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flowers
Their Spiritual significance
Photo Collection
Benevolence
Makes life fragrant without attracting attention.
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Reseda odorata L. (Resedaceae)
Garden mignonette
Yellowish white or greenish yellow
It's a terrestrial manifestation of divine Love in its form of... it has something to do with benevolence - it's not "benevolence," but a way of existing, feeling, seeing, acting, which is a sort of ... (words are stupid), a "psychic benevolence," which is an expression of divine Oneness.
The Mother
The Mother. Agenda. - Volume 9. - 1968
But I FEEL it. The origin of it is psychic, but it can concretize and create a certain kind of vibration. Well, if in one's consciousness one lives in that, there's absolutely no magic that can act. I feel it, because from time to time it comes, and at such times everything is clear. And it acts especially here (gesture around the head).
"Benevolence" (laughing) is the ridiculous human distortion of "that." It's a very, very peculiar vibration. What we might call "one of the ways of being of divine Love." And it can become a very material vibration.
The Mother
The Mother. Agenda. - Volume 9. - 1968
She was quite a wonderful person! In the beginning she had taken an attitude of benevolence and goodwill towards everything and everybody, even the worst scamp; she saw only the good side. Then as she stayed on, her consciousness developed; after a time, she began to see people as they were. So, one day she told me: "Formerly, when I was unconscious, I thought that everybody was good, people seemed to be so nice! Why did you make me conscious?" I answered her: "Do not stop on the way. Go a little further."
Once one has begun Yoga, it is better to go to the end.
The Mother
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 5. - Questions And Answers (1953)
It is not altogether difficult for the mind to envisage, even though it may be difficult for the human will with its many earth-ties to accept, this transformation of the spirit and nature of love from the character of a mixed and limited human emotion to a supreme and all-embracing divine passion. It is when we come to the works of love that a certain perplexity is likely to intervene. It is possible, as in a certain high exaggeration of the path of knowledge, to cut here also the knot of the problem, escape the difficulty of uniting the spirit of love with the crudities of the world-action by avoiding it; it is open to us, withdrawing from outward life and action altogether, to live alone with our adoration of the Divine in the heart's silence. It is possible too to admit only those acts that are either in themselves an expression of love for the Divine, prayer, praise, symbolic acts of worship or subordinate activities that may be attached to these things and partake of their spirit, and to leave aside all else; the soul turns away to satisfy its inner longing in the absorbed or the God-centred life of the saint and devotee. It is possible, again, to open the doors of life more largely and to spend one's love of the Divine in acts of service to those around us and to the race; one can do the works of philanthropy, benevolence and beneficence, charity and succour to man and beast and every creature, transfigure them by a kind of spiritual passion, at least bring into their merely ethical appearance the greater power of a spiritual motive. This is indeed the solution most commonly favoured by the religious mind of today and we see it confidently advanced on all sides as the proper field of action of the God-seeker or of the man whose life is founded on divine love and knowledge. But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete union of the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or limit this union within the lesser dimensions of an ethical rule of philanthropy and beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of knowledge, our acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and beauty and the soul's pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a sacrifice of the works of the soul's love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 20-21. - The Synthesis of Yoga