Flower Remedies
Flower essences from SAIIIHR
Abstract
This conversation occurred last year when Vandana was trying very hard to write something on the flower essences she has been working with since 1991. Nancy, a teacher in the International Centre of Education, Pondicherry is now in America. She agreed to help bring out what Vandana wanted to express. More than 20 talks ensued that are in the process of transcription...
V Many years back I was trying to write on the flower remedies and not succeeding. Then I had a dream: we are many little children in a class. Our teachers are beings from another world. They are very beautiful, straight and poised. They are teaching us techniques in occult methods. And we are just playing around. We are not interested in learning seriously, properly — none of us. And I am thinking inside myself ‘Oh, this teaching is so basic this I know’, like that. The teacher is not the least disturbed that we are not attentive. He/she asks us to line up for practice. What we have to do is to manifest light in matter. We have to create a form that embodies light. So this person, our teacher, who has no gender, is very calm, aligned and poised, shows us what he/she expects us to do using the techniques already taught to us. So there is this light that he/she changes into a beam of light and then gives it form. We are all lined up watching. And then it is our turn to do the same. I am trying and trying. It seemed so easy before… I only manage to get the light down, a little way above the ground. It is so difficult to manifest it in a being. Then I realise that I know nothing.I go into a classroom. I am called‘Vandana’. Our teacher is in front. He/she asks,“What about your work on the flower remedies?” I take a deep breath and say, “I am waiting for Francoise to come.” The teacher says, “You know it is your work, you have to do it”. That’s it. I wake up with a very clear understanding that this is one of my works on earth.
N Wow that’s really lucky! You know what you have to do.
V Its 2 years since I had the dream. I still haven’t managed to do it.
N But you’re making and using the remedies.
V I’m making them, I’m looking at them deeply. But I have to give them a form somehow. I have to express it, no? What I’m doing is still very small and primitive. But it is true that in these 2 years I have discovered much more than before. And I know that there is still much more I have to discover. It is not finished. Perhaps that’s why I cannot express it yet. I am waiting for the moment when something inside me is fully formed. I have to express it but I am held back. Then when we met something spoke up, “Nancy is here. Maybe to Nancy I can speak. Maybe with her it can catch fire”. Also you had the time. Others are busy in their work and life.
N I am lucky.
V I am the lucky one also. Hmm....hmm…I don’t know what will happen. I must gather myself. What do I want to do? Because otherwise how will it happen? And today in the morning, thinking about our time together, I felt maybe I could start with: what is healing? What does it mean to heal with the flowers? What does it mean to cure?
That’s where I started in the wrong way. And I had to find my path….To express it is so difficult. I don’t know how to say what it is…
N Then you say what it is not.
V Ya, it is not only about symptom relief, it’s not only about curing illness, it’s not only about getting an end-result with a flower remedy. It’s the journey of the soul…our path in life, its bringing back happiness, it’s about bringing back a feeling of wholeness, it is actually about life, about one’s way, about Being….yes it’s really like a blossoming… Something that is shrinking, that is shrivelled up inside, how can this relax and be? And it is not about an end-result you want to achieve with a flower remedy. It happens or it unhappens and then happens again. It is about life, it is about movement and through that, how to use them…it is like this. How do you bring that light you have known since eternity into life? How do you in your own life bring back that spark? It’s something about this. In fact, it is about how to manifest your soul. Which is the flower that resonates to you that can help you to open? Which is the flower that can help you to relax and just be?
When illness strikes or suffering comes into our lives, it’s a gift if we can use it or if we have the right kind of people around us who can help us to see. Luckily in our world there are more and more of this kind of people. And in the doctor-patient or client-therapist relation, it is not only that one is there to help the other, both are together to manifest something more. Hmm…it is so difficult to speak about it. It is as if I am speaking against a tremendous resistance. All sorts of contrary thoughts are crowding in: Oh, you can be misinterpreted, you can be misunderstood, people can start taking this very lightly…It is as if there is a veil in front of me and I am pushing against it. All my other selves are saying, “How can you speak like this? How can you speak like this?” That’s exactly what happens when I start writing.
N It sounds beautiful to me. I mean it sounds clear and beautiful. You may have more to express or perhaps in more depth, but there is nothing that sounds odd to me. So whatever that’s worth…
V Ya, ya,…Perhaps I should not make it general and start with how it happened to me. Then when it is true I can see. I cannot speak for everybody, I can only speak for me. I saw that when I was in control, healing someone or treating someone, it helped, but only to a certain limit. The problem is that when people come to me they are coming to me as a doctor or as a healer so they want me to get them well and I must use all possible ways to make them well again. When I was an allopathic doctor there was a problem: I saw that there was a limit to my treatment, people got better but for some the disease returned, they came back, it got better, then again returned. So I found that this system does not have the cure for everything. I also found that behind it all, people are still suffering. I could not take it for myself, I could not give it to others. Okay, I could prescribe Paracetamol for fever or medicines for cough and colds, it was easy but it did not truly help. Then I discovered homoeopathy. It was great. It removed the problem without any bad effects on the system. But again there were things one couldn’t cure.
And then I learnt Pranic healing. Here too there were limitations. Well there is a limit…I cannot see beyond it. I always admired people who felt ( after learning something), “I know everything. I am doing a great work. I can cure everything or my system is the greatest.” Because here I was satisfied with nothing, knowing my limitations and not at ease with them, constantly feeling that I am still missing something…This is not it, this is not it…like that. And then with the flowers, it is also the same thing. Sometimes they would help and sometimes apparently nothing would work. Some things would get better with me or without me and some things wouldn’t. Then I discovered what I told you about earlier: it was a process people were going through. For them it may not be conscious. For me too it was not conscious. Only now I see, I can feel the process through which the people are going. I remember a person who came to me for a skin problem. He wanted only flower remedies. He had tried homoepathy and herbal medicine but it didn’t work. He took flower essences, the skin problem worsened and he had to be admitted into a nursing home. I went to visit him there. He was recovering under allopathic medicine. His main complaint was about all the works that were pending because he was admitted.
Suddenly I realised, what was really helping him, along with the medicine, was the fact that he was temporarily out of stress…things like this taught me a lot. (In fact I am still learning about how a layman looks at illness. It is very different from an allopathic doctor’s view). Something in the person is struggling, struggling to come forward. How the whole world can block us from seeing it! Our senses and false ideas about what our world should be like can prevent us from living in our true self. All our patterns from childhood, all our experiences from this life or past lives are preventing us from being true to us. And I noticed that if I am in tune with the truth of the person in front of me, somehow the person gets the strength. So if I am aligned and I am looking at the true person in front of me, I can see the blossoming happen. I can see the joy coming out. In this state, it doesn’t matter what type of medicine I use because then the suffering starts dissolving as the real self emerges. It is like this. Then one can use any type of medicine that one is in tune with, including the flower remedies. With the flowers, the advantage is that being subtle they are more pervasive and thereby have a lot of power. They can effortlessly enter the darkest parts of our being. Because there is no resistance. To allopathic medicine there is a resistance, to homoeopathy there is a resistance, to healing there is a resistance, but to flowers the being has no resistance. It is just there. It doesn’t try to push us to make us change, it’s just there. And because it’s there, something in us can just do, “ Hahhh”, like that.
So more and more it’s how to make that happen? It is so delicate, it’s such a balance… And sometimes it needs a long stretch of time. To live from the level of your truth: for some people it can happen quickly, for some it will take time…So then they go away and come back later….Then I discovered that an illness was actually something that you need to look at in order to align your life to your truth. So it kept coming back again and again, knocking, knocking till finally some resistance broke and we were free. But sometimes we are never free till the end of our life and sometimes we need another life too…. So through all the mess that we are, it is to remain in tune with that part of the being that is our essence. That I feel is the work of someone who works with something that’s subtle, something that’s natural. Flowers are natural, flowers are subtle…and if I can work in this way with the flowers I have a hope. There is an opening. For me it’s like the true way. It’s the way that is the…how to say it…ummm…it’s the way for the new way to be born. It’s a way for something true and real to be born on the earth…through pain, through suffering, through all problems, through all difficulties, through obscurities…it’s like through all the mud there is this little seed that is sprouting. It is like this. And there are many, many little things. All of us are part of that movement. And we are trying to open, to grow. The work of healing with the flowers, for me is: how to make this happen? How to make this happen? And the age does not matter. It is one way of connecting within. One day it will happen…it’s a possibility of connecting.
N It makes a lot of difference. And I think you are right…You…when you’re writing you put it in your own way, that’s best…it’s my own experience as opposed to putting it as a general thing. Two reasons: one is that people don’t like to be preached to and there are no resistances if you say this is my way, this is what I found. The other way is to say, there may be other ways…so…that are true for other people.
V The thing is that what I have said about flowers is only one level. Maybe it’s the work I enjoy but it’s only one level. This is the work that is more in tune with my purpose: my purpose of being a doctor, of doing what I am doing…for me it’s the Mother’s work. This is the work I feel she wants me to do here, now…it’s the awakening of consciousness… how to make people more conscious? The flowers have a possibility to make us more conscious. That’s another level of the flowers. It’s really this: it awakens in us the true consciousness. They make us alive to the truth in a way that is very simple, really very simple…. When we take them, we change — we may not know how but we change. Once a psychologist told me, with these flowers in a few days we go through a psychotherapeutic process of months….It’s like we are new, fresh inside…
The Mother has given significances to flowers on many levels: the mental, vital, psychic, then…in matter… the supramental …and so it’s a path…the remedies are a path in the growth of consciousness…We have remedies like Loving Surrender. But the mind cannot decide that you need this flower. That is the problem. It is not from the mind that you can know. It is only from the soul…it is from inside, from another sense that you know… one can follow the intuition, but knowledge of the inner is from another level…when we stand in our inner truth we know…this is the problem. And in that there is simplicity, there is no complexity. The difficulty is to remain in this clarity. That is also the work of these flowers. They help us get rid of these layers that cloud us…They work on different states of consciousness. They also work on the physical body.
I never thought that they could work on constipation.
N The body is one of the planes in the states of consciousness, no?
V Yes, but I never thought that something so subtle like a flower could rid a person of constipation. I thought that for this we need very heavy stuff. They have helped in a case where a person collapsed physically too. So when we think of it, it is mind boggling for a medical doctor. When you believe that matter is the only reality and that this (matter) is real, then when you drink this water which has no material substance and yet you get well, you start questioning everything around you.
N But even physics says that matter is not real, that matter is made of space.
V: Yes, but you are putting your head on this table and it does not give way, it feels solid. On another level you know that it is not. There is so much more to this world than we expect. I do not really know, yah …. There is so much, much more than I expected … it is so complex inside me, so complex, I do not know how to untangle it to bring it out.
N Starting with one step, you do not have to say everything at once.
V My mind would really wish to speak everything at once. And it is not like this…
Perhaps it is by some other way that one can understand how it happens. It is very difficult to express because it is not linear. It is very complex. Inside me I can feel it, I can feel it. But to make it clear,...if there is someone in front of me who needs, who needs help then it is clear to me, then it is clear. The question that comes is how can this person feel or see the light? But perhaps I am not detached enough from the process to be able to speak about it. I don’t want to mentalise it, it is true. I wanted it to be true. For if I were to mentalise it, it could be very simple. But I have seen people putting things into words that make it very complicated. I myself can give a classification, but it is not that. One can say that there is the mind, the vital, the physical and there is the soul behind. And the soul has to act or radiate through all the layers. And behind the soul there is an eternal self. And how can this expression of the soul happen in one’s lifetime? It could be so clear. The soul has entered into matter and it is a question of how it will express itself through the mind, through the vital and through the body. That is the process. And then there is the journey that the soul takes through different lives. Some people get involved in the life process, without much evolution and then they are born again and again. So we come into life again and again and again, working out the evolution of the soul very unconsciously, spending lives. Then the time comes when one can do it a little more consciously. Now more and more souls are being born, who do not have a veil. And many people are leaving the earth in large numbers. So it is really the time when the soul can blossom. It is the time when medicine becomes more subtle, the time of alternative medicines, communication with angels, the Internet. Another consciousness behind is growing. It is breaking the barriers. There is still the wish to control, there is a control of governments and politicians, but it is slowly breaking down in front of the wish of the masses. So it is in the midst of these troubled times that the flower remedies are being born. And they are many. In America itself there are more than 1000 flower remedies.
N Bach?
V Yes. And also the Australian Bush essences, the Californian, the Amazon, very many, there are some from Greenland, from Germany. So from all over the world we have flower essences. The difficulty, however, is how do you use them? So you are given a list, you attend courses, you know the different flowers for different problems and you give them for that problem. Or there are muscle testings, kineseology, pendulum, etc. to find out whether it is this essence that you need or a combination of essences and there are people who mix 5 to 10 essences together hoping that something will work and of course it works, because they do work definitely. This is why the understanding what it is that we are looking for seems so important to me. What is it that an essence can bring to me? What is it that we are looking for?
Okay, I have a problem I want to cure, that’s it. So the problem is cured and you are very happy and that’s it. And then another problem comes up and you take another remedy and so on. You can take allopathy, you can do reiki, you can take massage or colour therapy and so many things. But if you really want to take a flower essence, it is something else altogether. It is actually a part of the flower that you are taking inside you, this consciousness of the flower. So when you are taking a flower you are actually in the consciousness of the flower. Have you ever noticed how you feel when you truly are in contact with the flower? It is exactly that. It really puts you in contact with the flower; it is more than just getting rid of something. It is really being with that. You are vibrating to the frequency of the flower, you are becoming the flower. It is something like this: that joy, that beauty, that softness, that simplicity, it is really simple. When you resonate to this vibration you get the full impact of a flower essence. And any flower remedy from wherever it might come can have this effect, provided it is pure …because people are putting many things into flower essences — they are putting crystals, they are putting gems, they are mixing herbs and many unrelated flowers, lots of things because they want results. But it is not about results … it is something else.
It is the difference between the way of action and the way of dreams. When you are acting you get into the cycle of action, action, action and you forget the dreams. You think that people who do not do anything are useless. To act is okay, but one must supplement it with dreams. Because through dreams, the depth your life gets is something different. You understand, no?
N I do.
V Yes, you have seen it happening, so you know. I too have seen it. I was totally an acting person. And the difference between an active person and a dream person is so drastically different that the transition is very difficult. You start doubting, you start wondering, what am I doing? Is this life? Everyone has achieved something, but what about me? So many thoughts can come to you. The strange thing is that people who have been active throughout their lives also can start wondering at the end what did they do? You came to this earth, but what did you do? Except for the rare few who have a clear vision of what do to, who act manifesting this purpose, people are not often clear. A dream person is very very different. For then action has a sense. Otherwise you are just living life, to earn money, to support your family, to enjoy a little bit, to be sad a little bit …but it does not make any sense for the soul and something was missed out. It is like the story of a man who found a coin in the gutter. He was so happy to find this strange coin in the gutter that he started looking in more gutters for coins. And he found many coins on roads, in gutters. He started collecting them. At the end of his life he had a whole bag full of coins. He was very happy. “I have so many coins”. When he reached the other world they asked him “What did you see on the earth? Did you see the mountains, did you see the sky, did you see the rivers? He was very be wildered and replied, “I think you are talking about a different world.”
N It is so true.
V The experience of the true world within this world is possible through these essences. It is not only therapy. You can go beyond therapy. It is not only healing, it is also a way of living, it is also a way of being, it is also a way of connecting to the deeper consciousness. It is connected to something that is beautiful, that is light. It is also about this. I am very grateful that I came to know about the flower remedies and that I have had an opportunity to work with them. I think I would have been a totally different person without them. I would have looked at only the physical body — the eating, the sleeping, the disease, the illness and missed the dreams and the other worlds that we constantly live in also.
N I am glad that you discovered them. I certainly wouldn’t have understood otherwise.
V: Before me there were other people in the Ashram who were dealing with them; Dr. Mahimtura, Bappi, Lippi. Lippi is in fact even now using them for different things. She still makes flower essences. In the beginning we met once or twice. She spoke a lot about them and I would just listen and wonder and doubt. But Mother has her ways of playing.
Now I am the one who is speaking, speaking, speaking.
N But the thing is that in that sort of working like you are talking about...the flower remedies...people have described them mentally but it is not the real thing. When I worked with people you know, they think that is the thing that has to be done, these are the actions you have to take in order to get that thing done …. On one level they are right, the building may be built wherever. But what they do not see is that they destroy the people who are building the building or they have missed the beauty that they could have put in the building. The building may be strong, it wouldn’t fall down but it wouldn’t be harmonious in a way that you can be comfortable in it, which is the point if you want to be happy in it. So the thing can be done according to an idea but they can get so fixed on the structure, that they do not see other things around that make the thing worthwhile doing. But I do not know if I am saying all the things that I mean. I am just talking as I go along. I have not formulated it earlier, but this is something of my ideas…in the background.
V Yes, I agree it is the mind; wherever the mind is very strong it makes things happen like that. The mind working on the physical goes in this way. The mind has an idea and it imposes this idea on the body. I have seen this in myself also. I can go on pushing an idea till it manifests. It is the will behind the mind which made it happen. It goes in an apparently straight line.
It took me years to understand what happened with the remedies on the physical level. But the inner levels…what happens in the inner consciousness…. It is a light, it is an expansion, it is a contraction, it is a wave — many things like this. The areas which are not alright in our body: how does the remedy work on these areas? How do emotions, relationships, etc. affect the body? This for me was a revelation. Through some people who were like crystals, clear and shining, though hard, I understood.
N Yes, but I am at the other end of the spectrum you know. They are very clear in getting the thing done, you know. I am too far on the other way. It really pains me. But it is the process of my life. Getting out of that hazy thing. Getting a place, building a resource centre… I have been doing it, I have done it. I mean it was a process…
V Yes, your way of manifesting is actually the process of a flower remedy. How to make it manifest? For me too it is the same process. How to make something very subtle come into the material? This is so difficult… how to make it manifest?
Flower remedies are pure.There is no distortion in them. If you become sentimental or emotional about them, it doesn’t work. It is just a quality, a vibration. You can perceive it or you cannot perceive it.
Yes, the flowers are not always very soft. They also need strength to be able to reflect their softness. You may be able to connect to the flowers physically but the other side of them where they reveal the inner states of consciousness and their true power is very well hidden. It is only when you become one with the flower that they show you this aspect of themselves. You have to really be …. I don’t know how to say it …the flower and you or the essence and you have to really become one. It is something like this and there has to be no sentiment, no emotion, no thought, no expectation. It is like you are on the same wavelength. Then it reveals itself: the flower.
Dr. Vandana has been working with the flowers to whom the Mother gave significances for the last 18 years.
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