13       I am going on as usual. The peace is there and the aspiration continues, but a big breakthrough has to come. When I look deep within myself, I seem to feel a thorough self-giving in general to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, but evidently whatever is there is not fully translated into the outer being with its remnants of the Old Adam though they are not specially lingering on the look-out for any old (or even young) Eve. I hope it won't take too long for the ordinary consciousness to kindle completely with the rose-and-white glow of the innermost profundity and the blue-silver-gold splendour of the overarching infinite. Will I have enough time to live altogether up t

2       Your letter has been in hiding for quite a number of days, but its place in my drawer did not mean that it was ever forgotten. Always my mind dwelt on it and it was securely lodged in my heart no less than in my drawer. Never to forget that it had been set aside for a less crowded time is really not to have set it aside at all in the true sense of the word. If, as Milton often says in Paradise Lost, small things may be compared to big ones, this morning when I have pulled your letter out I am reminded of what the Mother once told me after her son Andre's first visit to the Ashram. She said in effect: "Truly speaking, Andre was never absent. All through the years it w

3       Your experience, during four or five months, of seeing Sri Aurobindo smile at you from his photograph while you have been concentrating on it after a whole clay's tiring work, has certainly a truth in it. Not that the picture itself undergoes a change but, since in every picture of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother the presence of them has been instilled, this presence responds and superimposes its gesture on your sight or, rather, on the consciousness behind your seeing, through the features in the representation.   I too have had a response from the photo of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Just a few days back the big picture of the Mother which hangs on the wall j

The Mother's Childhood Experiences The Mother (Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa) was born on 21st February 1878 at 10.15am at 41, boulevard Haussmann, Paris. She was the second child of Maurice Alfassa, a Turkish banker, and his Egyptian wife, Mathilde Ismaloun. Though he was Muslim by birth and she was Jewish, they were materialists, so Mirra and her brother Matteo were brought up free of all religious influence. The Mother's parents moved from Egypt to Paris just a year before her birth. Speaking of the reason for being born in France she later said, "I was born in France because some special education was neces

A sketch of the Mother's life Home A sketch of the Mother’s life The Mother was born in Paris on 21 February 1878. Mirra, as the child was named, was the daughter of the banker Maurice Alfassa (born in Adrianople, Turkey, in 1843), and Mathilde Ismaloun (born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1857). Maurice, his wife, and their son Matteo (born in Alexandria in 1876) emigrated from Egypt to France a year before Mirra's birth. Her early education was given at home. In 1893 she joined an art studio in Paris where she studied for several years. Besides being an accomplished painter (some of her works were exhibited at the Paris Salon), the Mother was a talented musician and wri

Paintings & Drawings By The Mother This book brings to the lovers of Art, in a definitive form, a little-know side of one of the most remarkable spiritual personalities of our time. The Mother (Mirra Alfassa) was trained as a painter in the 1809s at one of the best art studios in Paris. She continued to express herself in art throughout her life, including her years in Japan and later in the midst of her responsibilities as the head of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India. Virtually all of her known art work is included in this volu

Drawings by the Mother   Scroll of Daiunji Temple Mira Ismalun Max Theon Rabindra Nath Tagore-1 Rabindra Nath Tagore-2 Rabindra Nath Tagore-3 Poet Hayashi-1 Poet Hayashi-2 Daughter of the Prime Minister of China-1 Daughter of the Prime Minister of China-2 Nobuko Kobayashi A Japanese Woman

Paintings & Drawings By The Mother     Self Portraits     Self-portrait - 1 Self-portrait- 2 Self-potrait (Detail) Self-portrait (28-8-1934) Self-potrait (1935) Self-portrait (11-7-1947) Self-portrait (2-3-1948)

Paintings & Drawings By The Mother     Sri Aurobindo    

Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings  The Painting The Drawing  The two lists below give briefly the details that are available about the paintings and drawings reproduced in this volume. For more information about the background of some of the works, references are made to the article, "The Mother as an Artist". The exact year is usually known with certainty only for works dated by the Mother. Otherwise, an approximate date indicated by "circa" (c.) or a range of possible dates is suggested. Most often we at least know whether the work was done in France, Algeria, Japan or India. The range of