Beauty is one of the most difficult terms to define yet one of the easiest terms to understand. We all know what is beautiful and what is not. It does not take a second for a person to say if a girl, a child, a man, a place, a song, or a poem is beautiful or not. Yet we hardly know why it is beautiful. All we know is that we like beautiful things and feel good when we see or hear something beautiful.
Random House dictionary defines “beauty” as a characteristic present in a person, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction to the mind or the eyes, arising from sensory manifestations such as a shape, color, personality, sound, design or rhythm. Yet no one knows, what are these characteristics that make a thing beautiful? Since beauty is based on the person’s perception, it is often said that beauty lies in the beholder’s eyes. Beauty is also considered to be only skin deep which means that beauty is superficial and lacks any substance.
The opposite of beauty is ugly, i.e., what gives us a bad feeling. When we see an ugly thing, we don’t like it and want to close our sensual perception and mind from that thing. Everyone wants to see the beauty and become beautiful and dread to become ugly. While we see a beautiful thing or meet a beautiful person, we want to keep looking. Einstein used the concept of beauty to explain the Theory of Relativity, i.e., how time can expand or contract.
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“You spend 30 minutes with a beautiful girl, it seems like a moment. You spend a moment sitting on a hot stove, it seems like 30 minutes”. Beauty is so important to human beings that they can do anything to look beautiful or achieve beautiful things in life. The pursuit of human life seems to become beautiful or acquire beautiful things in life. Beauty has such a powerful attraction that it bewilders all logic and rationality of the person, and sometimes, the attraction becomes fatal. Why is beauty such a powerful force?
Beauty means Truth and Good.
In the ancient philosophies, the material body is believed to be the material reflection of the soul, the spark of the universal soul or God. Hence, if the person is good, it is because the person has a beautiful soul. It is because of the beauty of the soul that people do good actions in this world. People find their parents and friends beautiful because they are good to them. We can hardly find any beauty in our enemies as they are not good to us. When a friend turns enemy, the same person ceases to be beautiful.
In Indian philosophy, God is said to have three manifestations in this world, i.e., Truth, Good and Beautiful (Satyam, Shivam, and Sundaram). Hence when we find something beautiful, it is only because it has the truth and goodness. Scientists discover secrets (truths) of nature because they find the universe beautiful (Difficult to imagine?). Einstein said, “I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.” Jules Henri Poincare, a famous French mathematician, and scientist said
“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” The discovery of truth is, therefore, to with the beauty it holds. For a scientist, the universe is not a dead object, but he sees beautiful patterns and aesthetics in nature, which helps him find nature’s secrets. While most people find the world as an ugly place due to its imperfectness like inequality, injustice, disorder, a poet sees the same world as beautiful and creates poetry. A poet can only make beautiful poetry if he finds beauty in nature and human beings. A logical person or a critique of the world can never find the world’s truth as he can never see the beauty in this world.
The Evidence of Beauty
Since beauty needs no logic, people often accuse beauty of being superficial. Rational people or scientists accept no facts to be true unless proven objectively by experiments and investigations. They often blame the perceptions of beauty as biased and prejudiced, which has developed in the people in evolution.
We all know that a human body looks beautiful if it is within a particular range of bodyweight depending upon the person’s height. We don’t find the body beautiful if it is either too thin or too fat. Yet we can’t say why only a particular weight should make the body beautiful? However, scientists have discovered that what we perceive as beautiful is actually the best bodyweight for health and longevity. A study conducted by more than a million participants by the US Cancer Prevention [1] concluded that
optimum body mass indexes to be between 23.5 and 24.9 for men and 22.0 and 23.4 for women. As body mass index increased, the risk of death increased. With body mass indexes of 40.0 or higher, men and women increased the risk of death by 250% and 200%, respectively. In contrast, underweight men and women, with body mass indexes of 18.5 or lower, increased the risk by 26% and 36%, respectively.
Thus, the perception of beauty is not superficial as it is supported by robust scientific research. If we can imagine how we can perceive the beauty of the body, we can easily notice that our perception of beauty perhaps varies in the same proportion as the effect of body weight on health as if our mind already knows what is good for the body even without going through the long process of research.
Once a scientist described to Einstein how long years of experimentation and research led to discovering the scientific theory. Einstein’s wife promptly remarked that her husband (Einstein) would have developed the same theory on a piece of paper. Einstein never conducted any experiments but developed the scientific theories’ soundest from the imagination of his mind as the man himself a replica of the universe.
We all have the inherent capability to distinguish the good from the evil and the truth from the untruth by our ability to see beauty. When we eat an apple, we don’t have to send it to the laboratory to know if it is rotten or fresh. We can, by looking at it, can know that it is fresh. A beautiful apple is also a good apple for health.
What is Good?
The first thing to understand is what is good? We can define goodness from the perspective of self and the world. One can be good to the world if his actions are for the good of the world. Similarly, one can also be good if his actions are good for him. Therefore, an ugly man must be bad for the world and bad for himself.
However, we can argue why one would like to do anything harmful to self. Yet, there is no dearth of such actions. For example, if one eats too much and becomes obese, it is surely not good for his own health. Similarly, smoking, additions, etc., are also not good for one’s own self. All selfish actions are initially good for the person but gradually become bad for him if they are not good for society. Thus, the challenge lies in finding a way that is good for self and good for society. All successful persons and businessman finds a way to find their good in the goods of others. For example, Bill Gates is the richest person in the world, not by harming society but by bringing tremendous benefit to society. As a consequence, he also became a rich man.
However, when a person focuses only on selfish benefits without any concern for the world, he creates an imbalance that makes the person bad. This leads to the path of untruth and evil. Such a person gradually becomes unattractive and ugly as the evil starts getting reflected on his body and face.
What is good also depends on the person and the situation. A sunny day may look beautiful in the cold winters and cold countries but extremely unattractive for the tropical and warm countries. The woman may look extremely beautiful to a lover. Still, only ordinary to other men and women. Hills may be beautiful for the people living in the plain or hotter places but may look unattractive to the native who may find the modern world of malls and urban life more attractive. Western music may be attractive to some but repulsive to others.
Thus our perception of beauty also has a purpose. The attraction depends not only on the object of beauty but also on our mental makeup. We find beauty in things that complement ourselves. Its force of attraction due to beauty can be compared with the attraction of the electric changes. The opposite attracts, and once they meet, they neutralize each other. So often, we are attracted to something which we lack. Often, we are not even aware of what is missing unless we find something attractive. Beauty is thus a guide to achieve the missing something in us to have a more fulfilling and contented life.
Yoga: The Secret of Beauty
Natural beauty’s secret lies in the mantra truth, good, and beauty (Satyam, Shivam, and Sundaram). To look beautiful outside, one has to be good inside. The good feeling can come only by being good and truthful. If one becomes bad for others, he has to pay the price with his beauty.
Yoga, one of the ancient methods for good health, means union. It defies all scientific theories as people use yoga to reduce weight and become healthy not by burning calories in the gym or by medication but simply by effortless postures of the body designed many thousands of years ago that require the body’s disciplined mind. Yoga means union, i.e., the union of body and mind with the soul on a personal level and the union of the individual soul to the universal soul or the soul of the world on another level. Yoga is used worldwide to make oneself beautiful as it beings the goodness and truth in the person. However, once the person becomes beautiful, he automatically gets the proper body weight, fitness, and good health.
The Challenges of being Beautiful
Some people are born beautiful, but others acquire beauty by conscious effort. Often the most become people become unattractive due to their lifestyle and evil actions. Who would find beauty in an obese man or woman or a criminal? However, often very ordinary-looking people become lovely because of their achievements. It is particularly true about a man who seems to become more attractive with their achievements and good deeds.
As believed in the Indian philosophies, beauty is the manifestation of God in this world. Hence, if a person starts doing evil acts, he starts drifting from God to Devil. Soon the person would start looking ugly too. His face and body would transform in a way that he would lose all beauty. He would lose health and fitness. He would fall sick frequently. He would become overweight or underweight to lose his vitality and health. His face would become cruel or pale devoid of serenity and beauty.
It is not a mere coincidence that no dictator or evil person has ever been beautiful. Conversely, a beautiful person can not be cruel or evil. One proof of this statement is that women, who epitomize beauty, can hardly kill innocent people or commit murder. The woman represents beauty; hence they also mean what is good for society. They risk their own lives to create a new life. We also find that all children are beautiful. It is not a mere coincidence that all children are also good. They love every creation of the world, including innate objects like dolls, toys, and animals. Most of the cartoon films and children’s films show kindness to animals. Yet as a man grows, he losses his beauty if he starts losing goodness.
Secret of Beauty
Beauty is one of the biggest desires of human beings hence a great business opportunity for business people. The cosmetic industry is a multi-billion dollar business today all over the world. Yet can any cosmetics make you beautiful? The beauty due to cosmetics is truly superficial and often causes long-term harm to the person. The true secret of beauty lies in discovering truth and goodness in the world and within oneself. Once a person has acquired inner beauty, his body and face start emitting the soul’s beauty to the world. One must also use his or her perception of beauty as a guide to achieving a more fulfilling life in this world. Beauty is, therefore, the most beautiful thing in the world as it comes to every person naturally without any training or study, yet it represents the truth and goodness of this world.
