beauty

156:5.5“But let me warn you against the folly of un­der­tak­ing to sur­mount temp­ta­tion by the ef­fort of sup­plant­ing one de­sire by an­other and sup­pos­edly su­pe­rior de­sire through the mere force of the hu­man will. If you would be truly tri­umphant over the temp­ta­tions of the lesser and lower na­ture, you must come to that place of spir­i­tual ad­van­tage where you have re­ally and truly de­vel­oped an ac­tual in­ter­est in, and love for, those higher and more ide­al­is­tic forms of con­duct which your mind is de­sirous of sub­sti­tut­ing for these lower and less ide­al­is­tic habits of be­hav­ior that you rec­og­nize as temp­ta­tion. You will in this way be de­liv­ered through spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion rather than be in­creas­ingly over­bur­dened with the de­cep­tive sup­pres­sion of mor­tal de­sires. The old and the in­fe­rior will be for­got­ten in the love for the new and the su­pe­rior. Beauty is al­ways tri­umphant over ug­li­ness in the hearts of all who are il­lu­mi­nated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the ex­pul­sive en­ergy of a new and sin­cere spir­i­tual af­fec­tion. And again I say to you, be not over­come by evil but rather over­come evil with good.”

87:5.7The method adopted to pre­vent the spir­its from be­com­ing jeal­ous of hu­man pros­per­ity was to heap vi­tu­per­a­tion upon some lucky or much loved thing or per­son. The cus­tom of de­pre­ci­at­ing com­pli­men­tary re­marks re­gard­ing one­self or fam­ily had its ori­gin in this way, and it even­tu­ally evolved into civ­i­lized mod­esty, re­straint, and cour­tesy. In keep­ing with the same mo­tive, it be­came the fash­ion to look ugly. Beauty aroused the envy of spir­its; it be­to­kened sin­ful hu­man pride. The sav­age sought for an ugly name. This fea­ture of the cult was a great hand­i­cap to the ad­vance­ment of art, and it long kept the world somber and ugly.

110:3.71. Choos­ing to re­spond to di­vine lead­ing; sin­cerely bas­ing the hu­man life on the high­est con­scious­ness of truth, beauty, and good­ness, and then co-or­di­nat­ing these qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity through wis­dom, wor­ship, faith, and love.

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.

• revelation of Deity

0:1.17Di­vin­ity is crea­ture com­pre­hen­si­ble as truth, beauty, and good­ness; cor­re­lated in per­son­al­ity as love, mercy, and min­istry; dis­closed on im­per­sonal lev­els as jus­tice, power, and sov­er­eignty.

• ultimate b. is discernment of divine goodness in eternal truth

2:7.8The dis­cern­ment of su­preme beauty is the dis­cov­ery and in­te­gra­tion of re­al­ity: The dis­cern­ment of the di­vine good­ness in the eter­nal truth, that is ul­ti­mate beauty. Even the charm of hu­man art con­sists in the har­mony of its unity.

• man’s effort to discern God in matter

56:10.2Through­out this glo­ri­ous age the chief pur­suit of the ever-ad­vanc­ing mor­tals is the quest for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and a fuller re­al­iza­tion of the com­pre­hen­si­ble el­e­ments of De­ity—truth, beauty, and good­ness. This rep­re­sents man’s ef­fort to dis­cern God in mind, mat­ter, and spirit. And as the mor­tal pur­sues this quest, he finds him­self in­creas­ingly ab­sorbed in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial study of phi­los­o­phy, cos­mol­ogy, and di­vin­ity.

• unification of contrasts, of Creator and creature

56:10.3Phi­los­o­phy you some­what grasp, and di­vin­ity you com­pre­hend in wor­ship, so­cial ser­vice, and per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, but the pur­suit of beauty—cos­mol­ogy—you all too of­ten limit to the study of man’s crude artis­tic en­deav­ors. Beauty, art, is largely a mat­ter of the uni­fi­ca­tion of con­trasts. Va­ri­ety is es­sen­tial to the con­cept of beauty. The su­preme beauty, the height of fi­nite art, is the drama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vast­ness of the cos­mic ex­tremes of Cre­ator and crea­ture. Man find­ing God and God find­ing man—the crea­ture be­com­ing per­fect as is the Cre­ator—that is the su­per­nal achieve­ment of the su­premely beau­ti­ful, the at­tain­ment of the apex of cos­mic art.

56:10.4Hence ma­te­ri­al­ism, athe­ism, is the max­i­ma­tion of ug­li­ness, the cli­max of the fi­nite an­tithe­sis of the beau­ti­ful. High­est beauty con­sists in the pan­o­rama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vari­a­tions which have been born of pre-ex­is­tent har­mo­nious re­al­ity.

• harmonious relations, rhythms of creation
• revelation of Deity

56:10.9The worlds set­tled in light and life are so fully con­cerned with the com­pre­hen­sion of truth, beauty, and good­ness be­cause these qual­ity val­ues em­brace the rev­e­la­tion of De­ity to the realms of time and space. The mean­ings of eter­nal truth make a com­bined ap­peal to the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual na­tures of mor­tal man. Uni­ver­sal beauty em­braces the har­mo­nious re­la­tions and rhythms of the cos­mic cre­ation; this is more dis­tinctly the in­tel­lec­tual ap­peal and leads to­wards uni­fied and syn­chronous com­pre­hen­sion of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Di­vine good­ness rep­re­sents the rev­e­la­tion of in­fi­nite val­ues to the fi­nite mind, therein to be per­ceived and el­e­vated to the very thresh­old of the spir­i­tual level of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion.

56:10.10Truth is the ba­sis of sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, pre­sent­ing the in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of re­li­gion. Beauty spon­sors art, mu­sic, and the mean­ing­ful rhythms of all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Good­ness em­braces the sense of ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gion—ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion-hunger.

56:10.11The ex­is­tence of beauty im­plies the pres­ence of ap­pre­cia­tive crea­ture mind just as cer­tainly as the fact of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion in­di­cates the dom­i­nance of the Su­preme Mind. Beauty is the in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of the har­mo­nious time-space syn­the­sis of the far-flung di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of phe­nom­e­nal re­al­ity, all of which stems from pre-ex­is­tent and eter­nal one­ness.

• reflection of Paradise in material creation

56:10.17Uni­ver­sal beauty is the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­flec­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise in the ma­te­rial cre­ation, while eter­nal truth is the spe­cial min­istry of the Par­a­dise Sons who not only be­stow them­selves upon the mor­tal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peo­ples. Di­vine good­ness is more fully shown forth in the lov­ing min­istry of the man­i­fold per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit. But love, the sum to­tal of these three qual­i­ties, is man’s per­cep­tion of God as his spirit Fa­ther.

• value-realization of God-consciousness

111:3.7In so far as man’s evolv­ing mor­ontia soul be­comes per­me­ated by truth, beauty, and good­ness as the value-re­al­iza­tion of God-con­scious­ness, such a re­sul­tant be­ing be­comes in­de­struc­tible. If there is no sur­vival of eter­nal val­ues in the evolv­ing soul of man, then mor­tal ex­is­tence is with­out mean­ing, and life it­self is a tragic il­lu­sion. But it is for­ever true: What you be­gin in time you will as­suredly fin­ish in eter­nity—if it is worth fin­ish­ing.

• finite maximum of experience

117:1.7Truth, beauty, and good­ness are cor­re­lated in the min­istry of the Spirit, the grandeur of Par­a­dise, the mercy of the Son, and the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Su­preme. God the Su­preme is truth, beauty, and good­ness, for these con­cepts of di­vin­ity rep­re­sent fi­nite max­i­mums of ide­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. The eter­nal sources of these tri­une qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity are on super­fi­nite lev­els, but a crea­ture could only con­ceive of such sources as super­truth, super­beauty, and super­good­ness.

• spirit of Father

155:6.11Never for­get there is only one ad­ven­ture which is more sat­is­fy­ing and thrilling than the at­tempt to dis­cover the will of the liv­ing God, and that is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hon­estly try­ing to do that di­vine will. And fail not to re­mem­ber that the will of God can be done in any earthly oc­cu­pa­tion. Some call­ings are not holy and oth­ers sec­u­lar. All things are sa­cred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, sub­or­di­nated to truth, en­no­bled by love, dom­i­nated by mercy, and re­strained by fair­ness—jus­tice. The spirit which my Fa­ther and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of ide­al­is­tic beauty.

167:6.5It was also at Jeri­cho, in con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion of the early re­li­gious train­ing of chil­dren in habits of di­vine wor­ship, that Je­sus im­pressed upon his apos­tles the great value of beauty as an in­flu­ence lead­ing to the urge to wor­ship, es­pe­cially with chil­dren. The Mas­ter by pre­cept and ex­am­ple taught the value of wor­ship­ing the Cre­ator in the midst of the nat­u­ral sur­round­ings of cre­ation. He pre­ferred to com­mune with the heav­enly Fa­ther amidst the trees and among the lowly crea­tures of the nat­u­ral world. He re­joiced to con­tem­plate the Fa­ther through the in­spir­ing spec­ta­cle of the starry realms of the Cre­ator Sons.

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

44:7.3Cos­mic con­cepts of true phi­los­o­phy, the por­trayal of ce­les­tial artistry, or the mor­tal at­tempt to de­pict the hu­man rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine beauty can never be truly sat­is­fy­ing if such at­tempted crea­ture pro­gres­sion is un­uni­fied. These ex­pres­sions of the di­vine urge within the evolv­ing crea­ture may be in­tel­lec­tu­ally true, emo­tion­ally beau­ti­ful, and spir­i­tu­ally good; but the real soul of ex­pres­sion is ab­sent un­less these re­al­i­ties of truth, mean­ings of beauty, and val­ues of good­ness are uni­fied in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of the ar­ti­san, the sci­en­tist, or the philoso­pher.

140:4.10Ed­u­ca­tion should be a tech­nique of learn­ing (dis­cov­er­ing) the bet­ter meth­ods of grat­i­fy­ing our nat­u­ral and in­her­ited urges, and hap­pi­ness is the re­sult­ing to­tal of these en­hanced tech­niques of emo­tional sat­is­fac­tions. Hap­pi­ness is lit­tle de­pen­dent on en­vi­ron­ment, though pleas­ing sur­round­ings may greatly con­tribute thereto.

3:5.116. Is ide­al­ism—the ap­proach­ing con­cept of the di­vine—de­sir­able? Then must man strug­gle in an en­vi­ron­ment of rel­a­tive good­ness and beauty, sur­round­ings stim­u­la­tive of the ir­re­press­ible reach for bet­ter things.

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.

195:6.17The sin­cere pur­suit of good­ness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And ev­ery sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery demon­strates the ex­is­tence of both free­dom and uni­for­mity in the uni­verse. The dis­cov­erer was free to make the dis­cov­ery. The thing dis­cov­ered is real and ap­par­ently uni­form, or else it could not have be­come known as a thing.

44:7.2Beauty, rhythm, and har­mony are in­tel­lec­tu­ally as­so­ci­ated and spir­i­tu­ally akin. Truth, fact, and re­la­tion­ship are in­tel­lec­tu­ally in­sep­a­ra­ble and as­so­ci­ated with the philo­sophic con­cepts of beauty. Good­ness, righ­teous­ness, and jus­tice are phil­o­soph­i­cally in­ter­re­lated and spir­i­tu­ally bound up to­gether with liv­ing truth and di­vine beauty.