"The beautiful somehow embodies transcendence and complete immanence all at once. It shows us the reach and the depth of possibility and perfection and does so in the immediacy of an act or an art that is greater than the sum of its parts.

"It is not simply the surface that makes the beautiful. Sometimes we mistake the shell for the nut. Instead, beauty reflects some underlying quality that is revealed when form and perception meet and open to one another. Take the beauty in works of art as an example. As psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli said, 'There is much more than mere aesthetic value; they constitute living forces, almost living entities, embodying a power that has suggestive and creative effects.' Michelangelo's David comes immediately to mind. We recognize it, we talk of it, yet it remains difficult to define; we might call it quality. We live according to an intuitive sense of its meaning. When we are awake to it, we recognize it by its resonance within us.

"Beauty is not just reserved for the artist creating a sculpture but takes endless forms — a perfect pitch in baseball, a meal prepared with special attention to detail, a perfect sunset, the deep peace of an infant asleep in loving arms. We hunger for it and are nourished by it, not just in creating art but also through giving our attention to the way the lawn is mowed or the rod is cast.

"Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead went so far as to say that 'the teleology of the universe is directed to the production of Beauty.' Even the supposed cold aloofness of science has beauty at its roots. Robert Augros and George Stanciu, in The New Story of Science, wrote that 'all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth.' French mathematician and theoretical physicist Henri Poincare understood the role of beauty in science in this way: '[The scientist] studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living.'

"Beauty provides a doorway, gateway, or bridge inviting us from one state to another, enabling us to expand our everyday realities and respond to something that is both greater than ourselves and intimately part of us. By entering that doorway and opening into that communion, we are brought closer to the experience of the union between our inner and outer worlds, between the visible and the invisible. When not hanging out with lions and witches through the wardrobe, C. S. Lewis said it this way: 'We do not want merely to see beauty . . . We want something else that can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.'

"Simply beholding beauty can be transformative. A bouquet of flowers brightens a day, time in nature seems to feed us, gorgeous surroundings or a stunning meal opens our senses, moods, and more. Beauty can even serve as medicine."