The occult Beauty

“Only those who are ignorant of the manifestation of Beauty will say, “We are content with the existing.” (1)
When man condemns himself to seeing, and pursuing, only visible forms, when he stubbornly descends deeper and deeper into the meanders of matter, losing his contact with Being and the Infinite, that is when Beauty disappears, is forgotten and we wander oblivious to its existence.
And it is not just a question of works of art lacking the fire of Beauty, but of the increasingly evident presence in everyday life of vulgarity, contempt, arrogance, ignorance, distrust, confusion, bewilderment, which gives the measure of the loss of Beauty.
As the Teachings admonish: “Having deprived itself of the knowledge of cosmic vistas, humanity has dissociated itself from the manifestations of Infinity and has lost the thread of unity with the beauty of life and with cosmic energy. (…) Affirm yourselves in the acceptance of the great beauty of Infinity!” (2)

Let’s imagine then that we possess a very thin, almost impalpable mirror, a mirror that has a reflective surface on both sides.
The upward-facing side of this precious mirror reflects the limitless magnificence of the Heavens, the splendour of the stars and the vigour of the Sun, and impresses all this energy into the downward-facing side whose task is to faithfully reproduce what the Eye of the soul contemplates.

And this mirroring capacity, this ability to unite high and low, to repeat in a symmetrical and organised manner the primordial Ideas until they precipitate into principles and forms, we can call it Beauty, an invisible and all-pervading mirror, intangible and real, occult and manifest.
And if we can experience Beauty, it is because we come to the World of Ideas, infinite and luminous, directly with our part of the Infinite, through the light we have been able to evoke in ourselves, through an all-embracing and peremptory knowledge that sums up in itself the characteristics of absoluteness.
And if we are just a little aware of the presence of this mirror in ourselves, we also know that we are required to proceed through life with gentle balance, dancing on the tightrope of the evolutionary path so that the mirror does not fall, shattering.
Not so much because Beauty is fragile, but because every deviation from the Middle Way blurs the vision, leading inevitably into chaos, breaking the link with Infinity.
And there is no point in defending oneself by invoking ‘personal taste’, ‘pleasure or displeasure’, individual opinion; it is of no avail invoking technique, skill of hand and thought, tradition or innovation. These are all marginal elements that miss the heart of the issue.

Beauty is or is not.
Why then is Beauty so elusive and at the same time so radiant, capable of decisively imprinting itself on human eyes and consciousness?
The Teaching comes to our rescue by stating that “There is a mystical beauty to be achieved, as we all know, through art. It conveys a general sense of beauty, colour and inspiration, and thus it clothes and veils ideas. There is an occult (hidden) beauty also to be achieved in the field of art. This conveys a different sense of beauty, colour and inspiration, clothed in those forms which reveal ideas. Mystical beauty veils, in beauty, the ideal. Occult beauty reveals, in beauty, the ideal.” (3)
Beauty, therefore, is that Golden Rule that underpins the whole universe because it draws directly from the World of Causes/Ideas and without which what is erected by hands and thought appears distorted, weird, disproportionate, or simply interwoven with external formality.
Beauty “makes all things divine” because it lives in intimate consonance with the divine Being.
Beauty imitates the Inimitable.
Beauty imitates the One and then re-proposes It in infinite forms that preserve, each in its own way, Its ‘image and likeness’.
And this inner mirror, which dictates its perfect Law to our consciousness and allows it to be revealed in the splendour of the formal world, draws with it those who accept this supreme challenge and turn towards the Highest, aware that Oneness is the fabric on which Beauty can germinate.
Hugh of Saint Victor reminds us that “Visible beauty is the image of invisible beauty” (4) and Agni Yoga echoes him by stating that “… the entire power of action is held in the invisible world” (5) and this ‘occult beauty’ is the power that shows the ‘invisible’; a beauty that lies deep within each atom and awaits to be brought to light through the golden thread that connects to the Infinite.
Indeed, the Teaching reminds us that “All cosmic ordainments correspond with beauty. Thus, the path to the Infinite summons to beauty!” (6) and that “In Beauty the Infinite will manifest.” (7)
In the Infinite, Ideas are ordered, perfect, eternal, immortal, as Plato reminds us; they are “energies of the highest potential”, perfect models of things, and they assume in themselves all the powers of Being, of which they are the image and matrix in becoming.

It is precisely the Lords of Perfection, Uranus and Mercury, whom we now find in conjunction according to the heliocentric perspective in the radiant waters of Taurus, who govern the appearance of Beauty in consciousness.
Mercury is “… the Builder of Beauty, a divine good diffused everywhere, inexpressible, elusive, adored, that settles lightly on things and transfigures them. Beauty is Mercury’s great gift. It gladdens the solar drama. It is a lovable mystery rooted in both rules and freedom.” (8)

Uranus, singer of Number and Geometry, guardian of the celestial Rules, makes use of the flight of Mercury, winged Messenger of Heaven, to bring the light of the World of Ideas down into the substance, rendering it immaculate and returning it transfigured to the source from which it came.
Mercury acts subtly from within and promotes the interchangeable action between Cause and effect, between Ideas and forms, while Uranus brings the forms themselves to refinement and at the same time marks out, with rule and rhythm, the stages of their appearance.
The combined action of the energies of the 4^th and 7^th Ray, conveyed by the two Luminaries, thus contributes to unveiling Beauty, starting from its home, the high heavens, and bringing it down to earth.
The appearance of Beauty to human eyes is thus the appearance of the divine making its way into all consciousnesses through ‘straight-knowledge’, the cognitive mode that allows us to reach the World of Ideas.
In this momentum we are supported by various statements in the Teachings that asserts: “Intellect is not wisdom. Straight-knowledge is wisdom” (9), “the noble straight-knowledge will always direct one upward” (10), “the telescope of straight-knowledge penetrates into Infinity” (11) and lastly “straight-knowledge concerns cosmic truth” (12).
This defines the contours of a cognitive capacity that is able to lead man to an understanding of the Real, and to do so not in the usual rational manner, but through direct contact with what one wants to know. A contact that cannot be confused either with the uncertain semblances of feeling or with the dubious swaying of reasoning.
Cosmic truths can only be ‘intuited’, that is, known according to an infinite ‘method’, woven of the same very subtle substance of which Infinity is made.
A method that has none of the sentimentality or illusory unity with the whole with which many theories are cloaked, but which rests on the summit of Abstract Intelligence and from there accesses ever more subtle and rarefied levels of consciousness, levels where mental lucubrations are no longer useful, or even necessary, and where the means to reach the higher Realities is intuition, that pure Reason that does not fret or get stuck in the meanderings of dichotomies, but knows What is without hesitation or questioning.
“The intuition or pure reason is the faculty which enables man to enter into contact with the Universal Mind and grasp the Plan synthetically, to seize upon divine Ideas or isolate some fundamental and pure truth.” (13)

It is therefore possible to achieve this natural adherence to the Real by fully immersing ourselves into the world of Causes, aiming firmly at where the perfection of Being dwells and from there learning to radiate, in turn, the light of Beauty.
“There is mutual intensification between humanity and the beauty of Cosmos, and only thus can one affirm a cosmically united power.” (14)
In order to appear before our eyes, Beauty requires the participation of consciousness; through consciousness the image of what has been contemplated in the World of Ideas can reverberate on earth and shine forth.
Humanity, imbued with the energy of the 4^th Ray, possesses the same power of Beauty and Harmony that vibrates in the cosmos and can make conscious the appearance of Beauty in the world.
Finally, Humanity, intimately immersed in the Sound of Ideas, will be able to give birth to that perfect act which reunites it with the One and returns it to the Infinite.

“The Crown of Be-ness unites that which belongs to it.
The Highest Reason blends that which it manifests.
The Cosmic Magnet fuses that which it gathers.
Thus triumphs the beauty of Be-ness!”

(Infinity II § 33)

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1. Agni Yoga Series, Infinity I § 14
2. Ibid. § 44
3. A. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age Vol. I, p. 283
4. Hugh of Saint Victor, Hierarchiam coelestem expositio
5. Agni Yoga Series, Infinity II § 455
6. Ibid. § 186
7. Agni Yoga Series, Illumination § 322
8. First Vertex, Man on Earth and in the Heavens (only available in Italian)
9. Agni Yoga Series, Agni Yoga § 508
10. Ibid. § 564
11. Agni Yoga Series, Infinity I § 4
12. Agni Yoga Series, Heart § 472
13. A. Bailey, A Treatise on White Magic, p. 365
14. Agni Yoga Series, Infinity II § 424