Spiritual significance of flowers, Rose = Rosa, Rosaceae

93 — Number of the plant

at the book: The Mother. The Spiritual Significance of Flowers.- 1-st Ed. / Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry (India).- Singapore: Ho Printing, 2000.- ISBN 81-7058-609-7

Classification

► Division Magnoliophyta - Flowering plants

► Class Magnoliopsida - Dicotyledons

► Subclass Rosidae

► Order Rosales

► Family Rosaceae - Rose family

► Subfamily Rosoideae

► Tribe Roseae

Synonyms

Common names

Rose (English)

Roses (English)

Rose (French)

Роза (Russian)

Culab (India (Hindi))

Roja (India (Tamil))

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

My aspiration to Thee, O Lord, has taken the form of a beautiful rose, harmonious, full in bloom, rich in fragrance. I stretch it out to Thee with both arms in a gesture of offering and I ask of Thee: If my understanding is limited, widen it; if my knowledge is obscure, enlighten it; if my heart is empty of ardour, set it aflame; if my love is insignificant, make it intense; if my feelings are ignorant and egoistic, give them the full consciousness in the Truth. And the "I" which demands this of Thee, O Lord, is not a little personality lost amidst thousands of others. It is the whole earth that aspires to Thee in a movement full of fervour.

In the perfect silence of my contemplation all widens to infinity, and in the perfect peace of that silence Thou appearest in the resplendent glory of Thy Light.

I saw a series of roses, this big (gesture of about ten inches), coming one after the other - magnificent! All kinds of colors. They certainly had a significance: one would arrive, come forward, as if giving a little bow, and go away, and then another arrived - roses this big.... Because I had complained just before! It was just in front of you (gesture on the heart level), magnificent roses of a perfect shape, and all kinds of colors.

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

Someone who has experienced love for the Divine can no longer love anything but the Divine, and it is the Divine he loves in all those for whom he feels affection; besides, this is the best way to love, because in this way one can be a powerful help for others to become conscious of the Divine who manifests in them.

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

The true love for the Divine is self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender. It makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger - for these things are not in its composition.

Only, if you climb a rung higher and consciously do what the rose does unconsciously, then it is much more beautiful. But it must be the same thing: a spontaneous flowering of beauty, uncalculating, simply for the joy of being. Little children have this at times (at times, not always). Unfortunately, under the influence of their parents and the environment, they learn to be calculating when yet very young.

But this kind of wish to gain by what one has or does is truly one of the ugliest things in the world. And it is one of the most widespread and it has become so widespread, that it is almost spontaneous in man. Nothing can turn its back on the divine love more totally than that, that wish to calculate and profit.

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

For me sadhana consists in loving the Divine more and more integrally, more and more absolutely, with a love so total that it leads to identification.

The Mother. En Route / [Madanlal Himatsinghka].- Pondicherry, 1987, P. 9 (July 1969)

Humility, a perfect humility, is the condition for all realization. The mind is so cocksure. It thinks it knows everything, understands everything. And if ever it acts through idealism to serve a cause that appears noble to it, it becomes even more arrogant more intransigent, and it is almost impossible to make it see that there might be something still higher beyond its noble conceptions and its great altruistic or other ideals. Humility is the only remedy. I am not speaking of humility as conceived by certain religions, with this God that belittles his creatures and only likes to see them down on their knees. When I was a child, this kind of humility revolted me, and I refused to believe in a God that wants to belittle his creatures. I don't mean that kind of humility, but rather the recognition that one does not know, that one knows nothing, and that there may be something beyond what presently appears to us as the truest, the most noble or disinterested. True humility consists in constantly referring oneself to the Lord, in placing all before Him. When I receive a blow (and there are quite a few of them in my sadhana), my immediate, spontaneous reaction, like a spring, is to throw myself before Him and to say, "Thou, Lord".

It is very simple, when people are told "be humble", they think immediately of "being humble before other men" and that humility is wrong. True humility is humility before the Divine, that is, a precise, exact, living sense that one is nothing, one can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if one is exceptionally intelligent and capable, this is nothing in comparison with the divine Consciousness, and this sense one must always keep, because then one always has the true attitude of receptivity - a humble receptivity that does not put personal pretensions in opposition to the Divine.

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

And the charm, the charm of the substance enveloping the cube was inexpressible! Something... I can't describe. There were no contrasts, no... the whole thing was in total harmony. Of course, to say it resembled tulle is a crude comparison - a very, very fine tulle, and gray.... Do you know that little wild grass I've named "Humility"?

Is it silver, is it...? It's indefinable. That's just what makes that grass so exquisite. Well, the tulle was that color. Afterwards, a long time after, when I began to observe and to... not actually "think," but to try to formulate it, I noticed the color was identical. "Now I know why I named it Humility!" I said to myself. It's like being in a domain where things are known quite naturally, you understand - there's no seeking.