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Read Summary of '''[[Beauty Summary|Beauty]]'''
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= What is Beauty? =
= What The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty =interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p2</ref>
== General Understanding of Beauty == <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The On the physical world is plane the world of form and the perfection of form is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">expresses himself through beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">'''.'''</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Beauty interprets, expresseson the mental plane through knowledge, manifests on the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with vital plane through power and on the Eternal psychic plane through the perfection of formlove. When we rise high enough, through harmony and we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a sense single, full of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higherlove, luminous, powerful, beautiful, containing all, pervading all. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1215/artsthe-divine-working-in-the-universe#p2p6</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through Spiritual beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through has a contagious power and on . Beauty is the psychic plane through love. When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single consciousness, full joyous offering of love, luminous, powerful, beautiful, containing all, pervading allNature.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1512/the-divine-working-in-the-universearts#p6p13</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">For all joy, There is a psychic world—a sort of Heaven of and beauty, love, peace, delight are out-flowings from the Ananda Brahman,—all delight of the spirit, the intellect, the imagination, aesthetic sense, ethical aspiration and satisfaction, action, life, the bodyharmony. And through all ways It is also a place of our being rest for the Divine can touch us soul between two in which it absorbs its past experiences and make use of them to awaken and liberate the spiritbecomes ready for another birth. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2428/the-anandapsychic-brahmanbeing#p4p100</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparentIt [aesthetic conscience] is the consciousness of beauty. Aesthetic means that which concerns beauty, art. There are people, for example, who move around in life and see landscapes, see people and things and have absolutely no sense of whether it is beautiful or not; color: #000000and into the bargain, it makes no difference at all to them. They look at the sky, see whether there are any clouds, whether it will rain or be clear, for instance;or whether the sun is hot or the wind cold. But there are others—when they raise their eyes and look at a beautiful sky, it gives them pleasure, they say, ">Spiritual beauty has a contagious powerOh! It is fine today, the sunrise is lovely today, the sunset is beautiful, the clouds have fine shapes. Beauty is " So, the first kind do not have an aesthetic conscience, the joyous offering of Naturesecond have.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1207/arts1-june-1955#p13p3</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Beauty is a great powerthe aesthetic instinct of man, and the good is his ethical instinct, and these two things are very important in human education and growth.. Beauty does not get its full power except when it is surrendered to the Divine.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1507/beauty25-may-1955#p8p39</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000... there is a beauty of thought, a beauty of feeling. This is something we perceive very often;when someone has done a very noble deed, very generous, very unselfish, quite spontaneously we say, ">To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world It isbeautiful!" And it's true, indeed, it gives the whole crown and essence sense of our Yogabeauty.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2907/divine-love-psychic-love-and1-humanjune-love1955#p1p14</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">It There is the soul in us this beauty, this dignity of soul—a thing about which turns always towards Truth, Good and Beauty, because it I am very sensitive. It is by these things a thing that it itself grows moves me and evokes in stature; the rest, their opposites, are me a necessary part of experience, but have to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the beinggreat respect always.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2115/the-origin-and-remedy-ofjuly-falsehood1958-error-wrong-and-evil1#p14p2</ref></div>
<div style="text= Pre-align: center;">&diams;</div>requisites ==
Beauty is a great power. Beauty does not get its full power except when it is surrendered to the Divine. <div style="colorref>http: #000000;">There is this beauty, this dignity of soul—a thing about which I am very sensitive//incarnateword. It is a thing that moves me and evokes in me a great respect always./cwm/15/beauty#p8</divref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...this All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of soul that is visible in the face, this kind of dignityBeloved, this harmony and all forms of integral realisation. When the soul becomes visible in the physical, it gives this dignity, this beauty, this majesty, have to stand under the majesty light of that comes from one's being eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the Tabernacle. Then, even things that have no particular beauty put on a sense of eternal beauty, sublimating and transfiguring power of it the eternal beautyunveiled Divine Perfection.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1523/julythe-ascent-of-the-1958sacrifice-1ii#p2p16</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">Love, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental determinates of the Divine Delight of Existence, and we can see at once that these are of the very stuff and nature of that Delight: they are not alien impositions on the being of the Absolute or creations supported by it but outside it; they are truths of its being, native to its consciousness, powers of its force of existence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/indeterminates-cosmic-determinations-and-the-indeterminable#p17</ref></div> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <div style="color: #000000;">All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p16</ref></div> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Beauty is not sufficient in itself, it wants to become divine. Pure sense of beauty can be acquired only through a great purification.</span>
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/beauty#p13</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">Beauty is Harmony and beauty of the aesthetic instinct mind and soul, harmony and beauty of manthe thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the good life and surroundings, this is his ethical instinct, the demand of. ... Where love and these two things beauty are not or are very important in human education and growth; reluctant to be born, she does not come." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0704/2512-may-19551951#p39p1</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">It [aesthetic conscience] is the consciousness of beauty. Aesthetic means that which concerns beautyWe must go farther on, art. There are peoplewe must advance, climb greater heights and go beyond the arid search for example, who move around in life pleasure and see landscapespersonal welfare, see people and things and have absolutely no sense not through fear of whether it is beautiful or not; and into the bargainpunishment, even punishment after death, it makes no difference at all to them. They look at but through the sky, see whether there are any clouds, whether it will rain or be cleardevelopment of a new sense of beauty, a thirst for instance; or whether the sun is hot or the wind cold. But there are others—when they raise their eyes truth and look at a beautiful skylight, through understanding that it gives them pleasure, they say, "Oh! It is fine todayonly by widening yourself, the sunrise is lovely todayillumining yourself, setting yourself ablaze with the sunset is beautifulardour for, the clouds have fine shapesthat you can find both integral peace and enduring happiness." So, the first kind do not have an aesthetic conscience, the second have.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0703/1-june-1955punishment#p3p24</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">...from and the heart's call for the Divine have a truth—it is the supramental point truth of view beauty and harmony are as important as any other expression the divine. The will for has in it a truth—it is the truth of the DivineSpirit's mastery over its members. But they should not be isolatedThe musician and poet stand for a truth, set up apart from all other relations, taken out from it is the ensemble; they should be one with truth of the expression of life as the Spirit through beauty . There is a truth behind the mental Affirmer; even there is a whole. People have truth behind the habit of sayingmental doubter, "Ohthe Russellian, it though far behind him—the truth of the denial of false forms. Even behind the two vital personalities there is an artist!" as if an artist should not be a man among other men truth, the truth of the possession of the inner and outer worlds—not by the but must by the Divine. That is the harmonisation for which our stands—but it cannot be an extraordinary being belonging to a class achieved by any outward arrangement, it can only be achieved by itselfgoing inside and looking, willing and his art too something extraordinary acting from the psychic and apart, not to be confused with from the spiritual centre. For the other ordinary things truth of the worldbeing is there and the secret of Harmony also is there. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0329/28the-julyadwaita-of-1929shankaracharya#p15p25</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== Different Ways ...from the point of Perceiving Beauty ==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>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>He means that it [seeking for beauty] is ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">instinctive</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">, that it isn't rational, it doesn't depend on the domain of reason, it is something instinctive.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">We have a sense of beauty and love beauty without even knowing why, and there are things which give the sense of beauty without our knowing why, without our reasoning. It is instinctive. He says that this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">sense. It is absolutely obvious that a child, who sees a pretty flower and has the feeling of beauty he does not know why, would never be able to tell you that it's because the form is balanced and the colours are lovely; he cannot explain it. Therefore it is not rational, it is altogether instinctive, it is an attraction, an impulse drawing one towards something, a harmony one feels, without being able to define it. But most often it is like that. It is rarely that one is able to say, "This thing is beautiful because of that, because of this," and to give a whole lecture on the beauty of something. Usually, one simply feels that it is beautiful; if later one wonders, "Why did I feel it is beautiful?" then, by making an effort with one's intelligence one may succeed in understanding it; but at the beginning one is not pre-occupied with the why, one feels that it is beautiful, and that's all, one is satisfied with that.</spancenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">For exampleThere are people who are just like beautiful animals—all their movements are harmonious, you enter a historical buildingtheir energies are spent harmoniously, their uncalculating efforts call in energies all the time and suddenly you they are seized by the sense of a great beautyalways happy; how do you explain it? If someone asks you about it you would saybut sometimes they have no thoughts in their head, "Wellsometimes they have no feelings in their heart, they live an altogether animalish life. I feel have known people like that it is : beautifulanimals." But if an architect enters a building and has the same feeling that it is beautifulThey were handsome, he will immediately tell you, "It's because the lines meet harmoniouslytheir gestures were harmonious, the mass of the volumes is in harmony, the entire structure follows certain laws of beauty, order their forces quite balanced and rhythm", and he will explain them to you. But that's because he is an architect, they spent without reckoning and yet you could have felt the beauty as much as he received without being able to explain it. Well, your feeling for beauty is what Sri Aurobindo calls infrarational, and his feeling for beauty is what Sri Aurobindo calls rational, because he can explain with his reason why he finds it beautiful. (The Mother, 1 June 1955)</span><ref>http://incarnatewordmeasure.They were in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p21</ref><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">It [beauty] is a kind of harmony which you experience much more than think, and the true suprarational relation with beauty is not at all a "reasonable" relation (Sri Aurobindo will tell you this at the end), it completely overpasses reason, it is a contact in a higher realm. But what precisely he tells us in this paragraph is that when it is an instinct it is found mixed with movements of ignorance and a lack of culture and refinement. So this </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">instinct is sometimes very gross material universal forces and very imperfect they lived in its expressionjoy.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">One can experience an aesthetic pleasure (let us call it They could not perhaps have told you that) in seeing something which is truly beautiful and at the same time something else which is not beautiful, but which gives one some sort of pleasure, because it is mixed, because one's aesthetic instinct is not pure, it is mixed they were happy—joy with all kinds of sensations which are very crude and untrained. So it is here, as he says, that reason has its role, them was so spontaneous that it comes in was natural—and they would have been still less able to explain tell you why a thing is beautiful, to educate the taste; </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">but it is for their intelligence was not final, and reason is not the final judge; it can very well make mistakes, only it is a little higher, as judgment, than that of a completely infrarational being who has no reason and no understanding of things. It is a stage. It is a stage, that's what he says, it is a stage. But if you want to realise true beauty, you must go beyond that, very far beyond this stage... At first your sense of beauty is instinctive, impulsive, infrarational, lacking light, wanting reason, simply without any true understanding, and so, because the origin of the aesthetic sense is infrarational, it is understood, one always says this: "There's no disputing tastes and coloursdeveloped." You know, there are all kinds of popular proverbs which say that the appreciation of the beautiful is not a matter of reasoning, everyone likes a particular thing he doesn't know why, he takes pleasure in looking at a thing, and this pleasure cannot be discussed. Well, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic sense. (The Mother, 1 June 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0704/113-junejanuary-19551951#p24p15</ref></span>
<div style="text-align= Beauty: center;">&diams;</div>Stages ==
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">higher principle He means that it [seeking for beauty] is instinctive , that it isn't rational, it doesn't depend on the domain of reason, it is something instinctive. We have a sense of beauty and love beauty without even knowing why, and there are things which give the sense of beauty without our knowing why, without our reasoning. It is instinctive. He says that this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic sense. It is absolutely obvious that a child, who sees a suprarational principle</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000pretty flower and has the feeling of beauty he does not know why, would never be able to tell you that it's because the form is balanced and the colours are lovely;">and therefore reason understands nothing at all about he cannot explain it. If you want Therefore it is not rational, it is altogether instinctive, it is an attraction, an impulse drawing one towards something, a harmony one feels, without being able to judge art by reason you are sure define it. But most often it is like that. It is rarely that one is able to say foolish things, "This thing is beautiful because of that, because of this," and to give a whole lecture on the beauty of something. (The MotherUsually, one simply feels that it is beautiful; if later one wonders, "Why did I feel it is beautiful?" then, 25 May 1955)<ref>http://incarnateword.by making an effort with one's intelligence one may succeed in/cwm/07/25understanding it; but at the beginning one is not pre-may-1955#p37</ref> </span>occupied with the why, one feels that it is beautiful, and that's all, one is satisfied with that.
<div style=For example, you enter a historical building, and suddenly you are seized by the sense of a great beauty; how do you explain it? If someone asks you about it you would say, "Well, I feel that it is beautiful." But if an architect enters a building and has the same feeling that it is beautiful, he will immediately tell you, "text-align: center;It's because the lines meet harmoniously, the mass of the volumes is in harmony, the entire structure follows certain laws of beauty, order and rhythm", and he will explain them to you. But that's because he is an architect, and yet you could have felt the beauty as much as he without being able to explain it. Well, your feeling for beauty is what Sri Aurobindo calls infrarational, and his feeling for beauty is what Sri Aurobindo calls rational, because he can explain with his reason why he finds it beautiful. <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p21</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">To understand truly what Sri Aurobindo means here, you must yourself have had the experience of transcending reason and establishing your consciousness in a world higher than the mental intelligence. For from up there you can see, firstly, that everything that exists in the universe is an expression of Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) and therefore behind any appearance whatever, if you go deeply enough, you can perceive Sachchidananda, which is the principle of Supreme Beauty. Secondly, you see that everything in the manifested universe is relative, so much so that there is no beauty which may not appear ugly in comparison with a greater beauty, no ugliness which may not appear beautiful in comparison with a yet uglier ugliness.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-19#p3</refcenter>~</spancenter>
<div style=It [beauty] is a kind of harmony which you experience much more than think, and the true suprarational relation with beauty is not at all a "reasonable"text-alignrelation (Sri Aurobindo will tell you this at the end), it completely overpasses reason, it is a contact in a higher realm. But what precisely he tells us in this paragraph is that when it is an instinct it is found mixed with movements of ignorance and a lack of culture and refinement. So this instinct is sometimes very gross and very imperfect in its expression. One can experience an aesthetic pleasure (let us call it that) in seeing something which is truly beautiful and at the same time something else which is not beautiful, but which gives one some sort of pleasure, because it is mixed, because one's aesthetic instinct is not pure, it is mixed with all kinds of sensations which are very crude and untrained. So it is here, as he says, that reason has its role, that it comes in to explain why a thing is beautiful, to educate the taste; but it is not final, and reason is not the final judge; it can very well make mistakes, only it is a little higher, as judgment, than that of a completely infrarational being who has no reason and no understanding of things. It is a stage. It is a stage, that's what he says, it is a stage. But if you want to realise true beauty, you must go beyond that, very far beyond this stage... At first your sense of beauty is instinctive, impulsive, infrarational, lacking light, wanting reason, simply without any true understanding, and so, because the origin of the aesthetic sense is infrarational, it is understood, one always says this: center;"There's no disputing tastes and colours." You know, there are all kinds of popular proverbs which say that the appreciation of the beautiful is not a matter of reasoning, everyone likes a particular thing he doesn't know why, he takes pleasure in looking at a thing, and this pleasure cannot be discussed. Well, this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic sense. <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p24</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">...the supramental beauty is something much higher and more perfect; it is a beauty untainted by any ugliness and it does not need the proximity of ugliness in order to look beautiful. When the supramental forces descend into Matter in order to manifest, this perfect beauty will express itself quite naturally and spontaneously in all forms. (The Mother, 6 March 1933) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/6-march-1933#p4</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
The higher principle of beauty is a suprarational principle and therefore reason understands nothing at all about it. If you want to judge art by reason you are sure to say foolish things. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/25-align: center;">&diams;may-1955#p37</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>And what will be the bliss nature when it manifests in a new supramental race? The fully evolved soul will be one with all beings in the status and dynamic effects of experience of a bliss-consciousness intense and illimitable. And since love is the effective power and soul-symbol of bliss-oneness he will approach and enter into this oneness by the gate of universal love, a sublimation of human love at first, a divine love afterwards, at its summits ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">a thing of beauty, sweetness and splendour now to us inconceivable. He will be one in bliss-consciousness with all the world-play and its powers and happenings and there will be banished for ever the sorrow and fear, the hunger and pain of our poor and darkened mental and vital and physical existence. He will get that power of the bliss-freedom in which all the conflicting principles of our being shall be unified in their absolute values. All evil shall perforce change itself into good; the universal beauty of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">All-beautiful will take possession of its fallen kingdoms</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"><nowiki>; every darkness will be converted into a pregnant glory of light and the discords which the mind creates between Truth and Good and Beauty, Power and Love and Knowledge will disappear on the eternal summit, in the infinite extensions where they are always one. </nowiki></spancenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">In To understand truly what Sri Aurobindo means here, you must yourself have had the free infinity experience of transcending reason and establishing your consciousness in a world higher than the mental intelligence. For from up there you can see, firstly, that everything that exists in the selfuniverse is an expression of Sachchidananda (Being-delight of Consciousness-Bliss) and therefore behind any appearance whatever, if you go deeply enough, you can perceive Sachchidananda there , which is a play the principle of Supreme Beauty. Secondly, you see that everything in the divine Childmanifested universe is relative, so much so that there is no beauty which may not appear ugly in comparison with a rāsa līlā of the infinite Lover and its mystic soul-symbols repeat themselves in characters of greater beauty and movements and harmonies of delight , no ugliness which may not appear beautiful in comparison with a timeless foreveryet uglier ugliness.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2310/gnosis-andaphorism-ananda19#p18p3</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== The All...the supramental beauty is something much higher and more perfect; it is a beauty untainted by any ugliness and it does not need the proximity of ugliness in order to look beautiful. When the supramental forces descend into [https://ie.auroville.org.in/index.php/M#Matter Matter ] in order to manifest, this perfect beauty will express itself quite naturally and spontaneously in all forms. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/6-Beautiful Absolute ==march-1933#p4</ref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The master and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of Beauty in the Light and Bliss that are for ever.</span><span styleVital ="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-master-of-the-work#p1</ref></span>
Perhaps not the highest sense of beauty, but in the vital one finds a complete sense of beauty and harmony. The beauty which is fundamental, profound, universal, constant belongs only to the psychic, but the sense of the beauty of form, of appearance, of colour, the educated, refined vital fully possesses. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-align: center;">&diams;march-1951#p30</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>... 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> </spancenter>
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. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-align1951#p34 http: center;">&diams;//incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p34</divref>
== Beauty in Love == <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color''Q: transparent; color: #000000;">The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision Can those who have a sense of beauty. The God-lover is the universal lover and he embraces the All-blissful and All-beautiful. When universal love has seized on his heart, it is the decisive sign that the Divine has taken possession of him; and when he has the vision of the All-beautiful everywhere and can feel at all times the bliss of his embrace, that is the decisive sign that he has taken possession of the Divine. Union is the consummation of love, but it is this mutual possession that gives it at once the acme and the largest reach of its intensity. It is the foundation of oneness in ecstasy.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-delight-of-the-divine#p8</ref>also become cruel?''
<div style="text-align''A: center'' That's a psychological problem. It depends on where their sense of beauty is located. One may have a physical see of beauty, a vital sense of beauty, a mental sense of beauty. If one has a moral sense of beauty—a sense of moral beauty and nobility—one will never be cruel. One will always be generous and magnanimous in all circumstances. But as men are made of many different pieces.... For instance, I was thinking about all the artists I knew—I knew all the greatest artists of the last century or the beginning of this century, and they truly had a sense of beauty, but morally, some of them were very cruel. When the artist was seen at his work, he lived in a magnificent beauty but when you saw the gentleman at home, he had only a very limited contact with the artist in himself and usually he became someone very vulgar, very ordinary. Many of them did, I am sure of it. But those who were unified, in the sense that they truly lived their art—those, no;"they were generous and good. <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/17-march-1954#p33</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>Love is a passion and it seeks for two things, eternity and intensity, and in the relation of the Lover and Beloved the seeking for eternity and for intensity is instinctive and self-born. Love is a seeking for mutual possession, and it is here that the demand for mutual possession becomes absolute. Passing beyond desire of possession which means a difference, it is a seeking for oneness, and it is here that the idea of oneness, of two souls merging into each other and becoming one finds the acme of its longing and the utterness of its satisfaction. ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Love, too, is a yearning for beauty,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">and it is here that the yearning is eternally satisfied in the vision and the touch and the joy of the All-beautiful. Love is a child and a seeker of Delight, and it is here that it finds the highest possible ecstasy both of the heart-consciousness and of every fibre of the being. Moreover, this relation is that which as between human being and human being demands the most and, even while reaching the greatest intensities, is still the least satisfied, because only in the Divine can it find its real and its utter satisfaction. Therefore it is here most that the turning of human emotion God-wards finds its full meaning and discovers all the truth of which love is the human symbol, all its essential instincts divinised, raised, satisfied in the bliss from which our life was born and towards which by oneness it returns in the Ananda of the divine existence where love is absolute, eternal and unalloyed.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-godward-emotions#p14</ref></spancenter>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <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> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> == Beauty in Psychic == <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">What is meant in the terminology of the Yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psyche or divine nucleus which stands behind mindBut for one who has more inner sensitivity, life and body (it is not the ego) but of which we appearances are only dimly aware. It is a portion of the Divine and permanent from life to life, taking the experience of life through its outer instruments. As this experience grows it manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the good, true and beautiful, finally becomes ready and strong enough to turn the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">nature towards the Divine. It can then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts and transform the nature. Nature no longer imposes itself on the soul, but the soul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the nature.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-being-and-its-role-in-sadhana#p1</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things deceptive and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience he can pollute its purity or extinguish perceive the flame. This spiritual stuff is immaculate and luminous and, because it is perfectly luminous, it is immediately, intimately, directly aware of truth of being and truth of nature;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">it is deeply conscious of truth and good and beauty because truth and good and beauty are akin to its own native character,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">forms of something that is inherent in its own substance. It is aware also of all that contradicts these things, of all that deviates from its own native character, of falsehood and evil and the ugly and the unseemly; but it does not become these things nor is it touched or changed by these opposites of itself which so powerfully affect its outer instrumentation of mind, life and body. For the soul, the permanent being in us, puts forth and uses mind, life ugliness hidden beneath a pretty face and body as its instruments, undergoes the envelopment of their conditions, but it is other and greater than its members.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p3</ref> </span> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The plants are very psychic, but they can express it only by silence and beauty. Form, colour, scent + something else which is indefinable [constitute the beauty of flowers].<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/science-and-yoga#p78</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There is concealed beneath a psychic world—a sort mask 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 birthugliness.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2810/theaphorism-psychic297-being298#p100p6</ref></span> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>
== Beauty in Art ==
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">True art means the expression of beauty in the material world.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p15</ref></span> <div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">True art is intended to express the beautiful, but in close intimacy with the universal movement. The greatest nations and the most cultured races have always considered art as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem to know that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p14</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...an artist should be capable of entering into communion with the Divine The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons 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, aesthetic reason and at the same time discovers a teacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, </span><span style="backgroundself-color: transparent; color: #000000;">art should be an element in the education of men's taste</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">, existent self and spirit of young pure and old, infinite Beauty and it is the teaching of true beauty, that is, the essential beauty Delight which expresses gives its own light and joy to the divine truth. This is the raison d'être material of art. Now, between this and what is done there is a great difference, but this is the true raison d'être of artaesthesis. (The Mother, 28 October 1953)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0524/28purification-octoberintelligence-1953and-will#p4p10</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== Beauty True art is intended to express the beautiful, but in Vital ==close intimacy with the universal movement. The greatest nations and the most cultured races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem to know that art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p14</ref>
<div style="color: #000000;">Perhaps not the highest sense of beauty, but in the vital one finds a complete sense of beauty and harmony. The beauty which Why is fundamental, profound, universal, constant belongs only to the psychic, but the sense of the beauty of form, of appearance, of colour, the educated, refined vital fully possesses.<span styleBeauty Important? ="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> (The Mother, 1 March 1951)</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p30</ref></div>
It is the soul in us which turns always towards, Good and Beauty, because it is by these things that it itself grows in stature; the rest, their opposites, are a necessary part of experience, but have to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the being. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-align: center;">&diams;evil#p14</divref>
<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</refcenter>~</divcenter>
...this beauty of soul that is visible in the face, this kind of dignity, this harmony of integral realisation. When the soul becomes visible in the physical, it gives this dignity, this beauty, this majesty, the majesty that comes from one's being the Tabernacle. Then, even things that have no particular beauty put on a sense of eternal beauty, of it the eternal beauty. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/july-align: center;">&diams;1958-1#p2</divref>
= Relatable Experiences = <center>~</center>
<div style="color: #000000;">...Usually one feels such pleasure or joy or enjoyment due to this thing or due to that—from the most material things to things psychological or even mental. For example, to take a deep detachment for all things in the worldmental thing, such you read a sentence which gives you a great need to find something elsejoy, for it brings you a light, a new understanding; so that joy is a joy which has an imperious need to find something which object, it is truly beautifulbecause you read that sentence that you feel this joy, truly freshif you had not read the sentence, truly goodyou would not have felt the joy... thenIn the same way, quite naturallywhen you hear beautiful music or when you see a beautiful picture or a beautiful landscape, this that brings you to joy; without those things you would not have felt that joy; it is these which brought you the joy. It is a joy which has an object, which has a spiritual aspirationcause. (The Mother, 9 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0408/95-aprildecember-19511956#p18p17</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">...if the seeking is a lasting and major drive in Nature, then all these objections and recommendations The plants are futile. For this drive will fulfil itselfvery psychic, this hidden reality will draw but they can express it only by silence and draw us till we achieve itbeauty. Those who feel its callForm, cannot do otherwise than follow and strivecolour, even if need be leave all scent + something else for it, hold all other greatness, splendour, nobility, which is indefinable [constitute the beauty as cheaper minor things compared with this other Light and Greatness and Beauty of which they have had the vision, the intimation, the formless attraction or else the passing touch or glimpseflowers].<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/moralityscience-and-yoga#p23p78</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>= Why is it Important for Progress in Yoga? ==
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...To do this spiritual bliss is here also in our hearts. It is hidden in from the toil of the surface mind which catches only yoga, one must have, at weak and flawed translations of it into various mentalleast a little, vital and physical forms of the joy sense of existencebeauty. But if the mind has once grown sufficiently subtle and pure in its receptions and If one does not limited by the grosser nature of our outward responses to existence, we can take a reflection of it which will wear perhaps wholly or predominantly the hue of whatever is strongest in our nature. It may present itself first as a yearning for some universal Beauty which we feel in Nature and man and in all that is around us; or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">we may have the intuition one misses one of some transcendent Beauty of which all apparent beauty here is only a symbol</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. That is how it may come to those in whom the aesthetic being is developed and insistent and the instincts which, when they find form most important aspects of expression, make the poet and artist, are predominantphysical world. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2415/thejuly-ananda1958-brahman1#p3p1</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span>It is when you feel To bring the universal or divine beauty or presence in things that Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the senses are open to world is, indeed, the Divinewhole crown and essence of our Yoga.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3029/thedivine-love-psychic-universallove-orand-cosmichuman-consciousnesslove#p56p1</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">... there is a beauty of thought, a beauty of feeling. This It is something we perceive very often; when someone has done a very noble deed, very generous, very unselfish, quite spontaneously we say, "It is beautiful!" And it's true, it gives you feel the sense of universal or divine beautyor presence in things that the senses are open to the Divine. (The Mother, 1 June 1955)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0730/1the-juneuniversal-1955or-cosmic-consciousness#p14p56</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">If you compare Love, Joy and Beauty are the human body as it now is with a higher ideal fundamental determinates of beauty, obviously very few would pass the examination. In almost everyone there is a sort Divine Delight of unbalance in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">proportions; Existence, and we can see at once that these are so accustomed to it that we do not notice it, but if we look from the standpoint of the higher beauty, it becomes visible; very few bodies would bear comparison with perfect beauty. There are a thousand reasons for this unbalance but only one remedy, to instil into the being this instinct, this sense of true beauty, a supreme beauty which will gradually act on the cells stuff and make the body capable nature of expressing beauty. This is still a thing which is not knownthat Delight: the body is infinitely more plastic than you believe. You must have surely noticed (perhaps very vaguely) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">that those who live in an inner peace, in an inner beauty, a light, and perfect goodwill, have an expression which is they are not quite alien impositions on the same as being of people who live in bad thoughts, in the lower part or creations supported by it but outside it; they are truths of their nature. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">When the human its being is at his best, above his base animalitynative to its consciousness, he reflects something which is not there when he lives in a state powers of its force of bestialityexistence. (The Mother, 25 January 1951)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0421/25indeterminates-januarycosmic-1951determinations-and-the-indeterminable#p27p17</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">Usually one feels pleasure or joy or enjoyment due to this thing or due to that—from If you compare the most material things to things psychological or even mental. For example, to take a mental thing, you read a sentence which gives you a great joy, for human body as it brings you now is with a lighthigher ideal of beauty, obviously very few would pass the examination. In almost everyone there is a new understandingsort of unbalance in the proportions; we are so accustomed to it that joy is a joy which has an object, we do not notice it is because you read that sentence that you feel this joy, but if you had not read we look from the standpoint of the sentencehigher beauty, you it becomes visible; very few bodies would not have felt the joybear comparison with perfect beauty. In There are a thousand reasons for this unbalance but only one remedy, to instil into the same waybeing this instinct, this sense of true beauty, when you hear beautiful music or when you see a beautiful picture or supreme beauty which will gradually act on the cells and make the body capable of expressing beauty. This is still a beautiful landscape, thing which is not known: the body is infinitely more plastic than you believe. You must have surely noticed (perhaps very vaguely) that brings you joy; without those things you would not who live in an inner peace, in an inner beauty, a light, and perfect goodwill, have felt that joy; it an expression which is these which brought you not quite the same as of people who live in bad thoughts, in the joylower part of their nature. It When the human being is a joy which has an objectat his best, above his base animality, he reflects something which has is not there when he lives in a causestate of bestiality. (The Mother, 5 December 1956)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0804/525-decemberjanuary-19561951#p17p27</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="colorA philosophic statement about the is a mental formula, not knowledge, not experience: #000000yet sometimes the Divine takes it as a channel of touch;">There are people who are just like beautiful animals—all their movements are harmoniousstrangely, a barrier in the mind breaks down, their energies are spent harmoniouslysomething is seen, their uncalculating efforts call a profound change operated in energies all some inner part, there enters into the ground of the time nature something calm, equal, ineffable. One stands upon a mountain ridge and they are always happyglimpses or mentally feels a wideness, a pervasiveness, a nameless Vast in Nature; then suddenly there comes the touch, a revelation, a flooding, the mental loses itself in the spiritual, one bears the first invasion of the Infinite. Or you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what?—a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but sometimes they have no thoughts in their heada moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, sometimes they have no feelings an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother. Similar touches can come too through art, music, poetry to their heartcreator or to one who feels the shock of the word, the hidden significance of a form, they live an altogether animalish lifea message in the sound that carries more perhaps than was consciously meant by the composer. I have known people like All things in the can turn into windows that: beautiful animalsopen on the hidden. They were handsome Still so long as one is satisfied with looking through windows, their gestures were harmonious, their forces quite balanced the gain is only initial; one day one will have to take up the pilgrim's staff and they spent without reckoning start out to journey there where the Reality is for ever manifest and received without measurepresent. They were in harmony Still less can it be spiritually satisfying to remain with shadowy reflections; a search imposes itself for the material universal forces Light which they strive to figure. But since this Reality and they lived this Light are in ourselves no less than in some high region above the mortal plane, we can in joythe 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. They could And when that divine Consciousness has been entered or when it grows within, then too its expression in life through these things is not perhaps excluded from Yoga; these creative activities can still have told you 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 were happy—joy with them was so spontaneous can be turned to a higher end, and then, like all things that it was natural—and they would have been still less able are capable of linking our consciousness to tell you whythe Divine, for their intelligence was not very developedthey are transmuted and become spiritual and can be admitted as part of a life of Yoga. (The Mother, 13 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0428/13the-januaryintellect-and-1951yoga#p15p26</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"><div style="color: #000000;">''Can those who have a sense of beauty also become cruel?''</div> That's a psychological problem. It depends on where their sense of beauty is located. One may have a physical see of beauty, a vital sense of beauty, a mental sense of beauty. If one has a moral sense of beauty—a sense of moral beauty the joy and nobility—one will never be cruel. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">One will always be generous happiness and magnanimous in all circumstances. But as men are made satisfaction of many different pieces.... For instance, I was thinking about all beauty that comes from the artists I knew—I knew all the greatest artists perception of the last century or the beginning of this century, and they truly had a sense of beauty, but morally, some of them were very cruelDivine everywhere. When It plunges the artist was seen at his work, he lived in a magnificent beauty but when you saw the gentleman at home, he had only a very limited contact nature inward towards its meeting with the artist immanent Divine in himself the heart's secret centre and usually he became someone very vulgar, very ordinary. Many while that call is there, no reproach of them didegoism, I am sure no mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it. But those who were unified, in from its sacred longing and its obedience to the attraction of the sense that they truly lived their art—those, no; they were generous and goodDivinity within it.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0623/17the-marchascent-1954of-the-sacrifice-i#p33p23</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>= Relatable Experiences in Yoga ==
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">But ...one feels such a deep detachment for one who has more inner sensitivityall things in the world, appearances are no longer deceptive and he can perceive the ugliness hidden beneath such a pretty face and the beauty concealed beneath great need to find something else, an imperious need to find something which is truly beautiful, truly fresh, truly good... then, quite naturally, this brings you to a mask of uglinessspiritual aspiration.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1004/aphorism9-297april-2981951#p6p18</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
= Effects ...if the seeking is a lasting and major drive in Nature, then all these objections and recommendations are futile. For this drive will fulfil itself, this hidden reality will draw and draw us till we achieve it. Those who feel its call, cannot do otherwise than follow and strive, even if need be leave all else for it, hold all other greatness, splendour, nobility, beauty as cheaper minor things compared with this other Light and Greatness and Beauty of Growing which they have had the vision, the intimation, the formless attraction or else the passing touch or glimpse. <ref>http://incarnateword.in Beauty =/cwsa/28/morality-and-yoga#p23</ref>
== Turning Inwards == <center>~</center>
<div style="color: #000000;">...this spiritual bliss is here also in our hearts. It is hidden in from the toil of the joy surface mind which catches only at weak and happiness flawed translations of it into various mental, vital and satisfaction physical forms of beauty that comes from the perception joy of existence. But if the Divine everywhere. It plunges mind has once grown sufficiently subtle and pure in its receptions and not limited by the grosser nature inward towards its meeting with of our outward responses to existence, we can take a reflection of it which will wear perhaps wholly or predominantly the immanent Divine hue of whatever is strongest in the heart's secret centre our nature. It may present itself first as a yearning for some universal Beauty which we feel in Nature and man and, while in all that call is there, no reproach around us; or we may have the intuition of egoism, no mere outward summons some transcendent Beauty of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert which all apparent beauty here is only a symbol . That is how it from its sacred longing may come to those in whom the aesthetic being is developed and insistent and its obedience to the attraction instincts which, when they find form of expression, make the Divinity within itpoet and artist, are predominant.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2324/the-ascent-of-the-sacrificeananda-ibrahman#p23p3</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>How to Cultivate 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, ineffableLet beauty be your constant ideal. 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 The beauty 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 soulThe beauty of Kali beside a sacred river and see what?—a sculpture, a gracious piece sentimentsThe beauty 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 thoughtsThe beauty of the word, the hidden significance of a form, a message actionThe beauty in the sound workso 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 nothing comes out to journey there where the Reality of your hands which 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, not 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 pure and become spiritual and can be admitted as part of a life of Yogaharmonious beauty.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2812/the-intellect-and-yogaarts#p26p3</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== Perfection ==From beauty to greater beauty, from joy to intenser joy, by an especial adjustment of the senses"—yes, that would be the normal course of a divine manifestation, however gradual, in Matter. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/spiritual-evolution-and-the-supramental#p34</ref>
<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</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
<div style="text-alignThere is, behind all things, a divine beauty, a divine harmony: centerit is with this that we must come into contact;"it is this that we must express. <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p60</divref>
== Widening the Consciousness == <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">We must go farther onThe beginning of the heart's attraction to the Divine may be impersonal, the touch of an impersonal joy in something universal or transcendent that has revealed itself directly or indirectly to our emotional or our aesthetic being or to our capacity of spiritual felicity. That which we thus grow aware of is the Ananda Brahman, the bliss existence. There is an adoration of an impersonal Delight and Beauty, of a pure and an infinite perfection to which we must advancecan give no name or form, climb greater heights a moved attraction of the soul to some ideal and go infinite Presence, Power, existence in the world or beyond it, which in some way becomes psychologically or spiritually sensible to us and then more and more intimate and real. That is the call, the touch of the arid search for pleasure bliss existence upon us. Then to have always the joy and personal welfare, not through fear nearness of punishmentits presence, even punishment after deathto know what it is, but through so as to satisfy the intellect and the development of a new sense intuitional mind of beautyits constant reality, a thirst for truth to put our passive and light, through understanding that so far as we can manage it is only by widening yourself, illumining yourselfour active, setting yourself ablaze our inner immortal and even our outer mortal being into perfect harmony with it, grow into a necessity of our living. And to open ourselves to it is what we feel to be the ardour for progressone true happiness, that you can find both integral peace and enduring happinessto live into it the sole real perfection.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0324/punishmentthe-ananda-brahman#p24p2</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">... if one deeply feels the beauty of Nature Be sincere and communes with her, that can help absolute in widening your consecration to the consciousnessDivine and your life will become harmonious and beautiful. (The Mother, 9 &nbsp;November 1969)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1614/9-november-1969sincerity#p4p9</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== Transformation One must be very much higher on the scale to see that what one does is ugly. One must already have at the core of oneself a kind of foreknowledge of what beauty, nobility, generosity are, to be able to suffer from the Vital ==fact that one doesn't carry them within oneself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p103</ref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>...this vital is a strange creature. It is a being of passion, enthusiasm and naturally of desire; but, for example, it is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiring, sensing anything greater and nobler than itself. And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the being, if there is a movement having an exceptional value, well, it may get enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with complete devotion—with a generosity that is not found, for example, in the mental domain nor in the physical. It has that fullness in action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and throw itself wholly without reserve into what it does. Heroes are always people who have a strong vital, and ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">when the vital becomes passionate about something, it is no longer a reasonable being but a warrior</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"><nowiki>; it is wholly involved in its action and can perform exceptional things because it does not calculate, does not reason, does not say "One must take precautions, one must not do this, must not do that." It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, it gives itself totally. Therefore, it can do magnificent things if it is guided in the right way. (The Mother, 9 September 1953)</nowiki><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/9-september-1953#p19</ref> </spancenter>
... if one deeply feels the beauty of Nature and communes with her, that can help in widening the consciousness. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/9-align: center;">&diams;november-1969#p4</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">A converted vital is an all-powerful instrument. And sometimes it gets converted by something exceptionally beautiful, morally or materially. When it witnesses, for example, a scene of total self-abnegation, of uncalculating self-giving one—of those things so exceedingly rare but splendidly beautiful—it can be carried away by it, it can be seized by an ambition to do the same thing. It begins by an ambition, it ends with a consecration. (The Mother, 9 September 1953)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/9-september-1953#p20</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
<div style=...one must have a universal consciousness in order to see and recognise it [beauty]. For instance, if your consciousness is limited to one place, that is, it is a national consciousness (the consciousness of any one country), what is beautiful for one country is not beautiful for another. The sense of beauty is different. For example (I could make you laugh with a story), I knew in Paris the son of the king of Dahomey (he was a negro—the king of Dahomey was a negro) and this boy had come to Paris to study Law. He used to speak French like a Frenchman. But he had remained a negro, you understand. And he was asked (he used to tell us all kinds of stories about his life as a student), someone asked him in front of me: "Well, when you marry, whom will you marry?"—"Ah! a girl from my country, naturally, they alone are beautiful...."text-align: center;(Laughter) Now, for those who are not negroes, negro beauty is a little difficult to see! And yet, this was quite spontaneous. He was fully convinced it was impossible for anyone to think otherwise.... "Only the women of my country are beautiful!">&diams;</div>
= Steps Only those who have developed a little artistic taste, have travelled much and seen many things have widened their consciousness and they are no longer so sectarian. But it is very difficult to pull a person out of the specialised tastes of his race—I am not even speaking now of the country, I am speaking of the race. It is very difficult. It is there, you know, hidden right at the bottom, in Transformation Leading the subconscious, and it comes back without your even noticing it, quite spontaneously, quite naturally. Even on this very point: the woman of your race is always much more beautiful than the woman of other races—spontaneously, it is the spontaneous taste. That's what I mean. So, you must rise above that. I am not even speaking of those who find everything that's outside their own family or caste very ugly and bad. I am not speaking at all of these people. I am not even speaking of those for whom one country is much more beautiful than another. And yet, these people have already risen above the altogether ordinary way of thinking. I am not even speaking of a question of race.... It is very difficult, one must go right down, right down within oneself into the subconscious—and even farther—to discover the root of these things. Therefore, if you want to Beauty =have the sense of beauty in itself which is quite independent of all these tastes, the taste of the race— you must have a universal consciousness . Otherwise how can you have it? You will always have preferences. Even if these are not active and conscious preferences, they are subconscious preferences, instincts. So, to know true beauty independent of all form, one must rise above all form . And once you have known it beyond every form, you can recognise it in any form whatsoever, indifferently. And that becomes very interesting. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/21-october-1953#p61</ref>
<div style="color: #000000;">From beauty to greater beauty, from joy to intenser joy, by an especial adjustment of the senses"—yes, that would be the normal course of a divine manifestation, however gradual, in Matter.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/spiritual-evolution-and-the-supramental#p34</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
You can hear poor music, even music from which one would like to run away, and yet you can, not for its outward self but because of what is behind, enjoy it. You do not lose the distinction between good music and bad music, but you pass through either into that which it expresses. For there is nothing in the world which has not its ultimate truth and support in the Divine. And if you are not stopped by the appearance, physical or moral or aesthetic, but get behind and are in touch with the Spirit, the Divine Soul in things, you can reach beauty and delight even through what affects the ordinary sense only as something poor, painful or discordant. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-align: center;">&diams;april-1929#p18</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">The beginning of the heart's attraction to the Divine may be impersonal, the touch of an impersonal joy in something universal or transcendent that has revealed itself directly or indirectly to our emotional or our aesthetic being or to our capacity of spiritual felicity. That which we thus grow aware of is the Ananda Brahman, the bliss existence. There is an adoration of an impersonal Delight and Beauty, of a pure and an infinite perfection to which we can give no name or form, a moved attraction of the soul to some ideal and infinite Presence, Power, existence in the world or beyond it, which in some way becomes psychologically or spiritually sensible to us and then more and more intimate and real. That is the call, the touch of the bliss existence upon us. Then to have always the joy and nearness of its presence, to know what it is, so as to satisfy the intellect and the intuitional mind of its constant reality, to put our passive and, so far as we can manage it, our active, our inner immortal and even our outer mortal being into perfect harmony with it, grow into a necessity of our living. And to open ourselves to it is what we feel to be the one true happiness, to live into it the sole real perfection.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-ananda-brahman#p2</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
...to be positively conscious of the supreme Good and supreme Beauty behind all things, which sustains all things and enables them to exist. When you see Him, you are able to perceive Him behind this mask and this distortion; even this ugliness, this wickedness, this evil is a disguise of Something which is essentially beautiful or good, luminous, pure. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-align: center;">&diams;49#p9</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">On this ignorant surface we become dimly aware of something that can be called a soul as distinct from mind, life or body; we feel it not only as our mental idea or vague instinct of ourselves, but as a sensible influence in our life and character and action. A certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful, fine and pure and noble, a response to it, a demand for it, a pressure on mind and life to accept and formulate it in our thought, feelings, conduct, character is the most usually recognised, the most general and characteristic, though not the sole sign of this influence of the psyche.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p5</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
It is one of the greatest weapons of the Asura at work when you are taught to shun beauty. It has been the ruin of India. The Divine manifests in the psychic as love, in the mind as knowledge, in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty it means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to the Asura. <div style="text-alignref>http: center;">&diams;//incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p224</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">To come into contact with the higher mind consciousness is not enough, it is only an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reaches. A transformation of the higher consciousness into a supramental light and power, a transformation of the vital and its life-force into a pure, wide, calm, intense and powerful instrument of the Divine Energy, a transformation of the physical itself into a form of divine light, divine action, strength, beauty and joy are impossible without this descending Force from the now invisible summits. That is why in this Yoga the ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths of Yoga is not enough; there must be too a descent of the Divine to transform all the energies of the mind, life and body.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-vital-and-other-levels-of-being#p8</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
When the adverse forces are dealt with in the right way, all that is ugly and false disappears to leave place only for what is true and beautiful. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/adverse-align: center;">&diams;forces#p28</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare influences, is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the Sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a flame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure,—for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions,—on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it of a higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-i#p22</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
To accept the uglinesses of the lower nature under the pretext that they exist―if this is what is meant by realism―does not form part of the sadhana. Our aim is not to accept these things and enjoy them, but to get rid of them and create a life of spiritual beauty and perfection. That cannot be done as long as we accept these uglinesses. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/desires-impulses-and-self-align: center;">&diams;control#p8</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>...the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness. Even within the obscure workings of the Ignorance we have then a witness who discerns, a living light that illumines, a will that refuses to be misled and separates the mind's truth from its error, the heart's intimate response from its vibrations to a wrong call and wrong demand upon it, the life's true ardour and plenitude of movement from vital passion and the turbid falsehoods of our vital nature and its dark self seekings. This is the first step of self-realisation, to enthrone the soul, the divine psychic individual in the place of the ego.~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999;"> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-evil#p36</ref> </spancenter>
...to be in such a state of purity and beauty that you do not perceive ugliness and evil—it is like something that does not touch you because it does not exist in you. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-align: center;">&diams;49#p5</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;"center>A first condition of the soul's complete emergence is a direct contact in the surface being with the spiritual Reality. Because it comes from that, the psychic element in us turns always towards whatever in phenomenal Nature seems to belong to a higher Reality and can be accepted as its sign and character. At first, it seeks this Reality through the good, the true, the beautiful, through all that is pure and fine and high and noble: but although this touch through outer signs and characters can modify and prepare the nature, it cannot entirely or most inwardly and profoundly change it. For such an inmost change the direct contact with the Reality itself is indispensable since nothing else can so deeply touch the foundations of our being and stir it or cast the nature by its stir into a ferment of transmutation. Mental representations, emotional and dynamic figures have their use and value; Truth, Good and Beauty are in themselves primary and potent figures of the Reality, and even in their forms as seen by the mind, as felt by the heart, as realised in the life can be lines of an ascent: but it is in a spiritual substance and being of them and of itself that That which they represent has to come into our experience. ~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The soul may attempt to achieve this contact mainly through the thinking mind as intermediary and instrument; it puts a psychic impression on the intellect and ...the larger mind of insight and intuitional intelligence and turns them in realisation that direction. At its highest </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">the thinking mind everything is drawn always towards the impersonal; in its search it becomes conscious of a spiritual essence, an impersonal Reality which expresses itself in all these outward signs and characters but is more than any formation or manifesting figure. It feels something manifestation of which it becomes intimately and invisibly awarethe Supreme,—a supreme Truth, a supreme Good, a supreme Beauty, a supreme Puritythe Eternal, a supreme Bliss; it bears the increasing touchInfinite, less immutable in his total perfection and less impalpable and abstractin his absolute reality. That is why, more by conquering our mind and more spiritually real its ignorant and concretefalse perceptions we can, the touch and pressure of an Eternity and Infinity which is through all things, enter into contact with this that Supreme Truth which is also the Supreme Beauty and more. There is a pressure from this Impersonality that seeks to mould the whole mind into a form of itself; at the same time the impersonal secret Supreme Love, beyond all our mental and law vital notions of things becomes more beauty and more visible. The mind develops into the mind of the sageugliness, at first the high mental thinker, then the spiritual sage who has gone beyond good and the abstractions of thought to the beginnings of a direct experiencebad. As a result the mind becomes pureEven when we say "Supreme Truth, largeSupreme Beauty, tranquilSupreme Love", impersonal; there is we should give to these words a similar tranquillising influence on meaning other than the parts of life: but otherwise the result may remain incomplete; for the mental change leads more naturally towards an inner status and an outer quietude, but, poised in this purifying quietism, not drawn like the vital parts towards a discovery of new life-energies, does not press for a full dynamic effect on the natureone which is attributed to them by our intellect. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2210/theaphorism-triple-transformation48#p12p3</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">A second approach made by the soul to the direct contact is through the heart: this is its own more close and rapid way because its occult seat is there, just behind in the heart-centre, in close contact with the emotional being in us; it is consequently through the emotions that it can act best at the beginning with its native power, with its living force of concrete experience. It is through a love and adoration of the All-beautiful and All-blissful, the All-Good, the True, For the spiritual Reality of love, that the approach is made; the aesthetic and emotional parts join together to offer the soul, the life, the whole nature to that which they worship. This approach through adoration can get its full power and impetus only when man the mind goes beyond impersonality to the awareness of a supreme Personal Being: then all becomes intense, vivid, concrete; the heart's emotion, feeling, spiritualised sense reach their absolute; dream of perfect beauty is realised in an entire self-giving becomes possibleeternal love, imperative. The nascent spiritual man makes his appearance in the emotional nature as the devotee, the bhakta; if, in addition, he becomes directly aware of his soul and its dictates, unites his emotional with his psychic personality and changes his life and vital parts by purity, God-ecstasy, the love of God and men and all creatures into a thing of spiritual beauty, full of divine light and good, he develops into the saint delight that has no dependence and reaches the highest inner experience and most considerable change of nature proper to this way of approach to the Divine Being. But for the purpose of an integral transformation this too is not enough; there must be a transmutation of the thinking mind and equal behind all the vital and physical parts of consciousness in their own characterobjective appearances...<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2223/the-triplethreefold-transformationlife#p15p20</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<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 greatnessgirl who had no education whatever; she was a dancer and danced tolerably well. After she took up Yoga, beauty or value and she danced only for himself friends; but her dancing attained a strong impression depth of his own comparative unworthiness expression and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that beauty which one adoreswas not there before. What does come very often with the inrush of Love is an exaltationAnd although she was not educated, a feeling of a greatening within, of new powers she began to write wonderful things; for she had visions and high or beautiful possibilities expressed them in one's nature or of an intensification of the nature; but that is not exactly self-reverencemost beautiful language. There is But there were ups and downs in her Yoga, and when she was in a deeper self reverence possiblegood condition, a true emotionshe wrote beautifully, a sense of the value but otherwise was quite dull and stupid and even the sacredness of the souluncreative. (The Mother, even the mind, life, body as an offering or itself the temple for the inner presence of the Beloved.28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/03/28/philosophical-thought-andjuly-yoga1929#p31p7</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
= Attitude ...the close and vivid discovery of soul or self, the straining towards that which is behind life and above mind, the passion for the Eternal or the Infinite, the hunger for a freedom and wideness of consciousness and existence not limited by the narrow moulds of intellect, character and the past life-aims of humanity, the thirst for union with the Divine or for the pure bliss and beauty of spiritual existence not tied down to Grow mental and vital values must be dismissed as a superfluous dream for which there is neither place nor necessity here. <ref>http://incarnateword.in Beauty =/cwsa/28/morality-and-yoga#p20</ref>
== Philosophic Practices == <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color: transparent...this vital is a strange creature. It is a being of passion, enthusiasm and naturally of desire; color: #000000;">Be sincere but, for example, it is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiring, sensing anything greater and nobler than itself. And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the being, if there is a movement having an exceptional value, well, it may get enthusiastic and absolute it is capable of giving itself with complete devotion—with a generosity that is not found, for example, in your consecration the mental domain nor in the physical. It has that fullness in action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and throw itself wholly without reserve into what it does. Heroes are always people who have a strong vital, and when the Divine vital becomes passionate about something, it is no longer a reasonable being but a warrior; it is wholly involved in its action and your life will become harmonious and beautifulcan perform exceptional things because it does not calculate, does not reason, does not say "One must take precautions, one must not do this, must not do that." It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, it gives itself totally. Therefore, it can do magnificent things if it is guided in the right way.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1405/sincerity9-september-1953#p9p19</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="backgroundA converted vital is an all-color: transparent; color: #000000;">powerful instrument.And sometimes it gets converted by something exceptionally beautiful, morally or materially..the realisation that everything is When it witnesses, for example, a manifestation scene of the Supremetotal self-abnegation, the Eternalof uncalculating self-giving one—of those things so exceedingly rare but splendidly beautiful—it can be carried away by it, it can be seized by an ambition to do the Infinite, immutable in his total perfection and in his absolute realitysame thing. That is why, It begins by conquering our mind and its ignorant and false perceptions we can, through all thingsan ambition, enter into contact it ends with this Supreme Truth which is also the Supreme Beauty and the Supreme Love, beyond all our mental and vital notions of beauty and ugliness, the good and the bad. Even when we say "Supreme Truth, Supreme Beauty, Supreme Love", we should give to these words a meaning other than the one which is attributed to them by our intellectconsecration. </span> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1005/aphorism9-september-481953#p3p20</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">For the spiritual man That [feeling the mindMother's dream Presence, Love, Joy, Beauty] is one part of perfect beauty the psychic experience—the other is realised in an eternal lovea complete self-giving, absence of demand, beauty and delight a prominence of the psychic being by which all that has no dependence is false, wrong, egoistic, contrary to the Divine Truth, Divine Will, Divine Purity and Light is equal behind shown, falls away, cannot prevail in the nature. With all objective appearancesthat 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.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2330/the-threefoldpsychic-being-and-its-role-in-lifesadhana#p20p5</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>= Practices ==
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">To do this yoga, one must All those who have been able to create something beautiful or useful have always been persons who have, at least a little, the sense of beauty. If one does not, one misses one of the most important aspects of the physical worldknown how to discipline themselves.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1516/july23-1958june-11934#p1p3</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparentThe man of genius may use anything at all and make something beautiful because he has genius; color: #000000but give this genius a perfect instrument and he will make something wonderful. Take a great musician;">Let </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000well, even with a wretched piano and missing notes, he will produce something beautiful;">beauty</span><span style="backgroundbut give him a good piano, well-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">be your constant idealtuned, and he will do something still more beautiful.The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">of the soulThe </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">of sentimentsThe </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">of thoughtsThe </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">of consciousness is the action</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">same in the workso that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an either case but for expression of pure it needs a good instrument—a body with mental, vital, psychic and harmonious </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">physical capacities.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1204/arts15-january-1951#p3p11</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style=If you said to yourself, my children, "background-color: transparent; color: #000000;We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express the divine Will in the world">"Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelingsthen for this instrument to be perfect, it must be cultivated, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movementeducated, harmony and beauty trained. It must not be left like a shapeless piece of the life and surroundingsstone. When you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel it. Well, this it is the demand of Mahalakshmi.same thing... Where love When with your brain and beauty are not or are reluctant body you want to be bornmake a beautiful instrument for the Divine, you must cultivate it, sharpen it, refine it, complete what is missing, she does not comeperfect what is there." (The Mother, 12 May 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0405/1213-may-19511953#p1p18</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">When the spirit There must be order and harmony in us work. Even what is freeapparently the most insignificant thing must be done with perfect perfection, then what was behind this soul-force comes out in all its lightwith a sense of cleanliness, beauty and greatness, the Spirit, the Godhead who makes the nature and soul of man his foundation and living representative in cosmic being and mind, action harmony and lifeorder. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2414/soul-forceprogress-and-theperfection-fourfoldin-personalitywork#p2p26</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Bhakti and For the heart's call work simply aspire for the Divine have a truth—it is Force to use you, put yourself inwardly in relation with the truth of the divine Love Mother when doing it and Ananda. The will for Tapasya has in make it a truth—it is your aim to be the truth of the Spirit's mastery over its members. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The musician and poet stand instrument for a truth, it is the truth of the expression of the Spirit through beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. There is a truth behind the mental Affirmer; even there is a truth behind the mental doubter, the Russellian, though far behind him—the truth of the denial of false forms. Even behind the two vital personalities there is a truth, the truth of the possession of the inner and outer worlds—not by the ego but by the Divine. That is the harmonisation for which our Yoga stands—but it cannot be achieved by any outward arrangement, it can only be achieved by going inside and looking, willing and acting from without regard to personal fame or the psychic praise and from the spiritual centre. For the truth blame of the being is there and the secret of Harmony also is thereothers.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2931/themental-adwaitadevelopment-ofand-shankaracharyasadhana#p25p18</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">It is, then, in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">highest mind of thought and light and will or it Beautiful conduct—not politeness which is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,—and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in usouter thing, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whomhowever valuable, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There must be —but beauty founded upon a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's spiritual realisation of the one Divine.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the seeking of the All and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Eternal unity andharmony projected into life, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way certainly part of the Yogaperfect perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2331/selfimperfections-and-consecrationperiods-of-arrest#p18p12</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There is, behind all thingsTo think constantly of the harmony of the body, a divine of the beautyof the movements, of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkward. You can obtain a divine harmony: it is with this that we must come into contact; it rhythm of movement and gesture which is this that we must expressvery exceptional. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1209/arts17-july-1957#p60p11</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparentOne can always try little experiments. I have said that one must use a torch, a strong light; color: #000000;">One then one must be take a round within one's being. If one is very attentive, one can very much higher easily find these ugly corners. Suppose you have a beautiful experience, that suddenly in answer to your aspiration a great light comes; you feel all flooded with joy, force, light, beauty, and have the impression that you are on the scale point of being transfigured... and then, it passes away—it always passes away, doesn't it? especially at the beginning—suddenly, it stops. Then you tell yourself, when you are not vigilant, "There, it came and it has gone! Poor me! It came and has gone, it just gave me a taste of the thing and then let me fall." Well, that's foolish. What you should tell yourself is, "Look, I was not able to keep it, and why was I not able to see keep it?" So, you take your torch and go on a round within yourself trying to find a very close relation between the change of consciousness and the movements accompanying the cessation of the experience. And if you are very, very attentive, and make your round very scrupulously, you will find that suddenly some part of the vital or some part of the mind or of the body, something has not kept up, in this sense that mentally, instead of being immobile and attentive, something has begun to ask, "Wait a minute, what one is this experience? What does it mean?", begun to try to find an explanation (what it calls an "understanding"). Or maybe in the vital something has begun to enjoy the experience: "How pleasant it is ugly, how I would like it to grow, how good if it were constant, how.... One must already have at " Or something in the core physical has said, "Oh! It is a bit hard to endure that, how long am I going to be able to keep it?" It is perhaps not as obvious as all this, but it is a wee bit hidden like this, somewhere. You will always find one of oneself a kind these three things or others analogous. Then, it is there the lantern is needed: where is the weak point? where is the egoism? where is the desire? where is that old dirt we do not want any longer? where is that thing which turns back upon itself instead of foreknowledge giving itself, opening itself, losing itself? which turns back upon itself, tries to take advantage of what beautyhas happened, nobilitywants to appropriate to itself the fruit of the experience? Or rather which is too weak, generosity aretoo hard, too rigid to be able to suffer from follow the fact movement?... It is that one doesn't carry them within oneself, you are now on the track, you begin precisely to put the light you have just acquired upon it; it is that you must do, focus the light upon it, turn it in such a way that the thing cannot resist it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0304/conjugate26-versesapril-1951#p103p29</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparentOne may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; color: #000000;">When the adverse forces are dealt with one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in the right an exceptional and beautiful way, all that there is ugly a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and false disappears opens the door to leave place a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only for what is true to be awake and beautifulto watch. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1508/adverse26-december-forces1956#p28p23</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">You must have a strong body and strong nerves. You must have a strong basis of equanimity in your external being. If you have this basis, you can contain a world of emotion and yet not have to scream it out. This does not mean that you cannot express your emotion, but you can express it in a beautiful harmonious way. To accept weep or scream or dance about is always a proof of weakness, either of the vital or the uglinesses of mental or the lower physical nature under ; for on all these levels the pretext that they exist―if this activity is what is meant by realism―does not form part of the sadhanafor self-satisfaction. Our aim is not to accept these things One who dances and enjoy them, but to get rid of them jumps and create a life of spiritual beauty screams has the feeling that he is somehow very unusual in his excitement; and perfection. That cannot be done as long as we accept these uglinesseshis vital nature takes great pleasure in that. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/14/desires-impulsesapril-and-self-control1929#p8p24</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...to be You carry with you, around you, in such a state of purity you, the atmosphere created by your actions, and beauty that if what you do not perceive ugliness is beautiful, good and evil—it harmonious, your atmosphere is like something beautiful, good and harmonious; on the other hand, if you live in a sordid selfishness, unscrupulous self-interest, ruthless bad will, that does not touch is what you because will breathe every moment of your life and that means misery, constant uneasiness; it does not exist in youmeans ugliness that despairs of its own ugliness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1003/aphorismconjugate-49verses#p5p106</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">You can hear poor musicWhen the surroundings, circumstances, even music from which one would like to run awayatmosphere, the way of living and yet you canabove all the inner attitude are altogether of a low kind, vulgar, gross, egoistic, sordid, love is reluctant to come, not for its outward self but because of what that is behind, enjoy italways hesitates to manifest itself and generally does not stay long. You do A home of beauty must be given for Beauty to stay. I am not lose the distinction between good music speaking of external things—a real house, real furniture and bad musicall that—I am speaking of an inner attitude, but you pass through either into that of something within which it expressesis beautiful, noble, harmonious, unselfish. For there is nothing in the world which There Love has not its ultimate truth a chance to come and support in the Divinestay. And if you are But when, as soon as it tries to manifest, it is immediately mixed with such low and ugly things, it does not stopped by the appearanceremain, physical or moral or aestheticit goes away. This is what Sri Aurobindo says: it is "reluctant to be born"—it could be said that it immediately regrets being born. Men always complain that love does not stay with them but it is entirely their fault. They give this love such a sordid life, but get behind mixed with a heap of horrors and are in touch with the Spiritsuch vulgarity, things so base, so selfish, so dirty, that the Divine Soul poor thing cannot stay. If they don't succeed in thingskilling it altogether, you they make it utterly sick. So the only thing it can reach beauty do is to take flight. People always complain that love is impermanent and delight even through what affects passing. To tell the ordinary sense only as something poortruth, painful or discordantthey should be very grateful that it manifested in them in spite of the sordidness of the house they gave it. (The Mother, 28 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0304/2812-aprilmay-19291951#p18p4</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">.And this vital, if you place it in a bad environment, it will imitate the bad environment and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree.If you place it in the presence of something wonderfully beautiful, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else and give itself wholly.to be positively conscious It will give itself more completely than any other part of the supreme Good and supreme Beauty behind all thingsbeing, which sustains all things for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and enables them to existenthusiasm. When you see Himit has desires, you its desires are able to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">perceive Him behind this mask violent, arbitrary, and this distortionit does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; even this uglinessit doesn't care the least bit. But when it gives itself to something beautiful, this wickednessit does not calculate either, this evil it will give itself entirely without knowing whether it will do good or harm to it. It is a disguise of Something which is essentially beautiful or good, luminous, purevery precious instrument. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1005/aphorism9-49september-1953#p9p22</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">It is one One believes he has his own way of the greatest weapons of the Asura thinking. Not at work when you are taught to shun beautyall. It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books he has been read or on the ruin of Indiamood he is in. The Divine manifests in the psychic as loveIt depends also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in the mind as knowledge, a room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If open air; it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you discard beauty ; it means that you depends on whether there is sunshine or drain! You are depriving the Divine not aware of this manifestation in the material and it, but you hand over that part think all kinds of things, completely different according to a heap of things which have nothing to the Asura. do with you! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1306/india28-july-1954#p224p51</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<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 girl who had no education whatever; she was simplicity of heart, and a dancer youthful and danced tolerably well. After she took up Yoga, she danced only for friends; but her dancing attained active energy―it depends on all that―on a depth kind of expression and beauty which was inner vital generosity: one must not be too egoistic, one must not be too miserly, nor too practical, too utilitarian―indeed there beforeare all sorts of things one should not be... like children. And although she was not educatedthen, one must have a lively power of imagination, she began for―I seem to write wonderful be telling you stupid things; for she had visions and expressed them , but it is quite true―there is a world in which you are the most beautiful languagesupreme maker of forms: that is your own particular vital world. But there were ups You are the supreme fashioner and downs in her Yogayou can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, and when she was in a good conditionif you love harmony, she wrote beautifullybeauty, but otherwise was quite dull and stupid and uncreativeyou will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0308/2818-julyapril-19291956#p7p55</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>= Practices for Children ==
<div style="color: #000000;">...one must I have said that from a universal consciousness in order young age children should be taught to see respect good health, physical strength and recognise it [balance. The great importance of beauty]must also be emphasised. For instanceA young child should aspire for beauty, if your consciousness is limited to one placenot for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, that is, it is a national consciousness (but for the consciousness love of any one country), what is beautiful beauty itself; for one country beauty is not beautiful for anotherthe ideal which all physical life must realise. The sense Every human being has the possibility of beauty is establishing harmony among the different. For example (I could make you laugh with a story), I knew parts of his body and in Paris the son various movements of the king body in action. Every human body that undergoes a rational method of Dahomey (he was a negro—the king culture from the very beginning of Dahomey was a negro) its existence can realise its own harmony and this boy had come thus become fit to Paris to study Lawmanifest beauty. He used to When we speak French like a Frenchman. But he had remained a negro, you understand. And he was asked (he used to tell us all kinds of stories about his life as a student), someone asked him in front the other aspects of me: "Wellan integral education, when you marry, whom will you marry?"—"Ah! a girl from my country, naturally, they alone we shall see what inner conditions are beautiful...." (Laughter) Now, for those who are not negroes, negro beauty is a little difficult to see! And yet, be fulfilled so that this was quite spontaneousbeauty can one day be manifested <ref>http://incarnateword. He was fully convinced it was impossible for anyone to think otherwise.... "Only the women of my country are beautiful!"in/cwm/12/physical-education#p12</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>Only those who have developed a little artistic taste, have travelled much and seen many things have widened their consciousness and they are no longer so sectarian. But it is very difficult to pull a person out of the specialised tastes of his race—I am not even speaking now of the country, I am speaking of the race. It is very difficult. It is there, you know, hidden right at the bottom, in the subconscious, and it comes back without your even noticing it, quite spontaneously, quite naturally. Even on this very point: the woman of your race is always much more beautiful than the woman of other races—spontaneously, it is the spontaneous taste. That's what I mean. So, you must rise above that. I am not even speaking of those who find everything that's outside their own family or caste very ugly and ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">bad. I am not speaking at all of these people. I am not even speaking of those for whom one country is much more beautiful than another. And yet, these people have already risen above the altogether ordinary way of thinking. I am not even speaking of a question of race.... It is very difficult, one must go right down, right down within oneself into the subconscious—and even farther—to discover the root of these things. Therefore, if you want to have the sense of beauty in itself which is quite independent of all these tastes, the taste of the race—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">you must have a universal consciousness</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. Otherwise how can you have it? You will always have preferences. Even if these are not active and conscious preferences, they are subconscious preferences, instincts. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">So, to know true beauty independent of all form, one must rise above all form</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. And once you have known it beyond every form, you can recognise it in any form whatsoever, indifferently. And that becomes very interesting. (The Mother, 21 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/21-october-1953#p61</ref> </spancenter>
To this general education of the senses and their functioning there will be added, as early as possible, the cultivation of discrimination and of the aesthetic sense, the capacity to choose and adopt what is beautiful and harmonious, simple, healthy and pure. For there is a psychological health just as there is a Physical health, a beauty and harmony of the sensations as of the body and its movements. As the capacity of understanding grows in the child, he should be taught, in the course of his education, to add artistic taste and refinement to power and precision. He should be shown, led to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things, whether in Nature or in human creation. This should be a true aesthetic culture, which will protect him from degrading influences. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-align: center;">&diams;education#p11</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">...the close and vivid discovery of soul or self, the straining towards that which is behind life and above mind, the passion for the Eternal or the Infinite, the hunger for a freedom and wideness of consciousness and existence not limited by the narrow moulds of intellect, character and the past life-aims of humanity, the thirst for union with the Divine or for the pure bliss and beauty of spiritual existence not tied down to mental and vital values must be dismissed as a superfluous dream for which there is neither place nor necessity here. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/morality-and-yoga#p20</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
<div style=When a child is full of enthusiasm, never throw cold water on it, never tell him, "You know, life is not like that!" You should always encourage him, tell him, "text-align: center;Yes, at present things are not always like that, they seem ugly, but behind this there is a beauty that is trying to realise itself. This is what you should love and draw towards you, this is what you should make the object of your dreams, of your ambitions." <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/31-july-1957#p8</divref>
<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</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<div style=When a child tells you a beautiful dream in which he had many powers and all things were very beautiful, be very careful never to tell him, "Oh! life is not like that", for you are doing something wrong. You must on the contrary tell him, "text-align: center;Life ought to be like that, and it will be like that!"<ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/31-july-1957#p17</divref>
== Physical Practices == <center>~</center>
<div style=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,"color: #000000;you must cultivate it, never forget it, hold it constantly before you, tell yourself, ">All those who I have felt it once, so I can feel it again. This has been able real for me, even for the space of a second, and that is what I am going to create something beautiful or useful have always been persons who have known how revive in myself".... And encourage the body to discipline themselvesseek 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, 23 June 1934) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1609/2331-junejuly-19341957#p3p11</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>= Practices for Artists ==
<div style="color: #000000;">The man ...an artist should be capable of genius may use anything at all entering into communion with the Divine and make something beautiful because he has genius; but give this genius 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 perfect instrument means of realisation of beauty, and he will make something wonderful. Take at the same time a great musician; wellteacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, art should be an element in the education of men's taste , even with a wretched piano of young and missing notesold, he will produce something beautiful; but give him a good pianoand it is the teaching of true beauty, well-tunedthat is, and he will do something still more beautifulthe essential beauty which expresses the divine truth. The consciousness This is the same in either case but for expression it needs raison d'être of art. Now, between this and what is done there is a good instrument—a body with mentalgreat difference, vital, psychic and physical capacitiesbut this is the true raison d'être of art. (The Mother, 15 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0405/1528-januaryoctober-19511953#p11p4</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">If you said to yourself, my children, "We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than the divine Will in aspect of beauty of the world"Divine manifestation. Perhaps, then for looking from this instrument to standpoint, there will be perfect, it must found very few true artists; but still there are some and these can very well be cultivated, educated, trainedconsidered as Yogis. It must not be left For like a shapeless piece of stoneYogi an artist goes into deep contemplation to await and receive his inspiration. When you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a To create something truly beautiful diamond, you chisel he [Yogi] has first to see it. Wellwithin, to realise it is the same thing. When with your brain and body you want to make as a beautiful instrument for the Divinewhole in his inner consciousness; only when so found, you must cultivate itseen, sharpen itheld within, refine can he execute it, complete what outwardly; he creates according to this greater inner vision. This too is missinga kind of yogic discipline, perfect what is therefor by it he enters into intimate communion with the inner worlds. (The Mother, 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0503/1328-mayjuly-19531929#p18p19</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There must be In fact people who work in order to develop their taste, to refine it... is for the cultivation of their senses, which is a very different thing. It is like the artist, you know, who trains his eyes to appreciate forms and colours, lines, the composition of things, the harmony found in workphysical nature; it is not at all through desire that he does this, it is through taste, culture, the development of the sense of sight and the appreciation of beauty. Even what is apparently And usually artists who are real artists and love their art and live in the most insignificant thing must be done with perfect perfectionsense of beauty, seeking beauty, with a are people who don't have many desires. They live in the sense of cleanlinessa growth not only visual, but of the appreciation of beauty, harmony . There is a great difference between this and people who live by their impulses and orderdesires. That's altogether something else. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1407/progress-and-perfection23-infebruary-work1955#p26p5</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">If you ask me, I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists! A word depends upon the way it is used, upon what one puts into it. One may put into it all that one wants. For instance, in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the work simply aspire for forms of trees so that in the Force to use youlandscape they make a beautiful picture. By all kinds of trimmings, props, put yourself inwardly etc. they adjust the forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in the landscape. A tree is planted in relation with a garden at the Mother when doing spot where it is needed and make moreover, it your aim to be is given the instrument form that's required for it to go well with the expression whole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful things. You have but to take a photograph of beauty without regard to personal fame or the praise garden, it is a real picture, it is so good. Well, I certainly call the man an artist. One may call him a gardener but he is an artist.... All those who have a sure and developed sense of harmony in all its forms, and blame the harmony of all the forms among themselves, are necessarily artists, whatever may be the type of otherstheir production. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3105/mental-development21-andoctober-sadhana1953#p18p26</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">Beautiful conduct—not politeness You have followed very little of this movement of art I am speaking about, which is related to European civilisation, it has not been felt much here—just a little but not deeply. Here, the majority of creations (this is a very good example), the majority of works, 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. And all this was not done with the idea of making a name for oneself as at present. One happened to be a great sculptor, a great painter, a great architect, and then that was all, there was no question of putting one's name on everything and proclaiming it aloud in the newspapers so that no one might forget it! In those days the artist did what he had to do without caring whether his name would go down to posterity or not. All was done in a movement of aspiration to express a higher beauty, and above all with the idea of giving an outer appropriate abode to the godhead who was evoked. In the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, it was the same thing, however valuableand I don't think that there too the names of the artists who made them have remained. If any are there, it is quite exceptional and it is only by chance that the name has been preserved. Whilst today,—but beauty founded upon there is not a spiritual realisation tiny little piece of unity and harmony projected into lifecanvas, painted or daubed, but on it is a signature to tell you: it is certainly part of the perfect perfectionMr. So-and-so who made this! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3105/imperfections28-andoctober-periods-of-arrest1953#p12p30</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">To think constantly of the harmony of Copy many beautiful things, but try even more to catch the bodyemotion, of the beauty deeper life of the movements, of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkwardthings. You can obtain a rhythm of movement and gesture which is very exceptional. (The Mother, 17 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0912/17-july-1957arts#p11p38</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">One can always try little experiments. I have said that one must use a torch, a strong light; then one must take a round within one's being. If one is very attentive, one can very easily find these ugly corners. Suppose Why do you have a beautiful experience, that suddenly in answer want to your aspiration a great light comes; you feel all flooded with joy, force, light, beauty, and have the impression that you are on do the point of being transfigured... and then, it passes away—it always passes away, doesn't itdetails? especially That is not at the beginning—suddenly, it stops. Then you tell yourself, when you are not vigilant, "There, it came and it has gone! Poor me! It came and has gone, it just gave me a taste of the thing and then let me fallall necessary." Well, that's foolish. What you should tell yourself Painting is, "Look, I was not able done to keep itcopy Nature, and why was I not able but to keep it?" Soexpress an impression, you take your torch and go on a round within yourself trying to find a very close relation between the change of consciousness and the movements accompanying the cessation of the experience. And if you are veryfeeling, very attentive, and make your round very scrupulously, you will find an emotion that suddenly some part of we experience on seeing the vital or some part of the mind or beauty of the body, something has not kept up, in this sense that mentally, instead of being immobile and attentive, something has begun to ask, "Wait a minute, what is this experience? What does it mean?", begun to try to find an explanation (what it calls an "understanding")Nature. Or maybe in the vital something has begun to enjoy the experience: "How pleasant it is, how I would like it to grow, how good if it were constant, how...." Or something in the physical has said, "Oh! It is a bit hard to endure this that, how long am I going to be able to keep it?" It is perhaps not as obvious as all this, but interesting and it is a wee bit hidden like this, somewhere. You will always find one of these three things or others analogous. Then, it is there the lantern is needed: where is the weak point? where is the egoism? where is the desire? where is that old dirt we do not want any longer? where is that thing which turns back upon itself instead of giving itself, opening itself, losing itself? which turns back upon itself, tries to take advantage of what has happened, wants to appropriate to itself the fruit of the experience? Or rather which is too weak, too hard, too rigid to be able to follow the movement?.expressed.. It is that, you are now on the track, you begin precisely to put the light you have just acquired upon it; it is that you must do, focus the light upon it, turn it in such a way that the thing cannot resist it. (The Mother, 26 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0412/26-april-1951arts#p29p49</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>Challenges =
<div style="color: #000000;">One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch. (The Mother, 26 December 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/26-december-1956#p23</ref> </div>= Physical ==
Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the dull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-liberation-of-the-align: center;">&diams;nature#p5</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>You must have a ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">strong body and strong nerves</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. You must have a strong basis of equanimity in your external being. If you have this basis, you can contain a world of emotion and yet not have to scream it out. This does not mean that you cannot express your emotion, but you can express it in a beautiful harmonious way. To weep or scream or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">dance about is always a proof of weakness, either of the vital or the mental or the physical nature; for on all these levels the activity is for self-satisfaction. One who dances and jumps and screams has the feeling that he is somehow very unusual in his excitement; and his vital nature takes great pleasure in that. (The Mother, 14 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/14-april-1929#p24</ref> </spancenter>
The only thing in the world which still seems intolerable to me now, is all the physical deterioration, the physical suffering, the ugliness, the inability to express that capacity for beauty which is in every being. But that too will be conquered one day. There too the power will come one day to shift the needle a little. Only, we must rise higher in consciousness: the deeper one wants to go down into matter, the higher is it necessary to rise in consciousness. That will take time. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-align: center;">&diams;february-1958#p39</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">You carry with you, around you, in you, the atmosphere created by your actions, and if what you do is beautiful, good and harmonious, your atmosphere is beautiful, good and harmonious; on the other hand, if you live in a sordid selfishness, unscrupulous self-interest, ruthless bad will, that is what you will breathe every moment of your life and that means misery, constant uneasiness; it means ugliness that despairs of its own ugliness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p106</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
It is the physical centre—sex is only one of its movements. Naturally, if the sex is active (instead of giving place to Beauty and Ananda) and if the lower movements are active, it forms an obstacle to the establishment of the higher consciousness. But the higher can descend, if there is at all an opening, even before the lower movements have definitely gone—it has then to complete the work of displacing them. <div style="text-alignref>http: center;">&diams;//incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p102</divref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">When the surroundings, circumstances, atmosphere, the way of living and above all the inner attitude are altogether of a low kind, vulgar, gross, egoistic, sordid, love is reluctant to come, that is, it always hesitates to manifest itself and generally does not stay long. A home of beauty must be given for Beauty to stay. I am not speaking of external things—a real house, real furniture and all that—I am speaking of an inner attitude, of something within which is beautiful, noble, harmonious, unselfish. There Love has a chance to come and stay. But when, as soon as it tries to manifest, it is immediately mixed with such low and ugly things, it does not remain, it goes away. This is what Sri Aurobindo says: it is "reluctant to be born"—it could be said that it immediately regrets being born. Men always complain that love does not stay with them but it is entirely their fault. They give this love such a sordid life, mixed with a heap of horrors and such vulgarity, things so base, so selfish, so dirty, that the poor thing cannot stay. If they don't succeed in killing it altogether, they make it utterly sick. So the only thing it can do is to take flight. People always complain that love is impermanent and passing. To tell the truth, they should be very grateful that it manifested in them in spite of the sordidness of the house they gave it. (The Mother, 12 May 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-may-1951#p4</refcenter>~</spancenter>
<div style=If it [the vital] admires all beautiful things, not women only, without desire—then there would be no harm [in admiring women]. But specially applied to women, it is a relic of the "textsex-align: center;appeal". <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p143</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">And this vital, if you place it in a bad environment, it will imitate the bad environment and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree. If you place it in the presence of something wonderfully beautiful, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else and give itself wholly. It will give itself more completely than any other part of the being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and enthusiasm. When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrary, and it does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesn't care the least bit. But when it gives itself to something beautiful, it does not calculate either, it will give itself entirely without knowing whether it will do good or harm to it. It is a very precious instrument. (The Mother, 9 September 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/9-september-1953#p22</refcenter>~</divcenter>
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. <div style="text-alignref>http: center;">&diams;//incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p97</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">One believes he has his own way of thinking. Not at all. It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books he has read or on the mood he is in. It depends also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you; it depends on whether there is sunshine or drain! You are not aware of it, but you think all kinds of things, completely different according to a heap of things which have nothing to do with you! (The Mother, 28 July 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p51</ref> </div>= Vital ==
<div style="textIn a human being, there is the divine Presence and the psychic being—at the beginning embryonic, but in the end a being wholly formed, conscious, independent, individualised. That does not exist in the vital world. It is a special [https://ie.auroville.org.in/index.php/G#Grace grace] given to human beings dwelling in matter and upon earth. And because of this, there is no human being who cannot be converted, if he wants it; that is, there is a possibility of his wanting it and the moment he wants it, he can do it. He is sure to succeed the moment he wants it, whereas those beings of the vital do not have a psychic being in them, they do not have the direct divine Presence (naturally, at the Origin, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was at the Origin, that is very far away). They are not in direct contact with the Divine within them, they have no psychic being. And if they were converted, there would remain nothing of them! For they are made up entirely of the opposite movement: they are entirely made up of personal self-align: centerassertion, despotic authority, separation from the Origin, and, of a great disdain for all that is pure, beautiful and noble. They do not have within them this psychic element which in man, even in the most debased, makes him respect what is beautiful and pure;">&diamseven the basest man, in spite of himself, against his own will, respects what is pure, noble and beautiful. But those beings do not have that. They are wholly on the other side, totally on the other side. It disgusts them in every way. It is for them something which should not be touched, because it destroys;</div>it is the thing that makes them disappear. Goodwill, sincerity, purity and beauty are things which make them disappear. So they hate these things.
<div style="color: #000000;">And Now I do not know on the trust he has in what happens to him, on the absence grounds one could convert them [beings 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 ]. What would be too egoistic, one must the point of support? I do not be too miserly, nor too practicalfind it. Even in the greatest. That is, too utilitarian―indeed there are all sorts some of things one should these beings will not bedisappear until hatred disappears from the earth.... like childrenOne might put it the other way round. And thenOne might say that hatred will disappear from the earth when those beings disappear; but, one must for the reason I have a lively just given, the power to make light spring forth in the place of imaginationdarkness, for―I seem to be telling you stupid things, but it is quite true―there is a world beauty in which you are the supreme maker place of forms: ugliness, goodness instead of evil, that is your own particular vital worldpower man possesses, the Asura does not. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use Therefore it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousnessis man who will do that work, if you love harmonyit is he who will change, beauty, you it is he who will build there something marvellous which transform his earth and it is he who will tend compel the Asura to spring up flee into the material manifestationother worlds or to dissolve. (The MotherAfter that, 18 April 1956) all will be quiet. There you are. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0805/1810-apriljune-19561953#p55p19</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== For Children ==But is the Divine then something so terrible, horrible or repellent that the idea of its entry into the physical, its divinising of the human should create this shrinking, refusal, revolt or fear? I can understand that the unregenerate vital attached to its own petty sufferings and pleasures, to the brief ignorant drama of life, should shrink from what will change it. But why should a God-lover, a God-seeker, a sadhak fear the divinisation of the consciousness! Why should he object to becoming one in nature with what he seeks, why should he recoil from sādṛśya-mukti? Behind this fear there are usually two causes: first, there is the feeling of the vital that it will have to cease to be obscure, crude, muddy, egoistic, unrefined (spiritually), full of stimulating desires and small pleasures and interesting sufferings (for it shrinks even from the Ananda which will replace them); next, there is some vague ignorant idea of the mind, due, I suppose, to the ascetic tradition, that the divine nature is something cold, bare, empty, austere, aloof, without the glorious riches of the egoistic human vital life. As if there were not a divine vital and as if that divine vital is not itself and, when it gets the means to manifest, will not make the life on earth also infinitely more full of beauty, love, radiance, warmth, fire, intensity and divine passion and capacity for bliss than the present impotent, suffering, pettily and transiently excited and soon tired vitality of the still so imperfect human creation! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-yoga-and-vaishnavism#p36</ref>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>I have said that from a young age children should be taught to respect good health, physical strength and balance. The great importance of beauty must also be emphasised. ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes a rational method of culture from the very beginning of its existence can realise its own harmony and thus become fit to manifest beauty. When we speak of the other aspects of an integral education, we shall see what inner conditions are to be fulfilled so that this beauty can one day be manifested <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physical-education#p12</ref></spancenter>
The danger of the vital is that of taking hold of love, Ananda, the sense of Beauty and using it for its own purposes, for vital human relations or interchange or else some kind of mere enjoyment of its own. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-align: nature#p15</ref> <center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">To this general education ...when one sees something beautiful, instead of admiring, loving, being happy, wishing that it grows and progresses (which is the senses and their functioning there will be addedtrue divine movement), one feels a sort of anger, rage, as early as possibleone wants to destroy, one wants to damage. This is the cultivation of discrimination and movement of the aesthetic senseadverse forces. Unfortunately, this is quite spontaneous in many people, and even in children... the capacity instinct to choose destroy and adopt what spoil. Well, it is beautiful the presence of the adverse forces. And these are forces which come directly from the vital world and harmonious, simpleincarnate on earth in human consciousness, healthy and pureat times also in animal consciousness. For there It is the hatred for things beautiful, for what is a psychological health just as there pure, what is a Physical healthgood, a beauty and harmony what is true. It is the hatred of the sensations as of divine Presence. And naturally, with this hatred, the body will to destroy and damage, to spoil, mar, deform, disfigure. One step more and its movementsit is the will to inflict suffering. As And all this is the capacity influence of understanding grows the adverse forces, which acts quite spontaneously in the inconscient, in the subconscient, in </span><span style="backgroundhalf-color: transparent; color: #000000;">consciousness. It is only the pure and luminous consciousness which can oppose this and prevent it from acting. But the state of the childworld is such that this is a constant battle. Very few people can escape from this hold. Everyone generally has a tiny little corner in him—at times quite small, at times bigger, sometimes quite unconscious, sometimes a little conscious, he should be taughtsometimes superbly, completely conscious—which likes destroying, in likes spoiling. And the state of the course world is such that when one gives way to that, one is helped by an onrush of his educationforces which lie waiting for the opportunity, waiting for the moment to be able to manifest, which need human collaboration to add artistic taste be able to manifest and refinement seek it. As soon as the opportunity comes, they rush forth, throwing out a formidable amount of energy. And so one feels stronger as soon as one begins to power and precisiondo evil. He should be shownThat is why it is easier, led whilst if one wants to appreciatereact, taught refuses to love beautifulbecome the instrument of these forces, one must fight hard, be very strong, very straight, very pure, very sincere, and above all, loftynot egoistic. One must not turn round upon oneself, healthy and noble thingsmust never be afraid. And this is not easy. That is, whether the world is in Nature or such a state that in human creation. This should order never to be moved by the adverse forces—the forces of darkness, destruction, wickedness, hatred—one must be a hero, a true aesthetic culturehero, who is not afraid of blows and fears nothing, who never turns round upon himself and doesn't have that kind of self-pity which will protect him from degrading influencesis so despicable a thing. That is why... in order not to do evil, think evil, wish evil, never, under any circumstances, one must be a hero It is not always easy to be a hero. The days one is tired, the days one wants to rest, not to make any effort, one slips, everything slips down. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1205/vital19-august-education1953#p11p32</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">When a child The unselfish movement, uncalculating, is full one of enthusiasmthe most beautiful forms of psychic consciousness in the world. But the higher one rises in the scale of mental activity, never throw cold water on the rarer itbecomes. For with intelligence come all the skill and cleverness, and corruption, calculation. For instance, when a rose blossoms it does so spontaneously, never tell himfor the joy of being beautiful, "You knowsmelling sweet, life is expressing all its joy of living, and it does not like that!" You should always encourage himcalculate, tell himit has nothing to gain out of it: it does so spontaneously, "Yesin the joy of being and living. Take a human being, at present things are not always like thatwell, they seem uglyapart from a very few exceptions, but behind this there the moment his mind is a active he tries to get some advantage out of his beauty that is trying and cleverness; he wants it to realise itselfbring him something, either men's admiration or even much more sordid gains yet. This is what you should love and draw towards youConsequently, this is what you should make from the object psychic point of your dreamsview, of your ambitionsthe rose is better than human beings." (The Mother, 31 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0905/3126-julyaugust-19571953#p8p34</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000Take for instance... you see something which is—which seems to you or is—very beautiful, very harmonious, very pleasant;">When if you have the true consciousness, you experience this joy of seeing, of being in a conscious contact with something very beautiful, very harmonious, and then that's all. It stops there. You have the joy of it—that such a child tells thing exists, you see. And this is quite common among artists who have a sense of beauty. For example, an artist may see a beautiful dream in which creature and have the joy of observing the beauty, grace, harmony of movement and all that, and that's all. It stops there. He is perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied, because he had many powers and has seen something beautiful. An ordinary consciousness, altogether ordinary, dull like all things were very ordinary consciousness—as soon as it sees something beautiful, whether it be very careful never to tell himan object or a person, hop! "OhI want it! life " It is not like that"deplorable, for you are doing something wrongknow. You must on And into the bargain it doesn't even have the joy of the contrary tell himbeauty, "Life ought to be like because it has the anguish of desire. It misses thatand has nothing in exchange, because there is nothing pleasant in desiring anything. It only puts you in an unpleasant state, and it will be like that!" (The Mother, 31 July 1957) 's all. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0907/319-julyfebruary-19571955#p17p7</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="backgroundThis world is a chaos in which darkness and light, false-color: transparent; color: #000000;">And sohood and truth, death and life, when the first experience comesugliness and beauty, which sometimes begins when hate and love are so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to distinguish one is very young, the first contact with from the inner joyother, still more impossible to disentangle them and put an end to an embrace which has the inner beautyhorror of a pitiless struggle, all the inner lightmore keen because veiled, especially in human consciousness where the first contact with that, which suddenly makes you feelconflict changes into an anguish for knowledge, "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 mepower, even for the space of a secondconquest, —a combat obscure and that is what I am going to revive in myself".... And encourage painful, all the body more atrocious because it seems to seek it—to seek itbe without issue, with but capable of a solution on a level above the confidence that it carries that possibility within itself sensations and feelings and that if it calls for itideas, it will come back, it will be realised againbeyond the domain of the mind—in the Divine Consciousness. (The Mother, 31 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0915/31the-julydivine-1957working-in-the-universe#p11p9</ref> </span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>Understanding of Beauty in Yoga=
== In Art What is Beauty? ==
<span style="backgroundFor all joy, beauty, love, peace, delight are out-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than flowings from the aspect of beauty Ananda Brahman,—all delight of the Divine manifestation. Perhapsspirit, looking from this standpointthe intellect, there will be found very few true artists; but still there are some and these can very well be considered as Yogis. For like a Yogi an artist goes into deep contemplation to await and receive his inspiration. To </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">create something truly beautifulthe imagination, he [Yogi] has first to see it withinaesthetic sense, to realise it as a whole in his inner consciousness;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">only when so foundethical aspiration and satisfaction, seenaction, held withinlife, the body. And through all ways of our being the Divine can he execute it outwardly; he creates according touch us and make use of them to this greater inner vision. This too is a kind of yogic discipline, for by it he enters into intimate communion with awaken and liberate the inner worldsspirit. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0324/28the-julyananda-1929brahman#p19p4</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">In fact people who work in order to develop their tasteThe master and Mover of our works is the One, to refine it... is for the cultivation of their sensesUniversal and Supreme, which is a very different thingthe Eternal and Infinite. It He is like the artisttranscendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, you know, who trains his eyes to appreciate forms the unexpressed and colours, lines, unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the composition Self of thingsall beings, the harmony found in physical nature; it is not at Master of all through desire that he does thisworlds, it is through tastetranscending all worlds, culturethe Light and the Guide, the development of All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the sense of sight Beloved and the appreciation of beautyLover. And usually artists who are real artists He is the Cosmic Spirit and love their art all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and live in he is the sense of beautyMore than all that is, and we ourselves, seeking beautythough we know it not, are people who don't have many desires. They live in the sense being of a growth not only visualhis being, but force of the appreciation his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of beauty. There his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a great difference between this spark of the Light and people who live Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by their impulses and desiresknowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga. That's altogether something else. (The Mother, 23 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0723/23the-master-of-februarythe-1955work#p5p1</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">If you ask me... that there is nothing but That—something we cannot name, cannot define, cannot describe, I believe that all those who produce but something artistic are artists! we can feel and can more and more become. A word depends upon the way it Something that is used, upon what one puts into it. One may put into it more perfect than all that one wants. For instancethe perfections, in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the forms of trees so that in the landscape they make a more beautiful picture. By than all kinds of trimmingsthe beauties , propsmore marvellous than all the marvels, etc. they adjust the forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in even the landscape. A tree is planted in a garden at the spot where it is needed and moreover, it is given the form totality of all that's required for exists cannot express it to go well with the whole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful thingsthere is nothing but That. You have but to take a photograph of the garden, And it is not a real picture, it Something floating in nothingness: there is so good. Well, I certainly call the man an artist. One may call him a gardener nothing but he is an artist...That. All those who have a sure and developed sense of harmony in all its forms, and the harmony of all the forms among themselves, are necessarily artists, whatever may be the type of their production. (The Mother, 21 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0516/218-october-19531966#p26p7</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>== Beauty in Psychic ===
<div style="color: #000000;">You have followed very little of On this movement ignorant surface we become dimly aware of art I am speaking about, which is related to European civilisationsomething that can be called a soul as distinct from mind, life or body; we feel it has not been felt much here—just only as our mental idea or vague instinct of ourselves, but as a little but not deeplysensible influence in our life and character and action. Here, the majority of creations (this A certain sensitive feeling for all that is a very true and good example), the majority of works, I believe even almost all the and beautiful works, are not signed. All those paintings in the cavesfine and pure and noble, those statues in the temples—these are not signed. One does not know at all who created them. And all this was not done with the idea of making a name for oneself as at present. One happened response to be a great sculptorit, a great painterdemand for it, a great architect, pressure on mind and then that was all, there was no question of putting one's name on everything life to accept and proclaiming formulate it aloud in the newspapers so that no one might forget it! In those days the artist did what he had to do without caring whether his name would go down to posterity or not. All was done in a movement of aspiration to express a higher beautyour thought, feelings, and above all with the idea of giving an appropriate abode to the godhead who was evoked. In the cathedrals of the Middle Agesconduct, it was character is the same thingmost usually recognised, and I don't think that there too the names of the artists who made them have remained. If any are there, it is quite exceptional most general and it is only by chance that the name has been preserved. Whilst todaycharacteristic, there is though not a tiny little piece the sole sign of this influence of canvas, painted or daubed, but on it is a signature to tell you: it is Mrthe psyche. So-and-so who made this! (The Mother, 28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0522/28the-octobertriple-1953transformation#p30p5</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Copy many What is meant in the terminology of the Yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psyche or divine nucleus which stands behind mind, life and body (it is not the ego) but of which we are only dimly aware. It is a portion of the Divine and permanent from life to life, taking the experience of life through its outer instruments. As this experience grows it manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the good, true and beautiful things, finally becomes ready and strong enough to turn the nature towards the Divine. It can then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts and transform the nature. Nature no longer imposes itself on the soul, but try even more to catch the emotionsoul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the deeper life of things nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1230/artsthe-psychic-being-and-its-role-in-sadhana#p38p1</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color...the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: transparent; color: #000000;">Why do you want to do the details? That it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not at all necessary. Painting constituted by them; it is not done to copy Naturelimited by what it manifests, but to express an impressionnot contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, a feelingnot tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an emotion ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that we enters into our experience on seeing can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame. This spiritual stuff is immaculate and luminous and, because it is perfectly luminous, it is immediately, intimately, directly aware of truth of being and truth of nature; it is deeply conscious of truth and good and beauty because truth and good and beauty are akin to its own native character, forms of Naturesomething that is inherent in its own substance. It is this aware also of all that contradicts these things, of all that deviates from its own native character, of falsehood and evil and the ugly and the unseemly; but it does not become these things nor is interesting it touched or changed by these opposites of itself which so powerfully affect its outer instrumentation of mind, life and body. For the soul, the permanent being in us, puts forth and uses mind, life and body as its instruments, undergoes the envelopment of their conditions, but it is this that has to be expressed.other and greater than its members. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1222/artsthe-triple-transformation#p49p3</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
= Challenges =...the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness. Even within the obscure workings of the Ignorance we have then a witness who discerns, a living light that illumines, a will that refuses to be misled and separates the mind's truth from its error, the heart's intimate response from its vibrations to a wrong call and wrong demand upon it, the life's true ardour and plenitude of movement from vital passion and the turbid falsehoods of our vital nature and its dark self seekings. This is the first step of self-realisation, to enthrone the soul, the divine psychic individual in the place of the ego. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-evil#p36</ref>
== Evolutionary == <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">An evolution from A first condition of the Inconscient need not be a painful one if there soul's complete emergence is no resistance; it can be a deliberately slow and beautiful efflorescence of direct contact in the surface being with the Divinespiritual Reality. One ought Because it comes from that, the psychic element in us turns always towards whatever in phenomenal Nature seems to be able belong to see how beautiful outward Nature a higher Reality and can be accepted as its sign and usually ischaracter. At first, although it is itself apparently "inconscient". Why should seeks this Reality through the growth of consciousness in inward Nature be attended by so much ugliness and evil spoiling good, the beauty of true, the outward creation? Because of a perversity born from beautiful, through all that is pure and fine and high and noble: but although this touch through outer signs and characters can modify and prepare the Ignorancenature, which came in with Life it cannot entirely or most inwardly and increased in Mind—that is profoundly change it. For such an inmost change the Falsehood, direct contact with the Evil that was born because of Reality itself is indispensable since nothing else can so deeply touch the starkness foundations of our being and stir it or cast the Inconscient's sleep separating nature by its action from the luminosity stir into a ferment of the secret Conscient that was all the time within ittransmutation. But it need not Mental representations, emotional and dynamic figures have been so except for the overriding Will their use and value; Truth, Good and Beauty are in themselves primary and potent figures of the Supreme which meant that the possibility of Perversion by inconscience Reality, and ignorance should be manifested even in order to be eliminated through being given their chanceforms as seen by the mind, since all possibility has to manifest somewhere: once it is eliminatedas felt by the heart, as realised in the Divine Manifestation in Matter will life can be greater than lines of an ascent: but it otherwise could be because it will gather all the possibilities involved is in this difficult creation a spiritual substance and not some being of them as in an easier and less strenuous creation might naturally beof itself that That which they represent has to come into our experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/spiritual-evolution-and-the-supramental#p33</ref> </span>
<div style="text-alignThe soul may attempt to achieve this contact mainly through the thinking mind as intermediary and instrument; it puts a psychic impression on the intellect and the larger mind of insight and intuitional intelligence and turns them in that direction. At its highest the thinking mind is drawn always towards the impersonal; in its search it becomes conscious of a spiritual essence, an impersonal Reality which expresses itself in all these outward signs and characters but is more than any formation or manifesting figure. It feels something of which it becomes intimately and invisibly aware,—a supreme Truth, a supreme Good, a supreme Beauty, a supreme Purity, a supreme Bliss; it bears the increasing touch, less and less impalpable and abstract, more and more spiritually real and concrete, the touch and pressure of an Eternity and Infinity which is all this that is and more. There is a pressure from this Impersonality that seeks to mould the whole mind into a form of itself; at the same time the impersonal secret and law of things becomes more and more visible. The mind develops into the mind of the sage, at first the high mental thinker, then the spiritual sage who has gone beyond the abstractions of thought to the beginnings of a direct experience. As a result the mind becomes pure, large, tranquil, impersonal; there is a similar tranquillising influence on the parts of life: centerbut otherwise the result may remain incomplete;"for the mental change leads more naturally towards an inner status and an outer quietude, but, poised in this purifying quietism, not drawn like the vital parts towards a discovery of new life-energies, does not press for a full dynamic effect on the nature. <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p12</divref>
<div style="color: #000000;">"Ours is the most material world, but it is not necessarily 'low down', at least, not for that reason; if it is low down, it is because it is obscure and ignorant, not because it is material. It is a mistake to make 'matter' a synonym for obscurity and ignorance. And the material world too is not the only world in which we live: it is rather one of many in which we exist simultaneously, and in one way the most important of them all. For this world of matter is the point of concentration of all the worlds; it is the field of concretisation of all the worlds; it is the place where all the worlds will have to manifest. At present it is disharmonious and obscure; but that is only an accident, a false start. One day it will become beautiful, rhythmic, full of light; for that is the consummation for which it was made." (The Mother, 7 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/7-april-1951#p16</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<div style="textA second approach made by the soul to the direct contact is through the heart: this is its own more close and rapid way because its occult seat is there, just behind in the heart-centre, in close contact with the emotional being in us; it is consequently through the emotions that it can act best at the beginning with its native power, with its living force of concrete experience. It is through a love and adoration of the All-beautiful and All-blissful, the All-alignGood, the True, the spiritual Reality of love, that the approach is made; the aesthetic and emotional parts join together to offer the soul, the life, the whole nature to that which they worship. This approach through adoration can get its full power and impetus only when the mind goes beyond impersonality to the awareness of a supreme Personal Being: centerthen all becomes intense, vivid, concrete; the heart's emotion, feeling, spiritualised sense reach their absolute; an entire self-giving becomes possible, imperative. The nascent spiritual man makes his appearance in the emotional nature as the devotee, the bhakta; if, in addition, he becomes directly aware of his soul and its dictates, unites his emotional with his psychic personality and changes his life and vital parts by purity, God-ecstasy, the love of God and men and all creatures into a thing of spiritual beauty, full of divine light and good, he develops into the saint and reaches the highest inner experience and most considerable change of nature proper to this way of approach to the Divine Being. But for the purpose of an integral transformation this too is not enough;"there must be a transmutation of the thinking mind and all the vital and physical parts of consciousness in their own character. <ref>&diams;http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p15</divref>
<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</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<div style="text-aligncolor: center#000000;">&diams...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>
== Traditional Why is Beauty Important? ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">I have objected And what will be the bliss nature when it manifests in a new supramental race? The fully evolved soul will be one with all beings in the past to vairagya status and dynamic effects of experience of a bliss-consciousness intense and illimitable. And since love is the ascetic kind effective power and soul-symbol of bliss-oneness he will approach and the tamasic kind—and enter into this oneness by the tamasic kind I mean that spirit which comes defeated from lifegate of universal love, a sublimation of human love at first, a divine love afterwards, not because it is really disgusted with life but because it could not cope with it or conquer at its prizes; for it comes to Yoga as summits a kind thing of asylum for the maimed or weak beauty, sweetness and splendour now to the Divine as a consolation prize for the failed boys us inconceivable. He will be one in bliss-consciousness with all the world-class. The vairagya of one who has tasted play and its powers and happenings and there will be banished for ever the world's gifts or prizes but found them insufficient orsorrow and fear, finally, tasteless the hunger and pain of our poor and darkened mental and turns away towards a higher vital and more beautiful ideal or physical existence. He will get that power of the bliss-freedom in which all the vairagya conflicting principles of one who has done his part our being shall be unified in life's battles but seen that something greater is demanded their absolute values. All evil shall perforce change itself into good; the universal beauty of the soul, is perfectly helpful All-beautiful will take possession of its fallen kingdoms; every darkness will be converted into a pregnant glory of light and a good gate to the Yoga. Also discords which the sattwic vairagya which has learned what life is mind creates between Truth and turns to what is above Good and behind life. By the ascetic vairagya I mean that which denies life Beauty, Power and world altogether Love and wants to Knowledge will disappear into on 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 iseternal summit, 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 Yogainfinite extensions where they are always one. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/asceticism-and-the-integral-yoga#p31</ref></span>
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. <div style="textref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/gnosis-and-align: center;">&diams;ananda#p18</divref>
== Physical == <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want The general power of sympathy Delight is love and openness, the shut soul, special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty. The God-lover is the universal lover and he embraces the callous All-blissful and All-beautiful. When universal love has seized on his heart, it is the decisive sign that the soon spent affection Divine has taken possession of him; and languor when he has the vision of the feelings, into our aesthetic All-beautiful everywhere and sensational nature can feel at all times the dull aesthesisbliss of his embrace, that is the limited range decisive sign that he has taken possession of response, the insensibility to beautyDivine. Union is the consummation of love, all but it is this mutual possession that makes in man gives it at once the coarse, heavy acme and vulgar </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">spiritthe largest reach of its intensity. It is the foundation of oneness in ecstasy.</span> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-liberationdelight-of-the-naturedivine#p5p8</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">The only thing Love is a passion and it seeks for two things, eternity and intensity, and in the world relation of the Lover and Beloved the seeking for eternity and for intensity is instinctive and self-born. Love is a seeking for mutual possession, and it is here that the demand for mutual possession becomes absolute. Passing beyond desire of possession which still seems intolerable to me nowmeans a difference, it is a seeking for oneness, and it is all here that the physical deteriorationidea of oneness, of two souls merging into each other and becoming one finds the acme of its longing and the physical sufferingutterness of its satisfaction. Love, the uglinesstoo, the inability to express that capacity is a yearning for beauty which , and it is here that the yearning is eternally satisfied in the vision and the touch and the joy of the All-beautiful. Love is a child and a seeker of Delight, and it is here that it finds the highest possible ecstasy both of the heart-consciousness and of every fibre of the being. But Moreover, this relation is that too will be conquered one day. There too which as between human being and human being demands the most and, even while reaching the power will come one day to shift greatest intensities, is still the needle a little. Onlyleast satisfied, we must rise higher because only in consciousness: the deeper one wants to go down into matterDivine can it find its real and its utter satisfaction. Therefore it is here most that the turning of human emotion God-wards finds its full meaning and discovers all the truth of which love is the human symbol, all its essential instincts divinised, raised, satisfied in the higher is bliss from which our life was born and towards which by oneness it necessary to rise returns in consciousness. That will take timethe Ananda of the divine existence where love is absolute, eternal and unalloyed. (The Mother, 19 February 1958) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0924/19the-februarygodward-1958emotions#p39p14</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">It To come into contact with the higher mind consciousness is the physical centre—sex not enough, it is only one an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of its movementsthe Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reaches. NaturallyA transformation of the higher consciousness into a supramental light and power, if a transformation of the sex is active (instead of giving place to Beauty vital and Ananda) its life-force into a pure, wide, calm, intense and if powerful instrument of the lower movements are activeDivine Energy, it forms an obstacle to a transformation of the establishment physical itself into a form of divine light, divine action, strength, beauty and joy are impossible without this descending Force from the higher consciousnessnow invisible summits. But That is why in this Yoga the higher can descend, if ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths of Yoga is not enough; there is at all an opening, even before must be too a descent of the lower movements have definitely gone—it has then Divine to complete transform all the work energies of displacing themthe mind, life and body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sexthe-vital-and-other-levels-of-being#p102p8</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
<span style="backgroundAt a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare influences, is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the Sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-color: transparentpointed and yet plastic in action and movement; color: #000000it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force;">If it [is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the vital] admires divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a flame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all beautiful thingsthe inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not women onlyon mere vital pleasure,—for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions, without desire—then there would be no harm [—on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in admiring women]the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. But specially applied to womenIts will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it is of a relic of higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the "sex-appeal"Eternal. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3123/sexthe-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-i#p143p22</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div>= How to Cultivate Beauty? ==
<span style="backgroundWhen the spirit in us is free, then what was behind this soul-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The desires of the heart and the body which stand force comes out in the way of Brahmacharya give a glow to the vital all its light, beauty and emotive nature and prevent it from being dry and shut to feeling. To keep greatness, the heart warm and openSpirit, not dried up or closed, and at the same time attain to spiritual purity Godhead who makes the best way is to turn it towards that which is eternal, pure nature and ever true, behind soul of man his foundation and beyond these earthly emotions—the ever-living Loverepresentative in cosmic being and mind, Bliss action and Beautylife. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3124/sexsoul-force-and-the-fourfold-personality#p97p2</ref></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;~</divcenter>
== Vital ==It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, — in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,—and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the seeking of the All and Eternal and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/self-consecration#p18</ref>
<div style="color: #000000;">In a human being, there is the divine Presence and the psychic being—at the beginning embryonic, but in the end a being wholly formed, conscious, independent, individualised. That does not exist in the vital world. It is a special grace given to human beings dwelling in matter and upon earth. And because of this, there is no human being who cannot be converted, if he wants it; that is, there is a possibility of his wanting it and the moment he wants it, he can do it. He is sure to succeed the moment he wants it, whereas those beings of the vital do not have a psychic being in them, they do not have the direct divine Presence (naturally, at the Origin, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was at the Origin, that is very far away). They are not in direct contact with the Divine within them, they have no psychic being. And if they were converted, there would remain nothing of them! For they are made up entirely of the opposite movement: they are entirely made up of personal self-assertion, despotic authority, separation from the Origin, and, of a great disdain for all that is pure, beautiful and noble. They do not have within them this psychic element which in man, even in the most debased, makes him respect what is beautiful and pure; even the basest man, in spite of himself, against his own will, respects what is pure, noble and beautiful. But those beings do not have that. They are wholly on the other side, totally on the other side. It disgusts them in every way. It is for them something which should not be touched, because it destroys; it is the thing that makes them disappear. Goodwill, sincerity, purity and beauty are things which make them disappear. So they hate these things.</div>= Challenges ==
<div style="color: #000000;">Now I do An evolution from the Inconscient need not know on what grounds be a painful one could convert them [beings if there is no resistance; it can be a deliberately slow and beautiful efflorescence of the vital]Divine. What would One ought to be able to see how beautiful outward Nature can be and usually is, although it is itself apparently "inconscient". Why should the point growth of support? I do not find it. Even consciousness in inward Nature be attended by so much ugliness and evil spoiling the greatest. That is, some beauty of these beings will not disappear until hatred disappears from the earth.... One might put it the other way round. One might say that hatred will disappear outward creation? Because of a perversity born from the earth when those beings disappear; butIgnorance, for which came in with Life and increased in Mind—that is the reason I have just givenFalsehood, the power to make light spring forth in Evil that was born because of the place starkness of darkness, beauty in the place Inconscient's sleep separating its action from the luminosity of ugliness, goodness instead of evil, the secret Conscient that power man possesses, was all the Asura does nottime within it. Therefore But it is man who will do need not have been so except for the overriding Will of the Supreme which meant that workthe possibility of Perversion by inconscience and ignorance should be manifested in order to be eliminated through being given their chance, since all possibility has to manifest somewhere: once it is he who eliminated, the Divine Manifestation in Matter will change, be greater than it is he who will transform his earth and otherwise could be because it is he who will compel gather all the Asura to flee into other worlds or to dissolve. After that, all will possibilities involved in this difficult creation and not some of them as in an easier and less strenuous creation might naturally be quiet. There you are. (The Mother, 10 June 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0528/10spiritual-evolution-and-junethe-1953supramental#p19p33</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">But Ours is the Divine then something so terriblemost material world, horrible or repellent that the idea of its entry into the physicalbut it is not necessarily 'low down', its divinising of the human should create this shrinkingat least, refusalnot for that reason; if it is low down, revolt or fear? I can understand that the unregenerate vital attached to its own petty sufferings it is because it is obscure and pleasures, to the brief ignorant drama of life, should shrink from what will change not because itis material. But why should It is a God-lover, mistake to make 'matter' a God-seeker, a sadhak fear synonym for obscurity and ignorance. And the divinisation of material world too is not the consciousness! Why should he object to becoming only world in which we live: it is rather one of many in nature with what he seekswhich we exist simultaneously, why should he recoil from sādṛśya-mukti? Behind and in one way the most important of them all. For this fear there are usually two causes: first, there world of matter is the feeling point of the vital that it will have to cease to be obscure, crude, muddy, egoistic, unrefined (spiritually), full concentration of stimulating desires and small pleasures and interesting sufferings (for it shrinks even from all the Ananda which will replace them)worlds; next, there it is some vague ignorant idea the field of concretisation of all the mind, due, I suppose, to the ascetic tradition, that the divine nature worlds; it is something cold, bare, empty, austere, aloof, without the glorious riches of place where all the egoistic human vital lifeworlds will have to manifest. As if there were not a divine vital At present it is disharmonious and as if obscure; but that divine vital is not itself andonly an accident, when a false start. One day it gets the means to manifestwill become beautiful, rhythmic, will not make the life on earth also infinitely more full of beauty, love, radiance, warmth, fire, intensity and divine passion and capacity light; for bliss than that is the present impotent, suffering, pettily and transiently excited and soon tired vitality of the still so imperfect human creation! consummation for which it was made." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2904/bhakti-yoga7-andapril-vaishnavism1951#p36p16</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000Certainly, the supramental manifestation does not bring peace, purity, force, power of knowledge only;">The danger 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 vital 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 taking hold of love, Anandait is in the heart, not the sense of Beauty mind—the heart that opens its inner door and using through it for its own purposes, for vital human relations or interchange or else some kind the radiance of the soul looks out in a blaze of mere enjoyment trust and self-giving. Before that inner fire the debates of the mind and its owndifficulties 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/3031/descentthe-anddifficulties-theof-lower-natureyoga#p15p11</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">...when one sees something beautiful, instead of admiring, loving, being happy, wishing that it grows and progresses (which is the true divine movement), one feels a sort of anger, rage, one wants to destroy, one wants to damage. This is the movement of the adverse forces. Unfortunately, this is quite spontaneous in many people, and even in children... the instinct to destroy and spoil. Well, it is the presence of the adverse forces. And these are forces which come directly from the vital world and incarnate on earth in human consciousness, and at times also in animal consciousness. It is the hatred for things beautiful, for what is pure, what is good, what is true. It is the hatred of the divine Presence. And naturally, with this hatred, the will to destroy and damage, to spoil, mar, deform, disfigure. One step more and it is the will to inflict suffering. And all this is the influence of the adverse forces, which acts quite spontaneously in the inconscient, in the subconscient, in half-consciousness. It is only the pure and luminous consciousness which can oppose this and prevent it from acting. But the state of the world is such that this is a constant battle. Very few people can escape from this hold. Everyone generally has a tiny little corner in him—at times quite small, at times bigger, sometimes quite unconscious, sometimes a little conscious, sometimes superbly, completely conscious—which likes destroying, likes spoiling. And the state of the world is such that when one gives way to that, one is helped '''Content Curated by an onrush of forces which lie waiting for the opportunity, waiting for the moment to be able to manifest, which need human collaboration to be able to manifest and seek it. As soon as the opportunity comes, they rush forth, throwing out a formidable amount of energy. And so one feels stronger as soon as one begins to do evil. That is why it is easier, whilst if one wants to react, refuses to become the instrument of these forces, one must fight hard, be very strong, very straight, very pure, very sincere, and above all, not egoistic. One must not turn round upon oneself, and must never be afraid. And this is not easy. That is, the world is in such a state that in order never to be moved by the adverse forces—the forces of darkness, destruction, wickedness, hatred—one must be a hero, a true hero, who is not afraid of blows and fears nothing, who never turns round upon himself and doesnSiddharth Jain'''t have that kind of self-pity which is so despicable a thing. That is why... in order not to do evil, think evil, wish evil, never, under any circumstances, one must be a hero It is not always easy to be a hero. The days one is tired, the days one wants to rest, not to make any effort, one slips, everything slips down. (The Mother, 19 August 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/19-august-1953#p32</ref></div>
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<div {|class="wikitable" style="background-color: #000000EFEFFF; width: 100%;">The unselfish movement, uncalculating, is one |Read Summary of the most beautiful forms of psychic consciousness in the world. But the higher one rises in the scale of mental activity, the rarer it becomes. For with intelligence come all the skill and cleverness, and corruption, calculation. For instance, when a rose blossoms it does so spontaneously, for the joy of being beautiful, smelling sweet, expressing all its joy of living, and it does not calculate, it has nothing to gain out of it: it does so spontaneously, in the joy of being and living. Take a human being, well, apart from a very few exceptions, the moment his mind is active he tries to get some advantage out of his beauty and cleverness; he wants it to bring him something, either men's admiration or even much more sordid gains yet. Consequently, from the psychic point of view, the rose is better than human beings. (The Mother, 26 August 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/26-august-1953#p34</ref></div>''[[Beauty Summary|Beauty]]'''
<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <div style="color: #000000;">Take for instance... you see something which is—which seems to you or is—very beautifulDear reader, very harmonious, very pleasant; if you have notice any error in the true consciousness, you experience this joy of seeing, of being paragraph numbers in a conscious contact with something very beautiful, very harmonious, and then that's all. It stops there. You have the joy of it—that such a thing exists, you see. And this is quite common among artists who have a sense of beauty. For examplehyperlinks, please let us know by dropping an artist may see a beautiful creature and have the joy of observing the beauty, grace, harmony of movement and all that, and that's all. It stops there. He is perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied, because he has seen something beautiful. An ordinary consciousness, altogether ordinary, dull like all ordinary consciousness—as soon as it sees something beautiful, whether it be an object or a person, hop! "I want it!" It is deplorable, you know. And into the bargain it doesn't even have the joy of the beauty, because it has the anguish of desireemail at integral. It misses that and has nothing in exchange, because there is nothing pleasant in desiring anythingedu. It only puts you in an unpleasant state, that's all. (The Mother, 9 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword@gmail.in/cwm/07/9-february-1955#p7</ref></div>com<div style="text-align: center;">&diams;</div> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">This world is a chaos in which darkness and light, false-hood and truth, death and life, ugliness and beauty, hate and love are so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the other, still more impossible to disentangle them and put an end to an embrace which has the horror of a pitiless struggle, all the more keen because veiled, especially in human consciousness where the conflict changes into an anguish for knowledge, for power, for conquest,—a combat obscure and painful, all the more atrocious because it seems to be without issue, but capable of a solution on a level above the sensations and feelings and ideas, beyond the domain of the mind—in the Divine Consciousness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-divine-working-in-the-universe#p9</ref> </span>|}
<div style="text-align{{#related: center;">&diams;</div>Psychic Education}}{{#related:Beauty Summary}}
{|class="wikitable" styleReferences = "background-color: #EFEFFF; width: 100%;"|Read Summary of '''[[Beauty]]''' |}
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