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flowers
Their Spiritual significance
Photo Collection
Spiritual perfume
It has an extraordinary power of attraction
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Pandanus tectorius Parkinson ex Zucc. (Pandanaceae)
Tahitian screwpine
Cream yellow
Spiritual perfume
Here, I have brought you two flowers. They have two different yet very typically Indian fragrances: this one is Straightforwardness, and this is Simplicity. I have always found that this one (Mother holds out the Simplicity) has a cleansing fragrance: when you breathe it, ah, everything becomes clean - it's wonderful! (Mother breathes in the flower's fragrance.) Once I cured myself of the onset of a cold with it - this can be done when you catch it at the very beginning. It fills you completely, the nose, the throat.... And this (Straightforwardness) is right at the other end of the spectrum. I find it very, very powerful - strange, isn't it?
It's not at all sweet-smelling.
Oh, no! It's quite strong.
It's largely the fragrances that have made me give flowers their significance.... I find these studies quite interesting; it corresponds to something really TRUE in Nature.
Once, without telling me anything, someone brought me a sprig of tulsi. I smelled it and said, "Oh, Devotion!" It was absolutely a ... a vibration of devotion. Afterwards, I was told it's the plant of devotion to Krishna, consecrated to Krishna.
Another time, I was brought one of those big flowers (which are not really flowers) somewhat resembling corn, with long, very strongly scented stalks . I smelled it and said, "Ascetic Purity!" (Subsequently, Mother named this flower "Spiritual Perfume.") Just like that, from the odor alone. I was later told it was Shiva's flower when he was doing his tapasya.
These people have an age-old knowledge - the ancient Vedic knowledge which they have preserved. In other words, it is something CONCRETELY TRUE: it doesn't depend at all on the mind, on thought or even on feelings - it's a vibration.
What about this flower, this long corn-like stalk?
Yes, this flower is Shiva, doing his tapasya.
And interestingly enough, its smell is fantastically attractive to snakes; it makes them come from far away to nest in the shrubs. And as you know, the serpent is the power of evolution, it is Shiva's own creature; he always puts them on his head and around his neck because they symbolize the power of evolution and transformation. And snakes like this flower; it often grows near rivers, and wherever there is a cluster of the plants you are sure to discover snake nests.
I find this very interesting, for WE didn't decide it should be like this: these are conscious vibrations in Nature. The fragrance, the color, the shape, are simply the spontaneous expressions of a true movement.
The Mother
The Mother. Agenda. - Volume 2. - 1961
I had already had the experience for the sense of smell - the divine vibration, the vibration of Ananda in odors. Just under my window, you know, Nripendra has his kitchen, where every morning and afternoon food is prepared for the children - it all comes wafting up on gusts of air. And when the Samadhi tree is in flower, the scent wafts up to me on gusts of air; when people burn incense down below, it comes wafting up here on gusts of air - each and every fragrance ("fragrance" - let's say odor). And generally it all comes while I am walking for my japa - an Ananda of odors, each one with its meaning, its expression, its ... (how to say it?) its motivation and its goal. Marvelous! And there are no longer any good or bad odors - that notion is gone completely. Each one has its meaning - its meaning and its raison d'être.
The Mother
The Mother. Agenda. - Volume 2. - 1961
Immortal fragrance packed the quivering breeze.
In groves that seemed moved bosoms and trembling depths
The million children of the undying spring
Bloomed, pure unnumbered stars of hued delight
Nestling for shelter in their emerald sky:
Faery flower-masses looked with laughing eyes.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 28-29. - Savitri / Book 11
The fragrance of flowers is the prayer of physical Nature to the Divine, her most subtle offering.
The Mother
The Mother. Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education: Quarterly journal.- Nov.l985, P.19.
Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy. The bliss existence may come to us through either one of these centres. When the lotus of the heart breaks open, we feel a divine joy, love and peace expanding in us like a flower of light which irradiates the whole being. They can then unite themselves with their secret source, the Divine in our hearts, and adore him as in a temple; they can flow upwards to take possession of the thought and the will and break out upward towards the Transcendent; they stream out in thought and feeling and act towards all that is around us. But so long as our normal being offers any obstacle or is not wholly moulded into a response to this divine influence or an instrument of this divine possession, the experience will be intermittent and we may fall back constantly into our old mortal heart; but by repetition, abhyasa, or by the force of our desire and adoration of the Divine, it will be progressively remoulded until this abnormal experience becomes our natural consciousness.
When the other upper lotus opens, the whole mind becomes full of a divine light, joy and power, behind which is the Divine, the Lord of our being on his throne with our soul beside him or drawn inward into his rays; all the thought and will become then a luminosity, power and ecstasy; in communication with the Transcendent, this can pour down towards our mortal members and flow by them outwards on the world. In this dawn too there are, as the Vedic mystics knew, our alternations of its day and night, our exiles from the light; but as we grow in the power to hold this new existence, we become able to look long on the sun from which this irradiation proceeds and in our inner being we can grow one body with it. Sometimes the rapidity of this change depends on the strength of our longing for the Divine thus revealed, and on the intensity of our force of seeking; but at others it proceeds rather by a passive surrender to the rhythms of his all-wise working which acts always by its own at first inscrutable method. But the latter becomes the foundation when our love and trust are complete and our whole being lies in the clasp of a Power that is perfect love and wisdom.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 20-21. - The Synthesis of Yoga
Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 19. - The Life Divine: Book 2
Spirituality can only come by opening of the mind, vital and physical to the inmost soul, to the higher Self, to the Divine, and their subordination to the spiritual forces and instrumentation as channels of the inner Light, the higher Knowledge and Power.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 22. - Letters on Yoga.-P.1
All perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 20-21. - The Synthesis of Yoga
The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation, - for it survives the longest periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment, - is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last, - God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 18. - The Life Divine: Books 1
The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting of the Divine; it raises the character of each personality to its full value and brings it to its maximum expression; for this is part of the Divine plan.
The Mother
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 3. - Questions and Answers (1929)
But the very spirit of Yoga is this, to make the exceptional normal, and to turn that which is above us and greater than our normal selves into our own constant consciousness. Therefore we should not hesitate to open ourselves more steadily to whatever experience of the Infinite we have, to purify and intensify it, to make it our object of constant thought and contemplation, till it becomes the originating power that acts in us, the Godhead we adore and embrace, our whole being is put into tune with it and it is made the very self of our being.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 20-21. - The Synthesis of Yoga