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Their Spiritual significance

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The Avatar

Avatar - the Supreme manifested on earth in a body.

The red lotus is the flower of Sri Aurobindo

 

Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn. (Nelumbonaceae)

Sacred lotus

Red-pink

Additional information

Sacred lotus

Lotus - Divine Presence and Divine Consciousness

The twelve-petalled lotus and the twelve-rayed sun indicate the same thing, the complete Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Mother.

Sri Aurobindo

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

The lotus is either the consciousness reddening to the colour of Divine Love or else the symbol of the Divine Presence on earth.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

Red and white lotuses

The red and the white lotuses represent the twin spiritual Consciousness guiding the terrestrial evolution.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 13. - Words of the Mother

Red lotus - symbol of the manifestation of the Supreme upon earth.

White lotus - symbol of the Divine Consciousness.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 13. - Words of the Mother

The red lotus is the Avatar.

The white lotus is the Divine Consciousness.

The Mother

The Mother. Unpublished writing dated 1934-1936.

The white lotus is the Mother's Consciousness, the red lotus is my consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

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

The Mother. White Roses: [Letters to Huta] / Compiled by Huta D. Hindocha.- Pondicherry, 1980, P. 12

About the blue flag. I presume you mean the flag with the white lotus. If so, it is the Mother's flag, for the white lotus is her symbol as the red lotus is mine. The blue of the flag is meant to be the colour of Krishna and so represents the spiritual or divine consciousness which it is her work to establish so that it may reign upon earth. This is the meaning of the flag being used as the Ashram flag, that our work is to bring down this consciousness and make it the leader of the world's life.

Sri Aurobindo

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

The flag that is shown on the cover of our Bulletin represents the symbol of a full-blown golden lotus with two rows of petals, four inside and twelve outside, at the exact centre of a silver-blue square.

This blue is the blue of the spirit and the gold is the colour of the Supreme Mother. The red of the cover surrounding the flag signifies the illumined physical consciousness.

This flag was originally chosen as the flag of the J. S. A. S. A.; but later, when we celebrated India's Independence Day (15 August 1947), we found that it also expressed the spiritual mission of the whole of India. So for us it is the symbolic flag of a resurgent, united and victorious India rising above the torpor of the centuries, having cast off the shackles of enslavement and undergone all the pangs of a new birth to emerge once more as a great and united nation and lead the world and humanity towards the highest ideal of the spirit.

We therefore consider ourselves very fortunate to have a flag with such a symbol and we cherish it deeply.

The Mother

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

Red lotus

The red lotus is the symbol of the Avatar and the offering of the red lotus is meant to suggest the full consecration to the Avatar.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 15. - Words of the Mother

Red lotus = The Divine Harmony.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

The red lotus is the flower of Sri Aurobindo, but specially for his centenary we shall choose the blue lotus, which is the colour of his physical aura, to symbolise the centenary of the manifestation of the Supreme upon earth.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 13. - Words of the Mother

The red lotus is the presence of the Divine on earth; the sun is the Divine Truth. It indicates the Divine manifestation on earth raising earth consciousness towards the Truth.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

White lotus

White lotus = the Mother's Consciousness (Divine Consciousness).

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

The white lotus is the symbol of the Mother's consciousness, – it does not indicate any part of the individual consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

The symbol of the inner consciousness

The lotus is the symbol of the inner consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

A lotus flower indicates the open consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

The Lotus is the symbol of the opening of the centres to the Light.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

The opening of the lotuses in your experience means, I suppose, the opening of the true vital and physical consciousness in which the spiritual being (the Swan) can manifest with all the consequences of that opening.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 23. - Letters on Yoga.-P.2-3

That is what is wanted - to open the lotus in the heart, to bring the whole nature under the control of the psychic being, this will bring about the New Birth.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

Blue is the colour of the higher mind. Blue lotus: it is the opening of that higher mind in your consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

The red lotus is the symbol of Sri Aurobindo's presence in that consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

The white lotus means the Mother's fully awakened Consciousness on your mental plane. The red-gold is the radiance of the Supramental in the physical.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

A white lotus signifies that the Mother's consciousness is manifesting there.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 4. - Bengali Writings. Translated into English

Lotus as a flower

Today is the birthday of Jyotin, the gardener. He brought me this, look!... (Mother gives a double pink lotus) It's beautiful.

The day man will be like this...

The Mother

The Mother. Agenda. - Volume 7. - 1966

The word Avatara means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 13. - Essays on the Gita

An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.

The Mother

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

An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence.

Sri Aurobindo

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

The reason for which the Avatars descend is to raise up man again and again, developing in him a higher and ever higher humanity, a greater and yet greater development of divine being, bringing more and more of heaven again and again upon the earth until our toil is done, our work accomplished and Sachchidananda fulfilled in all even here, even in this material universe.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 16. - The Supramental Manifestation

The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 13. - Essays on the Gita

Surely for the earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not break out of the obscurity – for that is the meaning of the manifestation.

Sri Aurobindo

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

His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres

Into our province of ephemeral sight,

A colonist from immortality.

A pointing beam on earth ' s uncertain roads,

His birth held up a symbol and a sign;

His human self like a translucent cloak

Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world.

Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time

And paying here God ' s debt to earth and man

A greater sonship was his divine right.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volumes 28-29. - Savitri / Book 1, Canto 3

Today I have been asked to speak to you about the Avatar.

The first thing I have to say is that Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject and the person who has asked me the question would do well to begin by reading what Sri Aurobindo has written.

I shall not speak to you about that, for it is better to read it for yourself.

But I could speak to you of a very old tradition, more ancient than the two known lines of spiritual and occult tradition, that is, the Vedic and Chaldean lines; a tradition which seems to have been at the origin of these two known traditions, in which it is said that when, as a result of the action of the adverse forces – known in the Hindu tradition as the Asuras – the world, instead of developing according to its law of Light and inherent consciousness, was plunged into the darkness, inconscience and ignorance that we know, the Creative Power implored the Supreme Origin, asking him for a special intervention which could save this corrupted universe; and in reply to this prayer there was emanated from the Supreme Origin a special Entity, of Love and Consciousness, who cast himself directly into the most inconscient matter to begin there the work of awakening it to the original Consciousness and Love.

In the old narratives this Being is described as stretched out in a deep sleep at the bottom of a very dark cave, and in his sleep there emanated from him prismatic rays of light which gradually spread into the Inconscience and embedded themselves in all the elements of this Inconscience to begin there the work of Awakening.

If one consciously enters into this Inconscient, one can still see there this same marvellous Being, still in deep sleep, continuing his work of emanation, spreading his Light; and he will continue to do it until the Inconscience is no longer inconscient, until Darkness disappears from the world – and the whole creation awakens to the Supramental Consciousness.

And it is remarkable that this wonderful Being strangely resembles the one whom I saw in vision one day, the Being who is at the other extremity, at the confines of form and the Formless. But that one was in a golden, crimson glory, whereas in his sleep the other Being was of a shining diamond whiteness emanating opalescent rays.

In fact, this is the origin of all Avatars. He is, so to say, the first universal Avatar who, gradually, has assumed more and more conscious bodies and finally manifested in a kind of recognised line of Beings who have descended directly from the Supreme to perfect this work of preparing the universe so that, through a continuous progression, it may become ready to receive and manifest the supramental Light in its entirety.

In every country, every tradition, the event has been presented in a special way, with different limitations, different details, particular features, but truly speaking, the origin of all these stories is the same, and that is what we could call a direct, conscious intervention of the Supreme in the darkest matter, without going through all the intermediaries, in order to awaken this Matter to the receptivity of the Divine Forces.

The intervals separating these various incarnations seem to become shorter and shorter, as if, to the extent that Matter became more and more ready, the action could accelerate and become more and more rapid in its movement, more and more conscious too, more and more effective and decisive.

And it will go on multiplying and intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme.

The Mother

The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 9. - Questions And Answers (1957)

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