Mirra - The Mother: Paris to Pondicherry: Journey of Discovery  

By MANOJ DAS  

Mirra - The Mother: Paris to Pondicherry: Journey of Discovery  

Paris in the last decade of the 19th century was tranquil enough to let the 12-year-old Mirra sit amidst the woods of Fontainebleau near her house for hours at a stretch and feel one with Nature and Infinity.

She would remain aloof, away from friends and relatives, but she was never alone. She was always aware of several invisible companions who, she said, were more real to her than those who were physically present.

One day, while climbing a hill in the woods, she slipped and began falling down the precipice. Even as she fell, she somehow knew that she was not going to meet the fate that was expected in such accidents. True enough, she soon found herself standing at the foot of the hill as if nothing had happened. She was not surprised; she had been fully conscious of the invisible hands supporting her.

She grew increasingly close to one of the 'companions' she saw in her visions and began calling him Krishna - years before even knowing the origin or meaning of the word. Her quest brought her to Pondicherry, where she met Sri Aurobindo. There, she identified the guide who had been with her all these years. He was none other than this Mahayogi .

The next day she wrote in her diary: ''It matters little that thousands of beings are plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.''

Mirra finally settled in Pondicherry in 1920. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram began to take shape with her arrival. Soon, she became known as 'the Mother'. The Ashram she shaped was not a hermitage for ascetics, but a community of sadhaks for whom the world itself was the Divine in action - the veiled splendours of the Divine in the process of manifestation.

''All life is yoga,'' said Sri Aurobindo, referring to the work done not for the satisfaction of one's desires or ego but as an offering to the Divine, which is actually a powerful means of yoga.

This is how the Mother explains the profundity of Sri Aurobindo's vision: ''There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

''Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. During the whole of his life upon earth, Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called the Supramental, and to help those gathered around him to realise it.''

The path to peace lies in a collective aspiration for a Supramental future. Till her passing away in 1973, the Mother experimented in her own person the process of stabilising this new consciousness.

(February 21 is the Mother's birth anniversary)

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See also: Mirra - The Mother, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)