Changes

<div style="color:#000000;">I believe even almost all the beautiful works, are not signed. All those paintings in the caves, those statues in the temples—these are not signed. One does not know at all who created them… All was done in a movement of aspiration to express a higher beauty, and above all with the idea of giving an appropriate abode to the godhead who was evoked. (The Mother, 28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/28-october-1953#p30</ref></div>

<div style="color:#000000;">That is how Sri Aurobindo describes the different pantheons of different countries, specially of Greece or India. That is to say, it is an aesthetic and intellectual way of transforming all things into divine creatures, divine beings: all the forces of Nature, all the elements, all spiritual forces, all intellectual forces, all physical forces, all these are transformed into a number of godheads and they are given an aesthetic and intellectual reality. It is a symbolic and artistic and literary and poetic way of dealing with all the universal forces and realities. That is how these pantheons came into existence, like the Greek or Egyptian pantheon or else the pantheon of India. (The Mother, 16 May 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/16-may-1956#p20</ref></div>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">All these gods are representations which Sri Aurobindo calls "aesthetic and intellectual"―a way of conceiving the universe. (The Mother, 16 May 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/16-may-1956#p21</ref></span>

<div style="color:#000000;">"In any cult the symbol, the significant rite or expressive figure is not only a moving and enriching aesthetic element, but a physical means by which the human being begins to make outwardly definite the emotion and aspiration of his heart, to confirm it and to dynamise it. (The Mother, 1 August 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/8/1-august-1956#p54</ref></div>

<div style="color:#000000;">Always the symbol is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally spiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual consciousness perennial and renovating, moved to express itself always in new forms or able to renew the truth of a form always by the flow of the spirit, and to so express itself and make every action a living symbol of some truth of the soul is the very nature of its creative vision and impulse. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p11</ref></div>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The dance was once one of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p22</ref></span>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Music, no doubt, goes nearest to the infinite and to the essence of things because it relies wholly on the ethereal vehicle,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">''śabda''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(architecture by the by can do something of the same kind at the other extreme even in its imprisonment in mass) ; but painting and sculpture have their revenge by liberating visible form into ecstasy, while poetry though it cannot do with sound what music does, yet can make a many-stringed harmony, a sound-revelation winging the creation by the word and setting afloat vivid suggestions of form and colour,—that gives it in a very subtle kind the combined power of all the arts. Who shall decide between such claims or be a judge between these godheads? <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/27/music-and-poetry#p1</ref></span>