I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.

Evan

EQ Wrote:

Scriabin - Madness or Prophecy?

His Philosophies As Seen Through His Words and Works

Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin may have lived and died in an era roughly 100 years

ago, but his legacy will come to fruition in our own day in a way many of us would never have

guessed. There are many books written about all aspects of the life of Scriabin, but only one is

of sufficient quality to reinforce the assertations made here, which could have otherwise seemed

highly incredible and rather controversial. This was, to my knowledge, the only text written

about Scriabin by someone who actually knew him, his friend and confidante, Boris de

Schloezer. The rest, written by musicologists who never met him once, cannot hope to make

sense of the complexity of the philosophical and mystical side of Scriabin, and it is no wonder -

the substance this side of him imparted may very well only be revealed to us all in the years to

come. The book, "Scriabin: Artist and Mystic", reveals about the inner nature of Scriabin

something that some of us are already familiar with but would never have attributed to an artist

from 100 years ago, and the rest of us will come to recognize - as everything he aspired

towards in the final years of his life comes to be in what may very well be the final years of our

own. This to say that afterwards, although our lives will continue as always, we might stand a

good chance of considering them to be new lives altogether. Although occasional references

might be made to other texts concerning the life of Scriabin, here we will seek to expand from

the contents of the one book aformentionned as it is the only to contain any information of true

worth for our concern. First it must be revealed what exactly Scriabin was getting at, keeping

clear of the misconceptions so many scholars too easily had and conclusions too easily jumped

to, in an effort to paint the most accurate picture of his final vision as possible. Next, this vision

described must be supported by a substantial portion of his musical works, if perhaps

concentrating on his late period, since the works cited should come from the same period that

saw the final refinement of his philosophical beliefs. It is crucial, especially in considering the

way Scriabin planned to implement his final vision, that one be able to hear in his musical works

the same quality his vision possessed. Finally, the portent of how his innermost essence revealed

itself in his communique, whether through words or music, must come to light so that the

purpose of this essay be revealed in full - to show that all Scriabin stood for in the final years of

his life represents what is perhaps the greatest instance of prophecy in the entire history of

mankind; and to show that, to mistake it for madness, would in turn be the greatest mistake of

the history of mankind.



Scriabin believed that he would be able to conjure a cataclysmic event he called "The

Mysterium", through a synthesis of sensations that "would reunite mankind in the Unique". To

further quote the most climactic section of de Schloezer's biography,

"They (mankind) would actually be transfigured: exaltation, as immeasurable and deep as the ocean, would reach its greatest imaginable intensity; the spirit and matter, liberated from their chains, would approach nothingness, and the polarity of the masculine and feminine principles would fall to the vanishing point. The cosmos would be hurled into the sunlit abyss of ecstacy. At that instant the universal consciousness would burst into comprehension of the Unique. Mankind would experience filial freedom and become aware of its divine essence, its sacrificial nature."

Over 325 pages of reading can be said to ultimately revolve around this above quote,

which immediately begs the questions - assuming something so unbelievable could even be

considered as possible, how is one to convince others to believe in anything this intangible, yet

inevitable? And how can they themselves come to be so assured of its inevitibility? The answer

is the same for both - an experience for the individual so powerful that all doubt of its possibility

is instantly removed. Whether this experience be shared by many at once, as Scriabin

envisioned, or between an individual and his "higher self" (the little voice within) alone, it makes

no difference - Scriabin had doubtlessly had this experience many years before he attained the

final status with which he would approach it the most closely, having spent his life trying to

reach it as best he could. This was a process of paring away the elements of himself that did not

match this vision, while at the same time unfurling the true self hidden within himself all along, the

facet of himself that matched his vision most closely. It is interesting to note that any negative

descriptions regarding the nature of Scriabin were always corresponding to earlier in his life,

thus falling subject to this process of purification, no longer holding validity when considering

who the pen-ultimate Scriabin really was. From a chronological point of view, one can always

assert that another possessed certain traits at certain points in their lives, but when it comes to

declaring who another actually was, one must look only to the end of their lives, a period after

which they have altered their core beliefs for the last time and are thus representing themselves

most accurately. To say Scriabin was egotistical, a megalomaniac, or a madman - any of these

qualities may have been accurate to him at a point in his life, but these claims will be shown to

be invalid for the last period of his life, when in fact, just the opposite that is true. Scriabin

transcended his egoticism and megalomaniacism to arrive at a point that was completely free of

ego and tendency towards domination altogether - he simply believed that he had a mission

(regardless of whether it be self-chosen or proclaimed for him by an external entity), and that it

was his duty to fulfill it. This evolution of his consciousness can be said to be the reciprocal of

his claim that simplicity can be found through complexity - here, the simplicity of egoticism gives

way to the insurmountable complexity of the task of the unification of mankind. And surely the

appearance of a man trying to do something noone could understand would lead to the labelling

of him as a madman - but if what he believed in was actually possible, it would have been much

more mad of him to know of it and do nothing. Scriabin first conceived the Mysterium around

1902, the same period when he was planning his opera, and the conceptions of both hold many

similarities that have led to most of the false accusations of what kind of person he was. In how

he imagined both - whether metaphorically in the opera, or in actuality in the Mysterium, he

would play a central role in both of the performances. The hero of the opera shared the same

solipsistic qualities he possessed at the time of its conception, and it is no wonder he abandoned

completion of the opera around the same time his views began to change. Although the basic

essence of the Mysterium remained unchanged through this period of transition, his role within it

changed immensely. He saw himself, in the final period of his life, as the only one who knew of

the need to carry out its creation, and said himself he would gladly turn over the task to another

who also saw the need and was more capable than he.



Some interpreted quotations of his journal writings shall serve to reveal the nature of his

vision more closely:

"Individuality exists only in relation to other individualities; it represents a coloration, an epiphany of the Spirit in the framework of time and space. The will to live is one and the same in all humanity; variations represent but a passing phenomenon.... Longing creates the instrument of its own fulfillment. The highest synthesis is revealed in man and human society; its goal is the preservation of life and the furtherance of individual progress. But there is a higher synthesis that is of a divine nature, and which at the supreme moment of existence is bound to engulf the entire universe and impart to it a harmonious flowering, that is, ecstasy, returning it to a primordial state of repose that is nonbeing. Such a synthesis can be consummated only by human consciousness, elevated to a superior consciousness of the world, freeing the spirit from the chains of the past and carrying all living souls away in its divine creative light. This will be the last ecstasy, but it is already close at hand".

In the above statement, it is revealed that the transition Scriabin had made over the

years of the 1900s. He saw that the task of individual progress is superseded by the divine task

of the creation of a work of art that will consummate the nature of singular individualities into a

synthesis of collective unity that represents all individualities bound together by a common

experience that triggers this ecstasy.

"Individual consciousnesses differ only in their contents, but the bearers of these contents, are identical. They are beyond space and time. We are faced here not with a multiplicity of conscious states, but with a universal consciousness that experiences a multitude of states of consciousness vertically (in time) and horizontally (in space). We should not be surprised by a world in which the same consciousness reveals itself in different individuals. Much more mysterious is that the universal consciousness reveals itself in different individuals (the exact same words of truth are spoken from the mouths of many different individuals), containing the consiousness of Ivan (X) in one place and of Peter (Y) in another place... Therefore the concept of individual consciousness is relative. There exists only one universal consciousness, in which an individual finds himself, according to the content that this consciousness experiences at a certain moment of time at a certain point in space. As a creative entity, an individual consciousness is nothing but potentially everything; ut individualities exist only in the categories of space and time... .By individually sensing something, I create not an imaginary but a true multiplicity of centers which is equally conscious of all the separate individualities it contains. At the present moment, at a given point in space, I am an individual conscious of myself, but I am also an act defined by my relationship to the external world. But in the absolute, I am the One; I am a consciousness simultaneously experiencing all other consciousnesses at once. I am you. I am all. I have unconsciously created the world as many times as there are living creatures. Now I have elevated myself to the level of conscious creation".

Above, Scriabin recognizes that the notion of individuality derives from the remainder of

all other possible ways of perceiving reality as shared between all individuals. The idea that we

have much more in common with each other than we have differences gives rise to this notion. If

this collective energy can be said to represent a pure white light, then individuality can be said to

represent the process of filtering this white light through "signature" filters that represent our few

differences from each other. The fewer our "defended" differences, as we make progress

towards the point Scriabin envisioned, the less we are filtering out elements of the white light,

and the closer we come to embodying this white light many have reported to have seen in near-

death experiences. Scriabin's vision could be said to represent the triggering of the symptoms of

a near'death experience "artificially", although the way he saw it, it would be the fore-creation of

a natural event mankind would have to achieve sooner or later anyways.

"The true center of the universe is all-embracing consciousness. Our past, which had not yet reached the level of consciousness, and our future are parts of this consciousness. The past and the future emanate from it, as does the infinity of space. They exist only as attributes of creation. The universe is identical with the One's will and is created by the One. The One is an all-embracing consciousness, a free creative impulse. Insofar as I am conscious of the world as my creation, everything must be the product of my free will, and nothing can exist outside of me. I am an absolute being (unlike Finite Reality, which is composed entirely of non-absolute material, nothing can be said to be 100% anything, it would instead be 99.99999...% what it was at best). All the rest are phenomena born in the rays of my consciousness."

Above, Scriabin identifies himself as a representative of the divine will only insofar as his

own intentions mirror the creative impulse of the divine. This is why he saw himself as the one

for whom the task of carrying out the Mysterium had been appointed - he was aware of this

divine impulse to return to the point of origin, the source, and knew that it marked the ultimate

desire - what all of humankind should and would one day be striving towards at once. If only he

was aware of this need, in his mind, then it must be his duty to carry out what only he knew was

needed. It is important to note at this point that the "I" Scriabin refers to is not his own,

ordinary, finite self, but the universal "I" he saw within himself.



Below, not his own words, but those he studied, are quite crucial to understanding the feeling he was working towards having everyone experience: From

Delacroix's "Etudes d'Histoire et de Psychologie du Mysticisme":

"In the state of possession we witness a radical transformation of the soul and of life itself, imbued by a continuous, permanent, and conscious element of divinity. The soul partakes of the divine spirit not only during a brief moment of intuition, but through the entire life of the individual; thus, intuition assumes a lifelike form. The soul, illuminated by the One, experiences its divinity in its actions; the individual feels that all spiritual states are born in the Deity, that his entire life and mode of thinking spring from a divine source... An individual then is indentical with divine action... Hence the consciousness of a superior control that is excerzised throughout one's life, a sensation of automaticism and of freedom combined, created by the conversion of individual consciousness into divine guidance. Here the soul is in a state of continuous possession by divinity, a species of theopathy analogeous to demonopathy. The Deity is perceived by the inner soul of man, becoming flesh of the flesh and consciousness of the consciousness, an integral part of the will. It is an operation that finds its natural expression in action... True spiritual life demands utilization of the divine force that penetrates the body and brings about the conquest of the outside world and of human souls... Contemplation and action exist in the soul, which is at once divine and human. It is only in this theopathic state that ones life assumes the meaning of a divine act, so that vital activities actually express the divine element and exhaust it by an infinite, creative action".

Above, the goal of Mysterium is outlined perhaps even better than the quote near the start of this paper. This feeling of "possession" would be triggered when

those involved have had a sensory experience so powerful that they feel from then on a closer relationship and kinship to the One than they would ever have felt

without a near-death (or real death, for that matter) experience. It can be said that after one has had this experience, their actions would from then on reflect divine

will and they would become co-creators just as their actions were previously contained to reflections of their personal dreams and desires (although they would still

be that too). Their individual consciousnesses would still exist, but a continuous link to a higher divine force would from then on exist within them at all times. It is

shocking to think that a man could conceive such thoughts in the midst of a world that would soon allow itself to carry out a World War, and then another, but even

this tendency in the world is reflected in Scriabin's vision:



"I need you, O dark depths of the past. For my infinite exaltation I need an infinite development, an infinite growth of the past. To achieve a state of bliss I need a world that would languish in pain. I had to pass through an infinitude of centuries in order to awaken to my present state. I had to undergo brutality and savagery in order to achieve the refinement of today. I need the strife of the past".

Above, Scriabin reasserts that a passage through the opposite of what one is striving towards is first necessary in order to attain it, to pass through the heart

of darkness in order to be able to achieve the highest light. This is because we are always bound by a reality we have created for ourselves until we can free

ourselves from it - at some point in human history, we have conceived the notion of the necessity to set things, many things, in opposition to each other - it is in fact

so deeply engrained into our belief systems that to consider the possibility of not doing so appear absurd. And yet it is not. Scriabin believed in the possibility of a

reality in which this dark, oppositional force has no place - to him it simply did not make sense. We would ourselves (and not with the hand of the One appearing as

an external entity to us) pass through this darkness and arrive at a pont where we would understand that we could abandon it forever, recognize it as the illusion it

really was all along, created in our minds many thousands of years ago, an evolution of fear, passed from generation to generation as something that "must" be a part

of our lives, the "balance" between "good" and "bad" being so omnipresent to us that few ever realized there could be another way to understand things around us.

We never seemed to realize that this notion never actually existed before humankind, that it made no sense to any of the animals, who could only love, or fear purely

out of instinct. Humankind derived hatred from fear, through a process of resenting the external entities that preyed on them, creating the need for instinctive fear

(which evolved into hatred as our minds began to evolve). And so it is not a mistake for this illusion to have ever existed, it was a perfectly logical development within

the evolution of mankind.

But what this paper seeks to provie is that it is just as logical a development within the evolution of mankind to now rid ourselves of it, as we are beginning to

evolve beyond the point where it should even make sense to us anymore. Scriabin knew this, and one can hear this notion of such transcendance in many of his late

works, including the 10th Sonata Op. 70, and the Poème "Vers La Flamme" Op. 72. We can see the darkness celebrated not as something to fear, but to recognize

for what it actually is, in works such as the 6th Sonata, Op. 62, the 9th Sonata, Op. 68, and the Poème Satanique, Op. 36.



Although he only left fragments, sketches of the "Acte Préalable" for his Mysterium at his death, an attempt at the completion of the work was exacted by

fellow Russian composer Alexander Nemtin, a sign of admirable faith in Scriabin's final efforts. Unfortunately the realization is much in the language of Nemtin, not

Scriabin, and so the work takes on a quality not unlike modern film music. Fortunately here and there we can hear elements that might be able to partially represent

the feeling Scriabin was trying to instill in others, likely the result of his sketches appearing in various places within the larger structure of Nemtin's own style of

composition.

And now, most importantly, how is it that something as inconceivable as the Mysterium be possible now, almost a hundred years later. There are several

ways to answer this question. One, the world has gone through the dark places of the World Wars and many other wars, and is finally starting to rebel against the

nature of war altogether. Although wars are still happening there is greater and greater resistance by the general public to such measures and we can see a time ahead

when war will be the solution to nothing. Next, technological advances are now permitting the ability for composers to instill synesthetic experiences in others to a far

greater degree than was previously imaginable to Scriabin, with his designs of the colour organ for his "Prometheus" Tone Poem. So far we could actually break the

barrier between the audio and the visual, and technologies to further collapse borders between other senses as well are inevitably soon coming. It is left for the

composers to awaken and begin to do so. Surround sound will allow the listener total immersion in the realm of sonic experience, and surround video could have the

same effect, or perhaps a unique type of video glasses for the individual. The integration of acoustic and electronic music could yield interesting possibilities,

especially if the composer at hand is to recognize the effects various audio frequencies, and combinations of frequencies (binaural frequencies) have on the human

brain. The M.I.D.I. protocol developped for electronic musical instruments in the 1980s allows for the synchronization of audio and visual art completely.



A description of a room fitted with incredible surround sound, video panels on all floors, walls, and ceiling might conjure an idea of the kinds of possibilities

that are now at our disposal, we have only left to gather needed materials to construct such a church of artistic experience. Soon nanotechnology might allow

integration of stimulation of the other senses in conjunction with these two.



The experience of the Mysterium will be sooner possible for the individual alone than a group of individuals, but the result would be the same regardless. Just

to conceive, and fully believe in the notion of it being possible for a group is to have already experienced it individually. This makes the individual become instrumental

in the design of the experience for groups of individuals. They will begin to start to discover their role within this endeavour, either by hearing the music, incessantly

until they compose it and set it free to the world, and then again, and again, as it becomes closer and closer to the light, or in the same way by seeing the graphic

artwork, or imagining the tastes, smells, feelings, and most importantly the 6th sense expression of this feeling. One could assume multiple roles when having more

than one kind of sensory experience relating to this - and that is exactly the point, the experience, even in a small dose, of what I could only call the "7th Sense",

defeats distinctions of even the basic senses and creates a unanimous feeling within the individual in many or all ways at once. All this culminating in the creation of an

experience for groups of individuals where no one could possibly walk out afterwards with any shadow of a doubt remaining within them.



Perhaps nothing will change after everyone undergoes this experience and has no lingering element of the old perception of reality within any longer, at least

so radically as Scriabin envisioned, or perhaps it will. Regardless, the impact this change in perception will have on us could very well make it seem as though a

completely new world was around us, even if we somehow recognized it from before.



To me the idea presented here can no longer possibly appear absurd, especially after reading this entire, high quality book on the life of Scriabin, and the

experiencing of many kinds of events over the last 7 or so years that are too varied and themselves too incredible-sounding to get into here. The notion of a reality

where all individuals simply base their differences on top of their similarities, rather than the other way around, is all that it really is. But how this new notion would

manifest itself is perhaps more incredible than anyone would ever be permitted to fully envision until it was actually the case.



For this we will have to continue to work towards this anticipated event in several more years time. All things, if you look for them, point to this as being

inevitable. The world is still a dark place, but look for the signs of a tidal wave of briliiant white light engulfing the darkness and erradicating it forever. They are there,

and when you see them, you will no longer be able to doubt ever again. One person at a time will come to this conclusion, and then everyone will.

Bibliography:

Boris De Schloezer, Translated from the Russion by Nicolas Slominsky. “Scriabin: Artist and Mystic”. University of California Press, (1923, 1987)

Faubion Bowers. “Scriabin”. Dover Publications, New York (1996)

Faubion Bowers. “The New Scriabin, Enigma and Answers”. St. Martins Press, New York (1973)

Alfred J. Swan. “Scriabin”. Da Capo Press, New York (1969)

Hugh McDonald. “Skryabin”. Oxford University Press, London (1978)

James M. Baker. “The Music of Alexander Scriabin”. Yale University Press (1986)

Wow. Thank you for sharing.

holy FUCK that was a long post. Just kinda skimmed over it, but DAMN.