Flower essences from SAIIIHR (IV)
“ For the more subtle is also more powerful, — one might say, the more truly concrete; it is less bound than the gross, it has a greater permanence in its being along with a greater potentiality, plasticity and range in its becoming .”
V So do you have anything to share regarding the remedy Divine Love Governing the World (Brownea coccinea)?
N About my experience with the remedy? It is hard for me at this point to tell what is what because there is the remedy and everything else has changed too. I am back here at the Ashram after two years, so everything is new and I don’t know what is what, what is me, what is the remedy. Is there more power in the Ashram because I feel the Force more? Or should I just assume that it is me, that I have become more open to it? Me, I can go into a sort of sloth sometimes. But now there are very beautiful times, so open. So it is difficult to know what is what. The traffic is difficult. Saturday night I couldn’t sleep because of the sounds outside. All I can tell you is that there is a sense of peace that could be coming from the remedy.
V Any dreams?
N Nothing that I can remember. I am having dreams but I am not remembering them. I do feel a little lighter.
V I have not prepared anything for today. I have not thought of anything for today. We can just sit and wait till something comes. (Pause) Now it is coming…It is the Mother. Whatever is spoken about these essences will be incomplete without the Mother, without talking about Her and Her work. We are using the flowers and the significances which She has given. So it is this special vibration with which we come into contact when we use the flowers. So we are directly working in Her line (Pause).
So one of the things is that whoever is using these essences cannot be just anyone. It has to be someone who is in tune and aware of the inner worlds, is aware of what is happening inside. The person must be aware of the soul’s journey through its lifetimes. It is in the significance (of the flowers), this inner path…it has to do with the inner path, and unless you are in tune with the inner path you will be using the remedies in a superficial way. To develop this perception would be the first step. People who are in tune with the whole are the people who would be able to use them the best, who would be able to perceive what they need.
That is what happened to me. In the early days I was only looking at the physical level, and okay, the remedies were working. But I do not claim that I did anything, the remedies themselves worked. When I started changing, when I started exploring the inner worlds, when I started understanding the complexity of my own being, not seeing it psychologically but vibrationally, then between me and the people there was a transparency. I still remember this person who had come from France. She was only here for a few days. She came and sat in my office and it was so transparent that I could see everything. It was like I knew what problems she had, I knew what was the core of her problem, what was at the root of her problems, it was like tak, tak, tak… all the information was given to me. Since her English was not so good, she told me a few things, but left out a lot. But just seeing her I knew. She only told me about the headaches and that she wanted a flower for them, because that is what I was: a physical doctor. So I told her, “You also have constipation, no? You also have emotional problems, no?”…and so on. As I went on speaking about her problems, she started looking very shocked. As I was revealing layer after layer because everything was transparent, she started getting very nervous. Then I realised that I shouldn’t have spoken thus. With this opening I understood that we are actually one. If we try to look, we can see or know everything. So if she had used the same way to look at me, she could have known everything about me also. We keep trying to make masks to hide ourselves. But these masks are not living or true. They are only for people who cannot really see or do not know. But for all of us who grow in the truth, the world can become completely transparent. For someone who is vast, for someone who is living the truth, we are all transparent. This transparency or capacity to know expands in measure to our connection to the Supreme Truth. Supreme is not something high, something beyond reach. It is something that exists here in matter around us. The simpler we are, the vaster we become, the truer we are to ourselves and the more transparent things become. It does not matter who or what or where. When this sort of quality starts coming, you can use the essences very easily. So then I knew exactly the remedy she needed. It was so clear. This is the flower which will bring her in tune with herself, this is the flower which will bring her in tune with the universal truth and thereby dissolve everything. It was so interesting. But of course I realised that I need not have spoken everything. I should just have given the remedy and let it go because we like our ways somehow, or we are at different stages of development.
This puts me back to what happened today. I was really impressed. Today I had a little child, about two years-old, yet a fully conscious being. I was with another patient but it was his time. He had come with his mother. He walked towards my office. He looked at me from a distance, with full authority because he wanted to see who I am and it was his time. He stood two doors away with full authority without the least shyness. I looked at him and he came in. He was just a crystal. He was happy to be in my room. As he sat in his mother’s lap, he looked straight into my eyes without blinking, with a fully conscious awareness. I found myself aligning spontaneously to myself. In fact I straightened up immediately. He had this clarity, this transparency. A transparency which does not need the outer coats of the social being, fully aligned to the soul. Thinking of him gives me a lot of hope for the future, it gives me a lot of hope for the world, it gives me a lot of hope that it is the time that these remedies can be used in the true sense. To find out more, I gave him many things from my table that I use to feel children: shells, sticks, crystals, marble, the essential oils. He did not sit on the chair, he was standing. He held the bottle of essential oil in his hand and looked up at me. In that look there was no sense of inferiority or being small, no sense that he is a child looking up at an adult. He was just like a person who is there looking at the world, “Oh, it is like this.” Small children generally have a tendency to throw things. But this child was just holding the bottle in his hand, questioning, “What is it for?“ He kept it very carefully in his hand. I opened the cap and told him to smell it; he smelt it, smiled and then gently gave it back to me. This sort of vibration: so clear, so gentle, so conscious. I asked him which type of flower would he like to take. And he spoke very simply and clearly, ”Pomegranate.” The pomegranate flower is called Divine Love by the Mother. So we went to the box together. He looked at the box very carefully, looked at the bottles but did not touch anything. I picked up the bottles of Devotion and Divine Love. I made them into a remedy bottle for him and put it into his hand. He held the bottle, then wanted to put it back among all the other bottles. So I told him, “No, it is for you, it is for you.” So he took it. He took it to his mother, gave it to her and then he wanted to drink it. He immediately wanted to drink it. So we got water for him, put 4 drops in it and he drank it. After that he told his mother to put a few drops on his head. His mother put it on the top of the head where it joins the back. She said that is what she does when she gave them (he and his brother) the Rescue Remedy. But the crown cakra is not there, its physical location is a little more in the front. And this little one, he pointed to the exact area of the crown cakra till his mother put the drops there. He wanted her to put them right on the top of the head towards the front.
N The bottle or the drops?
V The drops.
N So you put the drops?
V Yes. So it is like he knows and he is aware, he is conscious, he is someone without a veil. He knows that he is on earth and he is clear about what he wants. What a power! It was compact, not dispersed in emotion, no excesses, just clarity. The problem according to his mother is that he is very obstinate. He knows what he wants and no one can make him change his mind. His mother said, “If he wants me to sit here, he wants me to sit here. If I sit even 4 cm. away, he would insist that I should sit in that place. When he wakes up from sleep one can see that he is in another world and sometimes he is waking and talking in the real world to someone else. He also gets very irritable on waking in the morning. He will not tolerate anything, anyone near him, but me. He can be very possessive about me. So it is very difficult .” The feeling I had was that this child has a knowledge, a knowledge that all of us have, a quality that we are born with, in some way we are born with it, then we lose it in growing up and have to recover it again after plunging into the abyss. But for those of us who are recovering it and those of us who never lost it, the remedies can work extremely well. They are the people who can use these remedies the best because they know; they know what it is to be in tune. They know what it is to stand in one’s self, to be, how to say it, aligned with the universe, to do what you have to do while you are here. What you have to do might be very simple, but to do it you have to be born here. That is how it is for these people. This I feel is the Mother’s work. It is really Her path. She has built a new track on this earth so that matter and spirit can be linked, so that matter and spirit can become one and to make matter and spirit one you have to live in the spirit while you are in matter. It is not somewhere far away. It is not somewhere else. You are living in the midst of difficulties. You are living in the midst of turmoil. You are living on all levels here on this earth. You are the bridge. You are the bridge between spirit and matter. How can you be the bridge if you do not stand in your truth? So whatever prevents you from standing in your truth is unveiled by the remedies. They help you to become true, to drop the unnecessary baggage or just to realign to the true vibration that you are. So someone using these essences must be able to feel the soul quality of the person in front, most instinctively and inherently or consciously, because each of us is different; none of us is the same.
N The people who use the essence must know who you are?
V Yes and who they themselves are. They must stand in their truth and they also must know the truth of the person whom they are going to treat with the remedy. For example, if it is Vandana, the therapist, she must stand in her truth. By standing in her truth she will know what is around her, she will know the truth around her because the essential truth is not like the outer personality. It is a personality, but it is not like the outer person. Our false personality creates a barrier of not knowing between us and another person. Which means, I see myself as ‘I am like this’. The other person seen from the outer side appears very different from the me I see. So I distinguish him as he or she is like that. That is how it goes when we are living in the false or outer personality. Then we grate against each other. But when we live from our true self we do not have this grating because we are, in our essence, one, even though we reflect it differently. In the manifestation we have a variety. You understand? It is not a variation of the outer self, it is a variation …. For example, I might carry in my essence the quality of love, someone might carry the vibration of truth more, someone else might carry the vibration of vastness more, or of peace. So knowing the essence, we move in different ways. Even carrying the vibration of love we can express it differently, we work it out in different ways. But the moment we see each other from within, we recognise each other. Sometimes we may not even be physically close to each other, but we know, we know people across continents. We are vaster than what we think we are when we live in our truth. But someone who is spontaneously living like this knows what you need at this point in your life. Of course, you may not need anything because when you come in front of a person living in their truth, you can tune to your own truth, automatically, it is like in a flash. You are aligned, then you don’t need anything, but in case you need something, these flowers can help. Does this make any sense?
N Yes, sure…
V For me it is because of the work which the Mother did that the world is ready to move collectively in this direction, because she made the link between the physical body and the spirit. She made the path. She made the links of these difficult, difficult worlds which are in between, the worlds of falsehood, the worlds of the subconscient, the worlds of obscurity, the worlds of ignorance, she walked through them, she built a path through them. She has made a grand trunk road. But now on that road we also have to walk. So we also walk through falsehood, through ignorance, through obscurity, through hostility, through pain, through suffering… we all have to walk through it. The road is made, the map is clear. The map was already made by Sri Aurobindo. So you know how the journey is, what the different worlds are. You know from them how we can get mixed up, how complex the being is. You know how on one side you can be so beautiful, yet on the other so difficult and terrible. You know why it is like this because they have spoken about it. So the path of how to bring all these different cells together, how to move them towards the light, it is in this that the flower remedies can help. Or if you have totally lost your way or you can only see everything as dark and heavy, how you can get up from that state, how you do it, so then these flowers can help. This is apart from being able to help the physical and psychological problems. But if someone has the insight, “Oh this is where you are blocked, this is the key point at which you are blocked“ and the person knows the vibration of the flower that can open this, you see the whole shift. This is really the depth of the working of a remedy. Your life changes.
I remember it was in the early days… I was still not very developed; so it seems even a person who is not very developed can use the remedy without knowing that it can have this effect. I am just speaking about it as if I am contradicting myself, no? This is the other end of the spectrum. So it seems that even without knowing anything, the remedies were used in this drastic way.
When I started I too was very ignorant and only when I look back can I see the deep effect they created despite my not knowing anything. Like this boy who was working in my office, I knew very clearly that he needed Without Grief. He was all the time depressed, he was angry, he could not hold any job for long, he was running away from his family. He had many problems with violence, a bad childhood, etc. I gave it to him. He changed so much that he became a different person. He is now married, he is holding a stable job and is happy. It was such a shift that even his family could not believe it. They could not believe that it was the same person. In fact, his aunt came to ask me “What have you done? He has totally changed.” So it is like this when a remedy touches you — something in your core shifts. The explan-ations about the remedies may show you this is how it occurred and sometimes you don’t even know how it happened and you can only say “Oh, it is like this.” Yet the actual happening itself is very simple; it is very spontaneous and can go almost unnoticed. The understanding is not mental. The knowledge is from an inner sense. People have tried to write about the flower remedies or to classify them in a mental way but it goes beyond the mind. I don’t know about other flowers because I have not worked with them. I know about these essences and I know that they have shifted me to other levels. They have shifted me into a state where I can see other levels. And I understand the path of Mother and Sri Aurobindo a little better. But it is so immense that I don’t know when I will be able to see the whole. It is in process. That is why it has been so difficult to actually write and so difficult to speak about it because it is very complex. What you can say is only a fragment. So how can you speak?
N Your fragment can help people who don’t know that fragment.
V Yes, so then all our fragments may one day come together.
N Yes, they can open up to what you know but not what they don’t and this is not the end, there is more. But it is also this. That’s how all history of knowledge grows. Any knowledge we have had in the history of the world has all been fragmented, but it is a step, it helps.
V As long as we know that it is only a step, it is okay. But otherwise it has been very difficult because I constantly feel that I know nothing. And whatever I may have to say is so small, yes, it is only a step. It’s a possibility. Ten years later what I will be, I don’t know. So if I think like this, it is easier to speak otherwise it is too difficult to speak….
Through the significances that the Mother has given you realise how the whole yoga is there in the flower book. Even the negative, the downward path is there…. in fact the up, the down, the horizontal, everything is there. But it is not mental, it is not mental…. There is a little pattern you can see here and there: for example, the red coloured flowers are mostly flowers whose significances are related to the physical world, blue or violet are vital, white are somehow integral and yellows are more mental. Things like this are there. But to go deeply and understand why it is so is a study I have not gone into… But what I have gone into is how these flower essences can help the growth of the soul. What is the path of each individual towards the light? How can they manifest the light in their life? So it can be through anything, it can come through a heart problem, autistic problem, psychological problem, it can be an energetic problem, it can be a life situation, it can be anything.… So how can one find the way back to the truth? All of us have different ways, so how can these flowers help? That has been my focus till now.
There have been many suggestions over the years, like why don’t you potentise the remedies, why don’t you use them like homoeopathic remedies, why don’t you prove the remedies, etc? I did try to potentise the remedies once but the effect was not impressive. The effect somehow gets twisted, it becomes artificial.
N Potentising, means what?
V Potentising means energising a substance by hard percussion. Thereby the molecules get energised. Take 1 drop from this energised substance and dilute it with 100 drops of a neutral substance and again percuss one hundred times and so on…. This is the homoeopathic way. It is supposed to free the energy of the molecules. So when you ingest a remedy there is almost no physical substance, only energy… Many substances are made into homoeopathic remedies, such as plants, minerals, snake venoms and so on…. So some people wanted the same to be done with flower remedies. But I found that when you do that you actually distort something because the flower has a very gentle vibration that is of a different nature. When you potentise the remedies the vibration becomes hard and very agitated. It is not calm, gentle, soft, expanding and discrete any more. It is like someone jogging on a train. This is not their natural state. You do get an effect but it is not what the vibration of the flower is…. So I stopped doing it.
There are people who add minerals or crystals or energise the remedies in a crystal chamber, but I see that it is a distortion. It is not the pure essence of the flower. We have twisted it, we have changed it to suit an end-result. That is why it is never so good to make end-results important. They will inevitably come…but it is not only this. The effect of a remedy is much vaster than any end-result. The effect is a shift of consciousness. That shift of consciousness will bring about results but it is not only that. For me this was the most important step in working with the flowers. I had to make this shift and it was most difficult…. But once it was done there was a tremendous relief. The possibilities are tremendous. It’s like the difference between: ‘is your knee pain better, and how do you feel?’ When you ask about how you feel, you realise that a whole gamut of things has shifted, including the knee pain. Like this person who had a fear about travelling. Okay, the fear of travelling went away but her relationship to her children, her husband, her family totally changed too. Her dreams, her understanding of life and people changed… Her objectives in life, her fears, her self-regard, everything shifted. She is still in the same job, she is the mother of two kids, she still has a husband, but she is not so fearful any more because the station inside of her has shifted. But when we are looking for symptom relief alone we are gearing ourselves for only that thing. We stop being who we are. That is why the real path with the flowers is for someone who knows the way inside. They are the ones who can be the true wielders of these essences.
I feel a little presumptuous saying this; but I feel these flower essences can help a new world to be born. If the people could use it wisely then they could help this quality of the soul to be born…. It is really marvellous. To you I can talk about all these things, hmm? Even to say this to myself I am hesitant. What I am saying now, does it come through in the papers I left you?
N Which part of what you are saying?
V The part about a new world or connecting to the truth, connecting to the soul, the different vibrations….
N Let’s see….
V I mean to say, as I spoke, did you feel you had already read it there?
N I felt I already knew it. I don’t know if it came from here.
V Okay.
N Yeah, I think it does, it is here. Want to look?
V No, it’s okay.
N I have developed a whole new respect.… I mean I already had a respect for them but it is more of an adventure than I thought. I thought it would help a long way but not that it would be a way in itself. Now it feels like a way in itself.
V Yeah, this feedback is important because I don’t know what I am speaking. As I told you, the moment I start speaking I am deluged by a whole avalanche of doubts and questions. And the negation of all that I am speaking comes in front of me.
N But to me it seems perfectly clear and true, what you are saying....
V That is why I can say it to you because otherwise…
N It makes perfect sense….
V The exact opposite of it is standing in front of me with the same conviction of being true, at the same time. If I would start speaking to you of its opposite, I am sure I could also do it. I could crash everything and demolish all that I have spoken. That is why I could never write. If I start, I go to a certain extent and stop, thinking, “What is this nonsense?”
N Well, that also seems true to me because every step we take we have to become clear enough for the opposition…. I mean every step we take in the sadhana, the opposition also comes to test it, ‘Are you really sure? Do you really believe this? Are you really moving? Have you really taken a step?’ So, with this too there would be this opposition to tell you to test it. To make sure that you really know, that you really believe… not to believe only but to solidly, truly know what you know…. so that when a force comes against it to ask, “Are you sure?” “Yes”, finally you can say, “I am sure”. But if there is a weakness in what you feel, then you clarify that. I don’t know if that made any sense. Even in class when I teach, I ask, did you understand? If they did, then I give them a test to check…. Then we can find out the weaknesses and they can say, yes, here I really understood it. And it is the same as when I am taking a step along the path or am speaking my truth then the one person who does not agree comes in front of me. With other people it is easy but then I have to develop strength of character to be able to speak my truth to that person because for some reason that particular one is difficult for me. Then that becomes clear and there comes forward another person who is difficult for another reason.… Like that. So it doesn’t surprise me: your doubts, your doubts will come… They want to really test you. How firm, how clear, how much you can stand in your truth even if there is the opposite?
V When you put it like that I can say that what I spoke is not untrue. It is very true to me. It is what I see every day, it is what I feel and know every day in the work that I am doing. I can see how with the flowers people become happier. How they really blossom, how they are glowing. In fact it just happened that someone came to me for a remedy because she had seen her colleague glowing after taking a flower remedy. But I know that the flowers can do it, there is no doubt in my mind any more. But whether it will happen every time to everybody, that’s not sure.… But that they work for this I have no doubt…. I trust the process, I trust the work, I trust the words of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I know them to be true. They speak of much more than I personally know. I have to evolve and see, then more things can arise. I can doubt myself, but in their words I have no doubt. And sometimes this doubt acts like an acid. It is not good.
N Yes, Sri Aurobindo said that doubt is very pernicious. Don’t play around with doubt. I don’t know if he used the word ‘pernicious’…. He saidsomething like ‘Don’t toy with doubt’. But see …. There is this whole aspect of the medical community that has been so much a part of your life, your mother your father and you. You know... and that would naturally come to you. That you have to stand more firmly in your truth… it would come to present itself to you, to make you stronger and more confident.
V Yes, I know. Over the years I have seen many different types of alternative healers confidently saying that they can cure everything. And it is such a stupidity and there is such an overpowering self-confidence that is not based on any fact. And they can’t see it. They don’t want to see it. I never want to be like that. Let me know what I can do and what I can’t. There is a limit to our capacity to heal. And we must know this limit. For me I have stopped placing myself in the centre of the room when there is a patient. It is the Force that flows, that is the Truth which is in the centre, not myself, not a person, not anybody. May that Light manifest is my wish. And the process and how that is going to happen is an evolution between us. It is like I am one of the agents for that and then I have to be very open, I have to let the sense of limitation dissolve. At that moment, something happens and the problem can dissolve or the person start on a new path. I can see Her Grace work. Then it is interesting. Whatever comes through, I share it and it becomes interesting. We will see what it will lead to, what will happen, I don’t know. But I see that it is part of this work with the flowers that makes it happen. Of course, I don’t only work with the flowers, but it is also the process with the flowers. The vibration of the flower is in between. It is not someone, it is not anybody, it is just this. I am still so blind, so blind, I am so blind, so helpless. More and more I feel there is so much I can’t see.
N Bannye told me not to speak like this.
V Okay, what should I say?
N “I am seeing more and more. “ The moment you say “I am blind “, it happens like that.
V Okay, I am seeing more and more.
N And that is true.
V Yes, that is true.
N In front of that vastness, we can always see more and more. It is good to concentrate on the positive aspect. It is more true.
V So let us see what tomorrow brings....
*Sri Aurobindo. SABCL, Volume 18. Pondicherry; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1970, pp. 257-8.
Dr. Vandana has been working with the flowers to whom the Mother gave significances for the last 18 years.
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