The Mother

The Mother was born in Paris on Thurs Feb 21, 1878 at 10.45 am. At the early age of 5 she used to sit quiet in a tiny upholstered armchair specially made for her, and as she meditated she would experience the descent of a great brilliant Light upon her head producing a turmoil inside her brain. She had the feeling that the Light was continually growing, and she wished it would possess her completely. Her propensity to such sessions of solitariness, her moods of taut intensity and edged concern, were a source of worry and anxiety to her rationalist mother. Once, while Mathilde was scolding her, young Mirra suddenly “felt all the human misery and all this human­ falsehood” and tears welled out of her eyes. When Mathilde asked the reason, Mirra calmly replied that her tears were because of the world’s miseries, for she indeed felt their weight pressing upon her.
Concerning her early spiritual life, the Mother has said: “Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man’s possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine.” Around 1905 the Mother journeyed to Tlemçen, Algeria, where she studied occultism for two years with a Polish or Russian adept, Max Theon, and his wife. Returning to Paris in 1906, she started her first group of spiritual seekers. Between 1911 and 1913 she gave many talks to various groups in Paris.
At the age of thirty-six the Mother came to Pondicherry. Here, on 29 March 1914, she met Sri Aurobindo. At once she recognised him as the master who for many years had inwardly been guiding her spiritual development. After staying in India for eleven months, she was obliged to return to France because of the First World War. She left France after about a year, and lived for almost four years in Japan. On 24 April 1920 the Mother returned to Pondicherry and resumed her collaboration with Sri Aurobindo. She remained in India for the rest of her life.
At the time the Mother rejoined Sri Aurobindo, a small group of disciples had gathered around him. After her coming the number of disciples increased. Eventually this informal grouping took shape as an ashram or spiritual community.
From its very beginning in November 1926, Sri Aurobindo entrusted the full material and spiritual charge of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to the Mother. Under her guidance, which extended over nearly fifty years, the Ashram has grown into a many-faceted community which at present consists of about 1500 persons. The Mother also founded the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in 1951 and the international township Auroville in 1968. On 17 November 1973, at the age of ninety-five the Mother left her body.
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THE MOTHER ON HERSELF
The following quotes are from Collected Works of the Mother. Volume and page number follow each quotation.
When and how did I become conscious of a mission which I was to fulfill on earth? And when and how I met Sri Aurobindo?
These two questions you have asked me and I promised a short reply.
For the knowledge of the mission, it is difficult to say when it came to me. It is as though I were born with it, and following the growth of the mind and brain, the precision and completeness of this consciousness grew also.
Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man’s possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine. This, along with a practical discipline for its fulfilment, was given to me during my body’s sleep by several teachers, some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane.
Later on, as the interior and exterior development proceeded, the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and frequent; and although I knew little of the Indian philosophies and religions at that time I was led to call him Krishna, and henceforth I was aware that it was with him (whom I knew I should meet on earth one day) that the divine work was to be done.
In the year 1910 my husband came alone to Pondicherry where, under very interesting and peculiar circumstances, he made the acquaintance of Sri Aurobindo. Since then we both strongly wished to return to India – the country which I had always cherished as my true mother-country. And in 1914 this joy was granted to us.
As soon as I saw Sri Aurobindo I recognised in him the well-known being whom I used to call Krishna…. And this is enough to explain why I am fully convinced that my place and my work are near him, in India.
from Volume 13, Words of the Mother, p.38
Pondicherry, 1920)
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SRI AUROBINDO ON THE MOTHER
The following quotes are from Volume 25, “The Mother”, of Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library.
There is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but she is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here – it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose. She is that in the body, but in her whole consciousness she is also identified with all the other aspects of the Divine.
p. 49-50
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Q: There are some Prayers of the Mother of 1914 in which she speaks of transformation and manifestation. Since at that time she was not here, does this not mean that she had these ideas long before she came here?
A: The Mother had been spiritually conscious from her youth, even from her childhood upward and she had done Sadhana and had developed this knowledge very long before she came to India.
p.384 (23-12-1933)
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The Mother’s presence is always there; but if you decide to act on your own – your own idea, your own notion of things, your own will and demand upon things, then it is quite likely that her presence will get veiled; it is not she who withdraws from you, but you who draw back from her.
p. 117 (25-3-1932)
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You have only to aspire, to keep yourself open to the Mother, to reject all that is contrary to her will and to let her work in you – doing also all your work for her and in the faith that it is through her force that you can do it. If you remain open in this way, the knowledge and realisation will come to you in due course.
p. 122
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The Mother’s Force is not only above on the summit of the being. It is there with you and near you, ready to act whenever your nature will allow it. It is so with everybody here.
p. 157 (15-11-1936)
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The lights are the Mother’s Powers – many in number. The white light is her own characteristic power, that of the Divine Consciousness in its essence.
p. 83 (15-7-1934)
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Medicines have quite a different action on the Mother’s body than they would have on yours or X’s or anybody else’s and the reaction is not usually favourable. Her physical consciousness is not the same as that of ordinary people – though even in ordinary people it is not so identical in all cases as “science” would have us believe.
p.376 (1-2-1937)
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It is much easier for the Sadhak by faith in the Mother to get free from illness than for the Mother to keep free – because the Mother by the very nature of her work had to identify herself with the Sadhaks, to support all their difficulties, to receive into herself all the poison in their nature, to take up besides all the difficulties of the universal earth-Nature, including the possibility of death and disease in order to fight them out. If she had not done that, not a single Sadhak would have been able to practise this Yoga. The Divine has to put on humanity in order that the human being may rise to the Divine. It is a simple truth, but nobody in the Ashram seems able to understand that the Divine can do that and yet remain different from them – can still remain the Divine.
p.317 (8-5-1933)
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The Mother does not think that it is good to give up all work and only read and meditate. Work is part of the Yoga and it gives the best opportunity for calling down the Presence, the Light and the Power into the vital and its activities; it increases also the field and the opportunity of surrender.
It is not enough to remember that the work is the Mother’s – and the results also. You must learn to feel the Mother’s forces behind you and to open to the inspiration and the guidance. Always to remember by an effort of the mind is too difficult; but if you get into the consciousness in which you feel always the Mother’s force in you or supporting you, that is the true thing.
p.200-201 (18-8-1932)
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The Sadhana is done by the Mother according to the Truth and necessity of each nature and of each plane of Nature. It is not one fixed process.
p.267 (13-9-1933)
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The Mother deals with each one in a different way, according to their need and their nature, not according to any fixed mental rule. It would be absurd for her to do the same thing with everybody as if all were machines which had to be touched and handled in the same way.
p.300 (31-10-1935)
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It is true that the Mother is one in many forms, but the distinction between the outer and the inner Mother must not be made too trenchant; for she is not only one, but the physical Mother contains all the others in herself and in her is established the communication between the inner and the outer existence. But to know the outer Mother truly one must know what is within her and not look at the outer appearances only. That is only possible if one meets her with the inner being and grows into her consciousness – those who seek an outer relation only cannot do that.
p.172 (10-8-1936)
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The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of the Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.

The Mother

“Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there.”
– Mother
The Mother was born in Paris on Thurs Feb 21, 1878 at 10.45 am. At the early age of 5 she used to sit quiet in a tiny upholstered armchair specially made for her, and as she meditated she would experience the descent of a great brilliant Light upon her head producing a turmoil inside her brain. She had the feeling that the Light was continually growing, and she wished it would possess her completely. Her propensity to such sessions of solitariness, her moods of taut intensity and edged concern, were a source of worry and anxiety to her rationalist mother. Once, while Mathilde was scolding her, young Mirra suddenly “felt all the human misery and all this human­ falsehood” and tears welled out of her eyes. When Mathilde asked the reason, Mirra calmly replied that her tears were because of the world’s miseries, for she indeed felt their weight pressing upon her.