Did the most famous artists in the world get their inspiration from God?

Question: Did the most famous artists in the world get their inspiration from God?

Sri Chinmoy: There are quite a few famous artists who didn’t get any inspiration from God directly. There are some famous artists who were atheists; they didn’t even believe in God, So how can you say that they got their inspiration directly from God? In one sense, everything is from God — good, bad, everything. Inspiration, you can say, comes from a higher source, and this higher source is God. Or you can say that these artists got their inspiration from nature, Nature itself has its own inspiration, its own capacity, and some artists identified themselves with nature. Again, nature also is a part of God. But when it is a matter of God as a personal deity, God in His personal aspect, they did not necessarily get their inspiration from God.

This house, let us say, belongs to God, If anybody takes something from God’s House, you can say that they have taken that thing from God. For what is the difference between God and God’s House? Again, there is a difference, because God is inside one particular room of the House. If you pray and meditate, then you can go into that room and get inspiration from God directly. But if somebody doesn’t care for that kind of personal God, then he can get inspiration from God’s House, which is nature. Nature is also God; it is God’s outer manifestation.