Question: How can we bring beauty into our physical mind?

Sri Chinmoy: It is useless to try to bring beauty into the physical mind unless the mind has been transformed by the inner light — the heart's light or the soul's light. If you do, it will be like throwing something valuable into the garbage pail. The physical mind is like a garbage can. What is the use of bringing beauty into something that is overwhelmingly ugly and impure in every sense of the term? What you should do first is try to purify the mind. Beauty is purity; beauty and purity go together. When the mind is very pure, it is also beautiful. Then nothing ugly or undivine will dare to enter there. First purify the physical mind as much as you can. Once you have cleaned it thoroughly, then you will be able to bring the divine beauty into it through your inner cry. Once the mind is purified and illumined, the thing that you want to put there will automatically come from above.

Any abode will be occupied by tenants of its own standard. If it is a good place, good people will go there. If it is a temple, spiritual seekers will go there. If it is a bad place, bad people will go there. So when you purify the physical mind, automatically beauty will enter there.

When you want to preserve something in the material world, you have to keep it in a vessel that is pure. If you have something pure and divine — say a material object — you are not going to put it in an undivine, ugly place; you will put it somewhere that is also beautiful and pure. If you have a flower, you will place it on your shrine and not inside the refrigerator or in the closet. Similarly, if you want to keep beauty in your physical mind, you have to make your mind very pure and divine.