Spiritual significance of flowers, Indian lavender = Guettarda speciosa, Rubiaceae

810 — Number of the plant

at the book: The Mother. The Spiritual Significance of Flowers.- 1-st Ed. / Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry (India).- Singapore: Ho Printing, 2000.- ISBN 81-7058-609-7

Classification

► Division Magnoliophyta - Flowering plants

► Class Magnoliopsida - Dicotyledons

► Subclass Asteridae

► Order Gentianales

► Family Rubiaceae - Madder family

► Genus Guettarda L. - Guettarda

Synonyms

Common names

Indian lavender (English)

Dharu (India (Sanskrit))

Panneer (India (Tamil))

Description

Small highly fragrant white salverform flower with a sturdy tube and the limb divided into seven or eight soft rounded lobes; borne in small axillary cymes. A medium-sized spreading tree with horizontal branches and large broadly ovate leaves.

When you felt the Force, the concentration, the peace, it meant evidently the true consciousness coming; that could not produce the restlessness at night. If the restlessness were the result of the Force coming, it would follow that the more the Force comes down, the more the restlessness must increase. But that would be absurd and is not the case. What happened was simply that with the Force came a beginning of the inner or spiritual peace; in the nerves the old restlessness which was lying dormant rose up as a resistance, trying as all these habitual things of the nature do to prolong itself. As the peace enters the vital and the nervous being, these things naturally diminish and are eliminated. One has only to remain quiet and detached and let the Force in its working bring in the peace there also. If the difficulty persists, you will let us know so that we may see to it.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 24. - Letters on Yoga.-P.4

All that is very good - it is the psychic condition that is increasing. The peace and spontaneous knowledge are in the psychic being and from there they spread to mind and vital and physical. It is in the outer physical consciousness that the difficulty still tries to persist and brings the restlessness sometimes into the physical mind, sometimes into the nerves, sometimes in the shape of bodily trouble into the body. But all these things can and must go. Even the illnesses can go entirely with the growth of peace and power in the nerves and physical cells.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 24. - Letters on Yoga.-P.4

If it is like that, it is probably because you are living outside, allowing yourself to be disturbed by outward contacts. One cannot find happiness of a lasting character unless one lives within. Work, action must be offered to the Mother, done for her sake only, without any thought for yourself, your own ideas, preferences, feelings, likes, dislikes. If one's eyes are fixed on these latter things, then at every step one gets some friction either in the mind or vital or if these are comparatively quiet on the body and nerves. Peace and joy can only become stable if one lives within with the Mother.

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

Peace was the very first thing that the yogis and seekers of old asked for and it was a quiet and silent mind - and that always brings peace - that they declared to be the best condition for realising the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

Peace is a deep quietude where no disturbance can come - a quietude with a sense of established security and release.