Question: Is it unspiritual to try to enhance one's physical beauty?

Sri Chinmoy: If you mean by wearing all kinds of make-up, then yes, it is unspiritual. But if somebody does not take a shower or wash his hair for three weeks and then starts taking a shower and washing his hair every day, this enhances his physical beauty in a very spiritual way. If you comb your hair, if you wear clean clothes, it adds to your beauty.

You may say, "If I don't clean my body or comb my hair, what right do you have to complain?" But I do have a right, because when you are dirty and untidy, at that time you are representing ugliness to me. Now what right do you have to bring ugliness into my life? When people in the street are not washed, they will say, "It is our body." But if it is their body, then they should stay inside their room. They don't have to come out. If they do, they are either unconsciously or deliberately poisoning our eyes. We are trying to be normal and natural, but they are acting like abnormal creatures. Like animals, they are just roaming wild and we cannot find any beauty to appreciate in them. Because of their untidiness and ugliness, others suffer. The lower consciousness which they embody does not stay with them; it immediately enters into us.

It is good to make yourself pleasant in appearance, but do not do anything that is not natural and normal. If you want to wear all kinds of cosmetics, that will be a terrible mistake. But if you can be clean and neat and always keep your body in a pure consciousness, if you can keep your mind calm and quiet and serene, and if your vital is dynamic and not aggressive, then automatically your face changes. If the body is not lethargic, but active and ready to serve, if the body-consciousness is awakened, then automatically the face changes. There are so many spiritual things one can do to make oneself more beautiful in a natural and normal way. Constantly the inner is perfecting the outer. If you want to enhance your physical beauty, then do it in a way that will also be of help to your spiritual life.