Changes

Beauty is the aesthetic instinct of man, and the good is his ethical instinct, and these two things are very important in human education and growth. (The Mother, 25 May 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/25-may-1955#p39</ref>  “The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material.” (Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/teachers#p14</ref>

It 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; and 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, "Oh! It is fine today, the sunrise is lovely today, the sunset is beautiful, the clouds have fine shapes." So, the first kind do not have an aesthetic conscience, the second have. (The Mother, 1 June 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p3</ref>

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. (The Mother, 21 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/21-october-1953#p60</ref>

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. (The Mother, 9 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-february-1955#p7</ref>

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 (Sri Aurobindo) says that this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic sense. (The Mother, 1 June 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p21</ref>

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. (The Mother, 25 May 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/25-may-1955#p37</ref>

… so that joy is a joy which has an object, it is because you read that sentence that you feel this joy, if you had not read the sentence, you would not have felt the joy. (The Mother, 5 December 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/5-december-1956#p17</ref>

It is obvious that as one goes farther, as it were, from the material world, the forms and consciousness of those beings are of a purity, beauty and perfection much higher than our ordinary physical forms. It is only in the nearest vital world, the one which is, so to say, mixed with our material life―though it lies beyond it and there is a zone where the vital is no longer mixed with the material world―of that material vital one can say that in some of its aspects it is even uglier than things here, for it is filled with a bad will which is not counterbalanced by the presence of the psychic being which, in the physical world, amends, corrects, puts right, directs this bad will. But it is rather a limited zone and, as soon as one goes beyond it, one can find and meet things that are not favourable to human life, beings not on the same scale as human existence, but having their own beauty and grandeur, with whom one may establish relations which may become quite pleasant and even useful. (The Mother, 11 July 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/11-july-1956#p10</ref>

There is a world in which you are the supreme maker of forms: that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation. (The Mother, 18 April 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/18-april-1956#p55</ref>

Now, obviously, most often what people—unless they are initiated—call "soul" is the vital activity. If someone has a strong, active, obstinate vital which rules the body's activities, which has a very living or intense contact with people and things and events, if he has a marked taste for art, for all expressions of beauty, we are generally tempted to say and believe, "Oh! He has a living soul"; but it is not his soul, it is his vital being which is alive and dominates the activities of the body. That is the first difference between someone who is beginning to be developed and those who are still in the inertia and tamas of the purely material life. This gives, first to the appearance and also to the activity, a kind of vibration, of intensity of vibration, which often creates the impression that this person has a living soul; but it is not that, it is his vital which is developed, which has a special capacity, is stronger than the physical inertia and gives an intensity of vibration and life and action that those whose vital being is not developed do not possess. (The Mother, 9 April 1958) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/9-april-1958#p4</ref>

But the way the world is organized, people without aesthetic needs go back to a very primitive life—which is wrong. We need a place where life... where the very setting of life would be, not an individual thing, but a beauty that would be like the surroundings natural to a certain degree of development. (The Mother, 25 March 1970) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/11/march-25-1970#p49</ref>

The discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. Painters have to follow a discipline for the growth of the consciousness of their eyes, which in itself is almost a Yoga. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by this concentration, which is not other than the consciousness given by Yoga. Why then should not Yogic consciousness be a help to artistic creation? (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p7</ref>

But 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. (The Mother, 9 September 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/9-september-1953#p19</ref>

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… 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. (The Mother, 9 September 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/9-september-1953#p20</ref>

''Can those who have a see of beauty also become cruel?'' That's a psychological problem. It depends on where their sense of beauty is located. One may have a physical sense 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… But those who were unified, in the sense that they truly lived their art—those, no; they were generous and good. (The Mother, 17 March 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/17-march-1954#p34</ref>

Shame has admirable results and both in aesthetics and in morality we could ill spare it; but for all that it is a badge of weakness and the proof of ignorance. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-81-82-83#p5p3</ref>

But supposing you take a real genius—a musician or artist or writer of genius—who has fully mastered his instrument, who can use it to produce works that express the utmost human possibility, if you add to this a spiritual consciousness, the supramental force, then you will have something truly divine. (The Mother, 24 April, 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/24-april-1957#p13</ref>

…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. [Based on Aphorism 19—When I had the dividing reason, I shrank from many things; after I had lost it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent, but I could no longer find them.]<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-19#p3</ref>

I look at a rose, a thing that contains such a concentration of spontaneous beauty...how can one study sincerely, with attention and care, without being absolutely convinced that the Divine is there? …something we cannot name, cannot define, cannot describe, but something we can feel and can more and more become. A Something that is more perfect than all the perfections, more beautiful than all the beauties, 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>

...the perception and enjoyment of the divine Beauty and Delight which pervade the universe. And I said that as we embrace the whole of life in Yoga, so we accept the entire genuine self-expression of the spirit of life in poetry. We would range up and down the whole realm of poetic creation like free, unattached worshippers of the Divine Beauty and seekers of the divine Delight. (The Mother, 13 July 1943) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/13-july-1943#p2</ref>

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/05/21-october-1953#p26</ref>

''Q. What does "the beauty of the hideous" mean?'' ''A.''It is always the same realisation presented from different angles, expressed through various experiences: the realisation that everything is a manifestation of the Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite, immutable in his total perfection and in his absolute reality. That is why, by conquering our mind and its ignorant and false perceptions we can, through all things, enter into contact 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. [Based on Aphorism 48—I knew my mind to be conquered when it admired the beauty of the hideous, yet felt perfectly why other men shrank back or hated.]<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-48#p3</ref>

… "art" was no longer to express physical life but mental life or vital life. And so came all the schools, like the Cubists and others, who created from their head. But in art it is not the head that dominates, it is the feeling for beauty. And they produced absurd and ridiculous and frightful things. Now they have gone farther still, but that, that is due to the wars—with every war there descends upon earth a world in decomposition which produces a sort of chaos. And some, of course, find all this very beautiful and admire it very much.(The Mother, 28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/28-october-1953#p7</ref>

The mistake of the artist is to believe that artistic production is something that stands by itself and for itself, independent of the rest of the world. Art as understood by these artists is like a mushroom on the wide soil of life, something casual and external, not something intimate to life; it does not reach and touch the deep and abiding realities, it does not become an intrinsic and inseparable part of existence. True art is intended to express the beautiful, but in close intimacy with the universal movement. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p14</ref>

To create something truly beautiful, he has first to see it within, to realise it as a whole in his inner consciousness; only when so found, seen, held within, can he execute it outwardly; he creates according to this greater inner vision. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p19</ref>

… art must act as a revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life; that is to say, an artist should be capable of entering into communion with the Divine and of receiving inspiration about what form or forms ought to be used to express the divine beauty in matter. And thus, if it does that, art can be a means of realisation of beauty, and at the same time a teacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, art should be an element in the education of men's taste, of young and old, and it is the teaching of true beauty, that is, the essential beauty which expresses the divine truth. (The Mother, 28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/28-october-1953#p4</ref>

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

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

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

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

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

''Q. Are there people who have not been affected by this vital impurity and who appreciate beauty in a subtle aesthetic way only?''  ''A.'' Yes, certainly. Artists who have trained their mind to a purely aesthetic look at beauty and beautiful things—for one instance. There are many others also, who have a sufficiently developed refinement of the aesthetic sense not to associate it with the crude vital wish for possession, enjoyment or sensual contact. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/27/physical-beauty-and-sex-sensation#p4</ref>

It is a literary way of speaking, you must understand it in a literary way; it is a literary description of the word; it is very precise, but it is literary. So I cannot produce literature on this literature. One must have the taste for forms, for a beautiful way of saying things, a little exceptional, not too banal; but it is just one way, it's a way of saying things which is charming. Literature exists completely in the way of saying things. You catch what you can of what's behind. If you are indeed open to the literary meaning, it evokes things for you; but it cannot be explained. It is a means of evocation which corresponds also with music. Naturally, one can analyse literature and see how the sentence is constructed, but this is like your changing a human being into a skeleton. It is not pretty, a skeleton. It's the same thing. If in music you study counterpoint, and if this note must necessarily bring in this other, and this group of notes has necessarily to bring in that one, you spoil the music too, you make a skeleton of the music; it is not interesting. These things have to be felt with the corresponding senses, the charm of the phrase with the literary sense—catching the harmony of words and what it evokes. (The Mother, 21 September 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/21-september-1955#p2</ref>

… in this order: consciousness first, then the vital (mainly from the aesthetic point of view, but a study of sensations as well) , then the mind, then spiritual realization. And in between the vital and mental phases came the brief period of occultism, serving both as a transition and a basis for spiritual development. (The Mother, 28 July 1962) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/july-28-1962#p9</ref> ==By Perfection == When they speak of God, think of Him as "something else," they think that He cannot be weak, ugly or imperfect—they think wrongly, they divide, they separate… Perfection is something which lacks nothing.  [Based on Aphorisms 63— God is great, says the Mahomedan. Yes, He is so great that He can afford to be weak, whenever that too is necessary.

When they speak of 65—Because Godis invincibly great, think of Him as "something else," they think that He cannot can afford to be weak; because He is immutably pure, ugly or imperfect—they think wronglyHe can indulge with impunity in sin; He knows eternally all delight, they dividetherefore He tastes also the delight of pain; He is inalienably wise, they separate… Perfection is something which lacks nothingtherefore He has not debarred Himself from folly. ] <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-63-64-65#p24p21</ref>

Each thing is exactly in its place, each person exactly in his place, each movement exactly in its place—and in its place in an ascending progressive movement, without any relapse, that is to say, quite the contrary to what happens in ordinary life. Naturally, this presupposes a kind of perfection, this presupposes a kind of unity, this presupposes that the different aspects of the Supreme can be manifested and, of course, an exceptional beauty, a total harmony and a power strong enough to command obedience from the forces of Nature. (The Mother, 18 July 1961) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/18-july-1961#p11</ref>

Take a great musician; well, even with a wretched piano and missing notes, he will produce something beautiful; but give him a good piano, well-tuned, and he will do something still more beautiful. The consciousness is the same in either case but for expression it needs a good instrument—a body with mental, vital, psychic and physical capacities. (The Mother, 15 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/15-january-1951#p11</ref>

== By Purification ==

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 point of being transfigured...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") . 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 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 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?... 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/04/26-april-1951#p29</ref>

== By Discipline ==

I have known people with such opposite sides in their nature, so contradictory, that one day they could make a magnificent, luminous, powerful formation for realisation, and then the next day a defeatist, dark, black formation—a formation of despair—and so both would go out. And I was able to follow in the course of circumstances the beautiful one being realised, and while it was being realised, the dark one demolishing what the first one had done. And that is how it is in the larger lines of life as in its smaller details. And all that because one does not watch oneself thinking, because one believes one is the slave of these contradictory movements, because one says, "Oh! Today I am not feeling well. Oh! Today things seem sad to me", and one says this as if it were an ineluctable fate against which one could do nothing. But if one stands back or ascends a step, one can look at all these things, put them in their place, keep some, destroy or get rid of those one does not want and put all one's imaginative power—what is called imaginative—only in those one wants and which conform with one's highest aspiration. That is what I call controlling one's imagination. (The Mother, 3 September 1958) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/3-september-1958#p15</ref>

Without outer and inner discipline, one can achieve nothing in life, either spiritually or materially. All those who have been able to create something beautiful or useful have always been persons who have known how to discipline themselves. (The Mother, 23 June 1934) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/23-june-1934#p3</ref>

== By Detachment == In fact people who work in order to develop their taste, to refine it, are rarely very much attached to food. It is not through attachment to food that they do it. 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 physical 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. And usually artists who are real artists and love their art and live in the sense of beauty, seeking beauty, are people who don't have many desires. They live in the sense of a growth not only visual, but of the appreciation of beauty. There is a great difference between this and people who live by their impulses and desires. (The Mother, 23 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/23-february-1955#p5</ref>

We attain to something of this capacity for variable but universal delight in the aesthetic reception of things as represented by Art and Poetry, so that we enjoy there the Rasa or taste of the sorrowful, the terrible, even the horrible or repellent; and the reason is because we are detached, disinterested, not thinking of ourselves or of self-defence (''jugupsā''), but only of the thing and its essence…  

== By Devotion ==

The world is full of things that are not pleasing or beautiful, but that is no reason why one should live in a constant feeling of repulsion for these things. All feelings of shrinking and disgust and fear that disturb and weaken the human mind can be overcome. A Yogi has to overcome these reactions; for almost the very first step in Yoga demands that you must keep a perfect equanimity in the presence of all beings and things and happenings. (The Mother, 30 June 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p5</ref>

But if one deeply feels the beauty of Nature and communes with her, that can help in widening the consciousness. (The Mother, 9 November 1969) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/9-november-1969#p4</ref>

There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion—indeed so deep, so intense—that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine. (The Mother, 25 January 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-january-1956#p61</ref>

There is but one remedy: that signpost must always be there, a mirror well placed in one's feelings, impulses, all one's sensations. One sees them in this mirror. There are some which are not very beautiful or pleasant to look at; there are others which are beautiful, pleasant, and must be kept. This one does a hundred times a day if necessary. And it is very interesting. One draws a kind of big circle around the psychic mirror and arranges all the elements around it. If there is something that is not all right, it casts a sort of grey shadow upon the mirror: this element must be shifted, organised. It must be spoken to, made to understand, one must come out of that darkness. If you do that, you never get bored. When people are not kind, when one has a cold in the head, when one doesn't know one's lessons, and so on, one begins to look into this mirror. It is very interesting, one sees the canker. "I thought I was sincere!"—not at all. (The Mother, 1 April 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/1-april-1953#p10</ref>

The greatest obstacle to the transformation of one's own character is hypocrisy. If you always keep this in mind when dealing with a child, you can do him a lot of good. Of course, you must not sermonise or lecture him, etc. You should simply make him understand that there is a nobility in the being, a great purity, a great love of beauty, which is so powerful that even the most wicked and criminal people are forced to acknowledge a truly beautiful or heroic or selfless act. (The Mother, 6 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p28</ref>

The second step is 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-49#p9</ref>

"It is a pity my arms are too thin or my legs are too long or my back is not straight or my head is not quite harmonious", if one said: "It must be otherwise, my arms must be proportionate, my body harmonious, every form in me must express a higher beauty", then one will succeed… "Why! that disharmony I had in my face is disappearing; that sign of brutality, unconsciousness which was in my expression, it is going away." And then ten years later you don't recognise yourself any longer. (The Mother You are all, 17 June 1953) here, youthful matter; you must know how to profit by it—and not for petty, selfish and stupid reasons but for the love of beauty, for the need of harmony. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/17-june-1953#p39,p40</ref>

It is infinitely more difficult to tell a story beautiful from beginning to end than to write a story ending with a sensational event or a catastrophe. Many authors, if they had to write a story which ends happily, beautifully, would not be able to do it—they do not have enough imagination for that. Very few stories have an uplifting ending, almost all end in a failure—for a very simple reason, it is much more easy to fall than to rise. (The Mother, 26 February 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-february-1951#p23</ref>

And if you know how to tell yourself a story in this way, and if it is truly beautiful, truly harmonious, truly powerful and well co-ordinated, this story will be realised in your life. (The Mother, 18 April 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/18-april-1956#p56</ref>

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, "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." (The Mother, 31 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/31-july-1957#p8</ref>