Krakow has an unparalleled collection of once great European art of weaving magnificent painting-like pictures. Wawel arrases date back to the years 1553 through 1571 when King Sigismund II August commissioned best Brussels masters—then Europe's leading—to make some 350 splendid, elaborate tapestries. Huge wall hangings, some as large as 480 square feet, depict either biblical scenes in three series: Story of the Garden of Eden, Story of Noah, Building of the Tower of Babel, or landscapes with wild animals.

"The art of service is a great art. Unbeknownst to you, you are creating an eternal mural of service. And angel artists paint a mural—I will tell you not where—showing the episodes of this community of lightbearers and the day-to-day overcomings. Many preparations are being made for your homecoming and your rejoicing at last to understand all that has transpired at all levels. These are master artists who have determined that the sons of the best of men should not go down unrecorded in the murals of heaven, but should indeed rise up and in their own victory perceive that victory as a lesson to those who will one day be the students of the art which they have lived. For you are living artists of a living art.

"Whether you are repairing automobiles or machinery, whether you prepare the food or keep the records with the keepers of the scrolls, every act is a work of art. Every act is released from your soul as a release of energy which forms an engram of light, impressing upon the etheric octave geometric snowflake forms, roses and violets or, unfortunately, when done without grace or love, jagged forms of modern art which you would decry in a museum yet, alas, also manifest in the lower levels of the aura as work done without grace and joy and freedom.

"Service in life without freedom creates a record of art that is gray and dissonant. This is why even those who produce films always see a dim light as being present in Communist countries. Films about the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe seem to have that quality of absence of light, absence of dimension and even reality. It is the weight of oppression of the people who in their service are missing the seventh ray as a part of that artwork."

"Therefore, some of you will identify yourselves as a part of the body of the Mighty Blue Eagle, some of you as a part of those who minister at the altar of the I AM Presence and Saint Germain and Jesus. Others will see yourselves feeding and caring for the multitudes; others, the building of the Inner Retreat; others, the dealing with the nations and bringing them to the proper chord of response to our message. This tapestry, then, establishes an outline—whether within or without, whether in the maps of the earth in the ancient ages—of the Path for every­one who is to ascend through this dispensation and thoughtform."

"The question of selecting a medium to express one's art is easily resolved when one recognizes that there is a pattern basic and unique to every thing, to every idea, to every desire. The very desire to express, inherent within every form of Life, creates and evolves its own progressive pattern which goes before it, providing the forcefield for its unfoldment.

"Naturalness in living—a quality which some seem to enjoy to the fullest and others, wrapped up as they are in an artificial existence, fail utterly to comprehend—is a state of nonresistance to the soul patterns inherent in man and nature. Naturalness in living, as a quality of freedom, is also a quality of beauty.

"But let men not confuse what we term the natural with the base elements of man's nature; for these are unnatural, whereas all that is pure and lovely, all that is of the Christ in man, is truly natural because it is the true nature with which he was endowed by God.

"In the past as well as in the present, too many artists have felt compelled to use garish colors because these attract the attention of lifestreams whose lack of spiritual evolution causes them to have an affinity for the lower vibrations to which such colors correspond. But if the artist is true to his art, he will not display his work for the approval of the lower nature in man, but for the higher. He will strive to raise man from levels of mediocrity to a superior appreciation of Life.

"As the consciousness becomes more and more refined, the soul's appreciation of the qualities of the etheric plane are transferred to the outer consciousness, and man finds himself enjoying the more subtle expressions of light and color—the pastel hues and delicate shadings of sunlight as it plays upon Nature in all her glory.

"Just as people point to the never-ending chain of cause and effect sequences in the riddle
' Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' so we would point to the mutuality of influence that exists between a man and his art; just as cultural levels are influenced by society, so society is influenced by its culture. Just as a refined consciousness is aware of refined beauty, so those who are surrounded by the refinements of true culture tend to gain a refinement of consciousness.

"Until man refines the matrices of his consciousness at both conscious and subconscious levels, and until he gains mastery of the flow of thought and feeling ideations through the nexus of consciousness, he will inadvertently create discordantly.

"The act of consciously creating after the patterns of things in the heavens enables man to relate his consciousness with the Higher Mind. Thus he initiates a cause-effect sequence whereby he is influenced by the perfection of the creation even as he creates perfection in his art.

"This is the purpose of mandalas—geometric forms and designs used in meditation—to draw the consciousness of man into the symmetry of the Christ Mind, that he might manifest that symmetry first in his form and consciousness and then in all his endeavors. Long ago Saint Paul spoke of this ritual of congruency as the girding-up of the loins of the mind.

"The rapport with nature which man establishes in his being and consciousness, his engrossment with the realm of material manifestation, and his perfecting of the technique of precipitation from Spirit to Matter are intended to draw him back to the realm of Spirit, the plane of First Cause. Here he contacts the fires of creation which imbue his mind with a higher inspiration; indeed, he is at the Source, and all that he wills into manifestation will bear the mark of perfection.

"As he makes a habit of going to the God Presence for the outline of his work, he finds evolving in his consciousness the magnitude of the Father's love as his own creative potential.This is the gift of freedom the Lord of Creation intends all of his sons and daughters to have, that they might go forth to create, worlds without end, joyously, magnificently, after the patterns which God Himself employed.

"It must be remembered that man's native drives to be and to create are originally derived from God—no matter how far they have departed from their pristine purity, muddied though they may be by the spatterings of darkness which have afflicted the race.

"Those who allow themselves to continue working from a false premise in the fields of art, music, and drama, or any area of creativity, thinking they can move from the base levels of the human consciousness to a progressive achievement of a 'new art,' may find, upon contacting the teachings of the Ascended Masters which set forth the standard of perfection in every area of living, that the foundation of their experiments and the structure of their work based in imperfect matrices needs to be swept aside.

" . . . In the arts, as in every walk of life, it is sometimes necessary for individuals to take a seemingly backward step in order that a greater forward step might be taken.

"We cannot espouse those movements in art and literature, such as surrealism, which draw their form and content from the realm of the subconscious, unless that subconscious be sanctified by the Holy Ghost. We must advocate simplicity in design, pure geometric forms, and the depicting of those ideal qualities and images which originate in the Superconscious, or Christ, Mind.

"We recognize what we would call an expansion for living, through an expansion of Life, to be the purpose of all art. For art, to be worthy of the name, must raise the consciousness of a people into a higher understanding of the Life that is real—Life as God knows it and not as man has distorted it.

"Remember, beloved hearts of Light—all who would create, all who would bring forth design in any field—that your work is the work of God and that you must strive to ensoul it with patterns that have a peaceful and benign effect upon the beholder. The statement that beauty is in the eye of the beholder ought not to be forgotten.

"Therefore, if you desire to express beauty for others, to capture on canvas, in a poem, or in a musical composition some hieroglyph of cosmic worth, that those who behold your work may see beyond the physical into a realm of beauty not known before, you yourself must seek to embody in greater measure the divine ideals."