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flowers
Their Spiritual significance
Photo Collection
Psychological perfection
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Plumeria rubra L. (Apocynaceae)
Templetree
(1) predominantly yellow with a white edge, (2) a very fragrant white flower with five rounded petals and a large yellow centre.
Psychological perfection
There is not one psychological perfection but five, like the five petals of this flower. We have said they are: sincerity, faith, devotion, aspiration and surrender. But as a matter of fact every time I give this flower it is not always the same psychological perfection, it is something very fluid, depending on the circumstances and the need of people.
Who remembers this?
(Counting the petals) One, two, three, four, five psychological perfections. What are the five psychological perfections?....
So, if someone knows it, he can tell us, we'll compare....
Aspiration, devotion, sincerity and faith.
That makes only four, so far.
And surrender.
In any case, what is always there, in all combinations and to whomever I give it, the first among them all is sincerity. For if there is no sincerity, one cannot advance even by half a step. So that is the first, and it is always there.
But it is possible to translate it by another word, if you prefer it, which would be "transparency". I shall explain this word: Someone is in front of me and I am looking at him; I look into his eyes. And if this person is sincere or "transparent", through his eyes I go down and I see his soul — clearly. But — this is precisely the experience — when I look at somebody and see a little cloud, then I continue, I see a screen, and then sometimes it is a wall, and afterwards it is something quite black; and all this must be crossed, and holes bored in order to go through: and even then I am not sure if at the last minute I may not find myself before a door of bronze so thick that I shall never get through and see his soul; so, of such a person I can immediately say that he is not sincere. But I can also say, figuratively, that he is not transparent. That is the first thing.
There is a second, which is obviously, as indispensable if you want to go forward; it is to have faith. Or another word, which seems more limited but is for me more important, because (it is a question of experience) if your faith is not made of a complete trust in the Divine, well, you may very easily remain under the impression that you have faith and yet be losing all trust in the divine Power or divine Goodness, or the Trust the Divine has in you. These are the three stumbling-blocks:
Those who have what they call an unshakable faith in the Divine, and say, "It is the Divine who is doing everything, who can do everything; all that happens in me, in others, everywhere, is the work of the Divine and the Divine alone", if they follow this with some kind of logic, after some time they will blame the Divine for all the most terrible wrongs which take place in the world and make of Him a real demon, cruel and frightful — if they have no trust.
Or again, they do have faith, but tell themselves, "Well, I have faith in the Divine, but this world, I see quite well what it's like! First of all, I suffer so much, don't I? I am very unhappy, far more unhappy than all my neighbours" — for one is always far more unhappy than all one's neighbours — "I am very unhappy and, truly, life is cruel to me.
But then the Divine is divine. He is AllGoodness, All-Generosity, All-Harmony, so how is it that I am so unhappy? He must be powerless; otherwise being so good how could He let me suffer so much"
That is the second stumbling-block.
And the third: there are people who have what may be called a warped and excessive modesty or humility and who tell themselves, "Surely the Divine has thrown me out. I am good for nothing. He can do nothing with me, the only thing for me is to give up the game, for He finds me unworthy of Him!"
So, unless one adds to faith a total and complete trust in the Divine Grace, there will be difficulties. So both are necessary....
Now, we have put "devotion" in this series. Yes, devotion is all very well, but unless it is accompanied by many other things it too may make many mistakes. It may meet with great difficulties.
You have devotion, and you keep your ego. And then your ego makes you do all sorts of things out of devotion, things which are terribly egoistic. That is to say, you think only of yourself, not of others, nor of the world, nor of the work, nor of what ought to be done — you think only of your devotion. And you become tremendously egoistic. And so, when you find out that the Divine, for some reason, does not answer to your devotion with the enthusiasm you expected of Him, you despair and fall back into the same three difficulties I was just speaking about: either the Divine is cruel — we have read that, there are many such stories, of enthusiastic devotees who abuse the Divine because He is no longer as gentle and near to them as before. He has withdrawn, "Why hast Thou deserted me? Thou hast abandoned me, 0 monster!... They don't dare to say this, but think it, or else they say, "Oh! I must have made such a serious mistake that I am thrown out", and they fall into despair.
But there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion.... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contact with this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion — indeed so deep, so intense — that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion.
I remember that once we spoke of courage as one of the perfections; I remember having written it down once in a list. But this courage means having a taste for the supreme adventure. And this taste for supreme adventure is aspiration — an aspiration which takes hold of you completely and flings you, without calculation and without reserve and without a possibility of withdrawal, into the great adventure of the divine discovery, the great adventure of the divine meeting, the yet greater adventure of the divine Realisation; you throw yourself into the adventure without looking back and without asking for a single minute, "What's going to happen?" For if you ask what is going to happen, you never start, you always remain stuck there, rooted to the spot, afraid to lose something, to lose your balance.
That's why I speak of courage — but really it is aspiration. They go together. A real aspiration is something full of courage.
And now, surrender. In English the word is "surrender", there is no French word which gives exactly that sense. But Sri Aurobindo has said — I think we have read this — that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. So, if we follow what he has said, this is not just one of the necessary qualities: it is the first attitude indispensable for beginning the yoga. If one has not decided to make a total surrender, one cannot begin.
But for this surrender to be total, all these qualities are necessary. And I add one more — for so far we have only four — I add endurance. For, if you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged and without giving up, because it is too difficult; and if you are incapable... well, of receiving blows and yet continuing, of "pocketing" them, as they say — when you receive blows as a result of your defects, of putting them in your pocket and continuing to go forward without flagging — you don't go very far; at the first turning where you lose sight of your little habitual life, you fall into despair and give up the game.
The most... how shall I put it? the most material form of this is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if need be... You know, people come to me in despair, "But I thought it was done and now I must begin again!" And if they are told, "But that's nothing, you will probably have to begin again a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times; you take one step forward and think you are secure, but there will always be something to bring back the same difficulty a little farther on. You think you have solved the problem, you must solve it yet once again; it will turn up again looking just a little different, but it will be the same problem", and if you are not determined that: "Even if it comes back a million times, I shall do it a million times, but I shall go through with it", well, you won't be able to do the yoga. This is absolutely indispensable.
People have a beautiful experience and say, "Ah, now this is it!..." And then it settles down, diminishes, gets veiled, and suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace and apparently completely uninteresting comes before you and blocks your way. And then you say, "Ah! what's the good of having made this progress if it's going to start all over again? Why should I do it? I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved something, and now it's as if I had done nothing! It's indeed hopeless." For you have no endurance.
If one has endurance, one says, "It's all right. Good. I shall begin again as often as necessary; a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times if necessary, I shall begin again — but I shall go to the end and nothing will have the power to stop me on the way."
This is most necessary. Most necessary.
So here's my proposal; we put surrender first, at the top of the list, that is, we accept what Sri Aurobindo has said — that to do the integral yoga one must first resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way. But after that one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological perfections, and we say that these perfections are:
1. Sincerity or Transparency;
2. Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine, naturally);
3. Devotion or Gratitude;
4. Courage or Aspiration;
5. Endurance or Perseverance.
One form of endurance is faithfulness, faithfulness to one's resolution — being faithful. One has taken a resolution, one is faithful to one's resolution. This is endurance.
There you are.
If one persists, there comes a time when one is victorious. Victory is to the persistent.
The Mother
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 8. - Questions And Answers (1956)