Changes

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

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

== The All-Beautiful Absolute ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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</ref>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">"Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi.... Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come." (The Mother, 12 May 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-may-1951#p1</ref> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Bhakti and the heart's call for the Divine have a truth—it is the truth of the divine Love and Ananda. The will for Tapasya has in it a truth—it is the truth of the Spirit's mastery over its members. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The musician and poet stand for a truth, it is the truth of the expression of the Spirit through beauty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. There is a truth behind the mental Affirmer; even there is a truth behind the mental doubter, the Russellian, though far behind him—the truth of the denial of false forms. Even behind the two vital personalities there is a truth, the truth of the possession of the inner and outer worlds—not by the ego but by the Divine. That is the harmonisation for which our Yoga stands—but it cannot be achieved by any outward arrangement, it can only be achieved by going inside and looking, willing and acting from the psychic and from the spiritual centre. For the truth of the being is there and the secret of Harmony also is there.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-adwaita-of-shankaracharya#p25</ref> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">It is, then, in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">highest mind of thought and light and will or it 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> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">There is, behind all things, a divine beauty, a divine harmony: it is with this that we must come into contact; it is this that we must express. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p60</ref> </span>

<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</ref> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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#p28</ref> </span>

<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</ref> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...to be in such a state of purity and beauty that you do not perceive ugliness and evil—it is like something that does not touch you because it does not exist in you. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-49#p5</ref> </span>

<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</ref> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">...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 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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> </span>

<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</ref> </span>

<div style="color: #000000;">...a girl who had no education whatever; she was a dancer and danced tolerably well. After she took up Yoga, she danced only for friends; but her dancing attained a 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 most beautiful language. But there were ups and downs in her Yoga, and when she was in a good condition, she wrote beautifully, but otherwise was quite dull and stupid and uncreative. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p7</ref> </div>

<div style="color: #000000;">...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!"</div>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Only those who have developed a little artistic taste, have travelled much and seen many things have widened their consciousness and they are no longer so sectarian. But it is very difficult to pull a person out of the specialised tastes of his race—I am not even speaking now of the country, I am speaking of the race. It is very difficult. It is there, you know, hidden right at the bottom, in the subconscious, and it comes back without your even noticing it, quite spontaneously, quite naturally. Even on this very point: the woman of your race is always much more beautiful than the woman of other races—spontaneously, it is the spontaneous taste. That's what I mean. So, you must rise above that. I am not even speaking of those who find everything that's outside their own family or caste very ugly and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">bad. I am not speaking at all of these people. I am not even speaking of those for whom one country is much more beautiful than another. And yet, these people have already risen above the altogether ordinary way of thinking. I am not even speaking of a question of race.... It is very difficult, one must go right down, right down within oneself into the subconscious—and even farther—to discover the root of these things. Therefore, if you want to have the sense of beauty in itself which is quite independent of all these tastes, the taste of the race—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">you must have a universal consciousness</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. Otherwise how can you have it? You will always have preferences. Even if these are not active and conscious preferences, they are subconscious preferences, instincts. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">So, to know true beauty independent of all form, one must rise above all form</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">. And once you have known it beyond every form, you can recognise it in any form whatsoever, indifferently. And that becomes very interesting. (The Mother, 21 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/21-october-1953#p61</ref> </span>

<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</ref> </div>

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

== Physical Practices ==

<div style="color: #000000;">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> </div>

<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</ref> </div>

<div style="color: #000000;">If you said to yourself, my children, "We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express the divine Will in the world", then for this instrument to be perfect, it must be cultivated, educated, trained. It must not be left like a shapeless piece of stone. When you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel it. Well, it is the same thing. When with your brain and body you want to make a beautiful instrument for the Divine, you must cultivate it, sharpen it, refine it, complete what is missing, perfect what is there. (The Mother, 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/13-may-1953#p18</ref> </div>

<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</ref> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">For the work simply aspire for the Force to use you, put yourself inwardly in relation with the Mother when doing it and make it your aim to be the instrument for the expression of beauty without regard to personal fame or the praise and blame of others. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/mental-development-and-sadhana#p18</ref> </span>

<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</ref> </div>

<div style="color: #000000;">To think constantly of the harmony of the body, of the beauty of the movements, of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkward. You can obtain a rhythm of movement and gesture which is very exceptional. (The Mother, 17 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/17-july-1957#p11</ref> </div>

<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</ref> </div>

<div style="color: #000000;">One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch. (The Mother, 26 December 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/26-december-1956#p23</ref> </div>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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> </span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">You carry with you, around you, in you, the atmosphere created by your actions, and if what you do is beautiful, good and harmonious, your atmosphere is beautiful, good and harmonious; on the other hand, if you live in a sordid selfishness, unscrupulous self-interest, ruthless bad will, that is what you will breathe every moment of your life and that means misery, constant uneasiness; it means ugliness that despairs of its own ugliness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p106</ref> </span>

<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</ref></span>

<div style="color: #000000;">And this vital, if you place it in a bad environment, it will imitate the bad environment and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree. If you place it in the presence of something wonderfully beautiful, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else and give itself wholly. It will give itself more completely than any other part of the being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and enthusiasm. When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrary, and it does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesn't care the least bit. But when it gives itself to something beautiful, it does not calculate either, it will give itself entirely without knowing whether it will do good or harm to it. It is a very precious instrument. (The Mother, 9 September 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/9-september-1953#p22</ref></div>

<div style="color: #000000;">One believes he has his own way of thinking. Not at all. It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books he has read or on the mood he is in. It depends also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you; it depends on whether there is sunshine or drain! You are not aware of it, but you think all kinds of things, completely different according to a heap of things which have nothing to do with you! (The Mother, 28 July 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p51</ref> </div>

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

== For Children ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">I have said that from a young age children should be taught to respect good health, physical strength and balance. The great importance of beauty must also be emphasised. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes a rational method of culture from the very beginning of its existence can realise its own harmony and thus become fit to manifest beauty. When we speak of the other aspects of an integral education, we shall see what inner conditions are to be fulfilled so that this beauty can one day be manifested <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physical-education#p12</ref></span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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> </span>

<div style="color: #000000;">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></div>

<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</ref> </div>

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

== In Art ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than the aspect of beauty of the Divine manifestation. Perhaps, looking from this standpoint, there will be found very few true artists; but still there are some and these can very well be considered as Yogis. For like a Yogi an artist goes into deep contemplation to await and receive his inspiration. To </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">create something truly beautiful, he [Yogi] has first to see it within, to realise it as a whole in his inner consciousness;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">only when so found, seen, held within, can he execute it outwardly; he creates according to this greater inner vision. This too is a kind of yogic discipline, for by it he enters into intimate communion with the inner worlds. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p19</ref></span>

<div style="color: #000000;">In fact people who work in order to develop their taste, to refine it... is for the cultivation of their senses, which is a very different thing. It is like the artist, you know, who trains his eyes to appreciate forms and colours, lines, the composition of things, the harmony found in 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. That's altogether something else. (The Mother, 23 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/23-february-1955#p5</ref></div>

<div style="color: #000000;">If you ask me, I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists! A word depends upon the way it is used, upon what one puts into it. One may put into it all that one wants. For instance, in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the forms of trees so that in the landscape they make a beautiful picture. By all kinds of trimmings, props, etc. they adjust the forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in the landscape. A tree is planted in a garden at the spot where it is needed and moreover, it is given the form that's required for it to go well with the whole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful things. You have but to take a photograph of the garden, it is a real picture, it is so good. Well, I certainly call the man an artist. One may call him a gardener but he is an artist.... All those who have a sure and developed sense of harmony in all its forms, and 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></div>

<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</ref></div>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">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>

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

= Challenges =

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">An evolution from the Inconscient need not be a painful one if there is no resistance; it can be a deliberately slow and beautiful efflorescence of the Divine. One ought to be able to see how beautiful outward Nature can be and usually is, although it is itself apparently "inconscient". Why should the growth of consciousness in inward Nature be attended by so much ugliness and evil spoiling the beauty of the outward creation? Because of a perversity born from the Ignorance, which came in with Life and increased in Mind—that is the Falsehood, the Evil that was born because of the starkness of the Inconscient's sleep separating its action from the luminosity of the secret Conscient that was all the time within it. But it need not have been so except for the overriding Will of the Supreme which meant that the possibility of Perversion by inconscience and ignorance should be manifested in order to be eliminated through being given their chance, since all possibility has to manifest somewhere: once it is eliminated, the Divine Manifestation in Matter will be greater than it otherwise could be because it will gather all the possibilities involved in this difficult creation and not some of them as in an easier and less strenuous creation might naturally be. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/spiritual-evolution-and-the-supramental#p33</ref> </span>

<div style="color: #000000;">"Ours is the most material world, but it is not necessarily 'low down', at least, not for that reason; if it is low down, it is because it is obscure and ignorant, not because it is material. It is a mistake to make 'matter' a synonym for obscurity and ignorance. And the material world too is not the only world in which we live: it is rather one of many in which we exist simultaneously, and in one way the most important of them all. For this world of matter is the point of concentration of all the worlds; it is the field of concretisation of all the worlds; it is the place where all the worlds will have to manifest. At present it is disharmonious and obscure; but that is only an accident, a false start. One day it will become beautiful, rhythmic, full of light; for that is the consummation for which it was made." (The Mother, 7 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/7-april-1951#p16</ref></div>

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

== Traditional ==

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

== Physical ==

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the dull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">spirit.</span> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-liberation-of-the-nature#p5</ref>

<div style="color: #000000;">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. (The Mother, 19 February 1958) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-february-1958#p39</ref></div>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">It is the physical centre—sex is only one of its movements. Naturally, if the sex is active (instead of giving place to Beauty and Ananda) and if the lower movements are active, it forms an obstacle to the establishment of the higher consciousness. But the higher can descend, if there is at all an opening, even before the lower movements have definitely gone—it has then to complete the work of displacing them. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p102</ref></span>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">If it [the vital] admires all beautiful things, not women only, without desire—then there would be no harm [in admiring women]. But specially applied to women, it is a relic of the "sex-appeal". <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p143</ref></span>

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

== Vital ==

<div style="color: #000000;">Now I do not know on what grounds one could convert them [beings of the vital]. What would be the point of support? I do not find it. Even in the greatest. That is, some of these beings will not disappear until hatred disappears from the earth.... One might put it the other way round. One might say that hatred will disappear from the earth when those beings disappear; but, for the reason I have just given, the power to make light spring forth in the place of darkness, beauty in the place of ugliness, goodness instead of evil, that power man possesses, the Asura does not. Therefore it is man who will do that work, it is he who will change, it is he who will transform his earth and it is he who will compel the Asura to flee into other worlds or to dissolve. After that, all will be quiet. There you are. (The Mother, 10 June 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/10-june-1953#p19</ref></div>

<div style="color: #000000;">But is the Divine then something so terrible, horrible or repellent that the idea of its entry into the physical, its divinising of the human should create this shrinking, refusal, revolt or fear? I can understand that the unregenerate vital attached to its own petty sufferings and pleasures, to the brief ignorant drama of life, should shrink from what will change it. But why should a God-lover, a God-seeker, a sadhak fear the divinisation of the consciousness! Why should he object to becoming one in nature with what he seeks, why should he recoil from sādṛśya-mukti? Behind this fear there are usually two causes: first, there is the feeling of the vital that it will have to cease to be obscure, crude, muddy, egoistic, unrefined (spiritually), full of stimulating desires and small pleasures and interesting sufferings (for it shrinks even from the Ananda which will replace them); next, there is some vague ignorant idea of the mind, due, I suppose, to the ascetic tradition, that the divine nature is something cold, bare, empty, austere, aloof, without the glorious riches of the egoistic human vital life. As if there were not a divine vital and as if that divine vital is not itself and, when it gets the means to manifest, will not make the life on earth also infinitely more full of beauty, love, radiance, warmth, fire, intensity and divine passion and capacity for bliss than the present impotent, suffering, pettily and transiently excited and soon tired vitality of the still so imperfect human creation! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-yoga-and-vaishnavism#p36</ref></div>

<div style="color: #000000;">The danger of the vital is that of taking hold of love, Ananda, the sense of Beauty and using it for its own purposes, for vital human relations or interchange or else some kind of mere enjoyment of its own. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p15</ref></div>

<div style="color: #000000;">...when one sees something beautiful, instead of admiring, loving, being happy, wishing that it grows and progresses (which is the true divine movement), one feels a sort of anger, rage, one wants to destroy, one wants to damage. This is the movement of the adverse forces. Unfortunately, this is quite spontaneous in many people, and even in children... the instinct to destroy and spoil. Well, it is the presence of the adverse forces. And these are forces which come directly from the vital world and incarnate on earth in human consciousness, and at times also in animal consciousness. It is the hatred for things beautiful, for what is pure, what is good, what is true. It is the hatred of the divine Presence. And naturally, with this hatred, the will to destroy and damage, to spoil, mar, deform, disfigure. One step more and it is the will to inflict suffering. And all this is the influence of the adverse forces, which acts quite spontaneously in the inconscient, in the subconscient, in half-consciousness. It is only the pure and luminous consciousness which can oppose this and prevent it from acting. But the state of the world is such that this is a constant battle. Very few people can escape from this hold. Everyone generally has a tiny little corner in him—at times quite small, at times bigger, sometimes quite unconscious, sometimes a little conscious, sometimes superbly, completely conscious—which likes destroying, likes spoiling. And the state of the world is such that when one gives way to that, one is helped by an onrush of forces which lie waiting for the opportunity, waiting for the moment to be able to manifest, which need human collaboration to be able to manifest and seek it. As soon as the opportunity comes, they rush forth, throwing out a formidable amount of energy. And so one feels stronger as soon as one begins to do evil. That is why it is easier, whilst if one wants to react, refuses to become the instrument of these forces, one must fight hard, be very strong, very straight, very pure, very sincere, and above all, not egoistic. One must not turn round upon oneself, and must never be afraid. And this is not easy. That is, the world is in such a state that in order never to be moved by the adverse forces—the forces of darkness, destruction, wickedness, hatred—one must be a hero, a true hero, who is not afraid of blows and fears nothing, who never turns round upon himself and doesn't have that kind of self-pity which is so despicable a thing. That is why... in order not to do evil, think evil, wish evil, never, under any circumstances, one must be a hero It is not always easy to be a hero. The days one is tired, the days one wants to rest, not to make any effort, one slips, everything slips down. (The Mother, 19 August 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/19-august-1953#p32</ref></div>

<div style="color: #000000;">The unselfish movement, uncalculating, is one of the most beautiful forms of psychic consciousness in the world. But the higher one rises in the scale of mental activity, the rarer it becomes. For with intelligence come all the skill and cleverness, and corruption, calculation. For instance, when a rose blossoms it does so spontaneously, for the joy of being beautiful, smelling sweet, expressing all its joy of living, and it does not calculate, it has nothing to gain out of it: it does so spontaneously, in the joy of being and living. Take a human being, well, apart from a very few exceptions, the moment his mind is active he tries to get some advantage out of his beauty and cleverness; he wants it to bring him something, either men's admiration or even much more sordid gains yet. Consequently, from the psychic point of view, the rose is better than human beings. (The Mother, 26 August 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/26-august-1953#p34</ref>

</div>

<div style="color: #000000;">Take for instance... you see something which is—which seems to you or is—very beautiful, very harmonious, very pleasant; if you have the true consciousness, you experience this joy of seeing, of being in a conscious contact with something very beautiful, very harmonious, and then that's all. It stops there. You have the joy of it—that such a thing exists, you see. And this is quite common among artists who have a sense of beauty. For example, an artist may see a beautiful creature and have the joy of observing the beauty, grace, harmony of movement and all that, and that's all. It stops there. He is perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied, because he has seen something beautiful. An ordinary consciousness, altogether ordinary, dull like all ordinary consciousness—as soon as it sees something beautiful, whether it be an object or a person, hop! "I want it!" It is deplorable, you know. And into the bargain it doesn't even have the joy of the beauty, because it has the anguish of desire. It misses that and has nothing in exchange, because there is nothing pleasant in desiring anything. It only puts you in an unpleasant state, that's all. (The Mother, 9 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-february-1955#p7</ref></div>

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">This world is a chaos in which darkness and light, false-hood and truth, death and life, ugliness and beauty, hate and love are so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the other, still more impossible to disentangle them and put an end to an embrace which has the horror of a pitiless struggle, all the more keen because veiled, especially in human consciousness where the conflict changes into an anguish for knowledge, for power, for conquest,—a combat obscure and painful, all the more atrocious because it seems to be without issue, but capable of a solution on a level above the sensations and feelings and ideas, beyond the domain of the mind—in the Divine Consciousness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-divine-working-in-the-universe#p9</ref> </span>