True happiness would be the chance to help create a small but vibrant museum of Native American art here in New York.
—D. Popov

The Non-Dual Gaze

In your experience, can such a gaze be cultivated through art—and perhaps through poetry? Can a curator develop it through discipline, or is it a grace granted only to rare temperaments? And if it can be taught, what might such a pedagogy look like?

Dmitry Popov:

I do not believe that the philosophy of oneness can be instilled through art—or through any external activity. It can only be realized through deep contemplation, which we also call meditation.

It is no coincidence that this tradition appears in different forms among many peoples of the world: in India and Tibet through Hindu and Buddhist yoga; in the Far East through Chan and Zen; in the Americas through the contemplative practices of Native peoples.

It is within this process that the mystery of inner transformation takes place.

There is no place in it for rigid predetermined goals or imposed attitudes, which often become obstacles. This is why gurus, masters, and medicine men alike insist on the importance of openness.

Perhaps only one thing may be brought into contemplation: a question that truly lives within you, and to which you sincerely seek an answer.

It is also vital to abandon the fatal division between so-called objective reality, treated as fully real, and subjective reality, dismissed as illusion. In my experience, these two dimensions are deeply intertwined and mutually dependent.

Ancient humanity understood this intuitively and drew upon it in daily life. Later, dogmatic religious systems often constrained consciousness within rigid formulations. Then the rise of the positive sciences brought extraordinary knowledge of the external world, while the riches of the inner world remained in the care of mystics, poets, and artists.

It may be time to reunite these two halves of human reality within an indivisible and equal unity.

Agni Yoga and the Roerichologist

You once described yourself, looking back, as a “novice Roerichologist.” I was struck by the term. It suggests not merely an admirer or a scholar, but someone on a path of study, transformation, and realization.

Nicholas and Helena Roerich also developed a spiritual discipline known as Agni Yoga—the yoga of fire. Fire is not only the element of transformation and purification, but also of vision: the force that burns through obstruction and illuminates what was hidden.

How did you become a Roerichologist in this deeper sense? Is it a matter of study, of practice, or of both? And what place does Agni Yoga—its teachings, disciplines, and worldview—hold in your understanding of Roerich’s legacy?

Dmitry Popov:

Yes, you are right—this is a very interesting question: how the paths of the follower, the student, and the critical researcher come together within one person.

I encountered Roerich’s legacy during my university years, at a time when I had not yet acquired any real scholarly method. I was simply astonished by the horizons of creative and spiritual understanding that opened before me.

Naturally, I became a devoted follower of this master. I immersed myself in his fairy tales, parables, stories, essays, paintings, and spiritual writings. At the same time, I began studying the sources that had inspired him: the foundations of Vedanta and Yoga, and the works of Helena Blavatsky, Swami Vivekananda, and Rabindranath Tagore.

But soon, my university training and my critical instincts awakened another impulse: the desire to research the life of Nicholas Roerich, and to study his literary, artistic, and spiritual legacy with greater rigor.

In time, these two paths—the path of the follower and the path of the researcher—merged within me into an indivisible unity.

Today, I cannot imagine one without the other.

Only the path of critical and unbiased inquiry allows us to uncover a great wealth of factual truth, nuance, and historical understanding. Yet only the path of the sympathetic seeker allows us to enter the inner essence of a subject and interpret it with depth.

A truly holistic—or non-dual—view of Roerich is impossible without the union of these two approaches. Taken separately, each remains partial.

Over the years, I have met many followers of Roerich who became fanatical and sectarian, and many scholars who never managed to grasp the living essence of his legacy.

These two paths—the follower and the researcher—merged within me into an indivisible unity. […] A truly holistic view of Roerich is impossible without the union of these two approaches. […] Taken separately, each remains partial.
—D. Popov

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