The Virgin Queen         The Mother said several times, for instance on 12 September 1964 and on 15 July 1967 in the private conversations which make up the Agenda, that she had been Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603). In a conversation in 1964 she confirms an anecdote about Elizabeth she had told thirteen years before. 'There is a true story about Queen Elizabeth. She had come to the last days of her life and was extremely ill. But there was trouble in the country and, about questions of taxation, various people (merchants, I believe) had formed a delegation to present a petition to her in the name of part of the people. She lay very ill in her room, so ill that she would har

'Happy New Year!'         Then came the upswing again, in a movement which dug ever deeper, ascended ever higher. We simply follow the Mother's reports about the experience, for they show how careful she was not to distort her experiences by casting them prematurely into a mental formulation. It should be recalled that she herself had fully realized 'overmanhood' in 1958, a realization which made now possible the presence of the 'overman consciousness,' la conscience du surhomme.         1 January 1969 — 'In the night it came slowly, and on waking up this morning there was as it were a golden dawn, and the atmosphere was very light. The body felt: "Well, this is truly, trul

Matter, substance, vibrations, light         'I am trying to do it [the supramentalization of the physical],' the Mother said, 'not out of an arbitrary will, not at all: there is simply "something," or someone, or a consciousness or whatever (I don't want to talk about it) which uses this (Mother's body) to try and do something with it. Which means that I do the work and am a witness at the same time, and as for the "I," I don't know where it is: it's not down here, it's not up above, it's not ...I don't know where it is, it's for the requirements of language. There is "something" that works and is a witness of the work at the same time, and is at the same time the action being done: the thre

Fourteen   The Mother's Reincarnations Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of consciousness, I was there.1  — The Mother   The Divine also comes down into the cycle of rebirths, makes the great holocaust, endures shame and obloquy, torture and cruxifixion, the burden of human nature, sex and passion and sorrow and suffering, manifests many births before he reveals the Avatar,' wrote Sri Aurobindo to Nirodbaran.2 The Mother has often talked about her former incarnations, yet always in a confidential way, either to her audience in the Playground or in private conversations

In the Maharajah's service         It must have been an enormous change for A.A. Ghose to find himself in princely but culturally backward Baroda of the end of the nineteenth century after having lived for more than thirteen years in cities like Manchester, London and Cambridge. He was first posted in minor administrative offices such as the Stamp Revenue Department and the Survey Settlement Department, to accustom him to the place. After two or three years he joined the Dewah's office, i.e. the State Secretariat. When asked what the difference was between all that pen-pushing and the I.C.S., Sri Aurobindo said: 'Baroda was a native state under a native ruler. You did not have to be

Eighteen   The New Body It's always like this, the same answer: a yes, you see. All is well, all is well, all is well —just like it has to be, as soon as one is in it. All is well, just like it has to be. That's how it is, all the time.1  — The Mother       Meanwhile the transformation process in the Mother's body, which was representative of the Earth, went on. The connection, the bridge, the link between the supramental world and our material world was being established in her. Her body was no longer a personal body belonging to somebody known and seen as being the M

A side-door to spirituality         Aurobindo's ascent towards the path of spirituality was very different from that of Mirra Alfassa. In his case there was no early awareness and there were no early experiences, except the negative one of the dark cloud penetrating into him at Darjeeling. Still, in the last months of his stay in England, when reading Max Mueller's translations of the Upanishads, he had come upon the idea of the Atman, the Self-in-all, with the feeling that 'this was the true thing to be realized in life.' We know about the Calm Page-111 that descended on him the moment he set foot on Indian soil in Bombay. From then onwards Aurobindo occasiona

Joan the Maid         The Mother has referred several times to facts and situations from the life of Jeanne d'Arc (1412/13-31) which came back to her on many occasions and 'with a terrific precision.'27 It is no exaggeration to say that the life of this young French girl was a pure miracle. (That some miracles take time for their completion doesn't prevent them from being miracles.) 'She is the wonder of the ages,' wrote Mark Twain.28 The facts, which in this case can be verified in historical detail, are there for us to read and to ponder.         Jeannette was the daughter of simple people (laboureurs, which means farmers) at Domremy, a small town on the French border with Lorra

Five principles       What I'm talking about are cellular realizations, don't forget.8                                                                                                             — The Mother       To get an idea of the Mother's Work in the following years, an understanding of some general elements of her Yoga is necessary, for here we are entering a terrain where nobody has ventured before. We will have a closer look at these elements in brief and in the simplest possible way. It should be remembered that the Mother had to discover most of it by herself and for the very first time. In some cases she moves forward step b

The coming of the children         On 2 December 1943 the Mother started a school for about twenty children. The threatening presence of the Japanese troops on India's borders, its attempt at invasion and a few minor bombardments had frightened the population, and many Bengalis who had relatives in the Ashram sought refuge there. Of course they brought their children with them. As the Mother said later: 'When people found out that Pondicherry was the safest place on Earth [because of Sri Aurobindo's and her own protection], and when they arrived here with a throng of small children and asked if we could give them shelter, we could not send them back, could we?'62