An Excerpt From Nicholas Roerich's Heroica

Wikipedia:

Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh[a] (Russian: Николай Константинович Рерих), better known as Nicholas Roerich (October 9, 1874 – December 13, 1947), was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth he was influenced by Russian Symbolism, a movement in Russian society centered on the spiritual. He was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.

Born in Saint Petersburg to a well-to-do Baltic German father and a Russian mother, Roerich lived in various places until his death in Naggar, India. Trained as an artist and lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. Roerich was a dedicated activist for the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. The so-called Roerich Pact for the protection of cultural objects was signed into law by the United States and most other nations of the Pan-American Union in April 1935.

John McCannon – Nicholas Roerich: The Artist Who Would Be King (University of Pittsburgh Press, November 2022) (Amazon):

Russian painter, explorer, and mystic Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) ranks as one of the twentieth century’s great enigmas. Despite mystery and scandal, he left a deep, if understudied, cultural imprint on Russia, Europe, India, and America. As a painter and set designer Roerich was a key figure in Russian art. He became a major player in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and with Igor Stravinsky he cocreated The Rite of Spring, a landmark work in the emergence of artistic modernity. His art, his adventures, and his peace activism earned the friendship and admiration of such diverse luminaries as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, Jawaharlal Nehru, Raisa Gorbacheva, and H. P. Lovecraft.

But the artist also had a darker side. Stravinsky once said of Roerich that “he ought to have been a mystic or a spy.” He was certainly the former and close enough to the latter to blur any distinction. His travels to Asia, supposedly motivated by artistic interests and archaeological research, were in fact covert attempts to create a pan-Buddhist state encompassing Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet. His activities in America touched Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s cabinet with scandal and, behind the scenes, affected the course of three US presidential elections.

In his lifetime, Roerich baffled foreign affairs ministries and intelligence services in half a dozen countries. He persuaded thousands that he was a humanitarian and divinely inspired thinker—but convinced just as many that he was a fraud or a madman. His story reads like an epic work of fiction and is all the more remarkable for being true. John McCannon’s engaging and scrupulously researched narrative moves beyond traditional perceptions of Roerich as a saint or a villain to show that he was, in many ways, both in equal measure.

An excerpt from, “Heroica” By Nicholas Roerich, Nicholas Roerich Museum, 2018, Part Three – Thou Shalt Not Kill:

Publisher’s Note:

The fate of this book is unusual, and the book has followed a somewhat long and winding path to publication. After Nicholas Roerich compiled Heroica in 1946, he sent it off to an Indian publishing house. But the economic difficulties following the Second World War, coupled with Roerich’s passing in 1947, halted its immediate publication. After many decades, the manuscript was discovered in our archive, and we are pleased and honored to be able to publish it at long last. Readers and followers of Roerich’s prodigious output of written texts can now enjoy a new book in the series, Nicholas Roerich: Collected Writings.

You may wonder if it is still relevant after all these years. Roerich wrote the essays in this book during the 1930s and 40s, an era that now seems far removed from our own. Yet his perspective focuses on the universal and his messages resonate today just as powerfully as they did when he first wrote them. His most fundamental message, one that weaves its way throughout all of his work, both on the page and on the canvas, is this: that culture—its celebration and preservation—is the basis for creating a better future for all mankind.

. . . .

Before me lies an imposing volume The First World War. The publishers of it no doubt desired to show all the negative moments of the war and its consequences. Such books are excellent indicators amid the search and appeals for peace. If we witnessed all these horrors in the age of civilization and great discoveries, it means that the world culture is greatly shaken.

Besides its text, that book horrifies the reader with its pictorial reproductions. Let us not enumerate all such disgraces of humanity. It is sufficient to look into the eyes of a starving child-skeleton in order to feel into what abyss savagery and bestiality lead. The shameful destructions of the majestic creations of human genius also appeal to the hearts that are not yet fossilized.

The meaning of this white book on a table is similar to our white Banner of Peace, which was discussed at the Washington Convention. The more such books, the more signs of a reminder, the more the human heart will shudder and will ponder about the closest measures for the protection of dignity, for the safeguarding of the noble seal of the age. For what can be more dishonorable for such a seal of the age than the destruction of culture in its deep significance?

We must be thankful to all those who, by one sign or another, try to decrease the field of killing and destruction. It is true, we are horrified looking at some of the pages of the book of the Great War, but we exclaim at the same time: Let the school teacher, when showing such books to the students, say, “This will not be repeated.” So much terror has entered life, destroying the moral and material bases, that indicators should undeferrably appear on perilous spots from which humanity must be saved!

But in order that the teacher should have the right not to conceal from the children past horrors, he must cover every page of horrors with ten volumes of the true heroic deeds of humanity. He must know how to speak beautifully about those who shed their blood for the defense of the best constructive and educational foundations. Therefore, every publisher who shows the horrors takes upon himself the duty to issue books depicting the best images of the heroes and leaders of mankind.

In the days of the world crises, the wise Commandments should be especially remembered. Among them the most outstanding and imperative is: Thou shalt not kill! During the millenniums of bygone ages, the spiritual leaders of mankind on all continents repeatedly and patiently reminded of this closest basis of life. Precisely, this commandment has in view the safeguarding of life—that greatest gift for self-perfectment. And again, this planetary command was sent out, but again the blacksmiths of the whole world untiringly forged swords and spears, presupposing attacks, slaughter, and murders.

Endless volumes have been written against the killing of the body. From all sides it has been shown to what an extent this cruel action does not correspond to human dignity. If one could collect all the sayings that have accumulated around this conception, then we would see an amazing wreath, and on every leaf of it would twinkle the tears of humanity of all ages and all nations.

But amid the confusion of life, it has become unbefitting and even shameful to speak about this Commandment. And he who dares will be regarded as an impotent pacifist of the most perverted kind. He who speaks of this Commandment will be considered, if not insane, then at least a suspicious character who upsets the social structure of contemporary conventionalities. Indeed, if in antiquity murders were counted by the thousands, then in our “enlightened, civilized” era, the number of killed exceeds many millions. If in the Stone Age, hunters with primitive bows and spears killed some animals, then now in the slaughterhouses of Chicago alone, within the shortest time, some fifty thousand animals’ lives have been taken. Such is progress!

. . .Cruel are the deeds of this world. On the one side, people try to discover all sorts of remedies to prolong life; and on the other, they, with still greater speed, invent deadly guns and poisonous gases, which, besides destroying human life, poison the whole planet and inflict much greater harm than the civilized modern consciousness wishes to admit. All this refers to the body. But let us not forget that besides the body, we should keep in mind the human spirit, consciousness, thought, and ideas that govern the world. Of this a multitude of philosophers of all ages wrote and spoke, and in confirmation of this truth, they went into the fire and onto the scaffold.

But now the enmity of the world has reached such a state, that to speak of the perversion or violation of the spirit is considered merely a bigotry of bad manners. And indeed, where now can people hear about vital ethics, about the purification of consciousness, and the discipline of thought? The churches insufficiently stress it, and we all remember how guns were brought for blessing into churches. In schools there is no chair of ethics, and yet this subject, in all its historical vividness, could be one of the most inspiring. The ethics of the spirit, the teaching of the heart, has behind itself a most beautiful literature in all epochs. But it is not the custom to read such fundamental chronicles. It is not in the habit to search in characteristic old expressions something needed even today. For us who are addicted to aimless speeding to bodily contests, can there be any time to inspire ourselves with the beauty of ancient conceptions and images?

Having transplanted our consciousness into bazaars, into stock exchanges, into stadiums, into every possible kind of race and super-race, we simply lose the understanding wherein lies that self-perfectment for which we are here on this earth. One may run faster than his neighbor. One may fly faster than birds, but one may also swallow up one’s neighbor more bloodthirstily than a tiger. Embitterment has generated that unheard-of negation that destroys the meaning of human achievement. We had an opportunity once to quote the most significant statement of a British engineer-inventor, who said that humanity is not ready to accept great discoveries. And H. G. Wells, not because of the triumph of culture, recently suggested building a new Noah’s Ark.

Verily, in home life, in the schools, in social activities, many lessons of cruelty are taught. And in exchange, how blankly and tiresomely is repeated the withered command: Thou shalt not kill! And in the physical body, people have ceased to understand what it means, not to kill; what higher meaning this commandment, austere in its brevity, has.

. . .Always when we pronounce the great commandment: “Thou shalt not kill,” let us understand it not only in its physical but mainly in its spiritual sense. This last meaning will direct our attention to the heart and will help us understand the great Commandment not only in the narrow earthly way but in the whole magnificence of all higher worlds.

Cooperation, cognizance, strengthening of the spirit will again give to the world those heroes that the hearts of mankind long for.

Friends, do not think that these lines were written now, after the Second World War. No, they were written after the First World War, and now the same alarm should be sounded by all megaphones, by all loudspeakers, but in a superlative way. It is a shame that such superlatives should resound, that humanity should again be exhorted to ponder over the terrible reminiscences and truisms. Mankind knows that nothing humanitarian has been learned during this quarter of a century. Utilitarianism has led to atomic bombs. German militarism has resulted in unheard of bestialities. Will we again exclaim with Leonardo da Vinci, “Pazzia bestialissima!”