by Hazrat Inayat Khan

First we must understand what the word divine means. Divine means: in a state of perfection. This state is experienced by God through man. In other words, when man has risen to the stage of development where he can be the perfect instrument of God, when nothing of his own being stands in the way of the direct impulse that comes from within -- that spirit may be called perfect. That which is most precious, that which is the purpose of man's life is to arrive at that state of perfection when he can be the perfect instrument of God.
It is in this stage that man begins to realize the truth of the whole being and he will think: 'The one whom I have called God, whose personality I have recognized, and whose pleasure or displeasure I have sought, has been seeing His life through my eyes, has been hearing through my ears. It was His breath that came through my breathing, His impulse which I felt, and therefore I know that this body which I had thought to be my own is really the true temple of God. I did not realize that this body was the shrine of God.' Not knowing that God experiences this life through man, one is seeking for Him somewhere else, in some person aloof and apart from the world, whereas all the time He is in oneself.
Why is God called the Creator? Because the creation itself is the evidence of some wisdom working. No mechanical creation could result in such perfection as that of nature. All the machines of the scientists are built on the model of nature's mechanism, and every inspiration that comes to the artist is received from nature. Nature is so perfect in itself that it needs no scientific or artistic improvement upon it; but to satisfy the limited human fancies man develops science and art. And yet it is still the creation of God which is expressed in art and science through man, as in man God is not absent. In some ways man is more able to finish His creation, which God completes through man.
Art is much more important than the average person realizes it to be -- despite the saying that 'art is what man makes, and nature is what God makes.' I would prefer to say that nature is what God makes as God, and art is what God makes as man. The artist who has arrived at some perfection in his art, whatever his art may be, will come to realize that it is not he who ever achieved anything; it is someone else who came forward every time. And when the artist produces a perfect thing, he finds it difficult to imagine that it has been produced by him. He can do nothing but bow his head in humility before that unseen power and wisdom which takes his body, his heart, his brain, and his eyes as its instrument. Whenever beauty is produced in art, be it music, or poetry, or painting, or writing, or anything else, one must never think that man produced it. It is through man that God completes His creation.