Page 42 - NAMAH-Oct-2019

Namah Vol. 27, Issue 3, 15th October 2019

give the ultimate satisfaction. scientist too experiences it in moments of
sudden illumination when he has forgotten
A false opposition his own little personality and absorbed
in the contemplation of his work sits like
It may be noted however that Truth (sought one worshipping his chosen Deity in the
by science) and Delight sought by art are not cathedral of his laboratory.
two different realities but One. Though to the
mind they appear as two different things and Search for the Real behind appearances
different they are in their approaches, but
to the yogic vision, there is but only ‘One What religion and ideology seek to worship,
Thing’, call it by whatever name. Its essence though mistaking the shadow for the
is Existence, Consciousness and Delight. It is Real, what science and art discover and
a triune Reality so to say, captured beautifully experience in some utter moment of self-
by the Sanskrit term, Sachchidananda. That transcendence, that Yoga attempts through
is why all science is also an art and all art more direct means and with much more
is also a science. The seeker of Knowledge, completeness. It does not matter whether
whether through science or any other means, the yogi calls it God or the sacred Presence,
feels ecstatic after any new discovery like the the source and Origin of all things, the Dao
Eureka of Archimedes. So also art too revels (Tao) or very simply Aum, but it is the One
sometimes in process and technique. Reality that sits within our hearts and is
accessible to us if we care to find it. What
Yet just as the greatest discoveries of our life indirectly seeks and seldom finds
science have often been intuitive, flashing that Yoga seeks through much more potent
in a moment when the labouring mind means perfected through centuries of human
falls silent, so too the greatest works of art effort in a certain direction.
are those where the artist, forgetting norm
and technique, is lost in the contemplation While other means reach out outwards through
of the eternal Source of all things. In the senses or emotions or thought, yoga turns
science, when such a state arrives and within through concentration, contemplation,
the mind is quiet after its struggle for the reflection and interiorisation. This is the
formula that keeps eluding its grasp, a difference. The yogin may name it God
hidden door of knowledge opens filling the since it is personal or call it simply a state
scientist with the joy of a new sight. In art of Higher Consciousness since it is also
too, when the artist forgets the norm and impersonal, or transcending both calls it
is no more self-conscious, then in him too Nothing (since it corresponds to none of our
a hidden door opens and the fingers or cognate experience) or Everything (since it
the voice moves stretching him beyond dwells everywhere and in all things) this
the boundaries of the finite and touching much we can say, that the yogic conception
him with the delight of infinity. It is this of divinity is as far removed from religion
that is the rasa of art which the greatest as truth is from fiction and Knowledge is
of artists experience and communicate from imagination. The latter may sometime
in a state of utter self-forgetfulness. The open a door within us towards the former

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