Author: Jeanne Ross

Of all the principles associated with education, this has always seemed particularly important to me:

Children should be exposed to beauty.

Beauty teaches on a subtle level. It encourages sensitivity to harmony, proportion, color, order, rhythm, and refinement.

Beauty does not require an expensive classroom. A plant in a window, reproductions of good paintings, natural objects, harmonious colors, music, organized materials, and an attractive place in which to work can all influence the atmosphere.

Order is also part of beauty.

Anyone who has been ready to create and then discovered that the pencil, brush, paper, paint, scissors, or other necessary material cannot be found knows how quickly inspiration can disappear. A well-organized creative environment allows the child to concentrate upon the work rather than upon disorder.

Time is equally important. Creativity cannot always be produced on command and completed within an arbitrary few minutes. Children need periods in which they can become absorbed in what they are doing. Concentration deepens when it is not constantly interrupted.

Education necessarily includes memory. Children must learn facts, vocabulary, mathematical processes, historical information, and many other forms of concrete knowledge.

But education should not end with memorization.

When learning is limited to information that can easily be measured on a test, the student may remember a fact long enough to repeat it and then quickly forget it. Understanding develops when the child learns to ask why something happened, what relationships exist between events, and what consequences followed.

Art strengthens this kind of thinking because the child is constantly making relationships.

What happens when one color is placed beside another? How can a large shape be balanced by a smaller one? What makes a composition harmonious? How can movement, emotion, distance, texture, or atmosphere be expressed?

The student learns through observation and experimentation rather than through memorization alone.

Art therefore develops both imagination and judgment.

ENCOURAGEMENT RATHER THAN COERCION

Children develop more freely when they are encouraged rather than unnecessarily coerced.

A child who feels supported is more willing to experiment because failure is not experienced as humiliation. The willingness to try is essential to creativity. A drawing can be changed. A piece of clay can be reshaped. A musical passage can be practiced again. An idea that fails can lead to another idea.

Excessive criticism or coercion can have the opposite effect. The child becomes concerned with pleasing the teacher rather than discovering what can be created. Encouragement provides the emotional security necessary for curiosity and experimentation.

This does not mean that art education should lack discipline. Skill requires practice, materials must be respected, and children must learn techniques. But discipline should support creativity rather than destroy the desire to create.

Annie Besant’s ideas concerning education provide an interesting starting point. One principle particularly relevant to art education is that each child possesses individual gifts and interests. These may appear early, or they may remain dormant until later in development.

A child should therefore be exposed to a broad range of experiences rather than being defined too quickly by one apparent ability or weakness. An early interest may disappear, while another ability may emerge with maturity. Education should provide a sufficiently varied palette from which the child can gradually discover what has meaning.

Art is particularly valuable because there is seldom only one correct answer. Two children can be given the same materials and create completely different results. Both may be successful.

This freedom is important.

The child learns that an individual response has value and that imagination does not always have to conform to a predetermined answer.

The artist has a special role in human affairs. Yet artists have sometimes been dismissed as impractical dreamers whose work has little relationship to the serious business of life. This is one of the most unfortunate misunderstandings of the artist and of the importance of creativity itself.

Another, much older view exists. In many traditional cultures, artists and craftspeople held an important place within the community. They created sacred objects, ceremonial garments, paintings, sculpture, music, and other forms used in ritual and spiritual expression. Art was not separate from life; it contributed to the community’s well-being and consciousness.

Modern education does not usually approach art in this way. Art is more often regarded as an enrichment activity, a pleasant addition to the subjects considered academically necessary. Yet art education contributes something that factual learning alone cannot provide. It develops imagination, sensitivity, observation, self-expression, and the ability to find creative solutions.

From a spiritual perspective, creativity is also important because it encourages the individual to become more responsive to inner impressions. The child does not create only to produce a drawing, a painting, a song, or a dance. Through creative activity, the child learns to observe, choose, imagine, respond, and bring an idea into form.

Art education therefore has a much broader purpose than training future artists. Most children will never become professional painters, musicians, dancers, or sculptors, but every child will need imagination and creativity in some area of life.

A scientist requires creativity to recognize a new relationship. An engineer must imagine a solution before constructing it. A teacher must find different ways of reaching different students. Creativity enters business, medicine, writing, architecture, gardening, design, and ordinary problem-solving. Whatever direction a life eventually takes, creativity helps the individual bring ideas into manifestation.

Recently, I had a consciousness-changing event in my life when I went in for cataract surgery. I did not fully understand what that meant, except that the lens of the eye becomes clouded and can be replaced with a lens that clears the opacity and improves impaired vision. This degradation of sight usually happens later in life and occurs so gradually that one is not always aware of how much vision has changed.

When I came out of surgery and had my first examination a few days later, I was amazed at the brightness of the world. The unoperated eye could be compared with the operated eye, and the difference from what I had become accustomed to seeing was astonishing. The world was far brighter than I had perceived. Not only was color improved, but now I could see into the distance clearly, with details I had missed before.

The bougainvillea had once appeared deep red, but now I saw its brilliant magenta. The dull blue sky, which I thought was full of desert sand and perhaps the promise of rain, was now a bright, calm blue. Mountains that had once appeared misty and obscure became subtle palettes of lavender, with clear delineations between the peaks.

Children take this vision for granted, but their immature consciousness may not grasp its significance. Those whose eyesight has gradually been degraded by cataracts can begin to assume that dullness and vague perception are normal vision. Even with the correction of glasses, the full impact of diminished eyesight may not register in their consciousness.

“When one has eyes to see…” is an aphorism I have heard before, but I had never associated it with the degeneration of physical vision. Spiritually, it refers to an enlightenment of reality when a deeper truth is revealed.

I could not help pondering how the world can appear so differently to so many pairs of eyes. How we think and feel toward our environment is affected by the lens through which we view the world. Aphorisms, inspirational phrases, and metaphors often express spiritual truths that can guide behavior.

We can be “short-sighted,” failing to look ahead or anticipate consequences. Or we can focus so closely on details that we fail to perceive the larger picture, as expressed in the metaphor, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” When you are too close to a situation, looking only at the individual trees, you may need to step back and gain a broader perspective. Only then do you become aware of the whole forest that was there all along.

Cataracts can become a metaphor for our worldview. Humanity can view this world through a clouded lens, seeing it as doomed to darkness, shadowy designs leading toward planetary extinction, and a defeated world overwhelmed by humanity’s destructive, ignorant, and self-serving nature. On the other hand, and just as unrealistically, we can look through a “rose-colored lens” of positive evolution while remaining unaware of the relationships between human behavior and its consequences for the political, ecological, and economic environment.

Neither provides a clear lens of observation.

Another meaning of cataract is a great rush of water, such as a waterfall. It suggests to me the decisive flow of light that can suddenly change vision.

As we grow older, our views can become clouded by a history of ill-informed circumstances, perpetuated by half-truths learned from peers and family members who themselves may have been no wiser. There can be a gradual awakening to reality, but insight also can occur with suddenness, sometimes following tragic or unpredictable circumstances—just as a waterfall can become a cauldron of seething currents as it plunges into an otherwise undisturbed pool.

The science of vision is complex, ranging from complete loss of sight to color blindness, blind spots, visual diseases, cataracts, and astigmatism. In cataract surgery, the clouded natural lens is removed and replaced, allowing light to be focused more clearly and vision to improve.

As we evolve, our inner vision changes, even as our physical vision may diminish. Perhaps the path toward enlightenment is also an evolution of consciousness—an increasing ability to perceive the inner light.

The Spiritual Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan:

“The heart is the telescope of the soul, and the eyes are the telescope of the heart. Just as when seeing through spectacles it is the eyes that see, not the spectacles, so when seeing through the heart and the eyes, what sees is the soul. The eyes have no power to see; the eyes have only the power to help the soul to see. The moment the soul departs the eyes do not see. And so even the heart is a telescope, which helps one to perceive and to conceive, all that one seeks. Yet at the same time, the heart does not see; it is the soul that sees.”

Color has always provided a certain exhilaration for me, whether I was experimenting with my first box of Crayola crayons as a child or observing the subtle variations of color in nature. There never seemed to be a color that could not belong with another, or that did not serve some purpose within the whole.

Nature uses brilliant combinations of audacious color and an almost infinite variation of hue. Is this extraordinary display intended merely to please the eye and entertain the senses, or does color serve some deeper purpose within nature’s evolutionary scheme? Does the color perceived by the human eye correspond to that experienced by less complex forms of life, or do other forms of life perceive an entirely different world of color?

Color is intrinsic to form and is abundantly present throughout nature. Artists have traditionally used pigments derived from the earth to represent the visible world and imitate nature’s forms. As a student of art, I also explored the artificial and plastic qualities of paint, blending different hues into opaque and transparent passages and discovering the endless relationships that could be created between them.

Artists continually seek to capture the splendor of nature’s palette, although we can never entirely equal it. Nature remains the greater colorist.

The journey toward perfection is also the artist’s journey. In this sense, it becomes a metaphor for the journey of the soul, painted upon the palette of individuality.

We seek to understand and reflect something of the creative principles underlying nature and our relationship to the universe. The inner life, like a painting, contains complementary forces, contrasts, dominant tones, subtle gradations, harmony, imbalance, unity, and diversity. All must eventually be brought into relationship.

The artist works toward the wholeness and completion of a work of art. Similarly, the spiritual student seeks to harmonize spirit and matter and to bring the many aspects of life into greater balance so that the nature of the soul may be more clearly revealed.

Evidence of this process appears throughout the natural world. In vegetation, color, form, growth, and fragrance combine into a unified expression. A plant reaches upward toward the light, fulfills its cycle, flowers, and radiates its fragrance into the surrounding environment. Its beauty is not produced by color alone but by the harmonious relationship of all its qualities.

Esoteric teachings suggest that human beings undergo a comparable process. During an incarnation, the deeper qualities of the soul may initially be concealed by the stronger and coarser energies of the developing personality. Physical needs, emotional desires, opinions, ambitions, and patterns of thought may express themselves symbolically through the aura in changing qualities of color and vibration.

Within this metaphysical system, the Soul Ray represents the deeper spiritual quality seeking expression through the individual. As the personality develops greater discipline, balance, and self-awareness, the more discordant elements are gradually refined rather than simply suppressed.

Color therefore becomes an appropriate metaphor for spiritual transformation. Harsh contrasts may become harmonized. Muddy mixtures may become clarified. Excessive intensity may soften, while weak areas may gain strength. No experience is necessarily wasted; each contributes something to the final composition.

Eventually, according to esoteric teaching, the personality becomes increasingly capable of expressing the qualities of the soul. The colors associated with temporary desires and conflicts become less dominant, while the deeper quality of the individual becomes clearer.

Then the true color of the soul may begin to radiate with greater clarity and magnetism.

Like the artist who continues to refine a painting until its many elements become a unified whole, the soul works through repeated experience toward harmony, integration, and the revelation of its essential nature.

COLOR AS A METAPHOR FOR THE SOUL

Color has always provided a certain exhilaration for me, whether I was experimenting with my first box of Crayola crayons as a child or observing the subtle variations of color in nature. There never seemed to be a color that could not belong with another, or that did not serve some purpose within the whole.

Nature uses brilliant combinations of audacious color and an almost infinite variation of hue. Is this extraordinary display intended merely to please the eye and entertain the senses, or does color serve some deeper purpose within nature’s evolutionary scheme? Does the color perceived by the human eye correspond to that experienced by less complex forms of life, or do other forms of life perceive an entirely different world of color?

Color is intrinsic to form and is abundantly present throughout nature. Artists have traditionally used pigments derived from the earth to represent the visible world and imitate nature’s forms. As a student of art, I also explored the artificial and plastic qualities of paint, blending different hues into opaque and transparent passages and discovering the endless relationships that could be created between them.

Artists continually seek to capture the splendor of nature’s palette, although we can never entirely equal it. Nature remains the greater colorist.

The journey toward perfection is also the artist’s journey. In this sense, it becomes a metaphor for the journey of the soul, painted upon the palette of individuality.

We seek to understand and reflect something of the creative principles underlying nature and our relationship to the universe. The inner life, like a painting, contains complementary forces, contrasts, dominant tones, subtle gradations, harmony, imbalance, unity, and diversity. All must eventually be brought into relationship.

The artist works toward the wholeness and completion of a work of art. Similarly, the spiritual student seeks to harmonize spirit and matter and to bring the many aspects of life into greater balance so that the nature of the soul may be more clearly revealed.

Evidence of this process appears throughout the natural world. In vegetation, color, form, growth, and fragrance combine into a unified expression. A plant reaches upward toward the light, fulfills its cycle, flowers, and radiates its fragrance into the surrounding environment. Its beauty is not produced by color alone but by the harmonious relationship of all its qualities.

Esoteric teachings suggest that human beings undergo a comparable process. During an incarnation, the deeper qualities of the soul may initially be concealed by the stronger and coarser energies of the developing personality. Physical needs, emotional desires, opinions, ambitions, and patterns of thought may express themselves symbolically through the aura in changing qualities of color and vibration.

Within this metaphysical system, the Soul Ray represents the deeper spiritual quality seeking expression through the individual. As the personality develops greater discipline, balance, and self-awareness, the more discordant elements are gradually refined rather than simply suppressed.

Color therefore becomes an appropriate metaphor for spiritual transformation. Harsh contrasts may become harmonized. Muddy mixtures may become clarified. Excessive intensity may soften, while weak areas may gain strength. No experience is necessarily wasted; each contributes something to the final composition.

Eventually, according to esoteric teaching, the personality becomes increasingly capable of expressing the qualities of the soul. The colors associated with temporary desires and conflicts become less dominant, while the deeper quality of the individual becomes clearer.

Then the true color of the soul may begin to radiate with greater clarity and magnetism.

Like the artist who continues to refine a painting until its many elements become a unified whole, the soul works through repeated experience toward harmony, integration, and the revelation of its essential nature.

All human beings possess accumulated intelligence and the potential to unfold abilities that may extend beyond a single lifetime. From the perspective of reincarnation, no one incarnation could—or should—reveal everything the soul has previously learned. To do so might interfere with the particular experiences and lessons intended for the present life.

Prodigies present an intriguing exception. Some children demonstrate extraordinary abilities in music, mathematics, art, language, or other fields with remarkably little formal instruction. They may perform at a level that ordinarily requires years of concentrated study. From an esoteric perspective, such ability might represent a partial opening into knowledge developed during an earlier incarnation.

This does not necessarily mean the child consciously remembers acquiring the skill. Rather, the ability may emerge almost effortlessly, as though the difficult process of learning has already taken place somewhere beyond present memory. What others must labor to acquire appears already familiar.

Music and mathematics are among the most frequently recognized areas of prodigious ability, although unusual childhood memories may take other forms. Some children have reported vivid impressions of unfamiliar places, people, circumstances, or even another family. Whether such accounts arise from imagination, subconscious processes, unusual memory, or something extending beyond the present personality remains open to interpretation.

From the standpoint of reincarnation, a prodigy may be continuing a line of development begun in another life. A young mathematical genius, for example, may later direct that ability toward physics, engineering, or another scientific discipline. A child with exceptional musical ability may eventually move beyond performance into composition, teaching, or another area of artistic expression.

In this way, an inherited or remembered ability need not become the purpose of the present incarnation. It may instead provide a foundation upon which entirely new experience can be built.

As the child matures, the extraordinary early ability may remain, expand, or gradually become less dominant. The developing personality acquires new interests, relationships, responsibilities, and challenges. The present life begins to establish its own direction.

This may be important for the soul’s development. If an ability represents something already substantially mastered, endlessly repeating it would offer little new experience. The greater purpose may be to use that accumulated capacity as a starting point and then move into unfamiliar territory.

The unusual feature of prodigious ability is that the struggle involved in acquiring it is often absent from conscious memory. The child demonstrates the result, but not the long process by which such mastery would ordinarily have been achieved. From an esoteric point of view, the fruits of previous effort may remain while the memory of the effort itself is veiled.

A new struggle must therefore emerge, for further development becomes possible only through new challenges.

LATENT MEMORY AND THE AKASHIC RECORD

The subject of prodigies leads naturally to a broader question: how much information from previous experience may remain below the level of conscious awareness?

Esoteric teachings describe an Akashic Record, sometimes understood as a subtle record of experience extending beyond ordinary physical memory. Within this framework, fragments of earlier experience might occasionally surface as unusual talents, dreams, impressions, attractions, fears, or unexplained feelings of familiarity.

Ordinarily, however, memory of previous incarnations would appear to remain largely veiled. There may be good reason for this. The individual entering a new family must learn to participate fully in that family and in the circumstances of the present life. To remain consciously entangled with the personalities, loyalties, conflicts, and relationships of many previous families could make it difficult to form new attachments and respond freely to present experience.

Old patterns may nevertheless influence us. People sometimes experience intense attractions, aversions, fears, or emotional responses for which they can find no obvious explanation. Psychology offers many possible explanations for such experiences within the development and circumstances of the present life. Esoteric philosophy adds another possibility: that some patterns may reflect impressions carried forward from earlier experience.

This should not be confused with a clinical explanation for personality disorders or other psychological conditions. Such disorders are complex and are understood through psychological, biological, developmental, and environmental factors. The possibility of past-life influence belongs to metaphysical interpretation rather than established psychological science.

The personality develops gradually within each incarnation, gathering knowledge through family, culture, education, relationships, choice, and experience. Yet beneath that visible development, the soul may carry a much greater reservoir of accumulated experience.

The prodigy offers one particularly striking example of this possibility. A remarkable ability appears before the present personality has had sufficient time to acquire it in the ordinary way. Whether science eventually provides a complete explanation or whether some deeper form of memory is involved, the phenomenon invites an enduring question:

How much of what we appear to learn for the first time have we, in some deeper sense, already known?

Within esoteric philosophy, the evolutionary purpose of a planetary system is understood as movement toward greater consciousness. Different worlds or life systems may follow different paths of development, but the purpose attributed to Earth is especially associated with the Second Aspect of Divinity: Love-Wisdom.

Humanity may be viewed as consisting of souls at many different stages of experience. Some are comparatively new to human incarnation, while others are believed to have entered the human evolutionary journey much earlier. Through long experience, certain advanced beings have traditionally been described as our Elder Brothers.

Not every individual, however, is thought to progress at the same rate or in the same direction. Some may become increasingly self-centered, seeking power, domination, or exploitation rather than wisdom and service. Esoteric traditions sometimes describe such individuals as becoming responsive to destructive influences arising from the astral or psychic worlds. At the extreme, they may be associated symbolically with what has been called the left-hand path, or black magic.

By contrast, those who follow the right-hand path are described as dedicating their knowledge and abilities to service. Within esoteric teachings, the White Brotherhood refers to a spiritual hierarchy of highly evolved beings dedicated to wisdom, compassion, service, and the advancement of human consciousness. The term does not refer to race, ethnicity, or any physical organization existing in the ordinary world. “White” is used symbolically to represent spiritual light, while “Brotherhood” expresses unity of purpose and service. These beings are sometimes described as Masters, Elder Brothers, or spiritual guardians who assist humanity without interfering with human free will. Although the terminology has occasionally been misunderstood or associated with very different ideas, its traditional esoteric meaning is that of a spiritually directed hierarchy devoted to the constructive evolution of consciousness.

Evolution may be compared to a school. Some students learn rapidly, develop discernment, resist harmful influences, and eventually move from what has been called the Hall of Learning into the Hall of Wisdom. Others may attempt to influence or control those who are less discerning.

From this metaphysical perspective, Earth is considered a place of unusual interest because human beings possess both free will and the capacity for rapid development. Esoteric teachings sometimes propose that intelligences beyond ordinary human awareness may also take an interest in humanity. Such ideas remain matters of spiritual belief rather than scientifically established knowledge. Within the human family itself, however, the contrast is readily recognizable: some people choose to serve, create, heal, and cooperate, while others choose manipulation, exploitation, or control.

The most effective protection against destructive influence is the development of character, discrimination, and personal responsibility. Individuals who are governed primarily by fear, desire, anger, or emotional reaction can be more easily persuaded by advertising, propaganda, charismatic personalities, or social pressure.

Human beings are naturally responsive to emotion and collective feeling. Patriotism, religious affiliation, political identity, and popular opinion can therefore become powerful influences. They may express admirable ideals, but they can also be accepted without sufficient examination. Discernment requires the willingness to question what we are told and to distinguish genuine principle from emotional persuasion.

History repeatedly demonstrates that a relatively small number of courageous and principled individuals can bring about profound change. Their work is not always recognized, yet its influence may extend far beyond their own lives.

People in positions of authority carry a particular responsibility because their choices can affect communities, institutions, nations, and movements. Power can be used for service or for manipulation. For this reason, both those who possess influence and those who readily surrender their judgment to others must remain alert to the misuse of authority.

The esoteric teaching of the right-hand and left-hand paths can therefore be understood not only as a description of unseen spiritual forces, but also as a metaphor for a choice continually presented to human beings: whether knowledge and power will be used for service or for domination.

The surest defense against destructive influence is not fear of darkness, but the cultivation of wisdom, compassion, courage, and clear thought. Where individuals consciously choose these qualities, the forces of manipulation find far less opportunity to prevail.