Mirra Alfassa

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Mirra Alfassa , also Mira Alfassa , known as The Mother , (born February 21, 1878 in Paris , † November 17, 1973 in Puducherry ) was the spiritual partner of the philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo . She is the founder of the Auroville project and designed the Matrimandir .

Divine-mother (mirra alfassa) .jpg

Mirra grew up in France. She was of Turkish-Egyptian descent ( Sephardim ) and related to the Jewish family of the Alfassa. She came to Puducherry for the first time on March 29, 1914, where she met Aurobindo. In 1920 she finally settled in the ashram . After Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn completely from the public on November 24, 1926, she was responsible for the organization of the Ashram and took over the management after his death from 1950. Mirra Alfassa was the first person from the west to be worshiped as a guru in India .

Difficulties in getting an adequate biography

Since Mirra Alfassa's life was very spiritual and occult, her statements and experiences often appear unbelievable to fantastic to the sober western mind. She never wrote a biography herself, and only a few written references are known from her hand. Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of biographical information that can be found in the records of their conversations with students, partly also in their correspondence and in publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram .

Parental home and youth

Mirra was born on February 21, 1878 in Paris at 62 Boulevard Haussmann. Her father Maurice was of Turkish-Persian descent and a banker by profession; the mother Mathilde Ismaloum came from Egypt. Mirra had an older brother named Matteo. The family had emigrated to France the year before.

According to her own account, between the ages of eleven and thirteen, the existence of God and the possibilities of union with him were revealed to her in a series of psychological and spiritual experiences.

The young Mirra received mathematics lessons, learned to play the piano and, at the age of 14, attended Gustave Moreau's studio to study art. Here she also met her first husband, Henri Morisset, an art student.

The time before Aurobindo

In 1897 she married Henri Morisset, the next year her son André was born. Around 1904 she then met in her dreams, according to her own admission, a dark Asian figure whom she called Krishna . She reported that Krishna had guided her inwardly in her daily routine, that she had developed blind trust in him and that she hoped to meet him in real life one day. Around 1906 she founded a group of spiritual seekers in Paris called L'Idée Nouvelle . She was divorced from Henri Morisset in 1908 and married Paul Richard around 1910. He had met Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry in April 1910. He had traveled there to be elected to the French Senate of Puducherry. This was the first time Mirra heard of Sri Aurobindo.

Meeting with Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo

On March 29, 1914, Paul and Mirra came to Puducherry on the steamer Kaga Maru . At that time, Sri Aurobindo lived at 41 Rue François Martin, the so-called "guest house", where he received visitors in the morning, held group meditation in the afternoon and hosted informal get-togethers with his oldest students in the evening.

When Mirra first saw Sri Aurobindo, she recognized him as the person she had seen in her visions as a dark Asian figure and who had called "Krishna". The next day she noted in her diary: "It is not bad that thousands of beings have fallen into darkness. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth. His presence is sufficient to assure us that one day the truth will rule here. " She also said that when she first met Sri Aurobindo, her mind stopped running and her mind became quiet and silence began to spread, and that she sat at his feet for 20 minutes in complete silence.

Paul Richard had suggested Sri Aurobindo publish a journal on philosophy. On August 15, 1914, Sri Aurobindo's birthday, the first edition of "Arya" appeared. Mirra and Paul lived in Puducherry until February 1915. They returned to Paris because of the First World War and stayed in France for a year.

Japan

Since Paul Richard accepted an assignment from the French government in Japan, Mirra moved with him to where they lived together for four years, first in Tokyo (1916–1917), then in Kyoto (1917–1918). They were accompanied by the English Dorothy Hodgson. Hodgson had met Mirra in France and regarded her as her teacher. During the stay, Mirra adopted the Japanese way of life and visited many Buddhist pilgrimage sites. In 1919 she met the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate in literature Rabindranath Tagore , who happened to be staying in the same hotel and who gave her a typewriter that he had previously used.

Return to Puducherry

On April 24, 1920 Mirra and Paul traveled again to Puducherry, this time accompanied by Dorothy Hodgson. In order to be close to Sri Aurobindo, they moved to the guest house on rue François Martin on November 24th. Paul stayed only a short time and then spent a year as a sannyasin in northern India. A while after that he filed for divorce, and later remarried.

According to Sri Aurobindo, it was then possible to bring the Overmind down to the level of the vital. Mirra seemed to have a body of 18 or 20 years, he himself was bursting with health. But when they brought the supermental to work in the area of ​​the unconscious, these changes were lost. Dorothy Hodgson took the name Datta .

In January 1922, Mirra began regular evening talks and group meditations. In September or October of the same year, she and Aurobindo moved to house number 9 on Rue de la Marine, where Aurobindo continued to hold evening meetings with his oldest students and where Mirra held her talks and meditations. As the number of students grew, Mirra organized what later became the ashram at the request of the sadhaks .

The mother

On November 24, 1926 ( Siddhi Day ) Sri Aurobindo reported that he had had a significant experience in which the plane of the Overmind was realized and brought down to earth. He called it the supermind of Krishna . This became the occasion and the official time of the establishment of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram . At that time there were 24 students in the ashram.

In December of the same year, Aurobindo withdrew completely from the public. He now saw the Divine Mother in Mirra and instructed his students to do the same. He informed his students that from now on the mother would take full responsibility for the Ashram and that he would live in complete seclusion. He maintained contact with the students through written correspondence. Mirra later reported that Aurobindo had not informed her of its intention prior to making this statement. She and the students heard this message for the first time. Aurobindo lived from then on in the seclusion of his room on the first floor of the main ashram building until he died in 1950.

During World War II, Aurobindo and the mother declared their support for the Allies. They later said that a Nazi victory would have been a disaster for their spiritual work and that they would have influenced the course of the war with the resources at their disposal.

Physical transformation

In 1950 Sri Aurobindo reportedly felt that it was time to leave his physical body to work on a nonphysical level where he believed he could be more effective. The mother reported that he had a large amount of supramental energy accumulated in his body when he left his body. She stood next to his bed when, so literally, in a most concrete way - concrete with such a strong sensation that you could believe you were seeing it - all this supramental force that was in him - from his body in mine passed.

After Aurobindo's departure, the mother stated that she would carry out her promise to Aurobindo to achieve the physical transformation herself. On February 29, 1956 ("Golden Day") she announced that she had had a spiritual experience in which she had a wide, golden, cosmic form and the golden gate had been broken, which separated the universe from the divine and it allow the divine power to flow to earth in an uninterrupted flow. About two months later, on April 24th, she announced: "The revelation of the supramental on earth is no longer a promise, but a living fact" .

From 1960 until her death in 1973, the mother had conversations with her student Satprem almost every week . Here she discussed the progress of the personal transformation she had experienced, but also world events. It was about the new work of the supramental consciousness in the world, her visions of a new person, her previous life experiences including spiritual processes, changes in the functions of her physical body and many other topics. Almost all of these conversations were recorded and published.

The ashram

After Aurobindo's departure, the mother had the double task of organizing the ashram externally and being an inner guide for the sadhaks. In the first few years, she came to the balcony every morning to inaugurate the day with blessings. She also met with those in charge of the various areas of the growing Ashram every morning. At half past five in the evening she then led the meditation and met with almost all the sadhaks. It is reported that the mother, because she liked to wear a sari, owned a collection of around 500 pieces. One day, when she was offered 100,000 rupees for a sari, she called the sadhakas together and sold their clothes to raise funds for the ashram.

In 1943, the mother founded the Ashram School, which later became the Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education , a model, alternative education and school system with the aim of meeting international standards. Aurobindo had supported her idea from the start, because he was convinced of the usefulness of such a site for realizing a new way of education, learning and personal development. The mother led the development of this area herself and invested a lot of time and effort in this work. In 1949 the first edition of the Bulletin of Physical Education was published.

Ever since the mother had left France for Japan, she had stayed in contact with her son André Morisset through letters. In this way she also let him participate in the development of the Ashram and her yoga path. He became more and more interested in the ashram, but a visit was initially prevented by the outbreak of World War II. It wasn't until 1949 that he finally came to Puducherry.

Auroville

Even during Aurobindo's lifetime, the idea of ​​founding a universal city that should not be bound by any state or government is said to have arisen. Mirra pursued this idea after Aurobindo's death, and she managed to get the French architect and husband of her granddaughter, Roger Anger, to do the planning. Attempts to acquire land for the project initially failed. But then the ashram acquired properties around 20 km north of Puducherry. The inauguration ceremony for Auroville took place here on February 28, 1968 . In the center of this city, which is said to be home to 50,000 inhabitants, there is a temple, the Matrimandir (Indian temple of the mother ) designed by Mirra . After the mother's death on November 17, 1973, however, a violent conflict broke out between parts of the ashram and the residents of Auroville: The commercial side of the ashram also took on the organizational management and supervision of the construction work in Auroville. Eventually a lawsuit ensued, which was decided to the detriment of the Ashram.

student

Ashram members a. Satprem , Sujata Nahar and Pavitra are particularly known.

Pavitra (Philippe Barbier Saint-Hilaire; * 1894 in Paris, † May 16, 1969 in Puducherry) was one of Aurobindo's and his mother's first students. He was an engineer, had become acquainted with the atrocities of war as an artillery officer in the First World War and after these experiences went on a search for the spiritual truths of Asia. In 1925 he came to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo accepted him as a student and gave him the name Pavitra, (i.e. "pious, holy, clear"). In 1951 he became director of the newly founded Sri Aurobindo International University and secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram . Some of his notes of conversations with his mother and Sri Aurobindo from 1925 to 1926 were published in 1972 under the title Conversation avec Pavitra .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ KD Sethna, Nilima Das 1978
  2. ↑ Mother's Chronicles BKI; Mother on Herself - Chronology p. 83
  3. ↑ Bulletin of the Sri Aurobindo Center of Education, 1976 p. 14, Mother on Herself, pp. 17-18
  4. ↑ Karmayogi, no date
  5. ↑ Nilima Das 1978 p.121
  6. ↑ Purani 1982 pp. 9-12
  7. ↑ Iyengar 1978 p. 182
  8. ^ The 1978 p. 173
  9. ↑ Agenda vol. 2 p.211
  10. ^ Purani, Evening Talks p. 21, Das 1978, pp. 211-212
  11. ↑ Purani, 1982 S.9-12
  12. ↑ Sri Aurobindo Coll. Works Vol. 26 p.429
  13. ↑ The 1978 p.233
  14. ↑ Karmayogin, no date
  15. ↑ Purani: Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo and DKRoy: Sri Aurobindo came to me and Maggi Lidchi-Grassi: The light that shone into the abyss
  16. ↑ Karmayogi, no date
  17. ↑ Vol. 11, Notes on the way, p. 328, December 20, 1972
  18. ↑ Agenda Vol. 1 p. 69
  19. ↑ (Agenda vol. 1 p. 75)
  20. ↑ Karmayogi, no date
  21. ↑ The mother founded the Sri Aurobindo International University Center in 1952 , which was renamed the Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education in 1959 .
  22. ^ Memoirs of André Morisset, in Das 1978 p. 250

literature

Works by Mira Alfassa (selection)

  • For the following editions from different publishers, the volume count from the English Centenary Edition has been adopted for easier comparison. The compilation corresponds, as far as it is translated into German, to the Collected Works of the Mother in the Centenary Edition (Collected Works in the Century Edition):
    • The mother:
      • Prayers and Meditations , (corresponds to Vol. 1), edited and translated by Peter Steiger, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry 1974, without ISBN
      • Talks 1929 , (corresponds to volume 3, 1929 there), translation: Peter Steiger, copyright: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, publisher: SABDA, Puducherry 1976, o.ISBN
      • Talks 1930-31 , (corresponds to vol. 3, 1930-31 there), translation: Peter Steiger, copyright: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, publisher: SABDA, Puducherry 1976, o.ISBN
      • Talks 1950-1951 , (corresponds to volume 4), Mirapuri-Verlag, Planegg 1985, ISBN 3-922800-21-1
      • Talks 1953 , (corresponds to volume 5), Mirapuri-Verlag, Gauting 1994, ISBN 3-922800-53-X
      • Talks 1954 , (corresponds to volume 6), Mirapuri-Verlag, Gauting 1996, ISBN 3-922800-60-2
      • Talks 1955 , (corresponds to volume 7), Mirapuri-Verlag, Gauting 1999, ISBN 3-922800-70-X
      • Talks 1956 , (corresponds to volume 8), Mirapuri-Verlag, Planegg 1987, ISBN 3-922800-28-9
      • Talks 1957 , (corresponds to volume 9, 1957 there), Mirapuri-Verlag, Planegg 1989, ISBN 3-922800-34-3
      • Talks 1958 , (corresponds to volume 9, 1958 there), Mirapuri-Verlag, Planegg 1990, ISBN 3-922800-36-X
      • Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and aphorisms with explanations of the mother , (corresponds to vol. 10), translation: Hans Peter Steiger, copyright: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Publication Department, Puducherry 1979, without ISBN
      • Notated on the way - Conversations 1964-1973 , (corresponds to vol. 11), translation: Achim Brockhaus and Hans Peter Steiger, Copyright: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Publication Department, Puducherry 1992, ISBN 81-7058- 296-2
  • Mother's agenda , written reproduction of the taped conversations with Satprem from 1951 to 1973, 13 volumes, distribution: Verlag W. Huchzermeyer
  • Individual issues:
    • Mira Alfassa: The mother about Auroville , Auropublications (Ed.), Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry 1978, o.ISBN

Secondary literature

Title in German

  • Willers, Christiane: The Aurobindo Movement. Inventory and structures from a field theoretical perspective. (Dissertation Univ. Tübingen 1987; Europäische Hochschulschriften 23/332) Lang, Frankfurt am Main (inter alia) 1988, ISBN 3-8204-1179-8
Biographies about Mira Alfassa / (The Mother)
  • Huchzermeyer, Wilfried : The mother - a short biography. (edition-sawitri.de/ Karlsruhe) ISBN 3-931172-18-X
  • Nahar, Sujata: Six-part biography, translation from English: Hans-R. Höhener, Aquamarin-Verlag, Grafing:
  • Satprem: Three-part biography, translation from French, Verlag Hinder + Deelmann, Gladenbach (Hessen):
    • Vol. 1: Mother or The Divine Materialism , trans. by Anita Reichle, 1992, ISBN 3-87348-149-9
    • Vol. 2: Mother or The New Species , trans. by Anita Reichle and Robert Imhoff, 1993, ISBN 3-87348-154-5
    • Vol. 3: Mother or The Mutation of Death , trans. by Cay Hehner, 1994, ISBN 3-87348-155-3
  • Georges van Vrekhem : Beyond Man - Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and Mother , Dt. Trans. V. Ellen Tessloff, Aquamarin Vlg., Grafing 2014, ISBN 978-3-89427-678-2 (Eng.OA: Beyond Man - The Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother , HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi 1999, ISBN 81- 7223-327-2 ). Double biography based on the newly added and released sources up to 1999. Life and work are seen in a biographical, political, philosophical and yogic context.
Single title with reference to the work and impact of Mira Alfassa
  • Sri Aurobindo: The Revelation of the Supramental , Puducherry 1948
  • Sri Aurobindo: The mother - With letters about the mother , trans. v. Th. Karnasch u. A. Bitzos, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry (sic!) 2014, ISBN 979-81-7058-042-2
  • Otto Wolf: Sri Aurobindo , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1967, ISBN 3-499-50121-X
  • Satprem: Sri Aurobindo or the adventure of consciousness , Otto Wilhelm Barth-Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-87041-229-1
  • Sri Aurobindo: Conversations on Yoga , Vols. 1-3, Puducherry 1977
  • Sri Aurobindo: Savitri - legend and symbol , Hinder + Deelmann, Gladenbach 1985, ISBN 3-87348-119-7
  • Satprem: Mother - Notes from the Laboratory 1950 - 1973 , Summary Mother's Agenda, Hinder + Deelmann, Gladenbach 1992, ISBN 3-910083-00-5
  • Maggi Lidchi-Grassi: The light that shone into the abyss , Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1994, ISBN 81-7058-517-1
  • Satprem: Evolution II , Hinder + Deelmann, 1996

See also

Further information and links to Auroville and German-language references can be found in the article about this project initiated by Mira Alfassa .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alfassa, Mirra
ALTERNATIVE NAMES The Mother
BRIEF DESCRIPTION spiritual partner of the sage and seer Aurobindo
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 1973
Place of death Pondicherry