Hero Image

Art & Consciousness

Creativity plays an important role in awakening the vital energy of our innermost being and leads us to self-transformation, writes P N MAGO.

The term ‘art’ — used widely through the modern world — has multifarious significance, its meaning having been extended continuously from time to time. Of late, however, its content has tended to lose importance as an experience of the Self.Art has been taken over by science, industry, advertising and even politics.

Yet, its purpose has never been more important.

Art plays an important role in awakening the vital energy of our innermost being and leads us to self-transformation.The growing confusion that has clouded creative effort in present times will clear only when art becomes a means of life, and life a means of art, to enlarge and expand human consciousness.

Ancient Indian culture emphasised on discovering the essence of nature through exploration of the Self,so vital to art consciousness, and as an extension of experience into the realms of intuition and mystic vision.
The artist tries to connect his individual consciousness with the deepest layer of his being, to extend it to its outermost limits.

The most important aspect of a creative experience is the establishment of links between human consciousness and the atman, the individual Self. Spiritual bliss is the same as aesthetic bliss, both being attained by contemplated absorption and inwardness.Through the insights of his creative imagination,the artist shapes a more profound and meaningful spiritual aspect of his confrontation with life.

Poet Iqbal said: Dhoondta phirta hoon mein, Iqbal apne aapko, Aap hi goya musafir, aap hi manzil hoon mein — ‘O, Iqbal, I have always been wandering, seeking my inner self


As if I am myself the voyager, and the destination.’


The role of art in education should be made the subject of immediate attention.The insight that art provides helps people identify with and act in terms of aesthetic values. Aesthetic and moral values normally provided by religious codes are synonymous, for they are intimately related to the very discipline in which an artist and a humanist are engaged.To quote Iqbal again, if the object of poetry is to make man, the poet is a descendant of the Prophet.


Art is a practical act, a karma, that reveals to an artist,the depth of his creative being,unfolding layers of his consciousness in a creative stream. Continuous meditation leads him to samadhi,deep absorption and a state of trance, the indescribable higher state different from awareness, which leads him to realise his Self, and merge with the Supreme Self.

In this way,we would achieve self-fulfilment, overcoming the suffering and anxieties of life and live joyously, liberated from the limited consciousness and time-space bound existence. In the present state of disorder that we’re in, we can turn to art to help us journey towards the highest vantage ground possible, to be in touch with the creative forces of the Universe.The art experience is valuable for it spreads love, peace and compassion.

Post your comments at speakingtree.in

READ ON APP