"The Mother's consciousness is the divine consciousness and the Light that comes
from it is the light of the Divine Truth. One who receives and accepts and
lives in the Mother's light, will begin to see the truth on all planes, the
mental, the vital, the physical...." - Sri Aurobindo
"The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature
in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to
be 'Divine'. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a
growing Divine conscoiusness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was
inwardly above the human even in childhood." -Sri Aurobindo
The Mother was born Mirra Alfassa in Paris on February 21,1878 to parents of
Turkish and Egyptian ancestry. Even from the age of five, she was aware that
she did not belong to this world, that she did not have a merely human
consciousness. Her Yoga may be said to have begun from that time. Her parents
had a small chair, with a little back made for her - she would sit in it and
meditate. She used to see a column of light above her head. As her brain was
yet a child's and therefore insufficiently developed, she did not know what it
was. But the general sense of a high and vast mission accompanied always that
experience.
Neither of her parents had any knowledge of this inner life. On rare occasions,
at a little later period, she tried to give some hint, but they failed to
understand; nor, if they had understood, would they have believed. Her mother
was a materialist, in keeping with the times, and wanted her brother and her to
be ideal children according to her positivist notions. The father was a
businessman and did not care one way or another. All during her girlhood she
was conscious of a more than human force behind her and often entering her body
and working there in a supernormal way. This force she knew to be her own
secret being. From this age also, she had many experiences of extra-sensory
faculties and memories of past lives and of earth history. She was sent to a
private school, where she showed remarkable proficiency in Higher Mathematics,
Piano and Painting. She adored tennis from the age of eight and continued
playing it imperturbably till the age of eighty.
The inner life intensified. In the Mother's words, "Between 11 and 13 a series
of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of
God but man's possibility of meeting with Him or revealing Him integrally in
consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a divine life. This
along with a practical discipline for its fulfillment, was given to me, during
my body's sleep, by several teachers some of whom I met afterwards on the
physical plane. Later on, as the interior and exterior development proceeded,
the spiritual and physical relation with one of these beings became more and
more clear and pregnant, and although I knew little of the Indian philosophies
and religions at that time, I was led to call him Krishna and henceforth I was
aware that it was with him (whom I should meet on earth one day) that the
divine work was to be done." Being a painter, she made a psychically
impressionist sketch of him and waited for it to spring to life some day for
even her physical eyes.
At the same time, the outer life progressed. When she was about 14, Mirra
joined the world famous Ecole des Beaux Arts, for the study of Painting. This
was the heyday of Impressionism and though the youngest student in Gustave
Moreau's studio, Mirra was recognized as the most serious, most responsible and
just girl. They called her the Princess. She was personally familiar with all
the well-known artists of the epoch; and her paintings were exhibited in some
of the best art exhibitions. She also learnt both vocal and instrumental Music.
For a time, she would spend six to seven hours daily on Painting and another
six to seven hours on Music. From the beginning, in both Art and Music the
Mother was conscious of being an intermediary between a higher world and this
physical existence. Mother's Music, which follows in form and structure,
neither strict eastern nor western tradition, is something altogether new and
wonderful. Writing about it in 1933, Sri Aurobindo said, "Mother does not play
for the sake of a technical musical effect, but to bring down something from
the higher planes and that anyone can receive that is open."
In 1904, at the age of 26, Mirra discovered a magazine called "La Tradition
Cosmique", where she found many of her inner experiences described, though in a
bizarre idiom. Seeking for the publisher and author of the articles, she found
him in a powerful occultist with the outlandish name of Max Theon, who lived
with his even more remarkable wife Alma in Algeria. Mirra spent several years
with these two pursuing a systematic study of the higher occultism. Under them,
she would put her physical body into trance and awake progressively in her
subtle sheaths: putting to sleep the subtle sheath next to the physical, she
would grow aware in the one on a deeper level: she thus climbed the whole grade
of what occultists have charted out as the supra-physical planes, and became
acquainted with their laws and powers and operations,so that she might place
all available means at the disposal other spiritual ideal. On more than one
occasion, so complete was her withdrawal from the body, that the latter lay in
a condition of temporary death. But the release, which could have absorbed her
in the Divine Existence for good and plunged the embodied being into its
Supreme Origin, was refused by her. She saw the world in its long travail and
returned to the body by sheer force, a painful process when the connecting link
between the subtle and the gross has been snapped. It was here also, that the
remarkable adept Alma, recognized Mirra for who she really was. The Mother,
embodiment of the Divine Consciousness. Again, it was here , that She foresaw
the extent and formulated the scope of her future work, which was identical
with Sri Aurobindo's - the bridging of the poles of Spirit and Matter and the
establishment of a Divine Life on earth.
In 1910, a series of inner and outer coincidences led her into contact with Sri
Aurobindo, and in 1914 she came to India to meet him.During the sea voyage,
from about ten nautical miles from the shore of Pondicherry, she experienced
the pervasion of Sri Aurobindo's presence. When she saw Sri Aurobindo, she
recognized the original of her visionary sketch. She was to write in her diary
under the date March 30,1914: " It matters not if there are hundreds of beings
plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth: His
presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be
transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon
earth...." The Mother recognized the Avatar in Sri Aurobindo, as Sri Aurobindo
saw in Her Aditi, the original undivided Divine Consciousness, that would make
his Yoga an organized starting point of a new chapter of earth's history. The
Mother was to express this relationship later, in a pithy sentence: "Without
him, I exist not; without me, he is unmanifest."
The Mother spent the years of the First World War in France and Japan. She
returned to Pondicherry on 24 April 1920, this time to stay permanently. When,
after a special spiritual realization which took place on 24 November 1926, Sri
Aurobindo retired into seclusion, the guidance of the disciples who had
gathered around him was entrusted to the Mother. This was the beginning of the
Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
About this formation of the Ashram, Mother has said that before 1926, there was
"a collection of individuals—without a collective organization. One could say
it had a general value, but it was something very floating, without a
collective reality." About the objective of the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo has
written, "This Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily
common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a
centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of
life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness
and embody a greater life of the spirit." And, again in Mother's words, "All
our endeavour is to make this consciousness and this will govern our lives and
action and organise all our activities... Since 1926 when Sri Aurobindo retired
and gave me full charge of it ... all has grown up and developed like the
growth of a forest, and each service was created not by any artificial planning
but by a living and dynamic need. This is the secret of constant growth and
endless progress."
The number and diversity of the ashram members kept increasing. The Ashram was
seen as a "laboratory" of world transformation. Individuals representative of
different types in the world were allowed to coexist in a collective
consciousness and open all the parts of their being to the Divine. The Mother
said, "Each one here represents an impossibility to be solved" and again, "My
aim is to create a big family in which it will be possible for everyone to
fully develop his capacities and express them." About two thousand persons now
live in the Ashram. Many departments were developed. These were called
Services. There is the Building Service, with its auxiliary services: the
Sanitary Service, Water Supply, Electrical Service; a Domestic Service for
washing and cleaning, Furniture Service with Carpentry workshops, a large
Kitchen with a washing section, a Bakery, Flour Mill and Oil Mill, a Fuel
Service to supply coal and wood; a Tailoring section, a Footwear Service,
several gardens and paddy fields, two Dairies, a Poultry farm, a Flower
Service, mechanical workshops with Foundry, Smithy and Fitters' Departments; a
Weaving Service and Cottage Industries, the Ashram Press with a Bindery
section, where many Ashram publications are printed, a Library with about
50,000 books in different languages, a Dispensary, Nursing Home, Dentistry,
Clinical laboratory and Electric Massage clinic; Transport and Reception
Services, Secretariat and Postal Services, and many others. All these have been
set up and maintained as Creative Expression from the marvellous fount of the
Mother's Inspiration.
After Sri Aurobindo's passing in 1950, the Sri Aurobindo International Center
of Education was started by Her in 1951. At the opening ceremony of the
Center, the Mother said, "Sri Aurobindo is still present amongst us. For many
years he thought much to establish such a University Center, and he had said
that this is the best way to prepare man to enable him to receive the
supramental light. He said the modern advanced type of men would rise up into a
newer race with its help, and they will usher into the world a new light, a new
force, and a newer manifestation of life."
after Sri Aurobindo's passing, The Mother carried on his Work of trying to
bring down into her body a principle of consciousness, which would be the
foundation of a New Species and a New Life on earth, the consciousness which
has been called the Supramental by Sri Aurobindo. On the 29th February, 1956,
she had the decisive experience of the Descent of the Supramental
Consciousness, Light, and Power into the earth consciousness. In her
announcement on the 24th April, 1956 she said "The manifestation of the
Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is
at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious,
even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it." In 1958, she reduced
her external presence and withdrew to her room to concentrate on the necessary
work of physical transformation and world transformation with the Supramental
as its basis.
In 1968, She founded Auroville, a few miles outside of Pondicherry, as a
planetary city and a "laboratory of the new evolution". On 28th Febrauary, 1968
this township was inaugurated in collaboration with the United Nations. Earth
from 124 countries was poured in a lotus-shaped urn and the Charter of
Auroville was read out in 16 languages:
" 1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity
as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the
Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress
and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking
advantage of all discoveries from without and from within Auroville will boldly
spring towards future realisations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living
embodiment of an actual Human Unity. "
Mother left her body on November 17,1973. Her body was kept for three days in
the Meditation Hall of the Ashram, where thousands came to pay their last
respects to this pioneer of the Coming Race. On November 20, her mortal remains
were placed in a vault in Sri Aurobindo's samadhi, in the Ashram courtyard.
However, to Her disciples and devotees, She is as present today as before; Her
action grown now even more powerfully active in spite of, or perhaps because of
her divestment from the physical sheath. In remembering Her today, in humble
surrender towards becoming conscious servitors of the Truth, we invoke Her New
Year message of 1971: " Blessed are those who take a leap towards the future."