Mirra Alfassa

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The Mother - Mirra Alfassa

This article is about the spiritual partner of Sri Aurobindo. For Mother Meera (b. 1960), see Mother Meera. For the stageplay by Bertolt Brecht, see The Mother.

Mirra Alfassa, later Morisset and Richard (February 21, 1878 - November 17, 1973) but better known as The Mother, was the spiritual partner of Sri Aurobindo. She was born in Paris to Turkish and Egyptian parents and came to his ashram on March 29, 1914 visiting Pondicherry several times and finally settling there in 1920. After November 24, 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, she supervised the organization of his ashram and institutes. She became the leader of the community after Sri Aurobindo's death in 1950. She died in 1973.

The experiences of the last thirty years of her life were captured in the 13-volume work The Agenda. In those years she attempted the physical transformation of her body in order to become what she felt was the first of a new type of human individual by opening to the Supramental Truth Consciousness, a new power of spirit that Sri Aurobindo had allegedly discovered. Her followers and those of Sri Aurobindo consider(ed) her an incarnation of the Divine Mother, hence her name "the Mother." The Divine Mother is, according to her followers, the feminine aspect of the Divine consciousness and spirit.

Difficulties facing the biographer

There are a number of different narratives interwoven in Mirra's life, most dramatically the transformation of a girl from a non-religious family in France into a woman worshipped by thousands in India as an incarnation of the Divine Mother (The Hindu 2001); the first Westerner to become an Indian guru (Rawlinson 1997).

Mirra/The Mother herself did not care for biographies of her life, and never wrote a comprehensive or systematic account of her life. However a lot of biographical information is found scattered through her works, in her correspondence and talks with disciples, and in several Sri Aurobindo Ashram publications (K.D. Sethna, Forward, in Nolima Das 1978 p.v). These have been gathered in compilations by devotees, and the compilations and the original material also serve as reference for several on-line biographies. In some cases there are inconsistencies in dates in the material; Sri Aurobindo has also said that The Mother was not interested in dates.

A second problem is that many of the experiences related by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to their disciples do not sit well with the secular Western mind, and hence cannot be easily presented without seeming incredible or fantastic.

Early life

The Mother was born Mirra (or Mira) Alfassa in Paris in 1878, of a Jewish Turkish father (Maurice, a banker), and a Jewish Egyptian mother (Mathilde Ismaloun). She had an older brother named Matteo. The family had migrated to France the year before she was born (Mother's Chronicles Bk I; Mother on Herself - Chronology p.83). For the first eight years of her life she lived at 62 boulevard Haussmann.

Mirra describes extraordinary inner and outer experiences she had as a child in Paris. She says that at age five she realised she did not belong in this world, and her sadhana (spiritual discipline) began then (Mother India Feb, 1975, p.95, in Das 1978 p.14 and Mother on Herself pp.1, 3-4) She recollects that she would lapse into bliss and go into a trance sometimes when she was placed in an easy chair or during a meal, much to the annoyance of her iron-willed mother, who regarded this behaviour as a social embarrassment.

Between eleven and thirteen, she says, a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to her the existence of God, and man's possibility of uniting with Him (Bulletin of the Sri Aurobindo Center of Education, 1976 p.14, Mother on Herself pp.17-18). At age 12 she was practicing occultism and claimed to be travelling out of her body (Bulletin 1974 p.63).

One of the experiences she had, at the age of 13 for nearly a year every night, was of going out of her body and rising straight above the city.

I used to see myself clad in a magnificent golden robe...and as I rose higher, the robe would stretch...to form a kind of immense roof over the city. Then I would see men, women, children...coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread robe, begging for help, telling their miseries... In reply, the robe... would extend towards each one of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it they were comforted or healed, and went back to their bodies happier and stronger... Nothing seemed more beautiful to me.... and all the activities of the day seemed dull and colourless... beside this activity of the night...

(On Herself pp.18-19; Das 1978 pp.24-5).

At age 14 Mirra was sent to a studio to learn art, and a year later she wrote as a school essay a mystical treatise named The Path of Later On (Alfassa 1893). In 1893 she travelled to Italy with her mother. While at the Doge's Palace in Venice she recalled a scene from a past life where she was strangled and thrown out into the canal (The Mother - Some dates). (Later (e.g. in the Agenda) she would also describe other incarnations, but she also describes these past lives as emanations). At 16 she joined the Ecole des Beaux Arts where she acquired the nickname "the Sphinx", and later exhibited at the Paris Salon (Das 1978 pp.27, 30, 253).

In 1897 she married Henri Morisset, a student of Moreau. They lived at Atelier, 15 rue Lemercier, Paris, and Mirra became a part of the Paris artistic circles, befriending the likes of Rodin and Monet (Nahar 1986).

Mirra said that between nineteen and twenty she had achieved a conscious and constant union with the Divine Presence, without the help of books or teachers. Soon after, she discovered Vivekananda's Raja Yoga, which enabled her to make further rapid progress. She says about a year or two later she met an Indian in Paris who advised her to read the Bhagavad-Gita, taking Krishna as a symbol of the inner or immanent Divine. She obtained a French translation which—she relates—was quite poor but still enabled her to understand the substance of it (Collected Works - Questions and Answers 1954).

On 1898 she and Morisset had a son, André.

Mirra recalled that in her meditations she saw several spiritual figures, all of whom offered her help of one type or another.

Around 1904 she encountered in her dreams a dark Asiatic figure whom she called ‘Krishna’. She said that this figure guided her in her inner journey. She came to have total implicit faith in Krishna, and was hoping to meet him one day in real life (Karmayogi no date).

Sometime around 1905 she met the enigmatic occultist Max Théon, who for the first time was able to explain her psychic experiences to her. She paid two extended visits (on the second one she was accompanied by or later joined by Morisset) to Théon's estate at Tlemcen (Algeria) to live with and learn occultism first hand from Théon and Madame Théon (Das 1978 ch.5; Nahar 1989). Mirra had a very high regard for Madame Théon, who she describes as having exceptional psychokinetic powers. Later, when she had become The Mother, she would often relate some of the extraordinary experiences she had at Tlemcen. Some of the concepts in Théon's teachings were incorporated into Sri Aurobindo's and her own teachings.

In 1908 Mirra divorced Morisset, and moved to 49 rue de Lévis, Paris.

Around this time Mirra had regular meetings with students and seekers who were attracted to psychical phenomenon or to mysticism. In 1906 she founded in Paris a group of spiritual seekers which was named l'Idée Nouvelle ("The New Idea"), and which met at her home on Wednesday evenings, first at rue Lemercier and then at rue des Lévis, and (after her marriage to Paul Richard) at Rue du Val de Grace. Her book "Words of Long Ago" (vol.2 of the Collected Works) is the account of one of these meetings, along with talks she gave to the L'Union de Pensée Féminine, which was a new study group she had established. In 1912 she organised a small group (of around 20 people) of seekers named Cosmique, who would meet regularly with the aim of gaining self-knowledge and self-mastery. Although she had not yet met Sri Aurobindo, some of her ideas at the time paralleled his (Das, 1978, pp.82, 110-112). These were later included at the start of her small book, Conversations.

In 1910 she had what she later described as an experience of a reversal of consciousness in which she realised the Divine Will at the very center of her being, and from that moment onwards was no longer motivated by personal desire, but only wanted to do the Divine Will (Agenda vol I pp.163-4).

Around this time she married Paul Richard. Richard had travelled to India, seeking election to the French Senate from Pondicherry (Karmayogi no date, Van Vrekhem 2001), and while there had met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry) in mid-April 1910. This seems to have been when Sri Aurobindo first heard about Mirra and her Idea group. Richard informed Mirra of Sri Aurobindo (Das 1978, p.121), and Sri Aurobindo remained in "material and spiritual correspondence" with the Richards for the next four years (Das 1978, p.121).

Mirra studied philosophy with Richard, as well as correcting his dictation (The Mother - Some dates). They lived at Rue du Val de Grace, in a small house at the back of a garden or courtyard. André, then around twelve, was a regular visitor. This was the house where Mirra would receive Alexandra David-Neel almost every evening (Agenda vol.1, p.441)). During this period, she also met `Abdu'l-Bahá (Das 1978, pp.104-109), Inayat Khan and other spiritual teachers (Van Vrekhem, 2001).

In 1912 she wrote her first Prayers and Meditations (the original entry probably dating to the previous year). These would later be published as part of the Collected Works (Mother's Birth Centenary Edition vol. 1).

Meeting Sri Aurobindo

On 7 March 1914, Mirra and Paul Richard embarked for India aboard the steamer Kaga Maru, reaching Pondicherry on the 29th. She related later that when she saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time, she recognized him as the person she saw in her visions of a dark Asiatic figure, whom she had earlier referred to as "Krishna". The next day she noted in her journal, “It does not matter that thousands of beings are plunged in darkness. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth. His presence is enough to assure us that one day Truth will rule here.”

Years before Sri Aurobindo first met Mirra and Richard, he had given up his revolutionary quest to help India throw out the British and retreated to Pondicherry (where he was safe from arrest by the British) to work on the spiritual transformation of humanity and life on earth.

After a short period of intense sadhana, Sri Aurobindo would sometimes give evening talks. In 1913 he moved to no.41 Rue Francis Martin, called the Guest House, where he would receive visitors in the morning (this would have been when Mirra and Paul Richard met him), and after the group meditation (usually about 4. p.m.) he would host informal evening gatherings of his early disciples (Purani 1982 pp.9-12).

Mirra said that when she first met Sri Aurobindo, she found that her thoughts ceased to run, her mind became quiet, and silence began to gather momentum, until two or three days later there was only the silence and the yogic consciousness. In 1958 in the Agenda (vol I pp.163-4) she told Satprem that the two experiences, the consciousness in the psychic depths of the being realised in 1910, and the stillness connection with the Divine above the head realised when first meeting Sri Aurobindo, have remained with her ever since.

On 29 March Paul Richard had suggested that Sri Aurobindo publish a journal, dealing with a synthesis of the latter's philosophical ideas. The journal that they worked on was named Arya, and it became the vehicle for most of Aurobindo's writings, which would later appear in book form (The Mother - Some dates). The first issue of the monthly journal came out on 15 August 1914, Aurodindo's birthday (Das 1978 p.254).

Mirra and Richard stayed at Pondicherry until February 1915, but had to return to Paris because of the First World War. They spent a year in France before travelling to Japan where they stayed for four years, first in Tokyo (1916 to 1917) and then Kyoto (1917-1920). They were also accompanied by Dorothy Hodgson, an Englishwoman who had known Mirra in France (Das p.209) and who regarded Mirra as her guru (Iyengar 1978 p.182).

During her stay, Mirra adopted the Japanese way of life, mannerisms and dress, and visited many Buddhist places of pilgrimage (Das 1978 p.173) One Japanese friend recalled much later: "She came here to learn Japanese and to be one of us. But we had so much to learn from her and her charming and unpredictable ways" (Madame Kobayashi, in Das 1978 p.193). In 1919 she met Rabindranath Tagore, who happened to be staying at the same hotel. There is in the Rabindra Museum collection at Santiniketon a group photograph which includes the two. Tagore presented Mirra with the typewriter he was using at the time; this is still in the Sri Aurobindo ashram (ibid p.206). She also many years later (in 1956) recounted meeting Tolstoy's son while in Japan (Coll. Works vol 8, pp.106-7).

On 24 April 1920 Mirra returned with Paul Richard to Pondicherry from Japan, accompanied by Dorothy Hodgson. On 24 November, she moved to live near Sri Aurobindo in the Guest House at Rue Francois Martin. Richard did not stay long, he spent a year travelling around North India (Das 1978 p.209; The Mother - Some dates) as a sanyasi (Some time later he initiated divorce proceedings, having already remarried in the meantime (Agenda vol.2 pp.371-372)). Dorothy Hodgson meanwhile took the name Datta and was one of the earliest western devotees, even before the Ashram was established in 1926.

In 1921, when Sri Aurobindo said that they had brought the Supermind down to the Vital Plane, Mirra appeared (according to witnesses and her own accounts) to have a body like that of an eighteen- or twenty-year-old, while Sri Aurobindo was also glowing with health (Agenda vol.xx, p.xxx; Purani, Evening Talks p.21, Das 1978, pp.211-212). But these changes were lost when they took the Supermind down to the work of transformation in the Subconscient.

On January 1922 Mirra began regular evening talks and group meditations. In September or October of that year, Sri Aurobindo and Mother moved to no.9 Rue de la Marine, where the same informal routine of Sri Aurobindo's evening gatherings of his early disciples (Purani, 1982 pp.9-12) (and Mirra's talks and meditations) continued. As the number of disciples arriving increased, Mirra organised what would later become the ashram, more from the wish of the sadhaks then her or Sri Aurobindo's own plans (Sri Aurobindo Coll. Works vol.26 p.429).

The Mother of the Ashram

On the 24 November 1926 (Siddhi Day) Sri Aurobindo reported himself to have had an important experience in which he realised the Overmental plane and brought down to Earth, in his words, the Overmental Krishna (Das 1978 p.233).

This was also the official founding of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. At the time there were no more than 24 disciples in the Ashram (ibid pp.233-4).

In December of that year, Sri Aurobindo decided to withdraw from public view. It was at this point that he identified Mirra with the Divine Mother, and instructed his followers to do the same. He informed his disciples that henceforth The Mother would take full charge of the ashram and he would live in retirement. Mirra heard for the first time that this new responsibility was conferred on her and she had been installed officially as The Mother. She related later that Sri Aurobindo had not consulted her prior to the declaration nor did he inform her of his intention, but that she had heard the news for the first time along with the disciples (Karmayogi no date).

Sri Aurobindo considered that Mirra was an avatar (incarnation) of the supreme shakti. In 1927 he wrote:

The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence.

The Mother p.19.

Sri Aurobindo's letters and instructions to his disciples taught the path of spiritual surrender through devotion to The Mother; a form of Bhakti Yoga.

In 1927, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to Rue Francoi Martin, where they stayed for the remainder of their lives (The Mother - Some dates).

In the early years, The Mother appeared on the ashram balcony to initiate the day with her blessings. She would also meet the heads of the various departments of the growing ashram every morning, and then the sadhaks individually. Once again, in the evening at 5:30 PM, she conducted meditation and met each sadhak once more.

In 1938 Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the daughter of US President Woodrow Wilson, came to the Ashram and chose to remain there for the rest of her life. (Nirodbaran 1972, Karmayogi no date).

Henry Ford had also heard of The Mother and wanted to meet her. On the eve of his departure, World War II broke out and prevented his coming to India. (Karmayogi no date).

During the war, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother declared their support of the Allies. They said that victory of the Nazis would have been a disaster for the spiritual work, and professed to have participated in world history, changing the course of World War II by working on the subtle levels (e.g. Purani 1982 p.746, Reddy 2000, Van Vrekhem 2001).

Through letters, the Mother had remained in contact with her son Andre Morisset ever since leaving for Japan. In this way she kept him apprised of the development of the ashram and her and Sri Aurobindo's sadhana. He became increasingly interested, but was prevented from visiting by the outbreak of the World War II. In 1949 he finally arrived at Pondicherry ("Remembrances of André Morisset", in Das 1978 pp.250-1).

The first issue of the Bulletin of Physical Education was published in 1949. In 1951 she founded the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education to accommodate the children who had come to the ashram with their parents seeking shelter during World War II.

The Mother liked to wear saris and acquired a collection of about 500. When she was offered 100,000 rupees for one, she called all the sadhikas and distributed or sold them to raise funds for the ashram (Karmayogi no date).

She considered flowers of spiritual significance, and gave names to 800 different types (Karmayogi no date), according to the spiritual quality they convey (Flowers and Their Messages, Flowers and Their Spiritual Significance). These would be presented to disciples, as a vehicle for conveying her blessings and grace. Satprem records being presented with various flowers during his visits, each described according to its spiritual quality.

Physical transformation

Sri Aurobindo said that in the Mother he found surrender to the Divine down to physical body itself, the cells of the body (not merely the mind and emotions), the likes of which could not be found in any human being.

In 1950 he felt it was time to leave his physical body so he could work at the non-physical level, where he believed he could become more effective (Karmayogi no date). The Mother related that Sri Aurobindo gathered in his body a great amount of supramental force and as soon as he left his body. She was standing beside him as he lay on his bed, "and in a way altogether concrete -- concrete with such a strong sensation as to make one think that it could be seen -- all this supramental force which was in him passed from his body into mine" (Volume 11, Notes on the Way, p. 328 20 December 1972).

After Sri Aurobindo's passing the Mother fully took up in earnest her promise to Sri Aurobindo to attempt the physical transformation. On 29 February 1956 ("Golden Day") she announced an experience in which she had a vast cosmic golden form and broke open the golden door that separated the Universe from the Divine, allowing the Supramental force to stream down to Earth in an uninterrupted flow (Agenda vol.1 p.69). She later (24 April) announced "The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact" (Agenda vol.1 p.75).

From 1960 till her passing in 1973 the Mother had a number of near weekly meetings with one of her closest disciples, Satprem. There she discussed her progress in her physical transformation, world events and her effect on world events, the new workings of the supramental consciousness in the world, her earlier life's experiences including her spiritual experiences, the changes and spiritualisation in the functioning of her physical body, her visions of the new race, and many other topics. These conversations were kept and were published in French and English in the 13-volume set known as The Agenda.

In 1961 a friend of John F. Kennedy took interest in The Mother and examined in depth the philosophy and yoga of Sri Aurobindo. He met The Mother and asked her what were the external signs by which one could discern the attainment of the Supramental consciousness in a person. The Mother explained to him the conditions that would reveal the attainment of the Supramental consciousness and told him that of the three, equality, was the most significant (Mother's Agenda vol.2 pp.96-98). The visitor arranged for Kennedy to visit The Mother, but it could not take place.

In 1962, at the age of 84, she was forced by an illness to withdraw from close physical contact with disciples (Agenda vol.3), although she continued to give public Darshans four times a year, at which a few thousand devotees gathered and received her Grace. But she continued her inner work, concerning the transformation of the physical and cellular consciousness (Collected Works, vol. 11; Satprem 1982).

In later years she met with other renowned individuals, including the king of Nepal. She had a significant meeting with the Dalai Lama who had recently escaped from Chinese occupation of Tibet. She found him to be a man of great compassion. He asked the Mother if Tibet would one day be freed of Chinese rule. She affirmed it would one day happen (Karmayogi no date).

At the same time as the inner transformation she working on the outer. In 1956 she established the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch together with Surendranath Jauhar and The Mother's International School. In 1967 plans for were made and some land acquired to found a universal city of spiritual seekers in Gujarat, which she named Ompuri. This project, like earlier plans of 1957, did not go any further. But in 1968, the Mother, working with architect Roger Anger, began Auroville as a 'more external extension' of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Mirapuri - Biography).

From 1970 until 1973 Michel Montecrossa with the Mother's help worked on the foundation of Mirapuri which was later established in Italy and Germany (Mirapuri - Biography).

The Mother left her body on 17 November 1973; three days later her body was placed in the Samadhi, the vault in the courtyard of the Ashram where Sri Aurobindo's body was placed in 1950 (Mother on Herself - Chronology p.83).

The "mind of the cells"

At various points in the 1960s and 1970s The Mother mentioned that the cells of her body were becoming more conscious. This cellular transformation, that is, a "mind of the cells", was perhaps the key to the physical transformation. She would say that the cells of her body were learning to organize themselves, to a have a kind of mind of their own.

She often referred to death as a mere state of mind, a state of mind of the cells that the cells accepted. If they could change their perspective, if they did not accept death as an inevitability, this could help the cells maintain their form without their deteriorating.

She professed that one of the keys to physical transformation was overcoming the effect of the "physical mind" and the subconscious (subconscient). She said that this part of the nature is defeatist, grumbling, filled with inertia, where illness gets reinforced, and perhaps the great physical barrier to the physical transformation. Claiming that this was one of the great impediments to the emergence of the new species, she tried to bring in the higher consciousness into this part of her being (Karmayogi no date).

Auroville

In the 1960s, it was The Mother's dream to create a place where humanity could seek the Divine without having to dredge for food and shelter. Her dream led her to be instrumental in the development of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for those who dedicated themselves to yoga and to personal and spiritual transformation. The Mother wanted a place where "normal people" from all over the world could live together in harmony, a place where people can seek spirituality and bring it into the world. She named this place Auroville or City of Dawn. It now boasts a population of around 2,000 people.

The city has several zones with roads on which automobiles are prohibited. The "Soul of Auroville" is the Matrimandir (literally, "Mother's temple"); constructed as a futuristic-looking sphere that houses in its center a meditation hall built to exact proportions. The construction is uniquely arranged so that sunlight enters the building during all hours of the day through a small hole in the roof. Much later, in 1995, a lens was added at the top to focus the sun onto a crystal globe in the central chamber [1]. In 1968, the Mother formally inaugurated the new city, and the soil of 124 nations (all the independent countries in the world at that time) was mixed and placed in a huge lotus-shape urn on the site .

Some notable disciples

The Mother did not name nor are there any successors (although sometimes there have been such claims [2]). But following the Mother's passing, a number of followers each developed quite different teachings and approaches.

Ruud Lohman, a Dutch theologian who came to Auroville in 1971, developed a theology regarding the symbolism of the Matrimandir, according to which the Matrimandir is the Mother's body, the four pillars representing the four aspects of the Divine Mother (Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasraswati and Maheshwari) as described by Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo 1972b), and the Matrimandir as a whole being not only the focus of Auroville but "the first cell of the body of Mother Earth which offers itself for transformation" (Lohman 1986 p.63).

Satprem, who with Pavitra could be considered the most senior of the French disciples, and worked closely with the Mother for many years, the result being the Agenda, a thirteen volume record of her experiment in physical transformation. In successive books he wrote about the importance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to the Earth's evolution.

Michel Montecrossa is a musician and film director who with the Mother's help established Mirapuri, an Auroville-like New Age community in Northern Italy.

Quotations

What do you want the Yoga for? To get power? To attain to peace and calm? To serve humanity? None of these motives is sufficient to show that you are meant for the Path. The question you are to answer is this: Do you want the Yoga for the sake of the Divine? Is the Divine the supreme fact of your life, so much so that it is simply impossible for you to do without it? ...

This is the first thing necessary - aspiration for the Divine. The next thing you have to do is to tend it, to keep it always alert and awake and living. And for that what is required is concentration - concentration upon the Divine with a view to an integral and absolute consecration to its Will and Purpose.

Conversations (7 April 1929)

A human being is made of many different parts and it takes time and conscious effort to harmonise and unify all these parts. When you surrendered [to the Divine], it is not the whole of your being that did so. Little by little some other part that had not surrendered came to the surface and the joy of surrender vanished and was replaced by dullness and indifference. But after some time this part also gets converted and thus the happy condition comes back.

Volume 14, Words of the Mother, p.355 (26 June 1949)

A simple and faithful heart is a great boon

Volume 14, Words of the Mother, p.373 (15 June 1954)

The Divine's triumph is so perfect that every obstacle, every ill-will, every hatred rising against Him is a promise of a more vast and still complete victory

Volume 14, Words of the Mother, p.12 (9 October 1954)

What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.

Volume 13, Words of the Mother, "Sri Aurobindo" p.4 (14 February 1961)

Truth cannot be formulated in words, but it can be lived provided one is pure and plastic enough

Volume 14, Words of the Mother, p.211

One of the chief obstacles to the establishment of a progressive harmony is our eagerness to prove to an opponent that he is wrong and we are right

Volume 14, Words of the Mother, p.287

Integral even basis in the material: when all your material movements are organised, harmonised and co-ordinated and when all things find themselves in you in their respective places and your entire material basis is thus prepared and becomes ready to receive the Light and the Power

Volume 14, Words of the Mother, p.386

References

• Mirra (Mira) Alfassa "From Sephardic Jew to Hindu Guru" (How a Proselytized Secular Jew Became a Hindu Spiritual Leader) http://www.alfassa.com/mirra.pdf
• Anon., The Mother - Some dates
• Alfassa, Mirra (1893) The Path of Later On
• Aurobindo Ghose (1972), Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, Birth Centenary Edition
  • (1972b) The Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
• Iyengar, K.R.S. (1978), On the Mother: the chronicle of a manifestation and a ministry (2 vols, continuously paginated), Pondicherry, 1978 (2nd ed)
• Karmayogi (date?) Life and Teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Mere Cie, Inc. online
• The Hindu (2001) The Mother and the biographer's dilemma
• Lohman, Ruud (1986), A House for the Third Millennium: essays on the Matrimandir, Alain Grandcolas
• Mirapuri - Biography
• The Mother (1977) The Mother on Herself, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
  • (1978) Collected Works of the Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry Centenary Edition (17 vol set)
  • (1979- ) Mother's Agenda (Engl. transl) Institute for Evolutionary Research, New York, NY (13 vol set)
  • (1980) Notes on the Way - vol.11, Collected Works of the Mother - Centenary Edition, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
  • (1982) Conversations, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry
  • (date?) Flowers and Their Messages, Sri Aurobindo Ashram
  • (date?) Flowers and Their Spiritual Significance, Sri Aurobindo Ashram
• Das, Nolima ed., (1978) Glimpses of the Mother's Life vol.1, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
• Norelli-Bachelet, Patrizia, 'The 10th Day of Victory', 2004, Aeon Books.
• Rawlinson, Andrew (1997) The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court.
• Reddy, Ananda (2000) The Supramental Harbingers: Sri Aurobindo and The Mother online
• Nahar, Sujata (1986) Mother's chronicles Bk. 2. Mirra the Artist, Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Paris & Mira Aditi, Mysore.
  • (1989) Mother's chronicles Bk. 3. Mirra the Occultist. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Paris & Mira Aditi, Mysore.
• Nirodbaran (1972) Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo Pondicherry vol.1, (vol.II 1973, vol.III 1988)
• Satprem (1982) The Mind of the Cells (transl by Francine Mahak & Luc Venet) Institute for Evolutionary Research, New York, NY
• Purani, A.B., (1982) Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
• Van Vrekhem, Georges: The Mother - The Story of Her Life, Harper Collins Publishers India, New Delhi 2000, ISBN 81-7223-416-3 (see also Mother meets Sri Aurobindo -- An excerpt from this book)
• Van Vrekhem, Georges: Beyond Man - The Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi 1999, ISBN 81-7223-327-2
• Van Vrekhem, Georges: Hitler and his God - The Background to the Hitler phenomenon, Rupa & Co, New Delhi 2006

Partial bibliography

• Commentaries on the Dhammapada, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI 2004, ISBN 0-940985-25-X
• Flowers and Their Messages, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI ISBN 0-941524-68-X
• Search for the Soul in Everyday Living, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI ISBN 0-941524-57-4
• Soul and Its Powers, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI ISBN 0-941524-67-1

External links

• SearchForLight - Devoted to The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
• SABDA Online - Publishers of Mother's writings.
• The Mother - Sri Aurobindo Ashram pages
• Official Auroville site
• Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - good site with a lot of links and texts
• The Mother Information Page
• New Insights into the Life & Teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
• Biography - dates and images
• Biography
• Divine Mother's Light
• Information on Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
• The Mother's comments on the Supramental Manifestation - an article by Sadhu Charan Patnaik]