The Mother
Madame Mirra Alfassa - The Mother, or SriMa, as she was known - was born and educated in France. She began to have psychic and spiritual experiences at a very early age. She grew up to become an accomplished painter and musician. In 1906 and 1907 the Mother voyaged to Tlemcen, Algeria, where she studied occultism with Max Theon.
In 1914, she met Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian mystic and revolutionary, in Pondicherry, and her life was transformed. The next day, in her spiritual diary (published as Prayers and Meditations) she wrote: "It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when dark- ness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth."
In April 1920, after spending nearly four years in Japan, the Mother returned to Pondicherry, where she lived for the rest of her life. On November 24, 1926, when Sri Aurobindo withdrew from outer activities in order to focus all his energies on his Sadhana, he entrusted to the Mother, or SriMa, as he called her, the guidance of the disciples who had gathered around him, marking the start of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1968, SriMa founded Auroville, or the City of Dawn 10 kilometers outside of Pondicherry.
SriMa left her body on the 17th November,1973.
"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 the other aspects of the Divine." - Sri Aurobindo (Volume 25, "The Mother", of Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, pg 49-50)