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Mary Helen read
about Mother and Sri Aurobindo when she was just out of her teens and as a young
woman at the age of 22, she sent her photo to Mother and received Her blessings
to come and live in the Ashram. She traveled with a girl friend to India, taking
with her a few belongings and leaving everything else to meet Mother in August
of 1966. She returned to the Ashram in 1968 for the inauguration of Auroville
and worked for some months in the Auroville Information and Design office
opposite the Ashram main complex. After returning to the U.S. for a few years
she once again came to the Ashram in 1971 later moving to Auroville with
Mother’s blessings where she worked in the Nursery of the Matrimandir Gardens
for 10 years, collecting and studying numerous plant species that she helped
collect and propagate. She also began one of Auroville’s first journals,
Progress, chronicling the development of the pioneer communities in those
early years.
Mary Helen born
in Columbus, Georgia, U.S.A. Her father was a colonel in the U.S. Army and she
lived in a number of countries during her childhood, including Libya and Japan,
her most beloved memories were of Japan and its people and their aspiration for
beauty. Her favourite flower was the iris which Mother named
Aristocracy of Beauty. Together with Narad she traveled to many countries
and was especially drawn to Russia where she met a group of Mother and Sri
Aurobindo's disciples in a never-to-be-forgotten evening.
Hers was a spiritual life, filled
with love for all of God’s creation. Her gentleness and genuine kindness and
compassion extended to everyone regardless of race, creed or religious belief
and she always thought of others before herself. She read extensively,
especially sacred writings, in later years primarily those of Mother and Sri
Aurobindo.
Her nature was
more inward and reading Mother’s Prayers and Meditations was more
important to her than long conversations and intellectual meetings. She
told Narad of some of her dreams but one in particular was a dream of a wooden
structure like a cabinet that contained many, many drawers. Since it was a
very vivid dream-experience she asked Arabinda Basu its meaning. He told
her that each of the drawers contained gifts that Mother was giving her. In a
dream of something of the overmental world, Madhav Pandit wrote her:
'Dear Friend,
Certainly your experience is an act of Grace. It is hundred percent true. A
revelation has been made to you. Some part of your consciousness is
already in that state - behind the veil. By letting the experience settle
down you will allow it to spread itself. One day it will be possible for
you to live in that consciousness, that state of being. Life will justify
itself.'
She knew the
Ashram to be her spiritual home and considered the Patels, Lilou, Maniben,
Pushpa and Jayantibhai her closest family but cherished her friendships with
many Ashramites and Aurovilians. Her calm and gentle demeanour, her sweet and
warm disposition, her generosity and good will towards all masked a warrior soul
on the path of the Integral Yoga.
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Photographer,
writer, horticulturist, artist, and poet (though she wrote less than a dozen
poems) she did many of the line drawings for the first major revision of
Flowers and Their Messages, the compilation of the spiritual significances
of flowers given by The Mother. She also created exceptionally beautiful
and powerful collages of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. She is lovingly remembered by
plantsmen for her research on tropical plants, gained primarily from her years
of work in the first stages of the Matrimandir Gardens. Together with her
husband, Narad, she authored The Handbook on Plumeria Culture as well as
The Handbook on Oleanders.
In tribute she has been honoured by having
three flowers named for her, Bougainvillea ‘Mary Helen’ by John Lucas, President
of the Bougainvillea Society of America and Phlox ‘Mary Helen’ by Richard Saul
of Saul Nurseries, Atlanta, Georgia and a now famous plumeria, Mary Helen
Eggenberger by Jim Little of Hawaii. In 2001 she was also extended
the honour of being made a lifetime member of the Southern California Plumeria
Society. After her passing many disciples of Mother and Sri Aurobindo wrote
tributes in her honour.
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Mary Helen was
diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer in 1998 and underwent extensive
exploratory surgery. The cancer was so widespread, however, that no removal was
possible surgically. She was given three weeks to live. Determined, as the
Mother’s child, to conquer this disease on the life plane or proceed as far as
possible towards its elimination with her Guru’s ever-present help, she
concentrated her work on the body’s cells, calling in the Light while exploring
both traditional therapies and a host of alternative protocols. She told Narad
that to smile (and have faith in the Mother) was the best help he could give her
and not to be emotional. In fact her exact words were: ‘One day at a
time, smile!’ She slept each night with blessings packets Mother gave her
and a packet of sand from the inner chamber of the Samadhi under her pillow.
She was able to withstand an extraordinary amount of pain but when it became
too severe she simply asked for her 'Blessing Packets'.When the pain was
She devoted her last few years to
an immersion in Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem, Savitri, working with Narad
intensively on a dictionary of words and terms in Savitri, entitled Lexicon
of an Infinite Mind, and reading the poem aloud each night before sleep.
Her departure was chosen by here
soul as she left on February 7th, the day
before her birthday, incidentally, the same day and month of Nolini’s departure.
She left in her luminous wake a legacy of love and dedication, a compassionate
warmth, a sweet and generous nature filled with aspiration for beauty and order,
cleanliness, respect for material things, laughter alternating with deep
silences, refined taste, abhorrence of coarseness or crudeness in language or
actions.
During her last
weeks she listened constantly to The Mother by Sri Aurobindo in addition
to reading Savitri.
In Her copy of
Savitri was a note from Mother: ‘I
am with you, fear not.’
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