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....

CHAPTER 51 FORWARD TO PERFECTION I Throughout 1960 and after, although the Mother had to curtail her outer activities, she was nevertheless in continuous and intimate touch with the many-sided life of the Ashram community. She kept up a ceaseless stream of correspondence with some of the sadhaks, she made perceptive comments on Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms which she was rendering into French, and she gave timely and pointed counsel admonition or instruction as the occasion called for. Here is a letter written on 10 August 1960, relating to the Centre of Education and its academic programme: It is not so much the details of organisa

CHAPTER 2 THE REALMS INVISIBLE I And so Mirra was in the world, an observer and the observed, apparently no more than a little shining speck in the giddy whirl of Parisian life, yet she was not altogether of it, she held herself apart, she prized her privacy. Her steady schooling in the outside world of Man and Nature was not, however, quite as important as the sadhana in the infinitudes of the inner realms of the Spirit: A shore less sweep was lent to the mortal's acts, And art and beauty sprang from the human depths; Nature and soul vied in nobility .... Leaving earth's safety daring wings of Mind Bore her above th

CHAPTER 39 INTERNATIONAL CENTRE I In the Ashram's collective adventure of moving towards a New Life, a divine life, the Mother assigned (as we have seen) a central role almost to education. A school had been founded for children on 2 December 1943, but in the course of the seven years they had grown up in age and abilities and spread and depth of consciousness, and were now ripe for higher education. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had definite views about the future, and about the role of education in hastening that future. The Mother accordingly felt that the time was opportune for calling a Sri Aurobindo Memorial Convention, which met in the Ashra

CHAPTER 5 APPROACHES TO THE DIVINE I On the threshold of a vast inner change and development, - a revolution and transformation in terms of the Spirit, - Mirra now sought other means than group discussions, more highly sensitised and delicate means than essays in persuasion, to prepare for the imminent inner change, to accelerate the spiritual growth and development. These new engines of Mirra's sadhana - new only in the sense that they were now more frequently and fully brought into play - were prayer and meditation. With the spiritual seeker, prayer is no vulgar mendicancy for a material gift or advantage, say, success in an election o

CHAPTER 32 WAR AND PEACE I The Mother's New Year prayer for 1945 was partly an announcement of the coming victory and peace, and partly a hope and a warning that, unless the victorious powers fashioned a truthful and just peace, the fruits of victory would once again slip out of their hands: The earth will enjoy a lasting and living peace only when men understand that they must be truthful even in their international dealings. O Lord, it is for this perfect truthfulness that we aspire.1 On the eve of the New Year when the darkness hadn't lifted yet, the Mother could already see the clear streaks of the dawn of victory, but also the gather