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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.〔(Archives Départementales de Paris en ligne , acte de naissance n° 1878/390/9e du 21/02/1878, page 6 )〕 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''. In those years she attempted the physical transformation of her body in order to become what she felt was the first of a new type of human individual by opening to the Supramental Truth Consciousness, a new power of spirit that Sri Aurobindo had allegedly discovered. Sri Aurobindo considered her an incarnation of the Mother Divine and called her by that name: The Mother. ==Early life== Mirra Alfassa was born in Paris in 1878, of a Turkish Jewish father, Moïse Maurice Alfassa (5 July 1843 - 13 September 1918), and an Egyptian Jewish mother, Mathilde Ismalun (26 August 1857 - 9 December 1944). She had an elder brother named Mattéo Mathieu Maurice Alfassa (13 July 1876 - 12 August 1942) who held numerous French governmental posts in Africa. The family migrated to France the year before she was born.〔''Mother's Chronicles'' Bk I; ''Mother on Herself'' – Chronology p.83.〕 For the first eight years of her life she lived at 62 Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Alfassa says that at age five she felt she did not belong in this world, and her sadhana (spiritual discipline) began then.〔''Mother India'' Feb, 1975, p.95, in Das 1978 p.14 and ''Mother on Herself'' pp.1, 3–4.〕 She claims that she would lapse into bliss and go into a trance sometimes when she was placed in an easy chair or during a meal, much to the annoyance of her mother, who regarded this behaviour as a social embarrassment. Between eleven and thirteen she claims she had a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to her the existence of God, and man's possibility of uniting with Him.〔''Bulletin of the Aurobindo Center of Education'', 1976 p.14, ''Mother on Herself'' pp.17–18.〕 At age 12 she was practicing occultism and claimed to be travelling out of her body.〔''Bulletin'' 1974 p.63.〕 One of the experiences she claims she had, at the age of 13 every night for nearly a year, was of going out of her body and rising straight above the city:〔''On Herself'' pp.18–19; Das 1978 pp.24–5.〕 At age 14 Alfassa was sent to a studio to learn art, and a year later she wrote a school essay named ''The Path of Later On''. In 1893 she travelled to Italy with her mother. While at the Doge's Palace in Venice she said she recalled a scene from a past life where she was strangled and thrown out into the canal. At 16 she joined the Ecole des Beaux Arts where she acquired the nickname "the Sphinx", and later exhibited at the Paris Salon.〔Das 1978 pp.27, 30, 253.〕 On 13 October 1897 she married Henri François Morisset (6 April 1870 - 15 November 1956), a student of Gustave Moreau. Mirra and Henri had a son named André Henri Morisset (23 August 1898 - 29 March 1982). The Morisset family lived at Atelier, 15 Rue Lemercier, Paris, and Mirra became a part of the Parisian artistic circles, befriending the likes of Auguste Rodin and Monet.〔Nahar 1986.〕 Alfassa stated that between nineteen and twenty she had achieved a conscious and constant union with the Divine Presence, without the help of books or teachers. Soon after, she discovered Vivekananda's ''Raja Yoga''. She says about a year or two later she met an Indian in Paris who advised her to read the ''Bhagavad-Gita'', taking Krishna as a symbol of the inner or immanent Divine. She obtained a French translation which — she relates — was quite poor but still enabled her to understand the substance of it.〔''Collected Works – Questions and Answers 1954''.〕 Alfassa said that in her meditations she saw several spiritual figures, all of whom offered her help of one type or another. Around 1905 she met the occultist Max Théon, who explained her psychic experiences to her. She paid two extended visits (on the second one she was accompanied by or later joined by Morisset) to Théon's estate at Tlemcen, Algeria, to live with and learn occultism firsthand from Théon and his wife, Alma Theon.〔Das 1978 ch.5; Nahar 1989.〕 Alfassa had a very high regard for Théon. Alfassa and Henri separated in 1908, and Alfassa then moved to 49 Rue des Lévis, Paris. Around this time Alfassa had regular meetings with students and seekers who were attracted to psychic phenomena or to mysticism. In 1906 Alfassa and her brother Mattéo founded in Paris a group named "l'Idée Nouvelle" ("The New Idea"). This group met at her home on Wednesday evenings, first at Rue Lemercier, then at 49 Rue des Lévis, and finally at 9 Rue du Val de Grace. Her book "Words of Long Ago" (vol.2 of the Collected Works) is an account of one of these meetings, along with talks she gave to the "L'Union de Pensée Féminine", which was a new study group she had established. In a conversation with Prithwindra Mukherjee, one of the members of this group, Alexandra David-Néel, recalled those meetings and of Alfassa: "We spent marvellous evenings together with friends, believing in a great future. At times we went to the Bois de Boulogne gardens, and watched the grasshopper-like early aeroplanes take off. I remember her elegance, her accomplishments, her intellect endowed with mystical tendencies. In spite of her great love and sweetness, in spite even of her inherent ease of making herself forgotten after achieving some noble deed, she couldn't manage to hide very well the tremendous force she bore within herself."〔Interview with Prithwindra Mukherjee, ''The Sunday Standard'', 15 June 1969; ''The Mother'' by Prema Nandakumar, National Book Trust, 1977, p9.〕 In 1912 Alfassa organised a group of around 20 people named ''Cosmique'', who had the aim of gaining self-knowledge and self-mastery. Although she had not yet met Aurobindo, some of her ideas at the time paralleled his.〔Das, 1978, pp.82, 110–112.〕 These were later included at the start of her small book, ''Conversations''. On 5 May 1911 Mirra married Paul Antoine Richard (17 June 1874 - June 1967). Richard had travelled to India, seeking election to the French Senate from Pondicherry,〔Karmayogi no date, Van Vrekhem 2001.〕 and while there had met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry in mid-April 1910. Richard informed Alfassa of Sri Aurobindo and Sri Aurobindo remained in "material and spiritual correspondence" with the Richards for the next four years.〔Das 1978, p.121.〕 In 1912 she wrote her first ''Prayers and Meditations'', which were published as part of the ''Collected Works'' (Mother's Birth Centenary Edition vol. 1). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mirra Alfassa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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