Artistic Sensitivity

A powerful aid in fighting ugliness. - The Mother

Common Name: Morning Glory

Botanical Name: Ipomoea Tricolor

Spiritual Name: Artistic Sensitivity


“‘Savitri’, this prophetic vision of world’s history, including the announcement of the earth’s future - Who can ever dare to put it in picture?


We simply meditate together on the lines chosen, and when the image becomes clear, I describe it with the help of a few strokes, then Huta goes to her studio and brushes the paintings.”

- The Mother’s prefatory note on ‘Meditations on Savitri’

From the Editor’s Desk

This month we remain with our previous theme “Painting”. Till now, it is clear that painting is just one means of expression. However, worlds of differences, worlds of debate (if we are given to an active mind), worlds of philosophy and worlds of psychology arise when we pose these questions about the nature of painting as a means of expression: What is the subject matter of expression? What is the need to express it? And with what consciousness does an artist attempt the expression?




For those of us who believe that the highest in ourselves is the one thing worth seeking, as the highest around us, then it pays to take up one form of expression or the other and involve ourselves in a lifetime of discovery and if at all, some closeness to ‘spiritual mastery’ and its expression in our day to day life via any media of expression. What is this spiritual quality that an artist should aim to have imbibed and represented in and have exuding from his work of art? The expectation is exacting. BEAUTY. Nothing less than BEAUTY. What then is this ‘Beauty’? Let us contemplate awhile on The Mother’s words on Beauty and Art:



“Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital. Supramental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter.”



This beauty “does not get its full power except when it is surrendered to the Divine”. And true art, The Mother says, is



“the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life”. not g Beauty does not get its full power except when it We proceed with exploring the world of painting by moving in closer to the lives led by sadhaks who aspired for the highest and attempted to live that high life by simply following their inner Guide. The present June issue focuses on Huta and the subsequent issue, on Champaklal as sadhaks who took to the brush as a means of progressing in their inner realms, and those above and that too with direct guidance from The Mother herself.



When reading Huta’s books such as ‘The story of a soul’ and ‘Mother you said so’, one is immediately drawn into the beautiful life that she lived, albeit with her own lot of painful struggles to combat and overcome. Nevertheless, it was a life offered to the Divine, and therefore beautiful. Here is something from Huta herself describing the moment when she first looked upon The Mother: “Our eyes were locked in utter silence. It was as if our souls embraced. So deep, so intimate was our meeting that I realized instantly that here was the ONE I had been seeking since childhood, the ONE who could help me, that here was SHE who could release me from the dreadful confusion in which I had been struggling all those years. Then my inner being murmured, “Yes, this is the TRUTH and LOVE I have been seeking and aspiring for.” Her sparkling eyes and sweet smile captured my entire self…. Now my soul was at rest – it had finally found its home.”



And thus began Huta’s journey with The Mother in this life, one high point of it being an instrument of The Mother in giving artistic expression on canvas to the immortal lines from ‘Savitri’, into what is now known as ‘Meditations on Savitri’

Turn the pages for more…..

Question of the month

 Q: But if one does Yoga can he rise to such heights as Shakespeare or Shelly? There has been no such instance?

A:  The Mother: Why not? The ‘Mahabharata’ and ‘Ramayana’ are certainly not inferior to anything created by Shakespeare or any other poet, and they are said to have been the work of men who were Rishis and had some yogic tapasya. ‘The Gita’ which, like Upanishads, ranks at once among the greatest literary and the greatest spiritual works, was not written by one who had no experience of Yoga. And where is the inferiority to your Milton and Shelley in the famous poems written whether in India or Persia or elsewhere by men known to be saints, Sufis, devotees? And, then, do you know all the Yogis and their work? Among the poets and creators can you say who were or who were not in conscious touch with the Divine? There are some who are not officially Yogis, they are not gurus and have no disciples; the world does not know what they do; they are not anxious for fame and do not attract to themselves the attention of men; but they have the higher consciousness, are in touch with a Divine Power, and when they create they create from there. The best paintings in India and much of the best statuary and architecture were done by Buddhist monks who passed their lives in spiritual contemplation and practice; and they did supreme artistic work, but did not care to leave their names to posterity. The chief reason why Yogis are not usually known by their art is that they do not consider their art expression as the most important part of their life and do not put so much time and energy into it as a mere artist. And what they do does not always reach the public. How many there are who have done great things and not published them to the world!

(A drawing by The Mother, titled ‘Ascent of Truth -2’)

On ‘Meditations on Savitri’

[We have been screening “Meditations on Savitri” at our centre on the first and last Sundays of the month during our evening sessions from 6 to 7pm. The article we are reproducing here, written by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar in ‘On The Mother’, Chapter 52, ‘Readiness is All’, will be of striking significance to all those of us who have been meditating with this piece of audio visual production by Savitri Bhavan based on The Mother’s work, through Huta in translating selected lines of Savitri into artistic strokes on canvas following periods of deep meditation. This article may also be an inspiration for those who are yet to come across ‘Meditations on Savitri’.]



There was, then, the Polish sadhika Janina who responded to the marvellous insights and illuminations in the Mother's ‘Prayers and Meditations’ and Sri Aurobindo's ‘Savitri’, and rendered them in formulations and depths of colour that revealed an uncanny force and vivacity.



And of particular significance was Huta's first volume of paintings, ‘Meditations on Savitri’, which was released on 15 August 1962. Since her taking permanent residence in the Ashram in 1955, Huta had been struggling to judge from her correspondence with the Mother - within herself to find her true vocation. On 7 February 1961, Mother wrote to Huta:



"You ask me what you must do. It would be better to ask what you must be, because the circumstances and activities in life have not much importance. What is important is our way of reacting to them.



Human nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill, when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy, when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered."



How to get out of this "precarious condition"? The way of the strong is a severe and continuous tapasya. The other is to divert one's attention from the "small personal self" by dedication to a big ideal or absorption in art or science, or social or political life etc. All would depend on one's sincerity, endurance, effort, struggle - and the sheer will to victory. Huta had awakened to the splendours in the firmament of ‘Savitri’ on the night in July 1954 when "cataracts of divine light and peace" overpowered her and swept her towards a new goal in life. Then, after she had settled in the Ashram, she had "a concrete experience" in her sleep that the Mother was reciting ‘Savitri’ to her: "I heard distinctly her melodious voice and experienced intensely the soothing warmth of her Presence." And the Mother confirmed it: "Yes, indeed, I recited ‘Savitri’ to you and it was passages from Book Eleven – ‘The Book of Everlasting Day’ - the conversation between the Supreme Lord and ‘Savitri’" It was natural that she should now want to render some of the seminal lines and passages in ‘Savitri’ in divinations of line and colour. On 26 September 1960 she mentioned it to the Mother who revealed that she herself "had a great wish to express through paintings the visions I had seen in 1906, but I had no time", and after a deep contemplation added, "I will help you constantly. I will take you to higher worlds and show you the Truth. You must remember the Truth and express it through painting." The next day the Mother gave some preliminary instructions and assured her, "I will put my Force into you so there will be a link between [the] two consciousnesses. Go ahead." But when Huta insisted that her skill and experience in drawing, perspective and landscape were inadequate the Mother said,



"....the Epic is full of visions and they can be expressed by giving only an impression. The most important thing is that in painting you must bring vibrations, feelings, liveliness and consciousness."



And so the great work of visual interpretation and symbolic projection started and continued in a series of meditative sessions. As the Mother has explained in her prefatory note to ‘Meditations on Savitri’:



"’Savitri’, this prophetic vision of the world's history, including the announcement of the earth's future - Who can ever dare to put it in picture?



We simply meditate together on the lines chosen, and when the image becomes clear, I describe it with the help of a few strokes, then Huta goes to her studio and brushes the painting. "

The first volume of ‘Meditations’ included 23 paintings covering the opening canto ("The Symbol Dawn") of ‘Savitri’. Subsequent volumes were to appear in August 1963, February 1965 and August 1966 respectively - the four volumes together, with their 110 paintings, illustrating the whole of book I of ‘Savitri’. It was Lessing who first drew a meaningful distinction between fluid poetic description and the static art of sculpture, but painting can combine the fluidity of poetic suggestiveness with the explicit vividness of a visual art. The very title ‘Meditations’ hints at the fact that here art is but the handmaiden of sadhana. Which means that the rasika too should approach this work as part of his sadhana, and not merely as a student or connoisseur of painting. "It is in a meditative mood," says the Mother, "that the ‘Meditations’ must be looked at," for otherwise we might just fasten upon the appearance and miss the reality. It is not at the intellectual but at a high "overhead" - intuitive or overmental - level that the meaning has been seized and new-created in line and colour, and a like effort of seeing and experiencing is demanded of the rasika. This stupendous body of work spread out in the ‘Meditations’ volumes is perhaps a striving towards the future overhead painting, and what these paintings attempt is the revelation of unusual psychic, occult and spiritual phenomena, through audacities of form, line and colour. The lines in ‘Savitri’ with their arresting quanta of thought and measured tread of sound first strike the ear, but that is only the beginning. There is presently a reverberation through the inner corridors of sense and sensibility towards the still depths of the soul.



Readers of ‘Savitri’ - especially those who launch themselves on "The Symbol Dawn" - are apt to encounter wall after wall of resistance, for image is piled upon image, and there is an apparent density of meaning that seems to defy penetration by the mind. While one is no doubt gripped by the splendour of the articulation and the vast visionary vistas of spirit-scape, one also feels baffled. What is one to make of these images, these symbol-actions, these occult situations:



A fathomless zero occupied the world. ...



Something that wished but knew not how to be

Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance. ...



The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god. ...



On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood

And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve. ...



Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.

All came back to her: Earth and Love and Doom,



The mantric vibrations impinge on the doors of consciousness, there is a call or summons, and there is some response from the innermost countries. But Huta's paintings, which are but a transcription of her and the Mother's joint meditations, have yet to be re-enacted in the rasika's theatre of stillness and awakening psychic dawn. It is, in short, a sadhana - or nothing.

That the "Dawn Goddess" should appear in the opening canto is natural enough. But Savitri is a goddess too, the prophetess of the coming Supramental Dawn, the "Greater Dawn" to be. And for Huta herself - as for many - the Mother was also "a parable of Dawn", a Savitri-power. Dawn, Savitri, the Mother - they are of course different powers and divinities. But they have also their striking affiliations, and Huta was made to seize the truth, and in her paintings the Dawn-Goddess evoked in lines like "On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood" and the Savitri of "The calm delight that weds one soul to all" and "Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword" merge into one another, and also with the Mother - a golden three-in-one. And this is verily to reach the mystic heart of "The Symbol Dawn".



There are other paintings also that, with their epiphanic stances, suddenly make clear what had remained obscure when the poem was merely read, or project with a stunning vividness what had seemed a mere metaphor. Thus Plate II transcribes with haunting suggestiveness the idea of the lines:

Repeating for ever the unconscious act,

Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,



And Plate XVI is the very image - picturesque and powerful - of "Man lifted up the burden of his fate". This might be a Samson carrying a colossal weight, or even Krishna holding up the Govardhan Hill, - there is such controlled energy, such determined purpose, such intensity of effect in the painting. And the last Plate is magnificent:



Immobile in herself, she gathered force.

This was the day when Satyavan must die.



Savitri exudes the immobility of infinite strength, and Satyavan-"the soul of the world called Satyavan" - lies stretched before her, glorious in his beauty and the victim of immitigable Doom. The battle is joined-the battle that is to be waged and won in the occult infinitudes of Eternal Night, the Double Twilight and Everlasting Day.



(K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar in ‘On The Mother’, Chapter 52, ‘Readiness is All’, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry)

The Indian artist

”The Indian artist lived in the light of an inspiration which imposed this greater aim on his art and his method sprang from its fountains and served it to the exclusion of any more earthly sensuous or outwardly imaginative aesthetic impulse. The six limbs of his art, the sadanga, are common to all work in line and colour: they are the necessary elements and in their elements the great arts are the same everywhere; the distinction of forms, rupabheda, proportion, arrangement of line and mass, design, harmony, perspective, pramana, the emotion or aesthetic feeling expressed by the form, bhava, the seeking for beauty and charm for the satisfaction of the aesthetic spirit, lavanya, truth of the form and its suggestion, sadrsya, the turn, combination, harmony of colours, varnikabhanga, are the first constituents to which every successful work of art reduces itself in analysis. But it is the turn given to each of the constituents which makes all the difference in the aim and effect of the technique and the source and character of the inner vision guiding the creative hand in their combination which makes all the difference in the spiritual value of the achievement, and the unique character of Indian painting, the peculiar appeal of the art of Ajanta springs from the remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic turn which was given to the artistic conception and method by the pervading genius of Indian culture.”

Huta, In Memoriam

Savita D. Hindocha, better known by her Ashram name, Huta, passed away quietly on the 17th of November, 2011. Perhaps, it is more than just a coincidence that this fond child of The Mother chose to leave her body on the same date as The Mother did, 38 years before her. When she joined the Ashram permanently on February 10th 1955, in her late teens, The Mother gave her the name ‘Huta’ meaning ‘The Offered One’. Although she had no artistic training, the Mother perceived in her a potential artist and a soul belonging to a world of beauty. She trained her in painting, and worked with her from 1961 to 1966 to create the series of oil paintings illustrating passages from the whole of 'Savitri' called 'Meditations on Savitri' . We present below some of these works by a very special and unassuming child of The Mother.


The Dream Boat

Who was it that came to me in a boat made of dream-fire,

With his flame brow and his sun-gold body?

Melted was the silence into a sweet secret murmur,

“Do you come now? Is the heart’s fire ready?”

(In the painting for “The Dream Boat”, Huta illustrates a boat of fire with a representation of a divine being as a boy standing on this boat. An aura of light surrounds his head and he basks in soft golden light. The sea has a serene movement and merges with the hues of the sky. Gently-introduced pink tones indicate the sweet secret murmur.)

Beyond The Silence

One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,

Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,

Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering

Winged through the universe,

Spirit immortal.

(For “Beyond the Silence”, Huta depicts a swan soaring upwards as a symbol of the individual soul turning towards the Divine. She lifts the paint in its wings to create feathers and infuses dream-like soft colours for the spaceless ether, bringing a quietude to the canvas.)

Adwaita

I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon

Where Shankaracharya’s tiny temple stands

Facing Infinity from Time’s edge, alone

On the bare ridge ending earth’s vain romance.

(A lofty mountain strikes the eye with its bold colours in the painting inspired by “Adwaita”, and in its rendering the upward strokes of the brush carry the eye to the top where one discovers a temple in white. The subtle blue hues of the sky create a sacred atmosphere around the temple.)


The Divine Sight

A master-work of colour and design,

A mighty sweetness borne on grandeur’s wings;

A burdened wonder of significant line

Reveals itself in even commonest things.

(A divine being almost ethereal is shown in the painting for “Divine Sight”. A suggestion of fields, a river, birds, and a mountain peak in the background, rendered in light-filled, happy tones, create an atmosphere of delight and wonder.)

(Courtesy: ‘Pictures of Sri Aurobindo’s Poems’, SABDA Publications)

”I have seen the beauties and wonders of the higher worlds. Now I think of expressing them in painting by various colours – blues, golds, pinks and whites – with certain vibrations of Light – all in harmony forming the New World.

“I wish to bring down upon earth this New World. Since I have no time physically, I will paint through you.…”

- The Mother to Huta

(Courtesy: SABDA eNews)

Sudha’s inspirations from lines of ‘Savitri’

She was the red heart of the passion-flower,

The dream-white of the lotus in its pool.

Time’s sun-flowers’ gaze at gold Eternity:
There are the imperishable beatitudes.
A million lotuses swaying on one stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world.
Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.