The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Flowers at Pranam

What does the Mother mean by giving us flowers at the Pranam?

Simply to put the power indicated upon you if you are willing to receive it. It is a progress suggested and offered.

I felt hurt when the Mother stopped giving me flowers, but now I feel that I have not yet learned the first lesson of Yoga—to surrender to the Mother and accept that whatever she does for me is done for the best. Also, have I not myself told

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her several times not to give me flowers. Once I got very disturbed when people asked me why Mother gave me such poor flowers. But now I have got on the right track again. You will change me completely so that all of me belongs to you and the Mother.

As regards what you say retrospectively about the giving of flowers, there were there two mistakes,

(1) The one you have yourself seen; you should accept what the Mother sees to be best and most helpful, not judging by your own standard, as it is she alone who has the right knowledge about those things.

(2) Never base yourself or your idea of the Mother and her actions on what others say—as when they told you you had wrong flowers. How can they judge or know? Their utterances may be the result of very wrong judgments and their statements may be misstatements.

Now that you have seen the right thing, go by the way I have indicated to you, the way of confidence and true self-giving.

May 1932

The Mother was so kind as to give me a message in the form of six flowers. Their significances are: Devotion, Faith, Mental Sincerity, Resolution, Divine Help and Peace in the Vital. But I did not understand the exact meaning of the message. Will you kindly explain it?

The Divine Help was put inside the flower of faith—when that is done, the two flowers form a single idea = faith in Divine Help.

The meaning was simply that these are the conditions for the realisation in the Yoga—devotion, faith in Divine help, resolution, mental sincerity, peace in the vital—if these are there, the realisation will come.

10 February 1933

What is the significance of the Mother's giving us flowers at Pranam?

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It is meant to help the realisation of the thing the flower stands for.

28 April 1933

When giving the Bhakti flower, it is the power of Bhakti, the possibility of it that Mother offers to you—if you can open yourself and receive it.

13 June 1933

When the Mother gives us flowers, are we to aspire for the things they stand for or does she give these things with the flowers?

There is no fixed rule—sometimes it is the one, sometimes the other. But even when the thing is given, it is given in power—it has to be realised by the sadhak in consciousness and for that aspiration is necessary.

17 November 1933

Today the Mother gave me a "Vital purity" flower, but my vital does not like this flower because it lowers the vital in the opinion of people. "Other people get flowers with good significances, I get only this kind of flower"—unable to repel this suggestion, my vital got roused and I suffered.

"Vital purity" is also a flower of good significance expressing a very high thing. When the Mother gives a flower like that, she gives the Force along with it. But you must receive the force, not think about people's opinion of you or your prestige with them which is a thing not worth a thought.

22 November 1933

Today the Mother gave me the flower Progress. I felt she was telling me that I am just sitting and I ought to move forward. What should I understand by it?

When the Mother gives a flower, she gives the power of the thing it means—if the sadhak is ready or willing to receive it, he can do so.

17 March 1934

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X prophesies that I will get a "Divine Love" flower today; she wants half my share! I said I never get the nice white flowers she does. In any case we do not get what our mind thinks we should get.

Obviously not—the mind chooses according to likings or fancies or else to some mental idea of what should be; the Mother chooses by intuitive observation or else an inspiration of what is needed.

9 July 1934

At Pranam I observed that Mother was giving smaller lotuses to outside sadhaks and big, full lotuses to those she loves more. To my fate came a medium lotus and from that time all was finished. I could neither work nor sit steadily.

Why on earth do you get these fits of comparison and measurement? They are quite foreign to Mother's thoughts or intention. She did not choose at all in giving to the sadhaks,—all were mixed together, whatever came to her hand she gave.

5 April 1935

You say there was nothing intended in the giving of particular lotuses, but I find it hard to believe. First, Mother cannot be unconscious of what she is doing. Second, it would not create so much disturbance as to make me give up work and lose all strength, if there were not something behind it.

All these ideas are formations in your own mind and suggestions from a wrong force. It is the usual trick of certain forces to represent the Mother as a sort of malignant and insincere tyrant taking a pleasure in disturbing and torturing people and lying to them at every step. I wonder that a clear mind like yours should get so clouded as not to see the trick or fail to perceive that if she is like that she cannot be the Mother. But the singularity is that such ideas seem to spring up in almost everybody as soon as they get a little disturbed and they never seem to see the sheer illogicality of the thing. This has been a disease, it is true, that has sprung up and stuck in the Asram mind since almost the

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beginning and if it is somewhat diminished in generality and force, is still there. When it disappears altogether, it will be a great day for the collective sadhana.

5 April 1935

Are flowers mere symbols and nothing more? Can the flower symbolising silence, for example, help in the realisation of silence?

It is when Mother puts her force into the flower that it becomes more than a symbol. It then can become very effective, if there is receptivity in the one who receives.

19 July 1937