Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

12

Mira and Mirra

"Thank God, my mother was an out-and-out materialist," Mother exclaimed one day to Satprem, "so much so that naturally one could not speak to her about invisible things."

But all the same.

"But then, what is interesting, for instance, is that when her father died (my mother's father), she knew it: she saw him. She thought it to be a dream — 'a silly dream,' mind you. But he came to her to intimate that he was dead, and she saw him. 'It is nothing but a dream,' she said." Mother gurgled.

"When my grandmother died. . . . My grandmother, now, she had a sense of the occult. She had made her own fortune (a rather sizable fortune). She had five children, each more prodigal than the one

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before. So she would tell me —she considered me the only sensible person in the family and confided her secrets to me —she would say, 'You know, all these fellows, they are going to squander all my money!' She had a sixty-year-old son, for she had married very young and had him young. She got married in Egypt when she was fifteen; and her son was now sixty. So she would tell me, 'You see, this boy (!), he goes out, he frequents impossible people! And next he starts playing cards and loses all my money.' I saw 'this boy.' I was in the house when it happened. He came to her and said very politely,

" 'Good-bye, mother, I am going out to so-and-so's house.'

" 'Ah, if you please, don't waste all my money, and take an overcoat, will you, for it gets chilly at night.' "

Mother laughed, "Sixty years old! It was most comical. Well, to return to my story. When she died, my grandmother came (I took care of her a great deal), she came to find my mother. My mother was with her when she died. As she wanted to be cremated

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— she had got it into her head —she had to be embalmed, for she died in Nice and was to be cremated in Paris. I was in Paris then. My mother arrives with the body and tells me,

" 'Just imagine, I am seeing her constantly! And what's more, she enjoins on me saying, do not squander your money.'

" 'Well, she is right,' I replied to my mother, 'one must be careful.'

" 'But look here, she is DEAD! How can she speak to me! I tell you she is dead and quite dead at that!'

" 'What does it mean,' I asked her, 'to die?' "

Mother burst into a lively laughter at the memory. "It was all very droll."

Some eight to ten years before, one day Mother was telling us how she took care of her grandmother, without naming her. "An old lady I knew very well, who had five children, each more extravagant than the other." That is how Mother put it. "The more she had taken care to amass a fortune the more they took care to dissipate it; they spent it without rhyme or reason. So, when she died, the old lady came to find

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me and said, 'Ohh! Now they will squander all my money!' She was most miserable. I consoled her a bit. But I had great trouble persuading her not to stay on and watch over her money so they don't squander it away."

Mother had helped her own grandmother, just as she had helped many other people, to cross the passage after their death. "I had experiences at night, a sort of night activity, when I looked after people who were leaving their bodies.... I was twenty or so." Although she had not been taught the method nor knew the process, yet Mirra did exactly what needed to be done. The teaching and the knowledge were to come later. But that is another story.

Mira and Mirra.

A deep affinity ran between the grandmother and the granddaughter.

One day in 1969, Mother sent me downstairs to fetch a box where she used to keep her 'precious' things. She opened the box and started rummaging in it, bringing out one treasure after another. But she could not find her mirror. "There's a mirror somewhere,

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Mira Ismalun, a sketch by Mother.

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I don't know where. A mounted mirror; the mounting has gold in it. It is very pretty. A small, foldable pocket mirror. It belonged to my grandmother. My grandmother gave it to me. She was presented with it when she was . . . twelve. She gave it to me and I kept it; I still have it. Which makes that object well over one hundred years old!" Mira and Mirra.

Surely Mira with her "sense of the occult" had felt, if not known, a special something in the lovely silent child Mirra? On her side, the child Mirra —who from her earliest childhood was "extremely sensitive to the composition of air," as Mother said—appreciated the tranquil "air" of her granny.

Mother was talking that day on the subject of sleep, children's sleep in particular. "This has brought back to my mind all kinds of things from my childhood, from my infancy. My grandmother lived next door to us, and at night (in the evening after dinner), we used to visit her before going to bed. I can't say it was great fun, but she had very good armchairs! So then, while my mother chatted with her, I had one of

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those splendid sleeps over there, lying in that armchair; a kind of blissful sleep. I rested wonderfully." Mother concluded, "What's required is to give children a tranquil atmosphere, as much tranquillity as possible."

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