A passage to Pondicherry       Grant that I may accomplish my mission, that I may help in Thy integral manifestation.43       — The Mother   Paul Richard travelled to Pondicherry once more to participate in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, but this time there is no doubt that he wanted to get himself elected. The idea behind it, besides launching a political career, was perhaps to be close to Aurobindo Ghose, and if he did not receive from him what he was looking for, to have India and its yogis within reach. This time Mirra accompanied him.         On 3 March 1914, she took leave of her material surroundings. 'As the day

The Ashram School and its education Life must be faced as a whole, with all the ugliness, falsehood and cruelty it still contains, but care must be taken to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to bring this source consciously into contact with the world in order to transform it.9  — The Mother During the 1920s and 1930s, the Mother's educational activity was limited to instructing a few individuals in French and offering general counsel in other courses of study. At that time, children were not permitted, as. a rule, to live in

Angry sugar cane         It may be doubted whether it was the Mother's intention to stop her activities altogether in December 1959. She probably saw her withdrawal as temporary, for she was always ready to continue her effort to the end through thick and thin. The reason her withdrawal turned out to be more radical than intended was that the Yoga had entered a new phase: the transformation of the body. Transformation means change, and processes which lead to an unknown change in the body are generally considered illnesses. The inevitable transitional stages of the changes in the Mother's body as a whole, of its parts (skeleton and organs) and of its elementary Page-442 c

The Ashram in difficulty         Understanding of the significance of the war was badly lacking in the Ashram. 'Unfortunately, in the Ashram itself there were some who wished for Hitler's victory, not for love of Hitler but because of their hatred of British domination,' writes Nirodbaran.31 The reasoning went as follows: the British are the enemies of India, for they are the colonial power that is occupying it and bleeding it dry; the Germans and their allies are the enemies of the British; therefore the Germans and their allies are the friends of India. Among the Ashramites there were, as we have seen, former freedom fighters, and for them the above was a matter of element

First World War and Richard's expulsion   The hour is fateful for the earth .38 — The Mother   Historians concur that the eruption of the First World War was generally experienced as the sudden relief from a tension that had built up in humanity in the course of the last decennia, and become unbearable. Documentaries still show the smiling faces of the young men proudly marching to their fate with flowers in the barrel of their rifles, and the hysterically joyous behaviour of the women sending them off. Nobody had an idea of the murderous massacres ahead, the statesmen and generals no more than the others; and once having entered the dance of death th

Ten   The Laboratory My children, you belong to a future that is being built, and it is here that it is being built.1 — The Mother The foundations         Everything was in place for the decisive phase of the effort to bring the Supramental down into Matter, to transform Matter, to divinize the world. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had long known, from the early realizations in their Yoga, that this apparently impossible step in evolution — evolution so much condensed and accelerated that it became revolution — was the Work they had come down to accomplish. Thanks to their intense sadhana they

By way of an epilogue         When darkness deepens strangling the earth's breast       And man's corporeal mind is the only lamp,       As a thief's in the night shall be the covert tread       Of one who steps unseen into his house.       A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,       A Power into mind's inner chamber steal,       A charm and sweetness open life's closed doors       And beauty conquer the resisting world,       The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,       A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss       And earth grow unexpectedly divine.       In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow,    

The artist's life   For ten years Mirra would live as an artist among artists. 'I knew all the greatest artists of [the end of] the last century or of the beginning of this century.'10a 'All the artists I knew at that time were truly artists, they were serious and made admirable things which have remained admirable. It was the period of the Impressionists, it was the period of Manet. It was a beautiful period, they made beautiful things.'10b         Henri and Mirra seem to have been rather well-off, maybe with some help from father Edouard. In Rue Lemercier they rented an apartment on the first floor, connected by a footbridge with their glass-topped studio in the 'fairly large' gard

Alexandra David-Néel Alexandra David-Néel         In the meantime Mirra came to be on friendly terms with an extraordinary woman, Alexandra David-Néel. She may have met her for the first time when Madame David-Néel was giving a talk on Buddhism at the Guimet Museum, a place that crops up time and again in the lives of the Westerners who played a part in the discovery of the East. 'The Paris of the fin de siécle discovers Asia in the footsteps of the Goncourt Brothers who were the very first to give the starting signal for the run on Japanese prints, Buddhas in jade, silk fans embroidered with melancholic sunsets seen through branches of blossoming plum trees... And in Paris, Asia had its Page-71

Fifteen   The Manifestation of the Supramental   I know that the supramental Descent is inevitable — I have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age.1  — Sri Aurobindo A prediction         The Mother had been giving messages for the new year since the early 1930s. She said about these messages: 'I look at the year that is coming. To be able to speak about it, I must look at it. I look at the coming year and, looking at it, I see at the same time everything people imagine about it, all their speculations and their expectations about what is going to happ