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The Mother:             

“There is one divine force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but she is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here. It is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose. She is that in the body, but in her whole consciousness she is also identified with all other aspects of the Divine” .
-Sri Aurobindo

The Mother was born in Paris on 21st February, 1878. Mirra, as the child was named, was the daughter of a banker Mr. Maurice Alfasa and Mrs. Mathilde Ismaloun who emigrated from Egypt to France a year before Mirra’s birth. Her early education was given at home. From the age of 5 itself, she was feeling a light and force above her head penetrating her being and shaping her life gradually. Around 1892 she went to a studio to learn drawing and painting and later studied art at the famous Ecole des Beau Arts. Besides being an accomplished painter, the Mother was a talented musician and writer.
Referring to her early spiritual life, The Mother has said “ Between 11 and 13, a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man’s possibility of uniting with Him, of realizing him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in divine life”. With Max Theon & his wife Alma the mother studied occultism at Tlemcen, Algeria for two years in 1906 & 1907 and became an accomplished occultist for guidance in spirituality.
She met Sri Aurobindo on 29th March 1914 in Pondicherry and recognized him at once as the Master who for many years had inwardly been guiding her spiritual development. She had to return to France due to the first World War but returned to Pondicherry for the final time on 24th April, 1920 and resumed her collaboration with Sri Aurobindo for the unique divine enterprise he had undertaken.
The history of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram until 1950 could be presented in three periods of 12 years. 1914: first physical meeting of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and the beginning of their collaboration. 1926: descent of overmind; the Mother takes charge of the Ashram. 1950 : Sri Aurobindo leaves his body in order to continue his work from the subtle-physical plane, whilst the Mother strives on for the fulfilment of His object on earth; the manifestation of Supermind took place six years later in the earth’s subtle-physical layer on 29th February 1956 by the Tapasya of the Mother with solid support of Sri Aurobindo from the subtle physical plane.                                                                  
 
On 24th April 1951 the Mother announced in the Sri Aurobindo Memorial Convention with leading intellectuals and educationalists of the country the foundation of an international University center, which was later inaugurated on 6th January 1952. In 1959 the ‘Sri Aurobindo International University Centre’ was renamed as ‘Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education’.
The Mother also initiated in 1964-65 the project of Auroville where seekers from all over the world could live a progressive life in the service of Truth. ‘Auroville’ signifies ‘City of Dawn’. The ceremony for laying the foundation stone of this unique town was held on 28th February, 1968.

In 1958 the Mother’s yoga of physical transformation began in its most material sense, that is, her working on the cells of the body, their purification, their liberation not only from the suggestion of the ‘physical mind’, but also from what the Mother termed the ‘body-mind’ - the basic cellular consciousness as it has been up till now. The first stage of the transfomation took about ten years until 1968. In the remaining five yers until 1973 the Mother tried to direct the cells towards the new working and ultimately the formation of a new body called as Supramental body which would be physically immortal, an attempt to achieve the ultimate victory for mankind and to conquer for good disease and death.
On 17th November 1973, at the age of ninety five, the Mother left her body and entered into Supramental golden body which shall materialise in the supramental substance on earth when humanity shall become spiritually fit to see it.