Question: Does outer cheerfulness help us to manifest inner beauty?

Sri Chinmoy: Absolutely! Outer cheerfulness considerably helps in developing and increasing our inner beauty. But this outer cheerfulness, like everything else in the spiritual life, has to be sincere. Some people come up to me with folded hands and show all kinds of false devotion. Devotion is necessary in the spiritual life, but if you just fold your hands and bow down because somebody else is doing it, that is all useless insincerity. In everything we do we can be very sincere or we can be very insincere. If we are sincere, then we get something from the Supreme. But if we are not sincere, we will get nothing. So cheerfulness also has to be spontaneous. It has to come naturally from within and not just be something you are creating or showing off with. If you have that kind of cheerfulness, your inner beauty is bound to grow, because that kind of cheerfulness will help you tremendously in your spiritual life.