Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

24

Mister Mind

Mirra's destiny was in a hurry; it never allowed her to stay put with any one experience. That boundless Heart was in a constant forward motion.

Madame Theon gone, no backward pull tied Mirra to the occult world. She had thoroughly explored it and tested its boundaries, and the barriers had ceded beneath her touch. It was time to go on to the next exploration: the Mind.

"I have noticed," said Mother, "that the different stages of my development occurred in twelve-year periods. In practice, these periods overlap; but approximately every twelve years a particular type of development predominated. In this order: consciousness first; the vital next, mainly from the standpoint of aesthetics together with a study of sensations, which culminated in the occult development with Theon;

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then, at around the same time, an intensive mental development which lasted from 1908 to approximately 1920, a little less but especially before coming here in 1914."

As the year 1908 ebbed, it swept away Madame Theon with it. Then bidding adieu to the Earth it shook her hand —on 28 December 1908 Messina, the port city of Sicily, was completely destroyed by an earthquake followed by tidal waves, which left more than 80,000 dead.

The Cosmic Review made its last appearance in December of that year.

Mira Ismalun, Mirra's grandmother, passed away on 2 February 1909.

Theon retired in 1909.

Thus that "brief period of occultism which served as a transition to as well as a basis for spiritual development," was over.

However, before the transit to the spiritual realization, there was the Mind to be measured.

But let us be clear. We shall be doing Mirra an injustice if we think that she had neglected to cultivate her mind during thirty years of her existence. Quite

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the contrary. Rarely does one come across such a highly cultivated and refined young lady. Not only did she devour libraries, or write articles —for the Cosmic Review or her 'reunions' —but she even wrote stories. When Satprem was writing By the Body of the Earth or the Sannyasin, Mother recalled, "These past few days, the memories of things I had written came back to me —what I had imagined at a particular time and written, at the beginning of the century —before your birth!- in Paris. And there was, in that thing I wrote, this: 'The love of Beauty saved her.' It was the story of a woman who was greatly heartbroken by so-called love —as human beings conceive it —but who felt the need to express love, a marvellously beautiful love; well then, with THAT ideal she overcame her personal sorrow. I wrote a small book like that — I don't know where it is, by the way, but that's quite unimportant. At that particular time I could well conceive that personal things ought to be overcome by the will to realize something more essential and more universal. And I followed the curve of my own consciousness, how it began like that, then from there how I went on to . . . other things. I was eighteen

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years old. It was my first try at getting out of an exclusively personal viewpoint and pass on to a larger viewpoint, and at showing that the larger, the more universal viewpoint makes you overcome the personal thing."

By "intensive mental development" Mother meant "a mental development in the most comprehensive way: a study of all the philosophies, all the conceptual juggling, in the minutest details- delving into systems, getting a grasp on them. Ten years of intensive mental studies leading me to . . . Sri Aurobindo."

In between Sri Aurobindo who was to come and Theon who was gone, who was to bring Mirra the key to the Mind? Not just any middling teacher would do for her. Just as we may say that Theon was occultism personified, so may we say that Mr Mind presented himself in person. His name was Paul Antoine Richard, and he was born on 21 June 1874 at Marsillargues, southern France.

"He had been a pastor at Lille, in France," Mother narrated to Satprem, "for perhaps ten years; he had practised his religion a lot, but dropped it all as soon as he began to study occultism. At first, for his pastoral examinations, he had had to specialize

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in theological philosophy, studying all the modern philosophy of Europe —he had a rather remarkable metaphysical brain." He even published a book-length metaphysical essay.

Thus, after a thorough vital development, Mirra was led by Richard to a "mental development taken to its uppermost limit, where you can juggle with all ideas, that is to say, when the mind's development has already made you understand that all ideas are true and that there's a synthesis to be made, and that beyond the synthesis lies something luminous and true."

She recalled, "Then I met him in connection with Theon and the Cosmic Review." In all likelihood they first met in 1908, when Andre was ten. At any rate he told me that this was in Montmorency, at the house of his aunts, to whom Mirra had entrusted her son. She was on the best of terms with the Morisset sisters, and often went to their home. There she played tennis — "my passion." Paul Richard also played tennis.

Naturally, we don't know when actually Paul first heard of Mirra. Was it from the Théons in Tlemcen, when he stayed at Zarif for over a month- from 7 January to 17 February 1907?

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Mirra playing tennis

"And it's I who led him to the knowledge of the occult. I gave him enough occult knowledge for him to know how to get out of his own body and enter into another." Indeed, she gave him much of that, and "the books he wrote —especially the first one, The Living Ether—were, in fact, based on my knowledge. He put my knowledge into French —beautiful French at that! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods — it was incomplete, one-sided."

Mother continued, "Afterwards, there were all sorts of quite uninteresting stories." She refrained from recounting them. "He became a lawyer some time after we met; I learned Law along with him — I could even have passed the exam!" It was in July 1908 that Richard obtained his law degree from the University of Lille.

Therefore it was Paul Richard who introduced Mirra to the leaden formulas of the Mind. It did not take her long to overpass them. And with Sri Aurobindo she was to achieve "a limitless Mind that can contain the world."

"Then the divorce business began," she said.

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"He divorced his wife." She was Dutch. "He had three children and wanted to keep them, but to do so he had to have his legal situation in order, so he asked me to marry him —I said yes. I have always been totally indifferent to these things. But anyway, when I met him I knew who he was and I decided I would convert him. That's the thing. The whole story revolves around that."

What a story it was going to be!

"Then he became a lawyer and entered politics; he was a first-rate orator and fired his audiences with enthusiasm; and he was sent here, to India, to help a certain candidate who couldn't manage his election campaign by himself." A Mr Paul Bluysen, for our records, an aspirant deputy to the French National Assembly. He got elected.

"And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took the opportunity to come here and seek —he was seeking a 'Master,' a yogi. Upon his arrival, instead of busying himself with politics, the first thing he stated was, 'I am seeking a yogi.' He was told, 'You have got the devil's own luck! The yogi has just arrived.' Sri Aurobindo had just arrived. It was

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put to Sri Aurobindo: 'There is a Frenchman who requests a meeting with you.' Sri Aurobindo was none too pleased, but anyway the coincidence seemed rather interesting to him; he received him. That was in 1910."

Sri Aurobindo was lodged in the third storey of Shankar Chetty's house on April 4, 1910. A three-storey building was a rare sight in Pondicherry in those days. Two young Bengali boys —Bijoy and Moni — were with him. Moni gives an eye-witness account (in Bengali) of that meeting.

"About five to seven days —or at the most ten to fifteen days after Sri Aurobindo settled down at Chetty's house," wrote Moni, "a Frenchman, just arrived from France, came to meet him. The French gentleman's name was Paul Richard. He was a barrister from Paris. His address on the visiting card read: N°9 Rue Val de Grace.

"Although the ostensible reason for his coming to Pondicherry was politics, he had some ulterior object. So the first thing he inquired upon landing on the Indian soil was, where could he meet a yogi? He j asked his friend Zir Naidu, a bigwig of the Hindu

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Party, whether he could introduce him to a yogi. To which Mr Naidu whispered back (whispered because Sri Aurobindo's presence in Pondicherry was a very hush-hush affair at the time; only a very few top brass knew of it) that there was a great yogi in Pondicherry itself, but that it was extremely difficult to meet him; but, nevertheless, he would try his best. Then, quite probably, Naidu had recourse to Srinivasachari, who broached the matter to Sri Aurobindo and obtained his permission. All this is my guesswork, of course, because I wasn't present there!

"Be that as it may, one morning between nine-thirty and ten, Srinivasachari and Zir Naidu brought Paul Richard in person to meet Sri Aurobindo.

"Yes, we must say 'in person' because tall is his person made taller by a French colonial sun-helmet — he isn't someone to be passed by unnoticed. His age would be between thirty-five and forty; the two eyes —that cannot be termed lotus-petalled —are unmistakably glowing with intelligence; the nose is such that you cannot be unmindful of it. He wears a coat whose colour is chocolate tending towards red; the cuffs of his shirt can be glimpsed from time to time

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peeping out of his coat sleeves, with chocolate-colour dots on them. But what most drew my attention was Mr Richard's beard; it hung down to his breast and was dark, dark black. Never before have I seen such a jet-black and so long a beard on any European —except on Lord Ripon."

Sri Aurobindo received Richard for two days. Each day they talked for two to three hours. What were the subjects discussed? We do not know. But presumably they exchanged ideas about occultism and mysticism and the almost forgotten ancient traditions. Purani, however, notes that "one of the questions related to the symbolic character of the 'Lotus.' Sri Aurobindo explained that the lotus stands for the opening of the consciousness to the Divine. It can be seen on any of the subtle planes of consciousness."¹

The significance Mother gave much later to the red lotus is: 'The Avatar—the Supreme Manifested on Earth in a Body'; and to the white lotus: 'Aditi — the Divine Consciousness.'

1. A. B. Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo.

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