Flower remedies based on the significances given to flowers by the Mother

Kaalii‘Power’Dhatuuraa‘Tapasyaa’; Hanumaan Mudaar‘Courage’

The bright orange flowers of Saraca Indica, called Ashoka in Sanskrit literally means ‘Absence of Grief ’; which is what it vibrates to according to some flowers with which all of us are familiar. Touched by the Mother’s insight they reveal their inner depth. Jasmine is ‘Purity’; Chrysanthemum is ‘Life Energy’; Bougainvillea is ‘Protection’, and Marigold ‘Plasticity’(2).

In fact on all occasions in life; birth, death, anniversaries, and illnesses, flowers bring the freshness of nature and her happy laughter to us. And now through their remedies – the flower remedies.

Medicines have been prepared with flowers since ancient times. In Ayurveda there was a whole treatise on ‘Pushpa-ayurveda’ which has unfortunately been lost(3). In the West, flowers are used for therapeutic purposes chiefly in two ways: one for their fragrance, called Aromatherapy which utilises the essential oils extracted from flowers; the other developed by Edward Bach, called flower remedies which uses the essence of the flower in water.

Bach made and used 38 flower remedies from flowers in the British countryside. But now people all over the world are preparing remedies from indigenous flowers. So there are the Australian Bush essences, American flower remedies and the Indian Aditi-Himalayan flower remedies. The people working with these essences have been pioneers in their work and have mostly been intuitively guided to their use.

Basically there can be no systematisation of these remedies in mental terms of understanding. As Bach put it,

“They are able, like beautiful music or any glorious uplifting thing which gives us inspiration, to raise our very natures, and bring us nearer to our souls and by that very act to bring us peace and relieve our sufferings. They cure, not by attacking the disease, but by flooding our bodies with the beautiful vibrations of our Higher Nature, in the presence of which, disease melts away as snow in the sunshine.

There is no true healing unless there is a change in outlook, peace of mind, and inner happiness(4).”

Flower remedies — a therapeutic modality

“...there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology – and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon(5).”

Thus we have a whole pharmacopoeia of drugs, their pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Active ingredients from gross natural products are extracted and utilised very effectively. However modern pharmacologists themselves took the cue from herbs used in ancient systems of medicine e.g. ‘Sarpagandhaa’ or ‘Rauwolfia serpentina’ was used in Ayurveda for a long time before being utilised as ‘reserpine’ by Woodward in the 1950’s(6).

The question arises, how did the early Ayurvedic physicians know of the latent qualities of Rauwolfia serpentina as an antipsychotic without any scientific background and testing? The answer perhaps lies in the fact that ancient physicians were aware that matter is not the sole reality. They, through an inner sense or consciousness could approach animate or inanimate objects and intuitively grasp their essential qualities. As put by Dr. Wills Harman in his book, Global Mind Change,

“Ultimately the reality behind the phenomenal world is contacted, not through the physical senses, but through deep intuition. Consciousness is not the end product of material evolution; rather, consciousness was here first!(7)”

The intuitive approach in the modern age has however some limitations:

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1. The intuition received may be a partial truth, not the whole.

2. It has to be expressed through the mind which often distorts it by its inherent incapacity to perceive wholes.

3. It is not available on demand.

Despite these limitations flower remedies have been started and developed since the 1870’s through this approach. Edward Bach left his lucrative medical practice to discover these flower essences in the British countryside. Others all over the world have been using this approach to come in contact with the indigenous plants and use their flowers for healing.

How significances were given by the Mother to flowers

de novo

The Mother

“By entering into contact with the nature of the flower, its inner truth; then one knows what it represents....

There is a mental projection when one gives a precise meaning to a flower. It may answer, vibrate to the touch of this projection, accept the meaning, but a flower has no equivalent of the mental consciousness. In the vegetable kingdom there is a beginning of the psychic, but there is no beginning of the mental consciousness. In animals it is different; mental life begins to form and for them things have a meaning. But in flowers it is rather like the movement of a little baby – it is neither a sensation nor a feeling, but something of both; it is a spontaneous movement, a very special vibration. So, if one is in contact with it, if one feels it, one gets an impression which may be translated by a thought. That is how I have given a meaning to flowers and plants – there is a kind of identification with the vibration, a perception of the quality it represents and, little by little, through a kind of approximation (sometimes this comes suddenly, occasionally it takes time), there is a coming together of these vibrations (which are of a vital-emotional order) and the vibration of the mental thought, and if there is a sufficient harmony, one has a direct perception of what the plant may signify(8).”

Thus she identified the white flowers of Ixora thwaitesii as ‘Peace in the cells’; the pink country rose as ‘Surrender’; the paper flowers with a globular head, Gomphrena globosa, as ‘Immortality’ etc. The colours too symbolise the nature of their aspiration.

The incisive psychological understanding of the different planes of consciousness and parts of the being, from Sri Aurobindo is evident here. The editors of the book, Flowers and their messages, state,

“When we study the messages given by the Mother to flowers we find that certain colours correspond to certain planes of consciousness, certain levels of the being(9).”

Yellow is the colour of mental aspiration (there are of course exceptions, shades of blue can also indicate the mind); light pink is the colour of the psychic region; red is the colour of the physical; the higher vital is lavender, deep mauve or deep carmine and the vital proper is blue or dark red.

But colour alone does not determine the significances. The shape and size of the flow

Flower remedies based on the significances given to flowers by the Mother

Flower remedies — a therapeutic modality

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