Changes

<div style="color: #000000;">...from the supramental point of view beauty and harmony are as important as any other expression of the Divine. But they should not be isolated, set up apart from all other relations, taken out from the ensemble; they should be one with the expression of life as a whole. People have the habit of saying, "Oh, it is an artist!" as if an artist should not be a man among other men but must be an extraordinary being belonging to a class by itself, and his art too something extraordinary and apart, not to be confused with the other ordinary things of the world.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p15</ref></div>

== Different Ways of Perceiving Beauty ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">In the free infinity of the self-delight of Sachchidananda there is a play of the divine Child, a rāsa līlā of the infinite Lover and its mystic soul-symbols repeat themselves in characters of beauty and movements and harmonies of delight in a timeless forever.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/gnosis-and-ananda#p18</ref></span>

== The All-Beautiful Absolute ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">... that there is nothing but That—something we cannot name, cannot define, cannot describe, but something we can feel and can more and more become. A Something that is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">more perfect than all the perfections, more beautiful than all the beauties</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">, more marvellous than all the marvels, so that even the totality of all that exists cannot express it. And there is nothing but That. And it is not a Something floating in nothingness: there is nothing but That. (The Mother, 8 October 1966)

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/8-october-1966#p7</ref> </span>

== Beauty in Love ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Psychic love is quite satisfying, and it can change even the vital love into something great and beautiful.</span>

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/divine-love-psychic-love-and-human-love#p15</ref>

== Beauty in Psychic ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There is a psychic world—a sort of Heaven of peace and beauty and harmony. It is also a place of rest for the soul between two incarnations in which it absorbs its past experiences and becomes ready for another birth.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p100</ref></span>

== Beauty in Art ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...an artist should be capable of entering into communion with the Divine and of receiving inspiration about what form or forms ought to be used to express the divine beauty in matter. And thus, if it does that, art can be a means of realisation of beauty, and at the same time a teacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">art should be an element in the education of men's taste</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">, of young and old, and it is the teaching of true beauty, that is, the essential beauty which expresses the divine truth. This is the raison d'être of art. Now, between this and what is done there is a great difference, but this is the true raison d'être of art. (The Mother, 28 October 1953)

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/28-october-1953#p4</ref></span>

== Beauty in Vital ==

<div style="color: #000000;">As soon as there is organic life, the vital element comes in, and it is this vital element which gives to flowers the sense of beauty. It is not perhaps individualised in the sense we understand it, but it is a sense of the species and the species always tries to realise it. (The Mother, 1 March 1951)

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p34 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p34</ref></div>

= Relatable Experiences =

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">But for one who has more inner sensitivity, appearances are no longer deceptive and he can perceive the ugliness hidden beneath a pretty face and the beauty concealed beneath a mask of ugliness.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-297-298#p6</ref></span>

= Effects of Growing in Beauty =

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">A philosophic statement about the Atman is a mental formula, not knowledge, not experience: yet sometimes the Divine takes it as a channel of touch; strangely, a barrier in the mind breaks down, something is seen, a profound change operated in some inner part, there enters into the ground of the nature something calm, equal, ineffable. One stands upon a mountain ridge and glimpses or mentally feels a wideness, a pervasiveness, a nameless Vast in Nature; then suddenly there comes the touch, a revelation, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">a flooding, the mental loses itself in the spiritual, one bears the first invasion of the Infinite.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Or you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what?—a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother. Similar touches can come too through art, music, poetry to their creator or to one who feels the shock of the word, the hidden significance of a form, a message in the sound that carries more perhaps than was consciously meant by the composer. All things in the Lila can turn into windows that open on the hidden Reality. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Still so long as one is satisfied with looking through windows, the gain is only initial; one day one will have to take up the pilgrim's staff and start out to journey there where the Reality is for ever manifest and present. Still less can it be spiritually satisfying to remain with shadowy reflections; a search imposes itself for the Light which they strive to figure. But since this Reality and this Light are in ourselves no less than in some high region above the mortal plane, we can in the seeking for it use many of the figures and activities of Life; as one offers a flower, a prayer, an act to the Divine, one can offer too a created form of beauty, a song, a poem, an image, a strain of music, and gain through it a contact, a response or an experience. And when that divine Consciousness has been entered or when it grows within, then too its expression in life through these things is not excluded from Yoga; these creative activities can still have their place, though not intrinsically a greater place than any other that can be put to divine use and service. Art, poetry, music, as they are in their ordinary functioning, create mental and vital, not spiritual values; but they can be turned to a higher end, and then, like all things that are capable of linking our consciousness to the Divine, they are transmuted and become spiritual and can be admitted as part of a life of Yoga.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-intellect-and-yoga#p26</ref> </span>

== Perfection ==

<div style="color:#000000;">The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self-existent self and spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the material of the aesthesis.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p10</ref> </div>

== Widening the Consciousness ==

<div style="color: #000000;">... if one deeply feels the beauty of Nature and communes with her, that can help in widening the consciousness. (The Mother, 9 &nbsp;November 1969)

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/9-november-1969#p4</ref> </div>

== Transformation of the Vital ==

<div style="color: #000000;">...in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores. What does come very often with the inrush of Love is an exaltation, a feeling of a greatening within, of new powers and high or beautiful possibilities in one's nature or of an intensification of the nature; but that is not exactly self-reverence. There is a deeper self reverence possible, a true emotion, a sense of the value and even the sacredness of the soul, even the mind, life, body as an offering or itself the temple for the inner presence of the Beloved.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p31</ref> </div>

= Attitude to Grow in Beauty =

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">That [feeling the Mother's Presence, Love, Joy, Beauty] is one part of the psychic experience—the other is a complete self-giving, absence of demand, a prominence of the psychic being by which all that is false, wrong, egoistic, contrary to the Divine Truth, Divine Will, Divine Purity and Light is shown, falls away, cannot prevail in the nature. With all that the increase of the psychic qualities, gratitude, obedience, unselfishness, fidelity to the true perception, true impulse etc. that comes from the Mother or leads to the Mother. When this side grows, then the other, the Presence, Love, Joy, Beauty, can develop and be permanently there <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-being-and-its-role-in-sadhana#p5</ref> </span>

== Physical Practices ==

<div style="color: #000000;">And on the trust he has in what happens to him, on the absence of the mind's critical sense, and a simplicity of heart, and a youthful and active energy―it depends on all that―on a kind of inner vital generosity: one must not be too egoistic, one must not be too miserly, nor too practical, too utilitarian―indeed there are all sorts of things one should not be... like children. And then, one must have a lively power of imagination, for―I seem to be telling you stupid things, but it is quite true―there is a world in which you are the supreme maker of forms: that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation. (The Mother, 18 April 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/18-april-1956#p55</ref></div>

== For Children ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">And so, when the first experience comes, which sometimes begins when one is very young, the first contact with the inner joy, the inner beauty, the inner light, the first contact with that, which suddenly makes you feel, "Oh! that is what I want," you must cultivate it, never forget it, hold it constantly before you, tell yourself, "I have felt it once, so I can feel it again. This has been real for me, even for the space of a second, and that is what I am going to revive in myself".... And encourage the body to seek it—to seek it, with the confidence that it carries that possibility within itself and that if it calls for it, it will come back, it will be realised again. (The Mother, 31 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/31-july-1957#p11</ref> </span>

== In Art ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Why do you want to do the details? That is not at all necessary. Painting is not done to copy Nature, but to express an impression, a feeling, an emotion that we experience on seeing the beauty of Nature. It is this that is interesting and it is this that has to be expressed.. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p49</ref></span>

= Challenges =

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Certainly, the supramental manifestation does not bring peace, purity, force, power of knowledge only; these give the necessary conditions for the final realisation, are part of it, but Love, Beauty and Ananda are the essence of its fulfilment. And although the supreme Ananda comes with the supreme fulfilment, there is no real reason why there should not be the love and Ananda and beauty of the way also. Some have found that even at an early stage before there was any other experience. But the secret of it is in the heart, not the mind—the heart that opens its inner door and through it the radiance of the soul looks out in a blaze of trust and self-giving. Before that inner fire the debates of the mind and its difficulties wither away and the path however long or arduous becomes a sunlit road not only towards but through love and Ananda. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-difficulties-of-yoga#p11</ref> </span>

== Traditional ==

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">I have objected in the past to vairagya of the ascetic kind and the tamasic kind—and by the tamasic kind I mean that spirit which comes defeated from life, not because it is really disgusted with life but because it could not cope with it or conquer its prizes; for it comes to Yoga as a kind of asylum for the maimed or weak and to the Divine as a consolation prize for the failed boys in the world-class. The vairagya of one who has tasted the world's gifts or prizes but found them insufficient or, finally, tasteless and turns away towards a higher and more beautiful ideal or the vairagya of one who has done his part in life's battles but seen that something greater is demanded of the soul, is perfectly helpful and a good gate to the Yoga. Also the sattwic vairagya which has learned what life is and turns to what is above and behind life. By the ascetic vairagya I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into the Indefinite—and I object to it for those who come to this Yoga because it is incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if one is satisfied with life as it is, then there is no reason to seek to bring the Divine into life,—so vairagya in the sense of dissatisfaction with life as it is is perfectly admissible and even in a certain sense indispensable for my Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/asceticism-and-the-integral-yoga#p31</ref></span>

== Physical ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The desires of the heart and the body which stand in the way of Brahmacharya give a glow to the vital and emotive nature and prevent it from being dry and shut to feeling. To keep the heart warm and open, not dried up or closed, and at the same time attain to spiritual purity the best way is to turn it towards that which is eternal, pure and ever true, behind and beyond these earthly emotions—the ever-living Love, Bliss and Beauty. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p97</ref></span>

== Vital ==