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To surround oneself with beauty in materials and designs, in clothes and carpets, in pictures and decorations, is not necessarily to be snobbish and ostentatious, nor is the cultivation of taste and refinement necessarily accompanied by revelling in luxury. And to assert that elegance and quality and beauty must be abandoned for the simple life when one enters the path of spirituality is to raise the question: what is simplicity? Is it utter barrenness, the caveman's life? Is it mere ugliness? Is it squalor and dirt? Is it discomfort? And further: How many could agree on the basic needs of a simple life? In any case, let us not force all spirituality into a single groove. The philosophic way is to seek a quality of consciousness which transcends the ordinary, which is enriched by one's spiritual development and not impoverished by it. Both thought and feeling must be able to meet in the Silence, bow down and worship It. Both of them should enter into this final act as a consequence of their own growth and creative fulfilment.

-- Notebooks Category 14: The Arts in Culture > Chapter 1 : Appreciation > # 118