Question: When I see something beautiful, why do I feel sad?

Sri Chinmoy: There are two reasons. One reason is that the vital comes forward and becomes jealous of the thing. Since you are not as beautiful as the other person or thing, naturally you become jealous and this jealousy is expressed as sadness. There is another reason, a spiritual reason why you become sad when you see something beautiful. Your own inner cry, your heart’s inner cry to become really beautiful, becomes one with the beauty of that particular thing. At that time, the sadness that you feel is not really sadness; it is not vital sadness. It is psychic sadness, which is the purest oneness. Psychic sadness for God, for Truth, for Light is extremely good. So if you are in a spiritual consciousness and you feel sad, that means your inner cry wants to establish its oneness with the beauty you are seeing. But if you are in a lower consciousness, a vital consciousness, then it is jealousy that is expressing itself as sadness inside you.