Mykola Roerich. Young artist portrait. 2003, fireclay

Mykola Kostiantynovich Roerich: “The meaning of life is in ceaseless creativity and the creation of beauty.”

Mykola Roerich developed the ideas of the cosmic and historical unity of humanity with his multifaceted creativity. The artist believed that the world is dominated by the great law of self-development of culture due to the constant accumulation of experience and knowledge by previous generations. In this sense, the world is a single cultural field of the past and present, however, with the active development of techniques and technologies, a gap between culture and civilization, between the past and the present, breaks down the natural process of generational change.

Nicholas Roerich calls for the revival of spirituality. The thinker offers ways of development through the protection of the “age-old roots of the tree of culture”, the spiritual development of a person, his conscious desire for spiritual heights.

For M.K. Roerich, culture is the basis of the evolution of humanity in space. Culture contains the most powerful forces of development – beauty, creativity, knowledge. Roerich called all people of the world to be creative and build a new life. If humanity takes the path of beauty and creativity, all the doors of the universe will open before it.

“Try to understand the Cosmos – you will understand what is happening on Earth,” wrote M.K. Roerich on the purpose of life. First of all, a person must actively develop himself in order to awaken the abilities laid down by nature, but suppressed by civilization. You can do this only by constantly working on your inner world, developing spirituality, heart perception and consciousness. The evolution of life in space is built through the development of self-awareness. The artist claims: consciousness is a shell that accumulates from the subtlest types of energy around the “grain of the spirit.”

Consciousness develops and grows thanks to the experience gathered in each life. Consciousness, like a magic box, contains the achievements of all previous lives. The value of every life is enormous, through the improvement of consciousness in earthly life, every person has the opportunity to reveal the Divine possibilities in himself, to “grow into the image of God”, to become “manifested by God.” In the above-ground world, the developed human consciousness continues its conscious existence. In the subtle world, where a person passes after living an earthly life, there are all opportunities to continue his development, to accumulate experience – to study, work and create – to constantly improve in order to achieve the ultimate goal – to develop the consciousness of a God-man.

“A person is a part of the Cosmos, and therefore his every thought, every word and action contributes to establishing or disrupting the balance in the Cosmos,” claimed Mykola Roerich.