The Mother on Art
Author: The Mother
You have said: "If you
surrender [to the Divine] you have to give up effort, but that does
not mean you have to abandon also all willed action". But if one
wants to do something, it means personal effort, doesn't it? What
then is the will?
There is a difference
between the will and this feeling of tension, effort, of counting
only on oneself, having recourse to oneself alone which personal
effort means; this kind of tension, of something very acute and at
times very painful; you count only on yourself and you have the
feeling that if you do not make an effort at every minute, all will
be lost. This is personal effort.
But the will is something
altogether different. It is the capacity to concentrate on everything
one does, to do it as best as one can and not stop doing it until one
receives a very precise intimation that it is finished. It is
difficult to explain to you. But suppose, for example, that through a
combination of circumstances a work comes into your hands. Take an
artist who has in one way or another received an inspiration and
decided to paint a picture. He knows very well that if he has no
inspiration and is not sustained by forces other than his own, he
will do nothing much. It will look more like a daub than a painting.
He knows this. But it has been settled, the painting is to be done;
there may be many reasons for it, but the painting is to be done.
Then if he had the passive attitude, well, he would get out his
palette, his colours, his brushes, his canvas and then sit down in
front of them and say to the Divine: "Now you are going to
paint". But the Divine does not do things that way. The painter
himself must take up everything and arrange everything, concentrate
on his subject, find the forms and the colours that will express it
and put his whole will for a more and more perfect execution. His
will must be there all the time. But he will keep the sense that he
must be open to the inspiration, he will not forget that in spite of
all his knowledge of technique, in spite of the care he takes to
arrange, organise and prepare his colours and the forms of his
design, in spite of all that, if he has no inspiration, it will be
one picture among a million others and it will not be very
interesting. He does not forget. He attempts, he tries to see, to
feel what he wants his painting to express and in what way it should
be expressed. He has his colours, he has his brushes, he has a model,
he has made his sketch which he will enlarge and make into a picture,
he calls his inspiration. There are even some who manage to have a
clear, precise vision of what is to be done. But then, day after day,
hour after hour, they have this will to work, to study, to do with
care all that must be done until they reproduce as perfectly as they
can the first inspiration...That person has worked for the Divine, in
communion with Him, but not in a passive way, not with a passive
surrender; it is with an active surrender, a dynamic will. The result
generally is something very good. Well, the example of the painter is
interesting, because a painter who is truly an artist is able to see
what he is going to do, he is able to connect himself to the Divine
Power that is beyond expression and inspires all expression. For the
poet, the writer, it is the same thing and for all people who do
something, it is the same.
Is it possible for a Yogi to become an artist or can an artist be a Yogi? What is the relation of Art to Yoga?
The two are not as antagonistic as you seem to think. There is nothing to prevent a Yogi from being an artist and an artist from being a Yogi.
But when you are in Yoga, there is a profound change in the value of things, of Art as of everything else; you begin to look at Art from a very different standpoint. It is no longer the one supreme all-engrossing thing for you, no longer an end in itself. Art is a means, not an end; it is a means of expression. And the artist then ceases too to believe that the whole world turns round what he is doing or that his work is the most important thing that has ever been done. His personality counts no longer; he is an agent, a channel, his art a means of expressing his relations with the Divine. He uses it for that purpose as he might have used any other means that were part of the powers of his nature.
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