Seems an esoteric concept concept when one thinks deeply to get to the layers of “what is beauty”?
I explored various versions on the web to throw some light on what one may call, the ‘experience of beauty’. It seems I did have an innate raison de etre to scope the spiritual connotation of it, driven by my peep into the experience of the “divine”. The few and far between experiences, a window to the internal world, set the roadmap to answer this question.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever” title from John Keats poem. He says that the essence of beauty is a source of eternal peace on our mind by the mere thought of it. A thing of beauty never fades away, it will never pass into nothingness; Beauty is there to stay!
On the other end of the spectrum lies the whole plethora of advertisements that convey, eg Dove with their “body proud” stereotype, connect with a bit of superficiality to be “happy in one’s own skin” type of beauty”. Because these kind of experiences could be visual, sensorial.
Another experience which is similar to the divine experience may happen with the immersive quality of “connecting with nature”. Appreciation of a “raga” which cannot be rationalized, or even a painter who may experience that immersiveness, being one with the object, what he or she are visualizing, materializing.
Other experience as the one in the mythological drama by Kalidas, Dushyant’s feelings for Shakuntala have been described as a “baffling feeling of longing. What the mind remembers what was long unknown, as if loves from other lifetimes firm with feeling”. (what is beauty by David Suleman – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_IGGiocIok)
Or even the16th century neoclassical notion of beauty based on harmony, symmetry, balance meant to induce in the spectator some semblance of serenity, in the sense of jarring, a perturbation.(because it is different, an experience not experienced by many, so unsettling)
Shulman also relates the experience with some South Indian raga, called Rasamanjri, Rasikapriya; it is bereft of the vivadi notes; discordant notes very rarely used in the raga, but by being just that has an intrinsic part to play in the “experience of the raga”. Standard conventional norms stymie our interpretation; we perceive it as dissonant music. However we have to hear with our ears and mind open to accept it as it is…a kind of a second order cognition.
Looking from my personal space it is experienced as the “sound of stillness”, an extremely peaceful innate state, pure and untethered to any external stimulus. This then does relate to what Shulman conveys is a kind of a “feeling of serenity, but a kind of disturbing and unsettling, and a juxtaposed “anxiety and uncanny effect and the inner voice that “I don’t want this to end”.
There is a longing to remain connected to the divine. This is an objectless desire (spiritually it may indicate the desire from the subconscious which has no form; just the feeling that merges with the divine). The experience we cannot describe because it is formless, and no words can describe the subtleness of the experience. For me, beauty is innate, connectedness to the “higher self” is beauty.