The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
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Volume SayingsSocial GathekasReligious GathekasThe Message PapersThe Healing PapersVol. 1, The Way of IlluminationVol. 1, The Inner LifeVol. 1, The Soul, Whence And Whither?Vol. 1, The Purpose of LifeVol. 2, The Mysticism of Sound and MusicVol. 2, The Mysticism of SoundVol. 2, Cosmic LanguageVol. 2, The Power of the WordVol. 3, EducationVol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa ShastraVol. 3, Character and PersonalityVol. 4, Healing And The Mind WorldVol. 4, Mental PurificationVol. 4, The Mind-WorldVol. 5, A Sufi Message Of Spiritual LibertyVol. 5, Aqibat, Life After DeathVol. 5, The Phenomenon of the SoulVol. 5, Love, Human and DivineVol. 5, Pearls from the Ocean UnseenVol. 5, Metaphysics, The Experience of the Soul Through the Different Planes of ExistenceVol. 6, The Alchemy of HappinessVol. 7, In an Eastern Rose GardenVol. 8, Health and Order of Body and MindVol. 8, The Privilege of Being HumanVol. 8a, Sufi TeachingsVol. 9, The Unity of Religious IdealsVol. 10, Sufi MysticismVol. 10, The Path of Initiation and DiscipleshipVol. 10, Sufi PoetryVol. 10, Art: Yesterday, Today, and TomorrowVol. 10, The Problem of the DayVol. 11, PhilosophyVol. 11, PsychologyVol. 11, Mysticism in LifeVol. 12, The Vision of God and ManVol. 12, Confessions: Autobiographical Essays of Hazat Inayat KhanVol. 12, Four PlaysVol. 13, GathasVol. 14, The Smiling ForeheadBy DateTHE SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS | Heading 1. Sex2. Half-Bodies3. Attraction and Repulsion4. On Some Ideals5. Types of Lovers6. The Character of the BelovedFour Types of Women7. Modesty8. The Awakening of Youth9. Courtship10. Chivalry11. Marriage12. Beauty13. Passion14. Celibacy15. Monogamy15. Pologamy17. Perversion18. Prostitution |
Sub-Heading -ALL-i.ii |
Vol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa Shastra12. BeautyiiThe Venus of Milo, that statue whose beauty transcends the boundaries of nations, compelling the admiration of totally different schools of art, suggests that the beauty of women conquers without arms. There is nothing for which a man will so blindly sacrifice all he possesses as for the woman he loves. He can be seen discarding his standards of thought and understanding, his family and friends, and his position for the sake of her whom he loves. And one feels that Adam must gladly have left paradise, if Eve did but smile and say it was her pleasure to walk on earth. Woman's beauty touches man more than all other beauty. The colors, the delicacy, and fragrance of flowers, the radiance and light of jewels, are but a background for her. It seems to him that all nature was created to prepare for her being. And he finds no subject so beautiful for his art as a beautiful rendering of two youthful human figures, male and female. But how shall he describe her whom he loves? For when he is conscious of beauty, it is then that he closes his lips. As the ocean cannot be emptied into a vessel made by human hands, so beauty cannot be captured within the limits of human definitions. There is the beauty of the pine tree, a beauty of straightness and uprightness; and again there is the beauty of the sweeping branches of the willow. Or again a curve added to the beauty of steadiness of form sometimes doubles that loveliness. What can explain this diversity? Beauty of movement, of gesture, of feature, of expression, of voice, all escape explanation, which is indeed but a limited thing. How calmly the mountains and hills seem to be waiting for some day that is to come; if you go near to them and listen they seem to tell you this. How eagerly the trees and plants seem to be expecting some day, some hour; the hour that shall be the fulfillment of their desire. The same desire, intense and pronounced, is still seen in birds and in animals; but its fulfillment is in man. The same aspiration which works through all aspects of life and has brought forth such varying fruits culminates in humanity, and prepares through humanity a path that reaches up to the height called divinity, which is the perfection of beauty. |