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Fusionartist,
Mystic Painter and Teacher
Gazing at any of
Fusionartist Rassouli’s creative works provides a
glimpse into the mystic loving eye with which he looks at the world.
Rassouli has been a celebrated and innovative painter since childhood
who later trained as an architect. Born in Isfahan, Iran, and currently
living in Southern California, Rassouli has developed an artistic style
known as Fusionart. He feels this art form is an expression of cosmic
unity, a coming together of mysticism and artistic expression.
The development of
Fusionart has been his entire life’s work,
initiated in his childhood influenced by the historic and gorgeous home
he grew up in, a mystic uncle and hours watching the whirling dervishes
spin. Fusionart and his paintings blur the line between dream and
reality – intentionally, since Rassouli sees the two as coexisting.
Rassouli is a
prolific artist who has exhibited in solo and group
shows worldwide. His work has appeared in and on the covers of a long
list of publications and the Agape International Spiritual Center has
showcased his paintings. Inspirations of the Heart is his most recent
book; it contains a fusion of Rassouli’s evocative art with Reverend
Michael Bernard Beckwith’s meditative musings. Rassouli also creates
murals in public space and one of his more recent, titled Angel of
Unity, can be seen by people walking at the ocean end of Washington
Avenue in Venice. The Angel, like many of the women Rassouli paints, is
radiant, flowing, like the breath of the cosmos herself.
Understanding his
view on life, love and painting may come best from
his own words. He started his interview with LA YOGA magazine by
talking about his painting Eternal Sun.
Rassouli
Rassouli: Scientists
were male so they call it the Big Bang. But what does Big Bang mean?
Somebody hit something and a Big Bang happened? The truth is that it
was a Big Birth. It was the divine feminine power that gave birth to
the universe. We have the masculine power and we have the feminine
power and they’re in complete balance. It’s just like darkness and
light. They’re completely opposite of each other and they coexist. Life
is the union of opposites.
Kerri Blackstone: Do
problems and chaos come to be because the powers are out of balance?
Rassouli: Chaos
and problems are judgments. The truth is the chaos, problems, potential
– all of this is one. The union of opposites. Is a sunset beautiful? Is
a sunset ugly? A sunset is a sunset. It’s the way we see it that makes
it beautiful or ugly. If you were to be executed at sunset, the sunset
would be ugly to you. Why does the sun shine? It doesn’t have any
reason. We must accept that the darkness and the light co-exist. One
cannot destroy each other.
KB: Sometimes
it feels like we have an obligation to fight against the darkness. What
do you say to people who feel that accepting something, maybe a bad
thing, is the same as giving in to it?
R: There are
two ways of fighting. One is to retaliate; the other is to prevent the
attack. To prevent is absolutely necessary which means we have to
become enough to face that opposition. If I’m mad at somebody because
they destroyed something that I had, then I’m going to be attacking
them out of retaliation. That is what is not right.
KB: By attacking out of
retaliation, we’re just causing more hate and anger instead of trying
to solve the problem?
R: Right.
Instead I develop myself so that I’m able to face it. I’m working on a
book that is about how we can become empowered through the opposition.
I talk about the power of limits. We think limits limit us but it’s the
limits that make an artist begin to express herself.
KB: When we’re
given limits – creatively, financially or personally – they force us to
become even more creative in order to get around them and reach our
goals. Maybe those limits that seem like a bad thing, actually are
helping us go further than we might have gone without them?
R: Exactly. It
is the union of the two – the body and the soul. The spirit and the
body have become one and that’s how we create. Imagine if existence
were just gases – hydrogen, oxygen – it wouldn’t have any meaning. The
union of these things together – the outside and the inside – gives it
meaning, like a balloon. The air and the skin of the balloon together
make the balloon. The air without the skin would expand to infinity.
The skin without the air would be a piece of rubber that we usually
bury six feet under. That air is the soul, infinite, no limits. The
skin is the body that the soul goes into and gives it form.
KB: Do you
believe the soul is eternal? Is it something that has always been there
and then it comes into our bodies for a time to allow us to create in
this form and then returns to being infinite?
R: Soul is the
flow. Soul is energy. It has no identity, no personality. Imagine the
soul is a river that’s flowing. Whatever’s inside that river isn’t
aware of anything; it’s just in the flow. But then it comes into a
little brook and it ends up somewhere, like a dead end. That part of
the river that is inside the brook is us. That part of the river is not
happy and it wants to join the flow. If it has big high rocks or
mountains around it, it gets trapped and can’t get back to the river.
If it doesn’t have any of these, then it finds its way back.
KB: What are the rocks
and edges in our lives? Fears, doubts and limits we put on ourselves?
R: No, those
rocks and edges are our culture, heritage, upbringing, education, what
our mothers taught us from childhood, what teachers tell us, what
society tells us, what our religion tells us, what everything tells us.
The more we’ve learned, the more difficult it is for our spirit to get
back to the flow.
KB: That makes it sound
like learning is a bad thing that keeps us separated from our true
nature.
R: Learning is
not a bad thing or a good thing. Education is one thing, training is
something else. Learning (or education) is to unify us. You and I read
the same book, 30,000 people read the same book, three million people
see the same movie or listen to the same lecture. That’s one side. On
the other side, training is to individualize us.
KB: By training, do you
mean doing what we need to do to prepare for our profession?
R: I mean doing
what you love to do. Doing what you love to do has nothing to do with
your education. You might love to cook or you might love to meditate.
Developing yourself to do what you love, developing your deepest self –
that’s the training. Education and training have to work together for
us, for the individual.
KB: A lot of
people today feel stuck inside a consumer lifestyle where we’re
convinced we need to spend our lives working for the things that will
supposedly make us happy. They follow that path but at the end of the
day, there’s no meaning to it. How do we get away from that?
R: We have to
accept it. Accepting it means bringing it into our life. We adjust
ourselves to the night. We’re not saying night is bad or night is good.
We accept it and we deal with it. I could yell and scream at night
forever, “Why are you here? I’m going to destroy you! I’m going to blow
you up!” I could do that but the truth is we have to live with night.
This is not a matter of destroying day or night. It’s a matter of
living with both. Yoga is finding a balance between my physical being
and my spiritual being.
KB: Do you feel
like you were born an artist or is it something that developed as you
were going through your training and education?
R: First, let’s
define artist. I don’t consider myself a painter. I am an artist. Art
is a verb. Art is bringing the two together. Art is about union. So
when you say ‘I’m art-ing’, that’s bringing the two hearts together.
Imagine a necklace of
pearls. Each pearl has two holes for the
string to go through. This pearl is called heart. If my pearl does not
have a hole, the string is not going to go through it. The string that
goes through these pearls is what we call love. Some call it God.
Michael Beckwith calls it Agape, which is a Latin word for
unconditional love.
Now if there is only
one hole, the string is going to go in there
and stop. There’s got to be another hole for that string to come out in
order for the necklace to be formed – the union of the pearls – which
is what I’m calling ‘heart-storming’. The medium that does that is God
or love or Yoga – which are all the same.
KB: Are we all born
with two holes in our pearl? If so, what causes one of both of these
holes to get blocked along the way?
R: We’re all
born with the two holes but very quickly we begin to lose the child
within us. We begin to not use the holes so they get rusty and pretty
soon, they close.
It’s the same as the
blood that goes through the heart. The mystics
call it the wine. That wine or blood goes into your heart, gets
purified and comes back out. The same thing happens with love. We’ve
got to put love into everything we do in order to experience that pure
oneness, to develop that unity, to be part of that Yoga. Just like this
magazine which is called Los Angeles Yoga: the union of the angels.
KB: Why do you
think some people are able to realize that God is inside of them, when
most spend their time searching for God in the external world or some
other dimension?
R: Because I am
a mystic, I know that God is inside of me. Whenever I need to ask
something, I ask my heart, “What do I do next” and my heart tells me
what to do. Nobody’s heart is ever wrong. Even when it seems to be
going the wrong way, it is going the right way.
KB: How are we
able to tell the difference between what our heart and what our
rational mind is telling us based on what we’ve learned and been
conditioned to believe?
R: The soul is
on Earth to enjoy it. The tree is doing its treeing because it enjoys
treeing. The roots are rooting, the branches are branching, the fruit
is fruiting. They’re not thinking about anything but loving what
they’re doing.
The tree is making
love all the time – whether its winter or fall,
it is still making love. ‘God-ing’ is what we call love. To ‘God’ means
loving because that’s what God does – loves. We are created to enjoy
every moment, to be the creator, to love. God has made us to be God.
The whole idea for us is to love.
We have this rational
mind for the protection of the body, that’s
it. Without the rational mind, I might walk into the street and a car
hits me, or I walk into a wall or I go outside in the winter and catch
cold. My soul doesn’t need protection – my soul is connected with my
heart. If my mind wants to decide for my heart, it’s going to be wrong.
And if my heart wants to decide for my mind, it’s going to be wrong as
well. The two have to work together.
On Sundays early in
the morning, I climb the mountain in the dark,
sit on the peak of the mountain and wait for the sun to come. I love
walking in the dark because mystery is the essence of creativity.
Without mystery there would not be artists or scientists – it’s the
mystery that attracts us. I watch the transition from darkness to
light, from cool to warm, from blues into yellows. I watch and I
meditate. I am asking the Sun, my creator to wash away all the darkness
inside me, whatever has captured me this last week. I go through my
complete Yoga, knowing I’m being cleansed in the process. I have become
one with everybody and everything – mountains, sea, sky. In that
waiting for the beloved to appear, I experience true union. That is the
unity that prayer brings to us; that Yoga brings to us. Then I come to
my studio and begin to paint.
KB: Do you feel
you’re still in a trance and/or meditative state when you come down
from the mountain and start painting? How do you keep yourself into
that state?
R: Oh yes. But
it depends. Whenever I feel good, I paint and whenever I paint, I feel
good. I don’t paint to make a painting. When I paint I’m dancing. And
as I’m playing with paint, I begin to fly. I’m conscious, but I’m not
aware of what I’m doing.
That’s the problem
with people who use external means of getting
high. When you’re using internal means of being high, it’s empowering,
and the next morning you can build up on it. If I drink and get drunk,
in those moments it feels good but next morning it’s a problem because
I’m down again. If I get high from my inner being, the next morning I
build up on it and get even higher. Every painting I do is in a
different zone and at a different level than the one before. Everything
keeps building up so I’m transforming constantly.This is how you can
judge a work of an artist. Does the work come from a divine power or
someone who is under an external influence?
KB: It’s fairly
common for people, especially in the arts and music, to try to reach
that trance state through the external influence of drugs and alcohol.
How can they begin to find inspiration from an internal high instead?
R: Again, it’s
the relationship of creation and destruction. The creative one puts
things out there and the editor is the destroyer who takes things away.
If the editor leads the way, you’re in trouble because it shuts off the
process before it even starts. This happens with many artists, they
start editing themselves before they begin to create. It took Brahms
twenty-five years to compose his first symphony because he was
comparing himself to Beethoven.
KB: How do we keep our
editor on the sidelines until it’s his time to help?
R: Leila,
creation and destruction, is going to take place at the same time. If
you watch me paint, I’m creating at the canvas, and then I stand back
and the editor can see, then I’m back at the canvas and painting. I’m
in the trance state this whole time and the editor is well trained to
do his job. It’s like when you’re driving. Your driver is your editor.
You’re in your own world, putting lipstick on, talking on the phone,
thinking about your day, but the driver is your editor. The editor
knows how to handle things without hurting the creative being. Let’s
say I take the pink brush and put some pink paint here, at the same
time, I’m destroying the blue paint that was underneath. I am
destroying and creating at the same time.
KB: When you’re
in the trance, creating and editing a painting, do you have an idea or
vision in your mind of what the end product will be?
R: Not at all.
Actually, when I’m painting, a lot of times, I will turn the canvas
upside down and work from that perspective and the painting becomes
something totally different. I do this with students at my workshops
and they see that what they were painting was an entire landscape that
they didn’t even see.
KB: When you teach, how
do you help people get themselves into the trance state so that their
creative energy can start to flow?
R: It’s always
different. Sometimes, I have them close their eyes, get close to the
canvas and paint without looking at the canvass. I tell them, “If you
open your eyes, your painting is finished.” Once it’s done, they can
open your eyes and find out that it is completely different that it was
in their mind. Now the editor starts comparing what you’ve done to what
you had in mind and now the creator can stand with the editor and
really see what is there.
I often see things
that I didn’t know I had painted, they just come
through. I’ll see for example the shape of an old man leaning over with
a book in front of him and he seems to be writing on something. Now
when my editor sees that, he can eliminate the parts that don’t belong
to that, the parts around it, so that what came through me can really
pop out. This is the process of creating.
KB: I read a
quote you gave that said “I’m not painting something abstract, but
something more real than what we see.” Do you mean that what we see is
an illusion and, if so, is there any value in it?
R: Reality is
only one manifestation of the truth. For example: a bird and flight.
The bird is only a manifestation of flight. Flight never dies but the
bird dies. Truth is immortal but reality is mortal. What I paint is the
truth. Not the changing reality. What you see in my paintings is not
abstraction. Abstraction is not dealing with the reality or the truth
or anything. It is innocent painting – I’ll just paint and people will
see whatever they want to see in it. It’s their thing and whatever they
want to do with it is there business. That’s why painters who paint
abstraction don’t usually title their paintings. My paintings are about
the truth beyond the reality.
Many students and
artists follow my school of teaching and we have
retreats and workshops. It’s all about play and I get them in the zone
to play. At the end everybody discusses their process so the others can
benefit from it. It’s a safe zone for people to play and it’s a place
of healing for everyone. No one is judging.
KB: Would you consider
your workshops and retreats to be a form of art therapy?
R: With art
therapy you are trying to open up the mind and here I am trying to open
up the heart. I am a vehicle that allows people to take the journey of
transformation. I explain that they’re doing the act of creativity
which is ‘God-ing’. What do they have in the dictionary instead of
‘God-ing’? Love. You want to be giving love. That is the creative
process. I gave them pastels and paper and told them to do the act of
love-making with the paper and the chalk. I told them not to create
anything like anything else. Create like God. Play like God. That’s how
you can expand your love. And they got it.
KB: If you could share
one piece of advice with people who want to follow their heart, what
would it be?
R: Know that
you are greater than even you think you are. You were the winner
amongst infinite numbers of creatures in that drop of sperm. You were
the messiah among millions.
So act upon it.
Whatever you do, be the best at it. Rumi says,
“Footprints lead you to the shore of the sea, from there on no trace
remains.” Learn from others, so you can find a way to get to the shore
of the sea. There you are on your own. Dive in. And experience that
infinite sea.
For more
information about Rassouli or to attend a workshop, visit: Rassouli.com.
Look for future collaborations with Rassouli and LA YOGA where people
can come together to create love.
Altar of Devotion By
Rassouli
Soul's Journey By
Rassouli
LIVING WELL
MAGAZINE
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