0.12 How beauty can be quantified  (Page 4/6)

Also when things form together it results in a different impression as well. Say if you were looking at something jagged, well that’s lots of individual things which may look pretty by themselves, but together they look ugly because they don’t match with the other thing. Or your eye has to pause from one thing to the next (so it’s like pausing over an angle or a sharp curve, your mind has to slow down or your eye has to slow down when it hits the bend or angle because it has to stop). So your mind might have to stop a lot when looking at something jagged, but when looking at a lake it can process all the pretty waves and go smoothly from one wave to the next, instead of being interrupted. So the wave gives the right amount of stimulation, say if each wave was the same as each other wave, it would be boring looking at the entire lake, but since each wave is different it’s fun to look at the entire lake, your mind and eye doesn’t have to stop suddenly anywhere, and everything is different, new, and interesting. The large dynamic line structure of the lake is both pleasing and interesting and peaceful.

So it was easy to analyze how the lakes make you feel because it is just the combination of many similar lines or units of space. The way each line combines with the space around it is the same for each wave. A person has many different types of lines interacting with each other, so you have to look at how each line combines with the space around it. Say how a circle would interact with a square, instead of (with the lake) a wave interacting with a large blank space around it, than more waves and more blank spaces. We showed in the beginning that a circle was peaceful to look at because your eye never gets interrupted, but it causes pain to look too closely at a square because of the four sharp edges your eye has to stop at. So when you look at a circle that is in a square, or a square in a circle, you get the feeling of the square and the circle. Someone’s face is made up of different angles as well, and things that look like squares and circles. Take each individual part, add them up, and you get the feeling for the entire face. Then do that to each arm, leg, major body part, and then see how each fits with each other, to get a look at the whole person, and how they appear. So individual parts of an object each add their own beauty to the whole, you can literally add up the parts to see what the feeling the entire thing causes is.

If you’re projecting feelings for something but not actually looking at it, then you just aren’t looking closely enough at the lines and angles. You can actually enhance the feeling of anything you look at by looking at it more closely. If you find that you can’t look at something more closely, then unconsciously you don’t want to look at it because you’re projecting a false image of how that actually looks. So take the lake. If you just look at it for a second, you don’t get a sense of peace and calmness, but if you pause and look at it thoughtfully, then you realize that it brings a sense of peace and happiness. If you’re projecting that sense will never be there. You need to be in a normal, non-psychotic state of mind to properly appreciate beauty. It requires deep thought (and a calm mind) to appreciate true beauty. Like if you rush looking over the sharp angle (in the book) you wouldn’t pause over it and you wouldn’t really even see the book at all.