CHAPTER 19 POWERS AND PERSONALITIES I Ever since the coming of Mirra, first on 29 March 1914 and after the absence of a few years on 24 April 1920, and all along the way of her gradual assumption of more and more responsibilities with regard to the welfare of the inmates in Sri Aurobindo's household, the question as to her true identity - her real personality - had been intriguing disciples and visitors alike. Was she but an aspirant Westerner seeking the Light in faraway Pondicherry? Was she a spiritual adept in her own right? Was she but one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples; or did she have a special status? It was of course obvious that she h

CHAPTER 29 ATTACK, DEFENCE AND COUNTER-ATTACK I The accident to Sri Aurobindo's leg having occurred on the eve of 24 November 1938, the scheduled Darshan on that day had to be abandoned as related earlier, and the next Darshan too could not be held on 21 February 1939. Then came the Darshan on 24 April, for by then Sri Aurobindo had recovered enough to stand the strain of sitting in the same posture for over an hour while before him flowed the procession of sadhaks and admirers. Except that he could not walk as freely as before, Sri Aurobindo was in good general health. Before the accident, he had had to spend most of his night

CHAPTER 38 READINGS AND DISCOURSES I For the New Year (1951), the Mother's message took the form of a simple and solemn affirmation of adhesion to the work which Sri Aurobindo had looked upon as his mission on the earth: Lord, we are upon earth to accomplish Thy work of transformation. It is our sole will, our sole preoccupation. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal. The whole thrust was towards Transformation, not evasion, elimination or destruction. From imperfection to Perfection, from darkness to Light, from the human to the Divine! The months immediately

CHAPTER 21 A CHOICE OF GAMES I In an earlier chapter, the short-lived but psychically very potent effort at communion known as the Soup ceremony was described: its distant filiations with the Japanese Tea Ceremony, the evocation of a unique spiritual atmosphere in the Reception Room where it was held in the evenings, the mystic phenomenon of sharing and exchange, the rewarding experiences of some of the participating sadhaks, the gradual decline in the degree of consecration and dedication, the effect on the Mother of the one­sided exchange and her decision at last to withdraw her own personal participation in the ceremony - it was a marvellous lyric

CHAPTER 31 COMING OF THE CHILDREN II In the Ashram during the War years, especially after 1941, as if in answer to the violence and destruction outside, there were assembled day after day for the adoration of the Lord all the flowers of the Ashram gardens and as if in answer to the adult lunacies and horrors in the War theatres there, in the Ashram, more and more of the flowers of humanity - the children of the sadhaks and disciples - found a free atmosphere for integral growth. The War, for one thing, had forced the hands of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and made them agree to the withdrawal of the earlier rule of exclusion of children from the Ashr

CHAPTER 57 SUPERMAN CONSCIOUSNESS I The Mother's New Year message for 1969 ("No words - acts ") had doubtless been decided upon in the last weeks of the previous year. During the small hours of the night preceding the dawn on 1 January, however, she had the experience of the descent of a new power of consciousness: In the night it came slowly and on waking up this morning, there was as though a golden dawn, and the atmosphere was so light. The body felt: "Well, it is truly, truly new." A golden light, transparent and... benevolent. "Benevolent" in the sense of a certainty - a harmonious certainty. She came to know later

CHAPTER 55 SADHANA OF THE BODY I The Mother was to all appearance confined to her rooms on the second floor of the Ashram, her movements were severely restricted, and the little she ate consisted mainly of fruits and vegetables mashed and made semi-liquid. And yet never had her consciousness been more wide-ranging or exercised more effective power than at this time. In 1965 she had tackled the virulence and violence of the anti-Hindi agitators when they turned against the Ashram on the night of 11 February; she had launched the stupendous Auroville project for invoking and safeguarding the Next Future; she had given the guidelines and provided the main

CHAPTER 54 "FREE PROGRESS" I In the early 1960s the Centre of Education was to undergo the beginnings of a revolution in the pupils' motivation, in curricular structuring and in teaching techniques. More than once during the nineteen-fifties, the Mother had expressed her deep dissatisfaction even with the best that was being done at the Centre of Education, and of course she knew that what passed for education in the outside world was hardly worth the name. But it was not enough for the Centre of Education to do just a little better than what others did badly elsewhere. A bolder attitude or strategy was called for in consonance with Sri Aurobindo's vision of

-33_The Mother^s War.htm CHAPTER 30 THE MOTHER'S WAR I In the last months of 1940, although Hitler had had to abandon his idea of invading Britain, the Luftwaffe sporadically continued its aerial warfare and among the cities receiving special attention were London, Coventry, Southampton, Bristol, Sheffield and Manchester. There was punitive counteraction too, and so the War entered 1941, extended to North Africa, and caused widespread destruction and dislocation. The seesaw between attack and counter-attack went on, and the comparative lull in Europe was too good to last much longer. Realising at last that a successful invasion of Britain was impossible so long as the m

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY WORKS OF THE MOTHER The Mother's writings and recorded conversations have been published in the original French, as well as in authorised English translations. The Mother often wrote or spoke in English too to her disciples, and most of these writings and conversations have also been collected and published. In the birth centenary edition of the Mother's Collected Works the following titles have come out to date: Vol.1 Prayers and Meditations: Prayers and meditations selected by the Mother from her diaries of 1912 to 1919, and five prayers of a later date. Vol.2 Words of Long Ago: Writings before 1920: Early es