The Scientist Surrenders to Mystery

Creation of the Birds by Remedios Varo

This beautiful painting is by the Spanish artist Remedios Varo, who spent much of her life in Mexico.  Influenced equally by the mystic Gurdjieff and popular science books by Fred Hoyle, Varo’s art is a rich mixture of Italian Renaissance style and surrealism, often featuring fantastic beings in communion with the natural world.  In a short period of explosive creativity in the last decade before her early death in 1963 she painted many works that are now gaining much recognition (and auction prices to match).  Among them is this jewel, in which an individual of indeterminate gender and species is engaged in creating birds. Below is an account of what happens when this figure is approached and questioned about the task.

Creation of the Birds by Remedios Varo 1957

What am I doing? you ask.  I should have thought that was easy to see: I am making birds.  How?  Put simply, I use darkness, music and light.  Three things combined will always make a new idea, as I’m sure you already know.  I am an alchemist which involves both complicated tasks and purely instinctive work.  I can hear the music of the spheres, you see: a huge warm chord that the world of spirit makes as it vibrates with this realm of matter.

What’s that?  ‘Nonsense’ you think, do you?  Tell that to Pythagoras!  He’s dead you say?  Well, I’ve heard of him and so have you, so dead is a relative term don’t you think?  I begin to wonder if you are a merchant, not a scientist at all.  Me?  Yes, I’m a scientist.  Isn’t that obvious from my instruments and my skill in using them?  Who do I work for?  Please, repeat, I don’t understand the terms you use.  A corporation?  Funding?  Research?  I am a collaborator with the great Creative Spirit.  I work quietly, with no assistance from others in the realm of matter, and I derive my material from nature herself.

If you look carefully you will see that I have distilled the night’s darkness in these vessels resembling eggs.  I simply use the liquid, separated into colours, and paint with music.  Surely your mother explained to you when you were small that the body is a musical instrument played upon by the spirit of creation?  That’s all I do here.  My instrumental body has three strings to make a new element and it pours energy into my brush.  To combine with darkness and music I have the Moon—she is so bright and large tonight!  – and if I am careful to outline and colour correctly, my birds will shiver, shake their wings, and take flight.  Some hesitate a while before leaving and that is why I like to keep a supply of nutritious seeds scattered on the floor so that they can gain more strength before they fly.

Paid?  No, I am not paid.  I live by my art.  Do I sell my birds?  I don’t understand.  How would I sell such things?  No, I haven’t heard of copyright either.  To copy is to worship nature, surely?  And that makes all right.

Now why are you crouching down and peering up at my legs like that?  Have you never seen a birdperson?  Female or male, you ask.  How rude!  I see you are a person of very limited intelligence.  Perhaps I can help you by explaining.

As we journey through time, our aim is to join with the Spirit in creating new forms and by doing so, integrate all things.  I have combined darkness, sound and moonlight and I have done so by my openness to mystery and my willingness to study, practice and serve goodness.  I can’t recommend you continue with this aggressive keeping apart of principles—if male and female are set against each other we shall never achieve the Philosopher’s Stone, which is One.  Likewise, my friend, to hold the human and animal as separate can only end in unhappiness and disharmony.

Please, feel free to wander around and watch as I combine a new bird.  You will hear her voice as she finds her wings and knows her own special colours.  What’s that?  Fake, you are saying?  I don’t know this word.  A show?  A sleight of hand?  No, I can’t ‘prove’ a thing!  And yes, I certainly would object to an investigation.  Your suggestion of dissecting one of my children is abhorrent.

Let me ask you a question instead: how is it that you were born?  Yes, of course I am familiar with sexual congress, though I find it unsatisfying.  You are correct to say that there was an egg and a darting moving part, and that it was done in darkness.  But where did this egg and dart come from?  From another?  Yes.  And those?  And the ones before them?  You see the problem.  Your science simply postpones the mystery.  I concede that by studying such processes you are acknowledging that a mystery exists, but just for one moment empty your mind and listen to me.

I am a creature of nature, sprung from the earth and animated by the mysterious forces of life.  By gentle means, allowing myself to be held by these forces, I become a conduit.  Three things become one: matter, spirit and energy.  There is blackening, whitening and the reddening that completes the process.  Through my body comes life, it knits itself in my interior.  You, on the other hand, seem content to ignore mystery, look for ways to turn it into money or reduce it to a machine over which you have power.  I pity you.

I shall go on working here, until I need to rest again, and I hope that you will explain to those friends of yours in the marketplace that they live in a world of not seeing and not hearing.  The evidence of miracle is everywhere—in the trees, and the birds and the ocean—and it is quite simple to hear the music of the spheres if you will, just for a moment, surrender to mystery.