Question: How can you see the inner beauty of something you want to paint or draw, and bring it out?

Sri Chinmoy: When you are going to paint or draw something, first meditate for at least five minutes and try to see the essence of the thing you want to paint. Feel that there is a seed inside you, and then try to feel the seed germinating and growing into a plant. Then feel that this tiny plant is growing into a huge tree and this tree is your painting. First see the essence and then see the total substance. First make your creation as small as possible, then make it as vast as possible. Try to see the microcosm and the macrocosm together. Then try to see a bridge between the two, connecting the smallest and the largest, or try to connect them with your aspiration. As soon as you see the connection, you are bound to see the beauty from its origin to its culmination in your painting.

First see life in your creation, then see light in your creation. Or you can do it the other way. First you can see light in your creation, then you can see life in your creation. While you are imagining the seed, try to feel at that time that you are meditating on light; and when you are seeing the tree, feel that you are meditating on life. Or do it the other way. When you take the tree, the culmination, as life or light, or the seed within you as life or light, automatically you will bring forward beauty in your painting. That is because, before it has come into the physical world, in the inner world you have already given life and light to it. When you give life or light to something that you are going to create, you are bound to see beauty in it.