Mirra Alfassa

Mirra Alfassa
Mirra Alfassa
Institute	Sri Aurobindo Ashram Auroville
Pen name	The Mother
Personal
Born	Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa 21 February 1878 Paris, France
Died	17 November 1973 (aged 95)
Resting place	Pondicherry, India
Religious career
Students	Satprem, Nolini Kanta Gupta, Nirodbaran, Amal Kiran, Pavitra
Works	Prayers And Meditations, Words of Long Ago, On Thoughts and Aphorisms, Words of the Mother
Signature

Integral yoga
Henri Cartier-Bresson's photo of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra as "the Mother"

Mirra Alfassa (21 February 1878 – 17 November 1973), known to her followers as The Mother, was the spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo. Her full name at birth was Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa.

She came to Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual retreat on 29 March 1914 in Pondicherry, India. Having to leave Pondicherry during World War I, she spent most of her time in Japan where she met poet Rabindranath Tagore. Finally she returned to Pondicherry and settled there in 1920. After 24 November 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion, she founded her ashram (Sri Aurobindo Ashram), with a handful of disciples. She became the spiritual guide of the community.

The experiences of the last thirty years of Alfassa’s life were captured in the 13-volume work The Agenda. Sri Aurobindo considered her an incarnation of the Mother Divine and called her by that name: “The Mother”.

Mirra Alfassa was born on 1878 in Paris to Moïse Maurice Alfassa a Turkish Jew father, and Mathilde Ismalun an Egyptian Jewish mother, a bourgeoisie family. She had an elder brother named Mattéo Mathieu Maurice Alfassa, who is later known to have held numerous French governmental posts in Africa. The family had just migrated to France, an year before she was born, the marriage fell apart and both Mathilde and Maurice were living separate lives at 62 Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Mirra was close to her grandmother Mira Ismalum (née Pinto), who was one of the first women to travel outside Egypt alone and was also a neighbour.

Mirra had learnt to read at the age of seven and joined school very late at the age of nine; she is believed to have held interest in various fields of art, tennis, singing, etc. and was a concern to her mother who saw lack of apparent deeper, permanent concern over any matter in Mirra. By the age of 14 she had become a good reader and had read most of the books in her father's collection, which is believed to have helped her achieve mastery over French. Her biographer Vrekhem notes that Mirra had various occult experiences in her childhood but knew nothing of the subject and their relevance. She kept these experiences to herself and did not share with anyone as her mother was believed to be atheist and any experiences were deemed to be a mental problem which had to be treated. Mirra especially recalls at the age of thirteen or fourteen having a dream of a dark figure which she used to call as Krishna whom she had never seen before in real life.