My Savitri work with the Mother

02 June 1956

Before I painted the Mother's dress I finished painting the pale green sari of Mahalakshmi, which the Mother liked.

On 2nd June 1956 I offered to the Mother the dress with blue birds which I had painted according to her wish. She opened her eyes wide in sheer surprise, pressed my hands and said with zeal:

My child, this is very good. If I teach you how to paint systematically, will you learn from me?

I answered:

Yes Mother, I will learn from you.

The Mother was pleased with my answer and said:

Very well, but first you must see my paintings in order to get certain ideas. I will call you one morning and then we shall see them together.

Later, I observed her wearing on several occasions the white dress with the blue birds painted on it.

While painting the birds I had felt that the work of painting was somehow familiar to me. I remember distinctly all that the Mother revealed to me of my past births one day after our meditation in her room in the Playground. One of the births, she said, was that of a well-known award-winning artist in France—this the Mother actually saw in her vision. It could be the portraitist Madame Vigee-Lebrun she saw, because as the painter in me developed I found myself extremely inclined to doing portraits. From 1957 I started doing imaginary portraits with crayon, and later I painted several people. The Mother remarked:

Child, you have the capacity to bring out souls when you do portraits of people.

I may quote a passage from Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Edition, Vol. 25, p. 370:

The Mother only speaks to people about their past births when she sees definitely same scene or memory of their past in concentration; ...

That night I was thinking about all that the Mother had said to me regarding painting. At that moment I did not in the least realise that the painting she intended to teach me was not on the ordinary level but something higher and occult.