I am reading the book Nicholas
& Helena Roerich: The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artists and
Peacemakers, R. Drayer (2005). Years ago I was introduced
to the work of Nicholas and Helena Roerich at a spiritual retreat. I was
totally captivated by Nicholas’s painting Mother of the World (1930). To me it represents all concepts of mother
love—the Creator for the Creation, Mother Mary as mother of all humanity, and
the ensouled nature—Mother Earth, Mother Nature.
Life is often blessed with
enlightened people, individuals of great spirituality, talent and intuition.
Such individuals would be Siddhartha, Pythagoras, da Vinci, John Donne, William
Blake, Carl Jung, Catherine the Great, Thomas Jefferson and The Dalai Lama.
Some are widely recognized and others are treated with disdain. The Roerich’s
contribution is not often recognized—most likely because their roots were in
Czarist Russia.
The Roerichs were upper-middle
class in a time and place where most people were peasants. At that time Russia,
which lies on the border of Eastern and Western culture, was deeply religious
and spiritual. Nearly everyone has heard the story of Rasputin, the "mad monk" mystic and faith
healer who was introduced to Russian Czar Nicholas II and his wife. Supposedly Rasputin healed Czar Nicholas II's heir Alexis of hemophilia. This is the Russian culture that
impacted the Roerichs. They were nationalist with a great love for Russia and
it’s cultural history but also idealists and artists that believed in the
enlightening power of art, music, and the essential spiritual truth in all
religions—there is only one Creator and he created all that is. When studied
with a discerning eye all religions strengthen each other. Religious
separate-ism is the politics of power.
Information from the Nicholas
Roerich Museum website:
Nicholas Konstantinovich
Roerich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 9, 1874, the first-born
son of lawyer and notary, Konstantin Roerich and his wife Maria. He was raised
in the comfortable environment of an upper middle-class Russian family with its
advantages of contact with the writers, artists, and scientists who often came
to visit the Roerichs. At an early age he showed a curiosity and talent for a
variety of activities. When he was nine, a noted archeologist came to conduct
explorations in the region and took young Roerich on his excavations of the
local tumuli. The adventure of unveiling the mysteries of forgotten eras with
his own hands sparked an interest in archeology that would last his lifetime.
Through other contacts he developed interests in collecting prehistoric
artifacts, coins, and minerals, and built his own arboretum for the study of
plants and trees. While still quite young, Roerich showed a particular aptitude
for drawing, and by the time he reached the age of sixteen he began to think
about entering the Academy of Art and pursuing a career as an artist. His
father did not consider painting to be a fit vocation for a responsible member
of society, however, and insisted that his son follow his own steps in the
study of law. A compromise was reached, and in the fall of 1893 Nicholas
enrolled simultaneously in the Academy of Art and at St. Petersburg University.
Helena Roerich was an
unusually gifted woman, a talented pianist, and author of many books, including
The Foundations of Buddhism and a Russian translation of Helena Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.
Her collected Letters, in two volumes, are an example of the wisdom, spiritual
insight, and simple advice she shared with a multitude of correspondents —
friends, foes, and co-workers alike. …Later, in New York, Nicholas and Helena
Roerich founded the Agni Yoga
Society, which espoused a living ethic encompassing and synthesizing
the philosophies and religious teachings of all ages…. Prompted by the need to
provide some income for his new household, Roerich applied for and won the
position of Secretary of the School of the Society for the Encouragement of
Art, later becoming its head, the first of many positions that Roerich would
occupy as a teacher and spokesman for the arts.
Nicholas Roerich was
involved throughout his career with the problems of cultural preservation. From
an early age, when, as a teen-age amateur archeologist in the north of Russia,
he unearthed rare and beautiful ancient artifacts, he realized that the best
products of humanity's creative genius were almost always neglected, or even
destroyed, by humanity itself…. In the earliest years of twentieth
century, he traveled through the historic towns of Northern Russia, making
paintings of their crumbling walls and deteriorating architecture. He then made
appeals to the Russian government for efforts to maintain and restore these
priceless links to the past.
Nicholas Roerich spearheaded
the concept of an international pact to protect the best of world culture and
worked with the US administration of Franklin Roosevelt to accomplish this. It
was called the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific
Institutions and Historic Monuments (Roerich Pact). Washington, 15 April 1935.
“The High Contracting
Parties, animated by the purpose of giving conventional form to the postulates
of the resolution approved on 16 December 1933, by all the States represented
at the Seventh International Conference of American States, held at Montevideo,
which recommended to "the Governments of America which have not yet done
so that they sign the 'Roerich Pact', initiated by the 'Roerich Museum' in the
United States, and which has as its object the universal adoption of a flag,
already designed and generally known, in order thereby to preserve in any time
of danger all nationally and privately owned immovable monuments which form the
cultural treasure of peoples, "have resolved to conclude a Treaty with
that end in view and to the effect that the treasures of culture be respected
and protected in time of war and in peace, have agreed upon the following
Articles:” The entire pact is located on
the Roerich Museum website.
Helena Roerich was inspired and
received the spiritual teaching called Agni Yoga. Followers of the teaching
believe the Roerich family and their associates were in communication with
Master Morya,
the teacher of Helena Blavatsky,
one of the founders of the Theosophical
Society. Seventeen volumes of Agni Yoga have been translated from
the original Russian into English. Agni Yoga is sometimes called the Teaching
of Living Ethics, the
Teaching of Life, or the Teaching of Light.
Modernists who pursue Agni Yoga,
also called Inner Light-Fire Meditation
and Actualism Lightwork, view Agni to
be a joyous exploration into life, consciousness for personal and planetary
awakening. Agni Yoga is a meditation process that makes ancient Eastern beliefs
of inner Light-Fire accessible to the current Western consciousness. Agni Yoga
is considered to be active meditation, practical, grounded in the body and
comprehensive. The practitioner works to engage the source of limitless life
energy within to decode one’s soul language, and to release spiritual blockage to the
free the flowing life energy that makes up one’s consciousness and soul
competence.
As I read Nicholas &
Helena Roerich: The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artisits and Peacemakers, I am impressed by the spiritual dedication of Nicholas,
Helena, and their sons Yuri and Svetoslav. The Roerichs were often naive and
controversial. Sadly the idealistic spiritual seeker is often misunderstood by those who are inherently materialistic and power seekers. For myself I would rather seek inner spiritual fire and universal Christian brotherhood, rather than bind my soul to
lifeless religiosity—but that’s just me.
The Roerich’s lives read as a spiritual adventure story; we should all be so lucky. Perhaps we are all heroes in our own great adventure story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni_Yoga
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