Selection From The Works of The Mother

The Spiritual Significance of Flowers

"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.

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

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Paintings by Champaklal and Significance given by Sri Aurobindo himself

The red lotus represents Sri Aurobindo, the white one represents me. In a general way the lotus is the flower of the Divine Wisdom, whatever its colour. But red signifies the Avatar, the Divine incarnated in matter, and white signifies the Divine Consciousness manifested upon earth.

- The Mother

Notes on the Way

During the years 1961 to 1973 the Mother had frequent conversations with one of her disciples about the experiences she was having at the time. She called these conversations, which were in French, l’Agenda.

Selected transcripts of the tape-recorded conversations were seen, approved and occasionally revised by the Mother for publication in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education; they appeared regularly from February 1965 to April 1973 under the titles “Notes on the Way” and “A Propos”. The English translations that accompanied the French text in the Bulletin were sometimes read out to the Mother for approval; the same translations, with minor revisions, are published in this volume, number eleven of the Collected Works of the Mother.

On Education

This volume is a compilation of the Mother’s articles, messages, letters and conversations on education. Three dramas, written for the annual dramatic performance of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, are also included.

In these articles I am trying to put into ordinary terms the whole yogic terminology, for these Bulletins are meant more for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga — I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary conditions. It is a very difficult task but it is a kind of yoga. These people call themselves "materialists" and they are apt to get agitated or irritated if yogic terms are used, so one must speak their language avoiding terms likely to shock them. But I have known in my life persons who called themselves "materialists" and yet followed a much severer discipline than those who claim to do yoga.

What we want is that humanity should progress; whether it professes to lead a yogic life or not matters little, provided it makes the necessary effort for progress.

The Mother
25 December 1950