Editor’s note: We know from the Mother’s own accounts that she had deep kinship with the world of plants and flowers. We feature below a few incidents as narrated by Priti Dasgupta which reveal for us the deep love the Mother had towards the natural world. We read about how the trees, flowers and vegetables even communicated with the Mother in their language. These passages are excerpted from Priti Dasgupta’s book titled ‘Moments Eternal‘ published by Sri Mira Trust, Pondicherry.
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The Trees Complain to the Mother
After her tennis, the Mother would come to the Playground and take a short walk. The children continued playing while she walked around the Playground. On the northern side of the Playground there was a boarding for little boys and girls. A neem tree stood inside next to the wall, a very beautiful neem tree. When the flowers bloomed on this tree you couldn’t take your eyes off them. Their sweet fragrance filled the whole playground. The Mother’s name for these flowers was ‘Spiritual atmosphere’. When the playground was renovated and a new building erected in its place the boarding had to be torn down and this neem tree uprooted.
I had the privilege of walking alone with the Mother in the Tennis Ground. One day all of a sudden she told me: “We will go to the Playground and walk a little.” So we were walking there that day when the Mother suddenly stopped under the neem tree and leaning against the wall she started telling me stories.
The Mother loved this neem tree very much. The flowers of this tree would suffuse the Playground with their spiritual atmosphere. The tree looked unbelievably beautiful as if the Mother’s love had increased its life force. Like Krishna who by playing his heart-rending flute under the Kadamba tree gave it his love, the Mother also would stand under that neem tree and permeate humanity with this all-pervading spiritual atmosphere. The Mother had named the Kadamba flower ‘Supramental Sun’. . . .
The Mother did not like trees and plants to be cut down or leaves, flowers and fruits plucked without reason. Trees would go and complain to the Mother.
The famous Banyan tree in the centre of Auroville came one day to the Mother to express its grief.
So the Mother sent a sadhak to Auroville to find out what was wrong with this tree. When the sadhak arrived there he saw an axe had been stuck into the tree. He at once removed it and returned to the Mother to inform Her about it.
There are innumerable such stories that reflect this deep friendship between the Mother and trees.
The Mother used to go for walks in a famous park of Paris which had huge ancient trees in it. The Mother meditated under one such tree. One day while she was meditating these trees came to her to tell her of their sorrow. It had been decided to chop some of them down.
The trees complained to her in their language. We could never imagine that such things could happen.
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Mother’s Intimacy with Flowers and Trees
An amusing incident comes to mind. On one such ‘Prosperity’ day I was walking to the Ashram in a hurry.
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The Mother had finished the ‘Prosperity’ distribution and come out. Lots of roses had bloomed in the pots on the terrace. It was still very hot in the afternoon and the sun was very strong. As soon as the Mother arrived in the passage through Pavitra-da’s room she cried out loud: “Don’t pluck them!”
Nolini-da, Amrita-da, Pavitra-da and the others who were present there were taken aback on hearing the Mother’s voice. She said:
“These roses came and complained to me that they should not be plucked at odd times.”
The poor sadhak who wanted to pluck the roses and offer them to Her was terribly embarrassed.
Similarly when the Mother was in Japan and would go to pluck carrots or some such vegetables a few among them would cry out: “Pluck me! Pluck me!”
And those that were not ready would exclaim: “Don’t pluck me!”
Isn’t it extraordinary!
The Mother has such an intimate rapport with all things. It is through incidents like these that we found out about the Mother’s deep kinship with the world of plants and flowers. We came to know that plants could talk. Even the scientists have not yet been able to prove that plants can communicate.
Of course, Jagdish Chandra Bose had discovered that there was life in plants and that they could feel pain and sorrow just like us, that they had consciousness and felt joy and sadness. He invented an instrument in order to prove this about plants. And that marked a new beginning in the world of science. Jagdish Chandra Bose became a much admired scientist.
So this neem tree was finally not chopped down. Pranab and the other elders knew how much the Mother loved trees. However this tree had to be removed from there. So it was finally decided to transplant it by lifting it out of the soil with a crane without causing it too much pain.
The tree was finally moved with a lot of patience and effort and was planted in the Dining Room garden near the gate.
Unfortunately the poor tree could not bear the shock of all this transplanting. And it did not survive. We all felt as if we had lost a member of our own family. You readers might feel a little astonished by all this but this is how we learnt from the Mother to love trees.
There is so much research going on today in the world of plants and trees. Deserts have been created in so many countries because too many trees have been cut down. That is why people have at last woken up. It is only now that they have realised what a bond of friendship exists between man and nature. In several countries movements for planting trees have been initiated. Many organisations have been set up to promote this and they even have a tree-planting day every year!
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– Priti Dasgupta (Selections from ‘Moments Eternal’, pp. 220-223)
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