The Art of Living: Living within the Laws of Life
The Art of Living: Living within the Laws of Life, by Benjamin Creme Book review by Marc Gregory  "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life," wrote Oscar Wilde. Well, maybe. But the relationship between the two is perhaps more symbiotic and reciprocal than we have imagined up until now. In his 12th book, The Art of Living, Benjamin Creme points out that living correctly is indeed an art, and that life, like the arts, is subject to certain immutable laws.   This volume is in three sections and, like Mr Creme's other books, offers a great wealth and depth of information presented in a lucid, highly readable manner. It thus forms an apt counterpart to its two companion volumes, The Great Approach and The Art of Co-operation.  In section one, 'The Art of Living', the author makes use of the arts of painting and music as points of entry into a discussion of the spiritual meaning and purpose of life on Earth. "An art, whether painting, music or some other art, has to obey certain laws and rules. If you want to be a painter or composer, you have to learn the laws by which the art is formed; the methods too, but more profoundly the laws governing the qualities of art, like proportion, like revelation. The magic of art is stored in the obedience to these laws." (p.7)  What the artist finally seeks to express in a piece of work is a certain equilibrium, bringing together by intuition a balance of colour, tone, structure and proportion that is not only pleasing but, in the best of examples, a revelatory expression of meaning as well. When one thinks of a late string quartet by Beethoven or a portrait by Rembrandt, one not only recalls a work of great beauty, but a piece of art that retains over successive generations its revelatory power, its on-going ability to move people to a greater sensing and understanding of beauty and meaning in life.  The beauty and harmony expressed in great works of art are demonstrations of qualities inherent in humanity. Yet war, starvation in the midst of plenty, environmental degradation, brutality, despair, injustice of all kinds  -  the contrast between the real-time existence of these perennial problems and the splendour expressed in great works of art is as stark as it can possibly be. But why?  One can go to school to study painting, music and just about anything else. Yet, Benjamin Creme notes: "We are not taught how to live, the art of living. There is no school where we can go to learn the art of living. It is a spiritual problem because the art of living is tied up with living itself." (p.10) He goes on to quote a passage from an article, 'Moving Into Divinity', written by his Master: "Men must learn their role and innate power in life and take, thus, responsibility for its quality and direction. Unless they do this they will never leave their infancy behind." (p.11)  The world is sadly enough filled with myriad expressions of man's infancy, and there are two overarching root causes for these difficulties. The first is that we do not generally know who we are, and so tend to identify ourselves with everything we essentially are not. As Teilhard de Chardin said: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience". The distinction is basic, yet apt. We regularly identify ourselves with our beliefs, our political or religious affiliations, our occupations or our standing in society, our significant others, our thoughts and emotions, and so on. But far less often, if at all, do we identify with the fact that we are souls, inherently divine sparks of our Creator, in incarnation.   The second is that we do not know that there is a Divine Plan for the progress and evolution of all life on Earth. Central to this Plan are Great Laws. Again quoting from his Master, Creme writes: "Men will learn and understand the subtle laws which govern their lives: the basic law of life, the Law of Karma, of Cause and Effect, which controls the destiny of all; the related Law of Rebirth, which makes possible the journey of the Soul in matter; the Law of Harmlessness, which governs right relationship, and the great Law of Sacrifice, by which all evolution proceeds." (p.25)  As we are not aware of these two truths, human behaviour from time immemorial has been coloured primarily by conditioning, reactive responses to what we have been taught, have experienced, have misperceived and have thereby wrongly assumed about the nature of life. "All the wars, the suffering, the inability of humanity to demonstrate itself as souls in incarnation are the result of conditioning. Yet no one need be conditioned. Every single human being is conditioned  -  by the past, by its parents, by the very nature of its vehicles [personality, mental, astral and physical], which have been created for it by its soul under the Law of Karma." (p.18)  The oppressive and pervasive conditioning under which man labours is the collective result of our long history of incarnating again and again on Earth. It is also a by-product, in a somewhat oblique way, of the aspiration to something better which is latent in all of humanity. "No one, however faltering in action, is bereft of [the] desire for betterment, however expressed," writes Benjamin Creme's Master. "In no one does this longing not exist. How then to account for man's aberrations, his violence and hate?" (p.73) The pairs of opposites  This conflict is addressed in the second section of the book, 'The Pairs of Opposites'. It arises from the fact that man is an immortal soul immersed in matter, "the meeting ground of spirit and matter and the tensions which their concurrence evokes". (p.73) An innately perfect reflection of God, the soul incarnates repeatedly in matter, which is inherently inert. The friction created when that which is innately divine is immersed in that which is inherently inert, and the manner in which it attempts to deal with the effects of that immersion, is what creates conflict and shapes our reality, individually and collectively, for good or ill. Gradually spiritualising matter over the long course of our incarnational journey is the primary reason for man's life on Earth. It is our inner, undeniable aspiration to something better or greater that pushes us, in lifetime after lifetime, to continue to refine the matter within ourselves  -  and thus the matter of the planet itself  -  and that drives us ever forward on our spiritual journey. "The key is radiation. When we come to a certain point we create a radiatory activity in the matter. - It is the soul spiritualizing matter. In each incarnation from then on we bring into our bodies more and more matter of a subatomic nature." (p.87)  It follows then that an entirely new kind of education, one that takes into account man's essential reality (as opposed to the kind of glorified vocational training that characterises most education today) is critically necessary. A kind of education that, above all, stresses the need for harmlessness and imbues us with the knowledge that every one of our thoughts and actions sets in motion an effect for which we are ultimately responsible.  The teachings of Maitreya  Readers of Benjamin Creme's other books and those familiar with his lectures will know that his central theme is the reappearance in our time of the World Teacher, the Lord Maitreya, and a group of similarly perfected men, the Masters of Wisdom. As the Enlightened One expected by all major religions and a Teacher for all of humanity, His teachings show the way forward, a way in which men can begin to break the bonds of the conditioning which enthrals us.  Three elements central to these teachings are honesty of mind, sincerity of spirit and detachment. Honesty of mind means that there is no discrepancy between what we think, what we say and what we do, that our thoughts, words and actions are consistent and do not conflict. Sincerity of spirit simply means being one's self. How many of our words and actions are coloured by the fact that we wish to give a good impression, or because we are seeking to curry favour in one way or another? "That is the insincerity in which many people live," Creme writes. "How many people are really, utterly and entirely themselves?" (p.57) Then, finally, detachment. How concerned are we, or not, with how others see us, with what others think or say about us, whether they like us or not, and so forth. If one is truly detached, then one is likely not conditioned, and will not be subject to, or affected by, the effects of the conditioning of others or the conditioning of the world in general.   These ideas are "simple in essence", as Creme states, but they nonetheless require effort and discipline to put into practice. They are as well the method par excellence of negotiating one's way through the pair of opposites, of striking a creative balance between the impulses of the soul and the pull of matter, to which we are all subject. The persistent practice of these principles also helps clear the way for the intuition, a faculty of the soul, to function in a far more unobstructed manner.   Presently, humanity is spiritually fragmented. The functioning of the conscious mind is hindered by impulses, unexamined root assumptions and unresolved conflicts arising from the subconscious, as the result of conditioning or inadequately processed experience. Consequently, the astral, or emotional, sensing body in most people, which should be like the surface of a calm pond to reflect insights from a higher aspect of our consciousness (Buddhi or Soul consciousness) more often resembles the surface of a choppy sea in winter. This condition can be ameliorated by meditation, self-hypnosis and other forms of spiritual practice. As the teachings of Maitreya increasingly take hold in the world, and as contemplative spiritual practices continue to engage more and more people, "eventually the thinking, rational mind, the computer, will drop below the threshold of consciousness [where presently is found the subconscious], and we will intuit immediately and know the answer without thinking about it. We [will] know because we know because we know." (p.110)  Can you imagine a world wher...