They came as Forerunners

February 4, 1961

Here, I have brought you two flowers. They have two different yet very typically Indian fragrances: this one is Straightforwardness,¹ and this is Simplicity.² I have always found that this one (Mother holds out the Simplicity) has a cleansing fragrance: when you breathe it, ah, everything becomes clean—it's wonderful! (Mother breathes in the flower's fragrance.) Once I cured myself of the onset of a cold with it—this can be done when you catch it at the very beginning. It fills you completely, the nose, the throat.... And this [Straightforwardness] is right at the other end of the spectrum. I find it very, very powerful—strange, isn't it?

It's not at all sweet-smelling.

Oh, no! It's quite strong.

It's largely the fragrances that have made me give flowers their significance.... I find these studies quite interesting; it corresponds to something really TRUE in Nature.

Once, without telling me anything, someone brought me a sprig of tulsi.³ I smelled it and said, 'Oh, Devotion!' It was absolutely a... a vibration of devotion. Afterwards, I was told it's the plant of devotion to Krishna, consecrated to Krishna.

Another time, I was brought one of those big flowers (which are not really flowers) somewhat resembling corn, with long, very strongly scented stalks.⁴ I smelled it and said, 'Ascetic Purity!' Just like that, from the odor alone. I was later told it was Shiva's flower when he was doing his tapasya.⁵

These people have an age-old knowledge—the ancient Vedic knowledge which they have preserved. In other words, it is something CONCRETELY TRUE: it doesn't depend at all on the mind, on thought or even on feelings—it's a vibration.

What about this flower, this long corn-like stalk?

Page 61

Yes, this flower is Shiva, doing his tapasya.

And interestingly enough, its smell is fantastically attractive to snakes; it makes them come from far away to nest in the shrubs. And as you know, the serpent is the power of evolution, it is Shiva's own creature; he always puts them on his head and around his neck because they symbolize the power of evolution and transformation. And snakes like this flower; it often grows near rivers, and wherever there is a cluster of the plants you are sure to discover snake nests.

I find this very interesting, for WE didn't decide it should be like this: these are conscious vibrations in Nature. The fragrance, the color, the shape, are simply the spontaneous expressions of a true movement.

What does the serpent represent physically? What does it embody in the material world?

The vibration of evolution.

I don't mean symbolically, but physically, materially: the animal itself.

A formidable concentration of vitality—of all animals, the serpent has the most vitality. It's tremendous! And energy... progressive energy, energy of movement (progressive in the mechanical sense). Its meaning has been changed to a psychological one, but it's a force of movement.

Then why do these creatures always seem so evil to us?

The Christians say it's the spirit of evil, but this is due to a lack of understanding.

Theon always told me that the true interpretation of the Biblical story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden is that humanity wanted to pass from a state of animal-like divinity to the state of conscious divinity by means of mental development, symbolized by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And this serpent, which Theon always said was iridescent, reflecting all the colors of the prism, was not at all the spirit of evil, but the power of evolution—the force, the power of evolution. And it was natural that this power of evolution would make them taste the fruit of knowledge.

Page 62

Now, according to Theon, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras,⁶ the supreme Asura, the egoistic God who wanted to dominate everything and keep everything under his control. And of course this act made him furious, for it enabled mankind to become gods through the power of an evolution of consciousness. And that's why he banished them from Paradise.

Although told in a childish manner, there's a great deal of truth in this story, a great deal.

(silence)

One could almost say that of all animals, the serpent is the most sensitive to hypnotic or magnetic power. If you have it (magnetic power comes from the most material vital), you can easily gain a mastery over snakes; all the people who like snakes have it and use it to make snakes obey them.... That's how I got out of my encounter with the cobra at Tlemcen⁷—do you know the story? Theon had told me about this power and I was aware of it in myself, so I was able to make the cobra obey and he left. Afterwards (I've told this story, too), I was visited by the King of Serpents—I mean the spirit of the species. He came to me in Tlemcen after this and another incident when I helped a cat overpower a little asp (there are asps over there like Cleopatra's, very dangerous)—a big russet angora cat. At first it started to play with the asp, but then naturally grew furious. The asp struck at the cat, but the cat leapt aside with such swiftness that the asp missed it (I watched this going on for more than ten minutes, it was extraordinary). Just as the snake darted by, the cat would swat at it with all his claws out—and the asp got scratched each time, so that little by little it ran out of energy, and at the end.... I stopped the cat from eating it—that part was disgusting!

Then after these two incidents, I received a visit one night from the King of Serpents. He was wearing a superb crown on his head—symbolic, of course, but anyway, he was the spirit of the species. He had the appearance of a cobra, and he was wonderful! A formidable beast, and... wonderful! He said he had come to make a pact with me: I had demonstrated my power over his species, so he wanted to come to an understanding. 'All right,' I said, 'what do

Page 63

you propose?' 'I not only promise that serpents won't harm you,' he replied, 'but that they will obey you. But you must promise me something in return: never to kill one of them.' I thought it over and said, 'No, I can't make this promise, because if ever one of yours attacks one of mine (a being that depends upon me), my pact with you could not stop me from protecting him. I can assure you that I have no bad feelings and no intention of killing—killing is not on my program! But I can't commit myself, because it would restrict my freedom of decision.' He left without replying, so it remains status quo.

I have had several experiences demonstrating my power over snakes (not so much as over cats—with cats it's extraordinary!). Long ago, I often used to take a drive and then stop somewhere for a walk. One day after my walk, as I was getting back into the car to drive away (the door was still open), a very large snake came out, right from the spot I had just left. He was furious and heading straight towards the open door, ready to strike (luckily I was alone, neither the driver nor Pavitra were there, otherwise...). When the snake had come quite near, I looked at him closely and said, 'What do you want? Why have you come here?' There was a pause. Then he fell down flat and off he went. I hadn't made a move, only asked him, 'What do you want? Why have you come here?' You know, they have a way of suddenly falling back, going limp, and prrt! Gone!

How many, many experiences there were during those days at Tlemcen! Surely you've heard them.... Were you there when I told the story about the big toad? A huge toad, covered with warts. No?... The sitting room was upstairs in Theon's house (the house was built on a hillside) and it was connected by large open doors to a small terrace that sat almost on top of the hill. I played the piano in this room every day. And one day, what did I see hopping in through the open bay windows but an enormous black toad—enormous! He sat down on his backside right in the entrance and puffed up his throat: poff! poff! And for the whole time I played, he stayed there going 'Poff! poff!', as though in a state of delight! When I finished, I turned around and he gave me one last 'Poff!' and hopped away. It was comical!

Theon also taught me how to turn aside lightning.

Is it possible?!

Ah, yes-he used to do it.

Page 64

But it must take a formidable power!

Oh (laughing), he had a formidable power! Theon had a formidable power.... One stormy day (there were terrible thunderstorms there), he climbed to the high terrace above the sitting room. 'It's a strange time to be going up there,' I said to him. He laughed, 'Come along, don't be afraid!' So I joined him. He began some invocations and then I clearly saw a bolt of lightning that had been heading straight towards us suddenly swerve IN THE MIDST OF ITS COURSE. You will say it's impossible, but I saw it turn aside and strike a tree farther away. I asked Theon, 'Did you do that?' He nodded.

Oh, that man was terrible—he had a terrible power. But quite a good external appearance!

Have you seen his photo? No? I'll have to show it to you. He was a handsome man, about sixty years old—between fifty and sixty.

And do you know how he received me when I arrived there?... It was the first time in my life I had traveled alone and the first time I had crossed the Mediterranean. Then there was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcen—anyway, I managed rather well: I got there. He met me at the station and we set off for his place by car (it was rather far away). Finally we reached his estate—a wonder! It spread across the hillside overlooking the whole valley of Tlemcen. We arrived from below and had to climb up some wide pathways. I said nothing—it was truly an experience from a material standpoint. When we came in sight of the house, he stopped: 'That's my house.' It was red! Painted red! And he added, 'When Barley came here, he asked me, "Why did you paint your house red?"' (Barley was a French occultist who put Theon in touch with France and was his first disciple.) There was a mischievous gleam in Theon's eyes and he smiled sardonically: 'I told Barley, "Because red goes well with green!" 'With that, I began to understand the gentleman.... We continued on our way uphill when suddenly, without warning, he spun around, planted himself in front of me, and said, 'Now you are at my mercy. Aren't you afraid?' Just like that. So I looked at him, smiled and replied, 'I'm never afraid. I have the Divine here.' (Mother touches her heart.)

Well, he really went pale.

There were all kinds of stories in the countryside, terrible stories....

One day I will find his photo and show it to you; he is there with

Page 65

a big dog he called 'Little Boy,' a dog that could exteriorize—he would dream and go out of his body! This dog had a kind of adoration for me. (I should mention that at a fixed time in the afternoons I used to meditate and go into trance. When it was finished I would go out walking with Theon, and the dog always came with us, usually coming to fetch me in my room.) One day I was lying on a divan in trance when I felt his cold muzzle nudging my hand to wake me. I opened my eyes... no dog. Yet I had positively, clearly felt his cold muzzle. So I got ready, went downstairs, and who did I find fast asleep on the landing but Little Boy—he was in trance as well! He had come to wake me in his sleep. When I reached the landing he woke up, shook himself and trotted off.

It was an interesting life....

We used to go for walks in the nearby countryside to see the tombs (it was a Muslim country). I no longer recall their Arabic name, but there is always a guardian at Muslim tombs—a sage, like the fakirs of India, a kind of priest responsible for the tomb. Pilgrims go there as well. Theon was friendly with one particular sage, and would speak with him and tell him things (at these times I would see the mischief in Theon's eyes). One day, Theon took me along. (According to Islamic tradition I should have been fully covered, but I always went out in a type of kimono!) Theon addressed the sage in Arabic; I didn't understand what he said, but the sage rose, bowed to me very ceremoniously and went off into another room, returning with three cups of sweetened mint tea (not teacups, they put it in special little glasses—extremely sweet tea, almost like mint syrup). The sage was watching me, I was obliged to take it....⁸

The pine tree story is also from Tlemcen.

Someone had wanted to plant pine trees—Scotch firs, I think—and by mistake Norway spruce were sent instead. And it began to snow! It had never snowed there before, as you can imagine—it was only a few kilometers from the Sahara and boiling hot: 113˚ in the shade and 130˚ in the sun in summer. Well, one night Madame Theon, asleep in her bed, was awakened by a little gnome-like being—a Norwegian gnome with a pointed cap and pointed slippers turned up at the toes! From head to foot he was covered with snow, and it began melting onto the floor of her room, so she glared at him and said:

Page 66

'What are You doing here? You're dripping wet! You're making a mess of my floor!'

'I'm here to tell you that we were called to this mountain and so we have come.'

'Who are you?'

'The Lord of the Snow.'

'Very well,' replied Madame Theon, 'I shall see about that when I get up. Now go away, you're spoiling my room!'

So the little gnome left.

But when she awoke, there was a puddle of water on the floor, so it couldn't have been a dream. And when she looked out the window, all the hills were snow-covered!

It was the first time. They had lived there for years but had never seen snow. And every winter after that, the hillsides would be covered with snow.

(silence)

You see, when people are in this occult consciousness, everything is possible—it creates an atmosphere where ALL, all is possible. What to our European common sense seems impossible... is all possible.

She was English and he.... I don't know whether he was Polish or Russian (he was of Jewish origin and had to leave his country for that reason). But they were both European.

It was a very interesting world. Really, what I saw there.... Well, once you left, you would ask yourself, 'Was I dreaming?!' It all seemed so fantastic!

But when I recounted these experiences to Sri Aurobindo, he told me it was quite natural: when you have the power, you live in and create around yourself an atmosphere where these things are possible.

Because it is all here, it just hasn't been brought to the surface.

So, it's time to go and we still haven't worked—once again I've been talking away! Don't bother noting it all down; I've told it just for you, for your personal entertainment!

But many things here will interest everyone!

No. Besides, there are things.... There are things I don't want to speak of because... (and I haven't said them, either) because, after all, he taught me a lot.

Page 67

(long silence)

So, mon petit.... Sri Aurobindo always said the greatest obstacle to true understanding and participation in the Work is common sense. He said that's why Nature creates madmen from time to time! They are people not strong enough to bear the dismantling of this petty stupidity called common sense.

It's time to go now. Do you have anything to say?

Sometimes I am a little troubled because I don't feel I am advancing much or having any experiences.... Nothing seems to be happening. It's rather discouraging and at times I wonder why...

Lately, the nights are being spent in a subconscious realm that absolutely must be clarified; it's precisely the realm where one feels helpless, foolish, ignorant, utterly unprogressive, bound up in all sorts of stupidities. It all must be clarified.

These nights, I have been having experiences which, if I didn't know what I do or hadn't had the experiences I've had, would be very discouraging: how to get out of it? Seekers have always had the very same impression: that we are all incurable imbeciles. And always the same solution, to flee life and escape this folly. Now I see it from another angle....

But it's truly a burden.

Well, I am going on with the work, and what I would recommend to all those with the capacity and possibility to follow me is to remain very calm, don't fret, don't be troubled. And if you feel a little depressed, don't pay any attention to it; live quietly from minute to minute, without worrying about anything—it will pass. It will pass....

Naturally, the more calm and confident you are, the more quickly it will pass. That's all.

I can assure you that you are well fastened, very well indeed; you are automatically caught up in my whole forward movement. So don't worry. Begin your book on Sri Aurobindo.

But first I would have to reread everything!

Haven't you done that already?

In ten months I've had time to read two books!

It doesn't matter! Put your ideas down on paper. There are

Page 68

things you already know you want to say. Put it all on paper. I assure you it will do you good. I have seen it several times recently and I wanted to tell you: begin your book on Sri Aurobindo! Begin anywhere at all, at any point—the middle, the end, the beginning—it doesn't matter! Whatever you feel you have to say, write it down. It's good to keep yourself occupied like that now, during this period. And for our next meetings you can work a little on The Synthesis of Yoga and we will look at it together instead of you always making me talk!... I have increased your work, there will be no end to it. If it goes on like this, there will never be an end!

Fortunately!

So, mon petit, don't worry. You are SURE, sure not only to advance but to reach the goal. And as for this troubled mind, keep it occupied with the book on Sri Aurobindo.

Good-bye now, petit. Don't worry.

December 15, 1962

(Mother shows Satprem some pamphlets printed during Theon's time, "Fundamental Axioms of Cosmic Philosophy," which have just been found among some old papers:)

This is pretty funny! (Laughing, Mother reads:)

"In his physical state, man is the supreme evolutor.

"There is but one law, the law of Charity, and it is one with Justice.

"There is but one disequilibrium: the violation of this law.

"The cause of disequilibrium is excess.

"Perpetual evolution towards perfection....

"Mortality is the result....

"Mortality"! What a word!

Page 451

Infant mortality!

"Mortality is the effect whose cause is disequilibrium. It is accidental and temporary...."

According to Theon, you know, the world has been created and destroyed—creation and pralaya—six times. And each time, a particular attribute was manifested, but since that attribute couldn't reach fulfillment, the world was "swallowed up again." Now it's the seventh time, and the attribute is Equilibrium. And when Equilibrium is established, there will be uninterrupted progress—with no disequilibrium, naturally: that is, a deathless state, with no disintegration.

(Satprem continues the reading:)

"There is but one royalty, one aristocracy: the royalty and aristocracy of intelligence.

"There are four classifications of terrestrial formations: mineral, vegetal, animal, and psycho-intellectual or human-divine. Among the four, in order, there are no divisions.

"Divine unity, embodied and manifested by collective humanity...."

It was in both French and English. He called it "Fundamental Axioms of Cosmic Philosophy." It was the work of a certain French metaphysician who was well known around the turn of the century—his name began with a B. He met Theon in Egypt when Theon was with Blavatski; they started a magazine with an ancient Egyptian name (I can't recall what it was), and then he told Theon (Theon must have already known French) to publish a Cosmic Review and the "Cosmic Books." And this B. is the one who formulated all this gobbledygook.

There used to be the name of the printer and the year it was printed, but it's not there any more....

Yes, it is: "The Little Tlemcenian's Press."

It comes from Tlemcen?

Yes.

This B. seems to have had the idea that the perfect man, the

Page 452

immortal man, would be spherical! And then Théon always used to say (he told me the whole story himself): "I told him it wasn't possible, it would be too impractical—people couldn't kiss!" His idea of a joke. Théon also told me that when B. came to Tlemcen (they first met in Egypt, then again in Tlemcen), he saw the house Théon was building and asked, "Why is your house painted red? Does it have some mystical significance?" And Théon replied, "No, it's because red goes well with green!" So you get the picture. But I don't remember his name any more; in his time he was very well known, he was a contemporary of the fellow who wrote The Great Initiates.

Schuré?

Yes, Edouard Schuré. He was a contemporary of Edouard Schuré, a bit older (I met Schuré, by the way—a rather hollow individual). His name began with a B and he's the one who formulated these "Axioms."

You once mentioned someone called Barley....

Ah, that's it! Barley. Yes, it must be Barley.

Madame Théon, who was English, was the one who wrote, but she used to write stories, while this... this looks like Barley's work to me, because I read something at the end, on the last page, which is rather.... It's pathetic, actually, it's all really pathetic.

(Mother leafs through the pages, laughing as she reads:)

"The only legitimate cult is the cult of man...."

Yes, that's the superman, whom he calls "psycho-intellectual." The superman—the only legitimate cult....

It all seems a bit flimsy....

Very. I don't think it's worth wasting your time on. But it was interesting to find these first pages because... look at the symbol (Mother shows Satprem the first page).

Yes, I saw it!

Page 453

The symbol is interesting.

It looks like Sri Aurobindo's.

I am the one who designed Sri Aurobindo's, and I adapted it from this one.

Look, they made the central square very elongated. The one done here is more correct: Pavitra made all the sides equal. But the one for the Cosmic Review was elongated, with the lotus in the center.

It's the same [as the one for the Cosmic Review], only elongated so that the two triangles meet and form a square.

I am keeping this to show Pavitra, because that's what I had first tried to make. But obviously the one we have now is correct.

It was Theon who told me it was Solomon's seal.

Now then, did you bring your book?

(Unenthusiastically.) Yes....

(Mother starts leafing through the "Axioms" again)

They make all kinds of recommendations here: for instance, when you go out of your body you should wear a loose-fitting robe, a robe kept specially for that.

Why is that? What's the idea?

A question of aura. The idea is that the forces accumulate. And she even used to say it was preferable not to wash the robe!

"Ideas."

There's something true behind.

She also used to say that to stay in your body you should cover your feet with a piece of blue cloth (when you sleep, of course, your feet are bare); put a piece of blue cloth over your feet and it keeps you in your body.

???

It's the result of Madame Théon's occult experiences, from which they made a general rule.

But the reason for a loose-fitting robe is obvious: it's important not to get cold during such experiences, and there shouldn't be

Page 454

anything hampering you. And also, it's important that nothing interfere with your circulation, which diminishes greatly and must be protected.

These things are practical, but....

On the whole it's pathetic.

All those things put so neatly into paragraphs always look a bit flimsy and dogmatic.

Yes, they're stupid. They are affirmations of contradictions—I mean affirmations aimed at contradicting certain things. It's not meant at all to affirm something that has been SEEN, seen and transmitted, but to contradict all the stories of original sin and all the religions, which, according to Théon, always address themselves to more or less hostile beings.

Theon also used to say that man was born perfect, but had taken a tumble.

The story of the earthly paradise?

No, Theon always said that the "Serpent" had nothing to do with Satan, it was the symbol of evolution (Theon was entirely pro-evolution), the spiral path of evolution, and that the earthly paradise, on the contrary, was under the domination of Jehovah, the great Asura who claimed to be unique, who wanted to be the only God. For Theon, there is no such thing as a one and only God: there is the Unthinkable. It's not a "God."

But to me this seems to come from his Jewish background. Because Théon was Jewish, even though he never mentioned the fact (the Tlemcen officials made it known: when he arrived he had to tell them who he was). He never spoke of it and he had changed his name. They said he was of Jewish origin, but they could never say whether he was Polish or Russian. At least the person who told me never knew. But for the Jews it's the "Unthinkable," whose name must not be uttered (it is uttered only once a year, on the "Day of Atonement"; I think that's what it's called). It's the word Yahveh, and it must not be uttered. But the prayers speak of the "Elohim," and the Hebrew word "Elohim" is plural, meaning "the invisible lords." So there was no one and only God for Théon, only the unthinkable Formless; and all the invisible beings who claimed to be one and only gods were Asuras.

Page 455

He used to call Christ "That young man"! (Laughter) It was very funny.

Anyway, that's the story. I found this again, and it amused me.

I'm going to read it.

But it's pretty poor stuff.

It's succinct.

(Laughter) It's very meager.

It was obviously a tool for demolishing old notions. It's the idea that man is divine, that he can become divine again through evolution: he was originally immortal and is to be immortal again.

One wonders how people in Europe can break through that Christian carapace; it seems extremely solid—it's terrible, really!

Oh, indeed it is.

Even in America, mon petit, they're in its grip. They're always falling back into their Christianity.

It's going to be very hard.

I don't know why, but every time I come into contact with a Christian thought, it fills me with anger.

Oh, I understand! Because it's true, you know, that an Asura is behind it all—not Christ! Sri Aurobindo considered Christ an Avatar (a minor form of Avatar). One emanation of the Divine's aspect of Love, he always said. But what people have made of him!... Besides, the religion was founded two hundred years after his death. And it's nothing but a political construction, a tool for domination, built with the Lord of Falsehood in the background, who, in his usual fashion, took something true and twisted it.

It's a real hodgepodge, that religion—the number of sects! The only common ground is the divinity of Christ, and it became asuric when he was made out to be unique: there has been but ONE incarnation, Christ. That's just where it all went wrong.

We'll see.

It is resisting, resisting everywhere. It's even more resistant than materialism.

Page 456

Of course! Nothing is more terrible than idealists, they're the worst. They're worse than the bad people.

Oh, if you mean the puritans, the Protestants... dreadful! They're the worst. Catholicism still retains something of the occult sense, and after all, they have a certain adoration for the Virgin, which keeps them in contact with something that's not asuric.

The last Pope, who's dead now [Pius XII], had broadened both his own mind and Church doctrine a lot: he was a devotee of the Virgin.

But the Protestants turned back to the Father, and so their worship became exactly the worship of a one and only, personal God, an asuric God. And they have fabricated and distorted everything: like asceticism, for instance, and all that sort of thing—everything they touched was twisted and spoiled.

Oh, read me your book!

January 15, 1962

You spoke last time of putting a body on a vital being. Is that being still alive? Who was it?

I have spoken of this before.

I told the story of the Chinese revolution, and how this being left me, saying.... It was just five years before the Chinese revolution. I've told the story.

Page 43

I know I've told it—but it was never noted down.

I used to dictate. Théon taught me to speak while in trance (that is, he had taught my BODY to express itself), and I would tell him everything I was doing while doing it. And he never noted any of it down—I suspect he did it on purpose: he wasn't interested in making revelations. So it's all lost. But had it been noted down, hour by hour, minute by minute, it would have made an extraordinary scientific document on the occult—extraordinary! He never noted it down.

But that vital being who was given a body—did it live on earth for any length of time?

No, never.

Never?

He stopped at the subtle physical—he refused to go any farther. It was Satan, the Asura¹ of Light who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness (I've told the story many times). But anyway, when I was with Théon, I summoned that being and asked him if he wanted to enter into contact with the earth. It's worth mentioning that Théon himself was an incarnation of the Lord of Death—I've had good company in my life! And the other one [Richard] was an incarnation of the Lord of Falsehood—but it was only partial. With Théon too it was partial. But with Satan it was the central being; of course, he had millions of emanations in the world, but this was the central being in person. The others... let's keep that for another time.

He agreed to take on a body. Theon wanted to keep him there: "Don't let him go," he told me. I didn't answer. This being told me he didn't want to be more material than that, it was sufficient—you could feel him move the way you feel a draft, it was that concrete.

And he said he was going to set up the Chinese revolution. "I am going to organize a secret society to set up the revolution in China," he told me. "And mark my words: it's going to happen in exactly five years." He gave me the date and I noted it down.

And EXACTLY five years later, it happened. Later I met people coming from China who told me it had all been the work of a

Page 44

secret society. They told me about it because that society used a certain sign, and instinctively, unknowingly, I had made that sign while one of them was talking to me (Mother puts one fist on top of the other). And the person said, "Ah, so you're one of us!" I didn't reply. Then he told me everything.

But it's really interesting because the exact date was given. "The revolution will take place in exactly five years," he told me. He knew it before he left. "And that," he continued, "will be the beginning, the first terrestrial movement heralding the transformation of...." (Theon didn't use the word "supramental"; he used to talk about "the new world on earth.")²

But I did note that down.

I had forgotten the whole story, because I now live constantly in the Becoming. But it came back to me.

And all the disbelief in the world can't contradict that piece of evidence.

The note itself was stolen from me while I was moving to a new house.

Two things were stolen: that note and the mantra of life (I have told you about that). And I have a suspicion that it was an occult theft, not an ordinary one, because no one even suspected the value of those papers—for most people they had no interest at all.

Well—au revoir, mon petit.

November 7, 1961

(Regarding Satprem's letter to Mother on the Veda:)

This has confronted me with a problem....

You are asking about the process, aren't you?

Yes.

Page 377

My impression from the Veda is not the same as yours. You say that when they reached the heights they went into trance and then tried the other method. When I read the Veda... at least what Sri Aurobindo translates for us, because otherwise I have no direct knowledge....

But they say nothing about this.

I know my own experience and I can speak of it in detail; and according to what Sri Aurobindo told me, it was the same for him—although he NEVER wrote of it anywhere. But since it has been my experience, I naturally feel that it's the simplest method.

There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of 'Supermind,' but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, 'new heavens and a new earth,'¹ which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didn't actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into.... They used different words, another classification (I don't remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely 'developed,' you see—individualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it... and so on, twelve times.

I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called 'pathétisme,'² a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formless—he sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme 'The Formless.' (From this last stage one passed to the Formless—there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unity—unity in something that was the essence of

Page 378

Love; Love was a manifestation more... 'dense,' he would always say (there were all sorts of different 'densities'); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unity—perfect unity, identity—with no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light!... An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a golden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words.

Well, one time I was there (Theon used to warn against going beyond this domain, because he said you wouldn't come back), but there I was, wanting to pass over to the other side, when—in a quite unexpected and astounding way—I found myself in the presence of the 'principle,' a principle of the human form. It didn't resemble man as we are used to seeing him, but it was an upright form, standing just on the border between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of standard.³ At that time nobody had ever spoken to me about it and Madame Theon had never seen it—no one had ever seen or said anything. But I felt I was on the verge of discovering a secret.

Afterwards, when I met Sri Aurobindo and talked to him about it, he told me, 'It is surely the prototype of the supramental form.' I saw it several times again, later on, and this proved to be true.

But naturally, you understand, once the border has been crossed, there is no more 'ascent' and 'descent'; you have the feeling of rising up only at the very start, while leaving the terrestrial consciousness and emerging into the higher mind. But once you have gone beyond that, there's no notion of rising; there's a sense, instead, of a sort of inner transformation.

And from there I would redescend, re-entering my bodies one after another—there is a real feeling of re-entry; it actually produces friction.

When one is on that highest height, the body is in a cataleptic state.

I think I made this experiment in 1904, so when I arrived here it was all a work accomplished and a well-known domain; and when the question of finding the Supermind came up, I had only to resume an experience I was used to—I had learned to repeat it at will, through successive exteriorizations. It was a voluntary process.

When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. 'It's strange,' he

Page 379

said to me, 'it's an endless work! Nothing seems to get done—everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.' Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: 'It will be like that until we touch bottom.' So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience... how to put it?... practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body—but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.

Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old!... There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied.⁴ 'What has happened to you!' he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didn't last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. 'There!' he said, 'That's how you are now!' I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.

This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical—and all the trouble began.⁵ But we didn't stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence—there, in the midst of Darkness.

It wasn't the first time; when I was working with Theon at Tlemcen (the second time I was there), I descended into the total, unindividualized—that is, general—Inconscient (it was the time he wanted me to find the Mantra of Life). And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something 'like' that), and when it opened, I saw a Being of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was 'the immanent God in the depths of the

Page 380

Inconscient,' who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness.

But then a rather remarkable phenomenon occurred: when I looked at him, he woke up and opened his eyes, expressing the beginning of conscious, wakeful action.

I have experienced the descent into the Inconscient many times (you remember, once you were there the day it happened—it had to do with divine Love⁶); this experience of descending to the very bottom of the Inconscient and finding there the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, under one form or another. It has happened quite frequently.

But I can't say that my process is to descend there first, as you write. Rather, this can be the process only when you are ALREADY conscious and identified; then YOU DRAW DOWN the Force (as Sri Aurobindo says, 'one makes it descend') in order to transform. Then, with this action of transformation, one pushes [the Force into the depths, like a drill]. The Rishis' description of what happens next is absolutely true: a formidable battle at each step. And it would seem impossible to wage that battle without having first experienced the junction above.

That is MY experience—I don't say there can't be others. I don't know.

One can realize the Divine in the Inconscient rather quickly (in fact, I think it can happen just as soon as one has found the Divine within). But does this give the power to TRANSFORM DIRECTLY? Does the direct junction between the supreme Consciousness and the Inconscient (because that is the experience) give the power to transform the Inconscient just like that, without any intermediary? I don't think so. I simply haven't had that experience. Could all these things I've been describing be happening now if I didn't have all those experiences behind me? I don't know, I can't say.

One thing is certain—as soon as one goes beyond the terrestrial atmosphere, beyond the higher mind's 'highest' region, the sensation of 'high' and 'low' totally vanishes. There are no longer movements of ascent and descent, but (Mother turns her hand over) something like inner reversals.

I think the problem arises only when you try to see and understand with the mental consciousness, even with the higher mind.

Page 381

I am telling you this because, as soon as I got your letter, I replied with what I'll read to you now; then I was immediately faced with something I couldn't formulate, the kind of thing that gives you the feeling of the unknown (all I knew was my own experience). So I did the usual thing—became 'blank,' turned towards the Truth; and I questioned Sri Aurobindo—and beyond—asking, if there were something to be known, that it be told to me. Then I dropped it, I paid no more attention. And only as I was coming here today was I told—I can't really use the word 'told,' but anyway, what was communicated to me concerning your question was that the difference between the two processes [the Rishis' and the present one] is purely subjective, depending upon the way the experience is registered. I don't know if I can make myself clear.... There is 'something' which is the experience and which will be the Realization; and what appears to be a different, if not opposite, process is simply a subjective mental notation of one SINGLE experience. Do you follow?

That's what I was told.

Now I'm going to read you my reply—it's the first reaction (when something comes, I stay immobile; then an initial reaction comes from above my head, but it's only like the first answering chord, and if I remain attentive, other things follow; what I have just told you is what followed). My immediate written response is based upon my own experience as well as upon what Madame Theon told me and what Sri Aurobindo told me. (Mother reads:)

'It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent...' (that's what I meant just now by 'leaving the body,' but without going into details), 'that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well. When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low. But GENERALLY,' (I emphasized this to make it clear that I am not making an absolute assertion) 'it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the permanent transformation of physical nature.' (This can be experienced in all sorts of ways, but what WE want and what Sri Aurobindo spoke of is a change that will never be revoked, that will persist, that will be as durable as the present terrestrial conditions. That is why I put 'permanent.') 'There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did) they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity.'

Yes, the Rishis give an absolutely living description of what you

Page 382

experience—and experience continually—as soon as you descend into the Subconscient: all these battles with the beings who conceal the Light and so on. I experienced these things continually at Tlemcen and again with Sri Aurobindo when we were doing the Work—it's raging quite merrily even now!

As soon as you go down there, that's what happens—you have to fight against all that is unwilling to change, all that dominates the world and does not want to change.

Ignore the spelling mistakes!

Now, if there's something else you want to ask me, perhaps it will come....

(silence)

After reading your letter, I had a very strong feeling that you put the problem like that because you were considering it from a mental plane, which is the only plane where it exists; if you go beyond, there are no more oppositions or problems. These things are subtle, you know, and as soon as you try to formulate them, they elude you—formulation deforms.

What I mean is that it's not necessarily in trance, in another world, that one gets the supramental consciousness....

No.

It's something the Rishis realized with eyes wide open, in day to-day life, if I understand rightly.

I don't know how they did it....

But I myself have never had it in trance, and neither did Sri Aurobindo—neither of us ever had trances! I mean the kind of trance where contact with the body is lost. That's what he always said, and one of the first things I told him when we met was, 'Well, everybody talks about trance and samadhi and all those things, but I have never had them! I have never lost consciousness.' 'Ah,' he replied, 'it's exactly the same for me!'

It depends upon the level of development, that's what Theon used to say: 'One goes into trance only when certain links are missing.' He saw people as made up of innumerable small 'bridges,' with intermediary zones. 'If you have an intermediary zone that is undeveloped,' he said, 'a zone where you are not conscious

Page 383

because it's not individualized, then you will be in trance when you cross it.' Trance is the sign of non-individualization—the consciousness is not awake and so your body goes into trance. But if your consciousness is wide awake you can sit, keeping full contact with things, and have the total experience. I could go out of my body with no need of trance, except when Theon wanted me to do a particular work. That was a different business—the vital force (not the consciousness, the vital force) had to go out for that work, so the body had to go into trance. But even then.... For instance, very often when I am 'called' and go to do something in response, my body does become still, but it's not in trance; I can be sitting and, even in the middle of a gesture, suddenly become immobile for a few seconds.⁷ But I was doing another type of work with Theon—dangerous work, at that—and it would last for an hour. Then all the body's vital energy would go out, all of it, as it does when you die (in fact, that's how I came to experience death).

But it isn't necessary to have all those experiences, not at all—Sri Aurobindo never did. (Theon didn't have experiences, either; he had only the knowledge—he made use of Madame Theon's experiences.) Sri Aurobindo told me he had never really entered the unconsciousness of samadhi—for him, these domains were conscious; he would sit on his bed or in his armchair and have all the experiences.

Naturally, it's preferable to be in a comfortable position (it's a question of security). If you venture to do these kinds of things standing up, for instance, as I have seen them done, it's dangerous. But if one is quietly stretched out, there is no need for trance.

Besides, according to what I've been told (not physically), I believe that the Rishis practiced going into trance. But I suppose they wanted to achieve what Sri Aurobindo speaks of: a PHYSICAL transformation of the physical body permitting one to LIVE this consciousness instead of the ordinary consciousness. Did they ever do it?... I don't know. The Veda simply recounts what the forefathers have done. But who are these forefathers?

But surely this supramental consciousness is something to be found in the body?⁸

Page 384

When one has these experiences, like the ones I've had in the subtle physical, for example, the body is certainly in trance—but the part having the experience doesn't AT ALL feel deprived or lacking in anything. The experience comes with a fullness of life, consciousness, independence, individuality. It's not like going out in trance to accomplish a work and feeling linked to the body—it's not that: the body no longer exists nor has any reason to! It's simply not there. And it's a nuisance to go back into it—'what is this useless burden!' you wonder. As a result, if this experience becomes permanent, you live in a world that's just as concrete, just as real and just as TANGIBLE as our physical world, with the same qualities of duration, permanence and stability.

It's very difficult to express, because as soon as we notice it....

While having this experience, you are free (as I said, the body no longer exists, it has even no reason to exist, and you don't think of it), and you have just as concrete an OBJECTIVE functioning—even more so! It is more concrete because you have a MUCH CLEARER and more tangible perception of knowledge than ordinary physical perception; our ordinary way of understanding always seems so hazy in comparison. It's not the same phenomenon as going off into trance and being linked to the body, depending upon it for expression, and so forth.

But a certain work [of adaptation] is required to express this experience, and the first impression upon returning is that there's no way to do it. It simply doesn't correspond to anything.⁹

Prologue

"The direct power of mind-force or life-force upon matter can be extended to an almost illimitable degree," wrote Sri Aurobindo on 24 October 1938 to Prithwi Singh Nahar. "It must be remembered that Energy is fundamentally one in all the planes, only taking more and more dense forms, so there is nothing a priori impossible in mind-energy or life-energy acting directly on material energy and substance; if they do they can make a material object do things or rather can do things with a material object which would be to that object in its ordinary poise or 'law' unhabitual and therefore apparently impossible."

Then in the same letter speaking about the 'origination of matter,' Sri Aurobindo says, "But it is a fact that Agni is the basis of forms as the Sankhya pointed out long ago, i.e. the fiery principle in the three powers radiant, electric and gaseous (the Vedic trinity of Agni) is the agent in producing liquid and solid forms of what is called matter."

1

A Downright Atheist

"I was a downright atheist. Up to the age of twenty, the very idea of God made me furious." Hearing Mirra, God in his heaven must have laughed in his beard.

He had other ideas about this young lady who said, "I believed in nothing but what I could touch and see." Mirra's hands were now to touch immaterial things, and the eyes she had so meticulously trained were now to become doors through which world after world would come bursting into sight.

God was ready with his cataract.

The floodgates were to be unlocked by Theon.

The rush of experiences would have swept anybody else off his feet. But Mirra was a young woman with both her feet on the ground. Mother told Satprem, "I don't think there's anyone more materialistic than

Page 13

I was, with my practical common sense and positivism .... The explanations I asked were always down-to-earth, and it seemed obvious to me that there's no need of any mystery, nothing of the sort — you explain things materially."

Indeed, if you want inner experiences without becoming unbalanced, you need to stand on a solid base. Mirra was well equipped. "I had the most solid base —no imaginings, no mystical atavism : my mother was very much an unbeliever and so was my father. Consequently, it was very good from an atavistic viewpoint—positivism, materialism." But she did have a rare thing. "Only this : from my infancy, a will-to-perfection in any field whatever. A will-to-perfection and the sense of a limitless consciousness —no end to one's own progress, or to one's capacity or to one's scope. This from my infancy." She had also another thing from her infancy, remember? "The feeling of a Light above the head, which began when I was very young, at the age of five, along with a will-to-perfection. The will-to-perfection . . . oh, whatever I did had always to be the best I could do."

However, at the same time, the outward person

Page 14

"could easily have said, 'God? What's this foolishness! He does not exist.' Mentally, an absolute refusal to believe in a 'God'."

This refusal stemmed from a sort of misunderstanding. "Up to the age of twenty-five or so, I knew of no other God than the God of religions, the God as men have made him, and I would not have him at any price. I denied his existence, but with the certainty that if such a God did exist, I detested him."

But the real God - the Divine —could no longer bear this estrangement from that rebellious Sweetness. "My return to the Divine came about through Theon, when I was first told, 'The Divine is within, there,'" Mother tapped her breast. "Then at once I felt, 'Yes, this is it.'"

Who was Theon, that mysterious person? How did Mirra come to know about him and his teaching?

It was from Louis M. Thémanlys, Matteo's college friend, that Mirra first heard about Theon and the Cosmic Philosophy.

Thémanlys was a writer, with several books to his credit. His wife, Claire, was also at home with a pen. Claire's brother, Jacques Blot, was an artist. Both

Page 15

the families lived in Courseulles, in Normandy. Situated about eighteen kilometres from Caen, where fierce fighting took place in 1944 between the Allied armies and the German forces of occupation, Courseulles is a resort town on the shores of the English Channel where the Seulles flows into it. It was on D-Day, 6 June 1944, that the Canadian Army landed in Normandy — Courseulles-sur-mer being the spot.

To the great rejoicing of the two families, the Théons often spent a part of the year at the residence of the Thémanlys.

It seems it was in a Parisian bookstore, Librairie Chacornac, Quai St. Michel, in the Quartier Latin — well-known for its students, and its old bookshops much frequented by those who take a keen interest in the science of the occult —that Louis first came across an issue of The Cosmic Review. Whereupon he sent a letter to Theon enclosing a nominal subscription to the Cosmic publications. Then he met the Théons on one of their visits to France. It was only in 1907 that Louis and Claire visited Tlemcen, in Algeria, where the Théons lived. The young couple stayed there for three months, from April to June. It was then that

Page 16

Madame Theon told them one day how, as soon as she first held Louis's letter in her hands, she had informed Theon about the role Louis was to assume.

Her eyes had penetrated the future, because Thémanlys really devoted his pen and speech to the furtherance of the Cosmic Philosophy. Thrice a week, and for a number of years, he spoke extempore on this Philosophy. The gatherings were held at Passy, N°54 Rue Nicolo, where the family lived. Passy of the 16^th arrondissement is a posh locality of Paris. It is studded with parks.

In 1977 Satprem took me with him to France. Very apt, I felt, for it was my first flight overseas and I was going to Mother's country of birth. I was excited at the prospect of seeing some of the things she had looked at, knowing at first hand some of the places she had known and told us about, and walking where she had walked. How very lucky I was! And my cup of happiness brimmed over when a relation of Satprem's and his great admirer, Madame Carmen Baron, welcomed us to her beautiful apartment in Paris. The Luxembourg Gardens —where Mirra had gone so often for her evening walks —are at a stone's throw from

Page 17

there. Was I thrilled!

One day, Satprem and I went to Passy to see another intimate friend of ours. We took the subway. It was my first ride in a metro and, had Satprem not pulled me away in time, I would have been squashed right there by the closing doors! Our friend, Y. L., showed us the Roland Garros stadium, where the greats of tennis fight for the French Open crown. The Pare-des-Princes nearby, with its football grounds and cycle-racing tracks, is a crowd-puller. The Hippodrome d'Auteuil must be mentioned, because we believe that that is where Mirra met her Red Indian friend, from Buffalo Bill's team, when she was eight or so. In addition, on the periphery of the locality lies the Bois de Boulogne where little Mirra went for walks with her father, her small hand tucked in the large fist of the Turk.

Well then, not surprisingly, like homing birds, the Agenda tapes had flown straight to the locale so much frequented by Mother. For it was in Y. L.'s flat that the complete set of the rescued magnetic tapes containing Mother's talks with Satprem — Mother's Agenda —was lodged. Our friend showed us how well

Page 18

she had kept the tapes after bringing them from India. But that is another story, and as fascinating as any thriller. I hope she will one day, soon, tell it all.

It seems likely that through Matteo, Mirra and Louis already knew each other and that Louis was aware of her thirst for true knowledge. In which case, Louis would not have lost much time in telling his friend's sister about Theon and his teaching. Now, Mother never told us when exactly that was; she always put it between 1902 and 1904. We are inclined to think it was late 1903 or even in the course of 1904. She did say once that her first contact with the inner Divine —through Théon's teaching—was established when she was around twenty-five. That is the only given pointer we have. Which again would indicate 1903 as the year when Mirra first heard about the inner Divine. And "I rushed headlong like a . . . like a cyclone."

Mother was telling Satprem one day about her body. "I was reared by an ascetic, a stoic; my mother was a woman like a bar of iron, you know ..." who had dinned into the ears of her two small children that "one is not on earth to have a good time . . . and the

Page 19

only satisfaction to be got out of life is in doing one's duty." Mother added appreciatively, "A splendid education, my child! Splendid. I am infinitely grateful to her.

"My body has never asked for fun or well-being or anything else. 'That's life,' it said, 'and you just have to take it as it is, that's all.' So that's why when I first met someone who told me it could be otherwise — I was already past twenty —I said, 'Oh, really? Is that so?'" Mother laughed. "And then when he told me all about Théon's teachings and the 'Cosmic Life' and about the inner God and a new world that would be a world of beauty and, at least, of peace and light . . . well, I rushed into it headlong."

After a moment she went on, "But even at the time I was told: 'It depends upon YOU alone, not upon circumstances —above all, don't blame circumstances. You must find it in yourself, the transformative element is within you. And you can do that wherever you are, even in a cell at the bottom of a hole.' The groundwork was already done, you see, since the body never asked for anything."

Soon Mirra discovered the Fount of Life. She

Page 20

"obtained a conscious and constant contact with the Divine Presence."

So that was done.

Mirra now sought a rational explanation to the mass of experiences she had had from her childhood. She found many in Théon's teaching, and could at last say, "Ah, I am not mad!"

As she became more interested in the Cosmic Movement she began to involve herself in it. How? Lectures or speeches? No. Not Mirra. Abstract theorizing held no appeal to her. She always liked to come to grips with matter. Her involvement, therefore, was practical: she took in her charge the publication of the Cosmic Philosophy's mouthpiece, the French periodical, La Revue Cosmique.

The Cosmic Review was a monthly. In it Theon expounded his philosophy, but the greater part was contributed by Madame Theon. "It was dictated in English by Théon's wife while she was in trance," said Mother to Pavitra and Satprem one day in 1960. In those days she met Satprem in Pavitra's office on the first floor. "And there was a woman there, she too English, who claimed to know French like a French-

Page 21

man. She would say, '/ never use a dictionary, there's no need of a dictionary.' And then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classical mistakes in translating the English words that should not be translated that way." Mother was referring to Miss Teresa, secretary and companion to the Théons. "Then that was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible."

Even a gap of almost sixty years had not dimmed Mother's memory the least bit. "There was this Thé-manlys, my brother's collegemate, who wrote books; but he was lazy-spirited and opposed to work! So then he passed this job on to me; for my part, it was impossible, you couldn't do a thing with it. But I attended to everything —I found the printer, corrected the proofs — the entire work, for a long time."

Sometime later Mirra did the translations as well. And she asked for clarifications from Theon. who promptly replied. Just for fun, here is an example. Posted from Tlemcen, the card was addressed to Madame Mirra Alfassa, c/o M. Thémanlys, Les Verveines, Courseulles sur Mer, Calvados, La France. It read,

csimile of a cover

'The Cosmic Review'

Page 23

20.7.05

Do not trouble to write about the name of the plant which will go by its latin & botanical known name.

Affely

Aïa A.

Mirra received this postcard on 24

Mother gave a rough outline of the magazine's contents. "They were stories, narratives — an initiation given under the guise of stories. It contained a lot of things, a lot. Madame Theon knew a lot of things. But it was presented in such a way that it was unreadable."

Mother smiled whimsically. "I also wrote a thing or two — experiences I had noted down. That's why I would like to get those issues back, because they were rather interesting. I related some of my visions to Madame Theon and she explained them to me. So I would put the vision's narrative and its explanation. Because the symbolism was there, it was readable and

Page 24

interesting." These visions appeared in The Cosmic Review from 1906 to 1908, under the title, 'A vision.' There were other articles also by her, but unsigned. Pavitra asked Mother, "What was this Chronicle

of Ki ?''

"Not Ki, but CHI, because he was the founder of China!" Mother revealed. "Those things were fantastic! The story was almost childish, you know, but it contained a world of knowledge. Madame Théon was an extraordinary occultist. That woman had incredible faculties, incredible."

Mirra's French rendering of the Chronicles of Chi was applauded by Theon himself. From Or an, in Algeria, he posted a card, addressed to Madame Mirra Alfassa, 46 Grande Rue, Bernières-sur-Mer, Calvados, La France.

Tlemcen, Algérie

August 25^th 1905

Your transcription of the "Chron of Chi" is full of life and of liveliness. Merci. The termination of the brochure is worthy of our mutual friend, and cannot fail to be of great use to the Cause we ALL love and serve

Page 25

TOGETHER. All blessing be (through your intermediary, child of mine) on those who love you. We shall meet ere long to sing the old English refrain —"Oh I that will be joyful"! Affectionately,

Aia Aziz (Theon)

Page 26

2

The Cosmic Tradition

They met 'ere long.'

By that time Mirra had read every available scrap of the Cosmic Philosophy. "Theon called it 'The Tradition'." She drank and she drank at this fount of knowledge. It seemed to her that she had long thirsted for something which was now being given to her in abundance. And she just could not get enough of it.

"You know," said Mother to Satprem, "the 'Cosmic' had quite an interesting action in my life. I was completely against 'God.' The European notion of God was utterly repulsive to me." She added picturesquely, "You see, the idea of God sitting placidly in his heaven, then creating the world, and next looking pleasurably at it, and later telling you, 'How well done it is!' 'Oh,' I said, 'I won't have that monster!'

Page 27

And naturally, at the same time, that prevented me from having any experience. But with the 'Cosmic Teaching' about the inner god — Théon's key idea was this: the inner god (Mother touched her breast), the one who is inside each of us —"brrf!" She made a gesture as if walls crumbled. "The experience was stunning. I am very grateful to him for it. That was the means; by following his instructions and seeking within my being, behind the solar plexus, I found. I found it, I had an experience ... an absolutely convincing experience.

"I had this experience before I came here. I had the experience before coming, before knowing Sri Aurobindo. So it was as though three-fourths of the work were done.... I didn't have the mental knowledge—my mental knowledge was nothing remarkable — but it's not necessary to the experience. If you are sincere, you get the experience without thinking —you DON'T need to think. But you have to be sincere."

What exactly was this Cosmic Tradition?

"An initiation given under the guise of stories," said Mother.

One day Satprem read aloud to Mother a few

Page 28

lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri (Book X, Canto 2).

"Not only is there hope for godheads pure; The violent and darkened deities Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find What the white gods had missed: they too are safe; A Mother's eyes are on them and her arms Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons."

He was on the point of putting a question to her, when Mother forestalled him.

"What did you want to know?" she said with a big smile. "What the white gods have missed?"

Mother laced her fingers together. "But I also remember that when I read the Tradition—before I met Sri Aurobindo ..." Leaving her sentence unfinished she gazed into space. "It was like a romantic novel, a romance, in a word quite an episodical story of the creation of the world, but how very evocative! That is where I got the first hint of the universal Mother's first four emanations, when the Lord delegated his creative power to the Mother. And it was identical with the ancient Indian tradition, but told almost like a nursery tale, anyone could understand it —it was an image. Like a movie picture, and very vivid."

Page 29

Many times Mother recounted the story of the Tradition, but each time with a slight variation, which depended on the subject she wanted to deal with and on her audience of the moment.

Right in the early fifties, a youngster wanted to know, "Where do gods come from?"

"There is a very ancient lore which narrates that," Mother readily replied. Then she addressed her brood, "I am going to tell it to you as it is told to children. That way you will understand."

We listened with rapt attention to her narrative.

"One day, 'God' decided to put himself forth, to objectify himself, in order to have the joy of knowing himself in detail. So, at first he emanated his Consciousness, instructing it to bring into being a universe. This Consciousness began by emanating four Beings, four individualities who really were wholly superior beings, of the highest Reality. These were: the Being of Consciousness, the Being of Love (or rather of Ananda), the Being of Life, and the Being of Light and Knowledge. But consciousness and light are the same thing. We have: Consciousness, Love and Ananda, Life, and Truth —that's the right word, Truth. And, of course,

Page 30

The joy of knowing himself .

they were supremely powerful Beings —you can well imagine! In this lore they are called the First Emanations, in other words the first formations. But each one became very much aware of its quality, its power, its capacity and its possibility, and at once forgot in its own way that it was only an emanation and an incarnation of the Supreme."

We sat up straighter. Listening to Mother was always full of the pleasure of the unexpected.

"So, this is what happened.

"When Light or Consciousness separated itself from the Divine Consciousness — that is, when it began to think itself as the divine consciousness and that there was nothing else than itself—suddenly it became darkness and unconsciousness.

"And when Life thought that the whole life was in itself and that there was no other life than its own, and that it was not at all dependent on the Supreme, then Life became death.

"And when Truth thought it contained the whole truth and that there was no other truth than itself, this Truth became falsehood.

"And when Love or Ananda was convinced that it

Page 33

itself was the supreme Ananda and that there was nothing else than itself and its bliss, it became suffering.

"That is how the world that ought to have been so beautiful became so ugly."

Our eyes were riveted on Mother's face.

"Then, when the Supreme Consciousness you may call her the Divine Mother, if you like - saw that, she was very much bothered, you see. She told herself, 'Really, it is not a success!' Then turning to the Divine, to God, the Supreme, she asked Him to come to her succour.

"She said, 'Look at what has happened. Now, what is to be done?'

"He said, 'Begin again. But contrive not to make such independent Beings! They must remain in contact with you, and, through you, with me.'"

Mother now replied to the youngster's question.

"Thus she created the gods who were quite docile, were not so conceited, and who began the creation of the world. But as the others had come before them, the gods encountered them at each step. Thus it is that the world changed into a ground of battle, of war, of strife, of suffering, of darkness and

Page 34

all the rest of the caboodle. And to make each new creation the gods had to fight with the others who had set out before them. The others had preceded them and had rushed into matter; they made all this disorder, and the gods had to repair all the disorder.

"There, that's where the gods came from. They are the Second Emanations."

Actually speaking, those original four rushing into matter had lost no time in peopling the world exponentially with their progenies. All of them thrive on conflict and have occupied every layer of the material consciousness. "Those four personalities," said Mother, "made innumerable emanations, they in turn made innumerable emanations, which made formations. Thus there are millions upon millions upon millions of them. And between them they got into a certain habit and have the logic of persevering in it; and they keep on not wanting any other rule than their own to govern. In India, they are called 'Asuras,' the beings of darkness. It is logic that makes them so. They began by going wrong, they continue."

However, she added happily, "Now, I must say that there are some that are changing their minds."

Page 35

"Mother," another young fellow asked, "the first four who changed, was it by chance or willfully?"

"No. What is chance?" Mother retorted.

"It is also narrated —so the story goes on, or rather begins —that the Divine wanted his creation to be a free creation. He wanted that whatever came out of him should be absolutely independent and free in order to be able to join him again in freedom and not under constraint. He didn't want them compelled to be faithful, compelled to be conscious, compelled to be obedient. It was imperative that they do it spontaneously, through knowledge and through conviction that it was much the better way. So, this world was created as a world of total freedom, of freedom of choice. Thus, at every moment, each one has the freedom of choice —but along with all the consequences. If you choose well, good; but if you choose badly, well, what happens will happen —that's what happened!"

We gulped.

"The Divine emanated himself, as though he were looking at himself—instead of being in a static state of inward concentration where everything is unmanifest, he projected it out of himself 'to see,' as

Page 36

though he wanted to see everything that was in him — in other words, infinite possibilities. So everything was possible. It happened like this, it could have happened differently. Besides, there's nothing to show that alongside our universe as it is, there do not exist other universes so different that they bear no relation with one another." Isn't there a hint of science fiction there? "It can very well be that our universe is not the sole exteriorization of the Divine. Ours is as we know it; there may be others in a much less deplorable state than this one!"

In this way, through her simple stories, Mother tried to acquaint her youthful audience with profound philosophical theories.

The audience was youthful not particularly agewise —some were fully grown men —but rather childish in its comprehension. It was this precisely that differentiated Satprem from the rest of us. She could talk to him about any and every subject under the sun —and even about unknown suns —and always meet with a response of comprehension. "In order to speak, I must have a receptive atmosphere."

Let us then be in that congenial company. After

Page 37

telling Satprem substantially the same story with slight variations, into which we need not go, Mother specified about the first four, "Instead of receiving indications for action from Him, that is, doing things in proper order, each one took off independently to do as it pleased. They were conscious of their own power, they could act and they acted. They forgot their Origin." It is due to this initial oblivion that they changed. "And instantly they were thrown headlong into what became Matter. According to Theon, the world as we know it is the result of that. And that was the Supreme himself in his first manifestation."

Therein lies the power, the force of the first burns, the Asuras.

"And once the world has become like that, become the vital world in all its darkness, and they from this vital world have created Matter, the supreme Mother sees," sparks of merriment danced in those great eyes, "the result of her first four emanations and she turns to the Supreme in a great entreaty:

" 'Now that this world is in such a dreadful state, it has to be saved! We cannot just leave it, can we? It has to be saved, the divine consciousness must

Page 38

be given back to it. What to do?'

"And the Supreme says, 'Thrust yourself into a new emanation of the ESSENCE of Love, down into the most material Matter.'

"That meant plunging into the earth —the earth had become a symbol and a representation of the whole drama. 'Plunge into Matter.' She plunged into Matter. And that became the primordial source of the Divine within material substance. And from there —as is so well described in Savitri— she begins to act as a leaven in Matter, raising it up from within."

Sri Aurobindo and Mother termed this essence of Divine Presence in matter, the 'psychic flame.'

"And at the same time that she plunged into the earth, there was a second series of emanations, the gods, to inhabit the intermediary zones between Sachchidananda and the earth. But these gods," her suppressed merriment came rippling out, "well, great care was taken to make them perfect, so they wouldn't give any trouble! Only they are a little," she crinkled her nose, "a little too perfect, aren't they? Yes, a bit too perfect —they never make mistakes, they always do exactly as they are told. In short, rather lacking in

Page 39

initiative." She half corrected herself, "They do have some, but ... I don't know how to put it. These gods have always seemed to me — not those described in the Puranas here, they are different . . . well, not so very different! But the way Théon presented them, they were much like a bunch of marshmallows! It's not that they had no power —they had a lot of power — but they lacked that psychic flame."

The Indian scriptures say that even the gods, if they want to progress, must take human birth. Otherwise they remain unchanged in their typal worlds.

Incidentally, the Puranic gods, though not as meek as a nun's hen, do tend to be ninnies. The slightest setback at the hands of the Asuras, and they run to Grandfather Brahma to be pulled out of their predicament.

Mother's reference to the Puranas may be puzzling to those unfamiliar with Indian mythology. There are eighteen major Puranas and as many minor ones. They were written at different epochs. The earliest one is attributed to Vyasa, the author of the epic Mahabharata, which would take us back several thousand years; a few were composed during the first

Page 40

millenium A.D. Etymologically, the word purana means ancient or old. To the discerning mind a deal of 'lost' Indian history is woven into the fabric of these books that cover such a vast period of time.

The Puranas give mythical accounts of creation. They expound the theory of spiritual evolution. Stating that the material world is not an integral totality, but only a grade in a gradation, they describe through parables and fables how the powers belonging to the whole and involved within its matter, descend into it "from the higher gradations of the system to set free their kindred movements here from the strictness of material limitation," as Sri Aurobindo put it. And the higher powers —the gods —always fall foul of the Asuras.

As for the stories from the Tradition, "They are not to be taken as concrete truths, they are simply first-rate images," Mother told Satprem. "Through them I really got hold, very concretely, of the truth of what caused the world's distortion.... The essence isn't evil, but the functioning is faulty.

"The words are so childish that if you tell this story to intelligent people, they look pityingly at you;

Page 41

but it gives such a concrete grasp of the problem! It helped me a lot."

A slow smile spread across her face. "It was written in English and I am the one who translated it into French —into horrid French, perfectly horrid, because I put in all the words Theon had dreamed up. Then again, what words! He made a detailed description of all the faculties latent in man, and it was remarkable —but with such barbaric words! You can make up new words in English and get away with it, but in French it's utterly ridiculous. And there I was, very conscientiously putting them all in! Yet in terms of experience, it was splendid. It really was an experience — it was the account of Madame Théon's experiences in exteriorization. She had learned to do what Theon taught me also —to speak while you are in the seventh heaven: the body goes on speaking, rather slowly, in a low voice, but it works quite well. She would speak and a friend of hers, another English woman who was their secretary —I think she knew shorthand —would note it all down as she went along. And afterwards it was made into stories, told as stories. It was all shown to Sri Aurobindo and it

Page 42

greatly interested him. He even adopted some of the words into his own terminology.

"The divisions and subdivisions of the being were described down to the minutest detail and with such perfect precision! I know, because I did the experience again, I did it on my own, without any preconceived ideas, the very same: going out of one body after the other, one body after the other, and so on twelve times, and my experience — apart from certain quite negligible differences, doubtless due to differences in the receiving brain —was exactly the same."

Page 43

3

Théon

They met.

It was in 1905. In autumn, it would seem, when the Théons were on a visit to France during October and November.

Surely Mirra waited that moment with an intense eagerness. She must have felt that she already knew him —through hearsay of course, but mainly through what she had read of his writings. Was he not the one who opened wide to her the gates of knowledge? Would he be, by chance, the 'Krishna' she saw in her dream-visions about a year ago?

"When I met him," Mother said, "I saw that he was a being of great power. He bore a certain likeness to Sri Aurobindo. Théon was rather tall, about the same height as Sri Aurobindo —not a tall man, of medium height —and lean, slim, with quite a similar

profile." Théon had a wide forehead, a moustache that mingled with his beard, and wavy, auburn hair that fell onto his shoulders; he had fine and sensitive hands.

However, Mirra, who had all the shades of vibrations at her fingertips, could not be taken in by Théon's great power. "But I saw, or rather I felt that Théon was not he whom I had seen in my vision, because when I met him he didn't have that vibration. Yet it was he who first taught me things, and I went and worked at Tlemcen two years in a row."

After a slight pause, she added, "But this other thing was always in the background, in my consciousness."

Mother told Satprem, "He was handsome. Have you seen his photo?"

Satprem shook his head.

"No? Oh, I must show it to you." It was some ten years later, when an exhibition of Mother's paintings and drawings was held (in 1970, I think), that we finally saw the sketch she had done of him.

"He was handsome. A man around sixty — between fifty and sixty."

Page 47

He normally "wore a long purple robe that wasn't at all like the dress in my vision."

His background? "He was European. He was either a Pole or a Russian, I am not sure. But the impression I got is that he was more certainly a Russian, of Jewish descent, and that he was forced to flee his country. He never said anything about this to anyone, it's only an impression.... He never said who he really was, or where he was born, or his age. Nothing."

All about him was shrouded in mystery. Even his name. "He had two assumed names. He had adopted an Arab name when he took refuge in Algeria — I don't know for what reason —after having worked with Blavatsky and founded an occult society in Egypt. After that he came to Algeria; and there he was first called 'Aia Aziz' —a word of Arabic root, meaning 'the beloved'; and then, when he began setting up his Cosmic Review and his 'Cosmic Group,' he called himself Max Théon, in other words, the Supreme God (!), the greatest God! And nobody knew him by any other names than these two: Aia Aziz or Max Théon."

But Mirra had picked up one reliable piece of information. "Théon was a Jew, although he never

Page 48

mentioned the fact. It was made known by the Tlemcen officials; when he arrived he had to tell them who he was. He never talked about it and had changed his name. They said he was of Jewish origin, but they never could say whether he was a Pole or a Russian. Or else, the person who told me never knew."

Understandably Mirra was more interested in Théon's teaching than in his antecedents. It was the Knowledge that he could give which mattered to her. And he gave. And she soaked it all up.

However, Matteo's collegemate, Louis Théman-lys, along with his wife Claire and son Pascal were able to dig up other stray bits of information on Théon's life before he became known in France. Thus a few gaps can be filled up. But it is the sleuthing of our friend Patrice Marot that unshrouded much of the mystery that surrounded Théon. Patrice's notes of his quest, which took him to two continents, make absorbing reading; for he had to find his way through the decades of dust that had settled on the trail of Théon.¹

¹ Jackie Semenoff, a relation of Claire's, deserves a big thank you for supplying us with some precise information.

Page 49

We, of course, need not go into all that, but will limit ourselves to what concerns Théon directly.

Théon was born on 5 August 1847, exactly one century before India's independence from the British rule.

Of his parentage we know practically nothing. But it appears that he frequently mentioned his mother to the exclusion of any other member of his family, including his father. This may well be due to the profound admiration he felt for her because she had chosen for him a life of consecration. This was symbolized by Théon's long hair, never once touched by any pair of scissors.

It is also on record that before he founded the Cosmic Movement, Max Théon was associated with the mysterious H. B. of L. (Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor or Light). In 1873, Théon, then just twenty-six, was made its Grand Master; the Scottish philosopher Peter Davidson was the Order's frontal Chief. Blavat-sky, Olcott, Barlet and many others were its members. But in 1877 Blavatsky and Olcott severed their relation with the H. B. of L. It is known that Blavatsky's first Master was the magus Paulos Métamon, whom she had

Page 50

met in Asia Minor in 1848 and again in Cairo in 1870. Métamon was either a Copt or a Chaldean. Many people, including Barlet, believed that "Dr. Max Théon was the son of 'the old Copt.'"

Much of the above is speculation, most of which can now be set at rest once for all. Our Patrice dug up Tlemcen's census of 1911, found in a register kept in the National Archives at Aix-en-Provence, France, Overseas section. This is how it is inscribed:

Saf-Saf road, Suburb of Tlemcen

Théon, Louis-Maximilien, born on: 5 th August 1847; at

Warsaw

Nationality: Austrian¹

Family Status: Head of the household, Widower

Profession: None

Max was exceptionally young when he mastered different occult lores and became proficient in occult-

¹ It may seem strange to the modern reader to see Théon, born in Warsaw, giving his nationality as Austrian. History books say that Poland has a chequered political history. In the last couple of centuries it was parcelled up by its three greedy and powerful neighbours, Austria, Russia and Prussia, each grabbing in turn what it could and when it could. The many Polish attempts at independence proved abortive. The uprisings were heavily repressed, which caused large-scale emigration to other Western countries.

Page 51

ism. He spoke several languages with ease, and was adept at many crafts. A diversity of subjects interested him —scientific or artistic or sociological. He could always hold his own against the experts in any line.

A rebel at heart he, like Mira Ismalun, abhorred limitation. Any limitation. With the vast knowledge at his command, he soon found out the limitations of the H. B. of L. At the time of Blavatsky's and Olcott's dissension, he too became a dissenter, resigned from his post of Grand Master and broke completely with the H. B. of L. in Egypt.

He left Egypt and went to England.

With his refinement, his aristocratic bearing, he became a much sought-after guest in London's high society. Very quickly he gained a reputation almost matching that of the Count of Saint-Germain —in the Court of Louis XV —who claimed to be several centuries old. Théon never made any such claims. But rumours about him flew around at a great pace. Some spoke of his earthly immortality, others said he was the son of a Russian Prince, and so on and so forth. Dr. Théon's enigmatic personality aroused everybody's curiosity, but he took good care never to satisfy it.

Page 52

From one person's gaze, however, he could not hide his real identity. She was an young English poetess. It was in one of the parties that he met her. His keen eyes noted her calm and luminous face. Their first handclasp was like thunder and lightning, revealing to them in a flash their deep-seated harmony of being.

We do not know when exactly Théon landed in England after leaving Egypt, but by May 1884 Max and Alma knew each other well enough to go to theatre together. Not in a twosome, though —the strict Victorian code of morals forbade it — they were chaperoned by Teresa.

Then, on 21 March 1885, Max and Alma were married.¹

The marriage between Louis Maximillian Bimstein, Doctor of Medicine,² and Mary Chrystine

¹ The certificate of their marriage, as well as other documentary evidence, in particular that of Madame Théon's death, was very kindly provided to us by Mr Christian Chanel, magistrate in Lyons, France, who is preparing a doctoral thesis on Max Théon and the Cosmic Philosophy.

² A few particulars given in the certificate, such as Théon's and Alma's ages, possibly too Théon's stated profession of 'Doctor of Medicine,' appear rather doubtful. In all likelihood, Théon disliked any inroads into his privacy and said whatever his fancy dictated on the spur of the moment.

Page 53

Woodroffe Ware, was solemnized at the Register Office, in the District of Westminster, County of Middlesex. One of the two witnesses was Augusta Rolfe, who is none other than the devoted Teresa.

Théon's father is listed as: Judes L. Bimstein, Rabbi.

Alma's father as: William J. Ware (deceased), Gentleman.

The three of them went to live in N°ll Belgrave Road, St. John's Wood, Marylebone, which was Alma's residence.

Page 54

It would seem that Alma and Teresa were friends from their convent days at Claydon, Suffolk. The latter remained a lifelong companion of the former.

Teresa, when she turned forty, in July 1885, was allowed a year's trial under Théon.

By and by, Théon began holding séances. Soon, however, the couple realized that England was not a place where they could pursue unhindered their exploration of the lost knowledge. So the next year they went to the Continent. It was on March 9, 1886, that the three crossed over to France and reached

Page 55

Paris. They spent a few days there sightseeing, before embarking on a tour of exploration. They soon found a house to live in. And in November — 14^th o be exact — Théon began his séances in France. But after several trials of living in one part of France or another, they realized their error: what they really needed was a change of continent. Therefore in December 1887, the Théons left France for Algiers. Three weeks later Teresa —to say nothing of the three dogs!—joined them in Oran. After several months' search they finally found a place in the suburbs of Tlemcen. They acquired, in Madame Théon's name, naturally, a large villa on a hillside with extensive grounds. It took them about one year to make the place livable. Thus it was that on May 1, 1889, they came to live in Zarif. It was to become their base. They lived there many years with their devoted English secretary, Miss Teresa.

"According to a legend, Tlemcen's origin goes back to a remote past. Moses visited it. Solomon stayed in it. Egyptian sorcerers, skilled in witchcraft, made it their chosen town."¹

¹ Oran-Tlemcen, Sud-Oranais (1902), by Commandant de Pimodan.

Page 56

The greatest spiritual sages in India have always been careful in selecting the site which was to become the SEAT of their attainment. Pavitra told me that the renowned French archeologist Jouveau-Dubreuil found evidence that it was on the exact spot where the great Rishi Agastya and his spouse Lopamudra had made their arduous endeavour of digging through to the "Sun dwelling in the darkness" that Sri Aurobindo and Mother established THEIR seat. Thus the work begun in the Vedic times saw its completion —and more — in this twentieth century.

Page 57

4

The Human Fathers

It was around the turn of the century that the Théons decided to found the Cosmic Movement.

The Cosmic Review — intended for the "study and re-establishment of the original Tradition" —was to become the Movement's mouthpiece. Its first editor was Charles Barlet¹; and Theon, under the name of Aia Aziz, was its Director.

Theon declared that his wife was the moving spirit behind this idea. Thus, it was thanks to Madame Theon that all the science of the occult that Theon had accumulated could be put into practice.

¹ F. Charles Barlet was the nom de plume of Albert Faucheux (1838-1921). Among many of his activities, Barlet was also the Director of the magazine L'Étoile d'Orient ('The Eastern Star'). Prof. Charles Barlet, Bachelor of Law, was President of the Eastern Esoteric Centre of France, member of several scientific societies and the author of a number of books on astrology, occultism, etc. He was a member, often a founding one, of numerous occult or esoteric groups and societies, both French and international.

Page 58

"He said he had received initiation in India," Mother disclosed to Satprem. "He knew a little Sanskrit, and was thoroughly versed in the Rig-Veda. Well then, in some way, he developed a tradition which he called the 'Cosmic Tradition.' He claimed to have received it —I don't know how —from a tradition anterior to that of the Cabala and the Vedas."

Mother herself was deeply interested in the Vedas and made a thorough study of Sri Aurobindo's The Secret of the Veda and the many Vedic hymns he had translated.

One day, from my laboratory, I saw Mother going towards Pavitra's office to give Satprem one of the regular interviews. Often, on her way to him, she would stop to give me a smile or a pat. Not that day. She seemed intent on some thought, her eyes fixed on the flowers she held in her hand. Satprem had barely closed the passage door behind her when she began, "I have brought you a whole discourse!"

Handing him a flower, she said : "First, the goal of the Vedas —Immortality. That was their goal —the Truth that led to Immortality. Immortality was their ambition. Only I don't think it was physical immortality.

Page 59

But that's not certain, because they do speak of the 'forefathers' and this refers to the initiatory tradition preceding the Vedas and preceding the Cabala; and there they speak of immortality on earth, the earth transformed —Sri Aurobindo's idea."

This is what Sri Aurobindo wrote: "I had already seen that the central idea of the Vedic Rishis was the transition of the human soul from a state of death to a state of immortality by the exchange of the Falsehood for the Truth, of divided and limited being for integrality and infinity.... Man rises beyond the two firmaments, rodasi, Heaven and Earth, mind and body, to the infinity of the Truth, and so to the divine Bliss. This is the 'great passage' discovered by the Ancestors, the ancient Rishis."

Mother mulled over this question. "The text of the Vedas makes it plain, for example, that the 'forefathers' they remembered were men who had realized immortality upon earth." She added in an aside, "Who knows, they may still be alive! They had the same concept of things as Sri Aurobindo."

When Sri Aurobindo studied the Vedas in the original Sanskrit, he found that many of his own

Page 60

experiences tallied with those described in them. "My first contact with Vedic thought," he wrote in the Arya, "came indirectly while pursuing certain lines of self-development in the way of Indian Yoga, which, without my knowing it, were spontaneously converging towards the ancient and now unfrequented paths followed by our forefathers." As he began to unravel the knot of the Vedic imagery, he found "positive references to the human Fathers who first discovered the Light and possessed the Thought and the Word and travelled to the secret worlds of the luminous Bliss." Further studies of the more important passages, in which this great discovery of the human forefathers is hymned, made him find there "the summary of that great hope which the Vedic mystics held ever before their eyes; that journey, that victory is the ancient, primal achievement set as a type of the luminous Ancestors for the mortality that was to come after them. It was the conquest of the powers of the circumscribing Night, Vritras, Sambaras and Valas, the Titans, Giants, Pythons, subconscient Powers who hold the light and the force in themselves, in their cities of darkness and illusion, but can neither use it

Page 61

aright nor will give it up to man, the mental being. Their ignorance, evil and limitation have not merely to be cut away from us, but broken up and into and made to yield up the secret of light and good and infinity. Out of this death that immortality has to be conquered. Pent up behind this ignorance is a secret knowledge and a great light of truth; prisoned by this evil is an infinite content of good; in this limiting death is the seed of a boundless immortality. Vala, for example, is Vala of the radiances, his body is made of the light, his hole or cave is a city full of treasures; that body has to be broken up, that city rent open, those treasures seized. This is the work set for humanity and the Ancestors have done it for the race that the way may be known and the goal reached by the same means and through the same companionship with the gods of Light. At the beginning of all human traditions there is this ancient memory. It is Indra and the serpent Vritra, it is Apollo and the Python, it is Thor and the Giants, Sigurd and Fafner, it is the mutually opposing gods of the Celtic mythology; but only in the Veda do we find the key to this imagery which conceals the hope or the

Page 62

wisdom of a prehistoric humanity."¹

Mother continued. "The other tradition, which Theon said was the origin of Cabala — he said both the Cabala and the Vedas originated from it —also held the same concept of divine life and a divine world as Sri Aurobindo: that the summit of evolution would be the divinization of everything objectified, along with an unbroken progression from that moment on. As things are now, we go forward and backward, again forward and backward. But then the backward movement won't be necessary — there will be a continuous ascent. This conception was held in that ancient tradition." She added as an afterthought, "Sri Aurobindo hadn't yet written anything when I met Theon, who told me very clearly about it. Theon had written all kinds of things —not philosophy, it was all stories, fantastic stories! Yet this same knowledge was behind them. And when asked about the source of this knowledge, he would say that it antedated both the Cabala and the Vedas —he was well-versed in the Rig-Veda."

¹ The Secret of the Veda.

Page 65

5

Pralaya

"I was taught the history of occult traditions by Theon," said Mother.

In the Cosmic Tradition, as developed by him, "there were many things —Madame Theon was the clairvoyant and it was she who got the visions, she was excellent—but many things, which I myself had seen and known before meeting them, were then corroborated."

One such confirmation pertained to the original Tradition which had separated into two branches, the Vedic and the Cabalistic. "I have memories-these are always lived things for me — very clear memories, very precise, of a time which was assuredly MUCH prior to the Vedic times and to the Cabalistic or the Chaldean traditions."

Mother's eyes seemed to be turning inwards seeing those antediluvian days.

Page 66

"So personally, I am convinced that there was, in fact, a Tradition prior to these two traditions, and which contained a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. For a fact, there is a similitude in the experiences. When I came here and expressed to Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from an occult standpoint, he always told me that they were in conformity with the Vedic tradition. As for certain occult practices, he told me that they were fully Tantric. At that time I knew nothing, absolutely nothing of the Veda or the Tantra."¹

All the different traditions treat the common theme of the creation and its destruction. "The traditions tell you that a universe is created, then it is withdrawn into pralaya, then a new one comes."

'Pralaya' is an Indian term meaning universal dissolution —the apocalypse. The Indian Scriptures say that the universe is an unfoldment (Creation) from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous (Distortion) and back to the homogeneous again (Pralaya or Dissolution).

¹ The Tantras are the manuals not only of Hindu worship and rituals, but of its occultism.

Page 67

Interestingly, ages ago, there in Central America, the Mayan civilization had arrived at a similar idea. Like the Indians the Mayans too believed in the cycles of creation and destruction; according to them four earths have already been destroyed and the present one will suffer the same fate one day. Another conception they had was that there are nine layers below the earth and thirteen above it. I take it to mean that 'man' has emerged but recently upon earth —an idea which rejoins Théon's, "Man has just begun to get out of its swaddling-clothes and away from the society of the bullock and the ass."

Traditionally, however, a Creation consists of four cycles, each again comprising four 'yugas' or ages. Between two yugas there is a twilight period. A cycle starts with Truth in its fullness, the Satya Yuga or the Age of Gold. The Treta comes next, when the degradation has begun and the age has lost one third of the Truth. It is followed by Dwapara, when Truth and Falsehood hold equal sway to begin with, but Truth continues to lose ground. The Kali, the Iron Age, throttles the remaining Truth, and the cycle is closed. The increasing twilight is finally a total

Page 68

darkness. Darkness strangles earth's breast. It is stark night. Man's mind has become the handmaiden of his lowest instincts. Man is demented. It is the time of 'little bodies unclean,' as says the Vishnu Purana.¹ The creation is rotted to its core. Time for the deliverance. Time for pralaya. Out of the apocalypse, phoenix-like, a new creation emerges.

The Puranas state that the duration of each yuga is in direct proportion to the diminishing Truth.² As a result, man's life-span diminishes also. In addition, they say that with the declining Truth man's stature too declines. Man's height, which is fourteen cubits in Treta, is reduced to seven cubits in Dwapara, and goes down to four and a half cubits in Kali. Sri Aurobindo

¹ The Vishnu Purana, which was recorded in about the third century A.D., says many other interesting things about the Kali Yuga: "In the Kali Yuga, the kings will not take care of their subjects, and yet they will steal riches from their subjects on the pretext of collecting taxes. People will be haunted by famine, taxes and sickness. . . . The clouds will bring forth very little water and seeds will grow poorly . . . and every caste will become almost like the Shudra [labourers]. . . . But notwithstanding all these defects, the great virtue of the Kali Yuga is that the spiritual progress man accomplishes with great, ascetic efforts in the Satya Yuga he can accomplish with very little effort in the Kali Yuga."

² Some Puranas put the durations respectively as 4800, 3600, 2400, 3600, 2400 and 1200 years of the gods. One god-year = 360 human years.

Page 69

portrays this beautifully and the narrative sparkles with his underlying humour.

"There is a story about Revati," Sri Aurobindo said one evening to his disciples. "Her father, King Revat, wanted to get her married and wished to consult Brahma, the Creator, about it." King Revat was the king of Kushasthali on the Arabian Sea; it is over its ruins that in another age Krishna built his Dwaraka. Revat lived in Treta Yuga when men mingled freely with gods. Princess Revati accompanied her father. "So he went to the Brahmaloka and he was entertained with a song by an Apsara. After the song was over Brahma asked about the object of his visit. Revat asked about his daughter's marriage and suggested certain names. Brahma said all those people had already died! While he was listening to the song some ten thousand human years had passed and all was changed! The father asked Brahma what was to be done. He said, 'Well, Krishna and Balaram and others have gone down to humanity, you may go and give your daughter to Balaram.'

"So, Revati was married to Balaram. When she came to Balaram after marriage, he looked up to her

Page 70

as she was very much taller than himself. He said to himself, 'How am I to manage this?'

"He then did one thing; he took his plough and applied it to her shoulder and then pressed down with great force till she was brought down to his size." Sri Aurobindo concluded his story, "And then they lived happily ever after!"

The Indian lore gives a detailed description of the universal dissolution. Briefly, the signs announcing a pralaya are as follows. At first, a prolonged period of acute drought sets in; all the trees and shrubs, all vegetation is destroyed. The Sun becomes sevenfold and rides seven chariots. The seven suns spread out in their rays drinking up the waters of the oceans, burning away the entire earth, together with its mountains and seas and continents. The separately burning fires come closer and closer until they become one single fire. Its flames consume the universe, consume the four worlds,¹ consume all creation. The earth looks like an iron fireball. That is when, issuing from the solar ring, nets of clouds cover the skies. Awesome

¹ Earth, heaven, nether and mid-air.

Page 71

are these varicoloured clouds. At each instant their breasts are torn asunder by blinding flashes of lightning and split by deafening crashes of thunder. But there are no ears to hear, no eyes to see. The old creation is dissolved. To begin anew? Under new skies? Under what stars? Then like elephant trunks, the clouds spout torrents of water for ages of ages. The apocalyptic fire is finally extinguished. The earth looks like 'the world of waters wild.'

"You see," Mother explained to Satprem, "according to Theon, the world was created and destroyed — creation and pralaya—six times. And each time a particular attribute was manifested. But as this attribute could not fulfil itself, the world was 'swallowed up' again. Well then, we are the seventh time, and the attribute is Equilibrium."

Actually speaking, "he had enumerated all the successively manifested aspects. And what a logical sequence it was!" Mother said with unstinted appreciation. "Extraordinary. I have kept it somewhere, don't remember where."

Theon had gone on to develop the idea after naming them. "Turn by turn, the seven attributes of

Page 72

"I am Destruction"

the manifestation organized the world. The organization of this seventh period is noted down in the first chapter of the Genesis, whose masterly succinctness contains an ocean of knowledge. The seven days of the so-called creation stretch over immense epochs," he said. "Creation is meaningless, and the word 'created' — brought out of nothing —was never written in these monuments of thought. It is a matter of forming, of bringing order out of the primeval chaos, and this work belongs to Elohim, the divine Formator, a work man must help, pursue, accomplish."

Théon seems to be echoing an ancient Indian idea. For, "The Indian Scripture affirms in its doctrine that there is no such thing as an absolutely first creation, the present universe being but one of a series of worlds which are past and are yet to be."¹

However, an interesting point emerges which is perhaps applicable to all early Scriptures. To our modern way of thinking, they appear obscure and unintelligible. But, "The incoherencies of the Vedic texts," wrote Sri Aurobindo, "exist in appearance only,

¹ The Serpent Power, by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe).

Page 75

because the real thread of the sense is to be found in an inner meaning." That thread found, "the expression of the hymns becomes just and precise and sins rather by economy of phrase than by excess, by over-pregnancy rather than by poverty of sense."¹ The Mystics shrouded their thought in the veil of concrete myth and poetic figures, because they knew that the True Knowledge was unfit, perhaps even dangerous to the ordinary human mind, or in any case liable to perversion and misuse, if revealed to the vulgar and unpurified spirit.

At- all events, we have six creations and six creations behind us. "We are in the seventh, the last," said Mother. "The world will find a new equilibrium — a superior equilibrium —not static, but progressive. In other words, there will be an unlimited progress in equilibrium and harmony."

It was several years later, when describing to Satprem an experience she had just had, that Mother remarked, "And I have understood why Theon said that we are in the days of 'Equilibrium.' It means that

¹ The Secret of the Veda.

Page 76

when there is equilibrium between all these innumerable points of consciousness and their opposites, the central Consciousness is found."

Mother, whose consciousness was one with the central Consciousness, and indwelled equally the innumerable points of consciousness and their opposites — "My centre is everywhere. Be very careful," she once cautioned Satprem— could easily recall the memories of previous pralayas. "In the subconscient, there is the memory of previous pralayas. Well, it's this memory that always gives you the impression that everything is going to be dissolved, everything is going to crumble." She considered the problem, "But looking at it in the true light, it can only be a lovelier manifestation! Theon told me this was the seventh and the last. I told Sri Aurobindo what Theon said. Sri Aurobindo concurred, for he said, 'This one will see the transformation towards the Supermind.'"

Sri Aurobindo always gives us hope. "The Iron Age prepares the Age of Gold," he said. His portrayal of the present and the future is both luminous and crystalline.

Page 77

"It comes at last, the day foreseen of old,

What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed, Vision and vain imagination deemed,

The City of delight, the Age of Gold.

The Iron Age is ended. Only now

The last fierce spasm of the dying past

Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed

Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow."¹

¹ In the Moonlight.

Page 78

6

The Earthly Paradise

While 'the last fierce spasm of the dying past' is shaking the nations, let us take a glance backward at Earth's maidenhood. And for that our best recourse is Mother.

Mother, who had lived everywhere and in all times, had an assortment of inscribed tablets in her Memory's halls. Everything there was well documented and docketed. No cobwebs hung in any corner or recess where the tablets were neatly stacked. And there we find one tablet, untouched by time, which pertains to the earthly Paradise.

One morning in 1961, Satprem asked, "Is it true, Mother, that an earthly Paradise existed?"

"From a historical viewpoint," she replied, "not psychological but historical, if I take stand on the grounds of my memory . . . Only, I can't prove it —

Page 79

nothing can be proved, and I don't think any truly historical proof has come down to us, or, at any rate, it hasn't been found yet. But going by my memories ..." Mother folded her hands on her lap, shut her eyes and went in search of her memories. "Certainly, at one period of the earth's history, there was a kind of 'earthly Paradise,' in the sense that life then was perfectly harmonious and perfectly natural. I mean, the manifestation of Mind was in accord —was STILL in complete accord —and in total harmony with the ascending march of Nature, without any perversion or deformation. That was the first stage of Mind's manifestation in material forms."

She unlocked the doors of the Halls and began reading aloud from the inscriptions.

"Because this much I know," Mother was now sure of her ground, "I know for having lived it, that when the passage from animal to man —a very obscure , passage, but of which more or less convincing traces have been found —was adequate, when the result was plastic enough, there was a Descent, there was a mental descent of human creation. They were beings... it was a double descent, that was precisely its peculiarity,

Page 80

double —male and female —it wasn't one single being, it was two who descended. Those beings lived an animal life in Nature, but with a mental consciousness, without, however, any disaccord with the general harmony. All the memories are perfectly clear about a spontaneous animal life, absolutely natural, lived in Nature. A marvellously beautiful Nature, strangely similar to the nature in Ceylon and in tropical countries —water, trees, fruits, flowers. . .

She seemed to be listening to the music of a great orchestra.

"That spontaneous, natural and harmonious life — very harmonious —was extremely beautiful, luminous and easy! A harmonious rhythm in Nature. In short, a luminous animality."

Mother's relationship with Nature is of old standing, it seems!

"That's how we began."

How well she remembered that beginning!

"I still see it, the image is still fixed in the memory. It had nothing to do with mental civilization and development. It was a blossoming of force, of beauty in a spontaneous and NATURAL life, like animals

Page 81

life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power greatly exceeding what we now have. In point of fact, with a power over all surrounding Nature, over animal and vegetal and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter which men don't have —they need intermediaries, material instruments, while that was direct. And it was not thought, not reasoning, but spontaneous." Mother made a gesture to indicate the will's direct r

"That life was, yes, a truly superior life in a natural setting, and of such an extraordinary beauty and harmony! But I don't have the feeling that it was

—how to express it?—something known. And no idea at all that there were other beings upon earth and you had to mind them, or 'demonstrate' to them; nothing of the sort, absolutely nothing of mental life, nothing. A life like . . . like a pretty plant or a fine animal, but with an inherent knowledge of things, fully spontaneous and effortless — an effortless life, purely spontaneous. I don't even have the impression that there was any question about eating. I don't remember it. But the point was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty

—there were flowers, water, there were trees, animals,

Page 82

and everything was friendly, spontaneously so. And no problems! There were no problems to be solved, nothing at all —one lived!"

She who carried an incredible burden of problems, sighed.

"Certainly an uncomplicated life."

She sat deep in thought for several minutes. Then she said, "But it's far, far away in other times. For there wasn't the least bit of sensation that one had sprouted from below. One had as though fallen there, simply, to amuse oneself."

The faraway look in her eyes faded slowly. "It must have been before the first man produced by Nature. Not after. Before."

Traditions say that the first human pair materialized through an occult process. "That is to say, beings belonging to higher worlds built or formed a body of physical matter by a process of concentration and materialization; it wasn't that the lower species progressively brought forth a body which was the first human body."

Mother with her spiritual and occult knowledge was in a good position to discount, or rather rectify one

Page 83

current theory that the form precedes the consciousness and permits it to manifest. "It is absolutely certain that the conception precedes the manifestation and expression. And all those who have had a direct contact with the past, had the memory of a kind of human prototype — far superior to the present humanity —who came on earth as an example and a promise of what humanity will be like when it reaches its acme."

Mother switched the focus to another point on the canvas. "How long did it last? It's hard to say. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural surroundings, the climate to the needs of the body, the body to the demands of climate."

Mother wondered again, "How long did that period last? I am unable to say. Because I recollect also an almost immortal life. It seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the disintegration of forms became necessary for progress."

Are we then doomed for ever and a day to this rotten system formed by that 'accident'? Perhaps not. Sri Aurobindo and Mother say different. "Basically," she said, "when a body will be formed as the result of

Page 84

an ideal and an increasing development, a body with enough stuff and possibilities, enough potentialities, there is a good chance that an abrupt Descent by a supramental form will take place, just as happened with the human form."

In a very short time Mirra was to see this future form. But that will come in its own place.

Her eyes fell on a brilliant crimson canna in a vase. I often arranged a vase of flowers on Mother's interview days with Satprem. "Ah, there were many flowers just like this one in the landscape of that earthly Paradise —red, and so beautiful!"

She leaned back in her chair, placed her fingertips together and closed her eyes. "I have a recollection of that life, for I relived it when I first became conscious of the life of the entire earth. But I can't say how long it lasted or what area it covered —I don't know. I only remember the condition at the time, the state of being, how the material Nature was, and how the human form and human consciousness were; and also this type of harmony with all the other elements of the earth. There was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use Nature's things, the qualities of

Page 85

plants, fruits, and all that vegetal nature could offer. And no aggressiveness, no fear, no contrariety or friction, and NO

"It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop FOR and in itself, that ALL complications, all deformations began. So much so that this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis were similar to the Vedas in that each letter was the symbol of a knowledge; it was a pictorial resume of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictorial resume of the knowledge of its time. But additionally, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth —the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human form —was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that ..."

She left her sentence in mid-air to again scrutinize the landscape. "And where did it take place?. . . From certain impressions, but these are only impressions, it would seem that it was in the vicinity of

Page 86

either this side of Ceylon and India or the other side, I don't exactly know." Mother waved her arm towards the Indian Ocean, to indicate either west of Sri Lanka and India or to the east between Sri Lanka and Java. "Although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been engulfed by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I can't give precise, purely material details. Did it last for centuries, did it. . . ? I don't know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasn't curious to look at the details —one is in another frame of mind where there is no curiosity about material details; all things turn into psychological facts. The forms were human. But I can't say I remember . . . for instance, if I were asked whether or not there were nails at their fingertips, I wouldn't know! It was very supple and very luminous. At any rate, the forms were humanlike. But it was ... it was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupations with time and place."

She mused for a while. "Repeatedly, under different circumstances, and no few times, a similar

Page 87

memory came back to me —not exactly the same scene and the same images, no. Because it wasn't something I was viewing but a LIFE I was living. During a certain period, by day or by night, in a particular state of trance, I was rediscovering a life I had lived. And I was fully aware that that life was the flowering of the human form on earth —the first human forms able to incarnate the divine Being from above. This was the first time I could manifest in a particular terrestrial form, an individual form —not a general life but an individual form —that is to say, the junction between the higher Being and the lower being was made for the first time, through the mentalization of this material substance. I have lived that several times, and always in a similar setting and with quite a similar feeling of SUCH joyous simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions. There was nothing of all that, absolutely nothing! It was the blossoming of a joy of life —nothing but that — in a universal love and harmony; flowers, minerals, animals, all got along together perfectly."

Verily, as Sri Aurobindo addressed her, the young maiden was the

Page 88

"Mystic Miracle, daughter of Delight,

Life, thou ecstasy ..."

"It's only a LONG time afterwards that things began to go wrong," stated Mother, "long after —but this is a personal impression —probably because certain mental crystallizations were necessary, inevitable for the general evolution, so that the mind might prepare itself to move on to something else. That was when . . . ugh, it seems like a fall into a pit —into ugliness, darkness! Everything became so dark, so ugly, so difficult, so painful. Really . . . really the sense of a fall, a brutal fall, oh!" Mother swiftly brought down her arm to show a rapid fall.

"For the earth it probably happened like that, all at once; a sort of ascent, then the fall. But the earth is a tiny concentration. Universally, it's something else."

She lapsed into silence, then broke it to disclose: "The recollection of those times is preserved somewhere in the terrestrial memory, in the region where all the memories of the earth are inscribed." She also indicated that there are people who can make contact with this region.

Page 89

After pondering some more, she said: "Theon also used to say that man was born perfect, but had taken a tumble. Evidently, these things can always be explained symbolically. Take the explanation of man's 'exile' from Paradise, Theon explained it like this: When the Being, the hostile Being, assumed the status of the Supreme Lord vis-á-vis the terrestrial realization, it wasn't to his liking that humanity should progress mentally, thus gaining a knowledge which would enable it to stop obeying him! That is Théon's occult explanation."

"And what does the serpent represent physically?" Satprem asked, thinking no doubt of the original sin!

"Why," exclaimed Mother, "it is the vibration of evolution!"

"I don't mean symbolically," he explained, "but physically, materially —the animal."

"It's a tremendous concentration of vitality," she replied. "Energy —a progressive energy, an energy of motion."

"But why does the animal always give us this evil feeling?" he asked.

"Christians say it is the spirit of evil," she

Page 90

answered. "But all this is mere incomprehension.

"Theon always told me that the true interpretation of the biblical story —about Paradise and the serpent — was that man wanted to pass from the state of animal divinity, like the animals, to the state of conscious divinity, through a mental development. And this is what is meant symbolically when one says that they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge."

Does anybody know whether the apple from the Tree of Knowledge the serpent gave to Eve and the apple Newton saw fall, were not one and the same?

"The Tree of Knowledge," Mother said to Satprem, "symbolizes this kind of knowledge —no longer divine, you follow; the material knowledge that resulted from the sense of division is what began to spoil everything. And Sri Aurobindo fully agreed with this. He used to tell me the same thing: that the mental evolutionary power is what led man to knowledge, a knowledge of division. Besides, it's a fact that with the sense of Good and Evil, man became conscious of himself. Naturally this spoiled everything and he couldn't stay; it was his own consciousness that exiled him from Paradise. He could no longer stay."

Page 91

As Satprem sat listening to her, spellbound, Mother went on. "As for the serpent — Theon always said that it was irised, meaning that it had all the colours of the prism —it was not at all the spirit of evil; it was the power of evolution, evolution's force and power. And naturally enough, it's this evolutionary power that made them taste the fruit of knowledge." Which infuriated Jehovah. "Because it enabled man to become godlike by the power of an evolution of consciousness. That's why he drove them away from Paradise."

"Was man then banished by Jehovah or by his own consciousness?" asked a perplexed Satprem.

"Beg pardon! Theon always maintained that the 'Serpent' wasn't at all Satan, but the symbol of evolution—Theon was wholly pro-evolution —evolution in a spiral; and the earthly Paradise, on the contrary, was under the domination of Jehovah, the great Asura who claimed to be unique —who wanted to be the only God. For Theon, there is no one and only God, there is the Unthinkable. It's not a 'God'."

Then Mother said in a slow thoughtful voice, "But this stems from his Jewish background, it seems to me.

Page 92

"And for the Jews, it's the Unthinkable, whose name must not be uttered. It is uttered only once a year, on the Day of Atonement- I think that's what it's called. The word is Yahveh, and should not be uttered. The prayers speak of 'Elohim,' and the Hebrew word Elohim is plural, meaning the invisible lords.' So, for Theon, there was no one and only God. but solely the Unthinkable Formless; and all the invisible beings who claimed to be one and only gods were Asuras."

Page 93

7

Judaism

What exactly did Mother mean by Théon's 'Jewish background? To understand it in some measure let us refresh our memory about Judaism.

Judaism is one of the oldest extant religions of mankind. The history of the Jews is one of strife and persecution. Judaism's main persecutors have been its two daughters: Christianity and Mohammedanism. These quarrelsome sisters do not forget to equally quarrel among themselves.

Concerning the persecution of the Jews, Sri Aurobindo spoke of a "Cabalistic prophecy," according to which "when the Jews will be persecuted and driven to Jerusalem, then the Golden Age shall come."

He also pointed out that "the contribution of the Jews towards the world's progress in every branch is remarkable." Indeed the Jewish race has produced

Page 94

not only prophets like Elijah or philosophers like Spinoza (1632-77), but also the greatest of our modern scientists, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), born one year after Mirra. Besides, my acquaintances of that race are all people of refinement.

Like the Hindu Puranas, the old Hebrew books such as the Talmud are full of parables and allegories. Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, similarly gives the account of the Creation, of the Deluge; and it has familiarized us with the story of Adam and Eve, and the cause of their fall from Paradise.

Noah was the tenth male descendant from Adam and the grandson of Methuselah — the grand old man who is said to have lived 969 years! The Great Flood, that historical cataclysm, occurred during Noah's time. He had received the divine command to build an Ark, in which he and his family and all animals in pairs escaped the Deluge - a striking similarity with the Indian Manu. Historians set the date somewhere around 3000 B.C. for this Deluge, which washed away the Indus Valley civilization and marked a break in the Mesopotamian.

We do not know how many marvellous civiliza-

Page 95

tions thus disappeared suddenly, leaving unrecorded in history their artistic achievements, their social and political organizations. And even their scientific achievements, as in the case of the lost Atlantis. History is full of shadows and lacunae, and maybe the sole traces left are "the most primitive races, who appear so very akin to animals that one wonders if there really is any difference!" as Mother said. A great big black hole gapes at us. Curiously enough, she even said, "We had wonderful civilizations like those that left a sort of occult memory, for example, of a continent joining India to Africa and of which no traces remain . . . unless some human races are the remnants of that civilization."

We said 'curiously enough' because was Mother referring to Lemuria or to Gondwanaland? But the megacontinent Gondwanaland, which, according to the theory of continental drift, once included Australia, India, Africa, South America and Antartica, drifted apart in the Jurassic (mid-Mesozoic) or some 180 million years ago; while the separation of peninsular India from Southern Africa, rifting Lemuria, an elongated land mass that formerly occupied the Indo-Madagascan

Page 96

area, is supposed to have occurred early in the Tertiary, which, say geologists, began 65 million years ago. In any case, they also say that 'man' appeared on earth only in the early Quaternary, that is, two or three million years ago.¹ So!!! Who really knows what happened? And when ? The paleontologists digging up fossils and taking their time about it? Or the occultists who are able to establish a direct contact with the region where earth's memories are recorded? We do not know. Will —can — some earth scientists enlighten us?

During our long digression the Flood waters must have receded. Let us then see how the Semitic peoples were faring in West Asia.

After the Deluge, many nomadic tribes roamed the West Asia region. Abram, of an Aramaean nomadic

¹ And 'modern man,' according to archeologists, is supposed to have appeared some 40.000 years ago, which leaves very little time for the 'wonderful civilizations' mentioned by Mother or the 'previous cycle of civilisation' of which Sri Aurobindo saw a vestige in the first, so-called 'primitive' stage of our own cycle. However, recent archeological findings in Israel (reported in February 1988 in the science journal Nature) seem to indicate that the 'age' of modern man will have to be revised to about 100,000 years. This is still hardly enough, but archeology being itself relatively new-born, we can safely predict that it will go on pushing the date of modern man's appearance further back into the past.

Page 97

family, became its head on the death of his father. From Ur, the Chaldean capital, he led his kinsmen to the land of Canaan, Palestine. Coming as they did from the other side of the Euphrates, Abram and his household became known as 'Hebrews,' from a root meaning 'the other side.'

The Patriarch's name, Abram, was changed on his circumcision to Abraham, 'the father of many.' His grandson Jacob, after an experience of wrestling with an angel, was renamed 'Israel,' he who wrestles with God. Ultimately the descendants of the Abra-hamic family came to be known by this name. It was Jacob who was the progenitor of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Jacob's immediate descendants migrated to Egypt, where they fell on bad days. How Moses led the Exodus of the enslaved Hebrew tribes out of Egypt,¹ how he welded the various tribes into a confederation during their forty years of wandering, receiving on the

¹ The Exodus is supposed to have begun in 1447 B.C., which would make Moses a contemporary of Sri Krishna. And peculiarly enough, just when Krishna led the exodus of his Yadava tribe from Mathura to Dwaraka, seemingly Moses did the same with the Jews in the Middle East.

Page 98

way the Ten Commandments on top of Mount Sinai —"And to think Moses climbed up there to hear that banality!" exclaimed Mother— how Joshua completed Moses' task of reaching the Promised Land, is doubtless among the best adventure stories to be found in the Old Testament. But the arrival in the Promised Land was by no means the end of the Israelites' tormented history, for they had to contend for long with hostile peoples and conditions. This eventually compelled the Twelve Tribes —ruled so far by 'judges' —to set up monarchy (around 1025 B.C.). The first chosen king, Saul, was followed by David and his son, Solomon. It was David who conquered Jerusalem and made it the national capital. And it was Solomon who built the first Temple there during his forty years' reign (971-931 B.C.). That glorious period was short-lived. For upon Solomon's death ten tribes seceded, formed the Kingdom of Israel which was conquered by the Assyrians (in 722 B.C.), and lost their identity. They are counted as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The other two formed the kingdom of Judah, which was conquered by the Chaldeans (in 586 B.C.) who started the Diaspora —the dispersion of the Jews from Palestine —which the

Page 99

Romans completed in the first century A.D.

The Hebrews were on the road again. They were to be hounded from place to place, fugitives from the very countries they had enriched. Theon too had to flee his native country as we have already seen.

Left with perhaps too little time for art and science, the Hebrew genius found its expression best in its philosophy and literature. The Old Testament is universally known; we have already mentioned the Talmud; and among scores of other works equally deserving of mention, we must single out the Zohar, which embodies the teaching of the Cabala. In the Cabala, whose constituent elements are mysticism and philosophy, is enshrined the Jewish mystic lore, striving to fathom the mysteries hidden behind every word and letter of the Holy Writ. 'Cabala' means 'tradition,' implying that the teaching was originally handed down orally from generation to generation. It is more than likely that much of the deep knowledge preserved in the Cabala came from the Hebrews' prolonged contact with ancient Egypt, and, to an even greater extent, Chaldea. But as is well known, oral tradition is always a light that obscures. This too was no exception. Received

Page 100

from the remote past, this Jewish mystic thought was committed as secret doctrine to a privileged few in the eleventh century. Theon did not always agree with the secrecy. He said one day, "We are working to de-occultize the occult."

Theon, the excellent gardener that he was, had culled many seeds from the Cabala and cross-fertilized them with others from various ancient traditions, such as the Vedas which he knew so well, to develop his Cosmic Tradition. For instance Théon's idea of the 'inner Divine,' which caused a revolution in young Mirra, is common to the Vedic system, which posits the heart as the chief centre of consciousness, and to the Cabala, which lays great stress on the Shekinah or the all-pervading Divine Presence in man and the universe, regarded as the key to man's mission of restoring the original harmony between man and God, or between Matter and the Divine —a sharp contrast to the transcendant and wrathful Yahveh!

The Hebrew word of four consonants, YHWH (he is that he is ), representing the incommunicable name of God, is termed Tetragrammaton. The name is uttered by the Jews "only once a year," said Mother,

Page 101

"on the Day of Atonement." Called Yom Kippur, it winds up the ten days of Penitence which begin with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah — which can mean 'the birthday of the world' or "when mankind passes in judgment before the heavenly throne."

It is therefore not surprising that the Hebrew race excelled as a law-giver— take Moses and his Ten 'Thou Shalt Nots'! Although for the Cabala the role of man on earth is "to renew the unimpeded flow of Divine Love," the watchword of exoteric Judaism is rather Justice. God, in it, is basically depicted as the Judge of mankind, and not its Lover as in Hinduism. Perhaps it was also against this sense of severity that Christ rebelled?

Christ? He brings us back to Mother and Theon. She said in a laughing voice, "He used to call Christ, 'that young man'!"

Vast as was Max Théon's reservoir of knowledge yet he knew God only as the Master of man ; I doubt he had any conception of God as man's 'infinite Lover' as said Sri Aurobindo. "Theon had no idea of the path of bhakti, none whatsoever," said Mother. "The idea of surrender to the Divine was absolutely alien to him. Yet

Page 102

he did have the idea of the Divine Presence, here in the heart centre, of the immanent Divine, and of union with That. And he said that it was by uniting with That and letting That transform the being that one could attain this divine creation and the earth's transformation."

Mirra dipped time and again in his wide and profound occult waters and came up with so many treasures! "Theon was the first to give me the idea that the earth is symbolic, representative —symbolic of universal action concentrated to allow the divine forces to incarnate and work concretely. I learned all this from him."

Theon was a great teacher, and he taught Mirra a multitude of things. But that Love Incarnate had to wait for her coming to India to learn what the Indians mean by bhakti, the dedicated love which is unafraid of even perpetual hell for the sake of the Beloved. I have often wondered if this concept is not uniquely Indian. The idea is best embodied in the story of Radha, the Milk-Maid, and Krishna, the Cowherd.

My story opens at a time when Sri Krishna was already an established leader of men. And like all

Page 103

leaders he too was not spared headaches. So, it is no wonder that once, when Narada called on him in Dwaraka, he found Krishna lying with his eyes closed and a face dulled by pain. Narada, who was more accustomed to seeing a scintillating Krishna, was worried.

"What ails thee, Lord?" he inquired.

"I have a bad headache, Narada," answered Sri Krishna.

"Lord," asked Narada, "what can be done to cure thy headache?"

"If you can procure some dust from the feet of a human or a god, and apply it on my head, then only will my headache get cured," informed Narayana.

"I shall try, my Lord," said Narada, "and see whether I can succeed or not."

It did not occur to Narada, who always boasted of his own devotion to Krishna, to there and then take some dust from his own feet and apply it on the head of his worshipped One. No.

At any rate, he who "stands for the expression of Divine love and knowledge" was willing enough to take the trouble of travelling the two worlds for Narayana's sake. First he went to the abode of the

Page 104

gods, explained to them the situation, and asked if any one among them was ready to comply with his request. The gods were scandalized. "How can it be, Narada?" said all the denizens of heaven. "Dust from our feet on Narayana's head? What a great sin! Why, it will mean eternal sojourn in hell! Don't you know it?" One and all, the gods declined.

So then the demigod Narada descended from gods' heaven to men's earth. He landed in Brindaban, for he knew the genuine love of the Gopis for their Playmate. Bethinking himself of Radha, he went straight to her. He made no attempt to hide anything from her and spoke about the failure of his mission to gods.

Radhika listened silently to his tale. Then she asked,

"Is it absolutely certain, O Debarshi, that foot-dust will cure Govinda's headache?"

"Yes, Radha, that is certain," Narada assured her. "But if you give it you will have to sojourn in hell for eternity."

"Well, I am ready," replied the Milk-Maid. "What does it really matter —even if it means living eternally in hell —if his headache is cured ?''

Page 105

8

The First Visit

July 14, 1906.

It was the early hours of the morning. A distinguished-looking gentleman stood on the station platform, waiting for the train from Oran to come in. He was dressed in a white robe because of the day's coming heat. His long, wavy auburn hair framed the aristocratic face and fell to the shoulders. A soft breeze played hide and seek in his long beard. A lean figure, and although actually of medium height, he nonetheless gave an impression of being tall.

A cloud of smoke in the distance signalled the train's arrival. It came nearer and nearer, and the engine chuffed more and more loudly. The train ran alongside the platform, slowed down and stopped. Doors swung open. A vision of beauty, momentarily glimpsed framed in a window, stepped out. Our

Page 106

waiting gentleman came forward to meet his guest. Theon greeted Mirra.

Yes, it was Mirra. She had mastered the theoretical and had now come to learn the practical. One exciting event follows another when she comes to spend a few months with the Théons. There isn't one uneventful day from the time of her arrival.

Mother asked Satprem, "Do you know how he received me when I arrived there? That was the first time in my life I had travelled alone, and the first time I had crossed the sea. Then there was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcen. In short, I managed rather well —I got there."

In those days there were two maritine companies operating the sea route France-Algeria and back. Each ran a weekly service. The port of departure was Marseilles. The ship weighed anchor between twelve noon and four in the afternoon. It went straight to Oran — Algeria was then a French colony —without calling at any other port. The passengers had ample time to rest and sleep and enjoy themselves on that cruise, since the steamboat covered the distance of 525 nautical miles (or 972 kilometres) in about forty hours.

Page 107

We imagine that on this, her first voyage across the Mediterranean, Mirra, leaning on the ship's rail, had gazed at the dazzling sea. It looked strewn with myriads of splinters of glass that reflected the sunlight, shifted, changed the pattern of light. Did she, with her trained eyes, see myriads of sea-nymphs playing joyously among the waves?

After a cruise of two nights and a day, the ship docked at Oran in the early hours of the morning — between 4 and 6 a.m. Then there was a full day's wait in the town. The train for Tlemcen left at night. The railroad was 166 kilometres long and the train took about six and a half hours to reach its destination. From Oran it had rolled for a long time in the plains of Cheliff, as on a multi-coloured carpet, before chugging up the mountain. Set incongruously in an Arab dream, Tlemcen's little station must have jarred on a sensitive traveller like Mirra, seeming as it did like a blunder transported from some Parisian suburb. But the town itself presented another picture. Situated at an altitude of 800 metres or so, in the foothills of pink cliffs rising sheer and forming its enchanting backdrop, Tlemcen was like an Arab song. Its bracing air,

Page 108

its one minaret standing among white or pink houses, its large-eyed men who moved about proudly, and its women in burnoos- white shadows walking with real feet adorned with silver anklets were all like the diverse voices forming an enchanting chorus.

"He met me at the station. We set off by car for his place, as it was a little far away." The distance was about one kilometre.

The country road was bordered with sunny fields. The car slowly climbed up the slopes of the Atlas mountain. "Finally we reached his estate- a marvel! It spread across the hillside, dominating the entire valley of Tlemcen." Through Mother's eyes the scene tame alive for us. The immense estate which began from the plains sloped up almost to the top of the hill.

Zarif, the abode of the Théons, was a beautiful terraced garden.

"We arrived from below and had to climb up some wide pathways to get up there. I said nothing-from a material point of view it was truly an experience."

The path got narrower between big, sprawling fig-trees. The car stopped a little further on. The visitor got down and walked up some steps to reach the

Page 109

front courtyard, situated above a square basin which was always filled with water from a perennial spring.

"When we came in sight of the house, he stopped. 'That's my house.'

"It was red! Painted red!" Mother's eyes widened at the recollection.

"And he added, 'When Barlet came here, he asked me, Why did you paint your house red?'"

Mother broke off to explain, "Barlet was a French occultist who had put Theon in touch with France, and was his first disciple. This Barlet was Edouard Schuré's contemporary, a bit older. I met Schuré, by the way, he was rather hollow."

After this short explanation, she went on, "There was a gleam of mischief in Théon's eyes, coupled with a somewhat sardonic smile. 'I told Barlet, Because red goes well with green!'"

Mother smiled, "At once I began to understand the gentleman."

Their path lay through a garden. "We continued on our way uphill, when suddenly, without any warning, he wheeled around, planted himself in front of me and said, 'Now you are at my mercy. Are you not afraid?'

Page 110

"Just like that. So I looked at him, smiled and told him, 'I am never afraid. I have the Divine here in my heart.' Well, he really went white."

Even in 1972, some sixty-five years later, the imprint remained clear on the retina of her mind's eye. "It struck me, I never forgot it," said Mother. "I was absolutely conscious and calm. I remember we were walking in his huge estate; we were going up towards the house on foot, and I told him," she raised her index finger, " 'My psychic being governs me —I am afraid of nothing.' Well ..." Mother made a gesture which showed Theon starting as if he had been burned.

"I acquired that psychic consciousness just before leaving for Tlemcen. And it grew stronger there."

Theon turned on his heels and silently led Mirra to the house. As the visitor entered, she was met by a small woman dressed in a red, flowing dalmatic. It was Madame Theon, waiting to receive Mirra. The older woman's blue eyes lit up at the sight of the younger one, for what she saw was beyond compare.

*

* *

Page 111

Zarif, where Mirra was to stay for three months — from 14 July to 15 October to be exact- was Théon's property on the road to the Cascades. The building was set against a green sloping hillside. It looked down on the road and the far-off town. Painted coral red, resembling somewhat a Moorish manor, the house rose in tiers of small courtyards and terraces, covered or open, from where the eye could see clear to the distant horizon. From the house and from the garden equally, the view to the west stretched to where Tlemcen stood out, then beyond to the valleys and the plains that extended away to the faraway sea- which, it was said, could be glimpsed on a clear day. To the east also the eye could see a good ways off to where the Atlas mountain's crisscrossing peaks lay. But behind, the mountain formed a high background, like a barrier standing almost perpendicular and ending down at the road to the caves, the springs and the vast lawns of Zarif which were shaded by centuries-old olive trees behind the house. From there, as the house was built on a hillside, the top floor could be reached through the large doors of the sitting-room which opened on to the lawns. But the windows of the guest-

Page 112

room overlooked the yard in front. Laid in mosaic, the courtyard was surrounded by high walls set with ogival doors decorated with huge amphores. The waters in the square basin sang ceaselessly below the yard. The spring was reputed to be miraculous. The Arabs, who came and went freely on certain paths, stopped to bathe their feet in its water.

A little beyond the top left of the park was the shrine of an ancient marabout, Sidi Boumedine. He had lived there a long, long time ago. Over seven hundred years back a mosque was built over the site, and it has some fine mosaic works. The pilgrims came every day by the top road to burn special incense on the Mohammedan hermit's tomb; that scent mingled with those of the roses.

The rose garden of Zarif! It was a masterpiece by Aia Aziz. He took care of the whole estate, but the rose garden engaged his special attention. The best varieties of roses were planted by him, selected and grafted, made to bloom —the rarest of roses vied with each other in exuberant profusion and charm.

Under his expert care, fruit-bearing trees — cherry and apple and pomegranate, to name a few —

Page 115

flourished. And, of course, the sizable vegetable garden was a treat. As he worked with Nature he studied her and she became a fecund book yielding up to him her rich secrets. He was wont to say that "everything depends on the plane one has attained and the width of one's horizon; for the worm in the radish, the radish is its whole cosmos —most people live like the worm in the radish."

The dexterity of his hands was not limited to gardening alone. He was a skilled workman, proficient as a mason, as a house painter, a locksmith or a carpenter, as the need arose. He was fond of repeating that all the sages in ancient times knew and practised a manual craft; it reposes the mind, and also it forces one to some degree of precision. He would add: One must come into direct contact with matter, which can be had only through work. "You know the story of the Initiate, who refused to impart knowledge to the young aspirant who would not cultivate his garden? There is a profound teaching in the story."

With the long, fine fingers his hands played the piano. He sang songs and practised other arts. His sensitive hands made him a talented sculptor. But he

Page 116

was most clever with his hand in fashioning his cigarettes , which he did with disconcerting rapidity. Theon was a man of many moods: whimsical , gay or depressed , brilliant or forceful. In contrast , Madame Theon was full of a serene dignity, unruffled and equable. "Madame Theon was an extraordinary occultist, " said 'Mother. ' "That woman had incredible faculties , incredible. " Theon, for his part , always admitted that effectively it was owing to these amazing faculties his wife possessed that they could reach the lost or the as-yet-unexplored regions of knowledge. And Mother, on her side , whenever she referred to Madame Theon -e-it was always 'Madame' Theon spoke with a note of admiration , of regard, of respect. But let Mother herself tell about her memories of Tlemcen.

Page 117

9

Madame Theon

"I shall tell you about Madame Theon." Mother addressed her class of very young children. As there was no bar to their elders listening to her, many of us attended these 'classes.'

"Madame Théon was born in the Isle of Wight," began Mother. "She lived in Tlemcen with her husband who was a great occultist. Madame Theon herself was an occultist with great powers, she was a remarkable clairvoyant and had mediumnistic faculties. Her powers were of an exceptional order. She had received an extremely thorough and rigorous training, and could exteriorize, that is to say, from her material body she could go out in a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do this twelve times in a row, up to the extreme limit of the world of forms —on which I shall speak to you later when you can better understand

Page 118

what I am talking about. Just now I will recount a few small incidents which I myself saw when I was in Tlemcen, as well as a story she narrated to me."

Mother gathered the reins of her thoughts. "The nature of the incidents is more external, but very amusing.

"She remained almost always sunk in a trance, but so well had she trained her body that even when in a trance —that is, when one or more parts of her being were exteriorized — her body had a life of its own and she could walk about and even attend to certain chores. She worked a lot, because she was able to speak freely in her trance and describe what she was seeing, which was noted down and out of which a teaching was formed, which, by the way, was published. On account of all this and the occult work she was doing, often she was tired, in the sense that her body was tired and it needed to restore its vitality very concretely.

"Now one day when she was particularly tired, she said to me, 'You shall see how I am going to recover my strength.'

"She had plucked from her garden ... It wasn't a garden, it was an immense estate with centuries-old

Page 119

olive trees, fig trees as I have never seen elsewhere; it was a marvel, on a mountain slope, beginning from the plains and extending almost halfway to the top. In this garden there were many lemon trees, orange trees . . . and grapefruit. Grapefruit flowers smell even nicer than orange blossoms. The flowers are big like this, and she knew how to extract the essence herself—she had given me a bottle of it. Well, she had plucked a large grapefruit, big like this, big and ripe, and she lay down on her bed and put the grapefruit on her solar plexus, here, like this, holding it in both her hands. She lay down and rested. She didn't sleep, she rested.

"'Come back in an hour,' she told me.

"I returned after one hour.... And the grapefruit was as flat as a pancake. Which shows that her power to absorb vitality was such that she had absorbed all the life of the fruit and it had become limp and quite flat. I saw this myself." Mother challenged her audience, "Try it yourselves, you'll never succeed!" A burst of laughter was the only response she got.

"Another time, and it's even more amusing . . ." she paused considering how to proceed. "But first let

Page 120

me tell you a little something about Tlemcen, for probably you don't know about it. Tlemcen is a small town in southern Algeria, almost on the edge of the Sahara. The town itself is built in a valley encompassed by a circle of mountains, not very high but higher than hills all the same. The valley is fertile, green, superb. The population over there consists mainly of Arabs and rich merchants, in any case the town is very — it was, I don't know what it's like now [in 1957], I am speaking to you of things that happened at the beginning of the century; very prosperous merchants lived there and, from time to time, they came to visit Theon. They knew nothing, they understood nothing, but they were greatly interested.

"One day, towards evening, one of them turned up and began putting questions, ridiculous moreover. So Madame Theon said to me, 'You will see, we shall have some fun.'

"In the verandah of the house there was a big table used for dining, a very big table really, quite wide, with eight legs, four on each side. It was massive, you know, and heavy. Chairs had been arranged at some distance from the table for receiving the man.

Page 121

He sat at one end, Madame Theon at the other; I was seated on one side, as was Mr Theon. All the four of us were there. Nobody was near the table, we were all at quite a distance. Well then, he went on asking questions, as I said rather ridiculous ones, on the powers one could acquire, what one could do with 'magic,' as he termed it. She looked at me, uttered not a word and kept very still. Suddenly I hear a cry, a cry of fright. It was the table that had started moving, and with almost a heroic movement was charging down on the poor man who was seated at one end! It went and struck him. Madame Theon hadn't touched it, nobody had touched it." Mother let her words sink in. "She had simply concentrated on the table and, you see, with her vital power she had made it move. At first the table had wobbled a little, like this, then it began moving slowly, then suddenly, as with a single bound, it threw itself on that man, who left never to return!" We thoroughly enjoyed the man's discomfiture.

"She also had the power of dematerializing and rematerializing objects. But she would never say anything—she didn't boast, she never said, 'I am going to

Page 122

do this,' she didn't say anything —she did it quietly. She didn't attach much importance to these things, knowing that they only went to demonstrate that there were other forces than the purely material ones.

"When I went out in the evening —towards late afternoon I used to go walking with Mr Théon to see the countryside, to walk in the mountains, to neighbouring villages —I locked my door; it was my habit, I always locked my door. Madame Théon rarely went out, for the reasons I have told you, because most of the time she was in a trance and liked to stay at home. But when I returned from my walks and opened my door —which was locked, consequently nobody could have entered —I always found on my pillow a sort of small garland of flowers. These flowers grew in the garden, they are called 'Four o' Clocks.'¹ We have them here, they open in the evening and have a wonderful smell. A whole alley was full of them, with big bushes, high like this. The flowers are remarkable, I think it's the same thing here also, on the same bush

¹ Mirabilis, Also known as 'Marvel of Peru.' Mother gave it the significance: "Solace = The blessings the Divine grants us."

Page 123

there are different coloured flowers: yellow, red, mixed, purple. The small flowers are like . . . like the Blue Bells¹; n-no, rather like the Morning Glory,² but that is a climber while those are bushes —we have them here in the gardens. She always tucked some behind her ears, because of the nice smell. Oh, it smells delicious! Well then, she used to take a walk in the alley, between the large bushes which were this high, and she would cull the flowers; and then, when I returned the flowers were in my room!" We were lost in Mother's narrative and before the full import of her words could sink in she continued. "She never told me how she did it, but well, certainly she didn't enter my room.

" 'Weren't there flowers in your room?' she once asked me.

"I replied, 'Yes. Oh, yes!'

"That's all. So then I understood that she had put them there."

Mother glanced at her spell-bound audience

¹ Campanula: "Joy's Call = It is modest and rarely makes itself heard."

² Ipomoea or Convolvulus: "Artistic Taste = Is pleased with beautiful things and is itself beautiful."

Page 124

and took a deep breath. "I could tell you many stories, but I shall end with one she told me, which I didn't see myself."

She closed her eyes as if to get a better picture. "As I was telling you, Tlemcen is almost next to the Sahara and it has a desert climate, except in the valley where a never-drying river flows and makes the whole land very fertile. But the mountains were absolutely arid. Only in the plots held by agriculturists did something grow. Now, Théon's park, the big estate I mean, was, as I told you, a marvellous place. Everything grew there, every imaginable thing, and in magnificent proportions. Well, she related to me —they had been there for a very long time [seventeen or eighteen years] —that five or six years earlier, I think, it had been considered that these arid mountains could cause the river to dry up one day, so it would be better to plant trees there. And the Administrator of Tlemcen had given orders to plant trees on all the neighbouring hills, a wide cirque of hills, you know. He had said that pines should be planted, because in Algeria maritime pine grows very well; and they wanted to try it out. Now, for some reason or the other — through

Page 125

an oversight or a whim, nobody knows! —instead of ordering pines they ordered firs! Fir-trees belong to northern climes, and are not at all trees of desert lands. And these fir-trees had been very scrupulously planted. Madame Theon had seen this and, I think, wished to make an experiment. It so happens that after four or five years those firs had not only sprouted but had become magnificent, and when I myself went to Tlemcen the mountains all around were entirely green, magnificent with trees.

"'You see, these aren't pines, they are firs,' she told me.

"In fact, they were firs." Mother asked the children, "You know that firs are Christmas trees, don't you?" They said Yes in unison.

"They were firs. Then she narrated to me that after three years, when the firs had grown big, suddenly, one day, or rather one December night, just as she had gone to bed and put out the light, she was woken up by a very slight noise —she was very sensitive to noise. She opens her eyes and sees something like a moonbeam —there was no moon that night —lighting up a corner of her room. Then she perceived a little

Page 126

gnome there, like those one sees in the fairy-tales of Norway or Sweden, Scandinavian tales. A small little fellow, with a big head, a pointed cap and pointed shoes, he was dark green, with a long white beard, and fully covered with snow.

"So she looks at him —her eyes were open —she looks at him and says, 'Why ... Eh, but what are you doing here?'

"She was a little troubled, for in the room's warmth the snow was melting and making a puddle on the floor.

'"Whatever are you doing here?'

"Whereupon he smiled his most amiable smile at her and said, 'But we have been beckoned with the firs! The firs, they call the snow. They are trees of snowy lands. As for me, I am the Lord of the Snow, so I have come to you to announce that ... we are coming. We are called, we are coming.'

"'Snow?. . . But we are next to the Sahara!'

"'Ah! You should not have put firs!''

"Finally she told him, 'Listen, I don't know whether what you are telling me is true or not, but you are making a mess of my floor, off with you!'

Page 127

"So off he went. The moonlight was gone with him. She lit a lamp, since there was no electricity. She lit a lamp and saw ... a small puddle of water where he had stood. Therefore it wasn't a dream, it really was a little being who had made the snow melt in her room. And the next morning, when the sun rose, it rose over snow-covered mountains. That was the first time. Nobody had ever seen that in the country.

"From then on, every winter —not for long, just for a short time —all the mountains are covered with snow."

Mother looked at the expectant faces before her, but smilingly shook her head. "That's my story."

Page 128

10

What Happened at Tlemcen

That was Mother's story to the children.

Naturally enough, her stories covered wider grounds when she could talk freely to Satprem. She retold him the stories about the Lord of the Snow, about the musical toad, and other tales of Tlemcen.

Towards late afternoon Mirra went walking with Theon to explore the neighbour hood. But when one day he took her to visit the ancient marabout's tomb, he put her in an embarrassing situation and had his little revenge on her.

"We used to go for walks in the nearby countryside to see the tombs," said Mother to Satprem. "It was entirely a Muslim country, and the Muslim tombs are guarded by certain people (I don't remember now what they are called in Arabic). But there's always a sage, like the Indian fakirs here, to guard the tombs, a

Page 129

sort of semi-priest responsible for the upkeep of the tombs. Pilgrims go there as well. Theon was friendly with one particular sage, and would always converse with him —that's when I would see the mischief in Théon's eyes —and speak to him of one thing and another. One day, Theon took me along. I should have been fully covered, you know, to conform with those Muslims over there, but I always went out in a kind of kimono!" This remained her dress even when she went to the markets. "Theon spoke to him in Arabic; I didn't understand what he said but the sage rose, bowed to me very ceremoniously and went off into another room. He returned with cups of sweetened mint tea —not teacups, they put it in special little glasses —extremely sweet tea, almost like mint syrup. The sage looked at me. I was obliged to take it . . ." Mother stopped abruptly, and Satprem sensed that there was a sequel to this story but that she didn't want to say anything more.

We think the incident occurred at Sidi Bourne-dine, where the present guardian of the tomb is the grandson of the sage who offered Mirra the mint tea.

At any rate, it was not for nothing that "there

Page 130

were all kinds of stories in the countryside, terrible stories," about Theon.

He inspired fear and awe in the local Arabs.

They were awed by his power which healed their sick almost immediately; no matter if three days or three months later the healed one fell sick again. The neighbour hood Arabs venerated him and, among themselves, called him 'the Marabout.'

We can surely term her stay at Tlemcen a thrilling mystery in which Mirra is constantly confronted with bizarre situations. "One day I shall find Théon's photo and show it to you. He is there with a big dog he called 'Little Boy.' A dog that could exteriorize! It would dream and go out of its body! This dog had a kind of adoration for me. I should mention that at a fixed time in the afternoon I always went into a trance —I had meditation followed by trance. When it was over I would go out walking with Theon and the dog always came with us; he usually came to fetch me in my room. One day I was lying on a divan, in a trance, when I felt his cold nose thrust into my hand in order to wake me up. I open my eyes ... no dog. Yet I had positively, distinctly felt his cold nose

Page 131

Zarif: Mirra at her window

and 'Little Boy' in the courtyard

nuzzling my hand to wake me up. Well, I got ready, went down the stairs, and who did I find on the landing? My dog, in a deep slumber, he too in a state of trance! He had come to me in his sleep to wake me up. Then, when I reached the landing he woke up, gave himself a shake and trotted off."

She added musingly, "It was an interesting life."

And how!

"Extraordinary occurrences which go outside the ordinary course of physical Nature," as Sri Aurobindo puts it, became everyday occurrences at Zarif. When the eight-legged table flung itself upon the unfortunate Arab merchant with nobody within touching distance, one could have perhaps called it magic. But the apport? When Mirra regularly found flowers on her bed in a locked room? Or when she regularly heard the gong ringing by itself to anounce meal times? Or when Madame Théon's slippers . . .

"But it was a very interesting world," Mother said pensively. "Really, I saw there . . . Well, once you left you would ask yourself, 'Have I been dreaming?'" She rubbed her eyes. "It all seemed so fantastic."

Then she briefly explained how supranormal

Page 133

happenings can become normal ones. "You see, when people themselves are in this occult consciousness, everything is possible; it creates an atmosphere where ALL, but all is possible. What to our European common sense seems impossible, is all possible." Certain mediums —not necessarily yogis —have a native 'psychic' faculty which gives them power over matter. It is the faculty of being able to identify themselves with everything, even with inanimate objects.

"I saw it with Madame Theon. She would will a thing to come to her instead of going to the thing herself; when she wanted her sandals, instead of going to fetch them, she made them come to her." Satprem blinked. Mother smiled and went on, "She did this through her ability to radiate her matter —she exercised a will over her matter —her central will acted upon matter anywhere since she was THERE."

Sri Aurobindo explains further. "Obviously a layman cannot do these things, unless he has a native 'psychic' (that is, occult) faculty and even then he will have to learn the law of the thing before he can use it at will."

Madame Theon, who had 'a native psychic

Page 134

faculty,' had thoroughly learned the law of the occult.

It was now Mirra's turn to do the same. And the adventures she had! And the friends and admirers she picked up! Little Boy, the dog, was not alone in his admiration for her. Remember "the big toad, all warty — going poff, poff, poff!" whose admiration for Mirra's music was unbounded? Whenever she played the piano he would come hopping in and listen rapturously, his eyes bulging, then say 'poff!' and hop away when she stopped. That too was in Tlemcen. Why, she even charmed serpents there! Before that, however, she had to tackle some unforeseen problems that had ensued when she encountered the furious Naja, otherwise known as Cobra de Capello. Apart from telling Mirra that serpents symbolized the evolution, Theon had also told her that they were, of all the animals, the most sensitive to hypnotic or magnetic power. "If you have this power in you —the magnetic power is a power of the most material vital —you can very easily gain a mastery over serpents," Mother explained to Satprem, who till then heartily detested those creatures. "All those who love snakes have it and with it make the snakes obey them. That's how I got out of my scrape

Page 135

with the Naja in Tlemcen. Do you know the story?" Satprem nodded. He vividly remembered Mother telling him some years previously how she had extricated herself from that situation.

"There were centuries-old olive trees in Théon's estate. I would sit under one of them every day at noon to meditate. Yes, it was hot at high noon, but the heat never bothered me. Quite the contrary. Now, one day, I was deep in my meditation when I began to feel uneasy. So then I open my eyes. And what do I see? About two metres away in front of me, standing erect and swaying its hood, is a Naja, hissing furiously at me. You know 'Naja'? They are like the Nagas here, the Hooded Cobra, and so poisonous! Their poison is deadly. So there was this Naja, swaying its expanded hood and hissing for all it was worth. At first I didn't understand why the serpent was so enraged. Then I remembered that just behind me there was a hole in the tree. 'I must be sitting here barring its way to its hole,' I thought. 'But what's to be done now?' I was in a quandary. Any movement, be it ever so slight, would instantly make it strike me." Théon's counsel leapt to her mind. "Mark you, I didn't have any fear. I just sat

Page 136

still and stared fixedly at its eyes, and exerted my will-force to the utmost. Gradually the hissing softened, then stopped altogether. After some time, slowly, very slowly I drew away my legs, first one then the other. But all the while I kept my fixed stare on it and steadily exerted my will. At last the venomous snake suddenly lowered its hood, and quickly turning round jumped into the nearby pool."

"Phew!" Satprem let out his pent-up breath.

"When, later, I told Theon about this incident, he confirmed my surmise. 'We all know that the snake lives there,' he told me. 'After its bath it wanted to go to its hole, but found you barring its passage. That's why it was so angry.'

"Then looking quizzically at me, he added, 'If you want to make it your friend, give it some milk.'

"I did!" said Mother flatly.

That, in substance, is what Mother had told Satprem previously.

This time, after that passing reference to it, she went on, "After this incident there was another, when I helped a cat to defeat a little asp —they have asps there, like Cleopatra's, very dangerous. . . . The cat

Page 137

was a big russet angora, who, at first, began playing with the asp, then, of course, became furious. The asp kept jumping at him and the cat —it was extraordinary, I watched this for over ten minutes —the cat leapt aside so swiftly that the asp just missed him. And as it darted by, the cat struck at it with all his claws out, scratching it each time. The other lost its energy little by little. And at the end ... I stopped the cat from eating it, for it was sickening."

Thereafter she had two royal visits. First, the King of the Cats came and conferred on Mirra the power over his species.

And the second visit . . . "Well, one night, after these two episodes, I was visited by the King of the Serpents. He wore a superb crown on his head— symbolic of course, but anyway he was the spirit of the species. He had the appearance of a cobra. He was . . . he was splendid!" said Mother admiringly. "A formidable beast, and . . . splendid! He came to see me and said he wanted to make a pact with me —I had demonstrated my power over his species, so he wanted to come to an understanding.

"'All right,' I said, 'what do you propose?'

Page 138

" 'I not only promise that serpents won't harm you,' he replied, 'but that they will obey you. Only, you must promise me something in return: never to kill one of them.'

"I thought it over and said, 'No, I can't take this pledge, because if ever one of yours attacks one of mine —a being that depends upon me —my pledge to you would not, could not, stop me from defending him. Although I can assure you that I have no bad feelings! And no intention to kill —killing is not on my programme! But I can't commit myself, otherwise it would restrict my freedom of decision.'

"He left without replying, so the status quo remains."

Mother recounted another encounter she had with a serpent, this time in Pondicherry.

"But several experiences I have had make clear my power over snakes —not as much as over cats; with cats it's extraordinary!

"Long ago, I often used to take a drive and then get down somewhere and walk. One day after my walk, I got back into the car and was just about to drive away —the door was still open —when, exactly from the

Page 139

spot I had just left, a fairly large snake came out. It was furious. Belligerently it came and headed straight towards the open door, ready to spring at me. Luckily I was alone, neither the driver nor Pavitra were there, otherwise . . . The snake came on and when it had got quite near, I looked closely at it and said, 'What do you want? Why have you come here?'

"There was a pause. Then it fell down flat and was gone. I didn't make any movement, only spoke to it, 'What do you want? Why have you come here?' You know, they have a way of suddenly falling down, going limp, and prrt! Gone!"

Page 140

11

The Hidden Meaning

Between her various adventures, Mirra was discovering a host of other things.

She was already proving in practice what Sri Aurobindo was to write later. "The theory of traditional knowledge is perfectly rational and verifiable by inner experiences, and it imposes itself if we admit the supraphysical and do not cabin ourselves in the acceptation of material being as the only reality."

Under the able tutorship of Max Théon, Mirra the apt pupil was learning. She learned how to go in and out of the supraphysical worlds at will. She learned the art of materialization and dematerialization. She even learned how to move objects from a distance. In a letter, Sri Aurobindo refers to "an experience in which the Mother being in Algiers appeared to a circle of friends sitting in Paris and took up a pencil and

Page 141

wrote a few words on a paper. She signed her name and even moved an object. Having satisfied herself that it was possible she did not develop it any further. That was at a time when she was practising occultism with Théon in Algeria.... Théon was a great occultist; his wife was still more so." He added, "That paper was here even the other day."

Sri Aurobindo further explains that "tremendous vital force is necessary to move an object at a distance." His briefest comment reveals so much! "The Slavs as a race are psychically more sensitive but generally they do not control these occult forces. The JEWS, having a long-standing tradition about these powers, seem to know the way of mastering them. Théon, the Mother's first teacher, had great powers and knew how to use them. Sometimes these powers are gifts."¹

Madame Théon was amply gifted with this power. And between Théon and Théona (as Teresa called her), Mirra was given a complete training. They trained her to differentiate between smell and smell, between colour and colour, between light and

¹ Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, by A. B. Purani.

Page 142

light, between . . . Each smell, each colour, each light indicated to her its home. She learned to go straight to the heart of things and discover their motive power. Among her multitudinous discoveries was one in which she found that 'the essence of Love' which had plunged down into Matter had established its Presence everywhere and in everything.

"Even in things, in objects," she told us, "even in stones there is a strange receptivity which stems from this Presence. Also, stones have a spontaneous sense of what is higher, nobler, purer; and although unable to express it in any way, they feel it and are variously affected by it."

We have all heard about famous pearls and diamonds —such as the Blue Hope Diamond, the Eye of Buddha, the Kohinoor, etc.—being carriers of curse; behind each there is a trail of blood, of intrigue and assassination.

Mother observed additionally that if one knows how to go about it, some stones —gems mainly can be 'charged'; they can accumulate a force, preserve it and pass it on. Other stones can serve as a link, or carry messages, while yet others can be used to predict

Page 143

things —like the 'crystal' of the fortuneteller. To function, these things naturally demand a competent person with a special ability. A few stones are remarkable for the power of protection they can hold. "Amethysts are great accumulators of protective power which really protects the wearer." But the Presence is more easily discernible in "rock crystals, which form such magnificent designs of such total harmony," precisely owing to "this central Presence."

Colours. Lights. All possible subjects were included in Mirra's study.

"All lights," wrote Sri Aurobindo, "are indications of a Force or Power." Mirra, whose inner vision was as vivid as her actual sight, could now determine the plane from which a particular light emanated, as well as its action, by the light's colour. Later, Mother and Sri Aurobindo made a detailed organization of this notion —the gradation of consciousness beginning from material Nature right to the Supreme, shown by different coloured lights.¹

¹ Sri Aurobindo's letter on ' Lights' and Mother's Agenda (specially the conversation of 18 May 1963), will give the reader some inkling on the subject.

Page 144

But that was later. For the moment, Mirra the artist was glad to be able to better appreciate the hidden sense in colours. However, what really delighted her —she who "loved mathematics very much" —was to discover that numbers were not mere digits and a mental toy, but carried profound meanings in themselves.

Once upon a time, Satprem, to whom numbers were mere lifeless ciphers, needed a big quantity of paper to draw a Tantric diagram — 72 times a day and for three times 72 days —so he broached the matter to Mother. In the ensuing conversation she unravelled the diagram's connotation and by the same stroke gave him the key to the underlying meaning of numbers. From then on he began to take an interest in them.

"Wait! Look under there if by chance there's a box or something," she said, pointing to the heap of heterogeneous things under a window-ledge. "We'll see."

Satprem pulled out a box.

"It's all yellowed. Does it matter?" she asked.

"It'll soak water!" he objected. "You see, because

Page 145

I write with chandanam¹ mixed with water, using a twig of 'Divine Love'!"²

"Without any cotton-tip? Without anything?"

"Yes, without anything," he nodded. "Only a twig which I whittle into a pen."

"Are the designs small?"

"The image is a rectangle divided into three squares, with numerals and letters —one Sanskrit letter," he amended. "Quite a toil, you know!"

"Seventy-two a day! My little child!" Mother laughed commiseratively. "I must find something. . . ."

"When I come out of it, I feel dazed," he said tiredly.

"But that's what these Tantriks want!" She knew it. "They want to stupefy you. . . ."

"You understand, for two hours I have to squat over all those sacred scribblings," he said ironically.

His bitterness was quite understandable. For alongside this Tantric work, Satprem had to get ready the text for the Ashram's Bulletin, a bilingual quarterly.

¹ Sandalwood paste.

² Pomegranate.

Page 146

This work consisted in selecting with Mother the English texts of Sri Aurobindo's and then translating them into French; add to it choosing and reading out to Mother her own various texts, and as most of the time these were taken from her talks and conversations, he had to transcribe them from the recorded tapes and render them comprehensible to the readers. This apart, he had to transcribe from the tapes his own twice-weekly interviews with Mother which she called her Agenda. And what a tape-recorder he had! My gosh! So old that he used to turn the spools by hand. You may well imagine the rest. And to top it all, there was his book The Adventure of Consciousness on which he was still working.

"But tell me," she inquired, "wouldn't you have the right to sit in a chair, at a table?"

"I don't know," came the glum reply.

"Why not?" Then dwelling on this point for some time she concluded, "What's required is to have the inner attitude."

"Exactly," he said, "the inner attitude. I feel this new work as an empty and mechanical thing."

"Don't you feel each word as you write it?"

Page 147

Mother raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"They are numerals. Numerals and just one Sanskrit letter," he said drily. "Well, you can't say there's much soul in numerals, can you?"

"Will you describe it, that I may see?" she asked encouragingly.

As it was difficult to describe the design verbally, he said, "I'll write it out for you," and sketched the diagram.

The first thing Mother did was to tot up the figures. "Did you add them up? No? In every direction it adds up to 72. . . . Nine is the number for 'birth'."

"It's to be done 72 times for 72 days and three times over."

"And 72 comes to 7 + 2 which make 9," she put in.

"This Sanskrit letter is HRIM," he volunteered. He was getting interested.

"This is one of the three seed sounds," she revealed. "I don't recall now, but each of them represents one aspect of the Mother."

"Sujata told me it's Mahalakshmi."

"I was hesitating between Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati."

Page 148

Mother sat in a reverie where figures shimmered, then came into focus on her mind's screen. "It is clearly taken as a symbol of the gestation of the New Birth, the second birth, the divine birth. That's certain." Then she asked abruptly, "He said 72 days?"

"Three times 72 days. A little over eight months,¹ that is."

"Just so," she nodded her agreement. Then said smilingly, "It is . . . it's the work of gestation for the birth of the Divine Consciousness.

"And seven —7 + 2 — is interesting. 7 stands for realization; 2 is dual —a dual realization. And if you put the two together, you get the number of gestation."

She explained. "You see, Mahalakshmi is the Divine Mother's aspect of love.... It is to prepare the earth for receiving the Supreme's manifestation, which is the manifestation of His Victory.

"Thus seen, the diagram becomes clear —comprehensible and even comprehensive. It has content."

The conversation continued. Mother went on to

¹ Actually a little over seven months. Satprem and calculation! Never have I met anybody as uncalculating as he!

Page 149

give content to some numbers. I am adding a few more from my own notes.

2= Dual

3= Sachchidananda (Sat + Chit + Ananda)

4= Manifestation

5= Power

6= New Creation

7= Realization

8= Infinite

9= Gestation or Birth

10= Sign of external expression, or, something established, a static perfection

11= Progress, or, a Beginning

12= Mahashakti's figure, or, the Perfection of the Creation

12 = 4 + 8 = Manifestation of the Infinite

18 = Consciousness in its effort towards a material realization

18 = 10 + 8 = an established Infinite

18 = 9 + 9 = Dual Creation

18 = 12 + 6 = an extremely remarkable something

22 = Power of money

Page 150

30 = Manifestation of Sachchidananda

36 = Union of Sachchidananda with the Creation

42 = Dual manifestation of the Supreme and Nature

48 = Manifestation of the Infinite.

Mother also pointed out that any double-digit figure could have several meanings depending upon the numbers that went to make it. Such as 12 or 18.

Then she herself began to draw the diagram containing the numerals and the Sanskrit letter. "Let's see if I remember my Sanskrit," she mused aloud. "I have spent my time forgetting everything. I used to write my Sanskrit as I write French. All forgotten."

As she completed the design, she said, "There. Now it has a life, you understand? It has a life."

She had automatically written the symbols in their proper order — it is from this order that a Tantric diagram derives its real power. Then she pored over it for a long time, and suddenly exclaimed, "Why, there's a music!" And Mother hummed the air. Luckily Satprem was ready with his recorder and could tape it.

Page 151

"There." She repeated, "But it is full of meaning, pulsating with meaning."

"But where," Satprem's curiosity was aroused, "does the meaning of numbers come from?"

"This deep meaning of numbers," Mother replied, "I got it in Tlemcen, in the Over mind." Over mind, in Sri Aurobindo's terminology, is the realm of the higher Gods. "It was above, just above the realm of the gods. It was there that the numbers took on a living meaning for me; not a mental game — a living meaning."

Then there was a flashback of a fifty-year-old memory. "That is where Madame Théon recognized me, because of the twelve pearls in a formation over my head. She told me, 'You are That, because you have this. Only That can have this!'"

Mother's laugh rang out. "It was as far removed from my thought as possible. Thank God!"

Page 152

You are That

12

The Valley of the False Glimmer

It was not only the crown of twelve pearls over Mirra's head that Madame Theon saw. Her seeing included, among others, those two Guardian Angels who always hovered near Mirra —and even upbore her and gently set her down on the flint stones in Fontainebleau when, as she was racing ahead of the other children, she had sailed into the air and fallen from a height of about three metres. And not a scratch to show for it!

Mirra related to the Théons many of her personal experiences. That of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice was one. She had gone there with her mother. In the Dungeon she had relived a scene from a past life wherein she was strangled and thrown out into the canal. "I related all this to Theon and Madame

Page 155

Theon, and he too remembered one of his past lives there, during that very period. In fact, I had seen in Venice a portrait that was the spitting image of Theon! The portrait of one of the doges. Absolutely — it was a painting by Titian —it was absolutely Theon! his portrait, you know, as if it had just been done."

But she was really keen on understanding her night experiences, for they had left her puzzled. And the Théons were able to give her the key to the riddles of her 'dreams.' Take the mystery of the Being who promised her things in abundance. "When I was a child," said Mother to Satprem, "around twelve, I knew nothing about spiritual things, my family lived in a completely materialistic atmosphere. But once, I saw something in a dream: a Being coming to me, a woman, and telling me, 'You will always have in abundance whatever you need.' It was Nature, material Nature, the same Being I have always seen afterwards. And it's true, it's perfectly true," Mother smilingly swept her arm in a wide arc which included the room, the laden table, the piled up objects on the carpet, and every corner full to overflowing.

"Later on, when I met Theon, he explained it

Page 156

to me. But at the time I knew nothing at all; it wasn't a figment of my imagination, it came unbeknown to me, unasked for : 'You will always have in abundance whatever you need.' It's true!" She laughed her infectious laugh. Let us recall the time when Mirra the artist was so hard up that she had to paint her patent leather boots; and how, when she wanted one petticoat "much in fashion" then, to go with her gown, she got five!

The experiences that came to her "massively from my infancy," came "just like that, without my seeking them, wanting them or understanding them, without doing any sort of discipline, nothing —absolutely spontaneous. And they kept on coming and coming and coming." It was only "from the time I met Theon that it all got explained —I saw it all clearly, I understood and organized it."

It was her sleep that Mirra organized impeccably. Indeed, none could beat Mother where the subjects of sleep and dream were concerned. On one occasion when Satprem complained to Mother about his bad nights, she shed much fresh light upon sleep, then proceeded to say, "There would be many interesting

Page 157

things to tell about sleep, because it is one of the things I have studied the most." Indeed, over the decades during which she trained her sleep, the number of nights when Mother could not drill it was minimal. "To speak of how I became conscious of my nights. I learned this from Theon. And now that I know all these things of India, I realize what a real expert Theon was."

So was Mother. Thus she could at once refute somebody who stated to her, "If somebody kills you in a dream, it doesn't matter, since it is only a dream!"

"Sorry!" she riposted. "As a rule, you are sick the next day, or some time after. It is a warning. I knew a person who was attacked on the eye in a dream, and who really lost one eye a few days later.

"I myself have happened to dream about getting blows on my face. Well, upon waking up in the morning, I had a red mark on the spot, on the forehead and the cheek. A vital wound to somebody will inevitably result in a physical wound. I was struck vitally. It comes from within. Nothing and nobody touched anything at all from outside."

This vital world is the land of the Life Heavens

Page 158

on the one hand: "Just imagine, for example, that you are very tired and need to rest," Mother said to Satprem who always needed to take rest after his night's sleep! "If you know how to exteriorize yourself and enter consciously the vital world, you can find there a region similar to a miraculous virgin forest where all the splendours of a rich and harmonious vegetation are assembled, with such magnificent mirrors of water and an atmosphere so filled with this living, vibrant vitality of plants!"

Mother frequently went there for a walk. Once, she met Prahlad, who had died some time back. He was the son of Dr Agarwal, the ophthalmologist. "Two days ago," she related to Satprem in October 1968, "the day before yesterday, I went for a stroll in a forest of the vital.... My little child, it was beautiful! Oh, a magnificent forest, and then such a well-kept forest, so clean! Oh! It was fine. A truly magnificent place, truly magnificent." Her expression showed how breathtakingly beautiful it was.

"Well then, I suddenly see a youngish Pralhad there, a mere lad, coming towards me and telling me, 'I don't know, can't find the religion.'" She mimicked

Page 159

his despairing tone of voice. Then laughingly said, "So I told him, 'You don't need any religion!'

"He said, 'Oh, there is another man here who also can't find a religion.'

"And that was Benjamin!" He was a football player in Nolini's batch; a Pondicherian Christian, Benjamin yet lived in the Ashram where he did a part of the tailoring work for the inmates; he died in 1963. I remember how, during the war years, he and Moni¹ used to entertain us with French patriotic songs.

Mother continued, "I said, 'He is an idiot! He doesn't need to find a religion!"' She laughed again, struck by the incongruity of the situation. "There you are. . . . Benjamin lost in a marvellous forest —it's beautiful, you know! —because he can't find a religion! And Pralhad looking for a religion!"

Then Mother wished to send a comforting word to Prahlad's grieving mother, "Be consoled, Prahlad is in a very nice place!"

She remarked, "He was very well. He was very

¹ Moni or Suresh Chakraborty was a revolutionary from Bengal. He came to Pondicherry in 1910 with a letter from Sri Aurobindo to arrange a residence for him.

Page 160

well dressed." In life the boy used to be dressed rather slovenly

"Oh, how ridiculous it all is!"

After a silent contemplation Mother said again, "Oh, what a beautiful forest, my child. Trees as I have not seen except in Japan. Trees like columns, rising straight, planted in rows, superb! Pale green grass, light, so very light. Grass on the ground; air, lots of air; and at the same time there are only trees —a forest. Not thick, not smothered." She saw the forest again in her mind's eye.

"Well then, in this superb place, instead of rejoicing, the imbecile," Mother assumed a wailing voice, "'I don't know what happened to me, I have no religion'!" She laughed outright.

"Then I told him, 'But you should rejoice! No religion.... You are in a place much finer than all the religions.'"

She said anew, "There is such a life there, such a Beauty, so much richness and plenitude that you wake up full of force, together with an absolutely marvellous feeling of energy, even if you have remained there but one minute."

Page 161

She added in her precise way, "There are regions like that —not very many, but some.

"The vital world is a world of extremes. If, for instance, you eat a bunch of grapes in the vital world, you are so nourished that you can remain thirty-six hours without feeling hungry." Because grape is the fruit of life.

One day this happened in our presence. Mother was seated in her chair and we were on the carpet in front of her. Silence reigned in the room. Mother's eyes were wide open, but I could see that she was deep in contemplation; Satprem also* was in meditation. Then suddenly Mother spoke to him. "Somebody has just brought from both sides at once," she made a gesture to her right and left, "one dish of grapes and another dish of grapes, like this. There was one for you and one for me." A being from the Vital had brought them. He was like me, I dare say, always happy to be able to serve Mother.

"Those grapes" —quite frequently the vital world's food —"are of incomparable beauty. There were two bunches; one was big, the other not so big. I don't know for whom was the bigger one, and for

Page 162

whom the other? They were brought on both sides: one was on a dish, the other on a square of white paper. I assumed that the one on the square white paper was meant for me.

"Pretty! Beautiful! Grape that turns golden, you know transparent and golden when it ripens. Grape big like this." Her index and thumb were about five centimetres apart.

We, of course, had seen neither the being nor the bunches of grapes! Mother added, "When one is asleep, that is, when the body is in a state of trance, one can eat. You can feel the taste when you are outside the body. And it's very nourishing, it gives strength. I don't know how many times I have happened to eat . . . and mostly grapes. . . . Such grapes!"

"A world of extremes." And how! You can find there not only the Life Heavens but the Valley of the False Glimmer as well. It is a dangerous world. "Only a trained occultist with the infallible tact born of long experience can guide himself without stumbling or being caught through the maze," wrote Sri Aurobindo. Mirra, as we know, was certainly a trained occultist and much more. Even otherwise "Mirra is born free" as

Page 163

said Sri Aurobindo. Her unbound soul could, like the proverbial swan,¹ separate milk from water. She easily discerned the real nature of this zone; and with the sunlight of her clear vision dispersed its shimmering mists and fogs.

"On the other hand," said Mother, "there are many unpleasant places in the vital world where it is better not to go. You can also run into things, enter places that will wrest all the energy from you in a minute, and at times leave you sick or even disabled.

"I knew a woman who, from an occult point of view, was absolutely exceptional, and a similar accident befell her in the vital world. While trying to tear away from the beings of the vital world someone to whom she was attached, she received such a blow on the eye that it made her blind in one eye." Mother was referring to Madame Theon.

It is not for nothing that this zone is called the Valley of the False Glimmer. Sri Aurobindo describes it in Savitri.

¹ Swan or Hamsa: liberated soul, in Indian symbolism. And, curiously enough, Mother's signature resembled a swan with outspread wings, and the dot on the i, she told me, was the eye of the Consciousness.

Page 164

"It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods, Invests with grace the demon and the snake."

As Satprem read this to Mother, "Charming!" she exclaimed sarcastically.

"It's absolutely the characteristics of the vital, that which Theon called, 'the nervous world'."

But with all his knowledge and power Theon was unable to prevent the accident to his wife's eye. "Theon couldn't even protect her!" After more than sixty-five years Mother still felt bitter about it. That is why, when Satprem asked her if the kind of power over matter the Théons possessed would not be useful to her, she replied categorically, "No use —no use whatsoever." Occult power is a truncated power. It is not the almighty power.

All the same, as Mother observed once, knowledge of the occult can be useful; much can be gained by knowing those worlds. She who had to work constantly in them knew the dangers that lurked in the vital world, for example. When people 'die' they have to cross through this Valley of the False Glimmer to go beyond to other worlds. Many, most, get caught in

Page 165

its maze and never make it through.

"These things are very interesting," she told Satprem.

"They must form part of the work for which I have come on earth. Because even before meeting Theon, before knowing anything, I had experiences at night, certain types of night activities caring for people who had just left their bodies and with a knowledge (although I didn't know the process nor did I seek to know): but I knew exactly what had to be done and I did it. I was about twenty.

"As soon as I came upon Théon's teaching —even before meeting him personally — and read and understood all kinds of things I hadn't known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, my work consisted in constructing between the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmosphere a sort of path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldn't have to pass through it —for those who are conscious but don't have the knowledge it's a very difficult passage, infernal. It is infernal. I was preparing this path — it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I don't exactly remember —and

Page 166

doing this work for months and months and months. All sorts of things happened during that time, all sorts, ex-tra-ordi-nary things. Extraordinary. I could tell long stories....

"Then when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Theon about it. 'Yes,' she told me, 'it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. All those with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, wherever they may die, and you will help them to pass through.'

"And this is a constant work. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. I've had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examples. It's really very interesting."

But something left her puzzled. "I have had all sorts of experiences," Mother said, "for so many, so many years. For about sixty years, constantly I have aided people who are said 'to die.' Constantly. Well, there are almost as many cases as there are people. ... At least twice it happened to me —in this very existence —'to die,' as people call it; and both

Page 167

times the experience was different, although the apparent fact was the same. What I was asking myself today is: Would what is called 'death' be, by chance, a multitude of different things?"

Page 168

13

Two Angry Cocks

What with this, that and the other, time imperceptibly slipped by. It was already a full month that Mirra had been in Zarif when Henri Morisset came to join her. That was on August 17. He went sightseeing with Mirra and Théon.

There were, and still are, many picturesque spots around Tlemcen. For example, the Cascades d' El Ourit are seven kilometres from the town and the road to them skirted Théon's park; a metal bridge that still clings to a mountain-side is said to have been constructed by none other than Eiffel! Another notable place they went to was the Cork Forest —the 'Forest of Ahrif' to give it its local name. It was some 30 kilometres away on a motorable road. Teresa, who sometimes joined the group, went this time with the other three, in spite of knowing what an unreliable

Page 169

driver Theon was! He rarely returned without upsetting the cab or the car he was driving. So, when they returned safe from their outing, she noted the event in her diary: "September 13, 1906 —Went with Theon & M. & Madame Morisset to the Cork Forest."

Teresa's diary,¹ its pages yellowed with age, has numerous entries; she kept in it a record of the comings and goings and doings of Theon and Théona and their guests.

Madame Theon, however, rarely went out with them. Her occult work left her too tired, as Mother said. Besides, when Mirra looked out of her window in the morning, she would often perceive a figure wrapped in a red shawl, for Madame Theon was prone to colds. Seated in a corner of the courtyard, she was already at work —writing. She wrote and she wrote. One felt her attention fully absorbed in an inaudible voice, as though she were taking a dictation. Unless, of course, she was writing down what her inner eyes were seeing in other worlds. Be that as it may, when

¹ With the kind permission of Jackie Semenoff, we were able to procure some relevant data from this diary.

Page 170

she passed away, she left behind her more than 12,000 written pages, according to Pascal The manly.

Her own work with Theon was generally done after lunch.

The nature of Alma's work made her retiring. But her goodness of heart made her fond of the simple local folk, and she comforted them when they poured out their sorrows to her.

It is likely that Henri, as an artist, was much taken with the view the countryside presented and the colour full locals. But it is almost certain that he was less taken with Theon. Mother, while talking to Pavitra and Satprem about Madame Theon, recalled an episode figuring the above two.

"Madame Theon was an extraordinary occultist. She was a small woman, fat, soft almost, giving you the impression that if you were to lean against her, it would melt! I remember once ... I was there in Tlemcen with Andre's father —a painter, an artist — who had come to join us.

"Now, Theon was wearing a dark violet robe. So Theon told him, 'This robe is purple.'

"The other one replied, 'No, in French it is not

Page 171

purple, it is violet.'

"Theon bristled, 'When I say purple, it is purple!'

"When suddenly a flash came out of my head: 'No, it's too ridiculous!' I didn't utter a word, you know, but it came out of my head —I saw the flash.

"Madame Theon got up, came and stood behind me. Neither of us had spoken a word. The other two were glaring at each other like angry cocks. Then she put my head on her breast —I had exactly the feeling of sinking into eiderdown!

"Well then," Mother continued, "never in my life have I felt such peace, never. It was absolutely luminous, and soft . . . such a peace, you know, so soft, so tender, so luminous. Next, she bent over my ears and murmured, 'You must never argue with your master!' I wasn't the one who was arguing!

"She was a wonderful woman, wonderful.

"But he . . . well."

Teresa noted in her diary, "October 15, 1906: Mr and Mme Morisset left.''

*

* *

Page 172

The Morrissets returned to France.

Mirra continued translating Madame Théon's work for the Cosmic Review and getting the magazine printed. Only this time, that is, from 1906 onwards, Mirra herself became one of its regular contributors. "I also wrote a thing or two. . . ."

She went on with her life of artist on the one hand, and on the other she busied herself with a group she had already formed with a small number of like-minded men and women —people, who, in spite of the dazzling triumphs of physical Science, believed "it was a mistake to think that we live physically only," as said Sri Aurobindo. The group was named 'Idea' and it assembled once every week or every fortnight in the house of one member or another, including the Morissets' Atelier at 15 rue Lemercier. The meetings were held at night. Generally philosophical ideas were discussed. The subject for the meeting was often decided beforehand and the members read out their papers. Apart from this, Mirra also noted down special happenings which occurred during the meetings. Thus we have Un Chef¹

¹ Later published in Words of Long Ago.

Page 173

('A Leader'), describing the visit of a Russian revolutionary in January 1907.

André Morisset never forgot how he had peeped at the on-going meeting one night. He had stationed himself at the top step of the stairway which went down from the bridge to the Atelier. Though the five-to six-year-old boy understood nothing he listened. He was discovered and ran back to bed. Next morning his mother told him that there was no need to get up from his bed and go there to see what was happening. "You have only to get out of your body and come." Mirra explained to her son that a human being is not limited to his physical body alone, but can go to other places and see what is going on. We don't know what the child understood, but it struck him as so extraordinary that he remembered it till the end of his days.

Page 174

HOME

14

Satan

Mother was deploring the lack of mental qualities in the Ashram children. "These children don't understand Sri Aurobindo's irony," she told Satprem. "Happily, on this point of humour, there was a meeting of Sri Aurobindo's mind and mine," she said. "They read prosaically," she moved her palm in the air in a gesture of superficiality. "Strangely enough, it's the same phenomenon when they read Anatole France.¹ And Anatole France, read without understanding his irony, is abominably commonplace.

"They don't grasp the irony.

"Sri Aurobindo had it. He understood the irony of Anatole France so well, he had this same thing —so subtle, so refined."

¹ Anatole France (pseudonym of Jacques Anatole Thibault — 1844-1924), French novelist, received the 1921 Nobel prize.

Page 175

Indeed, except perhaps for two or three, there was a real dearth of 'refined,' that is, clear-thinking minds in the Ashram. Yet, time and again, Sri Aurobindo laid stress on this quality. "One of the most fundamental requisites for the search of the Truth," he declared, "is a critical reason, almost a cynical mind which tears off the mask and refuses to accept current ideas, thoughts and opinions. It is a kind of solvent. Man must have the courage to see the Truth as it is without any deception about it. Shaw¹ has got that critical mind to a great extent and we find the same in Anatole France."

And here is Sri Aurobindo on Anatole France.

Dilip Kumar Roy once sent Sri Aurobindo a quotation from Anatole France's Les Dieux ont soif (The Gods Are Thirsty): "Either God would prevent evil if he could, but could not, or he could but would not, or he neither could nor would, or he both would and could. If he would but could not, he is impotent, if he could but would not, he is perverse, if he neither

¹ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish dramatist, received the 1925 Nobel prize. His views on the Jewish-Christian God are strikingly similar to Anatole France's. He dubbed Christianity 'Crossianity.'

Page 176

could nor would he is at once impotent and perverse; if he both could and would why on earth hasn't he done it, Father?"

Then in his characteristic way Dilip added, "I send this to you as I immensely enjoyed the joke and am sure you would too, hoping you would have something to fend it off with."

Dilip was right. Sri Aurobindo thoroughly enjoyed the joke and, what's more, didn't forget to fend it off. "Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about the rational animal man or Humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct.

"But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France when they met in some Heaven of Irony, I suppose —it can't have been in the heaven of Karl Marx, in spite of France's conversion before his death. God is reported to have strolled up to him and said: 'I say, Anatole, you know that was a good joke of yours; but there was a good cause too for my non-interference. Reason came along and told me: "Look here, why do you pretend to exist? You know you don't exist and never

Page 177

existed or, if you do, you have made such a mess of your creation that we can't tolerate you any longer. Once we have got you out of the way all will be right upon earth, tip-top, A-l; my daughter Science and I have arranged that between us. Man will raise his noble brow, the head of creation, dignified, free, equal, fraternal, democratic, depending upon nothing but himself, with nothing greater than himself anywhere in existence. There will be no God, no gods, no churches, no priestcraft, no religion, no kings, no oppression, no poverty, no war or discord anywhere. Industry will fill the earth with abundance, Commerce will spread her golden reconciling wings everywhere. Universal education will stamp out ignorance and leave no room for folly or unreason in any human brain; man will become cultured, disciplined, rational, scientific, well-informed, arriving always at the right conclusion upon full and sufficient data. The voice of the scientists and the experts will be loud in the land and guide mankind to the earthly paradise. A perfected society; health universalised by a developed medical science and a sound hygiene; everything rationalised; science evolved, infallible, omnipotent,

Page 178

omniscient; the riddle of existence solved; the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world; evolution, of which man, magnificent man, is the last term, completed in the noble white race; a humanitarian kindness and uplifting for our backward brown, yellow and black brothers; peace, peace, peace, reason, order, unity everywhere." There was a lot more like that, Anatole, and I was so much impressed by the beauty of the picture and its convenience, for I would have nothing to do or to supervise, that I at once retired from business —for, you know that I was always of a retiring disposition and inclined to keep myself behind the veil or in the background at the best of times. But what is this I hear? It does not seem to me from reports that Reason even with the help of Science has kept her promise. And if not, why not? Is it because she would not, or because she could not? Or is it because she both would not and could not? Or because she both would and could, but somehow did not? And I say, Anatole, these children of theirs, the State, Industrialism, Capitalism, Communism and the rest have a queer look; they seem very much like Titanic monsters armed, too, with all the powers of

Page 179

Intellect and all the weapons and organisation of Science! And it does look as if mankind were no freer under them than under the Kings and the Churches!! What has happened? —or is it possible that Reason is not supreme and infallible, even that she has made a greater mess of it than I could have done myself?!!!' Here the report of the conversation ends; I give it for what it is worth, for I am not acquainted with this God y and have to take him on trust from Anatole France."

Sri Aurobindo clarified, "The conception of the Divine as an external omnipotent Power who has 'created' the world and governs it like an absolute and arbitrary monarch —the Christian or Semitic conception — has never been mine; it contradicts too much my seeing and experience during thirty years of sadhana."

And for Mother that 'God' in the manner of Anatole France was inadmissible. "It made me, if I may say so, a complete atheist in my childhood." However, when Mirra read Anatole France she was also greatly interested, because she was struck by the similarity between his view and Théon's idea on the Jewish-Christian God. "He was an Asura who wanted to be the 'one and only God,' that's why he became the most

Page 180

terrible despot imaginable," Mother said quoting Theon. "That's what Anatole France said too. I now know that Anatole France hadn't read Théon's story; but where did he pick that up? I don't know. It's in The Revolt of the Angels. He says that Satan is the true God and Jehovah, the 'one and only God,' is the monster. And when the angels wanted Satan to become the only God, he perceived that he was immediately taking on all the failings of Jehovah! So he refused. He said, 'No-no, thank you very much!' It's an admirable story. And in exactly the same vein as what Theon said. As it happens, that was the first thing I asked Anatole France." She interrupted herself to say to Satprem, "I told you once that I met him. Common friends took me to him. The first thing I asked him was, 'Have you ever read the Tradition?' 'No,' he told me. I explained to him why I had asked, and he was interested. He said his source was his own imagination. But he had caught the idea . . . intuitively."

She referred again to Sri Aurobindo. "'Very good,' he would have said while reading The Revolt of the Angels. 'True, which of the two should we believe?' "Jehovah or the rebellious Angel who wanted

Page 181

to take his place?

Then, as an associated recollection crossed her mind, Mother said, "Do you remember I once told you I had clothed a vital Being in a body?"

"Is that Being still alive?" Satprem queried. "Who was it?"

"I have spoken of this before," she replied.

"I recounted the story of the revolution in China, and how this Being left me, saying . . ." Mother did not complete her sentence. "It was just five years before the Chinese revolution. I have told the story." She repeated, "I know I told it. But it was never noted down."

She explained, "I used to dictate. Theon had taught me to speak while in trance —that is, he had taught my BODY to express itself—and I would tell him everything I was doing while doing it. And he never noted any of it down. I suspect he did it on purpose — he had no wish to make revelations. So it's totally lost." There was a tinge of regret in her voice. "But had it been noted down hour by hour, minute by minute, it would have made an extraordinary scientific document on the occult. He never noted it down."

Page 182

"But this vital Being clothed in a body," Satprem brought Mother back to his earlier question, "did he live on earth for any length of time?"

"No, never."

"Never?"

"He stopped at the subtle physical —he himself refused to go any further." She now disclosed his identity. "It was Satan, the Asura of Light, who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness —I have told the story many times. But anyway, when I was with Theon, I called that Being up and asked him if he wanted to come into contact with the earth. It's worth mentioning that it was the first born's central being. Of course, he had millions of emanations in the world, but this was the central being in person. He agreed to be clothed in a body. Théon wanted to keep him there with him: 'Don't let him go,' he told me. I made no reply. This Being told me he didn't want to be more material than that and it sufficed—you could feel him move the way you feel a draught, it was that concrete.

"And he said he was going to set in motion the Chinese revolution. 'I am going to organize a secret

Page 183

society to set in motion the revolution in China,' he told me. 'And mark my words, it will happen in exactly five years.' And he gave me the date.

"I noted it down. And EXACTLY five years later, it happened.¹ Afterwards I met people coming from China, who told me it had all been the work of a secret society. They told me about it because that society used a certain sign, and instinctively I made that sign without knowing about it while one of them was speaking to me." Mother put one fist on top of the other. "'Ah, you are one of us,' that person said to me. I didn't answer. Then he told me everything."

It would seem that revolutionaries were attracted to Mirra like fireflies to a lamp. Is it to be wondered at? Surely not. For was she not Revolution incarnate? Apart from Sri Aurobindo and Mother who else has striven to revolutionize evolution itself? Do we know anyone ?

¹ In 1905, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) made a loose alliance with other anti-Manchu groups and formed the TONGMENGHUI, which was the direct ancestor of KUOMIN-TANG. After several abortive uprisings the Revolt of October 1911 was crowned with spectacular success —and exactly five years earlier, in October 1906, Mirra was in Tlemcen.

Page 184

"But, you know," Mother said pensively, "it's really interesting because the exact date was given. 'In exactly five years the revolution will take place,' he told me. He knew it before he left. 'And that,' he said, 'will be the beginning, the first terrestrial movement heralding the transformation of . . .'" She elucidated, "Theon didn't use the word supramental, he used to say 'the new world on earth.'"

This episode had remained embedded in her mind, half-forgotten perhaps after a gap of fifty-six years. For she said again, "But I did note that down. I had forgotten the whole story in between, because I now live constantly in the Becoming. But I have recaptured it."

She added firmly, "And all the disbelief in the world can't contradict that piece of evidence."

Where was that piece of evidence?

"The note itself was stolen from me while I was moving to a new house.

"Two things were stolen: that note and the Mantra of Life —I told you about that. And I suspect that it was an occult theft, not an ordinary one; because people didn't even have an inkling of the

Page 185

value of those papers, which had no interest for most people.

"Well, till we meet again, my child." With a smile and a swish of her gown she was gone.

However, another time she gave some extra news about these four great Asuras. As always, her explanation to Satprem was fuller than her hint to the children some years before.

"The first one," she said, "whom religions call Satan, the Asura of Consciousness, was converted and has worked —is still working. The second" —Love and Ananda — "annulled himself in the Supreme."

That leaves two. In occultism one of them is designated as the ' Lord of Death' and the other as the 'Lord of Falsehood' —he, however, proclaims himself the 'Lord of Nations.' Frankly speaking, nations are puppets in his hands. "Effectively, it's he who has directed the whole course of world events during the last few centuries," said Mother.

In any case, before he left for China, Satan cautioned Mirra. "When that Asura of Consciousness made his surrender and was converted, he told me, T have billions of emanations and these will go on with

Page 186

their own lives, but their root, their source has now run dry.' How much time will it take to exhaust it all?" Mother wondered. "Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma."

I too wonder. Isn't their karma completed after eighty years? For, I do seem to smell billions of rotting fish floating dead on the surface of the sea.

At any rate, Mother consoled us twenty-seven years ago. "We can't say. But the source has dried up, and that is an extremely important thing."

Satan's setting in motion the revolution in China was an important milestone in history, as was President J. F. Kennedy's assassination. "There are landmarks of that kind. ... I told you, you remember, how that great Asura —who in fact was the first born, and for whom I built a subtle body —had said he was going to China and that China's revolution —a long time ago! —would signal the beginning of the work of terrestrial transformation. Those things are like milestones on a road, and the Chinese revolution was like the first milestone which opened up the road. Well, Kennedy's assassination pertains to those signs, it's one of the landmarks. I have been told this."

Page 187

This was in November 1963. Then the next year on 15 October, Nikita Khrushchev was removed from his twin posts of USSR's prime minister and First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Mother said it was "a VIOLENT regression." Later she clarified. "But I was counting on Kennedy, not without reason, for he gave his assent to join Russia for establishing peace upon earth. The talks had started and they had seized the opportunity of China's agression against India. The other one in Russia who had responded, Khrushchev, isn't dead because he left in time!" As for President Kennedy's assassination, "It has as though served to trigger one of the movements of the earth's transformation."

But what is interesting, and disconcerting, is that these 'milestones' are NEGATIVE, as though the worst had to be traversed —or the worst given a free hand —for the door of the New to open. as though the worst had to be traversed —or the worst given a free hand —for the door of the New to open.

Page 188

15

At the Threshold of the Formless

Weeks and months went by after the Morissets' return from Algeria. The year 1907 was well in its stride. Mirra was twenty-nine years old. Her ten years of intimate mingling with artists was drawing to its close —she had seen the boundaries of their world. After living ten years with Henri, it became amply evident to her that their parting of the ways had come.

She returned to Tlemcen for the second year running.

"18 July 1907 —Mirra came," Teresa noted in her diary.

Quite unexpectedly, on this second visit, Mirra was on the verge of discovering a secret. Mother disclosed this to Satprem when replying to a question

Page 189

of his. He wanted "to understand the process" —Sri Aurobindo's or the Veda's —by which the Supermind was to be found.

She replied, "My own experience I know and can speak about in detail. There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say."

She remarked upon the vision of Theon and Madame Theon converging on that of the Veda —the world of Truth which must incarnate on this earth and create a new world. "They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, 'New heavens and a new earth.'

"Because Theon also knew about it. He knew and called it 'the new world,' I think, or 'the new creation upon the earth and the glorified body.' But anyway, he knew the Supramental existence —he had had the revelation of it and that's what he announced. He also said that it would be reached THROUGH the discovery of the inner Divine ; and that that would lead to the 'thing.' For him, as I told you the other day, the 'thing' had a greater density —it seems to be a correct experience. Well, for my part, I made investigations and saw the earth's history in innumerable visions,

Page 190

about which I spoke a lot with Sri Aurobindo."

To whom she also told what Theon had said to her about Barlet and his "idea that the perfect man, the immortal man, would be spherical." And Sri Aurobindo, who always enjoyed a joke, repeated it in an informal chat with his disciples. "This question about the nature of the Supramental body was answered by Theon. He was in France at that time and he said the Supramental body would be a 'body of light — corps glorieux.' He had a number of disciples, some of whom were mathematicians and scientists. One of them brought the solution one day that the body of the Superman would be a sphere! Theon said, 'It may be, but it would be very inconvenient if people want to kiss each other!'"¹

Although Theon had all the knowledge, it was actually his wife who had all the experience FOR him. Mother gave a graphic description of the process she used. "Madame Theon had this experience, and it is she who, not actually taught me, but gave me the indication of how it was to be done. She would go out

Page 191

of her body and become conscious in the vital world — there were many intermediary states too, if one cared to explore them. After the vital came the mental ; you consciously went out of the vital body, left it behind —you could see it —and entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into . . . And in like manner she successively left twelve different bodies, one after the other. She would leave one body and enter the consciousness of the new plane she was in —she was extremely 'formed,' you see, individualized and organized, I mean —then fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, and describe it. And so on twelve times."

The Indian term for these bodies is kosha or 'sheath.' You leave your 'food sheath,' or the material body, on the material plane; then you enter the vital plane in your vital sheath; there you unsheath again to enter the mental plane. And so forth.

"I did the same thing," said Mother. "With great dexterity even. I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around and look, study, and then tell and record what I had seen. And my last stage abutted upon the Formless — Theon almost

Page 192

used the Jewish terminology: the Supreme without form he called 'the Formless.' From this last stage — which Theon called 'pathetism,'¹ a very barbaric but very expressive word —one passed on to the Formless. There was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all form, even all thought-forms, all possible forms were ended. In this domain one experienced total unity —unity in something that was the essence of Love ; Love being a manifestation more . . . 'dense,' he would always say —there were all sorts of different 'densities'; Love was a denser expression of THAT. THAT was the sense of perfect Unity — perfect unity and identity —and THAT no longer had any form corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! An almost immaculate white light, but with something of a golden-rose in it. Words are crude. This Light and this Experience were truly marvellous, it's inexpressible in words," Mother shook her head.

"Well then, once I was there —Theon said not to cross to the other side, because one did not return —

¹ Theon defines 'pathetism' as 'the Second World responding specially to Love.'

Page 193

but once there, I wanted to pass over to the other side. When, in a quite unexpected and astounding way, I found myself in the presence of the 'principle' as it were, a principle of the human form. It bore no resemblance to man as we see him, but it was an upright form, standing just on the borderline between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of 'standard.' At the time nobody had ever spoken to me about it, and Madame Theon had never seen it; nobody had ever seen or said anything. But I felt that I was on the point of discovering a secret."

Mother, during another conversation, had remarked upon the evolution of the human form showing a trend towards diminishing the difference between the male and the female forms. "More and more they resemble what I myself had seen on the highest height. I had seen it at the beginning of the century, even before knowing of Sri Aurobindo's existence, and without having ever heard the word 'supramental.' Nothing. No idea. I saw on the highest height, there at the threshold of the Formless, at the extreme limit, an ideal form resembling the human form —it was an idealized form, neither man nor

Page 194

woman. A luminous form, a form of golden light.

"Afterwards, when I met Sri Aurobindo and talked with him about it, he told me, 'It is certainly the prototype of the supramental form.' I saw it several times again, later on, so this proved to be true.

"I did this experiment approximately in 1904 — I think it was in 1904." It was in 1907 actually. "Consequently, when I arrived here, it was all an accomplished work and a known domain. Thus, when the question of finding the Supermind came up I had only to do my experiment again, to which I was well accustomed. I was used to doing it; I was taught to do it at will, through successive exteriorizations. It was a voluntary process."

Page 196

16

The Mantra of Life

"From that highest height I would redescend," said Mother, "reentering my bodies one after the other—you really feel the friction, you feel you are retaking a body and reentering."

She let fall that "when one is on that highest height, the body is in a cataleptic state." Which is neither sleep nor death, but a state in between.

Satprem the seeker, sought to know, "Is there a difference between sleep and death? Or are they the same?"

"Death and sleep? Oh, no!"

"But isn't sleep like death?" he insisted. "When asleep one is no longer in one's body; everything else goes out just as it does at the time of death. No?"

"Oh, no! Not at all," she disagreed. "No. The cataleptic state of trance, yes, it's like death, apart

from the link which remains —only a link remains, otherwise everything goes out. Actually, the body becomes cataleptic when everything has gone out. Otherwise all that is most material in the vital remains in the body."

The work Mirra did with Theon was "quite a perilous work, moreover. It was the body's life-energy that went out —everything, everything went out, just as when you die. Besides, that's how I came to experience death."

"I mean," Satprem chipped in, "aren't the places you go to in sleep the same as the ones you go to after death?"

"No. No-no." Then she gave the underlying reason for sleep and described what mostly happens in reality during sleep. She stated, moreover, "But no two sleeps are alike, my child. And the same goes for death —no two are alike. But they are different because . . . they are different STATES."

She repeated, "The STATES are different. While you have a body you are not in the same state as when you are 'dead.' After the doctors have declared you 'dead' there is a period of seven days when you are

Page 199

still in an intermediary state. But the state of death, death proper, is totally different BECAUSE there is no longer this physical base."

Mother took up the theme of the body's cataleptic state, giving her own example. "Once ... it happened twice, but I am not sure about the second time as I was alone. The first time was in Tlemcen and I was with Theon. My body was in a cataleptic state and I was in a conscious trance. But it was a special kind of catalepsy, in that my body could speak. I could speak, although very slowly —Theon had taught me how to do it. Well, anyhow, it can be done because the 'life of the form' always remains and this is what takes seven days to leave." Mother was always indignant at the way Indians cremate their dead so soon, only a few hours after they are pronounced dead.

"The life of the form, when trained, can make the body move —although the being is not there —at any rate, it can make it utter words." She then gave additional details on her own case.

"By and by, while I was still in catalepsy, the body began to live again, that is, it was able to speak and even move. The body managed to get up and

Page 200

move about. And yet everything had gone out of it. When everything goes out, the body becomes cold, of course, but there's a body-consciousness which manages to draw a little energy from the air, from this and that. And I would speak in that state; I spoke —I could speak very well and would recount all that I was seeing elsewhere."

In this state life literally hangs by a thread.

"However, this state is not without danger, the proof being that during my work, for some reason or the other— obviously due to some negligence on Théon's part who was there to watch over me —the cord, I don't know what to call it, went snap!" There was a faint rueful smile on Mother's face. "The link was cut malevolently."

Satprem shuddered. With reason. For, as a rule, it denotes a point of no return. To put it simply, when a spirit goes out from a body that is asleep or in a trance —as in Mirra's case —as long as life continues in the body the spirit is attached to it by a tenuously thin cord of silver light which is capable of stretching to an infinite distance.

I was told by a Tantrik that this was how the

Page 201

Rishis of yore could stay in trance for such long periods of time without dying. They left their bodies seated on the earth while their spirits went roaming, for instance, in the Sun-world (Suryaloka). To take an example at random, Mirra visited distant planets, we learn from Sri Aurobindo. It was way back in 1934 when a disciple was "wondering whether the Mother has been able to establish a direct connection with Mars or any other far-off planet."

Sri Aurobindo wrote back, "A long time ago Mother was going everywhere in the subtle body but she found it of a very secondary interest. Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them by touching something corresponding in the earth-atmosphere."

But evidently great precaution should be taken to guard the material body while the subtle body or the spirit goes out of it.¹ It can be darned dangerous.

¹ A story from Shankaracharya's life (788-820 A.D.) illustrates this. Shankaracharya had beena sannyasin since his childhood, and once he needed to have the experience of worldly life. Having asked a disciple of his to keep a close

Page 202

However, if sudden danger threatens the body, the silver cord is able to recall the spirit to animate it. But if that silver cord is once severed, the body dies. That is generally the case of people who are said to have "died in their sleep."

And why was the link "cut malevolently"?

Mother answered Satprem's mute question. "Theon made me find the Mantra of Life, the mantra that gives life. And he wanted me to give it to him, he wanted to possess it — the thing was formidable! It was preserved in a place." Not physical, of course. "It was the mantra that gives life —it can make anyone return to life, but that's only a small part of its power. This mantra was shut away, sealed, with my name on it in Sanskrit. I didn't know Sanskrit at that time, but he did. When he led me to that place, I told him, 'There is a sort of design, it must be Sanskrit.' I could recognize the characters as Sanskrit. So he told me to

watch over his body for a year, he left it and entered the body of a dying king. After living a king's life for a whole year, Shankaracharya left the king's body and returned to his own, having acquired the knowledge he wanted. He would seem to have acquired a Tantric process —a siddhi—by which yogis transfer themselves into another body.

Page 203

reproduce what I was seeing. I reproduced it. And it was my name, Mirra, written in Sanskrit. It was meant for me, and none but I could open it. He told me — we were doing this when I was in a catalyptic state — 'Open it and tell me what is there.' Then something in me KNEW at once, and I said, 'No.' And I didn't read it."

Mirra's refusal made Theon violently angry, and it was this that snapped the silver cord.

"I had gone out of my body in an entirely material way, the body was in a cataleptic state, and the link got cut. So the link was cut."

Satprem, ever curious, asked, "But what was the experience at that moment?"

"The experience was," Mother said laughingly, "impossible to enter that!"

Then in a more serious vein she went on, "When I wanted to return, when it was time to return, I couldn't get through. But Theon was there —Theon was scared stiff! But I was able to warn him. I alerted him, saying, 'The cord is cut.'

"He was capable; he knew —he knew how to 'pull.' So he used his power and his knowledge to make

Page 204

me return. But it was no joke! It was very difficult," she said mildly.

She reverted to Satprem's first question. "And that's when I had the experience of the two different states; because there, the part that had gone out had gone without the body's support —the link was cut. Then I knew. I was, of course, in a special state since I was doing a certain work in full consciousness with all the vital power, and I was mistress not only of my surroundings but . . . But, you see, what happens is a kind of reversal of consciousness — you begin to belong to another world. You feel this quite distinctly. Now, Theon instantly asked me to concentrate —I was getting ready to go wandering off! He was in a mortal dread that I would die on him! He entreated me to concentrate, so I concentrated on my body."

An impossible situation, surely! "But Theon was there," so the reentry into the body was made possible.

Knowledge was an important factor. "There was, from an occult point of view, knowledge — a goodly knowledge! There was knowledge as well as the will," Mother made a gesture of pushing to reenter the body.

Page 205

"And also an inner faith —but I never spoke about it — a concentration." Another factor helped. "Besides, the body was not deteriorated, you see; it was undamaged, so it wasn't difficult. It was in a very good condition, only the thread was cut —that is, what gives life had gone out and could no longer return.

"I returned as a result of the power and the will, because ... In fact, simply because I still had something to do on the earth."

We suppressed our smiles at Mother's understatement.

"But when I reentered, it hurt horribly. Hurt atrociously. An excruciating pain, terrible, terrible, as though you were entering into a hell."

"Into a . . . ?" Satprem was flabbergasted.

"Into a hell." Mother laughed. Yet it was no laughing matter. On the contrary the reentry was "an unforgettable suffering," she told us once.

"It was terrible. It doesn't last," she added.

"He made me drink half a glass of cognac. He always made me take some every day after the session, because I remained working in trance for more than an hour —which is generally a forbidden practice.

Page 206

"But still, I am quite sure that had it not been he and I, that would have been the end. I would not have reentered.

"So, even in my outermost consciousness I know a little bit. A little bit, that's all."

And she said in conclusion, "No, sleep is something else. Yes, something else. It's more like a falling back into the Inconscient. We all know, of course, that the Divine Consciousness is there in the depths of the Inconscient. But for some reason, probably owing to the necessities of the Work, I've never had, to my knowledge, a fully unconscious sleep."

As for the Mantra of Life, "I found it again when I was with Sri Aurobindo. And I gave it to Sri Aurobindo.

"But that is another story again."

Page 207

17

The Being of Irised Light

Mother took it for granted that "we all know, of course, that the Divine Presence is there in the depths of the Inconscient." But do we?

Well, anyway, as it happens, Mother had SEEN the Divine in the Inconscient.

It was in the 1920s. "After I returned from Japan, and we began to work together," Mother recounted to Satprem, "Sri Aurobindo had already brought down the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. 'It's strange,' he told me, 'it is an endless work! Nothing seems to get done — everything is done and then has to be constantly done all over again.'

"Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon, 'It will be like that until we touch bottom.'

Inconscient, and little by little, they awaken in each thing, in each atom as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution, she explained.

"I had that experience.

"I had the experience of being 'missioned,' so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combined emanated DIRECTLY into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there, I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic being in deep sleep . . . so veiled that he was almost invisible. Then, at my contact, the veil seemed to be rent and, without his awakening, there was a kind of radiation spreading out. I can still see my vision."

With Mother it was the case of once seen, never forgotten: "I don't have the memory of sound, but the memory of the eyes astounding. A thing seen once, never forgotten."

This particular vision was published in the Cosmic Review, 1906, exactly as Mirra had written it in French. We give below its translation.

Page 212

"I slept, and now I am awake.

"I slept upon the westward waters and now I penetrate into the ocean to fathom its depths. Its surface is the green of beryl, silvered by moonbeams. Below, the water is the blue of sapphire and already faintly luminous.

"Reclining on the waves' silken folds, I descend; rocked from one undulating wave to another in a gentle rhythm, I am borne in a straight line towards the west. The deeper I go, the more luminous the water becomes, great silvery currents coursing through it.

"Cradled from wave to wave, for a long while I descend deeper, ever deeper.

"All at once, looking above me, I glimpse something roseate; I draw nearer and discern a coralesque shrub, as large as a tree, held fast to a blue reef. The denizens of the waters, myriad and diverse, glide to and fro. Now I find myself standing upon fine, shining sand. I gaze about me in wonder. There are mountains and valleys, fantastic forests, strange flowers that could as well be animals, and fish that might be flowers- there is no separation, no gap between stationary beings and non-stationary. Colours everywhere,

Page 213

shimmering, brilliant or muted, but always harmonious and refined. I walk upon the golden sands and contemplate all this beauty bathed in a soft, pale blue radiance; tiny, luminous spheres of red, green and gold circulating through it.

"How marvellous are the depths of the sea! Everywhere the presence of the One in whom all harmonies reside is felt!

"Ever westward I advance, not tiring, not slowing. Sight succeeds sight in incredible variety. Here upon a rock of lapis lazuli stretch fine and delicate seaweeds like long blond or violet tresses; here are great, rose-hued fortress walls, all streaked with silver; here flowers seem chiselled from enormous diamonds; here goblets, as beautiful as though crafted by the most skilled carver, are filled with what appear to be droplets of emerald, alternately vibrant with light and shade.

"Presently I wend my way between two rock walls, blue as sapphire, upon a path flecked with silver; and the water becomes ever purer and more luminous.

"A sudden turn in the path and I find myself

Page 214

before a grotto which seems fashioned in wrought crystal, scintillating with prismatic radiance.

"Standing there between two iridescent pillars is a very tall figure; his face, framed in short blond curls, is that of a very young man; his eyes are sea-green; he is clad in a pale blue tunic, and like wings upon his shoulders are great fins, white as snow. Beholding me, he steps aside against a pillar to let me pass. Barely have I crossed the threshold when an exquisite melody strikes my ears. The waters are all iridescent here, the ground aglow with lustrous pearls; opaline the portico and vault, hung gracefully with stalactites; delectable perfumes hover everywhere; galleries, niches and alcoves open out on all sides; but directly ahead of me I perceive a great light and towards it I bend my steps. There are broad rays of gold, silver, sapphire, emerald and ruby, radiating outward in all directions, born from a centre too distant for me to discern; to this centre I feel drawn by a powerful attraction.

"Now I see whence these rays emanate. I see a recumbent oval of white light girdled by a superb rainbow, and I sense that the One whom the light

Page 215

hides from my view is plunged in a profound repose. For long I remain at the outer edge of the rainbow, trying to pierce the light and see the One who is sleeping girdled by such splendour. Unable to discern anything, I enter the rainbow, and thence into the white and shining oval. Here I see a marvellous Being, stretched on what seems to be a drift of white eiderdown. His supple body, of incomparable beauty, is clad in a long, white robe. His head rests on his folded arm, but of that I can see only his long hair, the hue of ripened wheat, flowing over his shoulders. A great and sweet emotion sweeps through me at this magnificent spectacle, and a deep reverence as well.

"Has the sleeper sensed my presence? For now he awakens and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, mauve and luminous eyes with a gentle, an infinitely tender expression. Wordlessly he bids me a sublime welcome and my whole being joyously responds. Taking my hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I stretch out on this downy whiteness, and his harmonious visage bends over me; a sweet current of force enters wholly into me, invigorating, revitalizing each cell.

Page 216

"Then, girdled by the splendid colours of the rainbow, enveloped by lulling melodies and exquisite perfumes, beneath his gaze so powerful, so lender, I float into a beatific repose. And during my sleep I learn many beautiful and useful things.

"Of all these marvellous things, understood

"Wherever there is beauty, wherever there is radiance, wherever there is progress towards perfection, whether in the Heaven of the heights or of the depths, there, assuredly, is found the form and similitude of man- man, supreme terrestrial evolutor."

Thus ended Mirra's account of her vision.

"And it is remarkable," concluded Mother, "that this marvellous Being strangely resembles him whose vision I had one day: the Being who is found at the other extremity- at the borderline of the form and the Formless. Only, the latter was in a golden glory, carmine, while in its sleep this other Being was diamond white, emanating opalescent rays.

"That, in fact, is the origin of all the Avatars."

Page 217

18

A Skilled Occultist

In spite of all the astonishing happenings at Tlemcen with which we have become acquainted, Mother still had other startling news up her sleeve.

"There were some amazing things," she said.

Then she dropped her bombshell of a revelation. "Theon also showed me how to deflect lightning."

"Can it be done?" asked an astounded Satprem.

"Ah, yes!" she was positive. "He used to do it."

"But it takes a formidable power!"

"Oh, he had a formidable power!" She laughed, "Theon had a formidable power.

"I saw him deflect a bolt of lightning! I SAW it !''

She mused awhile. "One stormy day —there were

Page 218

terrible thunderstorms over there- he climbed to the high terrace above the sitting room.

"'It's a strange time to be going up there,' I said to him.

"He started to laugh, 'Come along, don't be afraid!'

"So I went up with him. He began chanting some invocations and then I clearly saw a bolt of lightning that had been heading straight towards us swerve abruptly MIDWAY IN ITS COURSE."

Satprem gasped.

"You'll say it's impossible; but / saw it swerve. It went and struck a tree farther away.

"I asked Theon, 'Did you do that?' He nodded."

Mother left no doubt about the Occultist's power. "Oh, that man was terrible, you know. He had a terrible power. But outwardly, perfectly correct!"

And Theon could outrank any teacher of occultism. "At least, he taught me well occultism. At that time I was really very skilled! I too," Mother added with a laugh, "I have performed a number of miracles! But I set no value on them nor attached any importance to them."

Page 219

Sri Aurobindo's sentence will perfectly lit this case. "Great saints have performed miracles; greater saints have railed at them; the greatest have both railed at them and performed them."'

One of the miracles Mirra performed took place on the high seas. This time, Theon went with her on her return journey.

"When I went back from Tlemcen the second time, Theon accompanied me. He was going to go on a tour of Europe."

This was 1907. Not planes but steamships were then the means of transport across the seas, five years later, the Titanic was to sink in North Atlantic.

"While we were at sea, related Mother, "a violent storm broke out. The sea became very rough. High waves lashed the ship continually, tossing it up and down. There was apprehension of a catastrophe. The Captain himself was lull of anxiety and said,

"'The passengers may be in danger.'

"The passengers on board got very nervous, many were rather pale, and some of them even began to cry.

¹ Thoughts and Aphorisms.

Page 220

"Theon looked at me and said, 'Go and stop it.'

"The Captain was most astonished. He didn't at all understand what Theon meant! But naturally, I did. So I went to my cabin and lay down on the bunk.

"Then, leaving my body there, I went up out of it and moved freely to the open sea. There I found innumerable entities, but formless, madly jumping about. They were the ones that were creating all this havoc! I went near and, approaching them gently, said very sweetly,

"'What can you gain by torturing these poor people?' I appealed to them, 'Please calm down and spare their lives.'

"For half an hour I went on cajoling and remonstrating with them, until they gradually began to calm down. When they had completely ceased their activity, the troubled sea was calm once more.

"I returned to my body and went out of the cabin. Arriving on the saloon-deck I found everybody thoroughly enjoying themselves. They were all gathered at the bar, making merry and boasting," said Mother with half a mocking smile.

Page 221

23

They Came as Forerunners

Came a bolt from the blue.

Madame Theon was dead.

Mirra heard the news in utter disbelief. Why? Why? Oh, why?

How? When? Where?

After eighty years the trail was evidently cold. But in 1988 Patrice followed it doggedly and his perseverance paid off. Helped by Christian Chanel, he came up with a few hard facts which have enabled us to reconstruct the sequence of events.

The Théons were spending that summer of 1908 at Courseulles, with the Thémanlys family, when Madame Theon decided to visit the Channel Islands. We do not know for what reason. So, early in September, she went to the port of Carteret on the Normandy coast. Cotentin, as the French call this

Page 254

peninsula jutting out into the English Channel, has a rocky coast. Before taking the steamer that was to ferry her to the island of Jersey, she went out for a stroll on the narrow cliff path, 'le Sentier de la Corniche,' which soon gets narrower and rather dangerous. As she was walking along in a trance, she fell off the promontory and into the sea. The water in September is chilly there. But undeterred, she did not cancel her short voyage —from Carteret to Jersey is more or less 30 kilometres, and the steamer would have made it well within two hours. But once the ship had sailed, she suddenly felt an extreme malaise. So much so that the Captain on board the ship informed the officer commanding the Port of Gorey in Jersey that one of the passengers, a lady, was sick. The news was published in a local daily, datelined 12 September 1908, which contained additional details: Upon the ship's arrival, a doctor, O' Connor, examined her and diagnosed pneumonia. She was immediately transported to Hotel Elfine, where she died almost immediately after. It seems that she was taken to a hotel — the nearest available —rather than to a hospital because of her critical condition. The newspaper states further that a telegram was sent to her

Page 255

husband, Max Theon, editor of The Cosmic Review in Algeria, who arrived by S.S. Cygne. She was buried in the cemetary of the Croix-Grouville in the island of Jersey.

Théon of course had to register her demise before the burial, and obtain a death certificate. The entry in the register¹ goes thus:

Place: Faldouët

Date: 10 September 1908

Name: Miriam Lin Woodroffe

Sex: Female

Age: 65 years

Cause of death: Pneumonia

Registered on: 12 September 1908

In the Parish of St-Martin Jersey.

There are some discrepancies between the marriage certificate and the death register, such as Madame Théon's name, age, etc., but as we have seen, Theon didn't much care for officialdom.

Or he might have been too numb. Admittedly, the departure of his twenty-three years' companion

¹ Jersey being French-speaking, the original entries are in French.

Page 256

(from March 1885 to September 1908) —and what a companion! —was a terrible blow to Theon. He fell a prey to a profound depression.

The Thémanlys couple took their broken-hearted Master to their Normandy home and for several months nursed him with loving care, until he was somewhat recovered and could travel. He then returned to Tlemcen.

But before doing that he told the members of the Cosmic movement that as the Heart of the Movement had stopped beating, the publication of the Cosmic Review would stop too. Thus the Cosmic Review was published only for seven years —from January 1902 to December 1908.

It was in the November 1908 issue that Mirra poured forth her own sorrow at the sudden demise of Madame Theon. Here below we give an English rendering of the article.

---

THE EMPTY PLACE

"No more do we see her dear form, of harmonious lines, her likable face so good and so tender, furrowed

Page 257

by long years of a Psychic Fighter's life; nor her sweet smile like sunbeam which chases away sadness, nor her calm and majestic bearing fit for a pre-eminent Victress!

"No more do we hear her melodious voice, her gentle words inspired by wisdom, that powerful and profound poetry which flowed like a magnificent river from the pure source of the Soph, and through which this great intelligence expressed itself in the immense range of her vast knowledge!

"The dear psychic children kiss no more her small hands of a Sensitive, her small industrious and diligent hands, ceaselessly occupied with works of art and literature, as also —and above all —with the care of the sacred life of the Home, the blessed shelter of love!

"We heard her tell the story of a long-ago ghost who, from time to time, came to sit by the family hearth among her own people.

"Will she, too, return to gladden us by her presence? Will she let us once again rest at her feet as in the days gone by?

"And it is by no means a dream, this, not a

Page 258

baseless construction : surely she will return! Surely she will appear before us, visibly even to the neuron physical state.

"Life is universal; it is one; eternal; unchangeable; it changes but in the form, and it reigns, sovereign unifier, in her who, being individualized, has not quit us for long.

"Already She approaches, She is amongst her own, who are aware of a close link with Her, a gradual awareness growing day by day, in the same way as Her own consciousness, too, becomes ever more present and more complete.

"Let us whiten our clothes so that they may not be too unworthy in the presence of her luminous robe, pure, immaculate; and may our tears, shed with such pain, wash away the stains with which we may have sullied them by uncharitable thoughts, words or deeds.

"Let us march on courageously straight ahead, let us pursue this path on which She has led us: it is painful at this moment; but as we walk on it our pain will lessen until we hear the heroic chants of the glad victory, when the last dark veil, drawn aside, reveals

Page 259

to us the so dearly Beloved, who conquers us and brings us happiness, as a Triumphant Queen!"

---

It is as though Mirra had penned this for us, Mother's children, for the time when she herself would leave us behind.

*

* *

Théon returned to Tlemcen.

His visits to France became extremely rare. So rare that most people believed he had died in 1913 or thereabouts.

In 1971, Satprem asked Mother, "Isn't he upon earth anymore? He left his body?"

She replied, "Oh, yes! Long ago. I think he left before I came here. Long ago."

Pascal Thémanlys, however, wrote, "I saw him during one of his sojourns in Paris in 1920. Subsequently he returned to Tlemcen and lived there in company with his devoted secretary, Miss Teresa, up to 1926."

By 1920 Mother had already left France. But

Page 260

her words reflected the widely held belief about Théon's earlier demise. There was a reason which gave currency to this belief, as can be seen from a few jottings from Teresa's diary:

"1913, October 18 —Dear Theon has gone to Alger about autos.

"1913, October 24—Theon came home accident with the auto."

He must have suffered agonies, because she went on to note down:

" 1913, November 1 —Doctor has now set the fracture, so dear Theon will suffer less & less now, I hope, for he has suffered terribly."

Then two months later, she wrote:

"1914, January —Theon left his rooms for the first time since his accident & walked in the court (with crutches)."

That, then, is the reason why people thought he had died in 1913.

He was still in Tlemcen and gaining strength when the 1914 war broke out. It quite upset him, for he held a war to be "the greatest crime, because life is

Page 261

sacred." In fact, according to him, the ideal political system ought to be a Government by the Wise. Alas for us, more and more headless people seem to be occupying the seats of power!

Be that as it may, during the four years of war they did not move from Tlemcen apparently. It was almost one year after the armistice that Theon and Teresa ventured out of Africa.

Gleanings from Teresa's diary:

"1919, October 10 —Here we are [in Paris] . . . after a

very long & troublesome journey "1920, June 3 —We start for Tlemcen "1920, June 8 —Got home at last"

In all probability this was their last homecoming, because in 1920 both of them were well into their seventies and must have found travelling more and more difficult. In fact, if one fell ill, which happened, the other was unable to do any nursing.

Finally, according to a small paragraph in a newspaper published at Tlemcen, Theon died on 4 March 1927, and the funeral was held on 6 March 1927.

Teresa survived him perhaps by two years.

Page 262

When she too passed away, the authorities put up the property, which was in Madame Théon's name, to auction since there were no legal heirs.

It was a very nice young Arab boy, who told Patrice that his maternal grandfather had bought the house in 1930.

*

* *

6 March 1988.

"BUSHAOR! It's Bushaor!!" exclaimed in unison all the old men crowding around Patrice to see the photo he was holding aloft.

Patrice had gone to Tlemcen to try and find out more about Theon and visit Zarif where Mother had had so many experiences. After several false trails he hit upon the idea of visiting the local old men's club. At first the old men shook their heads when he asked them if they remembered Max Theon or Aia Aziz. No, the names evoked no response. Then he brought out a photo of Theon and showed it to them. It was then that they expressed their amazement at suddenly seeing a familiar face.

"Bushaor! It's Bushaor!!" all of them cried

Page 263

delightedly. Then they explained to Patrice that this was their nickname for the old man because of his long hair. Now they themselves were old, but when they had known him they were in their twenties or even less. But they still remembered a few things about Theon. "It was someone who didn't have very many contacts," they said. "He didn't speak. Oh, he was some kind of . . . magician. Nobody dared to approach him. People were afraid of him. Nobody went inside his property. But he would be seen now and then, just like that, when he came down into town. We would see him walking; he had long hair, wore a beret, and also a great big costume. For us," the Arabs said, "only prophets dress in that fashion. So then ..."

At any rate, it was one of the old men who kindly guided Patrice to Zarif. It was there that the latter met the young boy and his family who showed him around the house. The boy's mother felt sorry that their visitor could not meet her father who had passed away only a few years earlier; for the old man was for ever telling his little daughter stories about Theon and happenings at Zarif, to which she had paid but scant attention.

Page 264

But there still are people alive in Tlemcen who remember Theon.

*

* *

When the news of Madame Théon's death reached her, Mirra was stunned. Understandably. "She was a marvellous woman from the standpoint of experience —unique ..." Mother was to tell Satprem half a century later. "Madame Theon was the first to tell me what I was, what she had seen —the crown of twelve pearls over my head," she told us. "Madame Theon said to me —I used to narrate to her all my childhood stories —she told me, 'Oh, but of course! I know: You are that and the sign is on you, and it is that.' "

Why did Mirra have to lose such a precious one barely found?

My own feeling is that Madame Theon left only after she had met Mirra and was assured that their work, for which she and Theon had come, would be carried on and completed.

She gone, he was lost. But he was too great to remain just a miracle-maker. To quote Satprem, "We

Page 265

would be doing an injustice to Theon were we to think he was in pursuit of the great, dazzling powers.... He was in search of something much more momentous. Perhaps Théon's tragedy is this: the underlying defiance and grief and irony of a certain greatness that knows itself doomed to failure, but that struggles all the same like a veritable conquering doge. One day, perhaps, we shall see him again, without his toga, perhaps even in rags, sowing the seeds of revolution amongst the last stragglers of the old world."

Sri Aurobindo was to say, "Theon knew that he was not meant to succeed, but had only come to prepare the way to a certain extent."

And Mother: "But truly, they came as FORERUNNERS."

Page 266

8: Tlemcen 1: The Doors of the Possible

A new and strange adventure was about to begin in that already strange life. We have called it “Mother's great forest,’’ and we could wander it to the very last day of her ninety-five years and still discover even greater mysteries than we had suspected—transparent mysteries, which are the most undecipherable; every time we try to decipher them, they elude us, laughing in our face, or take us along a totally unexpected path which suddenly opens up on a dazzling spread of light, as if we were on the verge of— what? Something gaping at a vertiginous future. It is fan­tastic and yet real, more real than today’s concrete reality, but when we try to grab hold of it, it slips away—we cannot catch it. One cannot decipher Mother; one has to plunge into Her. And come what may. Mother is the greatest novel we have ever experienced—everything is there; love, beauty, vastness, the unexpected, the paths of the future, the paths of the past; one wanders there as in a future beforehand; it is the fiction of the Infinite becoming true.

And so many other things that cannot be put into words, which beat within a secret abyss and will go on beating long after our little bodies are no longer there. There is nothing to believe in, nothing to believe at all—one must simply taste.

Yet this new episode—occultism—closely resembles a dead-end adventure, a path one should not take, but then we always wonder what path ‘‘should not” be taken, for after all there is no path anywhere; walking is what makes the path and walking is what is necessary—to the left or to the right, above or below—and if we are sincere, really sincere, we are bound to end up exactly where we are supposed to go. ‘‘Sincere”—another one of Mother's key words. And as for all the occult knowledge She had accumu­lated, the science of the fourth dimension, those astounding powers that leave common people dumbfounded because they do not understand the process—She quite simply let it all drop by the wayside one day in May 1962:1 no longer need all that. Perhaps because the fourth dimension had merged with this one ... Indeed, there is something simpler, more direct—and more extraordinarily effective. Mirra was always seeking effectiveness. Nevertheless, it took her fifty-eight years to drop that baggage. Might we take advan­tage of the shortcut?... But, truly, what is "useless” or "circuitous” in this good universe? We have yet to find a single blade of grass that does not have its specific use in Nature’s economy, like that Vedic Rishi s disciple who, after studying all the medicinal plants, was sent into the forest by his master: "Bring me a plant that is useless and I will give you initiation." The disciple went, searched and searched, then came back in despair: “I haven't found the plant.” Whereupon the Rishi pressed him to his heart; the disciple no longer needed initiation because he had received knowledge. It is that simple—but quite difficult to realize in every detail, with our eyes wide open, because at the first scratch or "mishap" or “sin,” we raise the rafters: "That shouldn’t have happened!" But everything should happen, ; and perfectly so. Including that delicious original apple, : whose falling might not have been such a bad thing after ! all. It is for us to make sense of it. This is a vital truth when wandering through Mother's forest. Then, specks of gold and meaning start shining everywhere before our eyes, where once there had only been useless dust. But Mother’s forest can also be held within a speck of dust ; it is a magical forest of all dimensions.

A Doge in Dark Purple

It was through a friend of Matteo’s that one day in 1904 Mirra was to meet a singular man who called himself Max Theon—The "Supreme God,” no less. He never said who he really was or where he was born, nor his age, nor anything.¹ It seems he was a Russian or Polish Jew, who was forced to leave his country for that reason. He published in Paris a magazine called La Tradition Cosmique through the agency of someone called Themanlys, a friend of Matteo’s. Mirra pounced on it like a starving lioness. It was the first time ever She had heard of something similar to her own expe­riences, albeit in a rather bizarre language. For her, it was a revelation; all of that had a meaning at last; She was not totally crazy! Perhaps she knew even more than she had realized! We can picture this well-bred little positivist— odd and alien among humans, silent, always silent, because for twenty-six years She could never say anything without being threatened to be taken to the nearest doctor—suddenly thrown into the rationality of her irrational world. It was a sort of cataclysm in reverse—at long last, I am not crazy! She must suddenly have laughed to her heart s content. But let us not be mistaken; Mirra was not the type to gape with admiration and throw herself at the feet of the first mas­ter who comes along (except, of course, in “dreams,” but dreams are strange, as anyone knows). She looked at her cataclysm calmly, but nonetheless with a sigh of relief, now that she knew she was sane and normal. And who was that mysterious initiate? Themanlys knew little about him and spoke of him in the trembling whispers of a young neophyte. "He" lived far away in Algeria, in Tlemcen. That was all. And "He” knew. Then, one fine day, Max Theon unexpectedly turned up in Paris—he already knew who Mirra was. Indeed, he knew many things. Theon was rather tall, about the same size as Sri Aurobindo, and thin, slim, with quite a similar profile. But Mirra immediately knew that he was not the person of her visions. I saw (or rather I felt) that it was not he, because when I met him, he didn’t have that vibration.² Indeed it was not "that vibration”; it was something quite different. Yet, strikingly, there was a likeness—and there would be many more likenesses to Sri Aurobindo's discoveries, but with just that "little difference” which made them stand worlds apart, as if Nature took pleasure in devising the counter-type or anti-type of each being—and the more powerful the model, the more power­ful the anti-model, so to speak. Nietzsche had died just four years earlier—another curious model, or anti-model, we do not know which. Anti-models may well have been devised by Nature to force the models to go beyond themselves and to grow so much ... that no more caricature is possible, or that the reverse of what one represents vanishes at the point where reverses or obverses cease to exist. But that is another story.

Indeed, “that vibration” was not there, but something even more bizarre greeted Mirra’s eyes: suddenly, a portrait by Titian She had seen eleven years earlier in Venice (when Mirra "looked” at something, it was inscribed for centuries, like Thebes’ gutters) superimposed itself over Theon's face in a flash. Absolutely Theon! HIS portrait, you know, as if it had just been done.³ It was the portrait of one of the doges —Mirra had certain suffocating memories from the Palazzo Ducale. She must have swallowed a little hard, and then flashed a broad impassive smile, which probably did not fool Theon for a minute. Things were off to a good start. It might be interesting to know which doge it was, but unfortunately I have never seen the Titian in question, nor have I been able to compare it with one of the most strik­ing portraits Mirra has ever drawn—that of Theon. It looks like one of Rembrandt s etchings, or perhaps a Durer figure: a rather sparse beard, long hair, a black velvet cap, maybe fifty or sixty years old (or forty?), an ascetic face, an eagle's profile, and those eyes ... One side of the face almost illu­mined, clear, with a faint smile hesitating imperceptibly between irony and the lights of heaven, and a chilling left side. Powerful, incredibly powerful indeed, but a power ... Pain, perhaps—that pain everywhere in the depths of human beings—the pain of not being what one is, which results in a sort of struggle to emerge from one's reverse side into one’s obverse side of joy—a power condensed in one point instead of bursting out in the vastness. A high, very high forehead, which must have been capable of receiving many things. A remarkable intuition,⁴ Sri Aurobindo himself would say, which is no meager compliment coming from his pen. And a long, dark purple toga, fastened with a red cord.

It is not hard to imagine one of those powerful doges who carved out their domains from Dalmatia to the Pelo­ponnese and Byzantium or waged their bloody struggles against the Sforzas, then coolly tossed their victims off the Bridge of Sighs. Assuming that Theon's "genealogy” is correct, one may be surprised to see him set out on the “spiritual" path, but our conception of the "Spirit" is prob­ably as erroneous as our perception of Matter, and for the same reason. When speaking of Napoleon, Sri Aurobindo saw God armed striding through Europe,⁵ and this “evolution of consciousness,” which was also one of Theon's themes ("if only humanity understood its role as evolutionary agent of the planet,”⁶ he said) does not necessarily, or preferably, involve little saints. To evolve means to churn Matter, not to soar into heaven. But the way of the Spirit and the way of the Titan are separated by an imperceptible hair, which has only to do with a tiny difference of inner attitude: in one case, one seizes hold of the Shakti while in the other, one lets it flow through oneself—but in both cases the Shakti can strike just as cruelly. This time, Theon too "was meeting the problem from a different angle”: he was going after the Spirit as one goes after Euboea. And he found Mirra on his path. The world is truly a strange thing, infinitely stranger than it seems to us, and infinitely more fabulous than anything all our telescopes can discover across interstellar space; the least thing that takes place here, the least encounter on this earth, describes trajectories next to which the great orbits of our constellations are but four-lane highways totally devoid of mystery. We pass each other by as if it were the first time, for a few seconds or a few years, while that chance gesture echoes the memories of old disasters or pursues an old interrupted story, which will still continue under other latitudes and beneath other skies, in a dark purple robe or in the lightness of a self that no longer needs to shine in any color or conquer anything, because it has all the colors of love in its heart and a single delight in everything. We do not know the millions of "chances” that led to this little chance nor which Titian was preparing this conjunction, unless everything is woven from a single thread—a single picture gradually unveiling itself—the motion of one single Body moving through timeless ages with its myriad little doges shut up in a body, in quest of the one body, the one force and the one conscious­ness, and the one love that would cure all our truncated spaces and misery-laden ages.

But Wisdom is wise. It veils our ancient misdeeds as well as our good deeds so that, free of both, we may move ahead. In any event, Theon had recognized at first glance, if not who Mirra was, at least her uncommon gifts, and he invited her to visit him in Tlemcen—to work. She would go there two consecutive years, in 1905 and 1906, so far as we can determine dates as far as Mother is concerned whose fore­most gift was undoubtedly to slip through all times at once.

Zarif

It was undeniably a wonderful place. Theon had good taste, though sometimes his taste was sarcastic. Zarif was the name he gave to his terraced gardens on the slopes of the Atlas Mountains. A sprawling estate with hundred-year- old olive trees, fig trees unlike any I have ever seen—it was a marvel, just on the hillside, from, the plains all the way up to almost the middle of the mountain....⁷ and a rose garden that was “a work of art,” according to Themanlys, for "Aia” (as Theon had himself called by the Arabs; Aia Azis, "the Beloved," which is a little more amiable than "Supreme God" but hardly more reassuring) was also a gardener—as well as a painter, sculptor, carpenter and ironsmith; he did everything. "To cultivate men as one cultivates plants!" he exclaimed. "Indeed, if one knew it, wanted it, dared it!”⁸ He dared aplenty. But let Mirra herself tell us about that first memorable encounter. It was the first time in my life I had travelled alone and the first time I had crossed the Mediter­ranean. Then there was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcen—anyway, I managed rather well: I got there. He met me at the station and we set off for his place by car (it was rather far away). Finally we reached his estate—a won­der! It spread across the hillside overlooking the whole valley of Tlemcen. We arrived from below and had to climb up some wide pathways. I said nothing.... When we came in sight of the house, he stopped: “That's my house. "It was red! Painted red! And he added, “When Barlet came here, he asked me, ‘Why did you paint your house red?’" (Barlet was a French occultist who put Theon in touch with France and was his first disciple.) There was a mischievous gleam in Theon’s eyes and he smiled sardonically: "I told Barlet, ‘Because red goes well with green!’" With that, I began to understand the gentle­man.... We continued on our way uphill when suddenly, without warning, he spun around, planted himself in front of me, and sa id, “Now you are at my mercy. Aren't you afraid? " Just like that. So I looked at him, smiled and replied, “I’m , never afraid. I have the Divine here." [And Mirra touched y that white flame in her heart.]

Well, he really went pale.⁹

We cannot help thinking of Gurdjieff and Katherine Mansfield. But Gurdjieff was a little boy compared to Theon, and Mirra was not Katherine Mansfield.

Thus one went through the rose garden with a smile, then through the last terraced garden with a "square pool where water kept spurting out from a spring,”¹⁰ and finally up a little staircase of white stones that led to a high court­yard and Theon’s house. "A Moorish manor,” painted red for the color scheme, as we have seen, with a living room on a level with the garden and overlooking “mosaic court­yards enclosed by high walls, with ogival doors adorned with huge amphoras reminiscent of Scheherazade tales,” said Themanlys, though I am not so sure about Schehe­razade. But there were those terraced gardens. And a grand concert piano in the middle of the living room, with Theon himself standing there in his dark purple toga. There was also an Arab gong, which had the strange habit of resound­ing all by itself, whenever Theon looked at it somewhat seriously. I really saw all kinds of things there, Mother would tell us, and we can well believe it.

But there was also another person, and that was Mrs. Theon. Another personality altogether. Actually, she was the one who had amazing powers—a vast knowledge of the psychic planes,¹¹ Sri Aurobindo would later say—and it was on her experiences that Theon based his teaching. She was Theon’s foundation, and regardless of what can be thought of him, it was certainly to his credit to have been chosen as the companion of this marvelous woman—marvelous! (said Mother), who had certainly enough knowledge and clairvoyance to choose a very capable being for herself. Overwhelmingly capable—that was the trouble. Yet Alma, as she was called, was all sweetness and silent light: Such a soft, tender, luminous peace.¹² We can imagine her wide blue eyes, which seemed to have been washed by the sea, for she came from the Isle of Wight (at least we know where she came from). A small woman, fat, almost flabby— she gave you the feeling that if you leaned against her, it would melt ... absolutely the feeling of sinking into eider­down,¹³ dressed in a long white dalmatic, with an air of being elsewhere, constantly elsewhere, rather sensitive to cold—indeed she spent three-fourths of her life in trance, outside her body, even while she walked, moved about or attended to her chores. She was almost constantly in trance, but she had trained her body so well that even when she was in trance, that is, when one part (or more) of her being was exteriorized, her body kept a life of its own and she could walk about and even attend to small material chores.¹⁴ She could also speak and narrate everything she saw on the other planes, while she was exploring them, which is how Theon gathered all the material for his Revue Cosmique. "Her eyes have the purity of a child's, but they look tired of having seen so many things,”¹⁵ Themanlys noted. She had absolutely fabulous talents! Mother exclaimed, and coming from Mother's lips, who herself was not lacking in rather surprising talents, these words set one thinking. Her powers were of the highest order; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training, and she was capable of exteriorizing herself, that is, to draw out a subtle body from her material body, totally consciously, and twelve times in a row. In other words, she could shift consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, then again put that more subtle body into trance, exteriorize herself from it, and so on, twelve times in

a row, up to the extreme limit of the world of forms.¹⁶

It is this extreme limit that interests us.

Strange Matter

What was that bizarre couple doing together?

Indeed everything at Zarif seemed to behave in a strange manner and to follow a different law, as if one were entering another world. Matter responded to a different force—was it a “different” force or a different degree of the same force? When the ground was too dry, Theon made the rain fall on his roses while not a drop fell twenty yards away, or he sent the rain to the poor fcllaheens (and also cured them by looking at them, which is perhaps why he deserved to be called “Beloved” after all). They would take a walk along the shaded lanes scented with "marvels-of-Peru," while delightful little asps worthy of Cleopatras slithered up to them or slipped away beneath Theon's gaze, who pretended not to notice anything while watching Mirra out of the corner of his eye. Mirra smiled; She was a friend of all animals, and She understood them very well. Theon, too, understood—he had easily learned his lesson. All in all, it was quite pleasant ; one got on with everything—one got on and everything got on with everything within the complicity of a different law where nothing was “another thing” or "another” body. When Mrs. Theon needed her sandals, she did not go to get them; she made them come to her, very quietly; or else, like Theon, she rang the gong by looking at it rather than shouting for a servant, and all this was done in the most natural way, unostentatiously, as naturally as we would press an electric button—which sometimes fails to work, whereas that current never failed and was simplicity itself. She didn't boast; she didn't say, “I’m going to do this or that"; she didn't say anything—she did it quietly.¹⁷ It would be a mistake to think that Theon or Mrs. Theon were trying to show off their powers, which, by the way, did not impress Mirra. But they amused her; She was thoroughly enjoying herself. It was simply a different knowl­edge and different laws that were at work. Sometimes, however, they indulged in rather dubious jokes, for instance, like the day when that somewhat limpet-like Arab merchant had planted himself in the dining room and would not budge. All of a sudden, I heard a scream—a terrified shriek. The table had started moving (a huge oak table), and with an almost heroic lunge it charged at the poor man ... Madame Theon hadn't touched it, nobody had touched it. First the table wobbled a little, then it slowly started moving, then suddenly, in a single lunge, it threw itself on this man, who ran away and never came back!¹⁸ Sometimes, too, these jokes were more alarming (though not for Mirra) and the "current" seemed somewhat... disproportionate, as on one stormy day: There were terrible thunderstorms there. One stormy day, he climbed to the high terrace above the sitting room. “It’s a strange time to be going up there," I said to him. He laughed, “Come along, don’t be afraid!" So I joined him ... Then I clearly saw a bolt of lightning that had been heading straight towards us suddenly swerve IN THE MIDST OF ITS COURSE. You will say it’s impossible, but I saw it turn aside and strike a tree farther away. (Not one of Theon's, of course!) I asked Theon, "Did you do that?" He nodded.

Oh, that man was terrible—he had a terrible power. But outwardly, perfectly correct.¹⁹ And Mother laughed.

They could also eat in a most peculiar way at Zarif; it would be good for us to take a leaf out of their book, for it would free us from a lot of bother. Actually, Mrs. Theon was very often tired because she spent much of her time outside her body, which meant that a great part of her body’s energy went elsewhere instead of staying quite pru­dently in its box performing all the operations or tasks that one normally expects to be done in the said box. So she needed to recover her material energies. She did this in a very simple, very direct way; instead of sitting down to eat and going through the whole process of peeling and digest­ing a fruit, she stretched out on her bed and put a big grapefruit from the garden on her stomach: "Come back to see me in an hour." One hour later, Mirra returned, and the grapefruit was as flat as a pancake... that is, she had absorbed all the life of the fruit, which had gone limp and completely flat.²⁰

But Matter itself had strange ways, and we might now begin asking ourselves what Matter really is. Because, of course, there are no miracles or "magic" in all that, except for the simple-minded—to the cynocephalous baboons and a few others, man’s machines are magic. As for us, we know perfectly well that we are not magicians, far from it! We merely follow processes. Therefore, we can think better than cynocephalians and observe the processes at Zarif with a less superstitious eye. But in the end, maybe we are all a bit superstitious regarding Matter—scientifically superstitious. Superstition, that is, a blind belief in a single type of dogma or process, in a certain habitual way for Matter to behave—but is it really the habit of Matter, or rather the habit of our mind in Matter?... At this point, we begin feeling the earth give way beneath our feet and we flee like the Arab merchant, full speed ahead. All the same, the "marvels-of-Peru” were very beautiful along the paths of Zarif, they had a nice fragrance, it was exquisite: Huge bushes, this tall. Madame Theon always put some behind her ears, for they smelled very good... And when she went walking along this path, between those huge bushes that were so high, she would gather flowers.... (Meanwhile, Mirra was off walking with Theon) and when I returned from my walk and opened my door (which was locked, so no one could have entered), those flowers would be in my room!²¹ A little garland of marvels-of-Peru discreetly placed on her pillow, which means that Madame Theon could also “dematerialize" flowers to make them pass through walls, and “rematerialize" them, so they could be perfectly fresh on Mirra's pillow. A simple and charming gesture for Mirra, every evening, for this Alma was a very charming person.

What, then, was going on in that house?... Perhaps this was a more advanced stage of evolution—though it is not at all certain. Obviously there was a different atmosphere, we might almost say a certain transparency in which things could go through and take place, for the greatest obstacle and the thickest wall may not, after all, be the granite or concrete we shut ourselves in, but the wall of our own thoughts: we are constantly weaving a veil of impossibility between ourselves and things, and because we think it is not possible, then obviously it is not possible—how could it be impossibly possible? And really, one of life's most marvelous miracles is when we begin opening the great eye of the Possible and think, then feel, then see, with amaze­ment, that the simple little thought that "all is possible” makes an imperceptible crack in the prison—a transparency —and stealthily, almost timidly, one little thing slips in, then another and another, as if encouraged by our acqui­escence, then everything begins to tilt into another law. It is as we wish. We have only to think it. But we think of sickness, death, accidents, mathematics and the penal code, so everything happens just as we expected, exactly and mathematically. We cannot break out of the prison while believing in the prison, obviously.

Our first prison is not Matter, it is the Mind. Matter's walls are a dream of our mind, perhaps a railing to keep us from prematurely tipping over into an immensity too rich for us. I remember a very revealing little story that Mirra was soon to hear from the lips of Mrs. David-Neel, which She had every reason to believe true. When she was living in Indochina (I guess), Mrs. David-Neel used to medi­tate with her eyes closed while walking. She would follow the trail, leaving the others at the camp, and walked straight ahead ,.. till the end of her meditation. Now, one day, after finishing her meditation, she turned back as usual to return quietly to the camp, with her eyes open—when suddenly she found herself before a river. The river had not suddenly appeared between her coming and going, so she must have crossed the river on her way out—but how? And she had to get wet to return to the camp. We might call it a miracle —"she walked on water,” like Christ—or we might think that her meditation was so deep and so ethereal that.,. We may think whatever we like, but the fact is that Mrs. David- Neel herself did not think of the river. So the river did not exist. And one walked on it as easily as one would walk on anything else. Of course, the moment she thought of it (and, above all, thought that one cannot cross a river with­out getting wet), she had to get wet, like everyone else. But—there is a but—it is not enough to think that it does not exist for it to cease existing, because it is still the mind playing a good or a bad trick on itself: the magic of the Mind has far deeper roots. This magic was the very thing Mother was going to clarify meticulously, layer after layer, right up to a certain cellular frontier which is perhaps the very root of death.

Meanwhile, Mirra let everything pass through her with­out erecting any wall of impossibility, and where would there be any “miracle" or "magic" in all that? No, there is no magic to do, there is only a certain magic to undo. We are under a scientific spell, and all our science reinforces the spell. When I recounted these experiences to Sri Aurobindo, he told me it was quite natural; when you have the power, you live in and create around you an atmosphere where these things are possible. Because it is all here, it just hasn't been brought to the surface.²² Yes, "not brought to the surface,” that is, veiled, blocked, hindered by layers upon layers of dense determinism we are shut in, or so we think. But as soon as we rise even a single degree above, or to be exact (for where is the “above”?), as soon as our substance grows clearer and shakes off the mud' of its usual ways of seeing and doing and proceeding, this same Shakti—because it is the same that flows in the mud, the dust, the walls, the asp and the thunder, or in Beethovens symphonies: there is but one thing in the world, not two—that same and only dis­entangled Shakti lets its purer ray, therefore more direct and powerful and freer, flow into the same old substance, but now clear, altering all its laws which were only the laws of our entanglement or the laws of the veil we draw between things as they are and things as we see or think them. This “as they are" is the mystery, the magic we have to undo to get to the Secret, the layers to be cleared up. We know nothing, we only stick ineluctable and mathematical pro­cesses onto "something” that exactly has the mathematics of our brain. Scientific laws, said Sri Aurobindo with his wonderful lucidity, only give a schematic account of mate­rial processes of Nature—as a valid scheme they can be used for reproducing or extending at will a material process, but obviously they cannot give an account of the thing itself Water, for instance, is not merely so much oxygen and hydro­gen put together—the combination is simply a process or device for enabling the materialisation of a new thing called water; what that new thing really is, is quite another matter.²³ The "thing itself" eludes us everywhere. We move to a clearer level and all the processes change: the marvels-of- Peru materialize and dematerialize, just as hydrogen plus oxygen "materialize" into water, then “dematerialize” into gases. But what is the "thing” called "marvels-of-Peru?" We do not know. And in the end, there is only one consciousness "fact,” or one Shakti “fact" which is handled more or less directly depending on the level or the layer we move in. There is no such thing as a “foreign body,” there is no fire reacting to water; there is consciousness reacting on con­sciousness, Shakti on Shakti. Shakti is the only process— one can handle it as a monkey, as a scientist or otherwise, that is all.

So there were no miracles at Tlemcen, there was simply a certain atmosphere of a somewhat more real knowledge.²⁴ Perhaps we should say: a more real Matter. A Matter closer to “what it really is." The whole question is to know whether we want to act like the Arab merchant or to dare, after all, to exchange our eyes, that are but those of an improved baboon, for the eyes of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo always said, Mother told me, regarding the happenings at Tlemcen, that the greatest obstacle to true understanding and participation in the Work is common sense. He said that’s why Nature creates madmen from time to time: they are people not strong enough to bear the dismantling of this petty stupidity called common sense.²⁵ And Mother smiled, and in her smile it seemed we could catch fantastic possi­bilities in the wings. Perhaps Nature is prudently waiting for us to be a little less childish and frightened before pull­ing down, with a smile, the big scientific Wall of China that protects us ... from ourselves.

Once we really know what Matter is, we shall really know what Spirit is. And we shall conquer death.

The Impasse of Power

The doors of the Possible have to be opened, but not just any door.

It is all very fine—we handle bolts of lightning, the rain and the weather, big and small animals; we make our san­dals come running to our feet or even ring the tocsin of the scientific world—and it is all very well, we have power·, it is even quite natural when we know how to do it, just as natural as it is for us to pick up the phone and call the fire brigade. It is another organization—certainly simpler, with­out firemen and all the trepidation that is plainly beginning to grate on our nerves. Mirra was quick to learn the “trick,” if we may say so, though it was not really a trick, or at any rate no more a trick than putting H2O together, and when She returned to France, in the midst of a stormy sea that threatened to engulf her ship, She quietly retired to her cabin, lay down on her bunk and went out of her body, in order to pacify that wild dance of angry forces; and half an hour later everyone was cheerfully busy drinking their whisky as though nothing had happened. That is all very well. We can even use our power in a “humanitarian” way, since humanity has become fashionable: cure lepers with a single glance—but three minutes later they go back to their leprosy because they have no desire to be cured of the cause of their leprosy; put out fires—which will reignite three minutes later, three fields away or in the next neighborhood, because the stupidity that kindles fires and little wars will not have been put out; stop thieves and criminals with an inner bolt of lightning, and let us be done with the police!—but they grow back like weeds, thieves as well as policemen. We keep going round in circles, merely at a higher level, with fewer telephones and less racket, but with the same human matter that will be quick to use thun­der to get rid of a disturbing neighbor. In short, a chaos of a higher degree, a supra-scientific superchaos. Is this the next level of evolution? Each one will purge the earth of everything that does not conform to his own idea of Good, and finally there will be nothing left but a superascetic or a superdemon, one of whom will cheerfully go drink his whisky as if nothing had happened, and the other cheer­fully go back to his pure heaven, which he should never have left—for why on earth do we even come down into this damn mess if it is only to abolish it, and furthermore, why do we take on a body if it is only to go roaming about outside of it?

Indeed, this is not a higher level of evolution; it may even be an anterior level of evolution, one of Nature’s many fruit­less attempts, which she easily wiped out, as if it had never existed—for she is wiser than we are. If Atlantis ever existed, then it may well have witnessed the flourishing of this type of superman, who was just a man with super-powers: For, says Sri Aurobindo, man intellectually developed, mighty in scientific knowledge and the mastery of gross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his footstool, but undeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of asura [demon] using the powers of a demigod to satisfy the nature of an animal. According to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was the civilisation of old Atlantis, submerged beneath the Ocean when its greatness and its wickedness became too heavy a load for the earth to bear.²⁶ It could well be that our brutal return to what we might call scientific barbarism was the gentle wisdom of our Mother Nature, who knows better than we do what she wants us to discover in her scorned soil, and who uses our first materialistic stumblings to take us farther than our scientists suspect and deeper than our spiritualists imagine. Of how many cycles, how many fruitless quests are we the residue? But perhaps this time we have reached the real turning point, precisely because our science is crumbling down along with all our pretentions, which cloaked an old and stub­born poverty, and perhaps we are here by the very power of our failure. Divested of our trifling victories, both material and spiritual, we are approaching the Zero Point where Matter and Spirit will change into something ... which is perhaps the reality of the earth.

And Mirra was there.

She was not fooled—nor was Theon—and She knew quite well that those brilliant powers come from the lower door. The more brilliant and thundering and miraculous it is, the lower the door, you can be sure, because it is the door nearest Matter. Over the centuries, there have always been plenty of good folk to be dazzled and less good folk to perform their heavenly sleights of hand. It’s heavenly if you like, Mother said, but it all depends on which heaven it comes from!²⁷ Anyway, let people have their fun, as long as it keeps them amused. But the earth is not amused. In fact, it suffers, it is in pain; it is desperately searching for its real cure. And Mirra, in Tlemcen, already understood very well two things that are but one, because it was right there, under her very nose. First, there were all those poor people Theon used to cure with magic tricks, but who came back two days or a week later with another illness, which was still the same illness. One plugged the hole here and it reappeared farther—were all the cancers in the world plugged up, man would invent others. This is doubtless one of the most tremendous illusions we so-called rational beings are living in. We are constantly in search of millions of remedies for one Disease we do not really want to cure: unconsciousness. The thick layer that does not allow the smallest ray to enter. Of course, it is not quite so easy as getting pills from the drugstore. And Nature kindly lets the doctors proliferate, because in so doing, she still helps her children progress; she uses all their tricks to teach them ... that they know nothing. This is the great lesson, the longest to learn, but once we have learned it, then we are ready for knowledge. And if they refuse to learn, Nature resorts to her old usual trick: death. We begin the lesson again in another skin, a little less encumbered. And so on, until everything is exhausted. Then there is nothing left but a wall no thicker than rice paper, and we have only to blow on it to get out of the fishbowl. The terrible Lesson of unknowing. The earth is very close to exhaustion. Perhaps it has had enough of dying. All that was seen, lived, touched by Mirra: The conditions in which humans live on earth are the result of their state of consciousness. Trying to change the conditions without changing the consciousness is a vain chimera.²⁸ So if people want to build hospitals and treat lepers and invent anti-cancer drugs, let them do it, but it is not the world that they are helping to progress or heal: it is they themselves who progress in the unknowing. Change yourself if you want to change the world.²⁹

And then there is this so-called "power," which is the other side of the same question ... The more She saw Theon’s marvels, the less She marveled. It’s like stretching a rubber band, ³⁰ She told me one day; once you let it go, it snaps back, and everything is the same. As long as you stretch it, it can cure, hurl thunderbolts, rain like a bless­ing, it is even perfectly immortal for ... a quarter of an hour. And She always came back to that same Lesson of death, in fact, that was the very Point; why does it ah die, what can keep it from dying? Once this is solved, all else is solved. The cause, the mechanism. While over there, 6,000 miles away (perhaps at the same moment), Sri Auro­bindo was putting his finger on the same question, possibly through that trivial incident when one of his revolutionary companions was bitten by a rabid dog and had dominated the disease for years, thanks to his yogic power—until the day he got angry during a political meeting and died of rabies a few hours later, for he had lost control of himself and therefore had placed himself outside the conditions in which the power could work. A conditional power is not a power; a power that works for ten or twenty years and then breaks down is not a power; a power that is imposed on Matter like a fist blow, by stretching it like a rubber band, is not a power—a power that does not change Matter itself is not a power. It is Matter itself that must be changed. We must create a new physical nature,³¹ Sri Aurobindo would soon say. The true change of consciousness, Mother emphasized, is one that will change the physical conditions of the world and turn it into an entirely new creation.³²

And Nature may very well have invented death only to compel us to find here, in the depths of the body, the supreme secret and the supreme mastery.

Otherwise, we would all have already left for heaven, in single file, like little saints. Our greatest falls are our great­est possibilities of victory, our greatest failures may well be the supreme Door of the Possible.

Such is the impasse of power: it is powerful. Scientists do not act differently with their cyclotrons, pulverizers and crushing machines: they bully Matter with their equations, as others bully it with their occult stare, but it gets its revenge, and the few-hours- or few-decades-old miracle snaps back like a rubber band, or a wind of destruction, and in the end nothing is changed, for they have not mas­tered Matter—they have merely circumvented it. Power is a myth from which we keep dying obstinately. We must BE—be differently in Matter. Then nothing will be able to touch that, for what could touch what is?

9: Tlemcen 2: At the Furthermost Bounds of Evolution

To change Matter ... to change death.

We would be doing an injustice to Theon if we thought he was in search of the great, dazzling powers from the lower door, and besides, he did not have to search for them: he had them fully at his disposal. He was in quest of something far grander—which he was not fated to attain. This may be Theon's tragedy: the underlying defiance and pain and irony of a greatness that knows it is doomed to failure, but which struggles all the same, like a true con­quering doge. We always fall into the error of believing in "victory," but certain lives of "failure” are a soul’s true victory, and they find through the “reverse" side what they would never have reached on the precarious plateaux of virtue—where is the victory in the end, and whose is the victory, if there is not something within that smiles at victory as well as failure, because it is forever free, whether here or there? We know only a fraction of Theon, and sometimes the devil and the god are strangely intertwined. "Men are superior to gods,” he said, and he was right— although they are not yet so. And he wanted that divinity for men and the earth: "Men must be freed from the sad chains of habit and be shown life”; and he added, while ceaselessly rolling cigarettes at a disconcerting speed, "Everything depends on the plane you attain and the extent of your horizon. For the worm inside a radish, the radish is the entire cosmos—most people are like the worm inside a radish,”¹ which is quite true, but ... There was always a certain something in his words, an indefinable little vibra­tion with an ... uncertain tint to it. Something strangely reminiscent of Zarathustra, yet so full of genuine flashes— but somewhat tinted. Nothing is more misleading or cap­tivating than that tint, nothing more dangerous than a truth ensnared. Once a truth is captured, it is already almost a falsehood—oh, how well Mirra knew that! Her own words eluded all categories and categorizations to leave only a clear little vibration that carried you, without your knowing it, into the simple, trouble-free truth. With Mother, you drank the truth, breathed the truth, and walked on lightly, with a laugh. But Theon talked and held forth, while “his long, sinewy sculptor's hands”² kneaded the future or stripped the past to wrest its secret from it. Actually, he knew a lot of secrets, and I have always thought that he wavered on a narrow crest between truth and falsehood, like some survivor from Atlantis who still remembered his triumphs and was unable to get rid of them completely, while peering into the future to perceive a mysterious new man greater than all the Atlanteans, but without their weight of "I”—for ultimately, that is the only thing that weighs down. He knew Egypt ; he had lived there several years and had founded an occult society before taking refuge in Zarif, after being expelled from Egypt for some mysterious reason perhaps not unrelated to his excessive indulgence in thunderbolts. How did he happen to meet Alma, this soft English woman from the Isle of Wight—by what inscrutably circuitous route? Truly, the meetings of beings through time and space make up a strange geogra­phy; we are still unaware of the invisible little beacons that guide our skiffs and hail one another in the night across trans-natal distances, while we go haphazardly, carried along by the southerly wind, and land at the antipodes of our maps. He even knew India, where he had received initiation: He knew a little Sanskrit and the Rig-Veda thor­oughly, Mother tells us, and he said he held “a tradition anterior to the Cabala and the Vedas."³ And where did it come from? From what lost cycle? But Theon did not bluff, except with Arab merchants, and one did not bluff Mirra, who, after twenty-six years of deprivation, listened to him ravenously while they strolled the lanes of Zarif or Tlemcen’s bazaar, where Mirra used to walk in ... a kimono, under the sharp eyes of the Muslims. (After all, we are at the beginning of the century. Abd-el-Kader’s shadow is not so far away, and Abd-el-Krim is nearby, stirring up his conspiracies with William II. All the same, Mirra did not like women to be veiled, any more than Mathilde liked the khedive's tutelage.) And Theon held forth: "This so-called civilization, whose leaders themselves are ignorant of life’s depths, whose mystics without knowledge read and under­stand the sacred books as one might tread upon unsuspected diamond mines, with nose upturned to heaven!”⁴ He him­self looked down to the earth—like Mirra. He even quoted Peter the Apostle: "A new earth where Truth shall live."¹⁰⁰ And, like Sri Aurobindo, he proclaimed a new, superhuman humanity, endowed with a new body that he said would be made of a substance "denser than Matter.” We are not very sure what he meant by that, for the only “denser Matter” we know of is ionized Matter, which results from intra- atomic modifications formed through shock or radiation, or the Matter of certain collapsed stars, involving inter­atomic convergences induced by gigantic forces ... But perhaps Mother’s subsequent experiences will enlighten us on this point.

What, then, was Theon’s secret?

The Door Above

There is the door above.

It is both the best known and the least known. The lower door used to arouse all the scorn of the so-called enlight­ened people, who were quick to accuse you of “a thirst for power” or even of sorcery, as in medieval Europe, and you were dutifully sent off to the stake. The door above had all the haloes of heaven, for indeed, what is the use of "powers,” when all you want is to find some way out of this predica­ment? A single power is enough, the one that brings you out. And for centuries upon centuries (but not all), sages and saints of every color have nimbly or laboriously scaled the vertical world, as vertically as they could, without even seeing, as Sri Aurobindo said, these great and. luminous kingdoms of the Spirit. Perhaps they arrive at their object, but only to fall asleep in the Infinite.⁵ Amen. The poor wretches below had to make do with pulling down some flashes of light to compose a poem, a quartet or a strikingly simple equation, but most often to found big or small Churches, each one claiming exclusive rights to the Ray. But what is the point of composing quartets or equations if the goal is only to get out, and if those who were not eager to get out had neither the mastery nor the discipline required to scale those verticalities knowingly and draw from them better quartets or better equations—so on one side we remained the playthings of vague "inspirations,” and on the other the pursuers of a certain "liberation”—which was not so certain, for if we happened to be pulled a little roughly out of our heaven, we got quite furious and disgusted with the pettiness of this world, like all the rest of the common humankind. In short, “heaven” was within the four walls of an abbey or an ashram. And we died just the same. So we used to be divided between powerless mystics and sometimes overly powerful charlatans, or else rather vague poets. And finally, this vertical world suffered from a certain irrationality, which was perhaps but our own.

But Mirra was not vague. She had noticed several degrees in that verticality. She knew the world of colored waves, the world of rhythms that form great musical waves, as it were, and then all the way up, suddenly, along came a sound ... but so complete, so full! As if something exploded ...I don’t know what, much more resounding than an orchestra— something exploding. It was overwhelming!... Great, blue notes.⁶ She had touched the origin of music, perhaps the source of all form. The sound must be captured,⁷ She said. It must be captured indeed, but how? And there was also the world of the great vibrations creating the future, like a mighty, unceasing peal of bells all over the earth, dropping intermittent little "pearls of light,” which formed a revela­tion, an intuition, or perhaps those lost poems She wrote in her sleep. But the moment we try to capture that “sound from above," that rhythm, those vibrations, it’s as if things were passed through a sieve and broken up into separate little bits.⁸ Nothing remains but a mental translation. And then, higher, it was like vanishing into light; no more movement, no more form, nothing: the great silence of snow. Eternity. Though truly speaking, I have always wondered about that silence of snow—it is indeed marvelous, and free and vast; one breathes—oh, how wonderfully one breathes there, one can turn it into a whole heaven, it is heaven!—But, at the risk of seeming impertinent, one wonders how our friend the baboon would perceive our merely mental world, which is his own verticality; would not he vanish all the same into an ecstasy of non-comprehension and an immensity quite baffling compared to the narrow workings of his sensory perceptions? Perhaps “Heaven" is "adjust­able," if we dare say. And perhaps we know nothing at all of that “up-above-there,” no more than we really know what is “right-down-here.” Perhaps we have to put the two together to know really what they both are?

This is what Mirra was beginning to say to herself.

But what struck her most, the key She was seeking, was the key to the "sieve” we were talking about. Whenever one tried to bring “that” down into Matter—this sound, vibra­tion, harmony (whatever the name), this something that would finally alter the lower layers of determinism, it was like water disappearing into sand⁹ and it came out all diluted, fragmented, distorted, without any apparent real power, as if the ray grew darker, veiled, tinted, shattered into little pieces as it went through each layer, right to the last pulverized darkening, which makes up the particular opaque Matter we tread upon. This is perhaps the desperate reason why all the sages and saints throughout the ages (but not all) tried to get out for good: there is nothing to be done here, it is hopeless, better purify yourself as much as pos­sible and soar off into the great silence of snow, or to a lesser height, into some adjustable heaven proportionate to your capacities, tastes or beliefs; and in the meantime, well, do your duty, be kind to your neighbors, cure the ill people if you can, and so it goes round and round, until everyone has had enough of it and is ready to get out for good. Very well. But after all, the baboon’s heaven is rather dubious—and are we so sure of our own? Is it not holding some other sinister trick in store for us, which would chain us to yet another wheel we had not foreseen—any more than the baboon had foreseen his future mental “liberation?" For after all, perhaps our Mother Nature has intentions that will thwart all our gospels, materialistic or other. What is this vertical world, finally, if not our evolutionary future? This future that is as much ours as we are the future of the fish in its fishbowl. And why do we necessarily want this future to be located in “heaven?” To a fish, as far as we know, we are perfectly terrestrial and are nothing super­natural; perhaps this future is also perfectly terrestrial and natural, although in a way that still eludes our dense Matter and our mind shut up in a box. We must find the "new earth.” We must find the “way,” the next way, as Mother said. There must be one, otherwise why on earth would Nature have invented this evolution?

And again we go back to that “sieve," the division of the ray, that trajectory of our future, which comes to us in pieces, as it were—if we could clear the intermediary layers, the problem might well be solved. To clear them in our­selves is still conceivable, but to clear them on a cosmic scale, or even simply on a human scale, appears ... difficult.

Or else it will take centuries and millennia, a slow and tremendous evolution wasting bodies upon bodies and piling up pains, only to reach the clear "simple” lesson. But if we must wait for each human being to learn his lesson ... And if one single, somewhat obstinate man remains, where will the "liberation” of others be since, ultimately, there is only ONE body? Either we do not get out, or we all get out together. Either nothing is changed, or we all change together—it is the whole body that must change. So, what pure Ray could work that singular miracle? We can leave the task to the millennia, and it will doubtless take place despite all the materialists and all the spiritualists, for what can prevent a seed from becoming a tree? Evolution is the surest thing in the world, it is an irresistible bulldozer. But after all, we might try to accelerate the movement and shorten this web of misery a little. That is what Theon was thinking. It is what Sri Aurobindo was beginning to think, over there. As for Mirra, she was seeking the Ray that would clear all those layers. The lower we want to go, the more powerful the ray must be: the deeper you want to descend into matter, the higher you must rise in conscious­ness,¹⁰ because the resistance is stiffer, as She clearly saw. But the higher one rises within this vertical consciousness —and here lies the dilemma—the more it seems to fade away or, to describe things as if they were seen from above, the more the earth seems to fade away into a kind of tri­fling irrelevance, like a bad dream. An illusion.

Such was the dilemma, which was not at all philosophical but purely practical, like a chemistry or physics experi­ment. But an element was missing. One was left wavering there between the single reality of a heaven cut off from Matter, and the single reality of Matter cut off from what could cure it. And, well, it was not a comfortable position to be caught between the two. Something as obscure, per­haps, as the transition from the fish to the mammal.

Perilous Experiences

But the passage exists; there is a connection. One does not leap from the mind's summits to the pure and formless silence of eternity, otherwise there would be no hope and we would be evolutionarily doomed to be supermen creat­ing superquartets and superequations and super-Churches, the same merry-go-round as below but glorified, inflated, titanized, a kind of human millipede inventing another thousand legs for itself or perhaps a fourth brain and super­machines to compensate for his weariness of living, until we are fed up in the end and ready to take the leap and go to sleep forever, or fade into a white eternity we should never have left. For all these “supreme” levels that delight and inspire us are merely the clearer layers or higher waters of the same fishbowl—the mental fishbowl, for the mind is the bowl; it is the same principle and the same law but more effective or resounding, if we may say so, the same fragmentation beneath a certain golden "sieve” that splits the ray into countless little colors, or big colors, which make up all our separate paintings and all our separate miseries—though in the end the only misery is to be sepa­rated in a body and in a never finished little painting. And up above is the great leap beyond all painting, which is obviously a solution for the sluggards of evolution.

But there is something else.

Mirra was about to experimentally rediscover what the Vedic Rishis had found some seven or ten thousand years earlier, at the beginning of this ill-starred (?) cycle—what Theon was seeking, and what Sri Aurobindo was already beginning to clear out in the Shakti’s great virgin forest. Because the Vedic Rishis were not somnolent of spirit, they were great conquerors and heroes as yet untouched by the haste and impotence of our present Iron Age, in which dulled humans have replaced self-mastery with the mastery of machines, and the powerful light with sociological ethics and rosewater paradises. The Rishis had methodically explored all the levels of consciousness, and they had dis­covered what they mysteriously called "a certain fourth,” turiyam svid.

So Mirra was working. Theon was not satisfied with making speeches, he wanted results. It would last for an hour every morning, a dangerous work, at that—all the body's vital energy would go out—all of it, as it does when you die. And She would go from plane to plane, methodi­cally, twelve times in a row, like Madame Theon: I could even do it with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, observe, and then speak about what J had seen.¹¹ For She had trained her body in such a way, and was so perfectly conscious on all the planes (which for us would amount to deep and quite unconscious sleep) that She could speak, faintly but dis­tinctly, even while out of her body—which was lying on a couch in a near-cataleptic state, her heart scarcely beating. Which meant that her corporeal matter was already quite cleared out or purified and able to communicate the expe­riences from "above.” And Theon listened avidly. There was just a thin filament of light connecting Mirra to the earth: "the cord,” as She called it—perilous experiences indeed. If the filament snaps, there is no longer any way of re-entering, you "forget” your body, as it were, and you are "dead”—you keep living quite well on the other planes, but the terres­trial plane is cut off. This is generally what happens when we die. One day Mirra was even to experience complete death under rather tragic circumstances, or which would have been tragic for anyone else and which clearly reveal Theon’s "other side.” On a certain plane, She had discovered what seemed to be the vibratory mode or the combination of vibrations that engenders life, and which could therefore also engender death—quite a dangerous power in the wrong hands. Inwardly, She knew that She should not speak, so She stopped just when Theon was beginning to find it all extremely interesting. He broke into a rage, which cut the thread—Mirra barely had time to whisper "cut,” and in a flash Theon realized the enormity of what he had just done. He must have broken into a cold sweat. All of Theon’s power and all of Mother’s science were needed to reestablish the connection; Mother said that the “friction of re-entry” into the body produced an excruciating pain, as if all the nerves had been brutally loaded with current—the current of life, obviously—and as a result, She understood why newborn babies cry In any event, Mirra had just had her first expe­rience of conscious death in the body, which would later become a subject of very thorough experimentation in her quest to solve "the old question." As for the "secret of life,” She later handed it over to Sri Aurobindo, who simply consigned it to oblivion because this is not the way to change life or death: not through an arbitrary power—the eternal failure of power—but through a change in the very substance of life and the body Mirra and Sri Aurobindo stood at the opposite pole of the supermen and super­demiurges who interested Theon so much. They wanted a new and natural evolution of terrestrial Nature and not an occult and "supernatural’’ revolution, which, besides, would not have lasted longer than a staggering display of fire­works, for the “rubber band" would have snapped back to what it was before. They were searching for a principle other than that of the mental fishbowl carried to its trium­phant summit—a poor summit indeed.

And Mirra was there.

Strangely enough, Mirra always found herself at the crossroads—just as She found herself at the crossroads of the first explosion of appearances (Max Planck, 1900, Einstein, 1905), which was curiously linked to the Impres­sionists’ explosion of color—as if all were not closely bound together! One and the same seed is sown at a given time, and it bursts open everywhere under different names, forms or faces. And now it was as if She were at the crossroads of evolution with Theon, perhaps facing an old resurrec­tion of Atlanteans—who would secretly walk their path right up to Hitler—and a totally unknown but perceptible path which She was treading gropingly with Sri Aurobindo, over there, and a hesitant Theon.

A Certain Fourth

A very peculiar experience was going to occur during those sessions, an experience Mirra had already had alone in Paris, which She was unable to explain to herself—but truly speaking. She could explain nothing, for She went through a kind of chaos of experiences leaping from one level to another without any apparent connection; as She said, it was not a matter of believing or not believing, the fact was there, and that was all. The advantage of this was that my experiences were not mentally contrived.¹² Which is why She remained always grateful to Theon, despite his perilous outbursts (which perhaps carried on those of some ancient doge): After all, he taught me a lot.¹³ What do we know of our gestures of today? They continue old gestures and are today completing a picture begun when we were clothed in other colors and perhaps thirsting for an opposite goal ... which is always the same, but seen in another light. We understand nothing as long as we have not understood everything. But it is another picture. The really curious fact, “scientifically curious,” we might say, is that not only was Mirra going to have the same experience several times in a row, as regularly as a repeated chemis­try experiment, but that Madame Theon had also had the same experience ... and so would Sri Aurobindo, over there. And this experience coincided with that of the Vedic Rishis Mirra had never heard about before meeting Theon.

One day, as She was going from plane to plane toward that “Supreme Point" where consciousness seemed to evaporate, dilute, lose its dimension in a sort of Infinity, just on the threshold of this Infinity, when all the great waves and luminous vibrations were about to expire under­neath—that golden summit whence men draw their gospels and revelations and divine music, their great picture of the world as it is innumerably depicted in so many contrary colors—at the very moment when, as though struck with futility, it was all going to melt into a supreme Whiteness of Bliss reabsorbed into itself, at that golden junction, just before taking the great leap, Mirra suddenly found herself caught in something else—something radically different. Another consciousness. Was it really a consciousness? For it was formidably solid, the opposite of evaporation or subtilization: a substance of compact and almost coagu­lated consciousness. Nothing moved in it nor seemed to move, not one wave; or if there were some wave, it seemed solidified, as if all the rays, the countless rays that divided up below and went on fragmenting down to the infinitesi­mal, were reunited there into one compact block. It was so dense that it was rather crushing. A dense consciousness, of a crimson gold color. And for a moment, as had hap­pened once before, when She was alone in Paris, She saw what Madame Theon herself had seen, a form silhouetted in a glory of crimson gold,¹⁴ which was like the "prototype,” She said: a man, not at all a god, but the most inconceiv­able superman we could ever imagine. Something that was there, waiting. Perhaps it had been waiting since the begin­ning of time. Our future, the future of man. A man within another substance of consciousness, but not a "dream”: there were no dreams in it all, and it was more solid than the Himalayas. A dense man. Powerful, supremely power­ful, but in an immobility—it was this immobility that was overwhelmingly powerful. A crimson gold glory. The Future. No superquartets, no supergospels: a dense man. Another principle of being. Something like the prolongation of man but in such a radically different air, perhaps as different as man's oxygen is from the oxygen of the fish—what was different was the way of breathing. One did not breathe there in the same way, one was not the same. A different being, a different way of being.

Beyond the "Supreme" Point, there was something.

The end of man was the beginning of something.

Evolution led to something, which was not the white infinite.

Some seven to ten thousand years ago, the Rig-Veda spoke of the same thing, the same experience, in its sym­bolic language: "Concealed by this truth is that truth where they unyoke the horses of the Sun; the ten thousand [rays] meet there together; That ONE, tad ekam—I have seen the supreme God of the embodied gods.” (V.62.1). Beyond the golden truth of the mind's summits, there is a solar Truth where the ten hundred rays of our scattered intuitions and contradictory pictures unite within a compact body; there is this ONE. "The face of the Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid,”¹⁵ say the Upanishads, the golden "sieve" that fragments our whole mental world. They passed through the spiritual lid of the world, the rarefied layers of "spirit." They found "the great passage," mahas pathah (II.24.6): "The heaven [of consciousness] was made firm like a well-shaped pillar ... a god opened the human doors” (V.45). They entered "the dense consciousness,” chidghana,¹⁶ they touched another power and “set flowing in one movement human strengths and things divine" (IX.70.3). “Then, indeed, they awoke and they wholly saw, all behind and wide around them, then, indeed, they held the ecstasy that is enjoyed in heaven” (IV. 1.18). "Mortal, they achieved immortality" (1.110.4).

This is the new world Sri Aurobindo would call the supra­mental. It is the turiyam svid of the Vedic Rishis, a "certain fourth," which is perhaps a fourth state of Matter—the next state. A state in which Matter does not die.

A different Matter? Or a different way of seeing the same Matter, a different way of breathing within a Matter freed from its mental prison?

At last, Mirra had found this Ray that was capable of modifying all the lower determinisms.

But what is very interesting is that She was going to see—at what moment we do not know, but probably at the same time—a kind of replica of that being from above, but down below, in the deepest layers of the material inconscient: A being lying in a deep sleep, in the depths of a very dark cave, and, while he slept, rays of prismatic light (She would also say "iridescent") emanated from him and spread out little by little into the Inconscient. ¹⁷ One was in a crimson gold glory at the very summit of the ladder of consciousness, and the other in a diamond whiteness, ema­nating opalescent rays, at the first mute levels of existence, within the most ancient layers of evolution, when "dark­ness was wrapped in darkness,” according to the Rig-Veda’s powerful image (X. 129.3). And the moment Mother looked at him, he opened his eyes, as if he were awakening—as if, in the deepest Matter, in the obscure beginning of things, there were hidden, asleep, the realization of the end, the very Energy that will drive this entire evolution toward its golden blossoming.... We speak of "future," “past,” “summit above" and "deep cave below” in an inadequate language and with images expressive only of our three- dimensional impotence in a fishbowl that distorts and frag­ments a totality that has never ceased being total, without any high or low, heaven or hell: there is only the journey of our consciousness crossing all the evolutionary layers in order to reach what was always there; there is only the rediscovery of our own Wholeness, "and they wholly saw.” "What is in this world is also in the other," say the Upan­ishads, “and what is in the other, that again is in this: who thinks he sees a difference here, from death to death he goes.”¹⁸ In other words, the more we “progress" in evolution by purifying and clearing up those thick layers, the nearer the eternal thing "over there” draws to our consciousness— at first to our dreams, our visions, then to our imagination, thoughts and sensations—until it finally coincides with our Matter and our body; then, the being over there becomes the being right here and the two become ONE—without ever having ceased to be ONE. All our misery and aspiration are only the first murmur of the forgotten one who remem­bers himself in the forgetful other. We aspire for what is already there] otherwise, what would we aspire for? Mud does not aspire for mud, and if it changes into light and into a lotus in the light, it is because the light was always there and the lotus shone eternally in the depths of its dark seed. The supreme Energy is the primordial Energy, the supreme degree is the first degree. Always and everywhere, we keep going toward ourselves—and how would the non­existent go toward the existent if it had not existed since the beginning of time? In the atom is hidden the supreme Ray, fragmented, divided, pulverized; the supreme ONE, total, powerful and immortal, lies in the heart of a little forgetful cell as much as in all interstellar space. For really, "the Spirit who is here in man and the Spirit who is there in the Sun, lo, it is One Spirit and there is no other.”¹⁹ And there comes a moment in evolution, a supreme moment, when the coincidence draws near, when, freed from the dark layers which are really the layers of our forgetfulness, the radiant consciousness bends over its little body and becomes itself, total, powerful, luminous and immortal, down to the most obscure little cell. Then the Being "above" meets the being “below,” the superman becomes man, the untruncated totality finds itself again even down to the most obscure fragment—what was, is. A new time is born. A new gaze is born. And death will be conquered, because death was only self-forgetfulness. When the body remembers itself wholly, when it wholly becomes what it is, enlight­ened and clear, when the two have embraced down to the most obscure cell, we shall become completely immortal in a new body and on a new earth. "O men,” said the Vedic Rishis, "follow the shining thread ... weave an inviolate work, become the human being, create the divine race ... Seers of Truth are you, sharpen the shining spears with which you cut the way to that which is Immortal; knowers of the secret planes, form them, the steps by which the gods attained to immortality” (X.53.5,6,10). “Then shall thy humanity become as if the workings of these gods; it is as if the visible heaven of light were founded in thee" (V.66.2).

This coincidence of the two is what Sri Aurobindo and Mother would call transformation. It is the transition from the human body to a supramental or superhuman body.

The Great Passage

A mysterious transition indeed. But each of the preced­ing evolutionary transitions from one species to the next was always a mystery. There has always been a moment when the change occurred, the mutation abruptly took place, however slow the preparation and despite all the intermediary specimens. The process of the transition can be endlessly questioned and discussed, but each time, the transition was worked out despite all natural impossibili­ties, and possibly despite the specimen who was the object of the mutation. Our language may be inadequate—We need a new language! Mother exclaimed, like Rimbaud— and our images may be childish to describe the transition to that other species which will breathe such a different air and whose standards of consciousness are likely to be as radically different from ours as those of the mineral are from the animal's. This is not unlike the caterpillar trying to define its own tomorrow as a butterfly. But despite all its caterpillar science, no rational caterpillar can prevent itself from becoming a butterfly. We may doubt it with our rational intelligence, which sees nothing beyond a superglori­fication of its own rationality (which is failing abysmally), but evolution does not doubt, and the transition will take place—with or without us. In fact, we are right in the middle of the transition, mahas pathah, the great passage, and our scientific and rational materialism is probably the most antiquated thing there is after old Moses on his Sinai. That Sinai we will speak of again as the biggest balloon that has ever burst. Yet why should the transition not occur with us? Instead of being the passive and rather ill-treated guinea pigs of evolution, we could be co-experimenters, as it were. This is Mother's and Sri Aurobindo’s whole story. And Theon's unsuccessful story.

After all, we do not care about immortality, and the moment the consciousness awakens and begins to pick up the thread of past existences, the idea quickly becomes childish: who would care to wear one coat for a hundred years, said Sri Aurobindo, or be confined in one narrow and changeless lodging unto a long eternity?²⁰ But that “lodging” is what bothers us, along with the fact of death. Death is really a defeat: the defeat of the body, we might say, but this is not true; it is the defeat of the Spirit, for Spirit and Matter are one and the same thing, despite what our cater­pillar eyes may see, and we die just because we have found neither the reality of the Spirit nor the reality of Matter. When the two are one in something else, that will be it— and that something else is undoubtedly our next body.

But we must build that body; it is not going to drop from heaven ready-made. What is the process of fabrication?

Obviously, to perpetuate the consumer-cum-metaphysi­cian citizen is meaningless—evolution could not care less about metaphysics, although it makes use of it, as it does of everything else; it is not trying to create a fourth or a tenth brain, a superman who would be just an improved chimpanzee fitted with mathematics and television, but an instrument capable of handling consciousness directly, because consciousness is the primordial fact of evolution, the original moving force, the beginning of the end, that which we strive to handle as best we can through a crab shell or a brainbox, or whatever big or small box it may be. Evolution does not build civilizations, it builds ever wider consciousnesses. Consciousness is the key to the transition and to every transition. It is the Shakti in search of its own totality. And like the Rishis, like Mirra scaling the planes outside of her body while deeply asleep, we have seen that next consciousness, wider and "denser," in some heaven up above. But all this is still our caterpillar language, or the language of fish in their fishbowl. If, by the means of some special talent, our friend the baboon were to explore the next layers of evolution, it is likely that the first levels of the mind would appear to him like a distant heaven, far above, which he might only touch in an utter cessation of all that makes up his ape life—but how could that mental heaven enter straight down his consciousness? There is no room for it, the place is all cluttered with the many mechanisms of his ape life; an abrupt “descent" of the mental heaven into his consciousness would produce a kind of intolerable explosion. But while asleep, when everything ceases its usual racket, some first strange gleam or vibration may appear on the screen of his simian consciousness and leave him with a kind of nostalgia or aspiration, a distant and unexplained sense of wonder, a sudden break into an infini­tude of comprehension embracing in one glance his ape life and all apes' life: an inexplicable explanation, A mystic baboon, his rational neighbors would say. And yet these first slumberous traces prepare the next evolutionary groove. Something awakens in him, like another being in the depths of a bottomless cave, slowly, slowly wending its way to the surface. Nature slowly cleanses the layers and lets the centuries flow on while waiting for the next emer­gence: the meeting of mental “heaven" and earth in a new hominid creation. This cleansing of the intermediary layers seems to be the process of every transition. Each time, the ray grows and reaches a wider periphery, a darker depth, as if each time the conquered height gave it the power to cross a deeper layer, until the supreme Energy meets itself in the atom and the supreme Being in supreme oblivion. Death is the last door to the Supreme. And so goes the world, limping along from one stage to another, one being to another, one “heaven” to another, toward its totality of consciousness—toward the ONE, innumerable, in every point.

And now we have reached the point where a new heaven is to touch a new earth.

But the difference is even more radical than we think, for after all, between the ape and man there is scarcely more than a difference in degree of the same principle. What Mirra had seen, and the Rishis, and Sri Aurobindo over there, was another principle, something as radically differ­ent as mans oxygen is from the oxygen of the fish, as we said, and yet it is the same oxygen, only breathed in entirely different ways. She saw a different structure, we could rather say a different Matter: a conscious Matter, or a Matter made of consciousness, a massive consciousness— perhaps the real Matter, the one that eludes us and that we see so poorly and live so poorly. What does “earth" Matter look like to a fish? Obviously, like the asphyxiation of everything the fish is, that is, if it can see it; and yet, to us, they are the same atoms and molecules both here and there, but combined differently—the same “something” (which we do not really know) combining. And what combines dif­ferently is consciousness. It is that new combination that Sri Aurobindo and Mother were going to try' and bring into their bodies—and hence into the earth, for if a single body is touched, all other bodies can be touched—because there is but one Matter and one body. If Matter changes in one point, it can change in every other point. But it takes a whole journey to clear up and purify intermediary layers, so that this new heaven or new combination may enter Matter without exploding everything. For the gulf has to be bridged, Sri Aurobindo would soon say, the closed passages opened and roads of ascent and descent created where there is now a void and a silence.²¹

A perilous adventure.

A perilous transition for the earth.

The Last Sedition

Around 1906, a little corner of the Atlas Mountains saw the strange encounter between a forgotten Vedic experi­ence, lost beneath the incomprehension of "more evolved" millennia, and a materialist girl from Paris who believed only what She could “see and touch.” While over there, six thousand miles away (perhaps at the very moment of His first arrest for "sedition”), a young Bengali named Auro­bindo Ghose, also raised in the West, discovered beyond the supreme "summit" of Nirvana—a goal that seemed so intangibly ultimate and absolute that pretending to go beyond it was like a blasphemy—a certain "something” containing the seeds of humanity’s next cycle. What kind of wind was it then blowing over the earth? What more radical sedition was brewing? It is not a revolt against the British Government which any one can easily do, Sri Auro­bindo would soon say. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature.²² And Mother was still marveling in 1972, just one year before leaving her body, as if this remarkable coincidence seemed to her ever more remark­able, or more revealing: Theon and Sri Aurobindo did not know each other, they never met each other. They didn’t even know of each other’s existence and, with totally different approaches, they reached the same conclusion. In totally different countries and without ever knowing about each other, they knew the same thing at the same time. And I met one and the other.²³

Two beings with the same Western materialistic upbring­ing rediscovered a tradition lost since the beginning of this cycle, some seven to ten thousand years earlier, as if human­ity had to travel an immense curve and explore to the very end, with innumerable sages and saints, the ways of heaven or nothingness, which all emerged into a white infinity or some extraterrestrial paradise; explore to the very end the paths of science, which all opened out onto an almost monstrous earth; plow or struggle on the mind’s paths, which all opened onto a new, worldwide Babel where thoughts and words became like counterfeit money at the service of teeming egoisms and pygmies of power; touch and delve ever deeper into its own misery along all the paths of faith or non-faith, yes or no, good or evil—and nothing was good or bad anymore—to end up in some dark hole where the only unmistakable reality was still the old death, with or without bombs, in the middle of a tragic and grotesque circus where man ridiculed himself beneath the sole onslaught of radio waves and democratic slogans —draw the whole curve of pain, from zero-Matter to zero- Spirit, in order to come full circle at last and reach that supreme Starting Point where a few Rishis had seen, in the heart of Matter and the depths of their bodies, as if in the dark depths of a cave, a new Sun of knowledge like a new Spirit in a new Matter: "This treasure in the infinite rock” (Rig-Veda 1.130.3), "the Sun dwelling in the darkness” (III.39.5). And this entire cycle was perhaps needed for the whole of humanity to reach the same realization, instead of a few Rishis scattered atop their Himalayas—because, in the end, there is but one Man. One single evolution. We all reach the goal together, or no one reaches it.

We are there, we are reaching that point; we have exhausted everything, there are no more marvelous beliefs to mislead us above or below, we have seen ourselves perfectly: the doors of bankruptcy open upon OURSELVES.

And finally, the same old law of evolution presides over this transition as over all the others. The key to the transi­tion is not to be found in some new pair of lungs or some frontal or parietal superlobes, but in this very pressure from within, this Need which pulled the reptiles from the bottom of their dried-up swamps and forced them to invent wings, which pulled the fish out of their asphyxiating hole and compelled them to invent lungs—which is pulling men from their mental pestilence, and is pounding and ham­mering them until they spring forth into another air of consciousness, into that ONE where all the misery of sepa­ration and division in Matter will be healed.

Matter is the obstacle and Matter is the key.

Thus Mother had to meet Theon before Sri Aurobindo, as if She, too, had to exhaust all the false paths of the Possible before knocking at the real door—perhaps in order to close the way once and for all to any resurgence of the old Atlanteans, whom Plato said had been swallowed up 9,000 years before him; perhaps, too, because She had to meet death once before wresting its secret from it. For Death, according to the ancient Scriptures, is the guardian of Knowledge.²⁴

We are in the time of the last sedition: against Mind in Matter and death in Matter. Perhaps one and the same thing.

The supreme obstacle is the supreme door.