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flowers
Their Spiritual significance

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Physical continuity

Prolongs and prolongs itself and never comes to an end

   

Acalypha hispida Burm. f. (Euphorbiaceae)

Acalypha

Red or purple

Additional information

Continuity

If you have the philosophic mind, you will ask yourself: "What do I call 'myself'? Is it my body? - it changes all the time, it is never the same thing. Is it my feelings? - they change so often. Is it my thoughts? - they are built and destroyed continuously. That is not myself. Where is the self? What is it that gives me this sense of continuity?" If you continue sincerely, you go back a few years. The problem becomes more and more perplexing. You continue to observe, you tell yourself: "It is my memory." But even if one loses one's memory, one would be oneself. If one sincerely continues this profound search, there comes a moment when everything disappears and one single thing exists, that is the Divine, the divine Presence.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 5. - Questions And Answers (1953)

When we say myself what do we speak of? The body? The sensations? The feelings? The thoughts? All this has no stability. The appearance of continuity comes from a rigorous determinism obtaining in each of these realms of the being; and into this determinism there enter as many external as internal agents. Where then is the self, that is to say, something permanent, constant, ever the same? In order to find it, to find this absolute, we must proceed from depth to depth, from relativity to relativity - for all that is in form is relative - until we reach That which is Unthinkable to our reason, Unutterable to our language, but knowable by identification - for we carry That in ourselves, it is the very centre and life of our being.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 2. - The Path of Later On

The psychic being materialises itself... and that gives continuity to evolution.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 11. - Notes on the Way

The continuity of creation could not be assured without something which possessed that quality.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 10. - The Thoughts and Aphorismes

It is because of the psychic that we have so clear a sense of continuity.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 7. - Questions And Answers (1955)

So one can say that the psychic life is immortal life, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, unbroken continuity in the universe of forms.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 12. - On Education

At death, when the consciousness withdraws into the background, the different personalities in you fall apart, rushing hither and thither to seek their own suitable environments. One part may enter into another person who has an affinity for it, another may even enter an animal, while that which has been alive to the divine Presence may remain attached to the central psychic being. But if you are fully organised and converted into a single individual, bent on reaching the goal of evolution, then you will be conscious after death and preserve a continuity.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 3. - Questions and Answers (1929)

When I speak of the physical consciousness, I mean the physical mind and the physical vital as well as the body consciousness proper.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 24. - Letters on Yoga.-P.4

In my view the body as well as the mind and life has to be spiritualised or, one may say, divinised so as to be a fit instrument and receptacle for the realisation of the Divine. It has its part in the Divine Lila, even, according to the Vaishnava Sadhana, in the joy and beauty of Divine Love. That does not mean that the body has to be valued for its own separate sake or that the creation of a divine body in a future evolution of the whole being has to be contemplated as an end and not a means - that would be a serious error which would not be admissible. In any case, my speculations about an extreme form of divinisation are something in a far distance and are no part of the preoccupations of the spiritual life in the near future.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 26. - On Himself

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