Why Art Born of Agony Leads the Listener to a Sense of Unity — Rupert Spira

This has only just come to me so I haven't taken all week to plan it. Sorry. Um I'm just thinking um when Beethoven wrote his late quartets for instance from his agony over being profoundly deaf and Messianne wrote quartet for the end of time from a prisoner of war camp I believe and Hayen wrote Jesus's last words seven last words on the cross. Pieces like that they were writing from a profound sense of separation in a way. Um and yet art that is expressing friction separation agony evokes in the listener very often the a sense of unity. And it's just come to me to ask why do you think that is? And do you think um do you think that people who write from a position of separation and agony already know about unity or do they discover that knowledge through their writing? And do we as listeners get led to a sense of unity through their >> agony of separation? Do do you see where I mean? >> Yes. Yes. Um [cough] [clears throat] in order to write about your sorrow or your agony, you have to stand apart from it and view it. Otherwise, you couldn't describe it. In order to paint a tree, you have to take some distance from the tree and view it from a distance. That enables you to paint it. Exactly the same. If you want to paint or describe your agony, you have to stand apart from it, stand back from it and look at it. If it was identical with yourself, you it would be too close to you to describe it. So to describe it, to write a piece of music about it, to paint a picture about it, to write a poem about it, to write a novel about it, you have to separate yourself from it. So the artist separates them for itself from their experience and describes it. And then the the the [clears throat] reader, the listener um who who sees the painting or listens to the piece of music or they have they take the same position that the artist took in relation to the agony. In other words, the artist puts the listener in the right place as the observer of this agony. So it's not what the artist paints that is important. It's where they paint from. The point of view they take because the the artist places the viewer or the listener in the place where they stood when they were describing it or composing it or painting it. So um some of Rembrandt's portraits, he he po paints very raw, uh [groaning] gritty images of people, but he paints them from a place of a completely unjudgmental place. He he places the viewer in the right place. Doseski's novels are dark, but but he places the reader in the right place in themselves. So in in doing so, even if your subject matter is dark, you can still take the viewer back to their true nature. What about if they're trying to evoke joy and and like unity? Um, where are they putting the viewer or the listener then? And would it be would it be as successful? I mean, >> it's very often not so successful. >> I was thinking it probably is. >> I don't I don't like watching spiritual movies. No, >> because they nearly always try too hard and fail. >> I would rather watch a really good drama >> that wasn't trying to be overtly spiritual. But the the producer, the director comes from this understanding and this understanding is imbued in the movie. Although it's it it's the movie doesn't have a mission to teach you something. it that that they they are I think really much more spiritual movies truly spiritual the ones that don't try so hard >> like with with your talking about how to be with children if you've got a mission and you're you know it it's not as successful possibly as if you're just coming from an honest place and >> yes another example yeah >> that's yeah >> um talking about Messiah and the quartet for the end of time that he wrote in a concentration camp. I believe he said about that he said um [clears throat] I wrote this music in I'm paraphrasing not quoting he said I wrote this music in in the worst possible circumstances a human can be in almost and yet it came from a place of peace and joy in me and if you listen as I know you have if you listen to that piece of music it is hauntingly beautiful because it came from this place of peace and joy in spite of the dire circumstances in which he composed it. >> It's like that Gurki piece um where the singer a mother singing about her son saying he's in a camp and she's saying I I I just hand him over to you now because I can't do anything. There's something so raw about that coming from a position of um such sadness. But those people seem very very wise to me and and and I understand what you're mean when you say it's the position they put the listener into. The French writer Alber Camu, he said, "I finally realized in the depths of winter, there is in me an eternal summer." That and that's that's what he was able to communicate. Even in the depths of winter, the darkest experiences, there is this eternal summer, the light of the light of being which shines eternally even in the darkest places. the eternal summer, the eternal sunshine of pure being. >> That reminds me of um this is the hour of lead which if outlived like freezing persons in the snow, first chill, then stuper, then the letting go. It, you know, it's that idea of >> being so frozen and then suddenly you can >> Yeah, >> Sheena and I do this. We trade quotes with each [snorts] other. Actually, I can't remember who that one. That's that woman poet. What? You know what's her name? Emily Dickens. That was >> Anyway, that's very that's lovely. Thank you.