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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
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