Creative Art and Yoga-Sadhana

[K. S. Venkataramani was one of the distinguished contributors to “Triveni” right from the beginning. He was an established writer having about 20 books, in English, Tamil, Sanskrit and Hindi, to his credit. This article is reproduced from his book “The Nature of Creative Art” which was reprinted by the K. S. V. Birth Centenary Celebra­tion Committee.” – Editor]

What is Yoga? What is Sadhana?

Yoga is self-realisation or God-realisation; the union of the Jeevatma with Paramatma.

Sadhana is, in the words of one of the greatest saints and Advaitins of India, Swami Sivanandaji of Ananda Kutir, Rishikesh, “Sadhana is any practice to steady the wandering mind and fix it on God.”

If the fundamental longings of the human mind on the higher level be the basis for the evaluation of all the true values of life and art, the only test then of all literature and life and creative art is that it must function and serve as Yoga-Sadhana. Self-expression both in thought and deed must be so attuned as to lead you to self-realisation, to the footstool of God.

One, with the altitude or bent of mind seeking devoutly this Yoga-Sadhana mode in the determination of his activities, is a Rasika. A Rasika is the only nursery from which sprouts both the Yogi and the creative artist. A true Rasika furnishes the tilled and prepared soil from which alone could sprout the delicate seed of Divinity, now imprisoned in the Kundalini or the serpent-coil of man, which sums up the cosmic energy of all life.

Does the creative artist always require a mundane medium for his self-expression? He does require it in the lower altitudes of life. But a Jeevanmukta does not require any medium at all.

The saint without even a cadjan leaf or a pamphlet to his credit is as much a creative artist as Kalidasa or Shakespeare. His medium of expression is his own Tejas or self-effulgence, like sunshine from the sun, spreading peace and tranquility. For, the Jeevanmukta has mastered the rhythm of life and is one with the pulse-beats of the universe and he is the greatest creative artist; for he has attained the final goal of both life and art.

Sincerity is the base of Yoga, Sincerity like the spring in a sandy bed clears automatically the grains of sand that choke its own throat and slowly but surely the initial struggling ooze becomes a marvellous perennial flow in due time by God’s grace. Unattached sincere work is the purest joy on earth like spring­-water.

Silence and sound, how are they related to each other? Like the river and the sea? Speech is self-expression and silence is self-realisation – silence that forgets the objective environ­ment. True speech is Yoga-Sadhana to silence and true silence is Yoga-Sadhana to speech. Unless so based, speech leads to vanity and egoism and commercial waste and the chaos of plenty as in m0dern ways of life and hinders self-realisation.

In any true view of great art there is no audience except the artist himself. A master craftsman in his infinite absorp­tion in his work, in his highest and loneliest hours of communion, never thinks of the audience. There is a complete annihila­tion of duality, in the transcendental joy of swa-anubhavo, or self-experience and self-expression. The artist’s soul is the audience as well as the auditor. Auditor and audience merge into one, in the God-intoxicated, inspired artist. Matter and form become one. Sound and sense become one, even as Kalidasa formulates the basic rule of literature and art in the opening stanza of Raghuvamsa. If these great conditions of art are not satisfied, the result is not creative art or literature, but mere commercial production, coming at its best under De Quincey’s classification of “literature of knowledge” and not of power.

Literary composition, all great art indeed, is one of the authentic modes of self-realization, releasing and subliming the flow of mind energy in rhythmic patterns, thus infusing greater tranquility in human affairs. Art needs no ritual or ceremony but a profound sincerity of thought and feeling that detaches the gross body at the golden end of the pen and liberates the inner spirit of man to survey and comprehend to the full, and to compose the endless diversities and conflicts of life in this mysterious universe.

The great South Indian Sanskrit poet and statesman and Advaiti, Neelakanta Deekshitar’s definition of the nature of creative art is the best to my mind and is quite in keeping with our own authentic traditions of art and life, always inseparable.

He says that “Kavitha itself is a Yoga-Sadhna.” Self-­expression in art is an authentic mode of self-realization – a Yoga that transforms the mind energy into its higher forms till Ananda is realized, a state where work is still dynamic but rhythmic, where the mind loses its lower accents and tones and acquires the higher. The restless, the predatory, the acquisitive and the selfish instinct, of the mind are transformed into the peaceful, the non-predatory, non-acquisitive and selfless spontaneities of the soul and usher in a state and a society where the policeman is the individual.

Art conceived and executed as Yoga-Sadhana and not as shapely products for the gains of commerce, kills the Asura qualities in man and liberates the imprisoned Atma Gunas as outlined in the Bhagavat Gita, thus slowly transforming the human into the divine in the ever-ascending spiral of human consciousness.

Art as Yoga destroys the quality that erects the conflicting barriers and limitations of life and enables you to see the unity in diversity, the oneness of all life from amoeba to man. This “vision splendid” is reached only when the restless and unsteady mind is slowly sublimated through rhythm, through the immersion of the mind in the beatitude of Nada-Brahmam or rhythmic sound.

Pray, remember that sound is the first-born of creation and rhythm the first-born of sound. Music is the grand-child of rhythm. Rhythm is the corner-stone of cosmic life. Rhythm is the mother of peace and tranquility and of dynamic, selfless work, Nishkamya Karma. Rhythm is the root source of all matter constructive energy which, in the Leela or play of creation, interlocks itself into a rhythmic pattern as the till now impregnable fortress of the atom and the molecule, the vivid crystallization of energy into matter. Science, in the innocence of its ignorance of the true cosmic process, is seeking light and knowledge by the staircase, knowledge of creation through destruction. And the politician soaked in power-politics releases through the scientist this imprisoned energy in the atom through the wrong way, imperiling the happiness of mankind and the peace of the world.
Flood water, if canalized, irrigates; otherwise it inundates and destroys. Atomic energy as released through science is destructive; released through art as a Yoga-Sadhana into rhythm and Nada-brahmam, and Divya Nama Sankirtan it divinizes the ascent and consciousness of man and the whole of life.

Creative art is an enrichment of the range and quality of consciousness and not a mere accumulation of cyclopedic knowledge. Art becomes a Yoga-Sadhana when self-expression based on rhythm and Swa-anubhava gently takes you on to self-­realization surely like the river to the sea, for all her lazy wander­ings. That is why rhythmic activity based on Swa-anubhava and Swa-dharma is so vital to the individual. It never destroys, but integrates and builds. So truly creative art is bound to take you to the foot-stool of God – give you Brahma-Jnana, self-realization, the highest knowledge.

Life, art and criticism, under this selective conception of a great ideal, become the noblest striving of man, work that is worship at the most exalted level, seeking Divine grace and joy in a dynamic daily surrender of your ego through Nishkamya Karma based on Dharma and love.