Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them

The Mother fancied herself as a mystical teacher of some significance, a status that was reaffirmed and given considerable importance in Sri Aurobindo’s later writings. But whereas Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy was meticulous and analytical, the Mother’s take on metaphysics was either superficially derivative of Sri Aurobindo’s work or consisted of vague, airy, disjointed pronouncements about the nature of the universe. Whereas Sri Aurobindo is one of the greatest poets of the English language, the Mother’s aphoristic declamations sound, to my admittedly spiritually tone-deaf ear, like the pabulum found in cheap greeting cards. One of her supposedly major contributions to spiritual understanding was to have “given names” to numerous flowers – “Psychological Perfection” to Plumeria and “Wealth“ to Water Lilies, as examples – to indicate their deeper significances. “Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them”, the Mother said. “It is a subtle and fragrant language”. No comment.
She was not, however, without tremendous wisdom and skills. She was a peerless administrator, a brilliant educational theorist, and a far-seeing, astonishingly progressive social architect. As important as any of these impressive talents, though, was her legendary capacity for empathy and compassion. Everyone who knew her who marvels, to this day, at her uncanny ability to connect one-on-one with people; and they back-up their uniformly glowing assessments with story-after-story to drive-home the point.
I give my biases and impressions here, even though I readily acknowledge that I know little about spiritual matters and care even less. Certainly, the ashram and Auroville communities – people who knew her and have studied her work and writings far more extensively than I ever will – take the Mother very seriously. Indeed, ashram folks are a generally non-frivolous bunch when it comes to spiritual matters – which brings me back to Narad, who seems about as painfully earnest as they come, and to the gardening expedition. memestream Blog About Favorites « Gods Go for Beach Outing, Find Little Sand Bon Fête Auroville » Divining the Divine Plan Published 26 February 2008 Bio , India , Religion, Spiritualism & Other Make-Believe , Service Tags: Auroville, divine plan, garden, Matrimandir, Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, The Mother, weeding