Greetings angelic viewers, and welcome to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. In today’s show, we’ll take an inspiring voyage to the realm of light with the first of our two-part series on contemporary Canadian artist François Lortie, better known as Niska. Called “the Painter of the Soul,” Niska has devoted over 50 years of his life to the ardent quest for God with his paintbrush.

At the age of six, Niska was struck by a city bus when he found himself out of his body and surrounded by bright light. The life-changing moment was followed by 18 months of confinement in a hospital bed. Assigned to the rehabilitation center along with war amputees, he created his first painting under the loving encouragement of his caretakers. It was here that he made his lifetime commitment to spreading the message of light.

I was already painting those lights and my first exhibition [was] when I sent the paintings in Ottawa for the National Gallery in 1954. By this year, I remember, I was like 14 years old, those energies that I felt in my guts, I wanted to help the world. I wanted to help humanity, to change the world, So I associated to my spiritual energy, wanted so much to give, so that’s the strength of power. And of course the light that I associate to [is] the Light of God.

So what would you say will be your life mission? How would you sum it all up?

My life mission was to uplift the people to realize that we are not really human beings. We are divine beings that chose to be on Earth. I think the human experience and this human experience is fun. What is the most important thing in life? It’s your life, live the life, enjoy, you are here to rejoice. So you have to learn meditating on light and finding that you’re a being of light, that you can raise that dimmer. Some people need little lights to start growing until you realize you are the light.

With illuminating colors and smooth flowing strokes, Niska’s paintings glow with happiness, purity, and truth. The indescribable harmony of a soulful experience is brought before the viewer, like a poem, a symphony, a ballet, or an epic, so real that you can almost touch it.

It’s important to start thinking about light and love.

On your dead bed, you don’t ask where is my money, you ask where is the light.

The basic of many of the paintings is you see there are some kind of a circle here. Can you perceive that there is a circle there? You see there? (Right, yes.) Okay. When I was a young boy, I had this bus accident, declared dead, and I was entering that tunnel of light.

And now I know that depending on your religion, at that time I didn't know, I was six years old. I was Christian, so [I’d] meet Jesus. Elona, my wife, is Jewish so she might meet Moses. Others meet Buddha, Ramtha, Krishna. And that became my passion, to paint those circles of life. I've painted them now for 60 some years. I've learned a lot about them.

If I walk into that light right there, I’m going to be passing onto the other side of the light. So what is here on the other side of the light? With all my heart, it’s God.

You’ll see God when you get over this channel of light there. So for most people who think they are dust, they will turn to dust, they’re worth nothing, no, no, no, no. You are the light that will return to light. You are God that will return to God.

Through the profound experience of light and God, Niska arrives at his insightful view of the nature of this worldly existence.

Art evolved over the years. You see in many, many of my paintings. You see that straight line here, you see? And in 1990, I stopped putting dates on the paintings. That was through my spiritual growth and consciousness, that we’re not really immortal; we’re more eternal. I’m not the expert in language but I mean we were not really ever born nor will we really ever die.

We borrow the body for a period of time, so that’s a life span, this is your life, from there to there. So what’s a 50, 75, 100 years, or billions and billions of years? By meaning we are immortal, eternal, meaning that we’ve always been linked to God and we’ll always be, but we might not have our actual vehicle – I call sometimes “a car” that we borrow to visit Her.

We will be back with more on Niska’s paintings and the artist’s insights about his direct experience with God. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

God. I am just fascinated with God.

I realize that we are able to find God and connect [with] Him.

We only find God through our own experience. Did you know that? Nobody can teach; nobody has God. We can inspire you to start on the path and make your path, but you will find it by yourself. They cannot prove God to you, nobody, and nobody will ever. You can prove only God to yourself.

Welcome back to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. In today’s show, we are featuring Canadian spiritual artist Niska, who is known as “the Painter of the Soul.” To cultivate his connection with God, Niska starts his days with prayer and meditation. Then with fresh inspiration, he delves right into art. He once said in an interview, “It's my life, I meditate and paint, eat and sleep.”

All my life, the purpose of meditation is to contact God. Your inner God, contact this infinite nothingness. You know we think that God is everything but just it’s partial, God is everywhere. But as I painted, I do not realize I was actually meditating; so as I did it full time, I was not, thank God, a school teacher or things like that, to teach art. I love our teachers and to think I was blessed, to be able to paint and paint.

So suddenly I started seeing those lights coming up in my life, like the monks in Tibet or some other places that meditate 4 to 8 hours every day. After a few years they start seeing those lights, they actually see them. So me as I paint them and because if I didn’t see them, I couldn’t paint them, but they took me many, many years to see them. But then also that’s the purpose of meditation, contacting with God and then you grow.

I found out that God is very polite. He’s a good friend, but He’s very polite.

And I think some experts could confirm to you that the average brain functioning between 2 to 5 hundred words a minute; if your emotions are there, it goes fast fast fast. So God is quite polite. So what you want to do with meditation is to lower this scrambling of thoughts fighting all over, and when you get to about 100 words a minute, great, He tries to squeeze a word in, you know? So, He’s so polite that He will not interrupt you. So if you don’t shut up, you’ll never hear about Him.

The paintings of light created after meditation bear the power of inner God connection, touch people’s souls, and benefit even their physical lives. Niska’s wife Elona shares with us her own experience.

Yes, when I was doing my master thesis and I had one of his paintings above my computer. And he said to me, “Why don’t you let yourself go into the light?” He said, “So then you could be inspired and write it faster and it’ll go easier for you.” And I said, “Listen... it’s for McGill, and I need to do an analysis, political and economical and historical. How was the light going to help me?” Because I was just starting my spiritual growth.

I had ideas about it as a kid, but we never learned about it in school. It’s 3 in the morning, and there I was with that painting and I suddenly found myself having this inner dialogue with his painting, and it was helping me connect with my inner light and my inner guide, which I slowly discovered more and more over time. And what happened in the end was what normally would have taken me probably a year – I was working at the time, full time – I did it in three months, weekends and evenings.

I was so inspired by the painting, the words just typed out of my fingers and I started to discover the power of the light. If I hadn’t lived it I would have never known it, and after that when I handed it in, I wrote a lot of things in that thesis that I might normally not have written. And I said, “Oh, I don’t know if they are going like it.” They may fail me because I was quite audacious in what I had to say. It was quite forthright.

I tried to say it diplomatically, but I still said certain things that the paintings encouraged me. They said, “Go for it, go for it.” The light in the paintings said, “Go for it.” But after that when I got back my results in the mail, I opened it up and they wrote that, “The joy of a teacher is when the child surpasses the master,” and I started to cry, you know.

And I realized, I didn’t say I am so bright, but I said the light when you connect with your inner voice and you allow yourself to be inspired, you can reach heights and a sense of boundlessness that you don’t know really exist before. So, that was a life-changing moment for me when I realized I want to spend more time understanding what that was all about, and the power of that, that really transforms your life and brings you to places where you don’t think ever existed.

The life-changing experience of Elona is not an isolated incident. Through contemplating on God’s light, many people have found the source of lasting happiness. In Niska’s words, “With God, you are never alone.”

One of our big, big suffering in humanity presently is loneliness. People live in huge towers and couples can’t keep their parents home, so the little ones are often alone, and the older ones are very alone. We feel alone because we have the illusion, I think, of being disconnected from God. If we knew we are connected to God, how could you feel alone? I know He’s there, He’s helping me all the time. So that’s why I made this beautiful painting “With God, We Are Never Alone.”

We sincerely thank Niska and Elona for sharing with us the essential message of light and God. We will continue with part 2 next week, here on Supreme Master Television.

For more about Niska’s paintings, please visit

Radiant viewers, thank you for your presence on today’s episode of A Journey through Aesthetic Realms. Up next on Supreme Master Television is Vegetarianism: The Noble Way of Living, after Noteworthy News. May Divine light guide us all toward a virtuous, loving, and happy path in life.

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