Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 21060

All things are creations of the Universal Consciousness, Beauty also. The “experience” of the individual is his response or his awakening to the beauty which the Universal Consciousness has placed in. things; that beauty is not created by the individual consciousness. The philosophy of these lines is not at all clear. It says that the experience of beauty is a living truth added to beauty, a truth of which beauty is unaware. But if beauty is only the experience itself, then the experience constitutes beauty,. it does not add anything to beauty; for such addition would only be possible if beauty already existed in itself apart from the experience. What is meant by saying that beauty is unaware of the experience which creates it? The passage makes sense only if we suppose it to mean that beauty is a reality already existing apart from the experience but unconscious of itself, and the consciousness of experience is therefore a living truth added to the unconscious reality, something which brings into it consciousness and life.