What is the spiritual role of art?

Artist recognize a timeless truth and, taking hold of it in their work, bear it over to the rest of us. Artists are messengers between this world and the divine, which is why Goethe called art a sister of religion. We see the drama played out onstage as a smaller reflection of the divine drama. We read the plot of the novel as a shadow of the great battle of good and evil, fall and redemption. When the curtain is drawn between the material and the spiritual, the true power of art is lost. Through the Fourth Instinct artists glimpse the spiritual world, a sound unheard, a sight unseen by others; on the strength of that glimpse, they write, they paint, they compose, they choreograph. They are the conduit through which the spirit flows. What we finally see from the audience, hear from the balcony, read on the page is the artists’ most faithful rendering of their own vision. The primary requisite of art is that it moves us. Different art will move different people, but the greatest of art has spoken through the centuries from soul to soul -- a timeless and universal message. Art, in the final analysis, is always a connector. It links man and spirit. It heals and makes whole by making connections. The creative artist who first sets down the vision, the performing artist who takes up that vision and brings it to life, and the members of the audience when they become active participants -- all are links in the chain of artistic creation.