Eyes closed if you like. Nothing is recorded or sent. The screen stays on while it runs.
How it goes
- Take one flower, any flower. Hold it where you can see it.
- Its exact colour. Not “red”: this red. Touch when you have it.
- Its glow, the way the light sits on it. Touch.
- Bring it near: how strong its scent is. Touch.
- Its curve, the shape of each petal. Touch.
- With a fingertip, its texture. Touch.
- All of it at once. Then close your eyes and hold the whole flower in the mind. Hold, and stay.
- When you are ready, hold again. Open your eyes and look again, one by one, the way you went.
Care
- There is no score and nothing is right or wrong. Whatever you missed is only noticed.
- Eyes may stay open the whole time.
- Any flower, any leaf, any thing near you will do.
Sri Aurobindo, to someone afraid of the emptiness that came in concentration:
Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved.Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 276
Where this comes from
These are Sri Aurobindo's exercises, from A System of National Education, written in 1910 about the teacher and the child. Here they are given to a grown man, because the Mother says the education of the senses “should never cease”.
The order on the screen, and the way back through what was seen, are ours. They have not been tested. We claim no result from them.
Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), on how a child should come to know a flower, what he should be encouraged to do:
to fix in his mind the exact shade, the peculiar glow, the precise intensity of the scent, the beauty of curve and design in the form.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 404
Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), on how a teacher helps a child to know a flower:
His touch should assure itself of the texture and its peculiarities.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 404
Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), on why the senses err. The fault, he says, is never in the organ:
In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 397