The Mother

For most of us, the mention of an Indian ashram does not exactly bring to mind a dynamic picture. We probably think of bearded, orange-robed swamis sitting before statues of Hindu gods and goddesses chanting mantras; early-morning gatherings for meditation and bhajan singing; a quiet, simple, contemplative sort of life. But step through the gates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram and you're in for a very different kind of ride. In fact, arriving in the ashram on a sunny November morning, I found no inward-turning swamis, but energetic men, women, boys, and girls, young and old, dressed not in ochre robes but in polo shirts—and khaki shorts! Now, if you've never traveled in India, the fact that everyone was wearing shorts at an ashram might not mean much. But to anyone who has dragged a backpack around this socially conservative country, it is all but incomprehensible. Any travel guide worth the price of the paper it's printed on will tell you flat out: Unless you're hell-bent on offending the locals, don't wear shorts. What gives with the shorts? I wondered.

A visit with ashram reception, my first stop of the day, soon got me my answer. "The idea of wearing shorts came from the Mother," the man behind the desk informed me. "She instituted this back in the early forties. It was a very controversial step at the time, but now it is quite acceptable throughout the town. The Mother was a real pioneer, you know. She has left her mark in every field of life. Do you know much about her?"

"I've read some of her books," I replied. But given that her pictures seemed to take up more ashram wall space than even Sri Aurobindo's, I realized I was probably going to be learning a whole lot more about her over the next couple of days.

Not to be confused with his mother, the Mother, I would learn, was a French painter and musician named Mirra Richard, who showed up on Sri Aurobindo's doorstep in 1914 only to recognize that he was the spiritual teacher who had been appearing to her in visions since her early teens. Mirra was a highly accomplished occultist who had, by her own account, been "doing yoga" since she was four and soaring out of her body by night for most of her life. She had studied with some big occult leaders in Algeria and had led esoteric study groups in Paris with attendees as prestigious as the illustrious Tibetologist Alexandra David-Neel. A painter and member of Paris's artistic elite, mixing with the likes of Rodin and Matisse during her early years, she was an extraordinarily cultured woman.

Now when most of us hear the word "occult," we probably think of séances, spells, Ouija boards, and other mysterious, slightly spooky things happening in candle-lit rooms. And while the Mother no doubt participated in her fair share of those, her real occult calling was of a considerably different order. Her various "missions on earth" included such formidable tasks as vanquishing or "converting" the four great asuras, or demonic forces, that hold the world in their grip (one of whom she conveniently managed to marry). Moreover, she had known from an early age that she also had a task in front of her that could only be called "spiritual" in nature. As she tells it, "Between [the ages of] eleven and thirteen 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 realizing Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine." No surprise, then, that when she finally met Sri Aurobindo in the flesh, the impact struck deep. As she wrote the next day in her diary, "It matters little that there are thousands of beings 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's first visit to the ashram, however, ended abruptly after a year, when World War I broke out and she departed with her husband, who was called back to France to serve. But when she returned to India for good in 1920, Sri Aurobindo apparently soon recognized her extraordinary spiritual capacities and before long began to relate to her as a sort of confidante and collaborator in his work. Impressed by her remarkable proclivity for the practical, within a few years he gave her free rein to plan, build, and run his growing ashram, ultimately even putting her in charge of providing personal spiritual guidance to the disciples. And run it she did. As Michael Murphy, who knew her personally, would tell me later: "She kicked ass. She really kicked ass. She was a strong personality. She was shrewd. She was a real builder, a businessperson, extremely able. And she was spiritually realized. She ran a tight ship." In fact, I would learn, during the fifty-three years she lived at the ashram, it was the Mother's influence, much more even than Sri Aurobindo's, that was the guiding force in the growth and development of this burgeoning spiritual community, and of the work of Integral Yoga as a whole.

In the course of my first day at the ashram, thanks to the help of a couple of veteran ashramites who volunteered to show me around, I had the chance to speak with a broad range of people about the powerful role this unlikely guru from Paris played, and continues to play, in their lives. Later that evening, my head spinning from everything I had heard, I joined the community meditation. I had barely begun to sink in when my cell phone rang. "Damn. I can't believe I forgot to turn it off!" I cursed myself while running tiptoe through the mass of silent meditators, trying to get to the gate before the next ring.

"Guess who?" It was Andrew and my colleagues in chorus on the speakerphone. "What's happening in the laboratory?"

"Well," I answered, not sure where to begin, "it's a lot to take in. The people are all really nice, and they have been extremely helpful. And, from what I can tell, pretty much all of them seem deeply devoted."

"To evolution?" Carter asked.

"Well, I think so, at least some of them," I answered. "But what's ten times more apparent is their devotion to the Mother."

"The Mother?" They sounded dumbfounded.

"Yeah. I had no idea what a huge role she played here either. I mean, from the looks of things, they're much more devoted to her than they are even to Sri Aurobindo."

"Could that just be because she was there for twenty years after he died, so people had more contact with her?" Amy suggested.

"I think that was probably part of it, but there's more to it. You see, Sri Aurobindo apparently told everyone that devotion and surrender to her, as the Divine Mother on earth, was the most crucial part of the path."

"It sounds like she was really seen as a powerful spiritual master in her own right," Elizabeth commented.

"There's no question about it. In fact, Sri Aurobindo even said that he and the Mother were 'one consciousness.' And everyone here is convinced that both of them are avatars who descended from heaven to bring down the 'supramental consciousness,' or actually that the two of them put together make up a single avatar, or something like that. It's a little confusing. But the one thing I can say is that the way people speak about what it was like to be with her, it's obvious that she touched them really deeply. I don't know where else I've seen such intense devotion."

"I wonder why we didn't know more about the Mother's influence," Elizabeth said. "Could there have been some major hole in your research?"

"Well, maybe," I responded, "but Georges Van Vrekhem, who has written biographies of both of them, told me today that hardly anyone in America takes any notice of the Mother. I'm not sure why."

"Well, it sounds like an adventure in the making," Andrew concluded. "It'll be great to hear where things are at in a day or two."