Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

27

Val de Grâce

"When Richard finished his work," Mother continued her narrative, "he returned with a poor photograph of Sri Aurobindo, and a completely superficial impression of him; yet with the feeling that Sri Aurobindo KNEW. He hadn't at all understood the man; he didn't sense it was an Avatar; but he sensed he had the knowledge. Besides, I think, he always held that opinion, because he used to say that from an intellectual standpoint Sri Aurobindo was a unique giant, but that from a spiritual standpoint he didn't have many realizations! Nonsense of that kind — similar to Romain Rolland's." Mother exchanged a glance of understanding with Satprem.

"Well, you see, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, and it's difficult to touch upon it. You know, what happened here was far more

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exciting than any novel imaginable!" We shall see how true that is as Mother's life story unfolds.

"When he returned, he told me he would take me there as soon as he could.

"But the man was ..." she stopped abruptly.

Mirra and Paul Richard were married on 5 May 1911.

They lived on Rue du Val de Grace, in a small house at the far end of a garden with two entrances from the street, numbered 9 and 11.

"Well-well! The house on Val de Grace!" Mother exclaimed seeing the picture Pavitra was holding out to her. In those days Mother gave interviews to Satprem in the privacy of Pavitra's office. As a rule, Pavitra did not remain there during the interviews, except when he had something specific to talk over with her. That day, as soon as Mother was settled in her chair and all ready for Satprem's questions, Pavitra —as the Ashram's General Secretary, he dealt with all foreign correspondence—showed her the photo he had received in the morning's mail.

"Well-well! The house on Val de Grace!" Mother exclaimed, taking the picture in her hand. "It looks

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The house on Rue du Val de Grace

inhabited, there are curtains on the windows. I lived there —a small house, very small, with a room on top."

She began to explain what was what to the two men. "Here, it's the drawing-room, this is the studio," she jabbed her fingers on the spots to suit her words. "Then, behind the kitchen, there was a small room that served me as dining room and it opened onto a courtyard. Between this dining room and the kitchen there was a bathroom and a tiny antechamber. Here is the kitchen; you went up three steps, there was a tiny antechamber with stairs that led to the room. Next to the room, there was a toilet about as big as a thimble.

"It's part of a big house. There's a seven-storey apartment building on each side, and the street is here.

"It wasn't very big. But the studio was fairly large — a beautiful room.... That's where I used to receive Madame David-Neel—we saw each other almost every evening.

"There was a large library in the studio —the library took up the whole far end of the room —more than two thousand books belonging to my brother.

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There were some complete sets of classics. And I had my entire collection of the Cosmic Review, as well as my postcard collection —it was down below. The postcards were mostly from Algeria, Tlemcen — about two hundred. But there were five years of the Cosmic Review. And written in such a French! It was most funny." There was also her stamp collection.

With what care Mirra arranged the rooms. That there should be harmony among things came naturally to her artistic temperament. But what's more, things were never inanimate objects to her —so each object found its rightful place in her house.

Andre was a regular visitor to Val de Grace. "After my father and mother divorced, Mother married Paul Richard, and they came to live on Rue du Val de Grace." Andre was around twelve. "I used to go and have lunch with them every Sunday. After lunch, specially when the weather was bad, we would go to the studio. Paul Richard stretched out on a couch, lit his pipe, and they started working. That is, my mother wrote in her own handwriting what he dictated. I could not help but notice that Mother was rectifying most of Paul's dictation."

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t the back of a garden, or more precisely of a fairly large courtyard with a few trees, stretching in front of a big apartment house, was strikingly cosy and very comfortable."

Yes, it was that kind of house, with an air of comfortable simplicity, where you felt welcome and at your ease. Knowing Mother, knowing Mirra, it does not surprise us, really.

*

* *

I believe that Mirra's first group 'Idea' was scrapped when she moved to Val de Grace. But in those three years, from 1911 to 1913, she was an active member of another group, 'L' Union des Pensees Féminines' (the Union of Women's Thoughts). The talks she gave to this group were first published in 1946 —thanks to me! For it was at my request, as an apprentice in the new printing press, that Mother gave the manuscript for printing —under the general title, Reunions, in the book Paroles a "Autrefois, which also contained other early writings by Mother. The group's meetings were held not only in the spacious studio on N°9 Rue du

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Val de Grace, but elsewhere as well.

The little booklet, The Supreme Discovery, for instance, is one such article, which Mirra read out on 28 April 1912 at the residence of one Miss Sanderson.

It is a beautiful piece and worth reading in its entirety. Here is a sampling of a few lines taken haphazardly.

"You who are weary and bruised and beaten down, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, listen to the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like yourselves from the ills of the earth; he has, like you, crossed deserts under the burden of day, he has known hunger and thirst, solitude and abandonment, and, most cruel of all, the destitution of the heart.

"You are in the wilderness: well, listen to the voices of the silence.

"You are walking in deep night: well, gather there the priceless treasures of the darkness.

"You are following the path of denudation; it is the way to plenitude.

"Each grain that one puts in the earth produces a thousand.

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"Each wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.

"Beautiful, doubtless, was the song of the primordial sphere rocked on the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphal is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense chorale filling the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!"

At the end of the manuscript we came across a short note, in French:

"This is for Miss Baffet.

"Will you be kind enough to give it to her, for I did not find her at home.

"When can I see you? I am free after five on Monday and Wednesday next week.

"My friendliest regards,"

Signed: M. P. R.

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