The Experience of Beauty

“The experience of beauty is a product of a response mechanism on the energy within our bodies, which translates into emotional pleasure because we see in such beauty a reflection in terms of feeling response that provides a sense of inner wellbeing and a feeling at the emotional level.

Certain areas of natural beauty where positive and negative energy flow together into harmonious unity provide the same pleasure. The same effect can be encountered in buildings like gothic cathedrals and in all other buildings and works where the golden section (phi) has been incorporated.It is possible to distinguish the feelings within the human body, when they respond to positive and negative forces of energy such as can be encountered when visiting the Mary Chapel at Glastonbury.

In the summer I have taken people to the Ile de la Cite in Paris, beside the Cathedral of Notre Dame, where the steps go from the higher level of the road down to the level of the Seine itself, in order to feel the different energies at separate levels which pass through the cathedral. The crypts in gothic cathedrals were designed to introduce people to an area of balance and harmony where these positive and negative currents flow into each other and give a momentary experience of the inner peace and wellbeing, which developed mystics experience constantly within themselves.”

Sheikh Abdullah Sirr Dan al-Jamal.
20^th century  Naqshbandi Shaykh.