-001_Foreword.htm
Calligraphy, the art of fine writing, is truly an art for all! Very little equipment is needed --- more needed is patience and practice! Results can be achieved remarkably quickly for those who really try. Beautiful writing is a universal hobby. Handwriting is accepted as a notable form of self-expression and more than this, fine handwriting is appreciated as a mark of respect to those to whom it is addressed. Character refinement in the person of the writer will always be evident in this expression of art and joy. A life without beautiful writing would be as empty as one without reading! Finally, the pleasure of calligraphy is accessible to anyone with pen, ink and paper.
Here are some collections from the writings of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
-002_Calligraphy.htm
Skilful Fingers
The skilful Penman's unseen finger wrote
His swift intuitive calligraphy; ….
Sri Aurobindo
29: 232
Curve And Line
A conscious power has drawn the plan of life,
There is a meaning in each curve and line.
29: 460
Conscious Hand
If you want to play, if you want to work, if you want to do anything at all with your hand, unless you push consciousness into the cells of your hand you will never do anything good – how many times have I told you that? And this is felt. You feel it. You can acquire it. All sorts of exercises may be done to make the hand conscious and there comes a moment when it becomes so conscious that you can leave it to do things; it does them by itself without your little mind having to intervene.
The Mother
4: 404
Keshav: … Let us try the plan we have already adopted with such success, when we discovered the nature of beauty. We will take some form of harmony and inquire how regularity enters into it; and it occurs to me that the art of calligraphy will be useful for the purpose, for a beautifully written sentence has many letters just as the universe has many types and it seems that proportion is just as necessary to it.
Wilson: Yes, calligraphy will do very well.
Keshav: I recollect that we supposed beauty to have three elements, of which every type must possess at least one, better two, and as a counsel of perfection all three. If we inquire, we shall find that form is absolutely imperative, seeing that if the form of the letters is not beautiful or the arrangement of the lines not harmonious, then the sentence is not beautifully written. Colour too may be an element of calligraphy, for we all know what different effects we can produce by using inks of various colours. And if the art is to be perfect, I think that perfume will have to enter very largely into it. Let us write the word “beautiful". Here you see the letters are beautifully formed, their arrangement is beautiful, this bright green ink I am using harmonizes well with the word, and moreover, the sight of this peculiar combination of letters written in this peculiar way brings to my mind a peculiar association of ideas, which I call the perfume of the written word.
Wilson: But is it not the combination, not of letters but of sounds, which lingers in your mind and calls up the idea?
Keshav: I do not think so, for I often find sentences that seem to me beautiful in writing or in print, but once I utter them aloud, become harsh and unmusical; and sometimes the reverse happens, especially in Meredith, in whom I have often at first sight condemned a sentence as harsh and ugly, which, when I read it aloud, I was surprised to find apt and harmonious. From this I infer that if a writer’s works appear beautiful in print or manuscript, but not beautiful when read aloud, he may be set down as a good artist in calligraphy, but a bad artist in literature, since suggestion to the eye is the perfume of the written, but suggestion to the ear the perfume of the spoken word. In this however I seem to have been digressing to no purpose; for whatever else is uncertain, this much is certain, that form is essential to calligraphy, and this is really all that concerns us. Now if the form is to be beautiful it must be harmonious in effect, and to be harmonious in effect it must be proportionate in detail, and to be proportionate in detail, the words and letters of which it is made must exhibit a regular variety.
3:34
Write Beautifully
Mother, I always write to You about the same things: sleep, work and talk. Mother, do You like reading the same thing every day?
Why not, my little smile? You can learn to say the same things in different ways; this is an excellent exercise to learn how to write and mould your style. It seems that at the moment you are practising calligraphy! Who has taught you to write so beautifully?
Your affectionate Mother.
16: 76
Your Hand
My dear mother, I want to be like the lion on the envelope I am sending you this evening.
My dear little lion,
I am in your heart that it may be happy, in your head that it may be peaceful, and in your hand that it may be skilful.
With all my love.
16: 125
Handwriting
The children do not sit up straight and their handwriting is bad.
Mother wrote:
It is no more tiring to hold yourself straight than to hold yourself badly. When you hold yourself straight, the body grows harmoniously. When you hold yourself badly, the body becomes misshapen and ugly.
It is no more tiring to write neatly than to scrawl. When your work is neatly written, it is read with pleasure. When it is too badly written, it cannot be read at all.
To do with care all that one does is the basis of all progress.
12: 341
-003_Art and you.htm
Find It, Develop It And Use It
Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it.
17: 204
Genius
There is a genius within everyone of us — we don’t know it. We must find the way to make it come out — but it is there sleeping, it asks for nothing better than to manifest; we must open the door to it.
9: 397
Artistic Faculty
It is not necessary that every man should be an artist. It is necessary that every man should have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct and sensitive. It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man’s daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realises the fullness of the expanding Spirit in itself.
17: 251
Aesthetic
Sweet Mother, what is an aesthetic conscience?
It is the consciousness of beauty. Aesthetic means that which concerns beauty, art. There are people, for example, who move around in life and see landscapes, see people and things and have absolutely no sense of whether it is beautiful or not; and into the bargain, it makes no difference at all to them. They look at the sky, see whether there are any clouds, whether it will rain or be clear, for instance; or whether the sun is hot or the wind cold. But there are others --- when they raise their eyes and look at a beautiful sky, it gives them pleasure, they say, “Oh! it is fine today, the sunrise is lovely today, the sunset is beautiful, the clouds have fine shapes." So, the first kind do not have an aesthetic conscience, the second have.
7: 181
Curve And Straight Line
Keshav : … Can you tell me why a curve is considered more beautiful than a straight line?
Wilson : No, except that the effect is more pleasing.
Keshav : Ah yes, but why should it be more pleasing?
Wilson : I cannot tell.
Keshav : I will tell you. It is because a curve possesses that variety which is the soul of proportion. It rises, swells and falls with an exact propriety --- it is at once various and regular as rolling water; while the stiff monotony of a straight line disgusts the soul by its meaningless rigidity and want of proportion. On the other hand a system of similar curves, unless very delicately managed, cannot possibly suggest the idea of beauty: and that is because there is no proportion, for proportion, I would impress upon you, consists in a regular variety. And thus a straight line, tho’ in itself ugly, can be very beautiful if properly combined with curves….
3:16
Simple Combination Of Lines
Man becomes God, and all human activity reaches its highest and noblest when it succeeds in bringing body, heart and mind into touch with spirit. Art can express eternal truth, it is not limited to the expression of form and appearance. So wonderfully has God made the world that a man using a simple combination of lines, an unpretentious harmony of colours, can raise this apparently insignificant medium to suggest absolute and profound truths with a perfection which language labours with difficulty to reach. What Nature is, what God is, what man is can be triumphantly revealed in stone or on canvas.
17:249
Appreciation Of Beauty
It is like the artist, you know, who trains his eyes to appreciate forms and colors, lines, composition of things, the harmony found in physical nature; it is not at all through desire that he does this, it is through taste, culture, the development of the sense of sight and the appreciation of beauty. And usually artists who are real artists and love their art and live in the sense of beauty, seeking beauty, are people who don’t have many desires. They live in the sense of growth not only visual, but of the appreciation of beauty. There is a great difference between this and people who live by their impulses and desires. That’s altogether something else.
7: 58
True Art
Beauty is the joyous offering of Nature.
True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.
12: 234
Imagination
What is the function, the use of the imagination?
If one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life; one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to use it and has a power. In fact it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the capacity of imagination he would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the path of realisation. People who are not imaginative — it is very difficult to make them move; they see just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and they cannot go Foreword because they are clamped by the immediate thing.
7: 233
Beauty
In the first case, I believe I have already said often enough and repeated that in the physical world, of all things it is beauty which best expresses the Divine. The physical world is the world of form, and the perfection of form is beauty. So I think it is not necessary to go over all that again. And once we admit this, that in the physical world beauty is the best and closest expression of the Divine, it is natural to speak of it as a “priestess", who interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its true role is to put the whole of manifested nature into contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, harmony, and through a sense of the ideal which raises you towards something higher. So I think this justifies the word “priesthood" and explains and answers the question
8: 216
Inspiration
For what is most important is the inspiration, in everything that one does; in all human creations the most important thing is inspiration.
5:70
The Beauty Of…
Let beauty be your constant ideal.
The beauty of the soul
The beauty of sentiments
The beauty of thoughts
The beauty of the action
The beauty in the work
so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty.
And the Divine Help shall always be with you.
See Artistically
The consciousness must grow in light and sincerity and the eyes must learn to see artistically.
12: 238
Images
In truth, images are much more expressive than words.
10: 239
Art's Service
If Art's service is but to imitate Nature, then burn all the picture galleries and let us have instead photographic studios. It is because Art reveals what Nature hides that a small picture is worth more than all the jewels of the millionaires and the treasures of the princes.
*
If you only imitate visible Nature, you will perpetrate either a corpse, a dead sketch or a monstrosity; Truth lives in that which goes behind and beyond the visible and sensible.
17:95
Art And Beauty
Artistic taste is pleased with beautiful things and is itself beautiful.
Artistic sensibility: a powerful aid to fight ugliness.
Artistic works: all work at the service of beauty.
Mother,
May we ask X [an artist] to work on activities which are non-artistic?
All and everything can be artistic if it is done in an artistic spirit.
Beauty is a great power.
Spiritual beauty has a contagious power.
Beauty does not get its full power except when it is surrendered to the Divine.
The beauty of tomorrow: beauty which will express the Divine Power.
The beauty of tomorrow manifesting the Divine: a beauty that exists only by the Divine and for the Divine.
Beauty is not sufficient in itself, it wants to become divine.
Pure sense of beauty can be acquired only through a great purification.
The ideal of Beauty moves towards its infinite goal.
Among the most precious things in life are those you do not see with physical eyes.
15: 251
“Always better."
The future belongs to those who want to progress.
Blessings to those whose motto is: “Always better."
In the physical the Divine manifests as Beauty.
13: 240
Discipline
Mother, I want a discipline.
This is quite excellent and I approve of it. Without outer and inner discipline, one can achieve nothing in life, either spiritually or materially. All those who have been able to create something beautiful or useful have always been persons who have known how to discipline themselves.
Always with you in all love.
16: 123
The Beauty Of The Future
Sri Aurobindo came to tell the world of the beauty of the future that must be realised.
He came to give not a hope but a certitude of the splendour towards which the world moves. The world is not an unfortunate accident, it is a marvel which moves towards its expression.
The world needs the certitude of the beauty of the future. And Sri Aurobindo has given that assurance.
13: 15
Display
Let us be always very careful to avoid all that might encourage in us the spirit of display.
15: 272
Six Senses
... the first business of the educationist is to develop in the child the right use of the six senses; to see that they are not stunted or injured by disuse, but trained by the child himself under the teacher’s direction to that perfect accuracy and keen subtle sensitiveness of which they are capable. In addition, whatever assistance can be gained by the organs of action, should be thoroughly employed. The hand, for instance, should be trained to reproduce what the eye sees and the mind senses. The speech should be trained to a perfect expression of the knowledge which the whole antahkarana possesses.
17:206
Harmony and Beauty
Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi …. Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come….
25:31
Beautiful and Useful
There is a tendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and overstress the value of the useful,….
17:231
Material of the Artist
Whatever is capable of being manifested as Beauty is the material of the artist.
Form
We have now throughout the world a search, an attempt on various lines to discover some principle of significant form in Art which shall escape from the obvious and external and combine delight with profundity, the power of a more searching knowledge with the depth of suggestion, emotion and ecstasy which are the very breath of aesthetic creation. The search has led to many extravagances and cannot be said to have been as yet successful, but it may be regarded as a sure sign and precursor of a new and greater age of human achievement.
17:275
Help Man Upward
….the aesthetic faculties entering into the enjoyment of the world and the satisfaction of the vital instincts, the love of the beautiful in men and women, in food, in things, in articles of use and articles of pleasure, have done more than anything else to raise man from the beast, to refine and purge his passions, to ennoble his emotions and to lead him up through the heart and the imagination to the state of the intellectual man. That which has helped man upward, must be preserved in order that he may not sink below the level he has attained.
17:236
Raise And Purify
At a certain stage of human development the aesthetic sense is of infinite value in this direction. It raises and purifies conduct by instilling a distaste for the coarse desires and passions of the savage, for the rough, uncouth and excessive in action and manner, and restraining both feeling and action by a striving after the decent, the beautiful, ….
17:238
Morality
A still more important and indispensable activity of the sense of beauty is the powerful help it has given to the formation of morality.
17:240
Value
Necessary
….there is a tendency to ignore Art and poetry as mere refinements, luxuries of the rich and leisurely rather than things that are necessary to the mass of men or useful to life.
Art Galleries
Art galleries cannot be brought into every home, but, if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are things of taste and beauty, it is inevitable that the habits, thoughts and feelings of the people should be raised, ennobled, harmonized, made more sweet and dignified.
17:245
-004_Art and child.htm
Imitation And Imagination
Every child has the gift of imitation and a touch of imaginative power. Use it to give him the groundwork of the faculty of the artist.
17:215
The Hand
The hand, for instance, should be trained to reproduce what the eye sees and the mind senses.
17:207
The Hand And Eye
It is also very desirable that the hand should be capable of coming to the help of the eye in dealing with the multitudinous objects of its activity so as to ensure accuracy. This is of a use so obvious and imperatively needed, that it need not be dwelt on at length. The practice of imitation by the hand of the thing seen is of use both in detecting the lapses and inaccuracies of the mind, in noticing the objects of sense and in registering accurately what has been seen. Imitation by the hand ensures accuracy of observation. This is one of the first uses of drawing and it is sufficient in itself to make the teaching of this subject a necessary part of the training of the organs.
17:221
The one faculty we have omitted, apart from the faculty of direct reasoning, is Imagination. This is a most important and indispensable instrument. It may be divided into three functions, the forming of mental images, the power of creating thoughts, images and imitations or new combinations of existing thoughts and images, the appreciation of the soul in things, beauty, charm, greatness, hidden suggestiveness, the emotion and spiritual life that pervades the world. This is in every way as important as the training of the faculties which observe and compare outward things.
17:224
The Faculties
A free and active imaging of form and hue within oneself, a free and self- trained hand reproducing with instinctive success not the form and measurement of things seen outside, for that is a smaller capacity easily mastered, but the inward vision of the relation and truth of things, an eye quick to note and distinguish, sensitive to design and to harmony in colour, these are the faculties that have to be evoked….
17:252
Art
Art is subtle and delicate, and it makes the mind also in its movements subtle and delicate. It is suggestive, and the intellect habituated to the appreciation of art is quick to catch suggestions, mastering not only, as the scientific mind does, that which is positive and on the surface, but that which leads to ever fresh widening and subtilising of knowledge and opens a door into the deeper secrets of inner nature where the positive instruments of science cannot take the depth of measure. This supreme intellectual value of Art has never been sufficiently recognised. Men have made language, poetry, history, philosophy agents for the training of this side of intellectuality, necessary parts of a liberal education, but the immense educative force of music, painting and sculpture has not been duly recognised. They have been thought to be by-paths of the human mind, beautiful and interesting, but not necessary, therefore intended for the few. Yet the universal impulse to enjoy the beauty and attractiveness of sound, to look at and live among pictures, colours, forms ought to have warned mankind of the superficiality and ignorance of such a view of these eternal and important occupation of human mind.
17:247
See, See, See
Visual memory is more useful than mental memory. One should read a lot — see, see, see, on the blackboard, in books, on pictures.
12: 326
The education of the senses, again, has several aspects, which are added to one another as the being grows; indeed it should never cease. The sense organs, if properly cultivated, can attain a precision and power of functioning far exceeding what is normally expected of them.
In some ancient initiations it was stated that the number of senses that man can develop is not five but seven and in certain special cases even twelve. Certain races at certain times have, out of necessity, developed more or less perfectly one or the other of these supplementary senses. With a proper discipline persistently followed, they are within the reach of all who are sincerely interested in this development and its results. Among the faculties that are often mentioned, there is, for example, the ability to widen the physical consciousness, project it out of oneself so as to concentrate it on a given point and thus obtain sight, hearing, smell, taste and even touch at a distance.
To this general education of the senses and their functioning there will be added, as early as possible, the cultivation of discrimination and of the aesthetic sense, the capacity to choose and adopt what is beautiful and harmonious, simple, healthy and pure. For there is a psychological health just as there is a physical health, a beauty and harmony of the sensations as of the body and its movements. As the capacity of understanding grows in the child, he should be taught, in the course of his education, to add artistic taste and refinement to power and precision. He should be shown, led to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things, whether in Nature or in human creation. This should be a true aesthetic culture, which will protect him from degrading influences. For, in the wake of the last wars and the terrible nervous tension which they provoked, as a sign, perhaps, of the decline of civilisation and social decay, a growing vulgarity seems to have taken possession of human life, individual as well as collective, particularly in what concerns aesthetic life and the life of the senses. A methodical and enlightened cultivation of the senses can, little by little, eliminate from the child whatever is by contagion vulgar, commonplace and crude. This education will have very happy effects even on his character. For one who has developed a truly refined taste will, because of this very refinement, feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This refinement, if it is sincere, brings to the being a nobility and generosity which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour and will protect him from many base and perverse movements.
12: 20
Understanding Beauty
The mind is profoundly influenced by what it sees and, if the eye is trained from the days of childhood to the contemplation and understanding of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in line and colour, the tastes, habits and character will be insensibly trained to follow a similar law of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in the life of the adult man.
Home
Disciples
Devashish Patnaik
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.