Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo ...         Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo continued his Yoga in his apartment. Day after day, year after year, he was battling there for the future of the world, to obtain the transformation of Matter which would radically and permanently change this 'vale of tears' into 'a world divine.' He had acquired such a mastery over his body that nobody could even suspect about what was going on or what he was doing. 'All that was visible to our naked eye was that he sat silently in his bed, afterwards in the capacious armchair, with his eyes wide open just as any other person would,' reminisces Nirodbaran about the years during which he was Sri A

Life on the outside The only hope for the future is a change of man's consciousness and the change is bound to come. But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate to this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crushing circumstances.29 — The Mother 'I am leading a still much more busy life than the one I was leading downstairs,' said the Mother. At first she had not understood why the ordeal in April 1962 had been so severe that she had had to cease all her activities among the disciples 'downstairs.'30 If it was something of a mome

King Hatchepsut Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven? Or, so to speak more exactly, that in Egypt all the operations of powers which rule and work in heaven have been transferred down to the earth below?10       The Mother has said that she had had 'at least' three incarnations in Egypt. Her contact with Egypt started when she was very young, at the Guimet Museum in Paris. When she was asked many years later by a child why accidents often happen to people who break into the tombs in Egypt, she answered abruptly: 'They deserve it!' Then she added: 'Let me explain. In the physical form is contained "the spi

Cats An animal creature wonderfully human, A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman, Whether she is spirit, woman or cat, Is now the problem I am wondering at48                                             — Sri Aurobindo 'I have studied cats a lot; if one knows them well, they are marvellous creatures,' said the Mother. As the young people around her did not understand the Mother's exact relation with these animals, which in India are seldom kept as household pets, their attitude may be characterized as uncomprehending, to put it mildly. As Champaklal would say: 'During those early days, Mother herself "used to prepare a pudding. Of

Two   Artist among the Artists   It was not becoming for a girl of the better classes to take up art as a career. It would have been tolerated that she did water colours or painted fans and screens, but not paintings on canvas! This was not included in the catalogue of the conventions of the higher bourgeoisie.1  — Jean-Paul Crespelle The Julian Academy         In 1893, when she was fifteen, Mirra passed her final school examinations and joined an art studio, the Académie Julian, one of the many private art schools in Paris. She would attend its courses for four years. 'The name of the institution to w

The foreign lady         Few companions and followers of Sri Aurobindo knew about the unprecedented yogic sadhana in which he and Mirra were involved in, and fewer still, if any, understood its revolutionary significance. Besides, the presence of Madame Richard at Sri Aurobindo's side was not accepted as a matter of course. For she and Miss Hodgson were now living in the same house as Sri Aurobindo and his companions at 41 Rue Francois Martin. As Nolini writes in his Reminiscences: 'There came a heavy storm and rain one day [24 November 1920]. The house [where the Mother was staying earlier] was old and looked as if it was going to melt away. Page-203 Sri Aurobindo sai

The presence and role of the psychic being         Human beings have much more in them than a soul, a 'divine spark.' They have in them an evolved 'psychic being,' built and shaped by the essence of experiences in their previous lives (which is the essential meaning of reincarnation). This psychic being will ultimately result in the creation of the divine being, in each case different, which they were as part of the one Divine before they plunged into the adventure of evolution, but now with a degree of conscious differentiation making the evolutionary adventure worthwhile. The Avatar too goes through a series of reincarnations of the divine Emanation that fo

The coming of the disciples I do not very readily accept disciples as this path of Yoga is a difficult one and it can be followed only if there is a special call.36  — Sri Aurobindo       It will be remembered that the Mother had some questions ready when she met Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914. The 'very first' question was: 'Should you do your yoga, attain the goal, and then afterwards take up the work with others, or should you immediately let all those who have the same aspiration gather around you and go forward all together towards the goal?... The decision was not at all a mental choice, it came spontaneously. The circums

Impressionism         Modern art is an effort, still very awkard, to express something other than the simple physical appearance.6 — The Mother   Together with Mirra we have landed in the middle of an upheaval in the artistic world, of which the consequences are still very much with us today — although its real scope and significance are not sufficiently realized. We are talking about the revolutionary artistic movement called Impressionism.         In the early 1860s a group of painters, for reasons they were mostly still unable to formulate, started working in a way that ran counter to all the standardized, academic rules of the day. Instead of painting scene

Sixteen   What Is to Be Done Is Done         Thou shalt bear all things that all things may change.1                                                                                 — Sri Aurobindo   Ups and downs         1958 had been a year of splendid realizations. It was certainly the year in which the Mother fully realized the transitional being, overman, in her body. In a conversation in May of that year, she said that she had been working on this since the moment of Sri Aurobindo's departure, eight years before, and still more intensely after the supramental manifestation. When on 8 October a child asked her: 'Mother, will there not be any intermediary states b