What is beauty? There are endless debates about what is hidden under this concept since the beginning of the creation of the world. Oscar Wilde said that beauty has as many meanings as there are moods in a person. But this is about the visible, about the top of a beautiful iceberg. And what is hidden under the dark water is the beauty of the human soul. There is even more debate about it. We’ll talk about this.
The essence of the world
There is an opinion that in our time they speak less and less about spirituality, about what the true beauty of the soul is, and more and more pay attention to the external, to what you can see, feel, buy or sell. Is it so? Perhaps this is true. But on the other hand, the essence of the world does not change. There have always been and will be rich and poor, truth and falsehood, sincerity and hypocrisy, love and hate, black and white. Everything is. The essence does not change, only new means appear. And this means that the conversation about what is the beauty of the soul does not lose its relevance. And it's time to remember the words of brilliant writers, poets, great philosophers, religious figures and many others.
Where does the soul live?
Every person has a soul. It is difficult to disagree with this statement. No one is trying. The only thing they still argue about is where she lives, in which part of the body and whether she continues to live after bodily death.
On the one hand, from a scientific point of view, these are very interesting questions. And on the other - is it really important, where? It can be in the solar plexus, and in the heart, and in the head. The main thing is that it is true, unique and inimitable, like a drawing on the tip of a finger. The Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho claims that each of us is not a body endowed with a soul, but a soul, part of which is visible and is called the body.
The fact that the spirit is primary, argued and the outstanding Lebanese prose writer and philosopher Gibran Khalil Gibran. He wrote that the beauty of the soul is like an invisible root that goes deep into the earth, but nourishes a flower, giving it color and aroma.
Ancient Greek philosophers
Starting with Aristotle, many philosophers have argued that beauty is a twofold concept. There is the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul. Under the first understand the proportionality of parts, attractiveness, grace. All the same Aristotle said that such beauty is understood and appreciated by a simple people who are used to perceiving and feeling the world with only five basic feelings. Anyone who admires such beauty is "only small different from animals", relying only on their instincts.
Otherwise, the situation is with the inner world of man. Other laws apply there, which means that everything that happens among its immense latitudes is captured by other feelings. Plato argued that the beauty of the soul is tangible only by virtuous people, for the beautiful and the evil cannot coexist, one excludes the other.
Echoed by our contemporary - Paulo Coelho, who says that if a person is able to notice the beautiful, it is only because he wears it inside. The world is a mirror reflecting our true.
Beauty of the soul: quotes from writers and poets
The fact that beauty and soul are identical concepts was said not only by ancient Greek philosophers. Classics of world literature wrote about this and our contemporaries continue to discuss. Here are some examples. The 18th-century German poet and playwright Gotthold Efraim Lessing was convinced that even the most nondescript body was transformed thanks to spiritual beauty. And vice versa, the poverty of the spirit puts on the “most magnificent addition” some special imperceptible imprint and causes an incomprehensible disgust.
A century later, the Russian poet and prose writer V. Ya. Bryusov said the same thing, but in other words: “After death, the human soul continues to live its invisible and elusive life. But if one of us was a poet, artist or architect, then after the death of the body the beauty of his soul lives both in heaven and on earth, imprinted in the form of a word, color or stone. ”
And the Russian philosopher I.A. Ilyin tried to comprehend another secret - what is the beauty of the Russian soul. He compared it to a Russian song, in which, inexplicably, “human suffering, and the deepest prayer, and sweet love, and great comfort” merge together.
Poems about the beauty of the soul
The fact that beauty has two reverse sides, poets write. One of the most remarkable poems on this subject is the work of Eduard Asadov “Two Beauty”. The author, seriously and joking at the same time, notes that two beauties rarely end up in the same place. As a rule, it interferes with one another. But people often do not notice this and for a long time remain "myopic" to the spiritual beauty. And only when her antipode “decently and firmly annoys”, “embarrassed”, they begin to think about the true.
At the end of the poem, the poet comes to one conclusion - at the end of life, two beauties always change. One grows old, decrepit, succumbing to the ruthless influence of time. And the other - the beauty of the soul - remains the same. She does not know what wrinkles are, age and does not know how to count years. All that remains for her is to burn brightly and smile.
Other poets about the eternal
The beautiful Russian poet Vasily Kapnist regrets the earthly beauty of the earth. He sadly notes that everything on earth has been given one term - an instant. It disappears, and with it the beautiful Aurora, meteor, and beauty will sink into the abyss. But what can death defeat? Only the spirit. Neither time nor grave is able to "devour" him. And only in it is the color of beauty eternal.
The talented Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont praises the eternal beauty of love, suffering and renunciation. In his poem "There is Beauty in the World," he writes that the gods of Hellas, the blue sea, and waterfalls, and “heavy mountains”, no matter how beautiful, cannot compare with the beauty of the soul of Jesus Christ, who agreed to voluntary torment for the sake of humanity.
conclusions
So, if for centuries great minds have said the same thing - about the eternity of the spirit and the perishability of the body, then why do we continue this senseless race for brilliance, splendor and pictures? Israeli Kabbalist Michael Laitman claims that the soul is born again and again only to experience various conditions, as if trying on various clothes. And only after measuring everything and realizing that the pursuit of fame, wealth, external beauty and eternal youth does not bring anything but emptiness and disappointment, the soul turns its eyes to the true, looks inside itself and seeks answers to all questions only from God.
In other words, the scientist says that cultivating the beauty of the body is nothing but a necessary stage of development. It is impossible at school to jump from the first grade to the tenth at once and understand what trigonometry is, if you are still training to write numbers and letters beautifully in the recipe. And, as the Arab philosopher D.H. Gibran said, the moment comes when you perceive the world not as an image that you would like to see, and not as a song that you would like to hear, but as an image and a song that a person sees and hears, even if it closes your eyes and ears.