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One symbol that particularly lends itself to this kind of expressive patterning is that of the flower. Sri Chinmoy frequently analyses the unfoldment from seed to flower in order to distinguish the successive phases of an aspirant's life:

THE BLISS OF LIFE

The bliss of my past life:
A secret truth-seed.

The bliss of my present life:
A sacred love-tree.

The bliss of my future life:
A surrendered perfection-flower.[37]

HOPE-BUDS ARE WIDE AWAKE

Hope-buds are
Eternally wide awake
Inside my aspiration-heart.

Fulfilment-flowers are
Preternaturally fast asleep
Inside earth's indifference-reign.[38]

The flower is one of the most recurrent symbols in Sri Chinmoy's poetic canon and, to him, it is clearly one of nature's most outstandingly beautiful features: the precise perfection of every part, the slow growth from bud to blossom and the opening of the petals in wonderful symmetry-all these betoken the essential divinity of man as it gradually comes to the fore. As an individual makes spiritual progress, so he beholds his "heart-flower" begin to blossom, petal by petal: