Superior Index Go to the next: Chapter 26
Print Files: A4 Size.
Maitreya's Mystery School Is All-Important
You Are the Called and the Sponsored
Let the mind be quickened to know the Mind of God!
Let the mind be quickened to know the Mind of God!
Let needlelike rays from the sun of the I AM Presence pierce ignorance, dullness and absence of awareness of the qualities of life that must be appreciated by the heart that is refined, by the mind that is attuned to God and therefore tutored by his Christ.
In these days of the descending Dark Cycle, beloved, you will be aware of a subtle density closing in and of the faculties of mind and heart and soul and spirit here below not being of the full essence and joy and penetrating perception that you once knew, even in the days of Eden when you dwelt at the edge of the etheric octave, not yet having descended into denser levels.
Beloved hearts, the Mystery School is all-important! Maitreya's presence: let it be revered in your heart as you appeal to him - "Om Maitreya Om." Manjushri's presence: let it be revered in your heart as you appeal to him - "Om Manjushri Om." Thus appeal to all of the Bodhisattvas who rejoice to be in your midst, who come through this place once a day with tinkling bells and censers whereby the frankincense does permeate, does purge and purify even as it acts to exorcise those foul spirits who cannot bear to be about that most melodious fragrance of frankincense.
Let, then, the altars of this retreat and the altars of Keepers of the Flame in the earth experience once a day a little of the fragrance of frankincense burning that you might also know that Morya himself steps through the veil of frankincense.
Blessed hearts, when it comes to the judgments of Love, when it comes to the decisions of the Lords of Karma, I am there with the full flowering of Love. My sensors0 go forth - my sensitivity to the heart, mind and soul of individuals who have committed grave or not-so-grave crimes.
Where, then, does Love fall between Mercy and Justice? Where does Love come in the face of the All-Seeing Eye of God or the rule of Law and the rod of the Law of the Great Divine Director? Where is Love when the threefold flame borne by the Goddess of Liberty is violated? Where, then, is the balance of the seven chakras in giving opportunity or withholding it for a season because the individual has so flaunted the Law of Love?
And do you know what I deem to be the greatest flaunting of the Law of Love, beloved? It is ingratitude itself, ingratitude for the simple things of life as well as for the great things that are beyond man's ability to make happen. Ingratitude, it seems to me, must be the ultimate selfishness - always wanting more yet not appreciating the vibration of Love that intensifies in your hearts as I come, or the vibration of Kuan Yin or of the Lord Christ, who will follow.
To sit in the aura of the Ascended Masters is a privilege of many lifetimes, and yet it ought not to be a privilege but a right. It is truly the rite of spring and of Eastertide to know your Lord, but it is not a right that can be guaranteed by the Constitution of this nation. You see, beloved, it is a spiritual right that ought to belong to everyone but is forfeited by many. This forfeiture takes place because of the density that people have consented to have wrapped around themselves like strips of uncooked dough - yes, a dense dough that they have kneaded but not fired.
Understand, therefore, that there is a moment when you lose the right to be sensitive to a Master's presence, even if you should be two feet from him. You lose that right when you begin to take for granted what it takes for a Master to lower his vibration to your level, to enter your life and world. You lose that right when you begin to take for granted what it takes to raise up a Messenger that he or she might be the nexus of the flow of Light from heaven to earth.
You lose that right when you take for granted the dispensations that must be forthcoming year in, year out to maintain a Community of the Holy Spirit such as this Sangha of the Buddha. Do not take for granted what it takes to draw a circle of protection about it, a ring-pass-not of sacred fire, or what it takes to sponsor lifestreams on a path of accelerated chelaship. For there is always the tug-of-war, the whisper of well-meaning "friends": "You could be at a better place for better pay, with more opportunity to move up in this world and make a name for yourself. Think of all you're missing - the excitement, the fascinating things to do!"
To draw a circle around a place and to call it Maitreya's retreat, Maitreya's mountain, Maitreya's Mystery School - this comes by law of the hierarchy of the Buddhas as well as by dispensation of the Lords of Karma. Do not take it for granted!
Be not as yin insects, flitting about this way and that way, losing your tethering to your own heart of love or to the heart of Maitreya. Be one-pointed, beloved, and reassure yourselves that the true and right goal in life is union with God. For the pyramid you build, as it narrows, does culminate in the fulfillment of your mission foursquare through the All-Seeing Eye of God. It leads you to the accomplishment of that supreme goal of life whereby you place the capstone upon all other goals, which have been lawful for you to attain along the way as a means to that end of your ascension victory.
The lesser goals of human existence ought to be for a very specific purpose: the ripening of the soul and the weaning of the soul. First, the ripening of the soul in the Spirit and through human experience, human education and human involvement - having families, rearing children, studying to show oneself approved to God and man,1 preparing to shoulder community, national and global responsibilities, and making one's way in life. Second, the weaning of the soul from those very human exercises, and excesses, once the soul has fulfilled her humanness and can let go of it, climbing Jacob's ladder until earth no longer pulls her heartstrings and she is ready to go into orbit around the central sun of (1) the Cosmic Christ Maitreya, (2) the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and (3) her own Christ Self - who, at that moment of ripening, discovers the three to be one.
One's goal ought to be to satisfy lawful desire: the desire to realize the full potential of one's being in Christ, the desire to realize the human potential along with that Christ potential. This is necessary lest you come to the door of the kingdom as a rubber balloon that has never been inflated and therefore never known its size or how it compares to other rubber balloons or what it might accomplish if expanded to its full capacity.
It is necessary that you take steps to fulfill both your human and your divine potential early in life. Therefore, it is well to give children and young adults the opportunity for satisfaction in accomplishments that have merit and some usefulness to community, to society, to family and, above all, to themselves. For the training they receive from devoted teachers builds self-confidence and imparts skills that develop independence and a means of livelihood as well as strengthening the community.
But, beloved hearts, when ambition exceeds acceptable levels and you desire to build yet another level and another level of personal gain - each without solid foundation in the soul and in the Higher Self - you must cry halt to the human ego and assess the direction your life is taking. If the structure of life you are building contributes neither to the greater accomplishment of the individual nor to the greater blessing of the community, then you know that you have crossed the line. Beware then of human pride, intellectual pride and spiritual pride, where the work of your hands and your mind is done not to the glory of God2 but to the glory of your own self-esteem.
At that point on the ladder of the pyramid of life you cease to accrue in your Causal Body practical and spiritual momentums, for that which you offer on the altar of God and humanity is no longer done to the glory of God or toward the goal of your soul's union with God but only to increase the measure of the man, the measure of the woman or the measure of the child.
Thus know that attainment on the Path is to be sought and won, but it must always have a purpose and that purpose is self-transcendence. That purpose is entering in to a greater and greater level of one's Christhood, and that Christhood becomes the bread of Life that is broken and shared with others. The bread of Life is given to those who have the self-acquired gift of nonattachment. For if you are attached to the loaf of the Body of your Lord, you will not break that loaf to divide it and share it with others.
Understand, beloved hearts, that too much self-preoccupation takes from you the energy that is necessary and vital to your attainment of the Bodhisattva ideal. It robs from you the dance of the hours in which you take upon yourselves in all sincerity and love the ten vows of beloved Kuan Yin.3 When you keep these vows, you are accepted into the higher school of Maitreya in the heaven-world, where the Bodhisattvas are.
You can easily attain to membership in Maitreya's Mystery School in the heaven-world, in the etheric octave, and to membership in his Mystery School here below - if the will of God is the star that leads you, if selflessness is not a problem to you. And thus I say "easily" guardedly.
The reality of Maitreya's school in heaven and on earth and of your training there, literally day and night, ought to be brought to your memory now and then. For some of you forget that every day that dawns is your opportunity to greet Lord Maitreya. Each morning you ought to bow before his mighty heart and say to him: "What will you have of me this day? What may I do for you, Lord Maitreya, and for Lord Morya El, the Messenger and each precious member of your student body?"
Thus the attainment of the Bodhisattva level is possible to you here on earth, but you must reason with right reason. When you are setting forth the goals of your life, you must reason with the scribe who is your very personal recording angel and be sure to include enough time and space not only to balance your karma but to fulfill your dharma and your calling among your peers in society. These things cannot be set aside for anything, for anything, I say, beloved.
For if you allow all of the fruit of your tree of life to be devoured by those around you to whom you have a false sense of responsibility, then where shall that fruit appear in the day when that fruit is to be counted to see whether the twelve manner of fruits upon your tree of life have ripened and are now ready for the feast of Maitreya that they might be plucked, suitable and fit for his assimilation?4
I tell you, the spiritual path, the physical path, the human path and the path of self-transcendence wherein you deal with your psychology can all be fitted5 into your schedule as long as you place the proper weight on each part of your life. Chelas of my heart! You must realize that if you desire to deal justly with each aspect of your life, if you desire to be worthy of the calling that you have been called to, you may not dally in forms of entertainment that weigh the mind with unhealthy records and pollute the astral body.
I speak, beloved, of your going over and over the motion pictures of the past that have played and played and played themselves out. Have you ever seen a Bodhisattva come out of a group of individuals who were movie buffs? I haven't.
The desire of the Lords of Karma is for you to see that which is quality. There is much that is quality that is transmitted by satellite on certain stations. You must set up a system whereby you can record and play these programs for your members and play them again. These more effectively convey the essence of culture.
I come on the ray of Divine Love. You have children in your midst already who have supreme talent in the arts and in music, who have come from Venus, who are not receiving the training that they should have, but rather you are letting them engage their attention in those things that will only corrupt the great geometry of the All-Seeing Eye of God that is abuilding in them through the cooperation of their souls' inner work with their Holy Christ Self.
The time you waste in senseless endeavors, in activities that do not accrue to you one iota of the intelligence of the Mind of God - as opposed to the time you spend in the refinement of the intuitive faculties of the soul, adeptship in the control of the energies of the chakras, the practice of the spiritual arts of healing or anything else that is good, true and holy that you can name - this is what concerns the Lords of Karma. This wasting of time is part and parcel of your indulgence of your own dweller-on-the-threshold.
Take care, then, beloved ones, for all things can be accomplished here. But when you let your mind stoop to the level of those motion pictures that have to do with human emotion, human sexuality, violence, ego-strutting and all kinds of distorted sounds, this, beloved, not only affects you and your chelaship on the Path but it compromises Maitreya's Mystery School.
I speak, therefore, on behalf of the Lords of Karma. It is not necessary that anyone among you should be censoring movies or other entertainment. It behooves each one, in your own Christhood, to do that censoring and to realize that if too many of you continue to watch too many of these motion pictures or to engage in other entertainment that is surely below the level of your Christhood, you will see a compromise in this Mystery School of Maitreya that will not be able to be made up. It will not be made up by El Morya, by the Messenger or by a counterweight of your decrees in this court. There are some things that cannot take place on this ground if this ground is to remain holy and if you are to be supported as we desire to support you.
Those of you who do not wish to surrender these lower forms of entertainment as pastimes whereby you can dull the mind and forget about the rigors of spiritual attainment ought to reconsider whether you wish to remain at the Royal Teton Ranch at Maitreya's Mystery School. For I tell you, beloved, it is an hour and a season when El Morya is fighting for the continuing dispensation not only of this Mystery School but of other orders in the East that are being attacked from without directly, such as in Tibet.
Yes, beloved ones, it is the Mystery School that is the repository of the patterns to be outpictured in the Renaissance child, who shall become the Renaissance man and woman of the Aquarian age. If culture, the culture of divine love and beauty, is to be perpetuated, then I say you must make yourselves bastions, towers of the love ray of the arts of Paul the Venetian. And throw out the rubbage6 and remove it from your files!
Throw out that rubbish, beloved ones, and stop all diversions that take you downstream to the astral plane, that leave engrams in the mind and in the subconscious. And you would be surprised how long it takes you to remove the patterns of motion pictures and the amplification of modern so-called music. This is because the heavy emotions and the misqualified energy of the lower chakras projected through modern movies and music affect the emotional body and the soul with an intensity that is severe. And the younger your children are when you allow them to watch violence on TV and in the movies, the more damage that is done - for life.
I tell you, parents who have been sponsored not alone by El Morya but by the Lords of Karma to bring in children of Light: Wherever you are in the world today, take heed! Guard that life! Guard those little ones and guard your minds so that we might find that clarity of the Mind of God in you every day and hour. Let your mind be the very heart of the beacon of the Lighthouse beaming to a world the cadences of the mind of Maitreya, the distillations that you have brought forth from the higher octaves of the Bodhisattvas.
There are precious few places in the earth where such discipline of Love is required. I pray that you will uphold the standards and the spirit of this Mystery School. I pray that those who are considering coming here and who are ready for the rigors of the Path will not shirk, will not hold back, will not consider the comments of some others who have complained and complained about how hard it is to be at Maitreya's place. Let the complainers do their complaining elsewhere, for there are many who will fill those vacancies, who will enter in and who will not even consider that this Mystery School is as difficult as they may have thought it would be.
Blessed ones, it is time to treasure the jewel of the Sangha as well as the jewel of the Buddha, who is not a silent Buddha but a Buddha who may yet speak to you through your Messenger. It is time to treasure the jewel of the Dharma, the carrying of the weight of responsibility of the entire Spirit of the Great White Brotherhood - and to do so singing "My burden is Light!" It is time to carry that weight of the Causal Body of the Great White Brotherhood and to not look back to the old days nor attempt, after you have been here for so many years, to remold yourselves or your Community after the ways of the world.
The Mystery Schools are the fount of Light. Unless the fount be kept as a living flame, the flame can go out. You remember the tales of ancient Atlantis told by Phylos the Tibetan. Know, then, that the Maxin Light was withdrawn. Know, then, that all the work that was done by Jesus Christ for hundreds and even thousands of years of his tending the flame of the golden age of Atlantis did come to naught when the flame was withdrawn!
Are you not astonished that in the very living, physical presence of the Lord Jesus Christ the fallen ones did challenge him in the fullness of his Godhood/Christhood incarnate and that they were able to turn aside many from our Lord until finally the few who were loyalists to his cause removed themselves from that continent entirely and took up their abode in the land of India, the land of the Mother?7
If in the full manifestation of the living Christ Jesus there could be betrayal and the breaking up of the Mystery School and the forfeiting of thousands of years of a golden age that has not yet returned to planet earth, think you that it is not possible for the disparaging ones, who no longer have the eyes to see the flame nor the heart to tend it, to one by one take turns at trying to disrupt and ultimately break apart this Mystery School?
Remember the words of our Saviour and repeat them often as a mantra: "They shall not pass!"
Beloved ones, if you will ask the Messenger if she will make her ascension in this life, the Messenger will tell you, "That is in God's hands. I do not know. I could make a mistake and that mistake could cost me my ascension."
Therefore, you see, the same is true at the community level. Each member of the community of this Mystery School world-wide, every Keeper of the Flame in every city and town and hamlet the world around can elect to be a pillar in the mighty temple that ultimately will become physical here at Maitreya's Mystery School if there are those who will tend the flame in the very center of that temple.
Beloved ones, nothing is secure until you make it secure with the totality of your life - the totality of your commitment. Therefore, do not be moved from your calling but recognize that, whether you have known it or not, the Ascended Master El Morya has contacted every last one of you in some way or another. And whether by density or inattentiveness or wax in the ears or dullness in the brain or the surfeiting of the senses or the saturating of the molecules of self with the wrong kind of music, you at first may not have been able to tune into his wavelength, yet you were called. You have been called, one and all, and sponsored by El Morya! You have been called, beloved!
You may say, "Yes, I shall continue. No, I shall not continue." Let it be yes or no, but do not be found in that foul state, the in-between state of indecision.
This is the year when out of the Causal Body of the Messenger there descends the full-gathered momentum of the God-Harmony of her being and the full-gathered momentum of the God-Power of Lanello's being, in polarity. The twelve o'clock and the six o'clock lines of the Cosmic Clock denote the raising up of the sacred fire from the base-of-the-spine chakra to the crown chakra on the spinal altar of the Tree of Life. This cannot be accomplished without the God-Harmony of the Mother and the God-Power of the Father.
From the very base chakra, let your roots go deep into the Causal Body of Maitreya, who sponsors this Mystery School. And let the rings of light on your Tree of Life increase that you might become mature, that you might have the spiritual strength to reject the old self and the old momentums and the old, old dweller-on-the-threshold.
Let the branches of your trees be full and flowering! May they increase and grow high that the God-Power and the empowerment under the hierarchy of the Great Divine Director and the great hierarchy of Capricorn may bring you a year of solidifying, stabilizing and determining:
This is the place, this is the soil, this is the earth where I take my stand, where I have my victory, where I teach my children what it truly means to be a chela of El Morya! And I teach them from the moment they are born of that Master who loves them and sponsors them.
This is where I have decided to mark my cross in the sand, to take my place and to do so with 100 percent of my being and with full joyousness. And if I am not 100 percent whole, then I shall indeed go back and heal the unwhole parts of myself until all of me is one flaming presence, one sphere of Light, whereby Maitreya might enter and be one with me and be myself and multiply my Christhood and show me the oneness I have in the Sacred Heart of Jesus!
Blessed ones, this is not a time to pervert the flame of the six o'clock line. Serapis Bey is here with seraphim of God to give you the mighty disciplines of the base-of-the-spine chakra that you might raise up the white fire, nourishing every chakra, balancing every chakra and seeing yourself as a being who is individed in God, as Above, so below; and the figure eight does make the Above and the below whole.
Thus, it is no time for self-pity, for sympathy with the human consciousness to the exclusion of compassion for the soul who is bonding to the Christ, the Lord of all, or for self-justification or indecision on the spiritual path - all the wishy-washy, wishy-washy stuff. This is the time, beloved, to see that victories are about to happen in every direction, victories that need your strengthening, your input and your presence.
I bid you, then, read The Mahatma Letters, read the old books that Morya sponsored and that we guarded. Read of the path of the East and discover once and for all what it truly means to be a disciple on the Path. And above all, do not carve out your own concept of the Path that has nothing to do with the mahatmas.
I cherish each and every one of you. I AM Nada of the flame of Love. I come to sponsor the arts. I come to sponsor love that repels selfishness, self-love, nonsurrender, nonservice. I come with the love of the Ruby Ray that can empower you unto the day of your appearing at Serapis Bey's retreat.
It is not hard, beloved. You are equal to the task! Reject the spoilings that have come upon you by well-meaning caretakers, parents, et cetera. For the spoiled it is always too hard. But the course that is set is one that everyone in this worldwide community can run. Everyone can reach the finish line and survive.
Yes, indeed, beloved, you can make it here if you want to. If you do not want to, then it is best that you set up your own retreat in devachan8 as you may imagine it, as you may imagine your encounters with the Brotherhood. Yes, devachan may be your dreamworld, but do not count on outpicturing that dreamworld in your next life. Yes, this is the place - here in the concrete world, here in the compartments of time and space - where you can conquer.
I, Nada, have come in the greatest love and joy of our Lord. I have spoken to you of Reality. May you not shirk from facing it.
I seal you in the light of springtime. May it be for you the light of the springboard to your ultimate Victory.
This dictation by Lady Master Nada was delivered by the Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood Elizabeth Clare Prophet on Easter Sunday, April 11, 1993, during the five-day Easter Retreat 1993, held at the Royal Teton Ranch, Park County, Montana. Before the dictation, the Messenger read excerpts on personal encounters with the Masters from HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement, by Sylvia Cranston, pp. 45, 46-47, 179-80, 200-1. The Messenger suggests that every chela own this book "as a treasure in the history of our life and the life of beloved El Morya" (available through Summit University Press, hardbound. Following the dictation, the Messenger read from The Mahatma Letters, Letter No. XLIII by the Master M. to A. P. Sinnett. [N.B. This dictation was edited for print by the Messenger under Nada's direction.] Throughout these notes PoW is the abbreviation for Pearls of Wisdom.
"The Golden Age of Jesus Christ on Atlantis" by Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Videocassette: 2 cassettes, 161 min., GP91107.
Audiocassette: 2 cassettes, 163 min., A91074.
See also 1990 PoW, vol. 33, no. 47, p. 604 n. 10; 1991 PoW, vol. 34, nos. 29, 60, 61, pp. 382 n. 6, 659-78.
When Svetoslav Roerich died recently, he left behind numerous works of art, some of which have not even been properly accounted for. What will happen to these fascinating canvases that reveal the artist's deep empathy with nature and his fellow human beings?
SVETOSLAV Roerich, who died last month, left behind some 2,000 paintings. Although these were frequently exhibited in India, Russia and elsewhere, not many have seen the work of this remarkable mystic-painter. The fate of his private collection, like the fate of his estate, is not yet certain. As fierce a pacifist as his father before him, Svetoslav was instrumental in the signing of the UNESCO convention for the protection of museums and art galleries from war. But how far his own works will be protected remains to be seen.
In order to understand Svetoslav Roerich one has to go back to his father, Nicholas Roerich, an important Russian painter. In a certain sense, Svetoslav's work was the development of the legacy he inherited from his illustrious father. This legacy was the European Neo-Romantic ethos of the late nineteenth century, with its belief in the refined, noble and spiritually uplifting character of ancient and exotic cultures.
Aesthetic, literary and philosophical inspirations gained from such sources were shaped into fairy-tale-like visions of a perfect world, superior and preferable to contemporary mundanehess.
The early modernists like Degas, Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec or Matisse, and particularly the practitioners of Art Nouveau, transformed mainly Japanese art motifs. India, on the other hand, served as a spiritual stimulus.
When the Svetoslav family left their native St. Petersburg after the Revolution, they moved to Sweden, England and the USA. In their pursuit of a mythical Shangri-la, they also undertook prolonged expeditions to the Himalayas, covering areas from India to China and Mongolia and imbibing the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. Eventually, in 1933, the Roerichs setfled down in an estate at Nagar in the Kulu Valley. The place, situated at the foot of the Dhauladhars, embodied for Nicholas Roerich a peaceful and joyous communion of nature, man and the divine.
The close symbiotic relationship between Svetoslav and his mentor-father was to prove a greater shaping force in his artistic development than his stay at Columbia and Harvard. Even though devoid of the idols and mythological personages which populated Nicholas Roerich's sceneries, his son's first mature work retains the former's composition and atmosphere. Wide hill vistas ascend and come down in rugged, angular rhythms and float over long yet powerful slopes.
The gentle or tumultuous sinuousness of Art Nouveau's flowing rhythms and the mannered arching outlines come out fully in the figural scenes of the 1940s. In fact, the relatively individual work of Svetoslav Roerich shows his dependence on quite identifiable sources which lay at the beginning of his father's idiom and which were transcended by the older painter. The son's ouevre makes the viewer recall Gaugin and the stances of his oriental nodes echoed in the vaulted landscapes Svetoslav is fond of painting.
Roerich's paintings, however, have incorporated a degree of prettiness and sentimentality. The silhouettes range from a turn-of-the-century, theatricality to a mild Blake-like S-shape to 'nicely' stylised and simplified rustic beauties. The images exude the artist's delight in native types and his vision of their emotive response to nature's own moods, be it a threatening storm or a gaily unfolding spring, is just a little melodramatic. Svetoslav's ladies (one hesitates to use the word 'women') are delicate, innocently sensual, sensitive and calm. The same style is applied also to his allegorical groups of edifying content.
The Himalayan phase and the decoratively dramatic Art Nouveau tradition merged during the subsequent decades, particularly the '60s and '70s. Full of saturated, bright, expressively contrasting colours, a multitude of smallish canvases depict various picturesque scenes - rocks and low hills, river valleys, rich green trees, village huts and grids of cultivated fields. Their undulating rhythms, which may resemble sea waves, bind the vast spreading forms into a sort of design. Sometimes they incline towards an almost naturalistic rendering, though, more frequently, these also tend towards the stylised and patterned.
ALTHOUGH his spirit was dedicated to religious and spiritual ideals, Svetoslav Roerich walked on earth and responded directly to the people he met. More than his symbolic compositions, one appreciates some of the unpretentious studies of Indian village children, where the stylised and the decorative have imbibed elements of the touchingly real.
It is portraiture proper, however, which stands witness to his involvement with actual persons. Svetoslav, the portrait painter, began from a practically 19th-century academic realism. In the 1940s, although his work was very correct and professional, it did not soar. A certain acutely finished detailing and posed directness combine there with a dose of idealisation and sweetness, which are meant to enhance physical beauty and delicacy as well as spirituality. At this point, one remembers his portraits of his wife, the legendary Devika Rani. Here, the intimacy and warmth result in pleasant images. Some of his other portraits, however, prove to be fairly conventional. He was frequently commissioned to paint portraits of Indian political leaders, probably because Roerich was by now an internationally important figure and his style of portraiture - with its hint of a western search for Indian spirituality - was much admired.
Ever the realist, Roerich spoke against abstraction in art and the unnecessary distortion of natural beauty. His later portraits, accordingly, continue the previous tone, but become increasingly photographic in their idealised naturalism. The style often turns sugary, whether he depicts Devika Rani, a youthful and sensual society lady or a modest working class woman. The gently glamourous pose prevails among strong, bright colours, emphatic make-up and atmospheric background hues which may include Art Nouveau floral fantasies.
Christian themes recur throughout Roerich's career, but his last years culminated in large images of Jesus, saints and angels. Their didactic message is expressed through the use of symbols and allegories, doll-like faces and heavenly colours in misty gradations. But, instead of being harshly evaluated, they should be taken as evidence of the artist's longing for a pure anchoring in life beyond death.
Likewise, the phenomenon of Roerich as an embodiment of a specific kind of humanism overshadows his significance as a painter. Much respected, awarded and honoured in India and abroad, Roerich deeply believed in the transforming abilities of art. Hence, he strove to endow it with a feel of pan-natural harmony, peace, truthfulness, ethics and religious values. As he grew older, these became etched on his work and, indeed, on his very mien. He spent most of his long life on an estate near Bangalore, where he was active, being particularly associated with the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.
Today, a representative collection of the work of both the father and son is housed here, an abiding reminder of their long love affair with this land and its people.
FOR years they had been out of the limelight, living a quiet life of exquisite luxury and solitude in their Tatguni Estate, 20 km from Bangalore. Then last year, Svetoslav Roerich and Devika Rani found themselves pinned under a murky spotlight of property tangles and charges of drugged senility. And it did not take long to shatter the fragile beauty of their retired life, till then carefully shaded from the glare of public scrutiny.
The first lady of Indian cinema and her Russian painter husband had been, for years, in the magic circle reserved only for the top among the glitterati. Once acclaimed as the most beautiful woman of the Indian silver screen, Devika Rani had taken glamour and scandal in her stride, living her own life, not compromised by the claustrophobic norms of a hypocritical society. Belonging to the aristocratic Tagore family of Bengal (she was a grand-niece of Rabindranath) helped, especially to maintain her dignity while venturing into an area then frequented only by social outcastes.
Not only did Devika Rani carve a niche for herself in filmdom, but with the unflagging support of her first husband, filmmaker Himanshu Rai of Bombay Talkies, she took on roles that other actresses shied away from. For example in Karma, the first Indian talkie in English, she created a furore with a kissing scene way back in 1933. Never mind that the man she was kissing on screen also happened to be her husband. Apart from the aura of scandal and exquisite beauty, her remarkable talents as an actress, evident in films like Achhut Kanya, added to her image as the leading lady of Indian showbiz.
Even after the death of Himanshu Rai, Devika Rani refused to fall into the mould of the traditional Indian widow. She fell in love and married Svetoslav Roerich, a Russian painter who had made India his home. The Roerichs were aristocratic exiles from Russia, the name made immortal by Svetoslav's father Nicholas, an internationally acclaimed painter. It was a powerful union of souls, where two very sensitive individuals from extraordinary backgrounds built a life together.
Just as her first husband had made her the heartthrob of India by putting her squarely in the limelight, Devika Rani's second husband weaned her away from it. They escaped into their spacious estate, and settled down in a quiet bungalow amidst lush green meadows and Linolae trees miles from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. The queen of the silverscreen was content to be the queen of Svetoslav's dreams alone, posing for his paintings and travelling the world.
But the champagne years were bound to lose their fizz. The artist couple gave in to the demands of time, moving out of their home of 40 years in Tatguni Estate and into a five-star hotel more approachable to doctors and friends. And cornered by age and illness, they suddenly found themselves in the glare of the spotlight once again as their estate ran into trouble for no fault of theirs.
They fought the Bangarappa regime in Karnataka's move to acquire their 457-acre estate along with the paintings and artefacts they possessed from a room in Hotel Ashok. For a while, they even decided to leave the country and move to Russia. But that was not to be and the "Bengali Tigress" and the Russian artist fought off the government's move to acquire the estate for Rs 5 crore, as well as a stray coffee planter's claim that he had already bought the property from them for Rs 1.5 crore. The Russian embassy intervened, showing an interest in "preserving the Roerich heritage" and the couple decided to hand over the estate to a trust, for which they consulted family friends like Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and S. D. Sharma. The murky affair was brought to an end when the new Karnataka chief minister Veerappa Moily decided to guard the estate on behalf of the Roerichs. And the octagenarian couple was finally left alone.
But the scandal and dispute had destroyed an important aspect of their life: peace. It had dealt a stunning blow to the quiet dignity on which they had built their life together. And with Svetoslav Roerich's death, Devika Rani is left to pick up the pieces of a broken life, quite alien to the lady who epitomises grace. And this time she must do it alone. - A.D.S.
Reprinted from Indian Express Sunday Magazine, March 7, 1993.
Copyright © 1993 Church Universal and Triumphant, Inc., Box 5000, Livingston, MT 59047-5000, (406) 222-8300