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210
SAMAYASĀRA
Here the artist cannot be differentiated from the continuous process of creative activity resulting in the finished product of art. At every stage of this process we have the progressive manifestation of the artist's mind and hence the process of activity is the artist himself engaged in the art of creation. The artist while thus engaged in translating his idea into an objective figure has to undergoan amount of labour and suffering peculiar to the creative activity of the artist. This feature of the artist in both of the aspects is employed to explain the creative activity of the Self according to the principle of analogy. The Self also has to deal with external karmic matter. To shape this karmic matter into various patterns, various instruments are employed. The Self, like the artist has to manipulate these instruments and after shaping the karmic matter into various patterns he has to experience the hedonic value of the finished product. All these external facts are quite distinct from the nature of the Self who cannot identify himself with any of these. The account corresponds to the casual observation of the artist and hence does not represent the real and true nature of the activity of the Self. When we try to probe into the inner working of the activity of the Self we have a complete parallel to the creative activity of the artist. The Self also starts with an intellectual pattern of the shape of things to be. Starting with such an intellectual pattern, he approaches the karmic material in order to create a material pattern exactly answering to the psychic pattern which he attempts to translate into material shape. When the process of expressing the intellectual pattern in physical form is completed, he experiences the hedonic value thereof. Here also we have an identical and continuous self-expression and the Self that expresses through this process of manifestation is identical with the process itself. The process, the product and the value thereof are but the different stages in the creative activity. Hence the Self cannot be taken to be distinct from the exertion and suffering, characteristic of the creative activity of the Self, Thus these two accounts of the activity of the Self, one from the vyavahāra point of view and the other from the niscaya point of view, are parallel and analogical to the activity of the artist described above.
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