The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Patrick Beldio’s creative and pioneering study, The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga, examines the various ways that Mirra Alfassa helped to shape, and further develop, the Integral Yoga tradition inaugurated by Sri Aurobindo. Combining scholarly acumen with a disarmingly personal approach, the book breaks new ground in our understanding of the spiritual and philosophical contours of Integral Yoga and provides an urgently needed corrective to the tendency in scholarship to emphasize Aurobindo at the expense of the Mother. -- Swami Medhananda, UCLA and University of Southern California In a work that is both structured by systematic scholarship and suffused with spiritual sensibility, Patrick Beldio explores the teachings and practices of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa. He highlights certain synergies with respect to their visions of the transfiguration of humanity and also delineates certain clarifications and amplifications developed by Mirra. Sketching the distinctiveness of Mirra’s search on yogic and aesthetic pathways, Beldio correlates it to some contemporary quests for truth in contexts of religious diversity. Through Beldio’s sagely guidance, the reader is directed towards landscapes of Integral Yoga animated by the power of the divine feminine. -- Ankur Barua, University of Cambridge The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a welcome and needed addition to the library of Aurobindo studies, as Patrick Beldio gently but insistently restores to Mother Mirra Alfassa her rightful place in the story of the integral yoga. We are shown too a panoramic view of the remarkable community of spiritual masters east and west to which Mirra and Aurobindo truly belong. Indeed, Beldio himself turns out to be not just an observer but a welcome participant — pilgrim, artist — in the spiritual awakening of our times. -- Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Harvard Divinity School This original study offers significant new research and insights into an often-overlooked figure. As the first extensive academic exploration of Mirra Alfassa, The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram rectifies her longstanding marginalisation in the field of Aurobindo Studies. Beldio highlights her critical role in formalising Aurobindo’s innovative ""Integral Yoga"" while also re-establishing her significance as a spiritual leader in her own right. -- Alex Wolfers, University of Cambridge