Spiritual significance of flowers, Curtain creeper = Vernonia elaeagnifolia, Asteraceae [= Compositae]

123 — 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 Asterales

► Family Asteraceae [= Compositae] - Aster family

► Genus Vernonia

Synonyms

Vernonia eleagnifolia

Common names

Curtain creeper (English)

Vernonia creeper (English)

Parda bel (India (Hindi))

Description

Small clusters of tiny brushlike flowers that open pale mauve and become white with age. A vigorous climber that may form a dense curtain; the pendulous stems are white when young.

Beyond all preferences and limitations, there is a ground of mutual understanding where all can meet and find their harmony: it is the aspiration for a divine consciousness.

all desires and all attractions vanish; only the ardent aspiration for the Divine remains.

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 16. - More answers from the Mother

The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul's aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.

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

1. It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind allthings and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe - although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.

2. It is the Spirit and Master of our own being within uswhom we have to serve and learn to express his will in all our movements so that we may grow out of the Ignorance into the Light.

3. The Divine is transcendent Being and Spirit, all bliss andlight and divine knowledge and power, and towards that highest divine existence and its Light we have to rise and bring down the reality of it more and more into our consciousness and life.

In the ordinary Nature we live in the Ignorance and do not know the Divine. The forces of the ordinary Nature are undivine forces because they weave a veil of ego and desire and unconsciousness which conceals the Divine from us. To get into the higher and deeper consciousness which knows and lives luminously in the Divine, we have to get rid of the forces of the lower nature and open to the action of the Divine Shakti which will transform our consciousness into that of the Divine Nature.

This is the conception of the Divine from which we have to start - the realisation of its truth can only come with the opening of the consciousness and its change.

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

The Godhead with whom the soul of man has to enter into this closest oneness, is indeed in his supreme status a transcendent Unthinkable too great for any manifestation, Parabrahman; but he is at the same time the living supreme Soul of all things. He is the supreme Lord, the Master of works and universal nature. He at once exceeds and inhabits as its self the soul and mind and body of the creature. He is Purushottama, Parameshwara and Paramatman and in all these equal aspects the same single and eternal Godhead. It is an awakening to this integral reconciling knowledge that is the wide gate to the utter release of the soul and an unimaginable perfection of the nature. It is this Godhead in the unity of all his aspects to whom our works and our adoration and our knowledge have to be directed as a constant inner sacrifice.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 13. - Essays on the Gita

He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements: he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience: his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 20-21. - The Synthesis of Yoga

I use the word Godhead because it expresses at once the essence of Divinity and its powers - it opens the door on both the impersonal and the personal aspects without stressing either.

Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence - it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it - not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 22. - Letters on Yoga.-P.1

Consciousness is made up of two elements, awareness of self and things and forces and conscious-power. Awareness is the first thing necessary, you have to be aware of things in the right consciousness, in the right way, seeing them in their truth; but awareness by itself is not enough. There must be a Will and a Force that make the consciousness effective.

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 22. - Letters on Yoga.-P.1

The only thing that is truly effective is the change of consciousness; it is the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union, absolute and inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental forces. The preoccupation of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, including all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer any need at all to be preoccupied with what the consequences will be. What has to be in the play of the universal forces and their manifestation will be, quite naturally, spontaneously, automatically, there is no need to be preoccupied with it. The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete contact - constant, yes, constant - with the Force, the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable delight of the supramental consciousness.

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 9. - Questions And Answers (1957)

Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realisation. Yoga means a change of consciousness

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 22. - Letters on Yoga.-P.1

[Aspiration] is the call of the being for higher things - for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or Divine Consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo. Guidance from Sri Aurobindo.- I.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Society, 1974, P.106.

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.

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 8. - Questions And Answers (1956)

Aspiration is like an arrow, like this (gesture). So you aspire, want very earnestly to understand, know, enter into the truth. Yes? And then with that aspiration you do this (gesture). Your aspiration rises, rises, rises, rises straight up, very strong and then it strikes against a kind of... how to put it? ... lid which is there, hard like iron and extremely thick, and it does not pass through. And then you say, "See, what's the use of aspiring? It brings nothing at all. I meet with something hard and cannot pass!" But you know about the drop of water which falls on the rock, it ends up by making a chasm: it cuts the rock from top to bottom. Your aspiration is a drop of water which, instead of falling, rises. So, by dint of rising, it beats, beats, beats, and one day it makes a hole, by dint of rising; and when it makes the hole suddenly it springs out from this lid and enters an immensity of light, and you say, "Ah, now I understand."

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 7. - Questions And Answers (1955)

Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy.

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

Well, today there is something special. And these two flowers are just fine: Concentration in the Aspiration... But do you know how to aspire? Do you aspire a little?

Yes, my little one, rather from the psychic, the true aspiration comes from there; but one first starts from the heart.

As long as you are not in contact with it, in the beginning you can aspire from the mind, saying: Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, and asking precisely what you want, as, for example, Peace, or let Peace be established within me. Then you silently concentrate and you remain open. You will see that you will be flooded with Peace.

Then you concentrate in the heart, and you aspire to come into contact with the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification and go there, very deeply, and remain silent and open like this (Mother opens Her hands like a flower above Her head).

Once there - but you must sincerely make a great effort to find it, - you are in contact with the central being; everything else becomes silent, and one has the feeling that the Divine is doing everything for oneself. An immutable joy and peace and freedom then seize you. And nothing in the world is interesting any more, but the aspiration that unites with the Divine.