My experience of Satprem

Since the day…

On the 2 nd of December 1969 I reached Pondicherry, alone, and the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo. There Fabienne had given me rendezvous. When she had learnt that I planned to soon return to India in a second attempt at discovering “the source of the work”, she had explained that she often went there herself, in the South, where she had family; and so, we could meet there early December. She had simply given me the address of the Ashram and, perhaps, the name of her aunt Françoise (who was later renamed Pourna Prema). It was thus to Françoise’s home that I was directed; she was then occupying the first floor of a vast mansion, very near to the central building of the Ashram and just next to a large temple dedicated to the god Ganesha: a few luminous rooms giving on to a shaded terrace, where I was invited by her man-servant to sit and wait, and allowed to smoke one of my very last Gitanes. Françoise arrived soon after and welcomed me with much elegance and class. She was one of the intermediaries with Mother, particularly for the French newcomers and, in this function, played a considerable role for a number of us; she was also quite close to Satprem. Françoise was one of Mother’s two grand-daughters: Mother’s son, André Morisset, had married Wanda and they had given birth to two girls, Janine and Françoise; Janine gave birth to Fabienne and Françoise to Kalya. But it was Françoise who inherited the Egyptian features: one had to see her walking towards Mother’s room, clad in a long white sheath, her black hair held up in a perfect high chignon, with her raised cheekbones, her green almond eyes and her proud poise, holding in front of her a tray on which were laid documents, flowers and the concentrated dishes she had herself prepared for Mother… (If I linger with this descriptive, it is because for some of us Ancient Egypt evoked a profound resonance; Satprem, whom many of us recognized as, in a way, our

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