Page 10 - All India Magazine Feb-2019

Reminiscences

Consciously prepared body
I was born with a consciously prepared body — Sri
Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the
first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiri-
tual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and
attachment. And, mon petit, if there is the slightest desire
and the slightest attachment, it's impossible to do this work.
A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the
vital of this present incarnation was sexless — a warrior), an
absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior — no desires,
no attachments....
If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went
away, it left me absolutely calm. ...
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, March 28, 1964

A mother’s aspiration and a formidable will
It’s strange.... I say ‘strange’ because it’s due to her that
1
I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was
very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly
twenty years older than I; she was twenty when I was born
and I was her third child…. The first was a son who died
in Turkey when he was two months old…. Next was my
brother who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me,
born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that
time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a
kind of great aspiration in her: her children had to be ‘the
best in the world.’ It wasn’t an ambition, I don’t know what
it was. And what a will she had! My mother had a formi-
dable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside

1. The Mother's physical mother

10 All India Magazine, February 2019