BEAUTY—WHAT IS IT? People seek it in their homes and gardens, in their clothes, music, language—and often in their persons.
One's concept of beauty is different from another's. One person's superb sunrise is another's ugly threat of a storm. But is there another level of beauty over and above human judgment and physical conditions? Yes. In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote that infinite Mind, who is God, "possesses of itself all beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them." Science and Health, p. 89, There's the powerful source and the exquisite nature of beauty in its highest sense. And it is as present and as powerful as God.
It's enriching for individuals to realize that, fundamentally, beauty is a spiritual and mental quality. But how might one use this? Here's how. "The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony," ibid., pp. 247-248. explains Science and Health. To the man or woman in the street, that's most likely an unexpected recipe for beauty, probably seeming too demanding, beyond reach. And yet it is highly practical since it springs from scientific and spiritual law. It rests on the unchanging reality of being, above the flux and insecurity of material forms.
