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THE MOTHER
The Spiritual Significance of Flowers
Part I
Test and Photograph
Publisher s Note
"Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them," the Mother said. "It is a subtle and fragrant language." As if to provide a key to this language, she identified the significances of almost nine hundred flowers. In this book, these flowers and their meanings are presented in -the light of her vision and experience. The book consists of two separately bound parts. Part 1, the text and photographs, is arranged thematically on the basis of the Mother’s flower-significances. In each of the twelve chapters, flowers of related significance are grouped together; these groups are then placed in a sequence that develops the theme of the chapter. The organisation of the chapters is outlined in the Contents.
For each flower in Part 1, the following details are given: the Mother’s significance, her comment on the significance, the botanical name, and the colour or colours of the flower. Relevant quotations from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother accompany many flower-significances as an aid to understanding them. For most flowers there is a colour photograph to facilitate identification. Part 2 is a reference volume containing indexes, glossaries, detailed descriptions of the flowers and other information. The three indexes make it possible to locate the flowers in Part 1 by looking under the Mother’s significance, the botanical name or the common name.
The Origin of the Significances
Mother, when flowers are brought to you, how do you give them a significance? By entering into contact with the nature of the flower, its inner truth. Then one knows what it represents. Mother, how do you give a significance to a flower? By entering into contact with it and giving a meaning, more or less precise, to what I feel. Mother, each flower has its own significance, doesn’t it? Not as we understand it mentally. There is a mental projection when one gives a precise significance to a flower. … A flower does not have the equivalent of a mental consciousness. … It is rather like the movement of a little baby, neither a sensation nor a feeling, but something of both; it is a spontaneous movement, a very special vibration. Well, if one is in contact with this vibration, if one feels it, one receives an impression which may be translated by a thought. This is how I give a significance to flowers and plants. There is a kind of identification with the vibration, a perception of the quality it represents, and gradually through a kind of approximation (sometimes it comes suddenly, occasionally it takes time) there is a convergence of these vibrations, which are of a vital-emotional order, and the vibration of mental thought, and if there is sufficient accord one has a direct perception of what the plant may signify. THE MOTHER
The Mother
The Mother was born Mirra Alfassa on 21 February 1878 in Paris. A student at the Academic Julian, she became an accomplished artist. Gifted from an early age with a capacity for spiritual and occult experience, she went to Tlemcen, Algeria, in 1906 and 1907 to study occultism with the adept Max Theon and his wife. Between 1911 and 1913 she gave a number of talks to various groups of seekers in Paris and began to record her deepening communion with the Divine in the diary later published as Prayers and Meditations. In 1914 the Mother voyaged to Pondicherry, South India, to meet the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo. After a stay of eleven months,
she was obliged by the outbreak of the First World War to return to France. A year later she went to Japan, where she remained for four years. In April 1920 the Mother rejoined Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. Six years later, when the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was founded, Sri Aurobindo entrusted its material and spiritual charge to her, for he considered her not a disciple but his spiritual equal and collaborator. Under her guidance the Ashram grew into a large, many-faceted spiritual community. She also established a school, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, in 1952, and an international township, Auroville, in 1968. The Mother passed away on 17 November 1973.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. At the age of seven he was taken to England for his education. There he studied at St. Paul’s School, London, and at King’s College, Cambridge. Returning to India in 1893, he worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in the state’s college. In 1906 Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta, where he became one of the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement. As editor of the news- paper Bande Mataram, he boldly put forward the idea of complete independence from Britain. Arrested three times for sedition or treason, he was released each time for lack of evidence.
Sri Aurobindo began the practice of Yoga in 1905. Within a few years he achieved several fundamental spiritual realisations. In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in French India in order to concentrate on his inner life and work. During his forty years there, he developed a new spiritual path, the Integral Yoga, whose ultimate aim is the transformation of life by the power of a supramental consciousness. In 1926, with the help of the Mother, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His vision of life is presented in numerous works of prose and poetry, among which the best known are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri. Sri Aurobindo passed away on 5 December 1950.
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