Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

16

Lives Past

"At the Guimet Museum in Paris, there are two mummies. Nothing remains in one; but in the other, the spirit-of-form has remained very conscious." Mother was answering a question as to why calamity often befalls archeologists engaged in excavations. She was explaining to us that even when a person is outwardly dead, the body is not destroyed so long as the 'spirit-of-form' persists. This 'spirit-of-form' is a part of our physical form. Ancient Egypt had the knowledge of body preservation. Mother expounded: "In the other, the spirit-of-form has remained very conscious. Conscious to such a degree that one can have a contact of consciousness with it. Evidently, when so many idiots come and stare at you with uncomprehending round eyes, saying 'Oh! he is like this,

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he is like that,' it can't give pleasure."

Not surprising, "considering that ordinary people were never mummified, but only those beings who had achieved a considerable inner power, or else members of the royal family, persons more or less initiated." In ancient Egypt, where occultism was highly developed, "exceptional beings such as pharaohs or high priests etc. were mummified, because they were greatly developed externally, that is to say, there was the beginning of a voluntary and conscious cellular grouping in them—which is why the form was preserved for as long as possible."

Mummification was not a tradition in India. But in the days of yore, there was a tradition of preserving bodies by petrifying them. This was done to those who had developed and organised the cellular consciousness of their bodies. "Generally they were petrified, in the Himalayan petrifying springs." Once Mother even told Satprem that she had "seen" one of her bodies, lying petrified in a Himalayan cave.

To go back to what Mother was saying: "A particular mummy has been the cause of a great number of

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calamities. She was a princess, the Pharaoh's daughter, and secretly headed an initiatory school at Thebes."

Now, how did Mother know all this about the princess? Was it only through books? Or through some other means?

It was Satprem's birthday. Mother meditated with him. After the meditation she said, "As soon as the meditation started, I saw some perfectly familiar scenes from ancient Egypt. And you, you were slightly different but very similar all the same." The first thing Mother saw was the jackal-faced Egyptian god, Anubis, who helped reassemble the strewn pieces of Osiris' body, so that Isis could restore him to life (Osiris was killed and dismembered by Seth). The jackal-god is also the protector of mummies, and thus helps to preserve the body's conscious cells. "This god is very intimately linked with you," Mother told Satprem, "almost as though you had fused into each other: you were like a priest of the sacrifice and at the same time he was entering you.... It was interesting, so I went on looking and I lived the scene. All kinds of scenes: scenes of initiation, of worship, and so on.

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For a long time."

Ah, so Mother had 'lived' in Egypt!

On another occasion, she saw other scenes. "When I was resting in the afternoon, I had a vision, that is to say, I relived a life in Egypt. Ancient Egypt, as I saw by my own dress, by the walls, by everything. I was obviously the wife of the Pharaoh or his sister." Mother showed us a note on which she had immediately jotted down the salient points of her vision. "A temple or palace in ancient Egypt. Paintings in light and fresh colours on very high walls. Clear light.... I am the Pharaoh's queen, or the High Priestess of the temple, with full authority." This flashback took her to the times of Amenhotep IV, better known to us as Akhenaton. A great religious reformer, he substituted the cult of Amon with the worship of Aton, the sun-god.

But are these all imaginings? How to be certain? By the feeling that accompanies the experience. Mother describes this feeling: "Not exactly an emotion, but a certain emotional vibration associated 'with an occurrence. That's what is full and which remains, which lasts. Also, along with it, you get a

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perception —a bit vague, a bit fuzzy—of the people who were there, of the occasion, the occurrence. That makes up the psychic memory."

Mirra had many psychic memories.

"I could narrate many such things," said Mother, "it's very interesting. I have had a lot in Italy. I travelled in Italy with my mother when I was fifteen." One of these past lives in Italy had remained extremely vivid. As soon as Mirra saw the place, images came rushing up. "This Italian experience struck me much," Mother said with a smile. "I was fifteen. I was travelling with my mother. Very striking it was, moreover! The memory of being strangled in the prison of the Doges! It's quite a story."

As we know, the Doges presided over the government of Venice —all the 117 islands that make up the city. The Ducal Palace was first built in 814 and rebuilt several times at later periods. Finally, A. da Ponta restored it in the XVI ^th century, after it was burnt down. The palace is rich in paintings of sixteenth century artists: II Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Palma (the Younger).

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This is what happened to Mirra: "I was with my mother and a group of tourists, and we were being shown round the Palazzo ducale by a guide. Well, you were taken underground where the prisons were located. He began telling some story (which didn't interest me), when abruptly I was seized by a kind of force that came into me, and then not even . . . not even aware of it, I went to a corner and saw a written word. It was. . . . Well, the memory that / had written it came at the same time. The whole scene kept coming back: I had written that on the wall (and I saw it, I saw it with my physical eyes, the writing had remained; the guide said that all the walls with writings on them, made by the prisoners of the Doges, had been left intact). The scene continued. I saw, I had the sensation of people entering, catching hold of me. I was there with a prisoner. I was there, then people were entering, catching hold of me [Mother indicates her neck] and tying me. And then —I was with a bunch of about ten people who were listening to the guide, near a small aperture which gave on the canal —then, the sensation of being lifted and thrown

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out through the aperture. Well, naturally, fifteen years old, you understand! I said to my mother, 'Let us get out of here!' " Mother laughs. "It was difficult to contain myself. We left."

Mirra never accepted anything at face value. Not even her own sensations. She always checked the facts. "We left," said Mother. "But afterwards I made inquiries; I questioned, I researched —we had some family there [her aunt Elvire, we presume], I knew some people. And I found out how true it was. The next day, I researched in museums, looked up archives, found out my name, other people's names. Historically it was a true story. Well. A Doge had imprisoned his predecessor's son as a living danger to him, for he had tried to step in his father's shoes. So the Doge, who himself had usurped the father's place, imprisoned the son. But the Doge's daughter was in love with the son, and she managed to go and visit him. Then the Doge, in his rage, decided to have her drowned." Mother paused. But what did Mirra's action and sensation signify? What was written on the wall? "The whole story was there. It was really spontaneous.

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I knew absolutely nothing of that story —these stories are not known in other countries, only the local people know them. But the most interesting of all was that something which said to me, 'There.' I went to look and found written on the wall exactly what I remembered having written myself."

This particular Doge will keep cropping up in Mirra's life.

In this way, Mother got lots, lots of information about Joan of Arc, "lots. And then, of such striking exactitude! Most interesting, most."

Mother remarked, "Generally, these are fragments, individualized fragments of life." She had literally hundreds of such memories. "For instance, I had one when I was quite young (I was perhaps twenty), and it was not night, but I was resting stretched out: suddenly I felt myself on a horse, with a formidable warrior power, and the feeling of ... a will for victory and the POWER of victory." She saw herself in men's clothes, leading armies to a fantastic victory. "I felt I was riding a horse: I saw a white charger, and I saw my legs —my pantaloons, you know —and a costume

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in red velvet. And I was at full gallop. Naturally, I did not know what the face looked like or anything. I saw also the crowds, the armies and the rising sun. And it was so strong, this feeling ... it was the feeling of the will for victory and of the power of victory. That is how it came. Then, some time later, I happened to read the story of Murat and immediately understood that that was the moment of going into battle : he had called inwardly upon a Power, therefore an identification took place and it was that which I remembered and which came. . . . The feeling remained for a long time with the feel of the battle, but above all the feel of that power which makes you invincible." Mother added as an afterthought, "I was, so to speak, the spirit of victory in Murat."

History provides us with many instances when a man (or a woman) forgot his little person and felt something else take over from him. He became a force in action. Isn't Mother's narrative a fine example of it?

Another memory of which Mother spoke in detail was also of France. Mirra was then twenty or so, when she went on a visit to Versailles. "I had been invited

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to dinner by a cousin, who served us champagne during dinner without warning me that it was dry champagne, and I drank, unsuspecting —me, who never took wine or liquor! When it was time to get up and cross the crowded hall, oh, how difficult it was! So very difficult." Mother sighed. "Then we arrived near the chateau, at the place overlooking the park where you get a full view of it. There I was, looking at the park, when I saw there ... I saw the park filling up with lights —that is, the electric lights had vanished —with all kinds of lights: torches, lanterns, etc. And many people were walking about ... in Louis XIV costume! My eyes were wide open as I stood staring at all this. I was holding on to the balustrade to be sure not to fall down! For I was rather unsure of myself. I was looking at all that when I saw myself there, having an entire conversation with some people. That is, I was someone (now I can't remember who), and those two sculptor brothers were there; anyway, all sorts of people were there, and I saw myself among them, talking and discussing things."

This too was no dream, for Mirra had retained

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enough control to describe what she had seen. "It seems there were some extremely interesting details and rectifications."

What the child Mirra used to see in the "transparent" pages of her history books, the grown-up Mirra saw as living scenes unrolling before her eyes.

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