= How to Cultivate Beauty? =
Let beauty be your constant ideal.The beauty of the soulThe beauty of sentiments == General Understanding The beauty of Beauty ==thoughtsThe physical world is the world beauty of form and the perfection of form is actionThe beauty '''.''' Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection workso that nothing comes out of form, through harmony and a sense your hands which is not an expression of the ideal which uplifts pure and leads towards something higherharmonious beauty. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p2p3</ref>
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On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through From beauty to greater beauty, on the mental plane through knowledgefrom joy to intenser joy, on the vital plane through power and on by an especial adjustment of the psychic plane through love. When we rise high enoughsenses"—yes, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in would be the normal course of a single consciousnessdivine manifestation, full of lovehowever gradual, luminous, powerful, beautiful, containing all, pervading allin Matter. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1528/thespiritual-divineevolution-working-inand-the-universesupramental#p6p34</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">For There is, behind all joythings, a divine beauty, love, peace, delight are out-flowings from the Ananda Brahman,—all delight of the spirit, the intellect, the imagination, aesthetic sense, ethical aspiration and satisfaction, action, life, the body. And through all ways of our being the Divine can touch us and make use of them to awaken and liberate the spirita divine harmony: it is with this that we must come into contact; it is this that we must express. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2412/the-ananda-brahmanarts#p4p60</ref></div>
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Spiritual beauty The beginning of the heart's attraction to the Divine may be impersonal, the touch of an impersonal joy in something universal or transcendent that has revealed itself directly or indirectly to our emotional or our aesthetic being or to our capacity of spiritual felicity. That which we thus grow aware of is the Ananda Brahman, the bliss existence. There is an adoration of an impersonal Delight and Beauty, of a contagious powerpure and an infinite perfection to which we can give no name or form, a moved attraction of the soul to some ideal and infinite Presence, Power, existence in the world or beyond it, which in some way becomes psychologically or spiritually sensible to us and then more and more intimate and real. That is the call, the touch of the bliss existence upon us. Beauty Then to have always the joy and nearness of its presence, to know what it is , so as to satisfy the joyous offering intellect and the intuitional mind of its constant reality, to put our passive and, so far as we can manage it, our active, our inner immortal and even our outer mortal being into perfect harmony with it, grow into a necessity of Natureour living. And to open ourselves to it is what we feel to be the one true happiness, to live into it the sole real perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1224/artsthe-ananda-brahman#p13p2</ref>
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Beauty is a great power. Beauty does not get its full power except when it is surrendered Be sincere and absolute in your consecration to the Divineand your life will become harmonious and beautiful. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1514/beautysincerity#p8p9</ref>
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To bring One must be very much higher on the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into scale to see that what one does is ugly. One must already have at the world iscore of oneself a kind of foreknowledge of what beauty, nobility, indeedgenerosity are, to be able to suffer from the whole crown and essence of our Yogafact that one doesn't carry them within oneself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2903/divine-love-psychic-love-and-humanconjugate-loveverses#p1p103</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">It is ... if one deeply feels the soul in us which turns always towards Truth, Good beauty of Nature and Beautycommunes with her, because it is by these things that it itself grows can help in stature; widening the restconsciousness. (The Mother, their opposites, are a necessary part of experience, but have to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the being.9 November 1969) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2116/the-origin-and-remedy-of9-falsehoodnovember-error-wrong-and-evil1969#p14p4</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">There ...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 this not beautiful for another. The sense of beautyis 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 dignity 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 soul—a thing stories about which I am very sensitive. It is his life as a thing that moves me and evokes student), someone asked him in front of me : "Well, when you marry, whom will you marry?"—"Ah! a great respect alwaysgirl 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... <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/july-1958-1#p2</ref>"Only the women of my country are beautiful!"
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> 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...this beauty But it is very difficult to pull a person out of soul that is visible in the face, this kind specialised tastes of his race—I am not even speaking now of dignitythe country, this harmony I am speaking of integral realisationthe race. It is very difficult. When It is there, you know, hidden right at the soul becomes visible bottom, in the physicalsubconscious, and it comes back without your even noticing it gives this dignity, this beautyquite spontaneously, quite naturally. Even on this majestyvery point: the woman of your race is always much more beautiful than the woman of other races—spontaneously, it is the majesty spontaneous taste. That's what I mean. So, you must rise above that. I am not even speaking of those who find everything that comes from one's being outside their own family or caste very ugly and bad. I am not speaking at all of these people. I am not even speaking of those for whom one country is much more beautiful than another. And yet, these people have already risen above the Tabernaclealtogether ordinary way of thinking. I am not even speaking of a question of race.... ThenIt 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 that . Therefore, if you want to have no particular beauty put on a the sense of eternal beautyin itself which is quite independent of all these tastes, the taste of the race— you must have a universal consciousness . Otherwise how can you have it the eternal ? You will always have preferences. Even if these are not active and conscious preferences, they are subconscious preferences, instincts. So, to know true beautyindependent of all form, one must rise above all form . And once you have known it beyond every form, you can recognise it in any form whatsoever, indifferently. And that becomes very interesting. (The Mother, 21 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1505/july21-1958october-11953#p2p61</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">LoveYou can hear poor music, even music from which one would like to run away, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental determinates yet you can, not for its outward self but because of what is behind, enjoy it. You do not lose the Divine Delight of Existencedistinction between good music and bad music, and we can see at once but you pass through either into that these are of which it expresses. For there is nothing in the very stuff world which has not its ultimate truth and nature of that Delight: they support in the Divine. And if you are not alien impositions on stopped by the being of the Absolute appearance, physical or moral or creations supported by it aesthetic, but outside it; they get behind and are truths of its beingin touch with the Spirit, the Divine Soul in things, native to its consciousnessyou can reach beauty and delight even through what affects the ordinary sense only as something poor, powers of its force of existencepainful or discordant. (The Mother, 28 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2103/indeterminates28-cosmicapril-determinations-and-the-indeterminable1929#p17p18</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">All Beauty in the world is there the beauty ...to be positively conscious of the Belovedsupreme Good and supreme Beauty behind all things, which sustains all things and all forms of beauty have enables them to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves exist. When you see Him, you are able to the sublimating perceive Him behind this mask and transfiguring power this distortion; even this ugliness, this wickedness, this evil is a disguise of the unveiled Divine PerfectionSomething which is essentially beautiful or good, luminous, pure. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2310/the-ascent-ofaphorism-the-sacrifice-ii49#p16p9</ref></div>
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Beauty It is not sufficient 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 itselfthe psychic as love, in the mind as knowledge, in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty it wants means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to become divinethe Asura. Pure sense of beauty can be acquired only through a great purification. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1513/beautyindia#p13p224</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">Beauty is When the adverse forces are dealt with in the aesthetic instinct of manright way, all that is ugly and the good false disappears to leave place only for what is his ethical instinct, true and these two things are very important in human education and growth; beautiful. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0715/25adverse-may-1955forces#p39p28</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">It [aesthetic conscience] is To accept the consciousness uglinesses of beauty. Aesthetic means the lower nature under the pretext that which concerns beauty, artthey exist―if this is what is meant by realism―does not form part of the sadhana. 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 Our aim is beautiful or not; to accept these things and into the bargainenjoy them, it makes no difference at all but to get rid of 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 create 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 shapeslife of spiritual beauty and perfection." So, the first kind do not have an aesthetic conscience, the second haveThat cannot be done as long as we accept these uglinesses.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0714/1desires-juneimpulses-1955and-self-control#p3p8</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">...from the supramental point of view beauty and harmony are as important as any other expression of the Divine. But they should not be isolated, set up apart from all other relations, taken out from the ensemble; they should be one with the expression of life as a whole. People have the habit of saying, "Oh, it is an artist!" as if an artist should not be a man among other men but must be an extraordinary being belonging to a class by itself, and his art too something extraordinary and apart, not to be confused with the other ordinary things of the world. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p15</ref></div> == Different Ways of Perceiving Beauty == He means that it [seeking for beauty] is instinctive , that it isn't rational, it doesn't depend on the domain of reason, it is something instinctive. We have such a sense state of beauty and love beauty without even knowing why, purity and there are things which give the sense of beauty without our knowing why, without our reasoning. It is instinctive. He says that this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic sense. It is absolutely obvious that a child, who sees a pretty flower and has the feeling of beauty he does you do not know why, would never be able to tell you that it's because the form is balanced perceive ugliness and the colours are lovely; he cannot explain it. Therefore it is not rational, it is altogether instinctive, it is an attraction, an impulse drawing one towards something, a harmony one feels, without being able to define it. But most often it evil—it is like that. It is rarely that one is able to say, "This thing is beautiful because of that, because of this," and to give a whole lecture on the beauty of something. Usually, one simply feels that it is beautiful; if later one wonders, "Why did I feel it is beautiful?" then, by making an effort with one's intelligence one may succeed in understanding it; but at the beginning one is does not pre-occupied with the why, one feels that it is beautiful, and that's all, one is satisfied with that. 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 touch 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) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/1-june-1955#p21</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> It [beauty] is a kind of harmony which you experience much more than think, and the true suprarational relation with beauty is does 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 instinct is sometimes very gross and very imperfect in its expression. One can experience an aesthetic pleasure (let us call it that) exist in seeing something which is truly beautiful and at the same time something else which is not beautiful, but which gives one some sort of pleasure, because it is mixed, because one's aesthetic instinct is not pure, it is mixed with all kinds of sensations which are very crude and untrained. So it is here, as he says, that reason has its role, that it comes in to explain why a thing is beautiful, to educate the taste; but it is not final, and reason is not the final judge; it can very well make mistakes, only it is a little higher, as judgment, than that of a completely infrarational being who has no reason and no understanding of things. It is a stage. It is a stage, that's what he says, it is a stage. But if you want to realise true beauty, you must go beyond that, very far beyond this stage... At first your sense of beauty is instinctive, impulsive, infrarational, lacking light, wanting reason, simply without any true understanding, and so, because the origin of the aesthetic sense is infrarational, it is understood, one always says this: "There's no disputing tastes and colours." You know, there are all kinds of popular proverbs which say that the appreciation of the beautiful is not a matter of reasoning, everyone likes a particular thing he doesn't know why, he takes pleasure in looking at a thing, and this pleasure cannot be discussed. Well, this is the infrarational stage of the aesthetic sense. (The Mother, 1 June 1955)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0710/1aphorism-june-195549#p24p5</ref>
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The higher principle ...the realisation that everything is a manifestation of beauty the Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite, immutable in his total perfection and in his absolute reality. That is why, by conquering our mind and its ignorant and false perceptions we can, through all things, enter into contact with this Supreme Truth which is a suprarational principle also the Supreme Beauty and therefore reason understands nothing at the Supreme Love, beyond all about itour mental and vital notions of beauty and ugliness, the good and the bad. If you want 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 judge art them by reason you are sure to say foolish thingsour intellect. (The Mother, 25 May 1955)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0710/25-mayaphorism-195548#p37p3</ref>
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To understand truly what Sri Aurobindo means here, you must yourself have had For the spiritual man the experience mind's dream of transcending reason and establishing your consciousness perfect beauty is realised in a world higher than the mental intelligence. For from up there you can see, firstlyan eternal love, beauty and delight that everything that exists in the universe has no dependence and is an expression of Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) and therefore equal behind any appearance whatever, if you go deeply enough, you can perceive Sachchidananda, which is the principle of Supreme Beautyall objective appearances.. 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/cwmcwsa/1023/aphorismthe-threefold-19life#p3p20</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">...the supramental beauty is something much higher a girl who had no education whatever; she was a dancer and more perfectdanced tolerably well. After she took up Yoga, she danced only for friends; it is but her dancing attained a depth of expression and beauty untainted by any ugliness which was not there before. And although she was not educated, she began to write wonderful things; for she had visions and it does not need expressed them in the proximity of ugliness in order to look most beautifullanguage. When the supramental forces descend into Matter But there were ups and downs in her Yoga, and when she was in order to manifesta good condition, she wrote beautifully, this perfect beauty will express itself but otherwise was quite naturally dull and spontaneously in all formsstupid and uncreative. (The Mother, 6 March 193328 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1603/628-marchjuly-19331929#p4p7</ref> </div>
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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 close and dynamic effects of experience vivid discovery 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 fearor self, the hunger and pain of our poor and darkened mental and vital and physical existence. He will get straining towards 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 <nowiki>; every darkness will be converted into a pregnant glory of light is behind life and the discords which the above mind creates between Truth and Good and Beauty, Power and Love and Knowledge will disappear on the eternal summit, in passion for the infinite extensions where they are always one. </nowiki> In Eternal or the free infinity of the self-delight of Sachchidananda there is a play of the divine ChildInfinite, 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 hunger for a timeless forever.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/gnosis-freedom and-ananda#p18</ref> == The All-Beautiful Absolute == The master and Mover wideness of our works is the One, the Universal consciousness and Supreme, existence not limited by 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 narrow moulds of all beingsintellect, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light character and the Guide, the Allpast life-Beautiful and All-Blissfulaims of humanity, the Beloved and thirst for union with the Lover. He is Divine or for the Cosmic Spirit pure bliss 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 beauty of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal spiritual existence is made out of his substance not tied down to mental and vital values must be dismissed as a superfluous dream for which there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. 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 neither place nor necessity here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2328/themorality-master-of-theand-workyoga#p1p20</ref>
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... that there this vital is a strange creature. It is nothing a being of passion, enthusiasm and naturally of desire; but That—something we cannot name, cannot definefor example, cannot describeit is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiring, but something we can feel sensing anything greater and can more and more becomenobler than itself. A Something that is more perfect than all And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the perfectionsbeing, more beautiful than all the beauties if there is a movement having an exceptional value, more marvellous than all the marvelswell, so that even the totality of all that exists cannot express it. And there is nothing but That. And may get enthusiastic and it is not capable of giving itself with complete devotion—with a Something floating in nothingness: there generosity that is nothing but That. (The Mothernot found, for example, 8 October 1966)<ref>http://incarnatewordin the mental domain nor in the physical.It has that fullness in/cwm/16/8-october-1966#p7</ref> == Beauty in Love == The general power of Delight is love action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beautythrow itself wholly without reserve into what it does. The God-lover is the universal lover Heroes are always people who have a strong vital, and he embraces when the All-blissful and All-beautiful. When universal love has seized on his heartvital becomes passionate about something, it is the decisive sign that the Divine has taken possession of himno longer a reasonable being but a warrior <nowiki>; and when he has the vision of the All-beautiful everywhere it is wholly involved in its action and can feel at all times the bliss of his embraceperform exceptional things because it does not calculate, does not reason, does not say "One must take precautions, one must not do this, must not do that is the decisive sign that he has taken possession of the Divine. Union is the consummation of love" It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, but it is this mutual possession that gives itself totally. Therefore, it can do magnificent things if it at once the acme and the largest reach of its intensity. It is guided in the foundation of oneness in ecstasyright way. <(The Mother, 9 September 1953) ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2405/the-delight-of9-theseptember-divine1953#p8p19</ref>
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Love A converted vital is a passion and an all-powerful instrument. And sometimes it seeks for two thingsgets converted by something exceptionally beautiful, eternity and intensity, and in the relation of the Lover and Beloved the seeking for eternity and for intensity is instinctive and self-bornmorally or materially. Love is a seeking for mutual possession, and When it is here that the demand for mutual possession becomes absolute. Passing beyond desire of possession which means a differencewitnesses, it is a seeking for oneness, and it is here that the idea of onenessexample, 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 scene of the Alltotal self-beautiful. Love is a child and a seeker of Delightabnegation, and it is here that it finds the highest possible ecstasy both of the heartuncalculating self-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 giving one—of those things so exceedingly rare but splendidly beautiful—it can be carried away by it find its real and its utter satisfaction. Therefore , it is here most that can be seized by an ambition to do the turning of human emotion God-wards finds its full meaning and discovers all the truth of which love is the human symbolsame thing. It begins by an ambition, 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 absoluteends with a consecration. (The Mother, eternal and unalloyed.9 September 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2405/the9-godwardseptember-emotions1953#p14p20</ref>
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Psychic love 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 quite satisfyingfalse, wrong, egoistic, contrary to the Divine Truth, Divine Will, Divine Purity and it 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 change even the vital love into something great develop and beautifulbe permanently there. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2930/divine-lovethe-psychic-lovebeing-and-humanits-role-in-lovesadhana#p15p5</ref>
== Beauty in Psychic Practices ==
What is meant in the terminology of the Yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psyche All those who have been able to create something beautiful 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 useful have always on the good, true and beautiful, finally becomes ready and strong enough been persons who have known how to turn the nature towards the Divinediscipline themselves. It can then come entirely forward(The Mother, 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. 23 June 1934) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3016/the-psychic-being23-and-its-role-injune-sadhana1934#p1p3</ref>
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...the psychic entity in us persists The man of genius may use anything at all and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation make something beautiful because he has genius; but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections give this genius a perfect instrument and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface beinghe will make something wonderful. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to itTake a great musician; well, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame. This spiritual stuff is immaculate and luminous even with a wretched piano andmissing notes, because it is perfectly luminoushe will produce something beautiful; but give him a good piano, it is immediatelywell-tuned, intimately, directly aware of truth of being and truth of nature; it is deeply conscious of truth and good and beauty because truth and good and beauty are akin to its own native character, forms of he will do something that is inherent in its own substancestill more beautiful. It The consciousness is aware also of all that contradicts these things, of all that deviates from its own native character, of falsehood and evil and the ugly and the unseemly; same in either case but for expression it does not become these things nor is it touched or changed by these opposites of itself which so powerfully affect its outer instrumentation of mind, life and body. For the soul, the permanent being in us, puts forth and uses mind, life and needs a good instrument—a body as its instrumentswith mental, undergoes the envelopment of their conditionsvital, but it is other psychic and greater than its membersphysical capacities.(The Mother, 15 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2204/the15-triplejanuary-transformation1951#p3p11</ref>
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The plants are very psychicIf you said to yourself, my children, but they can "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 only by silence and beautymust be cultivated, educated, trained. It must not be left like a shapeless piece of stone. FormWhen you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, colouryou chisel it. Well, scent + something else which it is indefinable [constitute the beauty of flowers]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/cwsacwm/2805/science13-andmay-yoga1953#p78p18</ref>
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There is a psychic world—a sort of Heaven of peace and beauty must be order and harmonyin work. It Even what is also apparently the most insignificant thing must be done with perfect perfection, with a place sense of rest for the soul between two incarnations in which it absorbs its past experiences cleanliness, beauty, harmony and becomes ready for another birthorder.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2814/theprogress-and-psychicperfection-being#p100</ref> == Beauty in Art == True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts-work#p15p26</ref>
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True art is intended For the work simply aspire for the Force to express the beautifuluse you, but put yourself inwardly in close intimacy relation with the universal movement. The greatest nations Mother when doing it and the most cultured races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; make it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem your aim to know that art should be the expression of instrument for the Divine in life and through life . In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p14</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> ...an artist should be capable of entering into communion with the Divine and of receiving inspiration about what form without regard to personal fame or forms ought to be used to express the divine beauty in matter. And thus, if it does that, art can be a means of realisation of beauty, and at the same time a teacher of what beauty ought to be, that is, art should be an element in the education of men's taste , of young and old, praise and it is the teaching blame of true beauty, that is, the essential beauty which expresses the divine truthothers. 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/cwmcwsa/0531/28mental-octoberdevelopment-1953#p4</ref> == Beauty in Vital == <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. (The Mother, 1 March 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951sadhana#p30p18</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">As soon as there Beautiful conduct—not politeness which is organic lifean outer thing, the vital element comes inhowever valuable, —but beauty founded upon a spiritual realisation of unity and it is this vital element which gives to flowers the sense of beauty. It is not perhaps individualised in the sense we understand itharmony projected into life, but it is a sense certainly part of the species and the species always tries to realise itperfect perfection. (The Mother, 1 March 1951)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0431/1imperfections-marchand-1951#p34 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1periods-marchof-1951arrest#p34p12</ref></div> = Relatable Experiences = <div style="color: #000000;">...one feels such a deep detachment for all things in the world, such a great need to find something else, an imperious need to find something which is truly beautiful, truly fresh, truly good... then, quite naturally, this brings you to a spiritual aspiration. (The Mother, 9 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/9-april-1951#p18</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">...if To think constantly of the harmony of the seeking is a lasting and major drive in Naturebody, then all these objections and recommendations are futile. For this drive will fulfil itselfof the beauty of the movements, this hidden reality will draw of not doing anything that is ungraceful and draw us till we achieve itawkward. 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 You can obtain a rhythm of movement and Beauty of gesture which they have had the vision, the intimationis very exceptional. (The Mother, the formless attraction or else the passing touch or glimpse.17 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2809/morality17-andjuly-yoga1957#p23p11</ref></div>
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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..this spiritual bliss If one is here also in our heartsvery attentive, one can very easily find these ugly corners. It is hidden Suppose you have a beautiful experience, that suddenly in from answer to your aspiration a great light comes; you feel all flooded with joy, force, light, beauty, and have the toil 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 surface mind which catches only at weak 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 flawed translations 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 into various mental, vital and physical forms 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 joy movements accompanying the cessation of existencethe experience. But 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 once grown sufficiently subtle and pure not kept up, in its receptions this sense that mentally, instead of being immobile and not limited by the grosser nature of our outward responses attentive, something has begun to existenceask, we can take "Wait a reflection of minute, what is this experience? What does it mean?", begun to try to find an explanation (what it which will wear perhaps wholly or predominantly calls an "understanding"). Or maybe in the vital something has begun to enjoy the hue of whatever experience: "How pleasant it is strongest , how I would like it to grow, how good if it were constant, how...." Or something in our nature. the physical has said, "Oh! It may present itself first as is a yearning for some universal Beauty which we feel in Nature and man and in all bit hard to endure that , how long am I going to be able to keep it?" It is around us; or we may have the intuition of some transcendent Beauty of which perhaps not as obvious as all apparent beauty here this, but it is only a symbol wee bit hidden like this, somewhere. You will always find one of these three things or others analogous. That Then, it is there the lantern is needed: where is the weak point? where is how it may come to those in whom the aesthetic being egoism? where is developed and insistent and the instincts desire? where is that old dirt we do not want any longer? where is that thing whichturns back upon itself instead of giving itself, opening itself, losing itself? which turns back upon itself, tries to take advantage of what has happened, when they find form wants to appropriate to itself the fruit of expressionthe experience? Or rather which is too weak, too hard, make too rigid to be able to follow the poet and artistmovement?... It is that, you are predominantnow 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/cwsacwm/2404/the26-anandaapril-brahman1951#p3p29</ref>
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<span>It 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 you feel the universal 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 divine beauty admiration or presence gratitude which suddenly awakens in things that the senses 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 open a thousand ways, one has only to the Divinebe awake and to watch.(The Mother, 26 December 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3008/the-universal-or26-cosmicdecember-consciousness1956#p56p23</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">You must have a strong body and strong nerves... there is You must have a beauty strong basis of thoughtequanimity in your external being. If you have this basis, you can contain a beauty world of feelingemotion 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 dance about is something we perceive very often; when someone has done always a very noble deedproof of weakness, very generous, very unselfish, quite spontaneously we say, "It either of the vital or the mental or the physical nature; for on all these levels the activity is beautiful!" And it's true, it gives for self-satisfaction. One who dances and jumps and screams has the sense of beautyfeeling that he is somehow very unusual in his excitement; and his vital nature takes great pleasure in that. (The Mother, 1 June 195514 April 1929)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0703/114-juneapril-19551929#p14p24</ref></div>
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If You carry with you, around 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 you, the proportions; we are so accustomed to it that we do not notice itatmosphere created by your actions, but and if we look from the standpoint of the higher beautywhat you do is beautiful, it becomes visible; very few bodies would bear comparison with perfect beauty. There are a thousand reasons for this unbalance but only one remedygood and harmonious, to instil into the being this instinctyour atmosphere is beautiful, this sense of true beauty, a supreme beauty which will gradually act good and harmonious; 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 other hand, if you believe. You must have surely noticed (perhaps very vaguely) that those who live in an inner peace, in an inner beauty, a lightsordid selfishness, and perfect goodwillunscrupulous self-interest, have an expression which is not quite the same as of people who live in ruthless bad thoughtswill, in the lower part that is what you will breathe every moment of their nature. When the human being is at his bestyour life and that means misery, above his base animality, he reflects something which is not there when he lives in a state constant uneasiness; it means ugliness that despairs of bestialityits own ugliness. (The Mother, 25 January 1951)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0403/25conjugate-january-1951verses#p27p106</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">Usually one feels pleasure or joy or enjoyment due 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 this thing or due come, that is, it always hesitates to that—from the most material things manifest itself and generally does not stay long. A home of beauty must be given for Beauty to things psychological or even mentalstay. For exampleI am not speaking of external things—a real house, to take a mental thingreal furniture and all that—I am speaking of an inner attitude, you read a sentence of something within which gives you is beautiful, noble, harmonious, unselfish. There Love has a great joychance to come and stay. But when, for as soon as it brings you a lighttries to manifest, a new understanding; so that joy it is a joy which has an objectimmediately mixed with such low and ugly things, it does not remain, it goes away. This is what Sri Aurobindo says: it is because you read "reluctant to be born"—it could be said that sentence it immediately regrets being born. Men always complain that you feel this joy, if you had love does not read the sentence, you would not have felt the joystay with them but it is entirely their fault. In the same wayThey give this love such a sordid life, when you hear beautiful music or when you see mixed with a beautiful picture or a beautiful landscapeheap of horrors and such vulgarity, that brings you joy; without those things you would not have felt so base, so selfish, so dirty, that joy; 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 these which brought you the joyto take flight. It People always complain that love is a joy which has an objectimpermanent and passing. To tell the truth, which has a causethey should be very grateful that it manifested in them in spite of the sordidness of the house they gave it. (The Mother, 5 December 195612 May 1951)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0804/512-decembermay-19561951#p17p4</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">There are people who are just like beautiful animals—all their movements are harmoniousAnd this vital, their energies are spent harmoniouslyif you place it in a bad environment, their uncalculating efforts call in energies all it will imitate the time bad environment and do bad things with violence and they are always happy; but sometimes they have no thoughts to an extreme degree. If you place it in their headthe presence of something wonderfully beautiful, sometimes they have no feelings in their heartgenerous, great, noble, divine, they live an altogether animalish life. I have known people like it can be carried away with that: beautiful animals. They were handsomealso, their gestures were harmonious, their forces quite balanced forget everything else and they spent without reckoning and received without measuregive itself wholly. They were in harmony with It will give itself more completely than any other part of the material universal forces being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and they lived in joyenthusiasm. They could When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrary, and it does not perhaps have told you that they were happy—joy with them was so spontaneous that at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesn't care the least bit. But when it was natural—and they would have been still less able gives itself to tell you whysomething beautiful, for their intelligence was 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 developedprecious instrument. (The Mother, 13 January 19519 September 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0405/139-januaryseptember-19511953#p15p22</ref></div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">''Can those who have a sense One believes he has his own way of beauty also become cruel?''</div> That's a psychological problemthinking. Not at all. It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books he has read or on where their sense of beauty the mood he is locatedin. One may It depends also on whether you have a physical see of beautygood or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in a vital sense of beauty, room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether you have a mental sense of beauty. If one has a moral sense of beauty—a sense of moral beauty and nobility—one will never be cruel. One will always be generous and magnanimous in all circumstances. But as men beautiful landscape before you; it depends on whether there is sunshine or drain! You are made not aware of many different pieces.... For instanceit, I was thinking about but you think all the artists I knew—I knew all the greatest artists kinds of the last century or the beginning of this centurythings, and they truly had completely different according to a sense heap of beauty, but morally, some of them were very cruel. When the artist was seen at his work, he lived in a magnificent beauty but when things which have nothing to do with you saw the gentleman at home! (The Mother, he had only a very limited contact with the artist in himself and usually he became someone very vulgar, very ordinary. Many of them did, I am sure of it. But those who were unified, in the sense that they truly lived their art—those, no; they were generous and good.28 July 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/1728-marchjuly-1954#p33p51</ref>
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But for one who And on the trust he has more 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 sensitivityvital generosity: one must not be too egoistic, one must not be too miserly, appearances nor too practical, too utilitarian―indeed there are no longer deceptive 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 he you can perceive the ugliness hidden beneath make a pretty face and 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 beauty concealed beneath a mask of uglinessmaterial manifestation.(The Mother, 18 April 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1008/aphorism18-297april-2981956#p6p55</ref> = Effects of Growing in Beauty =
== Turning Inwards Practices for Children ==
<div style="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.A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the joy and happiness and satisfaction sake of beauty that comes from pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the perception love of beauty itself; for beauty is the Divine everywhereideal which all physical life must realise. It plunges Every human being has the nature inward towards its meeting with possibility of establishing harmony among the immanent Divine different parts of his body and in the heart's secret centre and, while various movements of the body in action. Every human body that call is there, no reproach undergoes a rational method of egoism, no mere outward summons culture from the very beginning of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it from its sacred longing existence can realise its own harmony and its obedience thus become fit to manifest beauty. When we speak of the attraction other aspects of the Divinity within it.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/cwsacwm/2312/the-ascent-of-the-sacrificephysical-ieducation#p23p12</ref> </div>
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A philosophic statement about To this general education of the Atman is a mental formulasenses and their functioning there will be added, not knowledge, not experience: yet sometimes the Divine takes it as a channel of touch; strangelyearly as possible, a barrier in the mind breaks down, something is seen, a profound change operated in some inner part, there enters into the ground cultivation of the nature something calm, equal, ineffable. One stands upon a mountain ridge discrimination and glimpses or mentally feels a wideness, a pervasiveness, a nameless Vast in Nature; then suddenly there comes of the touch, a revelation, a floodingaesthetic sense, the mental loses itself in the spiritual, one bears the first invasion of the Infinite. Or you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river capacity to choose and see adopt what?—a sculptureis beautiful and harmonious, a gracious piece of architecturesimple, but in healthy and pure. For there is a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly psychological health just as there is instead a PresencePhysical health, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded beauty and harmony of the sensations as of the World-Motherbody and its movements. Similar touches can come too through art, music, poetry to their creator or to one who feels As the shock capacity of understanding grows in the wordchild, the hidden significance of a formhe should be taught, 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. Still so long as one is satisfied with looking through windowscourse of his education, the gain is only initial; one day one will have to take up the pilgrim's staff add artistic taste and start out refinement to journey there where the Reality is for ever manifest power and presentprecision. Still less can it He should be spiritually satisfying to remain with shadowy reflections; a search imposes itself for the Light which they strive shown, led 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 prayerappreciate, an act taught to the Divinelove beautiful, one can offer too a created form of beauty, a song, a poem, an image, a strain of musiclofty, healthy and gain through it a contactnoble things, a response or an experience. And when that divine Consciousness has been entered whether in Nature 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 servicehuman creation. Art, poetry, music, as they are in their ordinary functioning, create mental and vital, not spiritual values; but they can This should be turned to a higher endtrue aesthetic culture, 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> == Perfection == <div style="color:#000000;">The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self-existent self and spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the material of the aesthesis.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p10</ref> </div> == Widening the Consciousness == 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 happinessprotect him from degrading influences.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0312/punishmentvital-education#p24p11</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">... if one deeply feels the beauty of Nature and communes with her, that can help in widening the consciousness. (The Mother, 9 November 1969)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/9-november-1969#p4</ref> </div> == Transformation of the Vital == ...this vital is When a strange creature. It child is a being full of passion, enthusiasm and naturally of desire; but, for example, never throw cold water on it is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiringnever tell him, sensing anything greater and nobler than itself. And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the being, if there is a movement having an exceptional value, well"You know, it may get enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with complete devotion—with a generosity that life is not found, for example, in the mental domain nor in the physical. It has like that fullness in action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and throw itself wholly without reserve into what it does. Heroes are !" You should always people who have a strong vitalencourage him, tell him, and when the vital becomes passionate about something"Yes, it is no longer a reasonable being but a warrior <nowiki>; it is wholly involved in its action and can perform exceptional at present things because it does are not calculatealways like that, does not reasonthey seem ugly, does not say "One must take precautions, one must not do but behind this, must not do there is a beauty that." It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, it gives is trying to realise itself totally. ThereforeThis is what you should love and draw towards you, it can do magnificent things if it this is guided in what you should make the right wayobject of your dreams, of your ambitions. " (The Mother, 9 September 195331 July 1957)</nowiki><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0509/931-septemberjuly-19531957#p19p8</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">A converted vital is an When a child tells you a beautiful dream in which he had many powers and all-powerful instrument. And sometimes it gets converted by something exceptionally things were very beautiful, morally or materially. When it witnessesbe very careful never to tell him, "Oh! life is not like that", for exampleyou are doing something wrong. You must on the contrary tell him, a scene of total self-abnegation, of uncalculating self-giving one—of those things so exceedingly rare but splendidly beautiful—it can "Life ought to be carried away by itlike that, and it can will be seized by an ambition to do the same thing. It begins by an ambition, it ends with a consecration. like that!" (The Mother, 9 September 195331 July 1957)<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0509/931-septemberjuly-19531957#p20p17</ref> </div>
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= Steps 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 Transformation Leading myself".... And encourage the body to Beauty =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>
<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</ref> </div> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>Practices for Artists ==
<div style="color: #000000;">The beginning ...an artist should be capable of the heart's attraction to entering into communion with the Divine may be impersonal, the touch and of an impersonal joy in something universal or transcendent that has revealed itself directly receiving inspiration about what form or indirectly forms ought to our emotional or our aesthetic being or be used to our capacity of spiritual felicityexpress the divine beauty in matter. That which we And thus grow aware , if it does that, art can be a means of is the Ananda Brahman, the bliss existence. There is an adoration realisation of an impersonal Delight and Beautybeauty, of a pure and an infinite perfection to which we can give no name or form, at the same time a moved attraction teacher of the soul what beauty ought to some ideal and infinite Presencebe, Powerthat is, existence art should be an element in the world or beyond iteducation of men's taste , which in some way becomes psychologically or spiritually sensible to us of young and then more old, and more intimate and real. That it is the callteaching of true beauty, that is, the touch of essential beauty which expresses the bliss existence upon usdivine truth. Then to have always This is the joy and nearness raison d'être of its presenceart. Now, to know between this and what it isdone there is a great difference, so as to satisfy but this is the intellect and the intuitional mind of its constant reality, to put our passive and, so far as we can manage it, our active, our inner immortal and even our outer mortal being into perfect harmony with it, grow into a necessity true raison d'être of our livingart. And to open ourselves to it is what we feel to be the one true happiness(The Mother, to live into it the sole real perfection.28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2405/the28-anandaoctober-brahman1953#p2p4</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">On this ignorant surface we become dimly aware Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than the aspect of beauty of something that can be called a soul as distinct the Divine manifestation. Perhaps, looking from mindthis standpoint, life or bodythere will be found very few true artists; we feel it not only as our mental idea or vague instinct of ourselves, but still there are some and these can very well be considered as Yogis. For like a sensible influence in our life Yogi an artist goes into deep contemplation to await and character and actionreceive his inspiration. A certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and To create something truly beautiful, fine and pure and noble, a response he [Yogi] has first to see itwithin, a demand for to realise it, as a pressure on mind and life to accept and formulate it whole in our thoughthis inner consciousness; only when so found, feelingsseen, conductheld within, character can he execute it outwardly; he creates according to this greater inner vision. This too is the most usually recogniseda kind of yogic discipline, for by it he enters into intimate communion with the most general and characteristicinner worlds. (The Mother, though not the sole sign of this influence of the psyche.28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2203/the28-triplejuly-transformation1929#p5p19</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">To come into contact with In fact people who work in order to develop their taste, to refine it... is for the higher mind consciousness is not enoughcultivation of their senses, it which is only an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reachesvery different thing. A transformation of It is like the higher consciousness into a supramental light artist, you know, who trains his eyes to appreciate forms and powercolours, a transformation lines, the composition of things, the vital and its life-force into a pureharmony found in physical nature; it is not at all through desire that he does this, wideit is through taste, calmculture, intense and powerful instrument the development of the Divine Energy, a transformation sense of sight and the physical itself into a form appreciation of beauty. And usually artists who are real artists and love their art and live in the sense of divine lightbeauty, divine actionseeking beauty, strength, beauty and joy are impossible without this descending Force from the now invisible summitspeople who don't have many desires. That is why They live in this Yoga the ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths sense of Yoga is a growth not enough; there must be too a descent only visual, but of the Divine to transform all the energies appreciation of the mind, life beauty. There is a great difference between this and people who live by their impulses and bodydesires.That's altogether something else. (The Mother, 23 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3107/the23-vitalfebruary-and-other-levels-of-being1955#p8p5</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudesIf you ask me, when I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists! A word depends upon the vital has been steadied and subdued and way it is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash willused, demand and desireupon what one puts into it. One may put into it all that one wants. For instance, when in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether forms of trees so that in the inner flame under the mass landscape they make a beautiful picture. By all kinds of its outwardnesstrimmings, obscurity or inertiaprops, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare influences, is able to come forward and illumine etc. they adjust the rest and take up the lead forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in the Sadhanalandscape. Its character A tree is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic planted in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like garden at the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; spot where it is at every moment needed and with a supple sureness moreover, it is given the form that 's required for it points the way to go well with the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivinewhole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful things. Its action is like You have but to take a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in photograph of the nature; it has in garden, it is a flame of will insistent on perfectionreal picture, on an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existenceit is so good. It sees Well, I certainly call the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figureman an artist. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, One may call him a gardener but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on he is an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure,—for it prefers rather artist.... All those who have a purifying suffering sure and sorrow to degrading satisfactions,—on love winged upward and not tied to the stake developed sense of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk harmony in the mire, on beauty restored to all its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternalforms, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but harmony of all the Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of lifeforms among themselves, are necessarily artists, whatever may be the expression through it type of a higher Truththeir production. (The Mother, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.21 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2305/the-ascent-of-the21-sacrificeoctober-i1953#p22p26</ref> </div>
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...the discovery You have followed very little of this movement of the soulart I am speaking about, which is related to European civilisation, it has not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, been felt much here—just a little but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within usnot deeply. When that becomes dominant over the natureHere, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware majority of creations (this is a guide within that knows very good example), the truthmajority of works, I believe even almost all the goodbeautiful works, are not signed. All those paintings in the true delight and beauty of existencecaves, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completenessthose statues in the temples—these are not signed. One does not know at all who created them. Even within And all this was not done with the obscure workings idea of the Ignorance we have then making a name for oneself as at present. One happened to be a witness who discernsgreat sculptor, a living light that illuminesgreat painter, a will great architect, and then that refuses to be misled and separates the mind's truth from its errorwas all, the heartthere was no question of putting one's intimate response from its vibrations to a wrong call name on everything and wrong demand upon proclaiming it aloud in the newspapers so that no one might forget it, ! In those days the life's true ardour and plenitude 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 movement from vital passion aspiration to express a higher beauty, and above all with the turbid falsehoods idea of our vital nature and its dark self seekingsgiving an appropriate abode to the godhead who was evoked. This is In the first step cathedrals of self-realisationthe Middle Ages, to enthrone it was the soulsame thing, and I don't think that there too the names of the divine psychic individual in artists who made them have remained. If any are there, it is quite exceptional and it is only by chance that the place name has been preserved. Whilst today, there is not a tiny little piece of the egocanvas, painted or daubed, but on it is a signature to tell you: it is Mr. <span style="backgroundSo-and-color: transparent; color: #999999;"> so who made this! (The Mother, 28 October 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2105/the-origin-and-remedy-of28-falsehood-error-wrong-andoctober-evil1953#p36p30</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">A first condition of the soul's complete emergence is a direct contact in the surface being with the spiritual Reality. Because it comes from that, the psychic element in us turns always towards whatever in phenomenal Nature seems to belong to a higher Reality and can be accepted as its sign and character. At first, it seeks this Reality through the good, the true, the Copy many beautifulthings, through all that is pure and fine and high and noble: but although this touch through outer signs and characters can modify and prepare the nature, it cannot entirely or most inwardly and profoundly change it. For such an inmost change the direct contact with the Reality itself is indispensable since nothing else can so deeply touch the foundations of our being and stir it or cast the nature by its stir into a ferment of transmutation. Mental representations, emotional and dynamic figures have their use and value; Truth, Good and Beauty are in themselves primary and potent figures of the Reality, and try even in their forms as seen by the mind, as felt by the heart, as realised in the life can be lines of an ascent: but it is in a spiritual substance and being of them and of itself that That which they represent has to come into our experience. </div> 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 catch the beginnings of a direct experience. As a result the mind becomes pure, large, tranquilemotion, impersonal; there is a similar tranquillising influence on the parts of deeper 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 naturethings. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2212/the-triple-transformationarts#p12p38</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">A second approach made by the soul Why do you want to do the direct contact details? That 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 not at the beginning with its native power, with its living force of concrete experienceall necessary. It Painting is through a love and adoration of the All-beautiful and All-blissfulnot done to copy Nature, the All-Good, the True, the spiritual Reality of love, that the approach is made; the aesthetic and emotional parts join together but to offer the soul, the lifeexpress an impression, 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, emotion that we experience on seeing the love of God and men and all creatures into a thing of spiritual beauty, full of divine light Nature. It is this that is interesting and good, he develops into the saint and reaches the highest inner experience and most considerable change of nature proper to it is this way of approach that has to the Divine Beingbe expressed. 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/cwsacwm/2212/the-triple-transformationarts#p15p49</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>Challenges =
<div style="color: #000000;">...in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores. What does come very often with the inrush of Love is an exaltation, a feeling of a greatening within, of new powers and high or beautiful possibilities in one's nature or of an intensification of the nature; but that is not exactly self-reverence. There is a deeper self reverence possible, a true emotion, a sense of the value and even the sacredness of the soul, even the mind, life, body as an offering or itself the temple for the inner presence of the Beloved.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p31</ref> </div> = Attitude to Grow in Beauty = == Philosophic Practices Physical ==
Be sincere Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and absolute 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 your consecration to man the Divine coarse, heavy and your life will become harmonious and beautifulvulgar spirit. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/sinceritythe-liberation-of-the-nature#p9p5</ref>
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...The only thing in the realisation that everything world which still seems intolerable to me now, is a manifestation of all the Supremephysical deterioration, the Eternalphysical suffering, the Infiniteugliness, immutable the inability to express that capacity for beauty which is in his total perfection and in his absolute realityevery being. But that too will be conquered one day. That is why, by conquering our mind and its ignorant and false perceptions we can, through all things, enter into contact with this Supreme Truth which is also There too the Supreme Beauty and power will come one day to shift the Supreme Love, beyond all our mental and vital notions of beauty and ugliness, the good and the badneedle a little. Even when we say "Supreme Truth, Supreme Beauty, Supreme Love"Only, we should give must rise higher in consciousness: the deeper one wants to these words a meaning other than go down into matter, the one which higher is attributed it necessary to them by our intellectrise in consciousness. That will take time. (The Mother, 19 February 1958) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1009/aphorism19-february-481958#p3p39</ref>
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For It is the spiritual man physical centre—sex is only one of its movements. Naturally, if the mind's dream sex is active (instead of perfect beauty 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 realised in at all an eternal loveopening, beauty and delight that even before the lower movements have definitely gone—it has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearancesthen to complete the work of displacing them... <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2331/the-threefold-lifesex#p20p102</ref>
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To do this yogaIf it [the vital] admires all beautiful things, one must havenot women only, at least a little, the sense of beautywithout desire—then there would be no harm [in admiring women]. If one does notBut specially applied to women, one misses one it is a relic of the most important aspects of the physical world"sex-appeal".<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1531/july-1958-1sex#p1p143</ref>
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Let beauty be your constant ideal.The beauty desires of the soulThe beauty of sentimentsThe beauty of thoughtsThe beauty 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 action The beauty in same time attain to spiritual purity the workso best way is to turn it towards that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of eternal, pure and harmonious beauty ever true, behind and beyond these earthly emotions—the ever-living Love, Bliss and Beauty. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1231/artssex#p3p97</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>= Vital ==
"Harmony In a human being, there is the divine Presence and beauty of the mind psychic being—at the beginning embryonic, but in the end a being wholly formed, conscious, independent, individualised. That does not exist in the vital world. It is a special grace given to human beings dwelling in matter and soulupon earth. And because of this, there is no human being who cannot be converted, if he wants it; that is, harmony there is a possibility of his wanting it and beauty the moment he wants it, he can do it. He is sure to succeed the moment he wants it, whereas those beings of the thoughts and feelingsvital do not have a psychic being in them, they do not have the direct divine Presence (naturally, at the Origin, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was at the Origin, harmony and beauty that is very far away). They are not in every outward act and direct contact with the Divine within them, they have no psychic being. And if they were converted, there would remain nothing of them! For they are made up entirely of the opposite movement: they are entirely made up of personal self-assertion, despotic authority, separation from the Origin, harmony and beauty , of a great disdain for all that is pure, beautiful and noble. They do not have within them this psychic element which in man, even in the life and surroundingsmost debased, this makes him respect what is beautiful and pure; even the demand basest man, in spite of Mahalakshmihimself, against his own will, respects what is pure, noble and beautiful.But those beings do not have that.They are wholly on the other side, totally on the other side.It disgusts them in every way. Where love and beauty are It is for them something which should not or are reluctant to be borntouched, she does not comebecause it destroys; it is the thing that makes them disappear." (The MotherGoodwill, sincerity, 12 May 1951) <ref>http://incarnatewordpurity and beauty are things which make them disappear. So they hate these things.in/cwm/04/12-may-1951#p1</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> When Now I do not know on what grounds one could convert them [beings of the vital]. What would be the spirit point of support? I do not find it. Even in us the greatest. That is free, then what was behind this soul-force comes out 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 all its lightthe place of darkness, beauty and greatnessin the place of ugliness, goodness instead of evil, that power man possesses, the SpiritAsura does not. Therefore it is man who will do that work, the Godhead it is he who will change, it is he who makes the nature and soul of man will transform his foundation earth and living representative in cosmic being and mindit is he who will compel the Asura to flee into other worlds or to dissolve. After that, action and lifeall will be quiet. There you are. (The Mother, 10 June 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2405/soul-force-and-the10-fourfoldjune-personality1953#p2p19</ref>
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Bhakti and But is the heart's call for Divine then something so terrible, horrible or repellent that the Divine have a truth—it is idea of its entry into the truth physical, its divinising of the divine Love human should create this shrinking, refusal, revolt or fear? I can understand that the unregenerate vital attached to its own petty sufferings and Ananda. The pleasures, to the brief ignorant drama of life, should shrink from what will for Tapasya has in change it . But why should a truth—it is God-lover, a God-seeker, a sadhak fear the truth divinisation of the Spirit's mastery over its members. The musician and poet stand for a truthconsciousness! 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, it there is the truth feeling of the expression 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 Spirit through beauty . There is a truth behind the mental AffirmerAnanda which will replace them); even next, there is a truth behind some vague ignorant idea of the mental doubtermind, due, I suppose, to the Russellianascetic tradition, though far behind him—the truth of that the divine nature is something cold, bare, empty, austere, aloof, without the denial glorious riches of false forms. Even behind the two egoistic human vital personalities life. As if there were not a divine vital and as if that divine vital is a truthnot itself and, when it gets the truth of means to manifest, will not make the possession life on earth also infinitely more full of the inner beauty, love, radiance, warmth, fire, intensity and divine passion and outer worlds—not by the ego but by the Divine. That is capacity for bliss than the harmonisation for which our Yoga stands—but it cannot be achieved by any outward arrangementpresent impotent, it can only be achieved by going inside and lookingsuffering, willing pettily and acting from the psychic transiently excited and from the spiritual centre. For the truth soon tired vitality of the being is there and the secret of Harmony also is there.still so imperfect human creation! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/thebhakti-adwaitayoga-ofand-shankaracharyavaishnavism#p25p36</ref>
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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 danger 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 vital is growing in us, the very origin that 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 taking hold of the thought on the idealove, the perception, the visionAnanda, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation sense of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the seeking of the All and Eternal Beauty andusing it for its own purposes, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy for vital human relations or interchange or else some kind 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 mere enjoyment of the Yogaits own. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2330/selfdescent-and-consecrationthe-lower-nature#p18p15</ref>
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There ...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 isquite spontaneous in many people, behind 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 thingsthis 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 divine beautylittle 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 divine harmony: formidable amount of energy. And so one feels stronger as soon as one begins to do evil. That is why it is with 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 we in order never to be moved by the adverse forces—the forces of darkness, destruction, wickedness, hatred—one must come into contact; it be a hero, a true hero, who is this not afraid of blows and fears nothing, who never turns round upon himself and doesn't have that we 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 expressbe 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/1205/arts19-august-1953#p60p32</ref>
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One must be very much The unselfish movement, uncalculating, is one of the most beautiful forms of psychic consciousness in the world. But the higher on 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 see that what one gain out of it: it does is ugly. One must already have at so spontaneously, in the core joy of oneself being and living. Take a kind of foreknowledge of what beautyhuman being, nobilitywell, generosity areapart from a very few exceptions, the moment his mind is active he tries to be able get some advantage out of his beauty and cleverness; he wants it to suffer bring him something, either men's admiration or even much more sordid gains yet. Consequently, from the fact that one doesn't carry them within oneselfpsychic point of view, the rose is better than human beings. (The Mother, 26 August 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0305/conjugate26-august-verses1953#p103p34</ref>
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When Take for instance... you see something which is—which seems to you or is—very beautiful, very harmonious, very pleasant; if you have the adverse forces are dealt true consciousness, you experience this joy of seeing, of being in a conscious contact with in 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 right waybeauty, grace, harmony of movement and all that , and that's all. It stops there. He is ugly 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 false disappears to leave place has nothing in exchange, because there is nothing pleasant in desiring anything. It only for what is true and beautifulputs you in an unpleasant state, that's all. (The Mother, 9 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1507/adverse9-february-forces1955#p28p7</ref>
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To accept 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 uglinesses other, still more impossible to disentangle them and put an end to an embrace which has the horror of a pitiless struggle, all the lower nature under more keen because veiled, especially in human consciousness where the pretext that they exist―if this is what is meant by realism―does not form part of conflict changes into an anguish for knowledge, for power, for conquest,—a combat obscure and painful, all the sadhana. Our aim is not more atrocious because it seems to accept these things and enjoy thembe without issue, but to get rid capable of them a solution on a level above the sensations and feelings and create a life ideas, beyond the domain of spiritual beauty and perfection. That cannot be done as long as we accept these uglinessesthe mind—in the Divine Consciousness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1415/desiresthe-impulsesdivine-andworking-selfin-controlthe-universe#p8p9</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
...to be in such a state = Advanced Yogic Level Understanding 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> Beauty =
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>= What is Beauty? ==
You can hear poor musicFor all joy, even music from which one would like to run awaybeauty, and yet you canlove, not for its outward self but because of what is behindpeace, enjoy it. You do not lose delight are out-flowings from the distinction between good music and bad musicAnanda Brahman, but you pass through either into that which it expresses. For there is nothing in —all delight of the world which has not its ultimate truth and support in spirit, the Divine. And if you are not stopped by intellect, the appearanceimagination, physical or moral or aestheticsense, but get behind ethical aspiration and are in touch with satisfaction, action, life, the Spirit, body. And through all ways of our being the Divine Soul in things, you can reach beauty touch us and make use of them to awaken and delight even through what affects liberate the ordinary sense only as something poor, painful or discordantspirit. (The Mother, 28 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0324/28the-aprilananda-1929brahman#p18p4</ref>
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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..to be positively conscious of He is the supreme Good Cosmic Spirit and supreme Beauty behind all things-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, which sustains and he is the More than all things that is, and enables them to exist. When you see Himwe ourselves, though we know it not, you are able to being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; perceive Him behind this mask 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 this distortion; even this uglinessBliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, this wickednesslove or any other means, to become aware of this evil is a disguise truth of Something which is essentially beautiful or goodour being, luminousto realise it, pureto make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1023/aphorismthe-49master-of-the-work#p9p1</ref>
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It ... that there is one of the greatest weapons of the Asura at work when you are taught to shun beautynothing but That—something we cannot name, cannot define, cannot describe, but something we can feel and can more and more become. It has been A Something that is more perfect than all the ruin of India. The Divine manifests in perfections, more beautiful than all the psychic as lovebeauties , in more marvellous than all the mind as knowledgemarvels, in so that even the vital as power and in the physical as beautytotality of all that exists cannot express it. And there is nothing but That. If you discard beauty And it means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation is not a Something floating in the material and you hand over that part to the Asuranothingness: there is nothing but That. (The Mother, 8 October 1966) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1316/india8-october-1966#p224p7</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>== Beauty in Psychic ===
<div style="color: #000000;">...On this ignorant surface we become dimly aware of something that can be called a girl who had no education whateversoul as distinct from mind, life or body; she was we feel it not only as our mental idea or vague instinct of ourselves, but as a dancer sensible influence in our life and danced tolerably wellcharacter and action. After she took up YogaA certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful, fine and pure and noble, a response to it, she danced only a demand for friends; but her dancing attained it, a depth of expression pressure on mind and beauty which was not there before. And although she was not educated, she began life to write wonderful things; for she had visions accept and expressed them formulate it in our thought, feelings, conduct, character is the most beautiful language. But there were ups and downs in her Yogausually recognised, the most general and when she was in a good conditioncharacteristic, she wrote beautifully, but otherwise was quite dull and stupid and uncreativethough not the sole sign of this influence of the psyche. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0322/28the-julytriple-1929transformation#p7p5</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">...one must have a universal consciousness What is meant in order to see and recognise it [beauty]. For instance, if your consciousness the terminology of the Yoga by the psychic is limited to one placethe soul element in the nature, that isthe pure psyche or divine nucleus which stands behind mind, life and body (it is a national consciousness (not the consciousness ego) but of any one country), what is beautiful for one country is not beautiful for anotherwhich we are only dimly aware. The sense of beauty It is different. For example (I could make you laugh with a story), I knew in Paris the son portion of the king of Dahomey (he was a negro—the king of Dahomey was a negro) Divine and this boy had come permanent from life to Paris to study Law. He used to speak French like a Frenchman. But he had remained a negrolife, you understand. And he was asked (he used to tell us all kinds taking the experience 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...through its outer instruments." (Laughter) Now, for those who are not negroes, negro beauty is a little difficult to see! And yet, As this was quite spontaneous. He was fully convinced experience grows it was impossible for anyone to think otherwise.... "Only manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the women of my country are good, true and beautiful!"</div> Only those who have developed a little artistic taste, have travelled much finally becomes ready and seen many things have widened their consciousness and they are no longer so sectarian. But it is very difficult strong enough to pull a person out of turn the specialised tastes of his race—I am not even speaking now of the country, I am speaking of nature towards the raceDivine. It is very difficult. It is there, you know, hidden right at the bottomcan then come entirely forward, in breaking through the subconsciousmental, vital and it comes back without your even noticing it, quite spontaneouslyphysical screen, quite naturally. Even on this very point: govern the woman of your race is always much more beautiful than instincts and transform the woman of other races—spontaneously, it is the spontaneous tastenature. That's what I mean. So, you must rise above that. I am not even speaking of those who find everything that's outside their own family or caste very ugly and bad. I am not speaking at all of these people. I am not even speaking of those for whom one country is much more beautiful than another. And yet, these people have already risen above Nature no longer imposes itself on the altogether ordinary way of thinking. I am not even speaking of a question of race.... It is very difficult, one must go right downsoul, right down within oneself into the subconscious—and even farther—to discover but the root of these things. Thereforesoul, if you want to have the sense of beauty in itself which is quite independent of all these tastesPurusha, imposes its dictates on the taste of the race— you must have a universal consciousness . Otherwise how can you have it? You will always have preferences. Even if these are not active and conscious preferences, they are subconscious preferences, instincts. So, to know true beauty independent of all form, one must rise above all form nature. 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/cwmcwsa/0530/21the-octoberpsychic-1953being-and-its-role-in-sadhana#p61p1</ref>
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<div style="color: #000000;">...the close psychic entity in us persists and vivid discovery is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of soul or selfour manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the straining towards that which is behind life imperfections and above mindimpurities, the passion for defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the Eternal divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the Infiniteflame. This spiritual stuff is immaculate and luminous and, because it is perfectly luminous, it is immediately, intimately, the hunger for a freedom directly aware of truth of being and wideness truth of nature; it is deeply conscious of consciousness truth and good and beauty because truth and existence not limited by the narrow moulds good and beauty are akin to its own native character, forms of something that is inherent in its own substance. It is aware also of intellectall that contradicts these things, of all that deviates from its own native character , of falsehood and evil and the ugly and the past life-aims unseemly; but it does not become these things nor is it touched or changed by these opposites of itself which so powerfully affect its outer instrumentation of humanitymind, life and body. For the thirst for union with soul, the Divine or for the pure bliss permanent being in us, puts forth and beauty of spiritual existence not tied down to mental uses mind, life and vital values must be dismissed body as a superfluous dream for which there its instruments, undergoes the envelopment of their conditions, but it is neither place nor necessity hereother and greater than its members. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2822/moralitythe-andtriple-yogatransformation#p20p3</ref> </div>
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That [feeling ...the Mother's Presence, Love, Joy, Beauty] is one part discovery of the psychic experience—the other is a complete self-givingsoul, absence not the outer soul of demandthought and emotion and desire, a prominence of but the secret psychic being by which all entity, the divine element within us. When that is falsebecomes dominant over the nature, wrongwhen we are consciously the soul and when mind, egoisticlife and body take their true place as its instruments, contrary to we are aware of a guide within that knows the Divine Truthtruth, Divine Willthe good, Divine Purity the true delight and Light is shownbeauty of existence, falls away, cannot prevail in the naturecontrols heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness. With all that Even within the increase obscure workings of the psychic qualitiesIgnorance we have then a witness who discerns, gratitudea living light that illumines, obediencea will that refuses to be misled and separates the mind's truth from its error, unselfishnessthe heart's intimate response from its vibrations to a wrong call and wrong demand upon it, fidelity to the life's true perception, true impulse etcardour and plenitude of movement from vital passion and the turbid falsehoods of our vital nature and its dark self seekings. that comes from This is the Mother or leads first step of self-realisation, to enthrone the Mother. When this side growssoul, then the other, divine psychic individual in the place of the Presence, Love, Joy, Beauty, can develop and be permanently there ego. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3021/the-psychicorigin-beingand-andremedy-itsof-rolefalsehood-inerror-sadhana#p5</ref> == 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/16/23wrong-juneand-1934evil#p3p36</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">The man A first condition of genius may use anything at all and make something beautiful because he has genius; but give this genius the soul's complete emergence is a perfect instrument and he will make something wonderfuldirect contact in the surface being with the spiritual Reality. Take a great musician; wellBecause it comes from that, even with the psychic element in us turns always towards whatever in phenomenal Nature seems to belong to a wretched piano higher Reality and missing notescan be accepted as its sign and character. At first, it seeks this Reality through the good, the true, he will produce something the beautiful; , through all that is pure and fine and high and noble: but give him a good piano, well-tunedalthough this touch through outer signs and characters can modify and prepare the nature, it cannot entirely or most inwardly and he will do something still more beautifulprofoundly change it. The consciousness For such an inmost change the direct contact with the Reality itself is indispensable since nothing else can so deeply touch the same in either case but for expression foundations of our being and stir it needs or cast the nature by its stir into a good instrument—a body with mentalferment of transmutation. Mental representations, emotional and dynamic figures have their use and value; Truth, vitalGood and Beauty are in themselves primary and potent figures of the Reality, psychic and physical capacities. (The Mothereven in their forms as seen by the mind, as felt by the heart, 15 January 1951) <ref>httpas realised in the life can be lines of an ascent://incarnatewordbut it is in a spiritual substance and being of them and of itself that That which they represent has to come into our experience.in/cwm/04/15-january-1951#p11</ref> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">If you said The soul may attempt to yourself, my children, "We want to be achieve this contact mainly through the thinking mind as perfect instruments as possible to express intermediary and instrument; it puts a psychic impression on the intellect and the divine Will larger mind of insight and intuitional intelligence and turns them in that direction. At its highest the thinking mind is drawn always towards the world"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, then for this instrument to be perfecta supreme Purity, a supreme Bliss; it must be cultivatedbears the increasing touch, less and less impalpable and abstract, educatedmore and more spiritually real and concrete, trainedthe touch and pressure of an Eternity and Infinity which is all this that is and more. It must not be left like There is a shapeless piece of stone. When you want pressure from this Impersonality that seeks to build with mould the whole mind into a stone you chisel itform of itself; when you want 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 make the beginnings of a formless block into direct experience. As a beautiful diamondresult the mind becomes pure, you chisel it. Welllarge, tranquil, it impersonal; there is a similar tranquillising influence on the same thing. When with your brain and body you want to make a beautiful instrument parts of life: but otherwise the result may remain incomplete; for the Divinemental change leads more naturally towards an inner status and an outer quietude, you must cultivate itbut, sharpen itpoised in this purifying quietism, refine itnot drawn like the vital parts towards a discovery of new life-energies, complete what is missing, perfect what is theredoes not press for a full dynamic effect on the nature. (The Mother, 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0522/13the-maytriple-1953transformation#p18p12</ref> </div>
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There must be order A second approach made by the soul to the direct contact is through the heart: this is its own more close and harmony rapid way because its occult seat is there, just behind in work. Even what the heart-centre, in close contact with the emotional being in us; it is apparently consequently through the most insignificant thing must be done emotions that it can act best at the beginning with perfect perfectionits 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 cleanlinesshis 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, harmony full of divine light and good, he develops into the saint and reaches the highest inner experience and ordermost 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/cwmcwsa/1422/progressthe-and-perfection-intriple-worktransformation#p26p15</ref>
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For <div style="color: #000000;">...in love for the work simply aspire Divine or for the Force one whom one feels to use yoube divine, put yourself inwardly in relation with the Mother when doing it and make it your aim to be the instrument Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the expression Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty without regard or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to personal fame 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 praise value and blame even the sacredness of othersthe 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/3128/mentalphilosophical-developmentthought-and-sadhanayoga#p18p31</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
<div style="color: #000000;">Beautiful conduct—not politeness which = Why 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>Beauty Important ==
<div style="textAnd 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-align: centerfreedom 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 <nowiki>♦</div>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.
<div style="color: #000000;">To think constantly In the free infinity of the harmony self-delight of Sachchidananda there is a play of the bodydivine Child, a rāsa līlā of the infinite Lover and its mystic soul-symbols repeat themselves in characters of beauty of the and movements, and harmonies of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkward. You can obtain delight in a rhythm of movement and gesture which is very exceptionaltimeless forever. (The Mother, 17 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0923/17gnosis-julyand-1957ananda#p11p18</ref> </div>
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<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 The general power of Delight 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, love and have the impression that you are on special mould which the joy of love takes is the point vision of being transfigured..beauty. The God-lover is the universal lover and then, it passes away—it always passes away, doesn't it? especially at he embraces the beginning—suddenly, it stopsAll-blissful and All-beautiful. Then you tell yourself, when you are not vigilant, "There, it came and it When universal love has gone! Poor me! It came and has goneseized on his heart, it just gave me a taste of is the thing and then let me fall." Well, decisive sign 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 Divine has taken possession of consciousness him; and when he has the movements accompanying the cessation vision of the experience. And if you are very, very attentive, All-beautiful everywhere and make your round very scrupulously, you will find that suddenly some part of can feel at all times the vital or some part bliss of the mind or of the body, something has not kept uphis embrace, 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 decisive sign that he has begun to enjoy taken possession of the experience: "How pleasant it Divine. Union 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 thisconsummation of love, but it is a wee bit hidden like this, somewhere. You will always find one of these three things or others analogous. Then, mutual possession that gives it is there at once the lantern is needed: where is the weak point? where is the egoism? where is acme and the desire? where is that old dirt we do not want any longer? where is that thing which turns back upon itself instead largest reach 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?..its intensity. 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 foundation of oneness in such a way that the thing cannot resist itecstasy. (The Mother, 26 April 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0424/26the-aprildelight-1951of-the-divine#p29p8</ref> </div>
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<div style="color: #000000;">One may seek within oneselfLove is a passion and it seeks for two things, one may remembereternity and intensity, may observe; one must notice what and in the relation of the Lover and Beloved the seeking for eternity and for intensity is instinctive and self-born. Love is going on, one must pay attentiona seeking for mutual possession, and it is here that's allthe demand for mutual possession becomes absolute. SometimesPassing beyond desire of possession which means a difference, when one sees it is a generous actseeking for oneness, hears and it is here that the idea of something exceptionaloneness, when of two souls merging into each other and becoming one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness finds the acme of its longing and the utterness of soulits satisfaction. Love, meets someone who shows too, is a special talent or acts yearning for beauty, and it is here that the yearning is eternally satisfied in an exceptional the vision and the touch and the joy of the All-beautiful way. Love is a child and a seeker of Delight, there and it is a kind here that it finds the highest possible ecstasy both of the heart-consciousness and of every fibre of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude the being. Moreover, this relation is that which suddenly awakens 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 being 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 opens discovers all the door to a state, a new state truth of consciousnesswhich love is the human symbol, a lightall its essential instincts divinised, a warmthraised, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way satisfied in the bliss from which our life was born and towards which by oneness it returns in the Ananda of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand waysdivine existence where love is absolute, one has only to be awake eternal and to watchunalloyed. (The Mother, 26 December 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0824/26the-decembergodward-1956emotions#p23p14</ref> </div>
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You To come into contact with the higher mind consciousness is not enough, it is only an indispensable stage. There must have be a strong body descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and strong nerves more powerful reaches. You must have A transformation of the higher consciousness into a strong basis of equanimity in your external being. If you have this basissupramental light and power, you can contain a world transformation of emotion the vital and yet not have to scream it out. This does not mean that you cannot express your emotionits life-force into a pure, wide, calm, intense and powerful instrument of the Divine Energy, but you can express it in a beautiful harmonious way. To weep or scream or dance about is always transformation of the physical itself into a proof form of weaknessdivine light, divine action, strength, either of beauty and joy are impossible without this descending Force from the vital or now invisible summits. That is why in this Yoga the mental or ascent to the physical natureDivine which it has in common with other paths of Yoga is not enough; for on there must be too a descent of the Divine to transform all these levels the activity is for self-satisfaction. One who dances and jumps and screams has energies of the feeling that he is somehow very unusual in his excitement; mind, life and his vital nature takes great pleasure in thatbody. (The Mother, 14 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0331/14the-vital-apriland-1929other-levels-of-being#p24p8</ref>
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You carry with youAt a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, around youwhen the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, in youdemand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the atmosphere created by your actionsmass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and if what you do felt only in its rare influences, is beautiful, good able to come forward and illumine the rest and harmonious, your atmosphere take up the lead of the Sadhana. Its character is beautifula one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, good one-pointed and yet plastic in action and harmoniousmovement; on it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the other handfalse, if you live extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a sordid selfishnessflame of will insistent on perfection, unscrupulous self-intereston an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, ruthless bad on willand strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure,—for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions,—on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. Its will is what you will breathe every moment for the divinisation of your life and that means misery, constant uneasiness; the expression through it means ugliness that despairs of a higher Truth, its own uglinessdedication to the Divine and the Eternal. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0323/conjugatethe-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-versesi#p106p22</ref>
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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 == How to come, that is, it always hesitates to manifest itself and generally does not stay long. A home of beauty must be given for Cultivate 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> <div style? =="text-align: center;">♦</div>
<div style="color: #000000;">And When the spirit in us is free, then what was behind this vital, if you place it soul-force comes out in a bad environmentall its light, it will imitate the bad environment beauty and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree. If you place it in greatness, the presence of something wonderfully beautifulSpirit, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else the Godhead who makes the nature and give itself wholly. It will give itself more completely than any other part soul of the man his foundation and living representative in cosmic being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and enthusiasm. When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrarymind, action and it does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesn't care the least bitlife. 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/cwmcwsa/0524/9soul-force-and-the-septemberfourfold-1953personality#p22p2</ref></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</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 Motherthen, 28 July 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p51</ref> </div> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">And on the trust he has in what happens to him, on the absence of the highest mind's critical sense, and a simplicity of heart, thought and a youthful light 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 will or it is quite true―there is a world in which you are the supreme maker inner heart of forms: deepest feeling and emotion that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel we must first centre our consciousness, — in either of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic them or poetic consciousness, if you love harmonywe are capable, beautyin both together, you will build there something marvellous which will tend —and use that as our leverage to spring up into lift the material manifestationnature wholly towards the Divine. (The Motherconcentration of an enlightened thought, 18 April 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.will and heart turned in/cwm/08/18-april-1956#p55</ref></div> == For Children == I have said that from a young age children should be taught to respect good health, physical strength and balance. The great importance unison towards one vast goal of beauty must also be emphasised. A young child should aspire for beautyour knowledge, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself ; 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 one luminous and in the various movements infinite source of the body in our 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> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> To this general education imperishable object 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 our emotion 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 starting-point of the body and its movementsYoga. As And the capacity object of understanding grows in the child, he should our seeking must be taught, in the course very fount 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, the Light which will protect him from degrading influences. <ref>http://incarnateword.is growing in/cwm/12/vital-education#p11</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">When a child is full of enthusiasmus, 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 very origin 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="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">When a child tells you a beautiful dream in the Force 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 we are doing something wrong. You must on the contrary tell him, "Life ought calling to be like that, and it will be like that!" (The Mother, 31 July 1957) <ref>http://incarnatewordmove our members.in/cwm/09/31-july-1957#p17</ref> </div> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> And so, when the first experience comes, which sometimes begins when Our 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 objective 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> == In Art == Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than the aspect of beauty of the Divine manifestation. Perhapshimself to whom, looking from this standpointknowingly or unknowingly, 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 create something truly beautiful, he [Yogi] has first to see it within, to realise it as a whole always aspires in his inner consciousness; only when so found, seen, held within, can he execute it outwardly; he creates according to this greater inner visionour secret nature. This too is There must be a kind of yogic disciplinelarge, for by it he enters into intimate communion with the inner worlds. (The Mother, 28 July 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-julymany-1929#p19</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">In fact people who work in order to develop their taste, to refine it... is for the cultivation sided yet single concentration 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, thought on the composition of thingsidea, the harmony found in physical nature; it is not at all through desire that he does this, it is through taste, cultureperception, 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 beautyvision, seeking beauty, are people who don't have many desires. They live in the sense of a growth not only visualawakening touch, but of the appreciation of beauty. There is a great difference between this and people who live by their impulses and desires. Thatsoul's altogether something else. (The Mother, 23 February 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/23-february-1955#p5</ref></div> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">If you ask me, I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists! A word depends upon realisation of the way it is used, upon what one puts into itDivine. 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 There must be a beautiful picture. By all kinds flaming concentration 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 heart on 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 seeking 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, Eternal 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="text-align: center;">♦</div> <div style="color: #000000;">You when once we have followed very little of this movement of art I am speaking about, which is related to European civilisationfound him, it has not been felt much here—just a little but not deeply. Here, deep plunging and immersion in the majority possession and ecstasy 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-Beautiful. 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 There must be a great sculptor, a great painter, a great architect, strong and then that was all, there was no question immovable concentration of putting one's name the will on everything the attainment 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 fulfilment 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 Divine is quite exceptional and it is only by chance that the name has been preserved. Whilst today, there is not a tiny little piece free and plastic opening 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> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> Copy many beautiful things, but try even more all that he intends to catch the emotion, the deeper life of things <ref>http://incarnateword.manifest in/cwm/12/arts#p38</ref> <div style="text-align: center;">♦</div> Why do you want to do the details? That is not at all necessaryus. Painting This is not done to copy Nature, but to express an impression, a feeling, an emotion that we experience on seeing the beauty triple way of Nature. It is this that is interesting and it is this that has to be expressed.the Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1223/artsself-consecration#p49p18</ref> = Challenges =
== Evolutionary Challenges ==
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>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
<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>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
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>
== 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>
== Physical ==
Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the dull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-liberation-of-the-nature#p5</ref>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
<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>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
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>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
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>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
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>
== Vital ==
<div style="color: #000000;">In a human being, there is the divine Presence and the psychic being—at the beginning embryonic, but in the end a being wholly formed, conscious, independent, individualised. That does not exist in the vital world. It is a special grace given to human beings dwelling in matter and upon earth. And because of this, there is no human being who cannot be converted, if he wants it; that is, there is a possibility of his wanting it and the moment he wants it, he can do it. He is sure to succeed the moment he wants it, whereas those beings of the vital do not have a psychic being in them, they do not have the direct divine Presence (naturally, at the Origin, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was at the Origin, that is very far away). They are not in direct contact with the Divine within them, they have no psychic being. And if they were converted, there would remain nothing of them! For they are made up entirely of the opposite movement: they are entirely made up of personal self-assertion, despotic authority, separation from the Origin, and, of a great disdain for all that is pure, beautiful and noble. They do not have within them this psychic element which in man, even in the most debased, makes him respect what is beautiful and pure; even the basest man, in spite of himself, against his own will, respects what is pure, noble and beautiful. But those beings do not have that. They are wholly on the other side, totally on the other side. It disgusts them in every way. It is for them something which should not be touched, because it destroys; it is the thing that makes them disappear. Goodwill, sincerity, purity and beauty are things which make them disappear. So they hate these things.</div>
<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="text-align: center;">♦</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="text-align: center;">♦</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="text-align: center;">♦</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="text-align: center;">♦</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="text-align: center;">♦</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>
<div style="text-align: center;">♦</div>
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>
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