Search for Light

Make me worthy of knowing Thee... - Mother

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and Sri Krishna

The conversation with Sri Aurobindo

- Pavitra

These conversations were held from December 18, 1925 to November 20, 1926. Pavitra, a French engineer of the Polytechnic School, arrived at Pondicherry on the 17th of December, 1925, having come from a Mongolian lamasery where his spiritual search had driven him, after his having spent four years in japan. He never left Pondicherry again, where he lived for forty-four years in the service of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. He left his body on May 16, 1969. These brief conversations were noted from memory, most of the time in French, except towards the end. Hence, they do not represent the exact words of the Master, but are as faithful a record as possible. Pavitra was then 31 years old.

- Editor's Note (1969)

Author photo

The conversation with Sri Aurobindo

Philip Barbier de St. Hilaire(Pavitra)

About Pavitra

(16.01.1894, Paris – 16.05.1969  Pondicherry)

Philip Barbier de St. Hilaire(Pavitra) ,the first French disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Pavitra (“Clearness”) was a name given by by Sri Aurobindo.

At 1914 was graduated Polytechnic School in Paris. Then he was called up for a war as artillery officer. After the war he worked as a junior engineer in Paris, at the Ministry of transport and communication.

Interested in occultism, in 1920 he departed for Japan to study Zen Buddhism. In 1924 he left Japan and spend time with Tibetan lamas in monasteries in North China and Mongolia.

In December 1925 he came to the Ashram and was accepted as a sadhak. In 1951 The Mother appointed him director of the newly founded Sri Aurobindo International University Centre. He served in this position for 18 years, as well as being general secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, until his death in 1969.