Lotuses (Part 1)

The water lily is not the same genus as the lotus. Its genus is Nymphaea whereas the genus of the lotus is Nelumbo. In fact, they are not even in the same family!

The easiest way to distinguish the water lily from the lotus is to splash some water on the leaves. The leaves of the water lily are quickly saturated with the water but water splashed on the leaves of the lotus forms into small balls and rolls off the leaf. We will take up the significance of the water lily in the next blog.

The Lotuses

The white lotus is well known to us and revered as Aditi, the Divine Consciousness.

Aditi−the Divine Consciousness

Mother's comment:

"Pure, immaculate, gloriously powerful."

As if the choric calyx of a flower
Aerial, visible on music’s waves,
A lotus of light-petalled ecstasy
Took shape out of the tremulous heart of things.

The pink lotus, is The Avatar, Sri Aurobindo.

The red lotus is the symbol of the Avatar and the offering of the red lotus is meant to suggest the full consecration to the Avatar; the yellow background represents the supramental manifestation.

8 November 1933
Words of the Mother, Vol. 15

A million lotuses swaying on one stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world
Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.

The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing
is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms
for ever in the Light above.

SABCL, Letters on Yoga, Vol. 24, Transformation of the Subconscient

Avatar - The Supreme Manifested In A Body Upon Earth

Mother's comment

"The pink lotus is the flower of Sri Aurobindo."

Below are all the additional lines from Savitri on the lotus

In gleaming clarities of amethyst air
The chainless and omnipotent Spirit of Mind
Brooded on the blue lotus of the Idea.

Existence’ self was shadowed by a doubt;
Almost it seemed a lotus-leaf afloat
On a nude pool of cosmic Nothingness.

Autumn led in the glory of her moons
And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools
And Winter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands
On Nature’s bosom still in a half sleep
And deepened with hues of lax and mellow ease
The tranquil beauty of the waning year.

He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love
With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,
Which quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.