She recognised Sri Aurobindo as a person she had met in
dreams (whom she had called "Krishna") and knew that she would return to spend
her life with him. During the time the Richards were in Puducherry they along
with Sri Aurobindo planned and initiated the journal Arya, in which Sri
Aurobindo was to serialise many of his major works.
From 1916-1920, the Mother and Paul Richard lived in Japan,
where she witnessed the terrible flu pandemic. During this period she continued
to meet leading intellectual figures, including Tolstoy's son and Rabindranath
Tagore.
In 1920 she broke her relationship with Paul Richard and
returned to Puducherry to join Sri Aurobindo. From that point the lives of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother were indissolubly linked.
The Mother quickly took charge of the growing household that
had formed around Sri Aurobindo. In 1926 Sri Aurobindo started using the term
"Mother" to refer to her, and he explained that her place in the Ashram had
come to equal his.
By the 1930's Sri Aurobindo had retired from overt
involvement in running the Ashram, leaving its day-to-day affairs to the
Mother. During the war the Ashram population grew to thousands, and the Mother
arranged all the details of its physical life as well as directed the
development of the sadhaks on the inner planes.
In 1950 Sri Aurobindo left his body, and the Mother assumed sole charge of the
Ashram and the disciples.
During the 1950's she expanded her work with the education of
the children in the Ashram. She taught French and other subjects, and for most
of the decade conducted question-and-answer classes on the spiritual life for
both children and older sadhaks. Transcripts of these classes form a large part
of her Collected Works. She also planned and developed what was to become the
"Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education."
The Mother continued the Supramental Yoga, and as a result,
towards the end of the 1950's the Supramental entered the earth's
consciousness. She was working on physical transformation, infusing the very
cells of the body with divine consciousness.
During the middle 1960's the Mother brought into reality a
vision she had of an international city. Auroville was inaugurated in February
1968 with the words of the Mother: "Auroville belongs to nobody in particular.
Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be
the willing servitor of the divine Consciousness."
She continued the Supramental Yoga and had many changes in
her physical body. In 1969 she experienced the descent of a crucial
intermediary between the human and the supramental, which she called the
"superman consciousness."
In November 1973 the Mother left her body.
|