Building a world in miniature       All creation and transformation is the work of the Mother.44  — Sri Aurobindo       'During the years immediately after she had taken full charge of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram,' writes Iyengar, 'the Mother's resources — spiritual, human, material — had to be canalized simultaneously in multiple directions. With the steady increase in the number of sadhaks, there was a persistent need for renting more houses, reconditioning, fitting, and furnishing them, and attending to their proper maintenance ... There were, besides, the permitted visitors. There was also the special influx of visitors

The integral vision and the Integral Yoga   Man is the link between what must be and what is; he is the footbridge thrown across the abyss, he is the great cross-shaped X, the quaternary connecting link24 — The Mother   This may be the appropriate place to give an idea, in the briefest of summaries, of the vision and yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that is the gist of the writings published during six-and-a-half years in the Arya.         The root of Sri Aurobindo's vision is Vedic-Vedantic. There is the Brahman, the One without a second, which is everything and next to which there is no

Part One   Convergent Roads   One   Growing Up in Paris       When I was a child and happened to complain to my mother ... she would ask me if I was under the illusion that I was born for my own satisfaction. 'You are born to realize the highest ideal,' she would say and send me packing.1    — The Mother Daughter of the Middle East         Paris in the 1870s, and for some decades to come, was the vibrant cultural and political capital of the world. All countries looked up to its celebrities and its trend-setting creations on canvas, on the stage and in

Calvary I have mounted the Calvary of successive disillusionments high enough to attain to the Resurrection. 30 — The Mother Meanwhile, what had become of Paul Richard? He had been active all the time as a speaker, a writer, and probably also as a teacher, for in the draft of a letter of his concerning the lease of a house he writes: 'You will understand that it is not possible for us to leave Tokyo in the middle of winter while the schools are in session, breaking our commitments in this regard.'31         In January 1917 he wrote and published in Tokyo a tract of seventeen pages entitled Au Japon (To Japan) and transla

Tlemcen — the first visit Tlemcen — the first visit (1906) When you yourselves are inwardly developed, are capable of having a direct and inner contact with these [occult] things, then you know what they are; but no material proof can give you the knowledge if within you do not have the being capable of having this knowledge.20      — The Mother It was Mirra's first long journey alone. She travelled by train to Marseilles, embarked on the boat to Oran, had to wait there a day or so, and then again took the train to Tlemcen. She arrived there on 14 July 1906. It had taken six-and-a-half hours to cover the 166 kilometres of the last stage of the journey.

 The Entretiens         The Mother resumed teaching French to some youngsters as soon as the twelve days, during which all Ashram activities were suspended after Sri Aurobindo's passing, had come to an end. These French classes started with simple conversation, recitation and dictation, but gradually expanded into what is now known as the Questions and Answers sessions, of which six volumes have been published. (The seventh volume contains some talks from 1929,1930 and 1931.) The usual procedure was that the Mother read a passage from Sri Aurobindo or herself and started commenting on it. Questions from her audience popped up frequently, for they were free to ask anything they wanted

* The early sadhana*         All this was part of Mirra's life on the surface — verifiable facts of what people call the everyday life, there for anyone to see. But all along she lived an intense parallel life nobody knew about — and nobody wanted to know about. Her father, who was externally a commonsense man-about-town while having internally withdrawn into a private kind of dream-world, showed no interest in the fancies or secret life of others, not even that of his daughter. (She would not have tried to confide in him very often.) And to her positivist mother, all unusual inner experiences were 'brain disorders,' to be treated without further ado by the family physician.  

In the earthly Paradise         The Mother, according to her own statements, has had innumerable reincarnations. Sometimes she had several simultaneously, for instance at the time of Christ and during the Renaissance. 'The Mother's Vibhutis would usually be feminine personalities most of whom would be dominated by one of the four personalities of the Mother'6 — i.e. Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. She has talked about some reincarnations only in passing; she has said, for instance, that she had lived several times in Babylonia — 'I have extremely precise memories, completely objective'7 — in Assyria, in Japan, etc. Others she has described in some detail,

The descent info Death   Sri Aurobindo has given up his body in an act of supreme unselfishness, renouncing the realization in his own body to hasten the hour of the collective realization.40                                                                     — The Mother   Towards the end of his life Sri Aurobindo had at times been suffering from 'some mild prostatic enlargement.' 'During his last months the symptoms of prostatic enlargement reappeared and began to increase slowly,'41 writes Nirodbaran. Ten days or so before the darshan of 24 November — almost immediately after the 'incomplete completion' of Savitri — the symptoms worsened again and Dr. Sat

The caterpillar and the butterfly         'The shock was too great to bear and the loss too deep to be told,'42 writes Nirodbaran. Statements of insight, visions and messages of encouragement by prominent Ashramites were pinned on the notice board in the central Ashram courtyard, and eagerly read and copied by the many who were seeking for every word of solace. Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, sent a message: 'The Mother was a dynamic, radiant personality with tremendous force of character and extraordinary spiritual attainments. Yet she never lost her sound practical vision which concerned itself with the running of the Ashram, the welfare of society, the