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flowers
Their Spiritual significance

Photo Collection

Static beauty

Transfixed in an immutable beauty

   

Camellia japonica L. (Theaceae)

Camellia

Several colours

Additional information

A static Oneness and dynamic Power

Descend in him, the integral Godhead's seals

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 28-29. - Savitri

The sculptor must express always in static form; the idea of the spirit is cut out for him in mass and line, significant in the stability of its insistence...; for him eternity seizes hold of time in its shapes and arrests it in the monumental spirit of stone or bronze.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 14. - The Foundations of Indian culture

If one wants to remain in the universe, one must admit the principle of progress, for this is a progressive universe. If you want to realise a static perfection, well, you will inevitably be thrown out of the universe, for you will no longer belong to its principle.

It is a choice.

Only, Sri Aurobindo often used to say: people who choose the exit forget that at the same time they will lose the consciousness with which they could congratulate themselves on their choice! They forget that.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 8. - Questions And Answers (1956)

No society wholly or too persistently and pervadingly dominated by this denial of the life dynamism can flourish and put forth its possibilities of growth and perfection. For from dynamic it becomes static and from the static position it proceeds to stagnation and degeneration.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 15. - Social and political thought

The solitude of the self in the Divine has no doubt to be active as well as passive and static; but none who has not arrived at the silence and motionless solitude of the eternal Self can have the free and integral activity of the higher divine Nature. For the action is based on the silence and by the silence it is free.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 22. - Letters on Yoga.-P.1

Peace is the Divine static, Ananda the Divine dynamic. Peace is a negative-positive; it is positive of itself, of status, of eternity, of the essential, of the abstract-concrete, of force in rest. It is or tends to be negative of all that is less than itself, contradictory to itself or more than itself, of the dynamic, of action, of creation, of time and happening, of the substantial concrete, of force in motion. Or when it allows these things or even feels or supports them, it is with a certain disinterested separateness. It has essentially the character of the Witness Spirit or at the most of the disinterested Witness-Creator.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 17. - The Hour of God

The first most ordinary result is a discovery of a vast static and silent Self which we feel to be our real or our basic existence, the foundation of all else that we are. There may be even an extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible. But also we can realise that this self is not only our own spiritual being but the true self of all others; it presents itself then as the underlying truth of cosmic existence. It is possible to remain in a Nirvana of all individuality, to stop at a static realisation or, regarding the cosmic movement as a superficial play or illusion imposed on the silent Self, to pass into some supreme immobile and immutable status beyond the universe. But another less negative line of supernormal experience also offers itself; for there takes place a large dynamic descent of light, knowledge, power, bliss or other supernormal energies into our self of silence, and we can ascend too into higher regions of the Spirit where its immobile status is the foundation of those great and luminous energies.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 18. - The Life Divine: Books 1

In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 12. - On Education

True Beauty is as difficult to discover, to understand and above all to live as any other expression of the Divine; this discovery and expression exacts as much impersonality and renunciation of egoism as that of Truth or Bliss. Pure Beauty is universal and one must be universal to see and recognise it.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations

Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge, Power or Ananda.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 25. - The Mother

But beauty and delight, whatever form it takes, - for we may speak here of the two as one, -- has an imaging youth, an eternal moment, an immortal presence.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Let beauty be your constant ideal.

The beauty of the soul

The beauty of sentiments

The beauty of thoughts

The beauty of the action

The beauty in the work

so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty.

And the Divine Help shall always be with you.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 12. - On Education

In the world of forms a violation of Beauty is as great a fault as a violation of Truth in the world of ideas. For Beauty is the worship Nature offers to the supreme Master of the universe; Beauty is the divine language in forms. And a consciousness of the Divine which is not translated externally by an understanding and expression of Beauty would be an incomplete consciousness.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations

Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Beauty is Ananda taking form - but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind. Love in the heart. Power in the vital. Supra-mental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

The one rule of the gnostic life would be the self-expression of the Spirit, the will of the Divine Being; that will, that self-expression could manifest through extreme simplicity or through extreme complexity and opulence or in their natural balance, - for beauty and plenitude, a hidden sweetness and laughter in things, a sunshine and gladness of life are also powers and expressions of the Spirit.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 19. - The Life Divine: Book 2

Beauty is his footprint showing us where he has passed,

Love is his heart-beats' rhythm in mortal breasts,

Happiness the smile on his adorable face.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 28-29. - Savitri / Book 2, Canto 2

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