The word inspir­a­tion is used in sev­er­al senses. Its lit­er­al mean­ing is inhal­a­tion; its aes­thet­ic-mys­tic­al sense is prompt­ing, kind­ling enthu­si­asm; in the theo­lo­gic­al sense it is the work­ing of divine power upon the human soul; and in the meta­phys­ic­al sense it is the final stage of spir­itu­al devel­op­ment, the res­ult of enlight­en­ment.

From these mean­ings it seems as if inspir­a­tion accom­pan­ies man from the very first steps of life to the very last, at first as breath, at the end as ful­fil­ment. Breath was once also writ­ten lélekz­et in Hun­gari­an, which poin­ted more clearly to the ensouled qual­ity of this vital bod­ily func­tion, to its being touched by the divine. This divine con­tact is stressed by the philo­sophy of the Upan­ishads too, when they link the breath of God, the deity of the winds, the wind mov­ing through the air, and human breath­ing, prana – what a macro- and micro­cos­mic fab­ric! It is said that man and God live in the same air, and what God breathes out, man breathes in. If we reck­on fif­teen breaths a minute, that makes nine hun­dred an hour, 21,600 a day, and 10,800 over the twelve hours of day­light. And though man ought to glor­i­fy the Lord of Beings with every breath, even if he does not man­age this, let him at least serve the full­ness of the uni­verse with a hun­dredth (108) of the breaths of his wak­ing state (10,800), and say 108 pray­ers. Even this takes some impetus, but in a rightly prac­tised spir­itu­al pro­cess the first steps and the final goal meet and melt into one anoth­er.

At the word prompt­ing, one epi­thet springs to every­one's mind: divine prompt­ing… How good it would be to draw our impetus, our enthu­si­asm, from such prompt­ings! Yet the source and the nature of inspir­a­tion also change, with age for instance: as a child, a toy car; as a grown-up, a big car.

This tech­nic­al interest of boys and men embod­ies a none-too-hid­den need to get from place to place. The need for move­ment, in turn, is a kind of self-affirm­a­tion – I am alive! – since it too belongs among the signs of life; and on the other hand it expresses the hope that merely going some­where else will some­how make some­thing bet­ter. And yet all our trav­el­ling takes place between two wooden objects, one of which is the cradle, the other the coffin. Where are we rush­ing to so fast?

The work­ing of divine power sets man on his way and calls him back, wheth­er we are aware of it or not. Yet where fate leads and shep­herds the obed­i­ent man, it sweeps the con­trary one away. That is why we should arrive at the fourth mean­ing of inspir­a­tion, the inspired life that enlight­en­ment bestows, which is just as sub­ject­ive, just as much spring­ing from man's inner being, as its first mean­ing, breath, even though, as we have seen and can sense, both stand under divine influ­ence.

But without exhal­a­tion there is no inhal­a­tion, without aspir­a­tion no inspir­a­tion, and only so is res­pir­a­tion whole. Aspir­a­tion is breath­ing dir­ec­ted towards some­thing, a striv­ing, as when, hur­ry­ing and out of breath, we at last reach the goal. Inspir­a­tion must be pre­ceded by aspir­a­tion. For the soul is soul­ful.

If we look at the past thou­sand years of human­ity, one of the chief inspir­ing forces was hope. Hope in the Enlight­en­ment, hope in sci­ence, in defeat­ing enemies and dis­eases, hope in get­ting rich, and who knows what else. The heav­en-reach­ing spires and oth­er­worldly statues of the Goth­ic still turned man's atten­tion towards heav­en, but since the Renais­sance we have placed our trust more and more in our earthly goals. True, we have achieved undeni­able suc­cesses in sci­ence, tech­no­logy and com­fort, but mean­while man has become cata­stroph­ic­ally vul­ner­able. So we may say that the open­ing-out of the mater­i­al per­spect­ive has nar­rowed the spir­itu­al hori­zon of human thought bey­ond meas­ure.

What, then, is to be done? Take a deep breath, and seek divine inspir­a­tion. Csontváry held him­self to be the paint­er of the sun's path, and declared: ‘inspir­a­tion and strength of will are my wings…’, that is, inspir­a­tion and aspir­a­tion. Most people are moved by their goals, but without God life has no true course to run. Once the holy and divine touch is there, all that remains is to sum­mon the strength of the will.