Dr. Vandana and Nancy Whitlow

Editor’s note

This is from the last series of conversations between Nancy and Vandana on the flower essences from SAIIIHR. This conversation centres around the flower of the Eucalyptus whose significance according to the Mother is Abolition of the Ego.

V So we start with Abolition of the Ego. It is very interesting because the first on the list of flower remedies is Abolition of the Ego and the last is always Without Grief. So most of the remedies I have made come somewhere in the middle of these two as the list is alphabetical. So perhaps the way to Without Grief begins with Abolition of the Ego. What would you like to know about it: how it was made, or about the remedy or about my experiences with the remedy?

N You can talk about it the way you like. I am ready for a story.

V Abolition of the Ego is the flower of the eucalyptus tree. It has two colours, one is cream-white and the other is red. Of course there are many other varieties, but in our surroundings these are the ones we mainly have. Normally it is not easy to get the flower because the trees grow very tall and high and the flowers bloom at these heights. So very rarely does one see flowers close to the ground. The first time I made this remedy I felt very lucky and grateful to find a tree whose flowers were easily accessible. This was near the Ganesh temple of Auroville. The remedy was finished after a few years. Now I had to make the remedy again and the trees near the Ganesh temple were not blooming.

There is something very interesting about the flower: it has a very hard bud and is covered with a very hard cap. It’s like a stem. Then this cap suddenly splits open and there are these pinkish flowers waving in the breeze, with a beautiful fragrance.

So when the remedy was finished I was having great difficulty finding this flower. I asked everybody I met if they knew of a tree with blooms close to the ground. Françoise told me that she believed there were some and that she would enquire. She did so and told me that it seemed that there were some in the Matrimandir gardens. At that time it had only buds. She told me she would keep a check. Then one Sunday I thought I could go to make the remedy. She told me that there was no need to bring anything as there were very few flowers. But inside me it was very clear that today was the day to make the remedy. It seems I had become a little more conscious! When I arrived at Matrimandir gardens, she met me with the one branch of flowers that was blooming. But you can’t make a flower remedy with flowers plucked a long time ago. You have to be in contact with the tree and make it near the plant when you pluck the flowers. You cannot pluck a branch, carry it away a distance and then make the remedy. The vibration must be very pure, nothing in between, only the flower and the water. So, she said, “Okay, it’s gone!” I said, “Let’s see where it is growing.” She told me how she had discovered this tree. She had been asking Andrea about this tree, standing in the gardens. Andrea said, “Well, just look behind you.” And there was a huge tree, a really huge tree. She had been standing just in front of it and she hadn’t even noticed — it was so discreet. Françoise is not someone who is unconscious, she has a deep link to plants. It was strange because being there, she could not see the plant. So we went to that tree and as we reached the tree, we discovered a whole forest. There was a whole grove of trees! Yet, she had only seen one, but behind it there were twenty other trees… and they were all in bloom. This was our first lesson on Abolition of the Ego.

And so I walked up to this tree which was really the most beautiful and it was so high, just as it is shown in the book and the leaves touched the ground. It was flowering, flowering, flowering and one could go near to touch the trunk. When you did that you were surrounded by these beautiful leaves and flowers. It was like you were embraced. It was so beautiful — there was such a presence. It was neutral, just neutral, so calm, still and neutral. There was a red one and a white one and the trees were full of flowers. I didn’t know which one to make, so I made them both. When in doubt, do both! Interestingly the water turned to a wine colour… a golden brown. In both remedies, from the white and red flowers, the water had exactly the same colour — golden brown. In the pink and white, the water had interestingly the same colour, exactly the same taste, and exactly the same smell. There was no difference. And well… the effect was also the same. The Australians call it ‘The Silver Princess’. I always liked that name, ‘Silver Princess’. This tree is really so tall, so dignified, so noble. It is there and yet not there.

Dr. Vandana and Nancy Whitlow

Editor’s note

This is the fifth talk in a series of conversations with Nancy on the flower essences from SAIIIHR. This talk focuses on the occult action of the flower, ‘Will to conquer Vital Enemies’.

V Do you feel that anything is unclear on what we have spoken concerning the flowers?

N Hmm.

V Today something else has emerged. I have gone so far to the other end of the spectrum from physical to inner worlds that today when someone asked me, “Do you have any flower for my neck pain?” I was totally at a loss (laughter).

N It seems like an unusual question (laughter). You know, I don’t know what to ask because the whole thing seems so mysterious to me anyway that I take it more on faith. You know the vibrations of the flowers come into our being, but it is not a thing that can be explained a lot. But maybe you can, I don’t know. So I just believe in them because I can see what they can do for me. It is the same way actually for everything. When I press the switch, the electric light goes on. But I can’t explain how it happens. I just know that it does. I learnt it once at school, but I don’t remember any more (laughter). So…. One question that I have is: you gave me many remedies while I was in the States and I just took what felt right at the moment. You had told me not to mix more than 3 or 4 together.

V This is according to Bach who says that more than 5 remedies should not be mixed together. For example you can’t mix Peace in the Cells¹ with Life Energy². You might land up with a huge problem. One is pushing you while the other is trying to hold you down. So there are some flowers that don’t go well together. But there are some flowers like Will to Conquer the Vital Enemies³ and Integral Protection⁴ which go very well together. There is another flower, Conquest over Vital Enemies⁵. Somehow I have never made that into a remedy after Will to conquer the Vital Enemies was made because Will to Conquer the Vital Enemies had a very good effect along with Integral Protection. I remember my first case. It was a 70 year-old woman. She was very weak but she would come daily to my office to meet me. She always felt that she was being attacked by occult forces. She would wake up in the night in great fear of being attacked. It could have been real or a delusion, I don’t know. I gave her Will to Conquer Vital Enemies with Integral Protection. After this her memory improved, her strength improved and her sleep improved. It worked really well.

Healing process

V I think we also need to talk about the healing process. The healing process greatly depends on the inner state of the therapist also. So depending upon the state that I am in, that is, the state of consciousness in which I live and breathe and function; this is what calls a certain type of person towards me.

When one is a doctor, people speak only of their physical problems. If you are a homoeopath, the range of complaints will increase. If you are a psychiatrist, the people come to you with psychiatric problems. If you are a healer, people will present to you the problems that need healing. So people, in a way, classify therapists into various categories. So the way people approach the therapist depends on the way in which they see the set-up.

Flowers can be used by all types of people. It is not necessary that only a healer should work with flower remedies or only a homoeopath can use flower remedies. Everyone can use flower remedies. In fact in psychiatry these flower remedies are working marvellously well.

Since we started with the occult there is another very interesting case. This is about a psychiatric patient, admitted into hospital, who got hold of a knife and wanted to kill himself. He had managed to escape from the attendants and nurses. They somehow restrained him and managed to give him the required medicines to knock him out. But it had no effect. He continued to be violent. He was possessed by a force that had enormous power. It was unbelievable. He was violent and shouting. The psychiatrist in charge suddenly remembered the flower remedies. He thought of trying them, since nothing else was working. He mixed together a few flowers and made the boy drink them. He says that within a few minutes the boy calmed down, completely relaxed and apologised to everyone. In a few days or weeks he could be released.

Dr. Vandana and Nancy Whitlow

“ 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 .”                                                                                                                                             — Sri Aurobindo*

V  So do you have anything to share regarding the remedy Divine Love Governing the World?

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 psych-ologically but vibrationally, then between me and the people there was a transparency.  I still remember this person who had come fromFrance. 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 trans-parent, 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. 

Dr. Vandana and Nancy Whitlow

Editor’s note This is an honest account of a healer’s journey through the systems of healing. Starting from the conventional (read modern) system of allopathic medicine that is currently in fashion, she has traversed many  landscapes in her inner and outer life. She has learnt successively Homeopathy, Reiki, Flower Therapy but has chosen not to limit herself with any system. Moving beyond systems, she uses them intuitively but does not limit or identify herself with them. This is an ideal situation, both for the personal progress as well as for the progress of medicine in general. The following is an account of her rendezvous with flowers with which she has worked the most, including some very original work on a developing pharmacopoeia of flower therapies based on the Mother’s significances. In this interview she reveals some aspects of this fascinating journey where the inner and the outer work closely follow and even intermingle with each other.

N After taking Divine Love Governing the World, there was a sweetness in feelings, that’s all I can say. I had to clean up a lot of stuff in the house; all these energies were coming out, so it’s hard to say exactly… but I took it again this morning and I will take it again tonight. I don’t see any difference. I certainly didn’t have the experience that you had.

V No, no, no…the sweetness is a good beginning.

N We will see… V  No, I should tell you another case of Divine Love Governing the World. This woman — I have been giving her the remedies for at least a year or a year and a half.   She had many, many problems — psychological problems. She was very complex. She was in many bad relationships; she was trying to have a child. It was not happening.  She and her partner were very unhappy.  Also her mother and grandmother had committed suicide. The whole family was suicidal too. After she  started Divine Love Governing the World, something inside her started becoming alright.  She left her old relationships. She felt a harmony with her father with whom she never had any contact.  She became well with her sister — at that time her sister was alive. Their relationship had been very turbulent before. She left the man with whom she had this bad relationship and she found someone else who was completely in con-sonance with her. And she has no plans at all now to have a child. She is very happy.  Every time I meet her she is glowing and blossoming. She started a project and got money for the project, which she had been struggling at for years. No one had been listening to her and suddenly now everyone started listening to her.  Somebody donated money and now she has a whole work going which she really wanted to do! This happ-ened in the course of two years during which she took Divine Love Governing the World.  So it was really simple.

N  Good.

V  It didn’t space her out.  Maybe she was already spaced out. (Laughter)

N  So it just does what everybody needs….

V  I don’t know…That’s why, that’s why it is so complex with these flowers. Because, it’s like, no two experiences are the same. No two people are the same.  That is why it is so hard for me to know whether Quiet Mind really gives a quiet mind, to prove whether it does so or not. So what does Divine Love Governing the World do for you?

N  No, I am happy. What I was about to say was that since it’s not overpowering, I could even take it two times a day. It feels nice.

V  Yes, yes, you can.

N  It has also been mixed with all this, you know: sorting things out, getting different things… I may have to take more bottles before I go to USA.                                  ( Pause)

V   I have not thought of anything. I just remain open and wait for what wants to come…like yesterday we talked about the healing process….Yes, something interesting happened. I went home and I opened The Agenda, Volume 3 of The Agenda, I have forgotten the page now, where She talks about the fact that She doesn’t know what to tell people to do. She feels that now there is no end-result for her; that this is what should happen; no. It is just a constant flow. Everything is in constant movement and at every instant it is like a new universe that is being born. You can’t say anything because the whole thing is different.  At every moment it is different. So you can’t want something like this or like that or like that. She says that it is gone for me… at every moment it is what the Lord wants, what the Lord wants…then it is what is the best. I was thinking, “Oh, but this is exactly what I cannot speak about in the work I am doing.“ Because people always want an end-result; okay you want to get well…. It is a good attitude; you want to get well…you don’t want to remain sick. But, for me, I just watch and see what happens.  There is no end-result in mind.

Dr. Vandana and Nancy Whitlow

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 I would love to hear your experiences with the flower remedies…

N Basically they are what they say — it is what I take them for.

V It is strange but I never believed that the flower to which the Mother gave the significance Peace could bring peace. That’s strange, no? I started with total disbelief. I didn’t believe that these remedies would ever work because it’s only water and diluted so many times: 4 drops in 30ml. 1 ml. is 16 drops, so it’s 4 drops in 480 drops. Then 4 drops from here in another 480 drops to make a remedy bottle. From this you are going to take 4 drops 4 times a day! It’s an incredible dilution. You wonder how it is ever going to act, especially if you are an allopathic doctor. Also then I didn’t believe in the fact that a psychological state is something real.

N This is a different Vandana from the one I know.

V You see how far I have come in my belief system.

N How long ago?

V 18 years back. And then the psychological belief system — if there is pain and you think the pain will go away, it will go away, it’s gone, gone. So was it the remedy that made it go or your belief that it will go away? That’s how I was: full of doubts, full of doubts. So I was blocked because of my mind, to some extent I am still blocked because of my mind. It’s really Her Grace that pulled us through — the flower remedies and me. Because if you don’t believe…. For you it’s fine, you have no doubt that they have an effect. I was also not aware of the psychological states at all… if you are a doctor and this is the remedy you are using to help the patient, you have to make the patient get well. And with allopathic medicines, I know how powerful they are…And I thought a flower water so diluted can never have that much power. So I told the Mother I will only use these remedies if they have an effect on the physical level…The physical I can see, I can watch and if the physical responds it is clear that the remedy is working. Anything else on a psychological level is nothing, it is not convincing. Yah, it was like that…

N It makes sense to me…It makes sense for a doctor to want to cure the physical…

V It went on like this for a few years. Actually, I went through the whole list. I made a list from the flower book, a list as to which remedies I should make. And it was with a German doctor that I went to the gardens, the ashram gardens. We walked through the whole place and not a single flower from that list did we find…Not a single one. And he was very tired because it was a very sunny day, he collapsed and went off to sleep on the veranda of Kaderland1. I was sitting there wondering, “Oh my God, now what are we going to do?” That is when I started enjoying the place. And as I was sitting there I realised I was sitting in a bed of tulasi2 which I had pruned the week before or no, it was the year before. I had come here and had a very concrete sense of Her presence in this tulasi bed. So I was there, sitting quietly. And again I started feeling Her presence. And around the tulasi there are these little, little bees that make a sound zzzzz. And this sound caught me. Suddenly I realised, “Oh there are flowers! These are also flowers!” I was sitting there, I had nothing else to do and here were some flowers, so I made a remedy. Then I started wandering looking for flowers that were calling me. And I made remedies of these flowers. I made five remedies because I had five bowls. In those days I used to think, you should make remedies in all the bowls. So I did all the bowls. And later when we had them all together, the German doctor discovered that there had been a pattern to it. Because the first remedy had been Devotion3, then Surrender4, then Spiritual Atmosphere5, then Divine Solicitude6, then Integral Immortality7.