art

38:2.1An­gels do not have ma­te­rial bod­ies, but they are def­i­nite and dis­crete be­ings; they are of spirit na­ture and ori­gin. Though in­vis­i­ble to mor­tals, they per­ceive you as you are in the flesh with­out the aid of trans­form­ers or trans­la­tors; they in­tel­lec­tu­ally un­der­stand the mode of mor­tal life, and they share all of man’s non­sen­su­ous emo­tions and sen­ti­ments. They ap­pre­ci­ate and greatly en­joy your ef­forts in mu­sic, art, and real hu­mor. They are fully cog­nizant of your moral strug­gles and spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties. They love hu­man be­ings, and only good can re­sult from your ef­forts to un­der­stand and love them.

2:7.8The dis­cern­ment of su­preme beauty is the dis­cov­ery and in­te­gra­tion of re­al­ity: The dis­cern­ment of the di­vine good­ness in the eter­nal truth, that is ul­ti­mate beauty. Even the charm of hu­man art con­sists in the har­mony of its unity.

111:4.4The in­ner and the outer worlds have a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues. Any civ­i­liza­tion is in jeop­ardy when three quar­ters of its youth en­ter ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pro­fes­sions and de­vote them­selves to the pur­suit of the sen­sory ac­tiv­i­ties of the outer world. Civ­i­liza­tion is in dan­ger when youth ne­glect to in­ter­est them­selves in ethics, so­ci­ol­ogy, eu­gen­ics, phi­los­o­phy, the fine arts, re­li­gion, and cos­mol­ogy.

68:6.5Fron­tier so­ci­ety de­vel­ops the un­skilled side of hu­man­ity; the fine arts and true sci­en­tific prog­ress, to­gether with spir­i­tual cul­ture, have all thrived best in the larger cen­ters of life when sup­ported by an ag­ri­cul­tural and in­dus­trial pop­u­la­tion slightly un­der the land-man ra­tio. Cities al­ways mul­ti­ply the power of their in­hab­i­tants for ei­ther good or evil.

46:5.306. The cir­cles of the cour­tesy colonies. The seven cir­cles of the cour­tesy colonies are graced by three enor­mous struc­tures: the vast as­tro­nomic ob­ser­va­tory of Je­ru­sem, the gi­gan­tic art gallery of Sa­ta­nia, and the im­mense as­sem­bly hall of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors, the the­ater of mor­ontia ac­tiv­i­ties de­voted to rest and recre­ation.

• religion is mother of a.

5:5.5Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is the mother of the sci­ence, art, and phi­los­o­phy which el­e­vated man to the level of re­cep­tiv­ity to re­vealed re­li­gion, in­clud­ing the be­stowal of Ad­justers and the com­ing of the Spirit of Truth. The evo­lu­tion­ary pic­ture of hu­man ex­is­tence be­gins and ends with re­li­gion, al­beit very dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties of re­li­gion, one evo­lu­tional and bi­o­log­i­cal, the other rev­e­la­tional and pe­ri­od­i­cal. And so, while re­li­gion is nor­mal and nat­u­ral to man, it is also op­tional. Man does not have to be re­li­gious against his will.

• teachings of Prince’s staff

66:5.238. The plan­e­tary coun­cil on art and sci­ence. This corps did much to im­prove the in­dus­trial tech­nique of early man and to el­e­vate his con­cepts of beauty. Their leader was Mek.

66:5.24Art and sci­ence were at a low ebb through­out the world, but the rudi­ments of physics and chem­istry were taught the Dala­ma­tians. Pot­tery was ad­vanced, dec­o­ra­tive arts were all im­proved, and the ide­als of hu­man beauty were greatly en­hanced. But mu­sic made lit­tle prog­ress un­til af­ter the ar­rival of the vi­o­let race.

66:5.25These prim­i­tive men would not con­sent to ex­per­i­ment with steam power, not­with­stand­ing the re­peated urg­ings of their teach­ers; never could they over­come their great fear of the ex­plo­sive power of con­fined steam. They were, how­ever, fi­nally per­suaded to work with met­als and fire, al­though a piece of red-hot metal was a ter­ror­iz­ing ob­ject to early man.

66:5.26Mek did a great deal to ad­vance the cul­ture of the An­don­ites and to im­prove the art of the blue man. A blend of the blue man with the An­don stock pro­duced an ar­tis­ti­cally gifted type, and many of them be­came mas­ter sculp­tors. They did not work in stone or mar­ble, but their works of clay, hard­ened by bak­ing, adorned the gar­dens of Dala­ma­tia.

66:5.27Great prog­ress was made in the home arts, most of which were lost in the long and dark ages of re­bel­lion, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til mod­ern times.

• Andite contribution

78:5.8The mi­gra­tory con­quests of the And­ites con­tin­ued on down to their fi­nal dis­per­sions, from 8000 to 6000 B.C. As they poured out of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, they con­tin­u­ously de­pleted the bi­o­logic re­serves of their home­lands while markedly strength­en­ing the sur­round­ing peo­ples. And to ev­ery na­tion to which they jour­neyed, they con­tributed hu­mor, art, ad­ven­ture, mu­sic, and man­u­fac­ture. They were skill­ful do­mes­ti­ca­tors of an­i­mals and ex­pert agri­cul­tur­ists. For the time be­ing, at least, their pres­ence usu­ally im­proved the re­li­gious be­liefs and moral prac­tices of the older races. And so the cul­ture of Mes­o­po­ta­mia qui­etly spread out over Eu­rope, In­dia, China, north­ern Africa, and the Pa­cific Is­lands.

• Cro-Magnons were artists

80:3.7It was not un­com­mon dur­ing the rig­ors of win­ter for their sen­tinels stand­ing on night guard at cave en­trances to freeze to death. They had cour­age, but above all they were artists; the Adamic mix­ture sud­denly ac­cel­er­ated cre­ative imag­i­na­tion. The height of the blue man’s art was about fif­teen thou­sand years ago, be­fore the days when the darker-skinned races came north from Africa through Spain.

• commandment against making images retarded

88:2.5Moses, in the ad­di­tion of the sec­ond com­mand­ment to the an­cient Dala­ma­tian moral code, made an ef­fort to con­trol fe­tish wor­ship among the He­brews. He care­fully di­rected that they should make no sort of im­age that might be­come con­se­crated as a fe­tish. He made it plain, “You shall not make a graven im­age or any like­ness of any­thing that is in heaven above, or on the earth be­neath, or in the wa­ters of the earth.” While this com­mand­ment did much to re­tard art among the Jews, it did lessen fe­tish wor­ship. But Moses was too wise to at­tempt sud­denly to dis­place the olden fe­tishes, and he there­fore con­sented to the putting of cer­tain relics along­side the law in the com­bined war al­tar and re­li­gious shrine which was the ark.

88:2.6Words even­tu­ally be­came fe­tishes, more es­pe­cially those which were re­garded as God’s words; in this way the sa­cred books of many re­li­gions have be­come fetishis­tic pris­ons in­car­cer­at­ing the spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion of man. Moses’ very ef­fort against fe­tishes be­came a su­preme fe­tish; his com­mand­ment was later used to stul­tify art and to re­tard the en­joy­ment and ado­ra­tion of the beau­ti­ful.

• sculpture originated in idol making

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.

• burial statues improved Egyptian

95:2.4In time the Egyp­tians ob­served that dead bod­ies placed in brick­less graves were pre­served—em­balmed—by the ac­tion of the soda-im­preg­nated sand, while those buried in brick vaults de­cayed. These ob­ser­va­tions led to those ex­per­i­ments which re­sulted in the later prac­tice of em­balm­ing the dead. The Egyp­tians be­lieved that preser­va­tion of the body fa­cil­i­tated one’s pas­sage through the fu­ture life. That the in­di­vid­ual might prop­erly be iden­ti­fied in the dis­tant fu­ture af­ter the de­cay of the body, they placed a burial statue in the tomb along with the corpse, carv­ing a like­ness on the cof­fin. The mak­ing of these burial stat­ues led to great im­prove­ment in Egyp­tian art.

95:2.5For cen­turies the Egyp­tians placed their faith in tombs as the safe­guard of the body and of con­se­quent plea­sur­able sur­vival af­ter death. The later evo­lu­tion of mag­i­cal prac­tices, while bur­den­some to life from the cra­dle to the grave, most ef­fec­tu­ally de­liv­ered them from the re­li­gion of the tombs. The priests would in­scribe the coffins with charm texts which were be­lieved to be pro­tec­tion against a “man’s hav­ing his heart taken away from him in the nether world.” Pres­ently a di­verse as­sort­ment of these mag­i­cal texts was col­lected and pre­served as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile val­ley mag­i­cal rit­ual early be­came in­volved with the realms of con­science and char­ac­ter to a de­gree not of­ten at­tained by the rit­u­als of those days. And sub­se­quently these eth­i­cal and moral ide­als, rather than elab­o­rate tombs, were de­pended upon for sal­va­tion.

• Jews’ prejudice against images

96:5.5But it was truly piti­ful to watch this great mind of Moses try­ing to adapt his sub­lime con­cept of El Elyon, the Most High, to the com­pre­hen­sion of the ig­no­rant and il­lit­er­ate He­brews. To his as­sem­bled lead­ers he thun­dered, “The Lord your God is one God; there is none be­side him”; while to the mixed mul­ti­tude he de­clared, “Who is like your God among all the gods?” Moses made a brave and partly suc­cess­ful stand against fe­tishes and idol­a­try, declar­ing, “You saw no simil­i­tude on the day that your God spoke to you at Ho­reb out of the midst of the fire.” He also for­bade the mak­ing of im­ages of any sort.

• Jews’ prejudice against images

142:3.12“2. You shall not make molten gods.

• Jews’ prejudice against images

185:1.3Pi­late’s dis­fa­vor with the Jews came about as a re­sult of a num­ber of un­for­tu­nate en­coun­ters. First, he failed to take se­ri­ously their deep-seated prej­u­dice against all im­ages as sym­bols of idol wor­ship. There­fore he per­mit­ted his sol­diers to en­ter Je­ru­sa­lem with­out re­mov­ing the im­ages of Cae­sar from their ban­ners, as had been the prac­tice of the Ro­man sol­diers un­der his pre­de­ces­sor. A large dep­u­ta­tion of Jews waited upon Pi­late for five days, im­plor­ing him to have these im­ages re­moved from the mil­i­tary stan­dards. He flatly re­fused to grant their pe­ti­tion and threat­ened them with in­stant death. Pi­late, him­self be­ing a skep­tic, did not un­der­stand that men of strong re­li­gious feel­ings will not hes­i­tate to die for their re­li­gious con­vic­tions; and there­fore was he dis­mayed when these Jews drew them­selves up de­fi­antly be­fore his palace, bowed their faces to the ground, and sent word that they were ready to die. Pi­late then re­al­ized that he had made a threat which he was un­will­ing to carry out. He sur­ren­dered, or­dered the im­ages re­moved from the stan­dards of his sol­diers in Je­ru­sa­lem, and found him­self from that day on to a large ex­tent sub­ject to the whims of the Jew­ish lead­ers, who had in this way dis­cov­ered his weak­ness in mak­ing threats which he feared to ex­e­cute.

195:7.15Art proves that man is not mech­a­nis­tic, but it does not prove that he is spir­i­tu­ally im­mor­tal. Art is mor­tal mor­ontia, the in­ter­ven­ing field be­tween man, the ma­te­rial, and man, the spir­i­tual. Po­etry is an ef­fort to es­cape from ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties to spir­i­tual val­ues.

196:3.30Art re­sults from man’s at­tempt to es­cape from the lack of beauty in his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment; it is a ges­ture to­ward the mor­ontia level. Sci­ence is man’s ef­fort to solve the ap­par­ent rid­dles of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Phi­los­o­phy is man’s at­tempt at the uni­fi­ca­tion of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion is man’s su­preme ges­ture, his mag­nif­i­cent reach for fi­nal re­al­ity, his de­ter­mi­na­tion to find God and to be like him.

142:4.2The Mas­ter saw that his host was be­wil­dered at his friendly at­ti­tude to­ward art; there­fore, when they had fin­ished the sur­vey of the en­tire col­lec­tion, Je­sus said: “Be­cause you ap­pre­ci­ate the beauty of things cre­ated by my Fa­ther and fash­ioned by the artis­tic hands of man, why should you ex­pect to be re­buked? Be­cause Moses one­time sought to com­bat idol­a­try and the wor­ship of false gods, why should all men frown upon the re­pro­duc­tion of grace and beauty? I say to you, Flav­ius, Moses’ chil­dren have mis­un­der­stood him, and now do they make false gods of even his pro­hi­bi­tions of im­ages and the like­ness of things in heaven and on earth. But even if Moses taught such re­stric­tions to the dark­ened minds of those days, what has that to do with this day when the Fa­ther in heaven is re­vealed as the uni­ver­sal Spirit Ruler over all? And, Flav­ius, I de­clare that in the com­ing king­dom they shall no longer teach, ‘Do not wor­ship this and do not wor­ship that’; no longer shall they con­cern them­selves with com­mands to re­frain from this and take care not to do that, but rather shall all be con­cerned with one su­preme duty. And this duty of man is ex­pressed in two great priv­i­leges: sin­cere wor­ship of the in­fi­nite Cre­ator, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, and lov­ing ser­vice be­stowed upon one’s fel­low men. If you love your neigh­bor as you love your­self, you re­ally know that you are a son of God.

142:4.3“In an age when my Fa­ther was not well un­der­stood, Moses was jus­ti­fied in his at­tempts to with­stand idol­a­try, but in the com­ing age the Fa­ther will have been re­vealed in the life of the Son; and this new rev­e­la­tion of God will make it for­ever un­nec­es­sary to con­fuse the Cre­ator Fa­ther with idols of stone or im­ages of gold and sil­ver. Hence­forth, in­tel­li­gent men may en­joy the trea­sures of art with­out con­fus­ing such ma­te­rial ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty with the wor­ship and ser­vice of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise, the God of all things and all be­ings.”

44:0.2Though their work may be al­most in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to the ma­te­rial mind, it should be un­der­stood that the mor­ontia and spirit worlds are not with­out their high arts and su­per­nal cul­tures.

68:2.10If van­ity be en­larged to cover pride, am­bi­tion, and honor, then we may dis­cern not only how these propen­si­ties con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions, but how they also hold men to­gether, since such emo­tions are fu­tile with­out an au­di­ence to pa­rade be­fore. Soon van­ity as­so­ci­ated with it­self other emo­tions and im­pulses which re­quired a so­cial arena wherein they might ex­hibit and grat­ify them­selves. This group of emo­tions gave ori­gin to the early be­gin­nings of all art, cer­e­mo­nial, and all forms of sportive games and con­tests.

56:10.3Phi­los­o­phy you some­what grasp, and di­vin­ity you com­pre­hend in wor­ship, so­cial ser­vice, and per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, but the pur­suit of beauty—cos­mol­ogy—you all too of­ten limit to the study of man’s crude artis­tic en­deav­ors. Beauty, art, is largely a mat­ter of the uni­fi­ca­tion of con­trasts. Va­ri­ety is es­sen­tial to the con­cept of beauty. The su­preme beauty, the height of fi­nite art, is the drama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vast­ness of the cos­mic ex­tremes of Cre­ator and crea­ture. Man find­ing God and God find­ing man—the crea­ture be­com­ing per­fect as is the Cre­ator—that is the su­per­nal achieve­ment of the su­premely beau­ti­ful, the at­tain­ment of the apex of cos­mic art.

56:10.4Hence ma­te­ri­al­ism, athe­ism, is the max­i­ma­tion of ug­li­ness, the cli­max of the fi­nite an­tithe­sis of the beau­ti­ful. High­est beauty con­sists in the pan­o­rama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vari­a­tions which have been born of pre-ex­is­tent har­mo­nious re­al­ity.

• inveigles man to contemplate spiritual reality

5:4.4The do­mains of phi­los­o­phy and art in­ter­vene be­tween the non­re­li­gious and the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of the hu­man self. Through art and phi­los­o­phy the ma­te­rial-minded man is in­vei­gled into the con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and uni­verse val­ues of eter­nal mean­ings.

• foreshadows higher universe reality

48:7.2321. The high mis­sion of any art is, by its il­lu­sions, to fore­shadow a higher uni­verse re­al­ity, to crys­tal­lize the emo­tions of time into the thought of eter­nity.

• cannot elevate soul or nourish spirit

84:8.4There is real dan­ger in the com­bi­na­tion of rest­less­ness, cu­rios­ity, ad­ven­ture, and plea­sure-aban­don char­ac­ter­is­tic of the post-And­ite races. The hunger of the soul can­not be sat­is­fied with phys­i­cal plea­sures; the love of home and chil­dren is not aug­mented by the un­wise pur­suit of plea­sure. Though you ex­haust the re­sources of art, color, sound, rhythm, mu­sic, and adorn­ment of per­son, you can­not hope thereby to el­e­vate the soul or to nour­ish the spirit. Van­ity and fash­ion can­not min­is­ter to home build­ing and child cul­ture; pride and ri­valry are pow­er­less to en­hance the sur­vival qual­i­ties of suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions.

• religious only when diffused with spiritual purpose

101:9.4The search for beauty is a part of re­li­gion only in so far as it is eth­i­cal and to the ex­tent that it en­riches the con­cept of the moral. Art is only re­li­gious when it be­comes dif­fused with pur­pose which has been de­rived from high spir­i­tual mo­ti­va­tion.

• spiritual communion not promoted by ostentatious

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.

• dangerous only when blind to spirit standards

195:7.16In a high civ­i­liza­tion, art hu­man­izes sci­ence, while in turn it is spir­i­tu­al­ized by true re­li­gion—in­sight into spir­i­tual and eter­nal val­ues. Art rep­re­sents the hu­man and time-space eval­u­a­tion of re­al­ity. Re­li­gion is the di­vine em­brace of cos­mic val­ues and con­notes eter­nal pro­gres­sion in spir­i­tual as­cen­sion and ex­pan­sion. The art of time is dan­ger­ous only when it be­comes blind to the spirit stan­dards of the di­vine pat­terns which eter­nity re­flects as the re­al­ity shad­ows of time. True art is the ef­fec­tive ma­nip­u­la­tion of the ma­te­rial things of life; re­li­gion is the en­nobling trans­for­ma­tion of the ma­te­rial facts of life, and it never ceases in its spir­i­tual eval­u­a­tion of art.