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SEQUENCE - 12: THE MOTHER: PARIS – 1893 – 1905
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
Sri Aurobindo’s preparation of his outer instrumentation was over; The Mother’s began.
The school essay, ‘The Path Of Later On’ that The Mother had written in 1893, when she was only fifteen, throws abundant light on the high seriousness
with which she pursued her painting and drawing classes at the Academi Julian in Paris. She was so poised and grave and busy with her work that her colleagues called her the sphinx. And, like the sphinx she solved
the problems not only of her classmates but also of the monitress who was unjustly being dismissed by the Head of the School.
When once scolded by her mother for Sphinx - seriousness, The Mother replied that she had ‘to bear all the sorrows of the world’. “On another occasion
she was scolded by her for not listening to what she had been ordered to do. Then she answered that “no earthly power could command her obedience.” (Nilima, vol.1, 27-28)
Incident b)
As she grew into her young womanhood -
“A lovelier light assumed her spirit brow
And sweet and solemn grew her musing gaze;
Celestial – human deep warm slumberous fires
Woke in the long fringed glory of her eyes.
Like altar burnings in a mysteried shrine.” (Savitri, 357)
For such a consciousness the experience at the Charity Bazaar came a rude shock. “This charity-bazaar was a place where men from all over the world
came to buy and sell all kinds of things, and the proceeds of the sale went to works of charity… There was a short-circuit, everything began to blaze up… All these elgant refined people, who usually were so
well-mannered, began to fight like street rowdies… Afterwards, lamentations in society big funerals and many stories ... Now, a Dominican said ..It serves you right. You did not live according to the law of God and
he punished you by burning you.” The Mother perhaps “felt repelled by this ridiculous notion of sin and punishment, a Christian idea, which falsifies our ideal of the Divine.” (KRS, 13)
TOPIC 2:
Her idea of the Divine she had gathered when she was in her late teens. As she explained :
“Between the age of eighteen and twenty I had attained a conscious and constant union with the divine presence and… I had done it all alone, with
absolutely nobody to help me, not even books…”
TOPIC 3:
But, the sense of the Infinite did not wean her away from the finite.
She continued with her training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and became an accomplished artist in her study years at the Ecole, she was introduced to
Henri Morrisset, a student of artist Gustave Moreau, with whom she got married in October, 1897.
In the subsequent year the Morrissets have their only child, Andre Morrisset. The Mother brought up her son with high ideals and without ever calling a
doctor whenever he child became ill!
TOPIC 4:
It was in the same year, in 1898, that an Indian met The Mother and spoke to her about the Bhagawad Gita. Giving her a copy of the Gita he told her :
“Read the Gita, and take Krishna as the symbol of the immanent God, the inner godhead, …. the God who is within you.” And in one month, The Mother was able “to enter into its spirit and find the Divine, the God
within.” (MCW6, 298)
TOPIC 5:
Incident a)
She had chosen beauty as a way to the Divine. She lived amidst true artists – they “were serious and did wonderful things. It was the era of the
Impressionists, it was the era of Manet, it was a brilliant era…”
Incident b)
Indeed, the Paris of The Mother’s times was the cynosure of Modern Age, and the impressionists — many of them now legendary names almost: “Monet,
Sisley, Pissaro, Moreau, Matisse, Degas Renoir – as also the composer Frank and the sculptor Rodin, explored the infinitudes of forms and colour…” The Mother was for a time deeply attracted by “ the moment, the men
and the movement.”
“There was an intense vital development during this period of my life.. and it all centered on studies: study of sensation, study of observation, study
of technique, comparative studies, and so on,” said The Mother.
Incident c)
Nothing was beyond the range of her observation and study. “I remember I once had, when I was simply walking in the street, a kind of revelation,
because a woman was walking in front of me … She had a magnificent gait! I saw this and all of sudden I saw the origin of the entire Greek culture: how those forms came down towards the world to express beauty…”
TOPIC 6:
Incident a)
Like Sri Aurobindo in his youth, The Mother too was, when she was twenty one or so, very hard up - ‘as stony-broke as can be’. “As an artist, I was
obliged to go out in society,” narrated The Mother, – “artists are obliged to. I had patent leather ankle – boots which were cracked… and I painted them so that it wouldn’t show! That’s telling you the condition we
were in - stony - broke.”
Incident b)
“Well, one day, in a shop window …” she continued to narrate, “the fashion of the day was a long skirt trailing on the ground, and I did not have a
petticoat to go with such things, I didn’t care a halfpenny, it was perfectly immaterial to me. But as Nature had told me that I would always have whatever I needed, I wanted to make an experiment. I saw in a shop’s
window a very pretty petticoat, much in fashion in those days — with laces, ribbons, etc. So I said, ‘ Well, I’d very much like to have a petticoat to go with those gowns’. I got five! They all came from all sides!”
(MC, 2, 118-19).
With The Mother the supernatural harmonised with the mundane.
TOPIC 7:
In the same year, in 1898, she assisted Mon. Morisset in painting murals on either side of the main altar in the church of St. James of Compostella at
Pau in France. A Spanish legend portrayed St.James appearing in a golden light on a white horse, almost like ‘Kalki’ and vanquishing the Moors. “All the slain moors were at the bottom,” The Mother specified, “and I
painted the slain or the struggling Moors.” (MC 2, 134).
TOPIC 8:
Incident a)
“I always dreamt of a great shared love which would be free from all animal activity, something that could reproduce physically the great love which is
at the origin of the worlds,” Thus speaks the Artist in The Mother’s drama, “Towards the Future”. “It is this dream that was responsible for my marriage. But it has not been a very happy experience. I have loved
much, very sincerely, very intensely but my love did not meet with the response it had hoped for,” explained The Mother.
Incident b)
So was her experience with the artists’ world. She was living with the ‘laureats of Beauty’ but it was not enough. She felt the need to go beyond and
size the kingdoms of the invisible.
“I had in me such an intense need to know,” said The Mother. “I knew nothing, but nothing, except the things of ordinary life: the external knowledge.
Whatever was given to me to learn, I learned: I learned not only what I was taught, but also what my brother was taught – the higher mathematics and all the rest! And I learned and I learned – and it was nothing.
Nothing explained anything to me – nothing.” (MC 3, 173-4).
TOPIC 9:
Incident a)
Occultism was the answer. The Mother had become involved in occultism even when she was only twelve. True occultism is “the discovery of the hidden
truths and powers of the mind-force and the life-power and the greater forces of the concealed spirit.” (SABCL 19, 877)
Incident b)
“When I began studying occultism,” said The Mother, “I became aware that… there was between the subtle–physical and the most material vital a small
region, very small which was not sufficiently developed to serve as a conscious link between the two activities ... I began working. One month, two months, three, four, no result… I left Paris ... and came to the
country side .. to stay with some friends who had a garden… I lay on the grass … and then suddenly all the life of that Nature, all the life of that region between the subtle physical and the most material vital….
all that became all at once, suddenly… absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous…” (MCW9,58-63)
Incident c)
It was a part of this occult discipline that The Mother began to practice - a discipline of recapitulating and retaining every moment of her
dream-experiences.
“At first it was not very fruitful, but at the end of about fourteen months I could follow, beginning from the end, all the movements, all the dreams
right up to the beginning of the night…”(MCW, 62) explained The Mother.
Incident d)
One such dream-vision was described by her:
“I saw Sri Aurobindo in these visions, exactly as he was physically, but more glorious. I mean, the same man as I was to see the first time I met him:
almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue, that clear-cut profile, the unruly beard, the long-hair, dressed in dhoti with one end thrown over his shoulder, arms bare, a part of the body also bare, and bare footed… I
saw him … absolutely decisive spiritual experience and facts of meeting and of a united perception of the work to be accomplished… I got the feeling that it was premonitary and that one day something like this would
happen.” (MC2, 181-2)
But, she had work to do in the occult worlds before she could begin her work with Sri Aurobindo.
TOPIC 10:
Incident a)
Keeping in line with her resolution to perfect her occultism, The Mother associated herself in 1904 with the Paris chapter of the ‘Groupe Cosmique’.
She was introduced to this Groupe by a friend of her brother Matteo. It was founded by a Polish occultist Max Theon and his wife Alma.
Incident b)
Soon she took up the editing of this Groupe’s philosophical mouthpiece, ‘La Revue Cosmique’ “The ‘Cosmic’ had quite an interesting action in my life,”
clarified The Mother. “I was completely against ‘God’. The European notion of God was utterly repulsive to me” (MC, 3, 27) “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.” (Ibid, 15)
“My return to the Divine came about through Theon, when I was first told, the ‘”Divine is within, there.” (Ibid, 15) “That was the means; by following
his instruction and seeking within my being, behind the solar plexus, I found. I found it, I had an experience … absolutely convincing experience.” (Ibid, 28)
TOPIC 11:
Incident a)
It was in the autumn of 1905 that when the Theons came to France that The Mother met them for the first time. “When I met him I saw that he was a being
of great power… But I saw, or rather felt that Theon 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.” (Ibid, , 46-7)
Incident b)
Before going to Tlemcen, The Mother established ‘L’Idée’ –– a group of spiritual seekers who met at her house at Rue Lemercier. “We used to have small
meetings every week – quite a small number of friends, three or four, who discussed philosophy, spiritual experiences etc.” (MCW, 321)
TOPIC 12:
Between her eighteenth and twentieth years, The Mother had achieved “a conscious and constant union with the divine Presence”. By reading Swami
Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga she had come to understand the marvels of inner life; by practicing the Gita she was able to find the immanent divine, by twenty-five she had discovered the inner God. She had attained the inner secrecies of man; she set now to conquer the subtle worlds:
“Ascending and descending twixt life’s poles,
The seried kingdoms of the graded Law
Plunged from the Everlasting into Time..” (Savitri 88-89)
The Mother ventured to discover ‘the seried kingdoms’ after ‘a complete preparation of self-purification and widening of consciousness.” (MCW 8, 217)
SEQUENCE - 13: SRI AUROBINDO: CALCUTTA – 1906 –09
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
“The coming of Sri Aurobindo to Bengal marks an epochmaking period in the annals of the country. Never before in the history of the political evolution
of the country had there been such a precious acquisition in the cause of the country’s fight for freedom … because there was no equal to him in the supreme self—consciousness he possessed of his God-ordained
mission… Everybody felt in his heart of hearts that the man for Bengal who had been long over due … had at last come and the honour of Bengal and her interest and, for the matter of fact, of all India would be safe
in his keeping,” noted an eminent thinker of Bengal. (M.C.5, 374-5)
Incident b)
As soon as he became the Joint Editor of the daily Bande Mataram, launched on August 6, 1906, “Sri Aurobindo’s first preoccupation was to declare
openly for complete and absolute independence as the aim of political action in India and to insist on this persistently in the pages of the journal; he was the first politician in India who had the courage to do
this in public and he was immediately successful. The party took up the word Swaraj to express its own ideal of independence and it soon spread everywhere…” (SABCL 26, 29)
He declared in the Bande Mataram:
“One thing only we are sure of, and one thing we wear as a life-belt which will buoy us up on the waves of the chaos that is coming on the land. This
is the fixed and unalterable faith in an over-ruling purpose which is raising India once more from the dead, the fixed and unalterable intention to fight for the renovation of her ancient life and glory. Swaraj is
the life-belt, swaraj the pilot, swaraj the star of guidance.
“India is the Guru of the nations, the physician of the human soul in its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to new-mould the life of the
world and restore the human spirit. But Swaraj is the necessary condition of her work, and before she can do the work, she must fulfil the condition.” (SABCL-1, 730-31)
Incident c)
Sri Aurobindo thus flung himself into the turmoil of Indian politics, impelled not only by an intense patriotic ardour alone but by a vision of India’s
spiritual destiny and the imminent role she had to play in the regeneration of humanity, nay, even in mankind’s evolutionary march towards Supermind.
He saw with his yogic vision not only ‘God’s purpose writ large upon the foaming waves of the national revolution,’ but he also gave to the nation a
fourfold programme:
“The work of national emancipation is a great and holy yajna of which Boycott, Swadeshi, National Education and every other activity, great and
small, are only major or minor parts.” (SABCL 1, 122).
Under his captaincy the forward group of men in the Congress who had formed a new party, the Nationalist Party, not only adapted the fourfold programme
of action, but forced the Moderate leaders to accept it at the landmark Congress meet of 1906 at Calcutta.
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
With the adoption of the Nationalist Programme, Sri Aurobindo entered the third phase of his political programme: “Thirdly, there was the organisation
of the people to carry on a public and united opposition and undermining of the foreign rule through an increasing noncooperation and passive resistance.”
The ‘organisation of people’ to carry on his programme was the Nationalist Party. And the ‘undermining of the foreign rule’ was best done by Swadeshi
plus Boycott. “Both Tilak and Sri Aurobindo were in favour of an effective boycott of British goods – but of British goods only … They wanted the Boycott to be a political weapon and not merely an aid to Swadeshi …
The sudden enthusiasm for the boycott of all foreign goods was wide and sweeping and the leaders had to conform to this popular cry and be content with the impulse it gave to the Swadeshi idea”. (SABCL 26, 31)
Incident b)
“Foreign cloth shops were picketed, foreign textiles were burnt in huge bonfires in market places and on crossings and roads. The family priests
refused to perform marriage ceremonies if either of the couple was clad in cloth other than Swadeshi.” (Dr.S.C. Bartarya, The Indian Nationalist Movement)
Frustrated and flustered the Englishman, an influential Anglo-Indian paper in Calcutta, wrote: “Boycott must not be acquiesced in or it will
more surely ruin British connection with India than an armed revolution.”
TOPIC 3:
Incident a)
“National Education was another item to which Sri Aurobindo attached much importance. He had been disgusted with the education given by the British
system in the schools and colleges and universities - a system of which as a professor in the Baroda College he had full experience. He felt that it tended to dull and impoverish and tie up the naturally quick and
brilliant and supple Indian intelligence, to teach it bad intellectual habits and spoil by narrow information and mechanical instruction its originality and productivity.” (SABCL 26, 31)
Incident b)
Government schools and colleges were boycotted and new ones started to impart education based on Indian values and to instill in the students love for
Mother India. The Bengal National College which was started on August 14, 1906, under the Principalship of Sri Aurobindo, owed its origin to this movement.
The movement of National Education “began well and many national schools were established in Bengal and many able men became teachers, but still the
development was insufficient and the economical position of the schools precarious. Sri Aurobindo had decided to take up the movement personally and see whether it could not be given a greater expansion and a
stronger foundation, but his departure from Bengal cut short this plan.” (SABCL 26, 32)
TOPIC 4:
Incident a)
“The Bande Mataram was almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of people and preparing it for
revolution.” (SABCL 26, 30). All that Sri Aurobindo had said in the pages of the journal formed the gospel of the immense political upheavel that led India to the attainment of its ultimate independence, except for
the creed of non-violence to which he never subscribed.
Regarding non-violence, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “In some quarters there is the idea that Sri Aurobindo’s political standpoint was entirely pacifist…. It
is even supposed that he was a forerunner of the Gospel of Ahimsa. This is quite incorrect. Sri Aurobindo is neither an impotent moralist nor a weak pacifist.
“The rule of confining political action to passive resistance was adopted as the best policy for the National movement at that stage and not as a part
of a gospel of non-violence or pacific idealism. Peace is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with
any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle of gospel of Ahimsa or any other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than before.” (SABCL 26, 22)
Incident b)
“During the brief period of its [Bande Mataram’s] existence it effected a profound revolution in Indian politics, in the thoughts and feelings of his
countrymen … Sri Aurobindo was, in the stricktest sense of the term, a true prophet, path-finder and pioneer of India’s Freedom Movement.”
The prophet of Indian Nationalism, Sri Aurobindo, and the supreme voice of awakened India, Bande Mataram, both attracted the ire of the Britishers who
were always looking for an opportunity to swoop down upon them and to smother them out of existence. On 16th August, 1907, a warrant was issued against Sri Aurobindo who was charged with sedition. On receiving the warrant, Sri Aurobindo went to the police station and offered himself for arrest. But, as there was no proof available of his being the editor of Bande Mataram, he was soon acquitted.
“The Bande Mataram case brought Sri Aurobindo into full publicity. And from that time forward he became openly, what he had been for sometime already,
a prominent leader of the Nationalist party, its principal leader in action in Bengal and the organiser there of its policy and strategy.” (SABCL 26, 26)
Incident c)
It was on the occasion of Sri Aurobindo’s acquittal that Rabindranath Tagore composed his famous lines as his tribute to the ‘Voice Incarnate of
India’s soul’:
O Friend, O my country’s friend…
God’s greatest gift, our birthright,
You have asked for the country
In flaming words of noble truth, in boundless faith…
The fiery messenger
Who has come on Earth with the lamp of God…”
TOPIC 5:
Incident a)
When the Bande Mataram case was brought against him, Sri Aurobindo resigned his post at the National College “in order not to embarrass the college
authorities but resumed it again on his acquittal.” (SABCL 26, 43)
Incident b)
Having become the recognised leader of Nationalism in Bengal, Sri Aurobindo now openly “led the party at the session of the Bengal Provincial
Conference at Midnapore where there was a vehement clash between the two parties,” - the Nationalists and the Moderates. “He now for the first time became a speaker on the public platform, addressed large meetings
at Surat and presided over the Nationalist conference” held there on 26 December, 1907.
This tumultuous Surat conference was a historical one, for, it split the Congress. It was Sri Aurobindo who had given the order to the Nationalists
that led to the breaking of the Congress. The National Congress, after the Surat session, dwindled serving the country with their avowed loyalty to the British crown. On the other hand, the Nationalists took to
secret revolutionary activities, and some to terrorism as the only means for winning freedom.
TOPIC 6:
Incident a)
In the midst of all this political turmoil, Sri Aurobindo’s inner work seemed to have come to an impasse. “I was groping for a way, doing no Sadhana at
all, making no effort because I didn’t know what effort to make, all having failed,” wrote Sri Aurobindo, “I had a complete arrest and was at a loss.” (SABCL 6, 78)
He expressed a wish to see a Yogi to Barin. A meeting with Vishnu Bhaskar Lele was arranged at Surat on 30 December, 1907. Typically, Sri Aurobindo’s
first requisition was: “I want to do yoga but for the work, for action, not for sannyasa (renouncing the world) and Nirvana.”
“Sit down”, I was told, ‘look and you will see that your thoughts come into you from outside. Before they enter fling them back.’ I sat down and looked
and saw to my astonishment that it was so; I saw and felt concretely the thought approaching as if to enter through or above the head, and was able to push it back concretly before it came inside. In three days –
really in one – my mind became full of an eternal silence…” (SABCL 26, 82).
Incident b)
Explaining further ‘the first decisive turn’ of his life, Sri Aurobindo wrote:
“The first result was a series of tremendously powerful experiences and radical changes of consciousness which he [Lele] had never intended – for
they were Adwaitic and Vedantic and he was against Adwaita Vedanta – and which were quite contrary to my own ideas, for they made me see with a stupendous intensity the world as a cinematographic play of vacant
forms in the impersonal unity of the Absolute Brahman.”
It was this stupendous inner state which he later described poetically in his poem ‘Nirvana’:
“All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought extinguished, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known — unknown.”
Incident c)
“This condition remained unimpaired for several months … At the same time an experience intervened. Something else than himself took up his dynamic
activity and spoke and acted through him but without any personal thought or initiative.” (SABCL 26, 86)
Incident d)
In this state of an ineffable silence of mind, Sri Aurobindo was made to speak in different parts of Maharashtra – Bombay, Pune, Nasik, Dhulia,
Amraoti, Nagpur — on the theme of “God being the leader of the manifold renaissance in India” and on her mission of giving the spiritual light to humanity.” (Rishabhchand, 261)
TOPIC 7:
Incident a)
“About this period Sri Aurobindo had decided to take up charge of a Bengali daily, ‘Nava Shakti’… [but] before he could begin this new venture, early
one morning [May 5, 1908] while he was still sleeping, the police charged up the stairs, revolver in hand, and arrested him. He was taken to the police station and, thence to Alipore Jail where he remained for a
year during the magistrate’s investigation and the trial in the sessions court at Alipore.” (SABCL 26, 33)
“In the jail he spent almost all his time in reading the Gita and the Upanishads and in intensive meditation and the practice of Yoga.” (Ibid, 33)
“I had endeavoured hard and long for a direct vision and realisation of Narayana, who dwells in my heart and cherished an intense hope of winning
Purushottama, the Creator of the universe, as my Friend and Master,” wrote Sri Aurobindo. “But I could not succeed on account of the pull of a thousand worldly desires, attachments to various activities, and the
dense obscurity of ignorance. At last Sri Hari who is infinitely kind and gracious, slew those enemies at a stroke and cleared my path, pointed to an abode of Yoga, and Himself stayed there with me as my Guru
(spiritual Guide) and intimate Comrade.” (Rishabhchand 278).
Incident b)
“I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded
me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars
of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing over me. Or I lay on the course blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the
arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my friend and lover.”
Incident c)
The prosecution, although they moved heaven and earth in order to achieve their aim, could not find enough evidence against Sri Aurobindo. On the
defense side, Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das masterfully demolished every piece of evidence against Sri Aurobindo and finally made a unique appeal to the judge:
“My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will be ceased, long after
he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India,
but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position in not only standing before the bar of this court, but before the bar of the High Court of History.” (P.C.Roy, Life and Times of
C.R. Das, 59-64)
So, Sri Aurobindo was acquitted on 6 May, 1909.
Incident d)
“During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and
divine guidance for his work in life. But now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his
work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded the service and liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned with the
whole future of humanity.” (SABCL 26, 34)
Incident e)
However, immediately after coming out of the Alipore Jail Sri Aurobindo was determined to continue the struggle though he found ‘the whole political
aspect of the country altered.’ He went to places in the districts to speak .. he started also two weeklies, one in English and one in Bengali, the Karmayogin and Dharma.
Incident f)
“Sri Aurobindo one night at Karmayogin office received information of the Governments’ intention to search the office and arrest him. While considering
what should be his attitude, he received a sudden command from above to go to Chandernagore in French India. He obeyed the command at once, for it was now his rule to move only as he was moved by the divine guidance
and never to resist and depart from it; he did not stay to consult with anyone, but in ten minutes was at the river ghat and in a boat plying on the Ganges; in a few hours he was at Chandernagore where he
went into secret residence... At Chandernagore he plunged entirely into solitary meditation and ceased all other activity.” (Ibid, 6-7)
Incident g)
During the six weeks interlude at Chandernagore Sri Aurobindo saw many visions and revelations - visions of the Vedic godesses Ila, Saraswati and
Sarama representing revelation, inspiration and invitation.
incident h)
When his friends were thinking of sending him away to France for his greater safety, “then there came a call to proceed to Pondicherry; and Sri
Aurobindo returned to Calcutta only to board the S.S. Dupleix. The ship reached Pondicherry on April 4, 1910.”
Incident i)
His mysterious and sudden withdrawal from the Indian political scenario was later explained by himself:
“I did not leave politics because I felt I could do nothing more there; such an idea was very far from me. I came away because I got a very distinct adesh in the matter. I have cut connection entirely with politics, but before I did so I knew from within that the work I had begun there was destined to be carried forward, on lines I had foreseen, by others, and that the ultimate triumph of the movement I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence … For the rest, I have never known any will of mine for any major event in the conduct of the world affairs to fail in the end, although it may take a long time for the world-forces to fulfil it.” (SABCL 26, 55).
SEQUENCE - 14: THE MOTHER: ALGERIA – PARIS – 1906-09
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
“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...?
“So I looked at him, smiled and told him...“ My psychic being governs me – I am afraid of nothing,’ narrated The Mother.
“I acquired that psychic consciousness just before leaving for Tlemcen. And it grew stronger there.”
This is how The Mother was received by Aia Aziz, who called himself Max Theon, when she went to his place in Tlemcen on July 14, 1906.
Incident b)
Exceptionally proficient in occultism, Max Theon had received initiation in India - “he knew a little Sanskrit and was throughly versed in the
Rig-Veda… he developed a tradition which he called the ‘Cosmic Tradition’.
“I was taught the history of occult traditions by Theon,” said The Mother. (MC, 3, 66)
Incident c)
Theon had once told The Mother that the present creation is the seventh and the last. “You see”, The Mother explained, “according to Theon, the world
was created and destroyed — creation and pralaya– six times. And each time a particular attribute was manifested. But this attribute could not fulfil itself, the world was ‘swallowed up’ again. Well then, we
are the seventh time, and the attribute is Equilibrium.” (MC.3, 72).
“And I understood why Theon used to say that we were living at the time of ‘Equilibrium’, that is to say, it is through the equilibrium of all these
innumerable points of consciousness and of all these opposites that the central consciousness is rediscovered,” reminisced The Mother later in her life. (MCW 11, 200)
“I told Sri Aurobindo what Theon had said and Sri Aurobindo agreed, because he said: This one will see the transformation towards the Supramental.” (MO
11, 311).
Incident d)
Theon ‘had a remarkable intuition about the coming down of the supermind and about the new race of superman,’ said The Mother.
Indeed a man of a wide knowledge and elastic mind, “but like most Westerners, was poorly developed in the control of the vital plane. With his rich and
plastic mind and the psychic knowledge gained through his wife, he could develop and help others develop certain psychic faculties to their utmost.
“Theon knew that he was not meant to succeed but had only come to prepare the way to a certain extent for others to come and perfect it. But
afterwards the disciples around him made him believe himself to be the man destined to bring down the supermind into the physical plane and naturally the whole thing came to a smash.” (Glimpses, 1, 77-8).
No wonder that The Mother later described Eliezer Mordehai or Max Theon a name which meant, ‘supreme god’, to be a powerful ‘vibhuti’ of the Lord of
Death, one of the four original divine emanations turned to Asura.
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
After a brief stay of three months, The Mother returned to Paris. But again, in July 1907, The Mother went to Tlemcen to complete her apprenticeship
with the Theons.
Incident b)
Madame Theon or Alma Theon “was an occultist of great powers, a remarakble clairvoyant, and she had mediumistic qualities. Her powers were quite
exceptional, she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself, that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do it twelve times in
succession.” (MCW, 58).
Incident c)
Under such a master in occultism, The Mother learned well how to go in and out of the supraphysical worlds at will. She learned the science of
materialisation and dematerialisation.
Sri Aurobindo confirmed in a letter ‘an experience in which The Mother being in Algiers appeared to a circle of friends sitting in Paris and took up a
pencil and wrote a few words on a paper. Having satisfied herself that it was possible she did not develop it any further.” (SABCL 25, 372).
Incident d)
“Madame Theon recognised me, told The Mother, because of the twelve pearls in formation over my head. She told me, “You are That, because you have
this. Only That can have this!” (MC 3, 152).
TOPIC 3:
Incident a)
Along with Henri Morrisset, who had joined The Mother on August 17, The Mother left Tlemcen on October 15 of the same year, 1906, and returned to
France.
Incident b)
The Mother resumed her life in Paris where she had left it. She continued her work as an artist as well as kept up her meetings with the ‘Idea’, the
group she had formed before leaving for Tlemcen.
Incident c)
Apart from her contributions to the ‘Revue Cosmique’, one of her writings immediately after returning from Alegeria was a remarkable story called, “A
Sapphire Tale”. It is almost the Savitri-Satyavan reverse and it is “almost a prophetic piece, a parable of her own life.” (KRS 32)
TOPIC 4:
Incident a)
On 8 July 1907, The Mother returned to Tlemcen, Alegeria. Then she learnt from Madame Theon the process of exteriorizing. “I could halt on any plane,”
explained The Mother, “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… Well then, once I was 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… an ideal form resembling the human form… A
luminous form, a form of golden light.”
Sri Aurobindo was to confirm later: “It is certainly the prototype of the supramental form”.
Incident b)
On her return journey Mon.Theon accompanied The Mother to make a European tour. In the course of the journey, the ship was caught in a violent storm.
There was apprehension of a catastrophe. “Theon decided on an intense occult intervention.” He told The Mother, ‘Go and stop it.’
Then, leaving her body in her cabin The Mother went out on the open sea. “There I found innumerable entities, but formless, madly jumping about. They
were the ones that were creating all this havoc!” The Mother pleaded with them and cojoled them ‘until they began to calm down… the troubled sea was calm once again.”
Incident c)
On her return in October 1907, after her second visit to Tlemcen, The Mother resumed her regular activities and attended all kinds of occult reunions.
But soon afterwards she left the ‘Groupe Cosmique’ and concentrated on her own group, ‘L’Idee’.
It was during her association with the Cosmic Movement that The Mother met in 1907 Paul Richard, a fellow seeker with whom she will get married in May
1911.
In fact, within a year, with the death of Alma Theon, in September 1908, publication the Cosmic Review itself was stopped. In the November issue of
1908, The Mother published her tribute in Alma Theon.
Thus the “brief period of occultism which served as a transition to as well as a basis for spiritual development” was over.
TOPIC 5:
“I have noticed”, said The Mother in her later years, “that the different stages of my development occurred in twelve year periods. In practice, these
periods overlap; but approximately every twelve years a particular type of development dominated. In this order: Consciousness first; the vital next, mainly from the stand point of aesthetics together with a study
of sensations which culminated in the occult development with Theon; then around the same time, an intensive mental development which lasted from 1908 to approximately 1920…” (MC 3, 267-8).
By “intensive mental development” The Mother “meant a mental development in the most comprehensive way: a study of all the philosophies, all the
conceptual juggling, in the minutest details delving into systems, getting a grasp on them. Ten years of intensive mental studies leading me to… Sri Aurobindo.” (Ibid, 270).
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