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

flowers
Their Spiritual significance

Photo Collection

The divine principle of duplicity

The charm of deceitful beauty

The all-powerful divine Charm of a perfidious beauty

   

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. (Malvaceae)

Shoeblackplant

Gray-mauve with a bright red pistil

Additional information

The divine principle of duplicity

(As she comes into her room, Mother stops in front of a tray of flowers that has just been brought and takes in her hand a strange new variety of hibiscus, gray-mauve with a bright red pistil.)

Oh, this is really my joy!

What's this flower?... (Mother takes the hibiscus) It has a strange color.

Yes, I've never seen it.

It's strange, with this red dot here.

Very strange.

It gives me a strange sensation.... How can I explain it? Oddly, it's something between deceit and perversion, yet it's divine! How do you like that!

You mean there's something false in the flower's appearance?

No, it's not the outside: it's inside.

Inside the flower?

It's inside, it's... What could we call it?... (Mother laughs) "The divine principle of duplicity."

Not very reassuring, this flower.

Yes, that's right. We might say, "The charm of deceitful beauty."

Yes, it's something like that!

We have much to learn from life.... Flowers know much better than we do. It's spontaneous, not thought out, not willed: it's divine vibrations that express themselves spontaneously. And this is... There's the English word alluring. Well, we could call it "the all-powerful divine Charm of a... perfidious beauty." Naturally, that's on the vital-physical plane. It's not up above, but there (on the vital-physical plane).

The Mother

The Mother. Agenda. - Volume 8. - 1967

In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.

The Mother

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

True Beauty is as difficult to discover, to understand and above all to live as any other expression of the Divine; this discovery and expression exacts as much impersonality and renunciation of egoism as that of Truth or Bliss. Pure Beauty is universal and one must be universal to see and recognise it.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations

Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge, Power or Ananda.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 25. - The Mother

But beauty and delight, whatever form it takes, - for we may speak here of the two as one, -- has an imaging youth, an eternal moment, an immortal presence.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Let beauty be your constant ideal.

The beauty of the soul

The beauty of sentiments

The beauty of thoughts

The beauty of the action

The beauty in the work

so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty.

And the Divine Help shall always be with you.

The Mother

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

In the world of forms a violation of Beauty is as great a fault as a violation of Truth in the world of ideas. For Beauty is the worship Nature offers to the supreme Master of the universe; Beauty is the divine language in forms. And a consciousness of the Divine which is not translated externally by an understanding and expression of Beauty would be an incomplete consciousness.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations

Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Beauty is Ananda taking form - but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind. Love in the heart. Power in the vital. Supra-mental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

The one rule of the gnostic life would be the self-expression of the Spirit, the will of the Divine Being; that will, that self-expression could manifest through extreme simplicity or through extreme complexity and opulence or in their natural balance, - for beauty and plenitude, a hidden sweetness and laughter in things, a sunshine and gladness of life are also powers and expressions of the Spirit.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 19. - The Life Divine: Book 2

Beauty is his footprint showing us where he has passed,

Love is his heart-beats' rhythm in mortal breasts,

Happiness the smile on his adorable face.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 28-29. - Savitri / Book 2, Canto 2

In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.

The Mother

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

True Beauty is as difficult to discover, to understand and above all to live as any other expression of the Divine; this discovery and expression exacts as much impersonality and renunciation of egoism as that of Truth or Bliss. Pure Beauty is universal and one must be universal to see and recognise it.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations

Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge, Power or Ananda.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 25. - The Mother

But beauty and delight, whatever form it takes, - for we may speak here of the two as one, -- has an imaging youth, an eternal moment, an immortal presence.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Let beauty be your constant ideal.

The beauty of the soul

The beauty of sentiments

The beauty of thoughts

The beauty of the action

The beauty in the work

so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty.

And the Divine Help shall always be with you.

The Mother

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

In the world of forms a violation of Beauty is as great a fault as a violation of Truth in the world of ideas. For Beauty is the worship Nature offers to the supreme Master of the universe; Beauty is the divine language in forms. And a consciousness of the Divine which is not translated externally by an understanding and expression of Beauty would be an incomplete consciousness.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 1.- Prayers And Meditations

Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Beauty is Ananda taking form - but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind. Love in the heart. Power in the vital. Supra-mental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 9. - The Future Poetry

The one rule of the gnostic life would be the self-expression of the Spirit, the will of the Divine Being; that will, that self-expression could manifest through extreme simplicity or through extreme complexity and opulence or in their natural balance, - for beauty and plenitude, a hidden sweetness and laughter in things, a sunshine and gladness of life are also powers and expressions of the Spirit.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 19. - The Life Divine: Book 2

Beauty is his footprint showing us where he has passed,

Love is his heart-beats' rhythm in mortal breasts,

Happiness the smile on his adorable face.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 28-29. - Savitri / Book 2, Canto 2

In Russian

In French