M irra Alfassa (1878-1973), was indeed Sri Aurobindo's radiant collaborator, of whom he declared:
"The one whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence."
The Mother was an extraordinary spiritual person long before she met Sri Aurobindo, having had many spiritual and occult experiences of her own since childhood. She met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry in 1914 for the first time, and the meeting was indeed a convergence, for she recognized that he was the one who had appeared to her as Krishna. When she came to stay in 1920, her significance became apparent. It was her energy that helped create the ashram. It was her understanding of what Sri Aurobindo was trying to accomplish that made his work possible.
According to excerpts from Mother's Agenda, Sri Aurobindo called everyone together and said, "I have resolved to withdraw from activity; She will be your Mother," officially naming Mirra as the Mother. He immersed himself in sadhana, never again to come out in public. The Mother, as she then became reverently known, (an Indian title of respect for a female Spiritual Teacher) together with Sri Aurobindo helped develop a process of spiritual transformation totally different from that of previous yogas. Rather than being simply a self-transformation in order to attain a state of individual eternal transcendence, the goal of their Integral Yoga was on transforming and divinising the entire planetary consciousness.
The Mother was no mere collaborator or helper, for significantly she is the one who embodied the teachings for many. As others have noted, Mother also served as a conduit, an intermediary between the new evolutionary spiritual force that Sri Aurobindo spent his life discovering and their followers who were trying to open themselves to this new consciousness. For this reason her books such as Questions and Answers are a personal guide for many people.
There are two ways of doing Yoga, one by knowledge and one's own efforts, the other by reliance on the Mother. In the last way one has to offer one's mind and heart and all to the Mother for her Force to work on it, call her in all difficulties, have faith and bhakti. Sri Aurobindo reiterated "...the truth that nothing can be done except through the force of the Mother."
The Mother's time in Auroville spanned over 50 years. In 1968 The Mother founded Auroville, an international community of peace and spiritual growth an experiment in Human Unity. The Auroville Charter states:
Auroville belongs to nobody in particular.
Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole.
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But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
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Auroville will be the place of an unending education,
of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
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Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
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Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual
Human Unity.
