Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

4

Mirra

21 February 1878

A new day broke.

A dawn opened the door of the Sun.

The light of the sun embodied itself and stepped out of the door.

Stepped out where?

On the earth.

Where on earth?

In France.

Why in France?

"There is a reason," Mother explained to Satprem.

"Sri Aurobindo loved France very much. I was born there —there must be a reason. As for me, I know quite well: the necessity for culture, for a clear and

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precise mind, for the refinement of thought and taste, for clarity of mind. There is no other country in the world like that. None. And Sri Aurobindo too loved France for the same reason —very, very much. He said that during the whole of his life in England he liked France much more than England!"

Sri Aurobindo puts it this way: "If there was attachment to a European land as a second country, it was intellectually and emotionally to one not seen or lived in in this life, not England, but France."

The day: Thursday.

The time: morning, quarter past ten.

The place: 41 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris.

Thus the birth of Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa was registered at the 9^th arrondissement of Paris.

And began a sadhana* which will never see an end.

"I began my sadhana from my birth, without knowing I was doing it," Mother told Satprem in 1958. "I have continued it throughout my entire life,

* Sadhana: the practice and discipline of yoga.

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that is, almost eighty years (although for the first three or four years of my life it was still something stirring about unconsciously). And I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana upon prepared ground around the age of twenty-two or twenty-three. I am now past eighty. I thought of nothing but that, I wanted nothing but that, I had no other interest in life, and not for a single minute did I forget that THAT is what I wanted.''

"When I was five years old ..." Mother looked back at the unfolding of her yoga. "I must have started before, but the memory is a bit blurred, nothing precise stands out. But from the age of five it is noted in my awareness — not a mental memory —the notation in the awareness. Well, I began with the consciousness; naturally, without knowing what it was. My very first experience was of the consciousness above, which I felt as a Light and a Force, which I felt here [pointing above the head] at the age of five."

So deeply etched was this notation in her awareness that whenever Mother spoke about that experience she still saw the scene vividly. "The sensation

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was very pleasant. I would sit in a tiny armchair, made especially for me. I would be alone in the room, and I. . . . You see, I didn't know what it was, nothing, nothing at all, mentally nil. But I would feel a sort of VERY PLEASANT sensation of something very strong and very luminous, here [above the head] — Consciousness. And my feeling was: this is what I must live, what I must be (of course, not with all those words), and I would pull it downward, because that was my true raison d'être. That is my first memory —at age five."

That 'pleasant sensation' was so very pleasant that almost ninety years later, in 1972 —when other, later memories were fading away — Mother still recalled

Mirra standing by her little armchair

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this first memory in all its freshness. Seated in her low armchair, gazing at the Service tree* which spread its branches over Sri Aurobindo's samadhi** and sprinkled its flowers like golden teardrops, Mother said slowly to Satprem, "The only thing I remember with clarity is being very young (something like five or six, I don't know), very young, seated in a tiny armchair made especially for me where I felt a GREAT FORCE above my head. And at that tender age I knew— in the way a child thinks —that that was bound to do great things.... I didn't understand a thing, I didn't know a thing."

Given Mathilde's sternness, Maurice's "couldn't-care-less ness'" and Matteo's quick temper, little Mirra, so sensitive, had a pretty rough time of it. When it became too much for the child, she would go sit in her own little chair.

* 'Service' is the significance given by Mother to the fragrant flowers of Rusty Shield-bearer, otherwise known as Copper Pod (Peltaphorum pterocarpum). The flowers are golden yellow, with delicately crinkled petals and rust-coloured at the base and sepals.

** Samadhi (lit: yoga-trance), where Sri Aurobindo's body rests under a marble tomb in the ashram courtyard.

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"Whenever there was any unpleasantness with my relatives or playmates or friends, and I felt all the nastiness or ill will —all kinds of unpretty things that came —I was rather sensitive, mainly because I instinctively nurtured an ideal of beauty and harmony, which was shocked by daily life's littleness. ... So when I was pained I took great care not to go tell anything to my mother or my father; for my father couldn't care less, and my mother would scold me —always, that was the first thing she did. So I would go to my room and sit down in my tiny armchair; and there I would concentrate and try to understand ... in my own way."

We can almost see little Mirra in that child's chair, looking at it all and trying to 'understand.' Her huge eyes would, maybe, take on a golden-hazel colour, or change into an emerald-green, which would as easily turn into black or sky blue perhaps. Strange, ever-changing eyes, beneath a broad band of ribbons that clasped together her already long auburn hair—or was it chestnut brown? —which later turned into spun gold and amber. The low-cut bangs on her forehead were reminiscent of the headdress of Queen Tiy of Egypt.

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Mirra found it so fascinating, so interesting to try and fathom life's mysteries that later on she would be extremely puzzled by the indifference of the Ashram youth in these matters. "I don't know," Mother told us, "but let me tell you this: it seemed tremendously interesting to me, the most interesting thing in the world. There was nothing, but nothing, that interested me more. It even happened to me. ... I was five or six or seven years old (at seven it had become very serious), and my father, who loved the circus, would come and ask me, 'Come, I am going to the circus on Sunday, come with me.' I would reply, 'No. I am doing something far more interesting than going to the circus.' Or else, my little playmates would invite me to a party, all to play together, to have fun together: 'No, no, I am enjoying myself much more.' And this was absolutely sincere. There was nothing more enjoyable on earth than that."

But from time to time Mirra did go to the circus, for instance when Buffalo Bill came to Paris with his troupe for the Universal Exhibition of 1889.

"The physical senses have a kind of extension,"

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Mother remarked. "The Red Indian's senses of hearing and smell, for example, have a greater range than ours (not to speak of dogs!)." Which brought to her mind her Red Indian friend. "I knew an Indian. He was my friend when I was eight or ten. He had come with Buffalo Bill in the days of the Hippodrome (oh, long ago! I was eight). He would put his ear to the ground, and he was so skilled that he could gauge distances: by the intensity of the vibrations he could tell from what distance the footfalls of someone walking by were coming. After which all the children said, T want to learn it, I do!' And so you try. . . . That's how you prepare yourself. You think you are just having fun, but you are actually preparing yourself for later on."

That is how little Mirra was preparing herself for 'later on.'

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