The emptiness of the dark night is a yielding emptiness that gives way to the fullness of all possibility... If all your spiritual activities have grown empty and you are compelled to walk away, tie yourself to one practice only: contemplative silence. Abandon discursive prayer if it has become mechanical and meaningless. Let go of holy images if they no longer evoke the sacred. Refrain from spiritual discourse if it tastes like idle gossip in your mouth. But do not turn away from the silence.
~ from DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL by Mirabai Starr, translated by Fr. Iain Matthew
Dr. Eaglefield Hull describes Scriabin's attitude to music: His first symphony is a "Hymn to Art" and joins hands with Beethoven's Ninth. His third, the "Divine Poem", expresses the spirit's liberation from its earthly trammels and the consequent free expression of purified personality; while his "Poem of Ecstasy" voices the highest of all joys -- that of creative work. He held that in the artists' incessant creative activity, the constant progression towards the ideal, the spirit alone truly lives.
