By Vijay Phanshikar :
For once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned 
skyward, for there you have been and there you will long to return.
-  Leonardo da Vinci,
Sculptor, scientist, painter, doctor,  
diplomat, philosopher (1452-1519) 
 
PROSE 

LEONARDO da Vinci was often celebrated for his fine way with words. Once, he said, in effect, ‘Art is never complete -- it is abandoned’. Even as he created masterpieces such as ‘Monalisa’, ‘The Last Supper’, he kept celebrating a spiritual elevation humans are capable of achieving. Here, he talks of the sense of mental enhancement of anybody who has enjoyed ‘flight’. ‘Flight’ is a metaphor of the spiritual and emotional elevation a person achieves. He has experienced something higher, finer, better, sublimer ... ! That elevates him/her to another level -- may or may not be visible or sensable to others. But once that finer inner elevation is sensed, the individual gets transformed totally. He/she remains in that trance, in that fine, endearing intoxication. Then, in that sublime condition, he is rarely worried about what is on the ground. For, his eyes are turned skyward -- looking for the ‘flight’ experience of the past. In that mental state, he cannot bind himself to earth. He wants to fly -- to higher heights, to finer zones, to enjoy and experience again the larger view of the world from that elevation. Leonardo da Vinci talks of ‘flight’ when the humanity has not seen aircraft.

 

That explains his deep and fine ability to delve deeper into human mind. Leonardo da Vinci, thus, takes the thought to an elevation that may make other dizzy. In his own life, he allowed himself the great fancy of such ‘flight’ of creativity -- rising himself over and above the normal level where ordinary mortals reside -- or love to languish. That lowly condition Leonardo da Vinci does not at all appreciate. His own eyes are turned skyward all the time -- metaphorically looking for another chance to elevate himself spiritually.

 

That urge -- of ‘kick’ in modern lingo -- often pushed Leonardo da Vinci to undertaking challenges that stunned most people in his time nearly six hundred years ago. It is not without reason that even in modern human society, Leonardo da Vinci is always respected -- certainly for his art and diplomacy and science and literature. But more importantly, he is respected even today for his innate faith in the human ability to rise to metaphorical elevation of creativity, of finesse, of maturity, of depth -- and of course of height of the flight of imagination and the execution of that mental leap. Even when flying in aircraft and spacecraft is commonplace today, Leonardo da Vinci still stands out because he gave human thought the wings !