This is the only extant photograph of Max Theon, occultist extrordinaire and one time teacher of Mira Alphasa, later Sweet mother, Sri Aurobindo's yogic partner. It seems too that Sri Aurobindo derived a certain amount of his cosmology from Theon's teachings to Mother. Theon was, according to Mother's conversations with Satprem, as recorded in 'Mother - the Divine Materialism', a being of extraordinary powers, including powers of healing and control of the elements. He had a unique explanation of the creation, and of what has 'gone wrong'. He is a character shrouded in mystery. It seems he was of Polish origin, and had travelled in Asia as well as Russia. Mother worked with him for a period in the early years of the 20th c. when Theon was living in Algeria. Theon and his Dog. Mira Alphasa 1906. (Mother was a schooled painter, who knew personally some of the impressionists in Paris). Madame Theon was also a most extraordinary being, again possesed of great powers, in her case of trance. Mother told Satprem that Mme.Theon could project twelve subtle bodies. By this she meant that Mme. Theon could project her consciousness into a subtle body, and from that into a body still more subtle and so on twelve times. Mother said that she learned an imense amount from both Mme.Theon and Theon himself, although she also said that Theon nearly killed her once when she was deep in trance and refused to reveal to him what she was seeing. Theon became angry, and severed the connection between Mother's subtle body and her physical form. She said nonetheless that none but Theon could have brought her back from such a pass. As I say, little is known of Theon. He mysteriously disappeared sometime around 1908 -1910, and Mme. Theon returned to her native Isle of Wight, where she died by falling from the cliffs known as the Needles. Mother said that Theon represented a definite higher type of humanity, what humanity could perhaps become along one possible line of evolution. However, she regarded Theon as an egoistic being, in Sri Aurobindo's characterization, a 'titan'. Mother believed that mankind's evolution must proceed along different lines. Still, he is one of the few who come in for any praise from Sri Aurobindo. And it seems some of his ideas were definitely taken on board by him, and used in 'Savitri'. (I have some comments of the Mother on the first part of the poem which show this to be the case. If anyone is interested, I will post them here). Looking at Theon's picture - what a presence! This is a face of a quite extraordinary man. The eyes say everything. Hope this may be of passing interest anyway. You can read more of Theon in 'Mother- the Divine Materialism' by Satprem. Pub. Society for Evolutionary Research, Paris.
Hare Krishna ! "Looking at Theon's picture - what a presence! This is a face of a quite extraordinary man. The eyes say everything." ........ BBB Yes, BBB, it is a wonderful photograph of Max Theon and his eyes say everything. Wonderful post, thank you ! Love, Kumar.
Kumar Dear - I'm happy that you found it interesting As usual, you see straight to the heart of the matter............... I have to say that Theon is a being I find quite fascinating. Just by 'co-incidence' too, I noticed that in UK time, I posted this (without knowing it of course) at 11.23 - both of which are significant numbers according to many esoteric traditions.... I'll perhaps expand this later and give Theon's account of the creation, which is in my opinion, extremely interesting, and derives from very ancient sources.
I think this is quite interesting. I do hope that you post the creation story...I always find them interesting...esp. compared to scientific evolution and theories of the origin of earth.
Hare Krishna ! Dear BBB, Please post more to expand on Max Theon, undoubtedly, it is going to be more inspiring for all of us. I would rather prefer to know about His spiritual- life-evolution to knowing the mystery of creation. I am eagerly waiting. Love, Kumar.
I'm afraid that as I said before, very little is known about Theon's life, or how he came to have his powers. I've tried to find out more, after reading Mother's account of him in Satprem's book, but I have been unable to find any further information. It seems that Theon deliberately obscured any solid facts about himself. Mother said " He never said who he really was nor where he was born, nor his age , nor anything"It is likely he was Polish, or possibly Russian. He may have been of Jewish extraction. Mother was with him at Tlemcen in Algeria. Theon would often perform healing on local Arabs (simply by looking at them) who called him "Aia Aziz", or "the beloved". Theon was a keen gardener, and Mother reports that despite the aridity of the Tlemcem region, each night a gentle rain would fall on Theon's garden. He was also a sculptor, carpenter and iron smith. Mother also said that Theon's features were identical with those of one of the Doges of Venice in a portrait by Titian. Regarding her time (2 years) spent with Theon, Mother recounted the following tale: "They had terrible storms there. One day, as a storm was raging, he went up on his terrace above the living room. "A strange time to be going out!" I said to him. He started laughing. "Come, don't be afraid," he said. So I followed him. And I clearly saw a bolt of lightning heading straight towards us and turn aside in mid course - you'll say it's impssible, but I saw it turn aside. It went and struck a tree some distance away (not one of Theon's trees of course). I asked Theon "Did you do that?" He nodded. He was terrible, you know. He had a terrible power - yet quite a gentleman outwardly!" It seems that prior to going to Algeria, Theon spend some years in Egypt. He was familiar with sanskrit, and claimed that he held a tradition older than either the Vedas or the Kabbala. "To cultivate men as one cultivates plants!. Indeed, if one knew it, wanted it, dared it!" Theon. Satprem mentions a book by Theon 'The Tradition' - but if it exists in print anywhere, I've not been able to track it down, despite many searches.
Here is Mother's version of Theon's creation story as told to Satprem. "The way Theon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didn't call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating, she made four emmanations....in India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit- Ananda (Sat is existence, expressed by life;Chit is consciousness, expressed by power;Ananda is bliss, synonomous with love). But according to Theon there were four...Well, these emmanations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these emmanations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme will and expressing only...instead of carrying out only the supreme will, they seem to have aquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the link - each acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of inconscience, the Asura of falsehood, the Asura of suffering and the Asura of death. Once this had occured, the Divine Consciousness turned towards the supreme and said (Mother laughs):"Well, here's what's happened. What is to be done? Then from the Divine came an emmanation of Love (in the first emmanation it wasn't Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, Delight of being which became suffering), and from the supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emmanation, Consciousness - Consciousness and Light had become inconscience and darkness. Love descended straight from the supreme into this inconscience; the supreme, that is, created a new emmanation, which didn't pass through the intermediate world (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counter balance the fall - it's the old story of the 'fall', this fall into the inconscient. But it wasn't enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. That's the story of the first descent...
And here is Mother's comment on the opening part of canto one of 'Savitri', Sri Aurobindo's epic poem. The text of 'Savitri' is italicized. It was the hour before the Gods awake. There is an ancient tradition which describes the creation as done by some first emanations of the Supreme Mother, who were four emanations. In the sense and the feeling of their supreme power, they cut connection with their Origin and became independent. And then, these emanations, being separated from their Origin, entered into darkness. The first one was Consciousness, Consciousness in Light, and by cutting Himself from His Origin, He went down and down towards Unconsciousness. The second was Bliss and turned into Suffering. The third was Truth and turned into Falsehood. The fourth was Life and turned into Death. This happened after they came down into the vital level. When this was seen, it was decided that some second emanations would be made to repair the mistake of the first; and the second emanations were the Gods. This first line refers to the condition of the world before the Gods were born. Sri Aurobindo says, “It was the hour before the Gods awake.” Across the path of the divine Event The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone In her unlit temple of eternity, Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’ marge. Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable, In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse The abysm of the unbodied Infinite; A fathomless zero occupied the world. As the result of this separation between the first emanations and their Origin, the creation by these first emanations had become obscure, inconscient. And that is what Sri Aurobindo describes here. He says, “the divine Event”, that is creation, - the creation that will go on and on for eternity. It started with what he called the Night - the Night of a foreboding mind. It is unconscious, immobile, lifeless, blind. All these things - the obscurity and the unconsciousness, the immobility, the lifelessness, the unbodied Infinite, and a fathomless zero - all these words are meant to express the Nothingness of the world. A power of fallen boundless self awake Between the first and the last Nothingness, Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came, Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth And the tardy process of mortality And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought. Even in the darkest Unconsciousness, there was something like the remembrance of the Divine Origin, and it had an urge to wake up to existence. But all the habit of the Inconscient was so strong that it had a natural tendency to go back to Nothingness. It is just what preceded the beginning of a conscious creation in the world. We saw that this emanation of Light and Consciousness had separated from its Origin and had naturally fallen into Inconscience. The result was that the world created was the world of Unconsciousness - a world of Nothingness, of obscure Nothingness. But in spite of everything the Divine Origin was inside this and had an urge to bring up again a world of Consciousness. And this is like the first attempt of waking up in the Nothingness by something that was a faint expression of consciousness - but “Recalling”, as Sri Aurobindo says, “the tenebrous womb from which it came”. This had a tendency of going back to Unconsciousness. It is like the origin of Death. As in a dark beginning of all things, A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown Repeating for ever the unconscious act, Prolonging for ever the unseeing will, Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl. Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space, Its formless stupor without mind or life, A shadow spinning through a soulless Void, Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams, Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs Forgetful of her spirit and her fate. For the sake of evolution and the ascension towards Consciousness, earth was formed. But it was formed naturally in the Unconscious, and so Sri Aurobindo says: Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space, Its formless stupor without mind or life, A shadow spinning through a formless Void, Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams, Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs Forgetful of her spirit and her fate. That is when earth was created in the Unconscious and the Nothingness, in order to concentrate the effort and the working of evolution - that is the description of the beginning. Earth began - almost totally unconscious - as he says: Forgetful of her spirit and her fate. That is the beginning. This is taken from Mother's comments to Huta Hindocha, an Indian artist who did a series of paintings to illustrate the text of 'Savitri'. I have the comments for the rest of canto one on file - I don't think this is available on the web, so if anyone would like to recieve it I can email it as an attachment. PM me if interested.
Thanks Spook. This is one of the 'Savitri' paintings I mentioned in the previous post, by Huta Hindocha. And another of Mother's paintings from her time with Theon. 'Theon's House' Mira Alfassa 1906-07.
Was Savitri originally composed in English? Very nice paintings; the impressionist influence is very apparent. The angel is awesomely beautiful.
Savitri is actually a woman who went back to get her husband from yamaraja... is that what the painting is representing or is it representing the divine mother? Anyway, in either case, its a pretty good painting.
BlackBillBlake, Thank you for posting this, I've never heard of Max Theon before. I did a google search on him and came up with this site that has a good bit of information on him if anyones interested http://www.kheper.net/topics/Theon/Theon.htm According to that site he may have been involved with some hermetic organizations. I found this interesting because as I was reading the description of his healing abilities and his control over the elements it made me think of the teachings in Franz Bardons ' Initiation Into Hermetics '. Perhaps there is some link between the teachings of Franz Bardon and Theon.
Hare Krishna ! "Was Savitri originally composed in English? " ........From Spook Yes, it was originally composed in English by Rishi Aurobindo himself.
Hare Krishna ! "Savitri is actually a woman who went back to get her husband from yamaraja..." ........................From Jedi. That is from the beautiful story of Satyavan and Savitri From the Mahabharata) which is just the base of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. "Savitri, the daughter of the Sun ascended towards the vast Delight " .......Atharva Veda Satyavan and Savitri both are symbolic figures. Satyavan is the soul, the Divine truth of all beings. He landed in the mortal land of flesh and blood as a human being. Savitri is the daughter of the Sun. She is the Divine truth herself and landed as the universal mother to save us all. They are both Divine Consciousness in human forms. Their story and life is to educate us that we also can have the divine consciousness ourselves in this mortal human form. We are immortal as Chaitanya-shakti, what we actually are.
Hare Krishna! Dear Bill, The Savitri painting by Huta Hindocha is indescribably beautiful. Thank you so very much for posting here! Love, Kumar.
"Savitri is a mantra for the transformation of the world" Sweet Mother. Sri Aurobindo worked on 'Savitri' for many years, continually changing it in each new draft. He completed the final version only a few days before his passing in 1950. The poem is many things; the first part tells of the ascent through the higher planes of being of Aswapati, and the second part tells of Savitri and Satyavan. Savitri is a goddess who descends to help humanity to evolve to a higher spiritual level. The entire poem can be found online at http://www.savitribysriaurobindo.com/index.htm English was Sri Aurobindo's first language - a result of his unbringing first in an anglicized Indian family, and later his English education at St. Paul's and Cambridge. He said of the poem: "..this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emmanations of living and conscious forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life."
