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{|class= What is "wikitable" style= "background-color: #EFEFFF; width: 100%;"|Read Summary of '''[[Beauty =Summary|Beauty]]''' |}
== General Understanding of What is Beauty =? =
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on 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 of love, luminous, powerful, beautiful, containing all, pervading all.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-divine-working-in-the-universe#p6</refcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>Spiritual beauty has a contagious power. Beauty is the joyous offering of Nature.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p13</refcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our Yoga.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/divine-love-psychic-love-and-human-love#p1</refcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;"center>There is this beauty, this dignity of soul—a thing about which I am very sensitive. It is a thing that moves me and evokes in me a great respect always.~</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</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span stylecenter>~</center> ... 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, "It is beautiful!" And it's true, it gives the sense of beauty. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p14</ref> <center>~</center> There is this beauty, this dignity of soul—a thing about which I am very sensitive. It is a thing that moves me and evokes in me a great respect always. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/july-1958-1#p2</ref> ="background= Pre-colorrequisites == Beauty is a great power. Beauty does not get its full power except when it is surrendered to the Divine. <ref>http: transparent; color//incarnateword.in/cwm/15/beauty#p8</ref> <center>~</center> 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#000000;"p16</ref> <center>~</center> 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=center>~</center> "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 very important in human education and growth; not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0704/2512-may-19551951#p39p1</ref></div>
<div style="color: #000000;">It [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; 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.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p3</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>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, "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. (The Mother, 1 June 1955)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.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 and very imperfect in its expression.</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 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; </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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: "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, </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/07/1-june-1955#p24</ref></spancenter>
<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>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>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 the Light and Bliss that are for ever.</span><span style="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></spancenter>
<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>
<span style="backgroundcenter>~</center> 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-color: transparent; colormarch-1951#p34 http: //incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#000000;"p34</ref> <center>~</center>There ''Q: Can those who have a sense of beauty also become cruel?'' ''A:'' That's a psychological problem. It depends on where their sense of beauty is located. One may have a psychic world—a sort physical see of Heaven beauty, a vital sense of beauty, a mental sense of peace beauty. If one has a moral sense of beauty—a sense of moral beauty and beauty nobility—one will never be cruel. One will always be generous and harmonymagnanimous in all circumstances. But as men are made of many different pieces. It is also ... 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 place sense of rest for 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 soul between two incarnations artist in which himself and usually he became someone very vulgar, very ordinary. Many of them did, I am sure of it absorbs its past experiences . But those who were unified, in the sense that they truly lived their art—those, no; they were generous and becomes ready for another birthgood.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2806/the17-psychicmarch-being1954#p100p33</ref> <center>~</spancenter> But for one who has more inner sensitivity, appearances are no longer deceptive and he can perceive the ugliness hidden beneath a pretty face and the beauty concealed beneath a mask of ugliness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-297-298#p6</ref>
== Beauty in Art ==
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>...an artist should be capable of entering into communion with the Divine and of receiving inspiration about what form or forms ought to be used to express the divine beauty in matter. And thus, if it does that, art can be a means of realisation of beauty, and at the same time a teacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">art should be an element in the education of men's taste</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">, of young and old, and it is the teaching of true beauty, that is, the essential beauty which expresses the divine truth. This is the raison d'être of art. Now, between this and what is done there is a great difference, but this is the true raison d'être of art. (The Mother, 28 October 1953)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/28-october-1953#p4</ref></spancenter>
<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 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 style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> (The Mother, 1 March 1951)</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p30</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">...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 which they have had the vision, the intimation, the formless attraction or else the passing touch or glimpse.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/morality-and-yoga#p23</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>If you compare the human body as it now is with a higher ideal of beauty, obviously very few would pass the examination. In almost everyone there is a sort of unbalance in the ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">proportions; we 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 and make the body capable of expressing beauty. This is still a thing which is not known: 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 not quite the same as of people who live in bad thoughts, in the lower part of their nature. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">When the human being is at his best, above his base animality, he reflects something which is not there when he lives in a state of bestiality. (The Mother, 25 January 1951)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/25-january-1951#p27</ref></spancenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">There are people who are just like beautiful animals—all their movements are harmonious, their energies are spent harmoniously, their uncalculating efforts call in energies all the time and they are always happy; but sometimes they have no thoughts in their head, sometimes they have no feelings in their heart, they live an altogether animalish life. I have known people like that: beautiful animals. They were handsome, their gestures were harmonious, their forces quite balanced and they spent without reckoning and received without measure. They were in harmony with the material universal forces and they lived in joy. They could not perhaps have told you that they were happy—joy with them was so spontaneous that it was natural—and they would have been still less able to tell you why, for their intelligence was not very developed. (The Mother, 13 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/13-january-1951#p15</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>A philosophic statement about the Atman is a mental formula, not knowledge, not experience: yet sometimes the Divine takes it as a channel of touch; strangely, a barrier in the mind breaks down, something is seen, a profound change operated in some inner part, there enters into the ground of the nature something calm, equal, ineffable. One stands upon a mountain ridge and glimpses or mentally feels a wideness, a pervasiveness, a nameless Vast in Nature; then suddenly there comes the touch, a revelation, ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">a flooding, the mental loses itself in the spiritual, one bears the first invasion of the Infinite.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Or you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what?—a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother. Similar touches can come too through art, music, poetry to their creator or to one who feels the shock of the word, the hidden significance of a form, a message in the sound that carries more perhaps than was consciously meant by the composer. All things in the Lila can turn into windows that open on the hidden Reality. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Still so long as one is satisfied with looking through windows, the gain is only initial; one day one will have to take up the pilgrim's staff and start out to journey there where the Reality is for ever manifest and present. Still less can it be spiritually satisfying to remain with shadowy reflections; a search imposes itself for the Light which they strive to figure. But since this Reality and this Light are in ourselves no less than in some high region above the mortal plane, we can in the seeking for it use many of the figures and activities of Life; as one offers a flower, a prayer, an act to the Divine, one can offer too a created form of beauty, a song, a poem, an image, a strain of music, and gain through it a contact, a response or an experience. And when that divine Consciousness has been entered or when it grows within, then too its expression in life through these things is not excluded from Yoga; these creative activities can still have their place, though not intrinsically a greater place than any other that can be put to divine use and service. Art, poetry, music, as they are in their ordinary functioning, create mental and vital, not spiritual values; but they can be turned to a higher end, and then, like all things that are capable of linking our consciousness to the Divine, they are transmuted and become spiritual and can be admitted as part of a life of Yoga.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-intellect-and-yoga#p26</ref> </spancenter>
<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>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">We must go farther on, we must advance, climb greater heights and go beyond the arid search for pleasure and personal welfare, not through fear of punishment, even punishment after death, but through the development of a new sense of beauty, a thirst for truth and light, through understanding that it is only by widening yourself, illumining yourself, setting yourself ablaze with the ardour for progress, that you can find both integral peace and enduring happiness.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/punishment#p24</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<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="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>
<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>
<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>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>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 that direction. At its highest ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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: 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 nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p12</ref> </spancenter>
<div style="colorcenter>~</center> 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. <ref>http: //incarnateword.in/cwm/15/adverse-forces#000000;"p28</ref> <center>~</center> 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.<ref>http://incarnateword.in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels /cwm/14/desires-impulses-and-self-control#p8</ref> <center>~</center> ...to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, in such a sense 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-49#p5</ref> <center>~</center> ...the realisation that everything is a manifestation of immense greatnessthe Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite, beauty or value immutable in his total perfection and for himself a strong impression of in his own comparative unworthiness absolute reality. That is why, by conquering our mind and its ignorant and a passionate desire to grow false perceptions we can, through all things, enter into likeness contact with that this Supreme Truth which one adores. What does come very often with is also the Supreme Beauty and the inrush of Supreme Love is an exaltation, a feeling beyond all our mental and vital notions of a greatening withinbeauty and ugliness, of new powers the good and high or beautiful possibilities 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 intellect. <ref>http://incarnateword.in one/cwm/10/aphorism-48#p3</ref> <center>~</center> For the spiritual man the mind's nature or dream of perfect beauty is realised in an intensification of the nature; but eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is not exactly selfequal behind all objective appearances... <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-reverencelife#p20</ref> <center>~</center> ... There is a deeper self reverence possible, girl who had no education whatever; she was a true emotiondancer and danced tolerably well. After she took up Yoga, she danced only for friends; but her dancing attained a sense depth of expression and beauty which was not there before. And although she was not educated, she began to write wonderful things; for she had visions and expressed them in the value most beautiful language. But there were ups and even the sacredness of the souldowns in her Yoga, even the mindand when she was in a good condition, lifeshe wrote beautifully, body as an offering or itself the temple for the inner presence of the Belovedbut otherwise was quite dull and stupid and uncreative.(The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/03/28/philosophical-thoughtjuly-and-yoga1929#p31p7</ref> </div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>Be sincere and absolute in your consecration to the Divine and your life will become harmonious and beautiful.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/sincerity#p9</refcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances...~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p20</refcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>Let ~</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;">be your constant ideal.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 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;">in the workso that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">.</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p3</refcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>It is, then, in the ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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,</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 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. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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.</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 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> </spancenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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 fact that one doesn't carry them within oneself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p103</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/desires-impulses-and-self-control#p8</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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. (The Mother, 28 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-april-1929#p18</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p224</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<div style="color: #000000;"center>...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...." (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!"~</divcenter>
<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="color: #000000;">The man of genius may use anything at all and make something beautiful because he has genius; but give this genius a perfect instrument and he will make something wonderful. 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</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There must be order and harmony in work. Even what is apparently the most insignificant thing must be done with perfect perfection, with a sense of cleanliness, beauty, harmony and order. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p26</refcenter> ~</spancenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">Beautiful conduct—not politeness which is an outer thing, however valuable,—but beauty founded upon a spiritual realisation of unity and harmony projected into life, is certainly part of the perfect perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/imperfections-and-periods-of-arrest#p12</refcenter> ~</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 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... 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 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 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</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
<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>
<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>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"center>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 ~</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p11</ref> </spancenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">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, "Life ought to be like that, and it will be like that!" (The Mother, 31 July 1957)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/31-july-1957#p17</refcenter> ~</divcenter>
<div style="color: #000000;">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 appropriate abode to the godhead who was evoked. In the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, it was the same thing, 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 and it is only by chance that the name has been preserved. Whilst today, there is not a tiny little piece of canvas, painted or daubed, but on it is a signature to tell you: it is Mr. So-and-so who made this! (The Mother, 28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/28-october-1953#p30</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Why do you want to do the details? That is not at all necessary. Painting is not done to copy Nature, but to express an impression, a feeling, an emotion that we experience on seeing the beauty of Nature. It is this that is interesting and it is this that has to be expressed..<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p49</refcenter>~</spancenter>
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<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 7 April 1951)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/7-april-1951#p16</refcenter>
Copy many beautiful things, but try even more to catch the emotion, the deeper life of things. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p38</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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>
== Physical ==
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, 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 the soul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-being-and-its-role-in-sadhana#p1</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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.~</divcenter>
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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 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: 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 nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p12</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>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.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p97</refcenter>
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, 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: then 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>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p15</ref> <center>~</center> <div style="color: #000000;">...in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores. What does come very often with the inrush of Love is an exaltation, a feeling of a greatening within, of new powers and high or beautiful possibilities in one's nature or of an intensification of the nature; but that is not exactly self-reverence. There is a deeper self reverence possible, a true emotion, a sense of the value and even the sacredness of the soul, even the mind, life, body as an offering or itself the temple for the inner presence of the Beloved.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p31</ref> </div> = Vital =Why is Beauty Important? == 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 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 All-beautiful will take possession of its fallen kingdoms; 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. In the free infinity of the self-delight of Sachchidananda there is a play of the divine Child, a rāsa līlā of the infinite Lover and its mystic soul-symbols repeat themselves in characters of beauty and movements and harmonies of delight in a timeless forever. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/gnosis-and-ananda#p18</ref> <center>~</center> The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-delight-of-the-divine#p8</ref> <center>~</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. Love, too, is a yearning for beauty, 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> <center>~</center>
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When the spirit in us is free, then what was behind this soul-force comes out in all its light, 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 and life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/soul-force-and-the-fourfold-personality#p2</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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!~</divcenter>
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/2923/bhakti-yoga-andself-vaishnavismconsecration#p36p18</ref>
== Challenges ==
<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p15~</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 19 August 1953)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/19-august-1953#p32</refcenter>
Certainly, the supramental manifestation does not bring peace, purity, force, power of knowledge only; these give the necessary conditions for the final realisation, are part of it, but Love, Beauty and Ananda are the essence of its fulfilment. And although the supreme Ananda comes with the supreme fulfilment, there is no real reason why there should not be the love and Ananda and beauty of the way also. Some have found that even at an early stage before there was any other experience. But the secret of it is in the heart, not the mind—the heart that opens its inner door and through it the radiance of the soul looks out in a blaze of trust and self-giving. Before that inner fire the debates of the mind and its difficulties wither away and the path however long or arduous becomes a sunlit road not only towards but through love and Ananda. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-difficulties-of-yoga#p11</ref>
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