THE MOTHER


…. the Mother is one but she comes before us with differing aspects; many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the goddess forms in whom she consents to be manifest to her creatures.

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The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine – which is the Mother of all things.

OM anandamayi chaitanyamayi satyamayi parame – Sri Aurobindo
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OM – She, the Delight

She, the Consciousness

She, the Truth

She, the Supreme.

(Translation by the Mother)

A Sketch of Her Outer Life

The Mother was born as Mirra Alfassa on 21 February 1878 in Paris. A student at the Academie Julian, she became an accompolished artist. Gifted from an early age with a capacity for spiritual and occult experience, she went to Tlemcen, Algeria, in 1906 and 1907 to study occultism with the adepts Max Theon and his wife Alma. Between 1911 and 1913 she gave a number of talks to various groups of seekers in Paris.

In 1914 the Mother voyaged to Pondicherry, South India, to meet the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo. After a stay of eleven months, she was obliged by the outbreak of the First World War to return to France. A year later she went to Japan, where she remained for four years. In April 1920 the Mother rejoined Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. Six years later, when Sri Aurobindo Ashram was founded, Sri Aurobindo entrusted its material and spiritual charge to her, for he considered her not a disciple but his spiritual equal and collaborator. Under her guidance, which covered a period of nearly fifty years, the Ashram grew into a large, many-faceted spiritual community. She established Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in 1952, Sri Aurobindo Society in 1960, and an international township, Auroville, in 1968. Her talks to the inmates are published in several volumes.

The Mother, on her ninetieth birthday, summarized her life and work in this way:

The reminiscences will be short.

I came to India to meet Sri Aurobindo. I remained in India to live with Sri Aurobindo. When he left his body, I continued to live here in order to do his work which is, by serving the Truth and enlightening mankind, to hasten the rule of the Divine’s Love upon the earth.

The Mother left her body on 17 November 1973.