On Flowers and Their Messages
Flowers have been the mediums for messages since time immemorial. In the Victorian era they were used as love notes to convey the deepest feelings between lover and beloved. Yet long before this usage flowers were offered to the gods as vehicles of prayer and devotion. They have also been for ages the most beautiful and heartfelt way of expressing grief and reverence for the dead as well as treasured offerings on the occasions of births, weddings and anniversaries.
Do flowers have in them a special occult i.e. hidden capacity to convey our deepest feelings and have we chosen to use them because of their beauty, color, form and fragrance? It is well known in India that the flower of devotion offered to the Divine, is ‘tulsi’, Ocimum tenuiflorum, known formerly as Ocimum sanctum, both named by the father of botany, Linnaeus. Therefore the question, has man imbued certain flowers with special significances or do the flowers themselves vibrate with a certain force that may be translated through an inner perception into meanings approachable to the mental consciousness? The Mother of he Sri Aurobindo Ashram answers thusly:
You can easily make a speech using flowers and I have noticed that this can effectively replace the old Vedic images, for instance, which no longer hold meaning for us, or the ambiguous phraseology of the ancient initiations. Flower language is much better because it contains the Force and is extremely plastic--since it is not formulated in words, each one is free to arrange and receive it according to his own capacity. You can make long speeches using flowers.
The Mother
The Mother’s ability to contact the special vibration of a flower is a seminal work which will be the foundation of the future understanding of the profound symbolism and the message that individual flowers convey to our consciousness, helping us to progress within. Here are some of Her words on the inner meaning of flowers and the way in which she was able to approximate in words their essential vibration.
“Mother, when flowers are brought to you, how do you give them a significance? “
Mother: 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?
Mother: 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?
Mother: 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.”
Further, the Mother has written and spoken at great length about flowers and has revealed to us approximately 900 significances. Compilations are available in two books, Flowers and Their Messages and a recent two-volume work, The Spiritual Significance of Flowers.
Mother: "Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them," the Mother said. "It is a subtle and fragrant language."
In addition to the significances given by the Mother, those who worked closely with flowers were given the opportunity to ask questions regarding the role of flowers in our lives. We will touch on these points later in this article.
The great sage, poet and Avatar, Sri Aurobindo, was once asked the following about a flower to which the Mother gave the name, Sri Aurobindo’s Compassion, Botanically it is Portulaca grandiflora, the Rose moss or Sun plant, popular in the East as well as the West for the beauty of its colors, its prolific bloom and ability to grow and flower in the hottest climates. His reply carries in it a depth of meaning and a transcendent statement of the value of flowers in our lives.
“Why is the flower symbolising your compassion so delicate and why does it wither away so soon?”
“No, the compassion does not wither with its symbol - flowers are moment's representation of things that are in themselves eternal. “
For me, the transcendent verities contained in His words, “flowers are the moment’s representation of things that are in themselves eternal” have been a unique portal into the world of the psychic being and a deeper understanding of flowers and the beauty and sacredness of earth.
How then to begin a deeper contact with flowers? We are now in a visual age, where books are uploaded in Kindle and on IPads throughout the world. DVD’s on every subject imaginable as well as streaming media available instantly on computers offer us an unprecedented oportunity to enter into the inner world of flowers by inhaling their fragrance or simply connecting with them through their beauty, colour and design. Plantsmen and women throughout the world through their love of flowers have created modern hybrids of inexpressible beauty, fragrance, color and form in a harmonious collaboration with Nature.
Here are some answers given by the Mother and a few of the great souls who have opened to us the mysteries of plant life and unlocked their secrets leading to so many breakthroughs in botany and horticulture.
“What is the best way of opening ourselves to the deep influence of flowers”
Mother: “To love them. If you can enter in psychic contact with them, then that would be perfect.”
If we look at the ‘common names’ of certain flowers it is quite simple to discern the most fundamental meanings based on the flower’s shape or its usage. Take for example the ‘Lady slipper orchid’. Its shape conveys the appeaance of a lady’s slipper. No great profundity here for this terrestrial species. But what of the epiphytic orchids that are the most highly evolved of all plants, having risen from an earthly existence rooted in the soil to the ability to grow and flower abundantly with extraordinary displays of shapes and colours and fragrances, having developed the capacity to live only from the air and rain and whatever nutrients are supplied in the form of soluble organic matter from the branches of trees to which they are attached. The tree is their host, they use it only as an anchor and take nothing from it. They are epiphytes, not parasites. And then we are moved by the significance Mother has given to the orchid: Attachment to the Divine and suddenly we are transported into a deeper world vibrating with power and beauty.
I have lived in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville for many years and have had the special blessing to work with tropical flowers as in my youth I learned both temperate and sub-tropical horticulture in the U.S. In the early 1960’s I met the Mother who gave me a work in music and with plants and later asked me to build the Gardens of the Matrimandir at the center of a new township being built in Auroville, South India near Pondicherry, the home of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and close to the Bay of Bengal. Auroville is planned for a population of 50,00 and is uniques in being the first township to be built on the ideal of human unity.
How then can we enter into this inner communion with flowers, through a contact with the heart or even deeper, with the psychic being, the evolving soul in us.?
Luther Burbank had such an intimate contact with plants that he could walk down a row of 10,000 fruit tree seedlings and pick the two that would bear superior fruit.
George Washington Carver unlocked the secrets of the humble peanut and discovered innumerable uses for it.
The rose speaks silently of love, in a language known only to the heart.
Anonymous
The love of flowers is really the best teacher of how to grow and understand them.
Max Schling
“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”
George Washington Carver
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret, it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine Saint.Exupéry (Author of The Little Prince )
“When one has the vision in the heart, everything, Nature and Thought and Action, ideas and occupations and tastes and objects become beloved and are a source of ecstasy.
Sri Aurobindo
Here is a question I wrote to Mother and Her answer.
If our flower-offering depends on our state of consciousness, does it help us to learn the significances of flowers even if it is purely mental to begin with?
Mother’s reply: Yes, surely.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
Sri Aurobindo - Savitri, Book X, Canto III
Alive and clad with trees and herbs and flowers
Earth’s great brown body smiled towards the skies,
Sri Aurobindo - Savitri, Book II, Canto III
Life must blossom like a flower offering itself to the Divine.
The Mother
Be like a flower. One must try to become like a flower: open, frank, equal, generous and kind. Do you know what it means? A flower is open to all that surrounds it: Nature, light, the rays of the sun, the wind, etc. It exerts a spontaneous influence on all that is around it. It radiates a joy and a beauty. It is frank: it hides nothing of its beauty, and lets it flow frankly out of itself. What is within, what is in its depths, it lets it come out so that everyone can see it. It is equal: it has no preference. Everyone can enjoy its beauty and its perfume, without rivalry. It is equal and the same for everybody. There is no difference, or anything whatsoever. Then generous: without reserve or restriction, how it gives the mysterious beauty and the very own perfume of Nature. It sacrifices itself entirely for our pleasure, even its life it sacrifices to express this beauty and the secret of the things gathered within itself. And then, kind: it has such a tenderness, it is so sweet, so close to us, so loving. Its presence fills us with joy. It is always cheerful and happy.
Happy is he who can exchange his qualities with the real qualities of the flowers. Try to cultivate in yourself their refined qualities.
The Mother
On the Matrimandir Gardens
In 1969 Mother spoke to me about the Matrimandir Gardens. Here are Her words:
It must be a thing of great beauty, of such a beauty that when men enter they will say, ‘Ah, this is it’, and they will experience physically and concretely the experience of each garden. In the Garden of Youth they will know youth, in the Garden of Bliss they will know bliss – and so forth. Then Mother raised her hand in a spiral gesture upwards and said, “One must know how to move from consciouness to consciousness.”
Below: One flower among the nearly 900 flowers whose significance the Mother has revealed to us.
Spiritual significance: Refinement
Mother’s comment: Grossness is gradually eliminated from the being.
Botanical name: Buddleja davidii
Common name: Butterfly-bush, Summer lilac
Native to central China and Japan
Named after the Basque explorer, Father Armand David
Plant: A vigorous shrub noted for its arching habit and plentiful source of nectar for many species of butterflies. It is so vigorous that it escapes and has become invasive in many countries. It is considered a noxious weed in some states in the U.S. Buddleja can growin many climates but will not survive freezing temperatures in the most northern parts of the world.
Culture: Full sun to partial shade. Needs no special care but as flowers bloom on the new growth it is best to remove old canes.
Narad – August 2012