Thoughts for Aspirants, compiled of Notes and Writings of N. Sri Ram, The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India, 1957
Thoughts for aspirants
N. Sri Ram
With the sword of my will, I carve for myself a throne in the realm of the Spirit, which I shall ascend.
Contents
[ in the original booklet there are 15 more chapters. There is also a second volume. So, if you find this book somewhere, buy it! - well worth your cash. The esteem people have for it can be seen from the fact that new E.S. (Esoteric Section) members often receive it as a gift on the day they enter the E.S. ]
VI
Beauty
- Beauty, not as an abstract principle but in its endless rendering, is the language of God; it translates the infinite, subjective Truth into its appropriate objective expression.
- Every beautiful thing is a window through which we can look into the ever-present Reality.
- Beauty is ever a perfect adjustment. That which is beautiful - a poem, a piece of architecture, a melody, a flower - has a unity, a centre of origin whence is its inspiration.
- There is but one essence of Beauty; it moulds all beautiful things.
- That which is wholly beautiful has an absoluteness which is the sign and seal of the hidden Divinity.
- The beautiful is the truly lawful. A thing which expresses the law of its own being is both beautiful and free, for freedom is also obedience to that Law of the Spirit.
- A beautiful thing is one in which the consciousness rests content, in which there is neither urge nor need to go beyond and find something else with which to round off and complete the experiene.
- The essence of beauty is not revealed by symmetry alone; symmetry can be dead or deadly. There has to be a subtly harmoious polarity of opposites, which calls for a sensitiveness that is all-pervading.
- To put away the ugly is to follow the subtle clue of Beauty.
- Anything that is wholly beautiful must have its own law of Beauty, its logic of expansion. Its nature is fixed by its essence.
- Through the force of beauty we can develop the requisite strength to get rid of our limitations.
- When the manifesting form becomes one of perfect beauty, then the highest significance is released and the life within that form is wholly expressed and fulfilled.
- Nature is evolving Beauty, as well as Intelligence and Capacity. That which is hidden in each thing, the Idea behind it, is in a process of revelation, and will be fully revealed only when the form is perfect and beautiful.
- From the standpoint of the Spirit, perfect beauty lies in the proper limits of expression; to go beyond them is to diminish the effect.
- The notion of beauty is not to be argued out, demonstrated or established like a logical proposition; it is an attestation of the same order as an instinctive faith which springs from within.
- The Law of Beauty is the Law of the Spirit in manifestation; it is the Law of the self-relation of the One to the many.
- You are infinitely beautiful when you give without one single thought of asking or taking.
- It is only when our sensibilities have come to a point of refinement where they make a perfect bridge between that which eternally is and that which is not, that we shall know what is Absolute Beauty.
- Art of every sort, when it embodies Beauty, speaks the language of an invisible order in which each thing has its own significant place.
- Beauty is not susceptible to appropriation. If there is any beauty anywhere, it belongs to the very nature of things. It is as erroneous to regard as your possession the beauty of your form as it is to imagine that the beauty of the sunset belongs to yourself or anybody else.
- I bury myself in all that is dark and suppressed; I am resurrected in all that is fair and beautiful.
- All form is limiting, but Beauty ceases to limit, and fulfils the manifestation of Truth.
- An object of Beauty exists for itself, as a revelation of the One Beauty. The highest end that is served, possibly, is that revelation.
- That which is beautiful, be it a melody, a work of art or a wayside flower, has a unity, a centre of origin, whence is its inspiration.
- There is no beauty without an idea which can be discovered in the depths of human consciousness.
- I believe in Beauty, abstract and concrete, and in giving oneself to it.
- Beauty is the creation of Life, which flows into a form and impresses it with the Truth which is at the very source of that flow.
- One aspect and mark by which we can recognize, even in its imperfect beginnings, the perfection-to-be is the beauty which characterizes the expressions of Life in its innumerable forms.
- There is such a thing as a stairway to beauty, a progressive appreciation and sense of the beautiful. Taste has to evolve and reach maturity and refinement.
- Absolute Beauty is at the very source of manifestation, in the spiritual root of ourselves, though we have forgotten it in our headlong plunge into the world of seperative matter. We must come to it in the end, which is a coming to the true nature of ourselves.
- Beauty in form, Truth in idea, these are the outer and inner correlatives. Each attests the other.
- Beauty is a quality that belongs to the subjective perception of an objective relation in time and space, be it a melodious sequence, a harmony of color or sound, or the curvature of a shape.
- When the idea is beautiful in truth, the expression or the gesture will also be beautiful.
- All beauty springs from the same source, and all things beautiful are secretly in affinity with one another.
- Every beautiful object has its unseen links with the heaven of God's own Ideas, and radiates an influence which is rained from above, subtle but potent.
- A beautiful thing is justified in itself, because it is itself, and no other thing.
- There is beauty when the instinct of expression which is in all life finds, for the time being, a perfect fulfillment.
- That which is truly beautiful, whether a work of art or a product of natural evolution, is an intimation from above, from a world of Light, where there is neither the shadow of the past nor of a dubious future created out of an imperfect present.
- Beauty at its supreme point, when it is absolute, lifts one out of the object in which it is present. The pure artist works only for the love of his work, with no motive other than his self-abnegating spirit.
- The greatest Beauty is beauty of soul, and that beauty has to be realized in thought, in feeling, in behavior, and in every form of action.
- That beauty is most beautiful which calls for an all-pervading sensitiveness in the consciousness that first beholds and then mingles with it completely.
- We have yet to grow wings for the swan-flight from Time to Eternity, following that archetypal line of beauty which is but a far-off dream to mortals.