SITE OF SRI AUROBINDO & THE MOTHER
      
Home Page | Photo Collections | Spiritual significance of flowers

flowers
Their Spiritual significance

Photo Collection

Optimism

More helpful than its opposite.

 

Erysimum cheiri (L.) Crantz (Brassicaceae [= Cruciferae])

Aegean wallflower

Yellow to orange

Additional information

I do not insist on a Couéistic optimism1 - although excessive optimism is more helpful than excessive pessimism; that (Couéism) tends to cover up difficulties and there is, besides, always a measure to be observed in things.

Sri Aurobindo

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

Bienveillance is to see the good side of everything. It is not mere optimism which closes its eyes from bad. It is rather a psychic vision which sees the Good everywhere.

The Mother

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

Neither optimism nor pessimism is the truth: they are only modes of the mind or modes of the temperament. Let us then, without either excessive optimism or excessive pessimism, "wait and see".

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 22. - Letters on Yoga.-P.1

As for the sceptics - well, optimism even unjustified is still justifiable because it gives a chance and a force for getting things done, while pessimism even with all the grounds that appearances can give to it, is simply a clog and a "No going" affair.

The right thing is to go ahead and get done all that can be, if possible all that ought to be, but at least do so much that all that ought will feel bound to come along on the heels of my doing. That is the prophets and the gospel.

Sri Aurobindo

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

 

 

 

 

1 Émile Coué (February 26, 1857,Troyes, France - July 2, 1926, Nancy) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy, healing, and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. The application of his conscious autosuggestion, "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better" (Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux) is called Couéism or the Coué method. The Coué method depended on the routine repetition of such expressions, according to a specified ritual, at the beginning and the ending of each day.

Back

In Russian

In French