He whom we saw yesterday is on earth

In search of an Indian wellspring Deccan Herald - India - Sunday - March 5, 2006 by Bhuvana Sankaranarayanan

The third great western sanyasini was Mirra Richard (note the small spelling difference). On 29 March 1914, she made the following note after a meeting with Sri Aurobindo, who was influenced by the Irish freedom struggle and Irish poets who shaped his philosophy, which included Integral Yoga and Life Divine: "It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth. His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed to light, when Thy reign shall indeed be established on earth." Richards stayed on in Pondicherry, working on compiling and editing the works of Aurobindo for many years. Renowned literary critic K R Srinivasa Iyengar records the return of Madame Richard to Pondicherry in April 1920. After Sri Aurobindo experienced ‘the descent of Krishna in the physical’ she took full charge of the ashram and came to be seen as ‘the Mother’.

One does not know what noble motive, what spiritual hot-headed idea drove these intellectual, articulate Western women to become spokeswomen for Indian nationalism and spiritualism. What is the spring of secret strength and energy that made them adapt to an alien cause? What made them spokeswomen and arbiters for, what was then, the future nation of India? As the titles of Gandhiji's autobiographies go, perhaps they were experimenting or wrestling with the truisms of their lives or perhaps, as the new title of the book edited by Mira for the Mahatma runs: God is Truth.