Meeta Ahluwalia

 Vincent van Gogh The Starry Night. Saint Rémy, June 1889

The Dutch artist must have been deeply spiritual. His paintings reveal profound insights into the true nature of the universe, displaying the interconnection and fluidity of energy, perceived as matter. It is said that he painted this from the window of a mental asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, adding to it an imaginary village. He had voluntarily admitted himself to this asylum following a mental breakdown.

For someone who spent such an enormous time alone in nature, the universe certainly revealed itself to him, in that shared silence, just as it did to Einstein. The expression of this powerful revelation, however varied, from mathematical equations to art. The artist who saw and knew more, therefore had no takers, in those who didn’t know and therefore, couldn’t understand.

His depiction of the dancing universe, even though, not astronomically accurate, is fascinating to see how he expressed symbolically what spiritual beings through ages have experienced and conveyed in poetry, or texts.