The Mother   There is only one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is who I am. Sri Aurobindo also knew it and declared it. Even the doubts of the whole of humanity would change nothing to this fact.32       — The Mother   'It was in 1914 mat the identification with the Universal Mother took place, the identification of the physical consciousness with her. Of course,   Page-153 I knew before this that I was the Mother, but the complete identification took place only in 1914,'33 said the Mother many years later.         Who is the Universal Mother? A few pages before we have seen that when th

Eleven   The Mother's War I affirm again to you most strongly that this [the Second World War] is the Mother's war. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realize itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future.1        — Sri Aurobindo (29 July 1942) The attack on Sri Aurobindo         The Ashram was flooded with visitors all looking expectantly forward to the

Mister Mind         Mirra had first met him in Montmorency, at the house of Henri Morisset's sisters, who were looking after her son André: Paul Antoine Richard, bora in 1874 in the south of France, intelligent, good-looking, and very interested in occultism. Richard too must have discovered the Revue cosmique, for he had been on a visit to Tlemcen from 7 January to 17 February 1907. One may suppose that he had wanted to know more than Max Théon and Alma were able to tell him in those few weeks, that the Théons had had a clear perception of his personality and capacities, and that they therefore had told him about Mirra Morisset, as she was still called. Mirra and Richard met shortly afte

Establishing the Ashram You take up the path only when you think that you cannot do otherwise.16  — Sri Aurobindo When reading the stories of some aspirants who became disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we have seen that, in every case, time was   Page-247 given to them to think over their decision, even when they knew from the very first moment of meeting Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that their destiny lay with them. 'I never push anyone to take the path,' said the Mother. 'When you have started, you must go to the very end. Sometimes to people who come to me in a surge of enthusiasm I say:

What would the supramental body be like?         What would the supramental body be like? It would be something like the body humanity has dreamt of through the ages and has ascribed to angels and gods — and more, for it would be a divinized body, fount and instrument of an everlasting ecstasy of which our humanity has no notion. In one of her talks, the Mother took the children with her on a fantasy tour of the supramental body. 'Transformation implies that the whole Page-453 purely material set-up [of the human body as it is now] be replaced by a set-up of concentrations of force consisting of certain types of vibrations which replace each organ by a cent

Behind the scenes         Though after the publication of New Lamps for Old Aurobindo had withdrawn to the sidelines of political life, it did not mean that he had lost interest. He followed it with all the means at his disposal and also studied the character, mood and inclinations of the Indian people. 'He studied the conditions in the country so that he might be able to judge more maturely what could be done.'27 The ideas thus gained and the subsequent political action he based on them were the following.         'First there was the action with which he started, a secret revolutionary propaganda and organization of which the central object was the preparation of an armed in

Sailing orders         Aurobindo tried to take up his former political life again. 'After the arrests and deportations we used to hold meetings in the College Square and some sixty or seventy persons used to attend, mostly passers-by; and I had the honour to preside over several of those meetings... That gave me an insight into my countrymen,' said an ironical Sri Aurobindo later.56 After Muzaffarpur, there had been a spate of bombings in Bengal, mostly organized by the terrorist group of Midnapur now that the Maniktola Garden boys were in prison. But the police were on the lookout everywhere, and the hangings, deportations—not a single prominent Nationalist leader was still free — an

The Mother withdraws         Meanwhile the Mother had continued working out in her own person what she called 'the transitional being' between man and the supramental being, or le surhomme,'' (the overman). We have been able to follow the progress of this work from the moment in December 1950 when Sri Aurobindo transmitted the Mind of Light into her body. On 16 April 1958 she again gave a progress report: 'It can be asserted with certainty that there will be an intermediate being between the mental and the supramental being, a kind of overman who will still have the qualities and in part the nature of man, which means that he will; still belong in his most external form to the hu

Gentleman and scholar         Manchester, centre of the cotton industry, was the second most important English city, the symbol of the new industrial society and the image of the world's future. 'It was the shock city of its age, busy, noisy and turbulent. It was the city Karl Marx's friend Friedrich Engels associated with the Industrial Revolution.' It was also for the most part ugly, dirty and unhealthy, for the Industrial Revolution had as little consideration for the human environment as it did for humans. Young Aravinda must have seen some of those horrors from close up.         The Reverend Drewett and his wife took excellent care of the three Indian brothers. Benoyb

Interventions   We have seen with what emphasis Sri Aurobindo stressed that the Second World War was the Mother's war. This does not mean that it was not his too, of course, and we will learn about several interventions which he made. Moreover, as he wrote about himself in the third person: 'In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action.'42         We remember that Sri Aurobindo said that he was neither an impotent moralist nor a weak pacifist. (See p. 92.) It is part of the experience of those who have advanced far in Y