Page 14 - All India Magazine Oct-2026

Seeing Beyond the Aesthetic Limit

Beauty is not the same as Delight, but like love it is an expres-
sion, a form of Ananda, — created by Ananda and composed of
Ananda; it conveys to the mind that delight of which it is made.
Aesthetically the delight takes the appearance of Rasa and the
enjoyment of this Rasa is the mind’s and the vital’s reaction to
the perception of beauty. The spiritual realisation has a sight, a
perception, a feeling which is not that of the mind and vital, —
it passes beyond the aesthetic limit, sees the universal beauty,
sees behind the object what the eye cannot see, feels what the
emotion of the heart cannot feel and passes beyond Rasa and
Bhoga to pure Ananda, — a thing more deep, intense, raptur-
ous than any mental or vital or any physical Rasa reaction can
be. It sees the One everywhere, the original bliss of existence
everywhere, and all these can create an inexpressible Ananda of
beauty, — the beauty of the One, the beauty of the Divine, the
beauty of the Beloved, the beauty of the eternal Existence in
things. It can see also the beauty of forms and objects, but with
a seeing other than the mind’s, other than that of a limited
physical vision, — what was not beautiful to the eye becomes
beautiful, what was beautiful to the eye wears now a greater,
marvellous and ineffable beauty. The spiritual realisation can
bring the vision and the rapture of All-Beautiful everywhere.
CWSA 27: 700-01

God had opened my eyes; for I saw the nobility of the vul-
gar, the attractiveness of the repellent, the perfection of the
maimed and the beauty of the hideous.
CWSA 12:425 Sri Aurobindo

All India Magazine, October 2026
14