"Paintings are there on the subtle plane, but we have to use paint to manifest them.
It is like a river, the river is flowing down from the subtle plane, in this case the creative plane,
and when it touches the earth, at that time it takes form and becomes creation itself."
- Sri Chinmoy
I slowly walked through the Queens, New York private gallery of paintings and drawings in Pilgrim Museum at Aspiration-Ground, taking a moment to absorb the feeling the colours and shapes created inside of me as I viewed each work. I stopped with a start before one painting by Sri Chinmoy entitled "Universal Love" with these exact words beautifully written across the bottom of painting in handwriting itself artistic. I stood mesmerized as an inner fragrance washed over me that felt comforting and familiar.
As a seeker yearning to discover truth, beauty and increasing God nearness, my spirit resonated with the depths of divine kindness, love and acceptance that seemed to pour forth from this painting. I felt as if I could have stood fixed to that spot for eternity staring into the essence imbued within this painting. Its abstract form provided the perfect invitation to follow the flow of the consciousness that unfolded in my heart. Like viewing a personal documentary, I remembered the countless sacred moments when God had awakened my sometimes-faltering steps into the breath of spirituality with the self-same quality I felt from this painting.
Transfixed, I humbly considered how this precept called "universal love" summed up the entirety of my personal journey through life. An expression of God's divine love for all of creation, the universal love energy embodied in this painting gently takes me by the hand and sleeplessly carries me to higher vistas. Like the church Sacre Coeur sitting on the hilltop of Montmartre high above Paris, universal love lifts me above the doubt, cynicism and failure left behind in the city streets far below.
I have never seen a print or postcard reproduction of this particular painting until now 4 years later when I have just purchased a print and postcard of the painting. Frm then until now I never forgot the feeling it created inside of me. Every step in my spiritual seeking resonates with this painting's essence. How I wish I could live my life permanently cradled inside this all-nourishing energy. Beautifully summing up this defining essence in my life, Sri Chinmoy states within one of his poems from The Wings Of Light, Part 8, "His God is the home of universal Love." No truer words describe my existence.