PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Soon after the publication of the first edition of my biography of Sri Aurobindo in February 1945, friends began asking me: "Why don't you now give us a companion 'Life of the Mother'?" It was only a suggestion ­ a request and perhaps a challenge as well. But wouldn't it be, I thought, like attempting a history of Infinity or a biography of Eternity? A 'Life' of the Mother! What did one know about her except that she was the Mother? And yet why not? A child might very well stretch forth its delicate arms and declare: "Infinity is as big as this!" That would be part of the Truth. Divers roads lead to the mountain-peak of i

CHAPTER 15 DESCENT OF KRISHNA I Since her shifting on the night of the cyclone to Sri Aurobindo's residence, Mirra began gradually taking the reins of the management of the house­hold in her own hands, and with a mixture of gentleness and firmness, of patience and sweet reasonableness, of sustained hard work and infinite generosity of understanding, she brought order, tidiness and a measure of functional adequacy to the community life of the inmates. Still it was Sri Aurobindo who remained the Master of the Yoga; he presided over the collective meditation in the evenings; he received the important visitors, he conducted the essential correspondence, a

CHAPTER 34 MANIFOLD MINISTRY I When the Mother found that the Ashram School was growing sinews of strength and its Department of Physical Education was serving school-children and sadhaks alike, she blessed the formation of the Sports Association of Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Jeunesse Sportive de l'Ashram de Sri Aurobindo), and she launched on 21 February 1949 its organ, Bulletin of Physical Education, a bi-lingual (English-French) quarterly journal. It was to contain articles by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, reports of the Ashram and School activities during the quarter, and a wide range of photographs. In the Aurobindonian world-view, the physical was in intim

CHAPTER 52 READINESS IS ALL I To all outward appearances the Mother's health - judged by merely human standards, and also as compared with her remarkably active outer life before 9 December 1958 - was far from satisfactory. She was eighty-four on 21 February 1962, and the weight of her cumulative responsibilities for the Ashram was not a whit less onerous than ever before; if anything, it but grew heavier every day with the steady proliferation of the Ashram's activities. While her movements were confined to the first and second floors of the main Ashram building, the calls on her time and energies were still unconscionably heavy. On l8 March 1962, after B

EPILOGUE Page – 827 CHAPTER 61 THE SAGA OF TRANSFORMATION "Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time For the magnificent soul of man on earth. Thy calm, O Lord, that bears thy hands of joy." "Thy oneness. Lord, in many approaching hearts, My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls." "Thy energy. Lord, to seize on woman and man, To take all things and creatures in their grief And gather them into a mother's arms." "Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain, Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe, Thy magic flowing waters of deep love, T

CHAPTER 53 DARKEST BEFORE DAWN I A significant development in 1961 was the permission graciously accorded by the Mother to one of her disciples, Satprem, to meet her once a week, engage her in conversation, and tape-record the questions and answers. Select fragments of these conversations were published in the Bulletin from February 1965 to April 1973 under the heading "Notes on the Way". Thus the prefatory note introducing the new feature: These reflections or experiences, these observations, which are very recent, are like landmarks on the way of Transformation: they were chosen not only because they illumine the work under way - a yoga o

CHAPTER 4 AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE I Mirra met Paul Richard while they were fellow-seekers in the Cosmic Movement, in 1907. They were married on May 5,1911 and went to live at 9, Rue du Val de Grâce. As Mirra Richard, her outer existence had apparently entered a new phase, but deep in her being there reigned a calm that nothing could ruffle. In her daily life she still radiated the same sweetness and light as before, and those who came within its charmed sphere of influence thought it had surely a mystic origin. For, she had brought into her human form — The calm delight that weds one soul to all, The key to the flaming doors of e

CHAPTER 25 ASHRAM CALENDAR I After Sri Aurobindo's complete withdrawal in November 1926, the opportunities for the sadhaks to see or communicate with him were very severely curtailed. This was a terrible deprivation for them, all the more so because they had so long basked unfettered in the old unrestricted sunshine. The sadhaks who came later, not having known the earlier freedom of personal interviews with the Master and the open Evening Talks with him, had perhaps less reason to complain; and, besides, some of them - Sethna, Nirod and Dilip, for example - had the privilege of regular correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, not only on matters pertain

CHAPTER 17 COMING OF THE DISCIPLES I It was mentioned earlier that the number of inmates in the Ashram increased from about 25 in 1926 to about 80 two years later. Prominent among the earlier sadhaks were Nolini, Amrita, Datta, Rajangam, Purani, Champaklal, Kanai, Barindra, Pujala1, Pavitra, Chandrasekharam and Anilbaran Roy. Not long after the Siddhi Day, there came - some for the first time, some for good - ardent spirits such as Dyuman, Janet and Vaun , McPheeters, Daulat and K. D. Sethna, Chandulal Shah and his sister Vasudha, Sahana Devi and Dilip Kumar Roy, J. A. Chadwick, Miss Maitland, Rishabhchand, and a host of others, most

CHAPTER 46 A GLORIFIED, NOT A CRUCIFIED, BODY I A few weeks after the supramental manifestation (about which hardly anything was known at the time), a senior Government of India officer met the Mother and asked her when the Supermind was likely to come down and set things right in the world. "You may take it that it is already here," she said. He then asked her how much longer dishonesty would thrive in private and public life, and what honest people should do in the face of the continued triumph of corruption and dishonesty. The Mother answered: Generally it continues until things have become so bad that everyone is fed up....