Mary Helen read about Mother and Sri Aurobindo when she was just out of her teens and as a young woman at the age of 22, she sent her photo to Mother and received Her blessings to come and live in the Ashram. She traveled with a girl friend to India, taking with her a few belongings and leaving everything else to meet Mother in August of 1966. She returned to the Ashram in 1968 for the inauguration of Auroville and worked for some months in the Auroville Information and Design office opposite the Ashram main complex. After returning to the U.S. for a few years she once again came to the Ashram in 1971 later moving to Auroville with Mother’s blessings where she worked in the Nursery of the Matrimandir Gardens for 10 years, collecting and studying numerous plant species that she helped collect and propagate. She also began one of Auroville’s first journals, Progress, chronicling the development of the pioneer communities in those early years.
Mary Helen born in Columbus, Georgia, U.S.A. Her father was a colonel in the U.S. Army and she lived in a number of countries during her childhood, including Libya and Japan, her most beloved memories were of Japan and its people and their aspiration for beauty. Her favourite flower was the iris which Mother named Aristocracy of Beauty. Together with Narad she traveled to many countries and was especially drawn to Russia where she met a group of Mother and Sri Aurobindo's disciples in a never-to-be-forgotten evening.
Hers was a spiritual life, filled with love for all of God’s creation. Her gentleness and genuine kindness and compassion extended to everyone regardless of race, creed or religious belief and she always thought of others before herself. She read extensively, especially sacred writings, in later years primarily those of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
Her nature was more inward and reading Mother’s Prayers and Meditations was more important to her than long conversations and intellectual meetings. She told Narad of some of her dreams but one in particular was a dream of a wooden structure like a cabinet that contained many, many drawers. Since it was a very vivid dream-experience she asked Arabinda Basu its meaning. He told her that each of the drawers contained gifts that Mother was giving her. In a dream of something of the overmental world, Madhav Pandit wrote her:
'Dear Friend,
Certainly your experience is an act of Grace. It is hundred percent true. A revelation has been made to you. Some part of your consciousness is already in that state - behind the veil. By letting the experience settle down you will allow it to spread itself. One day it will be possible for you to live in that consciousness, that state of being. Life will justify itself.'
She knew the Ashram to be her spiritual home and considered the Patels, Lilou, Maniben, Pushpa and Jayantibhai her closest family but cherished her friendships with many Ashramites and Aurovilians. Her calm and gentle demeanour, her sweet and warm disposition, her generosity and good will towards all masked a warrior soul on the path of the Integral Yoga.
Photographer, writer, horticulturist, artist, and poet (though she wrote less than a dozen poems) she did many of the line drawings for the first major revision of Flowers and Their Messages, the compilation of the spiritual significances of flowers given by The Mother. She also created exceptionally beautiful and powerful collages of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. She is lovingly remembered by plantsmen for her research on tropical plants, gained primarily from her years of work in the first stages of the Matrimandir Gardens. Together with her husband, Narad, she authored The Handbook on Plumeria Culture as well as The Handbook on Oleanders.
In tribute she has been honoured by having three flowers named for her, Bougainvillea ‘Mary Helen’ by John Lucas, President of the Bougainvillea Society of America and Phlox ‘Mary Helen’ by Richard Saul of Saul Nurseries, Atlanta, Georgia and a now famous plumeria, Mary Helen Eggenberger by Jim Little of Hawaii. In 2001 she was also extended the honour of being made a lifetime member of the Southern California Plumeria Society. After her passing many disciples of Mother and Sri Aurobindo wrote tributes in her honour.
Mary Helen was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer in 1998 and underwent extensive exploratory surgery. The cancer was so widespread, however, that no removal was possible surgically. She was given three weeks to live. Determined, as the Mother’s child, to conquer this disease on the life plane or proceed as far as possible towards its elimination with her Guru’s ever-present help, she concentrated her work on the body’s cells, calling in the Light while exploring both traditional therapies and a host of alternative protocols. She told Narad that to smile (and have faith in the Mother) was the best help he could give her and not to be emotional. In fact her exact words were: ‘One day at a time, smile!’ She slept each night with blessings packets Mother gave her and a packet of sand from the inner chamber of the Samadhi under her pillow. She was able to withstand an extraordinary amount of pain but when it became too severe she simply asked for her 'Blessing Packets'. When the pain finally became too great to bear she said quietly to me, "No more." I called the ambulance immediately because she did not have the strength to get in our car. The ambulance arrived and Mary Helen was still in the bedroom choosing what she would wear. I called to her, "Mary Helen, the ambulance is here and you are only going to the hospital, it doesn't matter what you wear." She answered sweetly, "Yes, it does, everything matters." And so, in her humble way she taught me once again, that everything in life matters for all is the Divine.
She devoted her last few years to an immersion in Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem, Savitri, working with Narad intensively on a dictionary of words and terms in Savitri, entitled Lexicon of an Infinite Mind, and reading the poem aloud each night before sleep.
Her departure was chosen by here soul as she left on February 7th, the day before her birthday, incidentally, the same day and month of Nolini’s departure. She left in her luminous wake a legacy of love and dedication, a compassionate warmth, a sweet and generous nature filled with aspiration for beauty and order, cleanliness, respect for material things, laughter alternating with deep silences, refined taste, abhorrence of coarseness or crudeness in language or actions.
During her last weeks she listened constantly to The Mother by Sri Aurobindo in addition to reading Savitri.
In Her copy of Savitri was a note from Mother: ‘I am with you, fear not.’
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