Paul Richard about the Mother
It is to Mira that I owe, among other things, my modest success as a writer. My daily columns in the newspaper were only crumbs as far as she was concerned; she wanted the bread in the oven. So, I began my first book, entitled The Living Ether. It was highly colored by the theosophical and spiritualist ideas which were popular at the time, and it tended to confuse objective and subjective realities. The book had some appeal to groups who knew little of philosophy and still less of science, but for me it was simply a stepping stone to my second book entitled Les Dieux. I wrote this book during a long holiday with Mira in a beautiful place near Fountainbleau. In this book I tried to work out some of the problems I had been struggling with as a Christian minister. The personal God of the Church seemed to me a supreme despot and enemy of the human race — a God not of life but of death. But this Promethean figure had a symmetric counterpart, and this is the Divine Presence within us. The book ends with a discourse by this invisible teacher of men.
After this, other books followed year after year due to the untiring encouragement and practical assistance offered by Mira. Philosophy was taking increasing precedence over the Law in my life, and my thoughts were also turning from Europe to Asia. The first opportunity to go to India came one morning in 1910, during a flood of the river Seine. I was looking at one of the bridges in Paris, covered with water right up to the Zouave carved on the pillar. One of my colleagues at the Court of Appeals was also watching this spectacle, and then casually he asked: “Would you like to take my place as a candidate for the election in Pondicherry? “I’ve been offered a better opportunity elsewhere.” I accepted without a second thought and began preparations for the trip. Meanwhile, Mira took care of moving our belongings from the apartment to another house on the rue Val-de-Grâce, which was to become our home for the next seven years.
Before reaching Bombay, I had a dream about receiving a telegram from Pondicherry telling me that all plans for the election had changed. When I arrived in that city a telegram was waiting for me, and the message was exactly what I had seen in the dream. Thus, the practical justification for my coming to India had vanished, but the real reason was about to become manifest. I continued my journey south to Pondicherry as if nothing had happened to change my plans. As soon as I arrived, I asked several people if they could direct me to a wise man, as that was what I had come to find. All of them laughed at the idea of finding a wise man in Pondicherry, but a few days later, two men visited my lodgings in great secrecy and said: “A wise man has come from the North. He is hiding in an Indian home. We have told him about you and he wishes to meet you.” So they brought me to the hideout of Aurobindo Ghose, and we began a friendship which would last twelve years.
Although Aurobindo did not say much about his personal life, I learned about his history from others. As a boy he had been sent to England to study and he had an outstanding record. His ambition was to become a civil servant in India, but he failed to qualify (of all things!) in horsemanship. Back in India, he was appointed by the Gawkar of Baroda as his personal secretary. Later, he became the head of the college in this highly progressive state. He could have spent his career in this quiet capacity, but his national pride was enflamed by the humiliations of British rule. Aurobindo joined the National Congress Party in his native province of Bengal; after the death of Tillac, its first leader, he assumed a position of leadership. One of his brothers was convicted of bomb throwing and sent to a penal colony in the Andaman Islands, and Aurobindo was also sent to prison on a charge of sedition.
While in jail, Aurobindo experienced a religious awakening. During his trial, he told me, he saw the Lord Krishna in the face of his judge; Krishna was also on the face of his jailer and his fellow prisoners. To vanquish the British, it was clear that supernatural power was needed. So, the English scholar turned to yoga in his Indian jail cell, in preparation for his future role as a spiritual leader. When he had completed his prison term, the British government, unwilling to set him free, prepared to try him on additional charges. At this point Aurobindo made his escape. His first refuge was with friends in Chandernagor, a French settlement near Calcutta. Feeling unsafe there, he proceeded as a fugitive to Pondicherry.
Before leaving India I went to Adyar (near Madras) which had become the Mecca of the theosophists. There I was introduced to Annie Besant and her protégé Krishnamurti37, whom I still remember as a twelve year old boy playing tennis. The voyage back to Europe was marked by the beautiful display of Haley’s comet rising in full splendor above the ocean, and then life in Paris began again with Mira in our new home. …
After careful analysis, it seemed to us that the concept of God could be reduced to a set of seven basic postulates… This book was eventually translated by Aurobindo Ghose into English and published in serial form in his magazine in India. I was still corresponding with him and discussing his plight in my circle of friends, and one day my brother-in-law, who was in charge of a section of the colonial office, told me that he had received a letter from the British government requesting execution of an order of extradition against Aurobindo who was still a fugitive in Pondicherry. My brother-in-law of course knew about my close association with Aurobindo, and when I asked him what he had done with the order of extradition requested by the Foreign Minister, he winked at me and said, “I left it lying in my drawer.” Later I heard that the British authorities in India were baffled by the silence of the French in response to their request.
The link with the East was growing daily for Mira and me, through many new contacts. One of our constant visitors was Alexandra David Neel, who was studying the Tibetan language at the Musée Guimet in preparation for her eventful trips to Lhassa. …
My life with Mira during this period was one of harmony on every level of work, thoughts and feelings. She was, at this time, undergoing an intense mystic and spiritual development. Every morning, before sunrise, was devoted to meditation. During the day she took care of household affairs, and in the evenings before retiring, she wrote in her diary. The pages in her diary, which she did not keep secret from me, read like an uninterrupted oblation to her God. Her concept of God at that time combined her sense of an inner Presence with an external deity derived from our Judeo-Christian tradition. However, she also used her powers of vision and imagination to wander off into a world of doubtful forms and fictitious beings. As she had been taught by her former “Master,” she enlisted the support of friendly spirits and fought with fire against “the hostile one.” I did my best to discourage this misuse of her giftsand tried to impress upon her a sense of goodwill towards every living being, visible or invisible, recognizing no enemy in this or any other world. One result of this dialogue between us was that we both became vegetarians after hearing a lecture by a physician who was the director of a sanatorium in southern France. His reasons were purely medical and based on anatomical comparisons between man and other primates, but they reinforced the feelings we already had which were based on aesthetic and philosophical considerations. …
My second trip to India took place in 1914, this time with Mira at my side. Every morning, on the deck of the ship, she unfolded her little writing table and took down my thoughts just as they came. On this voyage I had a strange and terrible dream. In this dream I was with a small group of intimate friends, and suddenly the one who was closest to me changed into a frightful and destructive monster. It must have been a premonition, and I remembered it several years later when Aurobindo told me: “There is a wolf in me. But I do not want to get rid of him. He could be useful some day.”
Stopping at Colombo, Ceylon, we visited a Buddhist monk named Angarika Dharmapala whom we had heard about from Alexandra David Neel. He was one of the founders of the Mahabodhi Society, the goal of which was to purify Buddhism of all its historical accretions and distortions, and to return the faith to the original teachings of the Buddha. Many years later I would meet him again, in Calcutta.
From Colombo we crossed to the mainland and made our way directly to Pondicherry. I have a more vivid impression of it from this second visit: stately stone houses in the colonial style with interior courtyards and gardens, a town square in front of the palace, and broad avenues following the seashore. In fact, the whole town reminded me of a pretty shell on the beach from which all life had been sucked out by the neighboring city of Madras. In Pondicherry the only important export was peanuts, mountains of which could be seen on the streets, swarming with rats. Many impoverished residents of European or mixed stock prided themselves on being pensioners. They lived on the dole but they would not dream of carrying their own parcels in public and they rode grandly in bicycle rickshaws powered by emaciated coolies.
We found Aurobindo now living in a spacious house, but in seclusion, with several young men serving as his link with the outside world. An agent of the British secret police was stationed permanently at his door, and his job was to interview and take down the names of all new visitors. (The same type of police spy began settling in at my door, but I managed to get rid of them in one way or another, in one instance ruining a good umbrella.)
Our house was in sight of Aurobindo’s, and when we went out on the terrace in the mornings we could see him pacing back and forth on his veranda in deep concentration. In the afternoons we would join him and sometimes remain until late at night if he had no other visitors. He was still the same quiet and thoughtful man I remembered from our first meeting four years earlier, except that he could now speak French. After a few days of this I began to tire of looking at the scenery; feeling that something should be done to make our stay productive, I said to him: “Shall we start a magazine?” Without hesitating, and with a characteristic movement of the head, he agreed.
For the title of the magazine we chose the word “Arya,” the meaning of which really refers to the noblest characteristics of all races. The word derives from the Sanscrit root “ar,” which designates growth, progress, creation. In Latin the equivalent is aratrum, and in Greek, arete (virtus) and aristos (the noblest in man).
After securing the permit and the copyright for the magazine, I looked around for a printer. I found a print shop in Pondicherry, but no printers, except for two or three apprentices whom I had to train for the unaccustomed work of printing a magazine. Since we had decided to do it in both English and French editions, Aurobindo and I had the double task of writing and also translating one another’s work. Meanwhile I also continued dictating to Mira my manuscript entitled Le Pourquoi des Mondes.
Aurobindo’s contributions to the magazine included essays on “The Life Divine,” “The Secret of the Vedas,” “The Psychology of Social Development,” “Human Unity,” and others. He was genuinely surprised at the way these essays were taking form, both in terms of the new philosophic trend of his thought and also the “automatic” manner in which he had begun to write. “I have never written like that before,” he confided to me.
My contributions included “The Eternal Wisdom,” “The Origin” (which he translated under the title “The Wherefore of the Worlds”), and some of the two thousand passages from sacred texts which I had used in the earlier book co-authored with Charles de Fontenay.
Every Sunday, Aurobindo and his young attendants visited us in our home, sharing our vegetarian meal although they were not exclusively vegetarian themselves. After dinner we would sit until late on the terrace under the beautiful southern constellation. One evening in late July the Tamil poet Bharati was with us. Our conversation had led us to the conclusion that the world had become so hardened and its institutions so entrenched that no spiritual renaissance was possible. It was as if the world of the present had become a prison wall through which no future could pass. What could possibly break through? There was a long silence; then suddenly, Aurobindo and I were both shaken by the same inspiration, and we exclaimed almost in a single voice: “War is needed.” And, a few days later, World War I broke out, leading ultimately into a world revolution which has not yet reached its term. As a pacifist since childhood I condemned that war, but at the same time something in me had heralded it, and I felt that I could not remain away from it in the far off shelter of India. In any case, the matter was settled by a special order from the Minister of War. Since men of my age could not be mobilized in the colonies, I was asked to return to France.
So, after a few issues, the French edition of the Arya had to be suspended. I transferred to Aurobindo the formal ownership of the magazine, although Mira and I continued to be listed as co-editors as long as the magazine survived. The English edition was very successful, and what had been for us a financial burden became an asset to Aurobindo during the next seven years. Aurobindo’s vision was an extension of that of the ancient sages; it was probably the best summation of the old wisdom. The future, however, cannot long thrive on the past. No philosophy can illuminate the modern world unless it incorporates modern science as well. …
Back in Paris, we could see more of the tragic consequences of the war than in my camp in Lunel. Airplanes could now bomb cities, and “Big Bertha” was shelling the city streets. One of the large holes was near the studio of our friend Georges Picard with whom we still spent our evenings, as we had before the war. During the days I tried to make myself useful by helping one of our old friends, the Mayor of the 16th arrondissement, in social welfare activities.
In terms of my personal life, there is something that I should perhaps keep secret but which at the same time ought to be said, because it reveals as much about Mira’s character as it does about my own, and also about my life with her. I have already said that my union with Mira had liberated me from all dogmatism and rigid bourgeois orthodoxy. It was as if I had passed from the troubled world of social and moral conventions to a more simple and natural world, purified of falsity and conflict between flesh and spirit. Through the light and truth of her soul, I had come to trust the wisdom of Mother Life even when it is unacceptable by common standards.
Although Mira had no inhibitions or moral objections about the full exchange of love and creative forces between human beings, she believed that the animal mode of reproduction was only a transitional one and that until new ways of creating life became biologically possible her own motherhood would have to remain spiritual. My nature, however, was deeply patriarchal; I believed that one should never refuse to share with another human being the joy of creation and the duty of the living to the unborn, and I never concealed my thoughts on the matter. So, with her full consent and even encouragement, I had a new child at that time, a daughter who was named Genevieve, and that child was not hers. …
We were not to remain in Paris much longer. One evening when I returned home I told Mira the news that the Suez Canal had been closed as a result of the German submarine warfare. Without any hesitation she replied: “That is the sign that we must go to Japan.” But then her unexpected conclusion became so obvious that I immediately began preparations for the long voyage. After a stop in England, we would sail down the west coast of Africa and finally to Singapore before reaching Japan. Of course I had to apply for a passport, however much I felt violated by this indignity. In addition to the passports, we also acquired a travelling companion. Her name was Dorothy, and she was a follower of Abdul Baha. We agreed to take her along with us, so early in 1916 we left Paris on the Sussex which only a week later was sunk by a German submarine.
Photos the Mother in Japan
The Winds of Wonder 
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