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Flower remedies


Flower essences from SAIIIHR (III)


Dr. Vandana and Nancy Whitlow

Abstract
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 consonance 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 happened 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.

N This is hard for people to understand, especially when they are coming with a problem.

V Yes…yes…so I can’t speak of this to anybody. I just keep this inside me quietly, silently.

N So then when you give a remedy, you give it out of an intuition and feeling, what is the right thing for the person? I mean…if you aren’t looking for a result…

V It is really for the soul. It is really for the person…the true person… what can help the true person to come out. It’s like this…umm… because for me to be free of suffering is to stand in your true self. That is from where the light, the joy, the vastness, the simplicity, the purity, the beauty, everything springs — your own true self. If that comes forward, then all this darkness of our being can be lit by that light. Automatically everything disappears. Sometimes it is very clear to find a flower for the person, but sometimes it is not clear at all…in the sense that there are layers; and I can’t get through to the person. It’s like…I am always searching, looking, looking, looking for That, sometimes I see, sometimes I can’t. When I can’t, then I just look at the layer that is creating most trouble and aim the remedy at that. Once that becomes silent, then we can go beyond. It is like this. For people who are simple, it is very simple or for children. For people who are mental, who are complicated here (in the head), they can turn everything upside-down. Then it becomes a little more difficult. Then we have remedies like Quiet Mind, Mental Simplicity, Silence…so we start with those… which bring peace to the mind. Some people have some very clear ideas. A real frame-work…. So even if the soul wants to come forward, the framework doesn’t allow it to happen. Because then, “What will the world say? Then how will I be like?” You know it is all these fears that come up and they are natural, because we are in a social world which is not true. We are living in a mess, in a world that is totally upside-down — according to the soul. It is not living from the Truth. It is living from somewhere else. And how does someone who is just spontaneously happy fit into an environment that is totally unhappy? People look at you with suspicion, with doubt, as if something is wrong with you...in the midst of all this mess you are smiling, or you are laughing at a problem…you are crazy or what? So it’s really like…you have to be born to a vision of something beyond. Or, I have to make an effort to transmit that whole vision in the work of healing and slowly enlarge them from their narrow, or whatever, I shouldn’t say narrow, not narrow… it is like one particular viewpoint towards something that is more global. And that I try to do in many ways. One does that just by creating an atmosphere in the place in a way so that when you enter, you would say, “Oh it is not a normal therapy room, and it is not what we expect, it’s something else….” and the way of interaction is already not like I am responsible, the way of interaction always puts the responsibility back, back to the patient.

I will never forget this Indian policeman who just walked in from the street and decided that he should take treatment with me. He had been taking allopathic medicine that didn’t suit his stomach and he thought this is free, let me go here and he walked in. He complained that he was having severe headaches, very severe headaches and couldn’t sleep. I give him a remedy and it worked. But it came back. It happened two or three times like this. Then one day I asked him, “But why are you having headaches?” He said he didn’t know. So I said, “If you don’t know, then how would I know?” He was forced to think why he was getting a headache. There was really a pressure from my side, “Why are you getting headaches, you have to find out”. He found out. Yes, he found out and recovered and never had a headache again.

So it’s that sort of stimulus…. Then it is like breaking a framework…. Sometimes people want to be dependent on somebody like a doctor and always…if you find help some-where you feel, “Oh that person knows better.” So I try to make it very clear that I know nothing. So slowly, slowly, they get the feeling that I am as helpless as they are. This was a very difficult step for me. Because always the control had been in my hands …and so…I was believing…I was feeling…now I know nothing. And it was really difficult because what am I doing here then? I had better stop working. What is the use of working like this? And if it had not been for Françoise who kept encouraging me that it is good that you are like this because something can then happen which is beyond you and you shouldn’t give up and she kept on telling me that I am in the same state, I am in the same state, and had written a line for herself, “Je suis un bon canal qui est imbecile.”( I am a good channel who is imbecile) When I saw these words written by her for herself, (they had come to her like this) I realised, “Perhaps it is true for me also.”

I am getting into the state where I know nothing. I am totally foolish. It is like this… something else might work through me. Odd you know… but I’m there, I am there. And I refuse now to take responsibilities. And this somehow… this deep faith inside me, in something beyond working through me, has created a state so that people feel free with me and it has also created the possibility that they feel they are in charge. And they can tell me what they want. Or they can speak freely about whatever. No one is going to make rules for them. They can find their own guidance. But there is someone against whom they can hear themselves or see themselves. This was another way of breaking structures. It became like this. And then also… because of this shift, the type of people coming to me started changing. Maybe when you shift inside yourself like this in a drastic way, something starts happening in your connections with the world. So automatically the people who are healthier started coming, not only the ones who are sick. They were people who wanted to take responsibility for their health. So also my responsibility drops off. In this intermediate period I used to have very strange phone calls like, “Today I have a very high fever, so I won’t be coming.” In my practice, it used to be the pain that I was treating, the fever that I was treating, the headache that I was treating. Here were people ringing up “I have a fever, so I won’t be coming.” It dawned on me that it was not the fever or the stomach pain they wanted me for, it was other, deeper issues that were troubling them that needed to be addressed. This disease would pass — the stomach pain, the fever — but the deeper problem behind needed to be addressed.

Most people have a very clear sense about how to heal themselves. This is what I discovered when I stopped being a doctor. Most people know what is good for them if they are not deluded by big, big words. And that’s where we come to the Internet. It’s such a big help. People can go to the Internet, look at what their problem is, look for the treatment, then ask 10 different people and come to a conclusion as to what is good for them. And I think that is marvellous because this puts the power back in their own hands. Many doctors do not like it; many therapists do not like it because then they cannot dictate terms. But to me it is really marvellous. When you can ask 10 people and make your own decision you can go wrong, but can a doctor not go wrong? Everyone can go wrong. But at least you are doing what you feel is right for you. It may not be the way the therapist thinks is right for you. But you follow your nature, you follow your way, you make your mistakes. For your health, you take responsibility, it is a huge step…. It is like a process you know…you evolve. When you are ignorant, you put your body or yourself in someone else’s hands. It is not true. Something about it is not true. Because you were not born that way…you knew…another falsehood disappears.

For me it is more of this work now. How can the truth manifest? And the flowers are one of the ways by which this truth can manifest. How can the falsehood dissolve? How can this, which is really us, come forward? It is really this. How can this happen? And it is really a process. There are no end-points.

You find with the flowers, your illnesses decrease, the frequency of your falling ill decreases, you start becoming healthier, you start moving towards something else, your patterns shift. It’s amazing, it’s amazing what can happen with them. But again it is important how you use them. For me it’s very clear. I have seen people using flower remedies and not getting anywhere. They have sets of flower remedies they keep using on themselves and their family, but it doesn’t lead them anywhere. It doesn’t lead you anywhere in the sense that it only lulls something. But it is not being used in the true sense. The flower is not established in you. You are using it for a problem. But you are not resonating to the flower. You are not moving into that world which is the speciality of flowers. And for any therapy or deep work, it is …it is …to become one, to become whole. The joy of that wholeness which is unique … no one can replicate you. You are yourself. This is what the flowers can give you. But when you use flowers to remove fear or anxiety or whatever, it is not that. Okay it can help, but it is not that. That is my discovery of the flowers. Where they can take you is far beyond everything. If that essence you can find with the flowers … that is the real, real gift. Sometimes I think it is like magic. All those years of meditation, all those years of trying to achieve something in the inner worlds … here it happens effortlessly… with a few drops you have it. It is possible because they radiate spontaneously to that vibration. I really find it beautiful. This is one aspect of it.

The process is so complex. What we have been speaking about is only one aspect of it. We have followed only one thread. It is only one way. It is like a terrain. You can traverse that terrain in thousands of ways. And the way I am speaking of, is only one way. Or it is like climbing a mountain. You can go by the easy path, you can choose the difficult way, there can be thousands of ways to reach the top. The same is true with the flowers. You can use it for the physical body, you can use it for the emotions, you can use it for the mind, you can use it for anything. It is okay; that is how it is. It can have an effect or there may be no effect. Or it may appear to have no effect as in my case. But it actually had an effect: it changed my life. But I never understood what was happening inside me.

N When you were taking them at first, you mean….

V Yeah, I never realised what they were doing to me. So it is a great power. And if there is something in you that resists being happy, that resists being beautiful, that resists being vast, that resists being light; and there are parts that resist; then these remedies are unbearable. You cannot bear them. I will never forget that day when that person came and banged the remedy on my table asking me, “Do you know the power this water has? Do you know what you are playing with? I cannot bear it any more. I can’t.” So he left my office. It was a lesson. 4The person was so conscious….

N It seems a pity but maybe he knows his own problem....

V Yes…maybe he takes his own time, especially with these entities, these forces which catch you, which are deep twists in the vital world, these twists…or these twists in the mind.

People have made such formulas out of the flower remedies. I have got so many lectures on them but I cannot understand them. I do not know what they are speaking about. That is what I mean when I say that there are so many paths with the flowers.... People have used them as vibrational medicine, they have done mathematics with them, they have equated them with homoeopathy, I mean all sorts of things they have done which are very, very strange and very complicated. They have classified them according to colours, according to astrology, sun signs; it’s amazing what one can do! But I feel that the flower way with the Mother is through the soul. These are flowers with the Mother’s significances. So I try to use them the way She would have liked, I mean the way She would have perhaps used them…to bring the soul forward. It is the evolution of the soul, how can the soul blossom? Because She has given the spiritual significances to the flowers, what they truly carry. So it is really the inner resonance of the flower.

This reminds me of how I still keep trying to look at a flower trying to understand what in the physical structure gives a clue to the meaning of that flower…to the significance She has given. Again, you get caught in the same trap! It is not physical, it is the vibration with which you need to come into contact. If you look at the structure you will understand nothing. You will only make a theory that this structure is equal to this significance. But it is not true. It is really the vibration…you have to come into contact with the vibration. If you can’t feel it, however much you look at the structure, you will not know why She gave it that significance.

Only yesterday it has come. But there are people who know this right from the beginning. But it never struck me, I am so dumb.

N I wonder also that some flowers are grown with love or at a certain place or something like that. I mean that it isn’t that a rose is a rose, is a rose. You know that some roses might carry a certain vibration and certain other roses carry another vibration….

V Yes, it is very, very, very true. I have seen that happening. And that is why I prefer the Ashram gardens because the vibration is more neutral. There are people who get attached to their plants. There are people who put a lot of themselves into their plants and you can feel it in the plant itself. That is why most of the remedies are made in wild nature. Bach did not make any remedies from potted plants. He made them all from wild flowers. Because they are more in tune with their truth… they are not affected by human beings. Plants are very sensitive to human contact and specially roses. There was a rose from Germany which was not blossoming. It was being attacked by insects. I started talking to it and every time I would talk to it, it would flutter, it would really flutter. I showed it to many, many people and they all agreed because there was no breeze, nothing. It would just move like this…. Some plants can be so conscious, so alive. So the flowers from which we make the remedies have to be very pure…. For me I feel the more neutral it is, the better. I mean, the more unaffected it is by human beings the more pure it is. Somehow we distort that…we have distorted this vibration. We have many twists. But people who live in nature, who work with nature, can be very simple as compared to people who live in cities. Rarely people who live in cities can also be very, very simple. So a flower in somebody’s house can be very natural also.

Yes, when I am in the world of plants, I feel so happy, so free, so free. Plants and I, we go along very well together.

N I don’t know the physical process of making a flower remedy. What do you do?

V I take a bowl of water,…a clear bowl… made of glass. I put Ganges water, around 500 ml., into the bowl. Then I put the flowers to cover the surface of the bowl which is quite wide. The bowl is wider at the top and narrower in the base. So I cover the surface of the bowl with flowers and leave them in the sun for 1 ½ hours and if it is a night blooming flower, leave it in the moonlight 1½ to 3 hours depending upon how strong is the flower and how strong is the moonlight. Then the flowers are removed from the water by sieving them through a muslin cloth. The water in the bottle is the main remedy or the mother bottle. These bottles are then taken to Mother’s room to be blessed. Four drops of this bottle in 30 ml. of water make the stock bottle. Four drops from the stock bottle are enough to make the remedy bottle. This is the sun method of Bach. I don’t use the boiling method even for trees or the flowers of trees. I don’t use the way of not plucking the flower. There are people who believe that plucking the flowers creates a distortion or a pain. But anyway the flowers die after sometime, they are not immortal. So I just pluck them and put them in the water. And with Ganges water, the flowers look more fresh after the remedy is made than on the plant! Also,when I was using ordinary water with brandy, the remedies used to spoil. But after Ganges water the remedies are fresh, supple, more alive. They last 10 -15 years too…. And they have a luminosity which was not there with the brandy. They are really luminous.

And there are some people who can make these remedies even more luminous. There was a lady from Auroville who used to carry these remedies in her bag and run around everywhere. This is really not to be done with the flower remedies. And when she would take out these bottles — the remedy was sparkling. I asked her, “What have you done?” She said, “Nothing.” I took photographs of it because I could not believe it. And there are people who add something to the remedy. There is this lawyer in Delhi. Whenever he brings the remedies, they are full of peace. The first time I saw them I could not believe it because the bottle was very cool, icy cool. He had not kept it in the fridge, he had left it in the open. And he himself did not realise what had happened till I showed it to him. He touched it and said, “Yes, yes it is cold.” It was a solid peace that he brought to the remedy. And then there was another lady. She was from Ireland. She had an altar where she would keep the remedy bottle. Before taking the remedies she used to pray. Her bottles were like a crystal — radiant and clear. She also loved crystals. Her bottles used to sparkle.

So I think it is vibrations, qualities…and there are people whose remedies spoil in a week! You can see a cloud forming in the water and Ganges water does not spoil usually. Interestingly, with these people I found something. I would keep changing the remedy bottles for them without saying anything. After some-time as they started improving, the remedies started spoiling less and less. They could manage to keep the remedy alive for a month and then longer. So it seems the quality of your vibration also influences the remedy. Somebody once told me, “But why do the remedies get spoiled? That means something is wrong. Why don’t they remain forever? I do not know why they don’t remain forever. You have to find out the reason”. He asked, “Why don’t they remain okay uniformly? Why do they spoil for some people, while for others they don’t?” There could be so many factors, no?

N But it also seems natural.

V Yes, when you look at it from the vib-rational angle, it seems natural. But he was probably looking at it from a purely material angle: quality of the glass, quality of the dropper, whether the dropper was left open, where it was kept, how it was kept, etc. I think he was looking at it from that angle.

N The thing about it is that anyone administering these remedies has to have that kind of an intuition then. I wouldn’t have any idea for example that this remedy was spoilt so I should change it or if it’s sparkling….

V No, no, the sparkling is clear. No, no, that you can see. Everyone can see that. If a cloud forms in the remedy you can see it.

N Oh, you mean the water becomes cloudy?

V Yes.

N I see. I was thinking it would be more subtle.

V No, it is very physical. In fact even a soft ball, like a cotton wool ball, can form inside the water. It is very physical. But the thing that caused this physical thing to happen, I believe was a subtle mechanism. More and more I understand that the physical world is not really physical. It is not only physical, it is made of vibrations.

N Even physics say that now.

V Yes. But to practically experience it, it is a shock. It can be very shocking if you have a sort of total belief in matter. It breaks you. And I can tell you that coming from the medical side it really breaks you. I know that Mother has systematically broken me.

N You?

V First she broke my ego of being a doctor. It is very hard, this ego of being a doctor. ‘I am responsible, I am the one who can cure’. It is very hard, this belief. I used to think I must find a way by which I can cure.

N It reminds me when we were doing the free progress system and I was fully responsible for what happens if these kids do not learn what they need to learn. Then Promesse said that when they were talking to Mother about the free progress system, She said, “Who are you to take responsibility?” So it is not for us to take responsibility. We just do what we can. Such a relief! From my point of view, I used to feel they should be able to write a simple sentence in English or, you know, things like this. I mean, I don’t have too many complications, just basic grammar, basic sentences, stuff like this is my responsibility, I mean. But She says, “Who are you to have responsibility?”

V Yes, but you cannot tell this to the patients or to the students. This has to be a closely guarded secret.

N Yes, I know, I know. My students did not like it when I said, “I don’t know“. Then they think I am stupid and go to another teacher.

V Yes, exactly. Then you feel very helpless and very small.

N It depends on how clear I am…if it is something I feel I should know then I feel very small. You know? But otherwise I can know that I do not know everything. It’s okay, it depends.

V For me it is like I just left the responsibility and my knowledge widened as a result, my horizons widened. I knew many more things…because my brain opened up, the cells opened up. When you are an allopathic doctor you have this bias…bias against this, bias against that, you know everything, you know the structure, you know the physiology, you know the anatomy, you know everything and you know the biochemistry and you know that is the way the world runs. As I told you, I believed totally in physical medicine. I didn’t believe anything like vibration could work.

N It is so interesting that you came from that place.

V Yes, totally. You see my parents are also doctors. I have grown up taking allopathic medicine. I have grown up in doing investigations, finding the cause and treating it. And my parents are very scientific people. For them, anyone who is not an M.D. is a quack. I have grown up like that. I have studied into that bias.

N So what do they think of you now?

V My mother has recently started accepting that there could be more to medicine.

N That means she has a certain faith in you.

V Yes…. And there is also this faith in India that whoever turns to God only brings back something good. That trust also helps a lot. As I was learning, as I was exploring, I was sharing it with them…what was happening to me. So they were in constant touch. And now most of my family takes homoeopathy or flowers or biochemic medicines for their problems. Only when it is very serious do they take allopathic medicines. But the firm belief is still there in allopathic medicine, in standard Western medicine.

N And your father?

V The same. Both of them are the same in this regard. Whatever I prescribe for them they take. It’s like this. But he had a bypass, he is taking medicines for blood pressure…. Out of that structure I have emerged till this point. I don’t know how.

N But it is good because it makes you understand their point.

V Yes, yes. On the way I have seen people with such …how you say, strange ideas about their healing capacities. They cannot see their limitations. They keep criticising Western medicine or another system and they can’t see their own limitations. For me I just blink my eyes and think, “Oh my God, how can they have such a blind faith in what they are doing, even when it is not working?“ They are so convinced about themselves. And it is so small, so tiny, it is such a little box but they believe in that box, so they want the whole world to believe in it. And it is interesting to see that the type of people whom they attract is their own type of people. So those people are helped a little. This strengthens their belief, that they are doing the greatest thing. I don’t know if it ever strikes them that it is so small… a small part of the whole.

N That’s the way of the world. It is not surprising to me, for most of us too I mean. As I learn, I look back and ask, “How could I think only this?” And there are still things in me like that.

V Sure, there are things like that in me too.

N I find out later, “Oh, it didn’t have to be like that!”


(To be continued)


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Divine Love Governing the World

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Divine Love Governing the World

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Divine Love Governing the World

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Universe that is being born

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Quiet mind

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Mental simplicity

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Silence

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Trust

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Bowl of water

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Bottles

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Lotus

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Growing up

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Open space