This transformed and transforming religion of the West, the tardy fruit of the teachings of Christ, now secretly active in the hearts of men, will receive enrichment from many sources.  Science will reveal the manner in which the spirit weaves its seven-fold veil of illusion; nature, freshly sensed, will yield new symbols which art will organize into a language; out of the experience of the soul will grow new rituals and observances.  But one precious tincture of this new religion our civilization and our past cannot supply; it is the heritage of Asia, cherished in her brooding bosom for uncounted centuries, until, by the operation of the law of cycles, the time should come for the giving of it to the West.

This secret is Yoga, the method of self-development whereby the seeker for union is enabled to perceive the shining of the Inward Light.  This is achieved by daily discipline in stilling the mind and directing the consciousness inward instead of outward.  The Self is within, and the mind, which is normally centrifugal, must first be arrested, controlled, and then turned back upon itself, and held with perfect steadiness.  All this is naively expressed in the Upanishads in the passage, “The Self-existent pierced the openings of the senses so that they turn forward, not backward into himself.  Some wise man, however, with eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the Self behind.”  This stilling of the mind, its subjugation and control whereby it may be concentrated on anything at will, is particularly hard for persons of our race and training, a race the natural direction of whose consciousness is strongly outward, a training in which the practice of introspective meditation finds no place.

Yoga—­that “union” which brings inward vision, the contribution of the East to the spiritual life of the West—­will bring profound changes into the art of the West, since art springs from consciousness.  The consciousness of the West now concerns itself with the visible world almost exclusively, and Western art is therefore characterized by an almost slavish fidelity to the ephemeral appearances of things—­the record of particular moods and moments.  The consciousness of the East on the other hand, is subjective, introspective.  Its art accordingly concerns itself with eternal aspects, with a world of archetypal ideas in which things exist not for their own sake, but as symbols of supernal things.  The Oriental artist avoids as far as possible trivial and individual rhythms, seeking always the fundamental rhythm of the larger, deeper life.

Now this quality so earnestly sought and so highly prized in Oriental art, is the very thing which our art and our architecture most conspicuously lack.  To the eye sensitive to rhythm, our essays in these fields appear awkward and unconvincing, lacking a certain inevitability.  We must restore to art that first great canon of Chinese aesthetics, “Rhythmic vitality, or the life movement of the spirit through the rhythm of things.”  It cannot be interjected from the outside, but must be inwardly realized by the “stilling” of the mind above described.