Beyond Man

Chapter Four: Of Painters and Occultists

Mathilde Ismaloun was born in Alexandria, at one time the crossroads of the world, and her husband Maurice Alfassa came from Adrianople, now the Turkish town of Edirne. ‘He had the skin of the people of the Middle-East, just like mine,’ the Mother would say. As the story goes, the nonconformist Mathilde once refused to bow to the Khedive in the manner exacted by protocol, and as a consequence was banished from Egypt. The young household, with its son Mattéo still less than a year old, went to live in Paris in 1877. They were somewhat familiar with their new surroundings thanks to Mathilde’s mother, Mira Ismaloun, for her time a remarkably cosmopolitan woman as much at home in Paris, Geneva and Nice as she was in Cairo, and who had many famous friends like Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer who dug the Suez Canal, and the composer Gioacchino Rossini.

And so it happened that Mathilde’s third child — her first, a son, had died from a vaccination when he was six months old — was born in Paris on the 21st of February 1878, at 41 Boulevard Haussmann. It was a girl, and she was named Blanche Rachel Mirra. Everybody called her Mirra. Only in 1890, twelve years after Mirra’s birth, was Maurice Alfassa to become a naturalized Frenchman.

Mirra, age 11

Mathilde wanted, just like Dr K.D. Ghose, that her children would grow up to be the best in the world. Long after she was known as the Mother, Mirra Alfassa once characterized Mathilde as ‘an ascetic, stoical mother, like an iron rod.’ Although Mathilde was a confirmed atheist, she adored her son and treated Mattéo as if he were her god, till she had to let go of him when he married. Her daughter, on the contrary, could seldom come to her with her problems and questions, for time and again she got scolded or repulsed without any reason. And ‘all the time I was told that I would be good for nothing …’

Mirra’s parents lived separate lives. Her father, an exceptionally strong man with a gift for languages and mathematics, had his own bedroom, where he told his children stories with himself as the hero and where he let his canaries and other pet birds fly around freely. He loved going to the circus and took his children with him. He took them also to Buffalo Bill’s Great Wild West Show in 1889, the year of the Paris World Exhibition and of the erection of the Eiffel Tower.

Mattéo and Mirra were bosom friends, although Mattéo had such a violent temper that, in his outbursts of fury, he more than once gave his sister a near fatal blow. He studied at the École Polytechnique and at the École Normale Supérieure, at the time and afterwards, together with the Sorbonne, the most highly reputed educational institutions in France. He would build up a successful career and rise to become governor of French Equatorial Africa. At the end he could look back on a life of exemplary, unselfish and totally dedicated service.

Mirra in Paris, ca. 1895

Perhaps it was as a reaction against the rigorous way in which Mathilde ruled her household that Mirra plunged into the world of painters and artists. At the age of sixteen or thereabouts she began following the classes of the Académie Julian, a painting school, and later on she studied at the prestigious École des Beaux Arts. The quality of her paintings was good enough for them to be exhibited at the highly esteemed Salon (exhibition) of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1903, 1904 and 1905. ‘I have been living among the artists for ten years … I met all great painters of that time and I was the Benjamin among them. That was at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one, with the World Exhibition of 1900 and all those who by then had made a name for themselves in the arts.’¹ In the same conversation of 1962 she assessed herself as ‘a very mediocre painter’.

The high tide of Impressionism, as described by Jean Jacques Crespelle in his La vie quotidienne des Impressionistes (the daily life of the Impressionists), ran from 1863 to 1883. ‘Their oeuvre was not finished by then, far from it, but the movement, as it had come to the fore after 1863, did no longer exist.’² If we suppose that Mirra’s formative years as a painter started somewhere in 1894, then at that time even postimpressionism (Cézanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, Gauguin) belonged already to the past as a movement; neo-impressionism was the order of the day, and fauvism (Matisse, Vlaminck), with its countless twentieth century epigones, was on the verge of making its appearance.

This explosive moment in the history of the Western arts is tellingly illustrated by an anecdote related much later by Mirra, then called the Mother, to the children of the Ashram. It was about a painter ‘who was a pupil of Gustave Moreau. He really was an excellent artist, he knew his art through and through, but he went hungry and did not know how to make both ends meet.’ (Mirra herself lived in rather straitened circumstances at the time, for she had to varnish her bottines before she went out, so that nobody would notice the creases.) ‘One day, when a dealer in paintings deigned to visit his studio, the talented painter showed him all his best work but the dealer did not seem impressed. Till somewhere in a corner he found a canvas on which the painter had been living out his fancy with the paint scrapings of his palette. “This is it! My friend, you are a genius! This is miraculous! You must show this to the world! Just look at the richness of these shades of colour, at this inventiveness of forms! What an imagination!” “But sir,” said the poor painter, “these are the scrapings of my palette!” The dealer took hold of him: “You foolish man, don’t say that! Give these paintings to me, give me as many as you can produce, I’ll see to it that they are sold. Ten, twenty, thirty a month, I’ll sell them all and make you famous.”’³

And famous he has become! For all indications point to the fact that the painter in question was Henri Matisse: he was well known to Mirra; he had been a pupil of Gustave Moreau; the incident occurred ‘around the time of the World Exhibition in 1900’, and Fauvism made its appearance in 1898 and had its first formal exhibition in 1905; and ‘if I would tell you his name, all of you would know him.’

Another of her friends was the then aged sculptor Auguste Rodin. ‘He looked magnificent. He had the head of a faun, a Greek faun. He was of small stature, very sturdy, stoutly built, with shrewd little eyes. He was exceedingly ironical and even somewhat [sarcastic?]’ And it was to Mirra that he came to unburden his heart and to ask for advice regarding his sentimental adventures.

It was the time of one of the great culminations of European art with the music of Berlioz, Franck, Saint-Saëns, the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé, the novels of Zola, the operas of Massenet, the recitals of Eugène Ysaÿe, a Belgian violinist of genius, of the bals (dancing halls), the Moulin Rouge and the Grand Guignol … all that in the cultural capital of the world, Paris. That was where Mirra lived.

When she was nineteen she married a painter, Henri Morisset, also a pupil of Gustave Moreau. A year later their son André was born. Henri Morisset was a talented painter, but not talented enough to have his name mentioned in the Petit Larousse or for one of his canvasses to be hung up in the museum of the Quai d’Orsay. Little is known about him. And little did Mirra realize at the time that a completely different future was awaiting her.

Tlemcen

To know these [occult] things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution … It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.⁴

— Sri Aurobindo

The fact that there is a more profound knowledge and power present behind the surface of what in the various cultures has been (and is being) accepted as the dominant form of knowledge, was known even in Europe since the earliest times. The search for this hidden knowledge and the application of it is called occultism. All religions have their occult practices, many going back to a so-called pagan period by which every religion is preceded. The formulation of our rational-positivistic science has for the most part been a reaction against the hollow claims of an immature Western occultism, which has in many circles been the cause of the denigration of all occultism. Yet this denigration has not been able to prevent popular occultism from taking on enormous proportions even in the present so-called techno-scientific world. The credulous and the desperate pay vast amounts of money for the services of often unskilled occultists, giving in to the ineradicable need to be shown a glimmer of light in the darkness of existence, to find protection against the countless invisible dangers threatening them from the cradle to the grave, or to obtain a modicum of power in a world in which the human being is one of the most helpless of creatures.

The lack of skill and knowledge or the false pretensions of the practitioners of occultism cannot be a valid argument against the existence of the occult. Were it so, the same argument could be used, for instance, against medical science. Among the occultists in pre-scientific times were some of the greatest savants, e.g. among the true alchemists, who as an acknowledgment of their lifelong labour now get a tiny footnote in the history of science because they discovered some chemical element or process. But their endeavour, their search for knowledge had a much higher aim: they were looking for an understanding of man and of the universe in which man lives, and they tried to transcend the limits of the human species. The true alchemists did not value ‘the philosopher’s stone’ and ‘the elixir of life’ as material gains, but as the fulfilment of the promise, given to man at the commencement of his long journey through the centuries, that one day he would be even as God. Let us not forget that Isaac Newton, one of the most prominent names in the pantheon of modern science, has written more about alchemy and other occult matters than about his fundamental scientific discoveries, and so has Johannes Kepler.

‘Over the last 25 or so years there has been an occult boom, a “magical explosion”, of a sort not experienced since the later years of the Roman Empire,’ write Francis King and Isabel Sutherland in The Rebirth of Magic, published in 1982.⁵ The works of the occult ‘masters’ of the last one hundred years and even of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages are now generally available in the bookshops — treatises by Eliphas Lévi, Stanislas de Guaita, Papus, Fulcanelli, Eugène Canseliet, Armand Barbault, or by John Dee, MacGregor Mathers, Alister Crowley (‘the wickedest man in the world’), Dion Fortune, Alice A. Bailey, Arthur Machen, etc. One of the foremost poets of the twentieth century, W.B. Yeats, was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Freemasonry, a collective name for a variety of occult sects, counts hundreds of prominent personalities among its members.

Taking all this into consideration, it is amazing that perhaps the two greatest occultists from the end of the previous century and the beginning of the present one, commanding a knowledge and a power few others ever equalled, would have remained unknown if Mirra Alfassa had not crossed their path.

The real name of Max Théon, who also called himself Aia Aziz, was Louis Bimstein and he was born in 1847, the son of a rabbi.⁹¹ Little is known about the years of his life before he met Mirra Alfassa. It seems he had spent some time in India, for he knew Sanskrit and the Vedas. He is also said to have been a collaborator of Madame Blavatsky in Egypt. It was in this country that he got acquainted with the French occultist Charles Barlet, who brought him into contact with France. After Théon had left Egypt for some obscure reason, we find him again in London, where he married Mary Christine Woodroffe Ware, alias Alma. They went to live in the outskirts of Tlemcen, an Algerian town at the foot of the Atlas Mountains.

Théon was a multifaceted personality. He spoke several languages, was well read, could draw from a rich experience, had an artistic sense, and knew how to use his hands. He usually wore a kind of white or brown robe, tightened around his middle with a red cord. He was a smooth talker and rolled, with nimble fingers, one cigarette after the other.

Alma, three years younger than her husband according to the marriage document, was of a small and chubby build. She had lost an eye in an occult battle. She was usually in trance, but she had trained her body in such a way that, even while in trance, it allowed her to go about her normal daily occupations. For hours on end she scribbled down her inexhaustible occult experiences and has left over twelve thousand pages. ‘Madame Théon was an extraordinary occultist. She possessed exceptional abilities, that woman, exceptional!’⁶ said the Mother, who was not lacking in such abilities herself. For Alma it was a simple matter to make her slippers come shoving towards her all by themselves, to make the gong sound from a distance, to have the table jump up without touching it, or to dematerialize a bunch of flowers and rematerialize it on Mirra’s pillow in her locked bedroom.

It was Alma who had the occult experiences and who communicated her knowledge to Théon. Théon, according to the Mother, ‘had a great deal of knowledge’, and she talked about his stupendous powers, for instance how she had witnessed with her own eyes how he struck a bolt of lightning out of its course. ‘Théon had terrible power … Once, while there was a thunderstorm, he climbed on top of the terrace on the roof, above the drawing-room … I went with him. He started pronouncing some formulas, and I clearly saw how a bolt of lightning came straight towards us and how he caused it to deviate. People will say that this is impossible, but I have seen it with my own eyes. The lightning has hit a tree a little further on.’ Yes, Théon was ‘a formidable fighter, and this is a matter of course, for he was an incarnation of an Asura.’ Asuras are titans, the dark opponents of the gods. The significance of these words of the Mother will become clear to us later on. ‘He was terrible, that man, he had terrible power. But outwardly you wouldn’t have suspected a thing.’⁷

Théon had founded a periodical, the Revue cosmique (cosmic review), which was published in France under the editorship of Charles Barlet. The first issue had come out in January 1902. A certain Georges Thémanlys, a disciple of Théon, was responsible for the printing and the publishing of the review, and Thémanlys was acquainted with Mirra’s brother Mattéo. This is how Mirra came to know about the Groupe cosmique, the group inspired by Théon and Alma. At last she found an explanation for the numerous inner experiences she had had without expecting or knowing anything, and about which she had never been able to talk in Mathilde’s harshly positivistic household. She had tried once, years ago, and Mathilde had taken her without ado to the family doctor, convinced that her daughter suffered from some sort of brain disease. Mirra found, thanks to the articles and symbolical stories in the Revue cosmique, an explanation for her experiences and knew that she did not have a brain disease.

Thémanlys was an easy-going person, and before long the full burden of publishing the Revue cosmique came to rest on Mirra’s shoulders. She found a new printer, corrected the proofs, kept the accounts, and even rewrote the articles sent to her from Tlemcen. These articles had been translated from Alma’s English into French by Theresa, the English secretary who would assist the Théons for the rest of their life, and who thought so highly of her poor knowledge of French that she found it unnecessary to use a dictionary. In 1905 Théon was in Paris; he met with Mirra Alfassa, sensed her capacities as an occultist and invited her to Tlemcen.

It was Mirra’s first long journey, in 1906, by way of Marseille and Oran. ‘It was the first time in my life that I was travelling by myself and the first time I crossed the sea. Then followed a rather long journey by train from Oran to Tlemcen. Anyhow, I managed to get by. I arrived at my destination. He was waiting for me at the railway station. He took me to his house in his car, for it was some distance away. Then we arrived at his estate: a splendour! One first reached the foot of the hill — for the property covered a whole hill and looked out over the valley — and then one climbed through broad avenues up to the house on top … We still had to walk a short distance on foot, and suddenly he stops, without any apparent reason. He turns around, comes and stands in front of me, and says: “You are now in my power. Aren’t you afraid?” Just like that. I looked at him, smiled and told him: “I am never afraid. I have the Divine here”.’⁸ The Mother pointed to her heart. ‘And believe me,’ she added, smiling at the remembrance, ‘he blanched.’ It was in Théon’s very own Revue cosmique that Mirra had learned how to discover the Divine in her heart. She never found theory interesting except when it could be turned into practice.

The Mother has often reminisced about the fantastic occult world of Tlemcen. However interesting those anecdotes or those countless occult miracles may be, the broad picture behind them is much more important. Alma and Théon had immediately felt who Mirra essentially was and they gave her an intense occult training, in 1906 and 1907, both times from July to October. Mirra’s unusual capacities made her a student who quickly equalled her teachers. Like Alma she was able to leave her gross material body, then the subtle body, then the next still more subtle body, and so on — twelve times one after the other, because each successive body consisted of the ever subtler substance of the twelve worlds gradually ascending from our material world up to the highest, outer limit of the manifestation. But always there is the silver cord or thread of life which has to keep connecting the subtle bodies with their material base on earth, for if it snaps one loses contact with the material world and dies. Once, during a working session, Théon had a terrible outburst of anger, thus cutting off Mirra’s silver thread; happily both of them were sufficiently knowledgeable to connect it again with her material body (after she had been dead for a short while!). Why had Théon become so angry? Because he knew that Mirra in her state of exteriorization had found, somewhere in another world, the mantra of life, the formula which can give and take life, and because she had refused to tell him that mantra, knowing who he was and what he might do with it. Afterwards she confided the mantra to Sri Aurobindo.

No, Théon and Alma were not after small things. They were the inheritors of a tradition going back to times before the Chaldeans and the Vedas in which originated the foundations of both. They had a profound knowledge of the forces in and behind the universe, of the meaning of evolution and the destiny of man. They knew that man is an evolutionary being somewhere halfway in the cosmic development, and that for him the time has come to be transmuted into a new being, called by some ‘superman’ for lack of a better word; the body of this new being would wholly consist of the divine matter which is now on the verge of Integrating into the matter of our planet.

‘Théon knew that he was not meant to succeed but had only come to prepare the way to a certain extent for others to come and perfect it … It was [Alma] who had been supporting Théon with her knowledge and powers; without her he was nothing, and naturally after her death the entire project suffered shipwreck.’⁹ (Sri Aurobindo)

One has the impression that Alma withdrew from life of her own will. After she and Théon had spent the summer of 1908 in France with Georges and Claire Thémanlys, she wanted, in the beginning of September, to visit the British Channel Islands. (She herself was born in the Isle of Wight.) Before the departure of the ferryboat from the harbour of Côteret, there was some time left for a stroll along a rather dangerous path between rocks protruding over the sea. Eyewitnesses say that she slipped, probably in trance as usual, and fell into the cold waters. She did not want to postpone her outing but became very ill during the crossing. On her arrival in the port of Gorey, on the island of Jersey, she was taken to a hotel, where she died that very day, 10 September.

Théon never got over Alma’s death. The Revue cosmique ceased to appear in December of the same year, 1908. Afterwards he himself lived as a recluse in Tlemcen, so much so that Mirra, like most others, thought he had died somewhere in 1913, the year he had met with a serious car accident. He died much later, however, in 1927, with the faithful Theresa at his side. She would survive him less than a year.

Théon’s death, like that of Alma, got but a few lines in a local newspaper. They, who had probably been the greatest occultists of their time, died even less known than when alive. Nevertheless, as precursors to the New Age they had not been working in vain, for their occult knowledge lived on in Mirra Alfassa, who would always remember them in gratitude. ‘Théon has taught me occultism really well, I was really very good at it.’ Their qualities, because of which Mirra had had to become their pupil, were a comprehensive knowledge, the synthesis of the occult schools from very ancient times but always checked out by personal experience, and their fundamental sincerity.

‘Occultism in the West could be thus easily pushed aside because it never reached its majority, never acquired ripeness and a philosophic or sound systematic foundation. It indulged too freely in the romance of the supernatural or made the mistake of concentrating its major effort on the discovery of formulas and effective modes for using supernatural powers. It deviated into magic, white and black, or into romantic or thaumaturgic paraphernalia of occult mysticism and the exaggeration of what was after all a limited and scanty knowledge. These tendencies and this insecurity of a mental foundation made it difficult to defend and easy to discredit, a target facile and vulnerable. In Egypt and the East this line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour,’¹⁰ writes Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine.

To build up their worldwide synthesis, Aurobindo Ghose would test out on his own person everything the hidden Eastern knowledge had to offer, and Mirra Alfassa would contribute the best of what the West had discovered and what Max Théon and Alma, better than anybody else, had represented.

And so the Mother could say, when looking back in the last years of her earthly life: ‘Isn’t it strange, Théon and Sri Aurobindo did not know each other, they had never met each other … Without knowing each other they followed the same lines, they reached the same conclusion … And I have known both of them.’¹¹