flowers
Their Spiritual significance
Photo Collection
Accomplishment
Accomplishment is without any doubt the fruit of patience.
Mimusops elengi L. (Sapotaceae)
Spanish cherry
Fruit - Small oval yellow orange fruit with a pointed tip; the fruit of the Patience flower
Accomplishment
Brahman embraces in His manifestation both Vidya1 and Avidya2 and if they are both present in the manifestation, it is because they are both necessary to its existence and its accomplishment. Avidya subsists because Vidya supports and embraces it; Vidya depends upon Avidya for the preparation and the advance of the soul towards the great Unity. Neither could exist without the other; for if either were abolished, they would both pass away into something which would be neither the one nor the other, something inconceivable and ineffable beyond all manifestation. In the worst Ignorance there is some point of the knowledge which constitutes that form of Ignorance and some support of Unity which prevents it in its most extreme division, limitation, obscurity from ceasing to exist by dissolving into nothingness. The destiny of the Ignorance is not that it should be dissolved out of existence, but that its elements should be enlightened, united, that which they strive to express delivered, fulfilled and in the fulfilment transmuted and transfigured. In the uttermost unity of which knowledge is capable the contents of the Multiplicity are inherent and implicit and can any moment be released into activity. The office of Vidya is not to destroy Avidya as a thing that ought never to have been manifested but to draw it continually towards itself, supporting it the while and helping it to deliver itself progressively from that character of Ignorance, of the oblivion of its essential Oneness, which gives it its name. Avidya fulfilled by turning more and more to Vidya enables the individual and the universal to become what the Lord is in Himself, conscious of His manifestation, conscious of His non-manifestation, free in birth, free in non-birth. Man represents the point at which the multiplicity in the universe becomes consciously capable of this turning and fulfilment. His own natural fulfilment comes by following the complete path of Avidya surrendering itself to Vidya, the Multiplicity to the Unity, the Ego to the One in all and beyond all, and of Vidya accepting Avidya into itself, the Unity fulfilling the Multiplicity, the One manifesting Himself unveiled in the individual and in the universe.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Isha Upanishad
The mind of the outside world may be too shallow, restless and impatient to understand a great, profound and difficult truth like ours on the side of the idea, but a visible accomplishment, a body of things done has always the power to compel and to attract the world to follow it. The only danger then is that when this body of things becomes prominent and attractive, numbers may rush into it and try to follow the externals without realising and reproducing in themselves the truth and the power of the real thing that made it possible. It was that against which I warned you when there came the first possibility of a considerable expansion. It is your business to enlarge your field of work and the work itself but not at the cost of any lowering or adulteration of its spirit. The first condition you have to assure is that all who have the work in hand or share in its direction must be of the spirit and work from the self outward; they must be men of the Yoga; but, secondly, all who enter in must have this imposed on them as the thing to be developed, must learn to develop this self-realisation first and foremost and the work only as its expression. The safety of the work lies in a strict adherence to this principle. The majority of the educated people of Bengal care only to get something done, - and are not troubled by the fact that really nothing sure and lasting does not done or else only something that is likely to do as much harm as good; they care nothing about the spiritual basis of life which is India ' s real mission and the only possible source of her greatness, or give to it only a slight, secondary or incidental value, a something that has to be stuck on as a sentiment or a bit of colouring matter. Our whole principle is different and you have to insist on our principle in all that you say and do.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 27. - Supplement
Thou art the perfect peace and the marvellous accomplishment; Thou art all that the universe is, immutably, beyond time, and wants to be more and more in the consciousness of time and space. Thou art all that is in the infinite stillness and the divine hope of all that wants to be....
The Mother
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations
1 Knowledge in its highest spiritual sense
2 the Ignorance; the relative and multiple consciousness.