My Pilgrimage to the Spirit

The Mother’s Life—Salient Facts

1) The Mother was born in Paris in 1878 in an influential family. Her father was a Banker and brother a Governor.

2) As a child She was highly introspective, clear-minded and firm in will and conscious of a mission in life.

3) At 13 years of age She had, for almost a whole year, repeated every day, a most wonderful spiritual experience—an experience of a high spiritual status rendering help to men, women and children, bringing to them through spiritual contact hope, joy, health and general well-being.

4) During the early years of this century She practised occultism—the science and art of the subtle truths of life and existence—under a Polish teacher in Algeria.

5) Around 1912 She led in Paris a group of spiritual seekers and revealed to them profound spiritual insights as to the growth and fulfilment of individual and social living. She had at this time a clear and a conscious perception of the aim of an integral transformation of life and the spiritual processes involved in it.

6) At the same time She had a persistent longing for a visit to India and a further and a higher pursuit of spiritual life.

7) She arrived in India in 1914 at the age of 36 and on meeting Sri Aurobindo spontaneously saw and felt in him a demonstrative assurance that the aim of the integral divine transformation of life was a complete possibility and that Her life's work lay here beside Him. And the same She pursued incessantly (with an interruption during the years of the World War I) in her embodied form uptil the age of 96 and built up Sri Aurobindo's spiritual work from the very beginning to an international status in Sadhana, in education and in the construction of an international township. In the literary way, the organization of "The Arya", which brought forth Sri Aurobindo's main works, and Her own writings, which came later are additional. Further additional are Her capacities and creations in painting and music.

8) In Sadhana, the work consisted of giving continual individual attention and help to seekers to grow in consecration, selflessness, harmony, peace and the realization of soul and God. Objectively it was to recreate the entire contemporary cultural life on the spiritual basis. Sri Aurobindo Ashram with its large community of about 2,000 persons and a vast set-up of varied departments with wide international contacts is the present shape of things.

9) In education, the work consisted of organizing a proper environment, creating a new atmosphere and providing for each child the individual attention necessary for promoting in him the inmost spiritual fact of his personality rather than stuffing him externally with information and stuffing the inner fact which brings unity, harmony and creativity to life. Sri Aurobindo's International Centre of Education with its facilities from the kindergarten to post-graduate research is the ostensible result.

10) The International township of `Auroville' was the last thing to be undertaken. The aim was to concretise human unity beyond ordinary barriers of nationality, race, language, religion etc. on a true spiritual basis. And in this too a promising good start has been made.

11) The Ashram life and its promotion has been the basic work all along and there are thousands today who rejoice over the inspiring contact they have had from the Mother. The educational work was taken in hand in 1943 and Auroville was inaugurated in 1968.

12) All the three undertakings being basically spiritual, are essentially most uphill tasks, which have had constantly to fight against the down-hill movements of normal human nature.

13) Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were most realistic in their approach and entirely aware of a continuing and a mounting action needed to overcome the hard resistances of life and circumstances, even when they pressed for an early decisive result. Sri Aurobindo worked long for the overmental siddhi, which came about in 1926. Much longer and more strenuous was the next phase of work that was crowned with Supramental Descent in 1956 and created the necessary condition for the transformation of the physical, which engaged the Mother for a long time and continues to be the further quest of the spiritual work here.

14) Sri Aurobindo's continued spiritual action in the pursuit of the aim of integral transformation of life was vouchsafed by the Mother repeatedly after his passing in 1950. The same must be presumed of the Mother after She left her body in 1973. And there is testimony enough, inner and outer, that they both continue to look after their work and the sadhakas have thus every reason to be happy in their pursuit. An energetic and a persistent pursuit of the high ideal under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother carries its own immediate satisfaction and the assurance of a full ultimate result.