Alexandra David-Neel

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(Alexandra David-Neel about Mother:) “We spent marvellous evenings together with friends [in Paris], believing in a grand future... I remember her elegance, her accomplishments, her intellect endowed with mystical tendencies.
         In spite of her great love and sweetness, in spite even of her inherent ease in making herself forgotten after achieving some noble deed, she couldn't manage to hide very well the tremendous force she bore within herself.”[1]


“Recently someone gave me a book called “With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet” by Madame Alexandra David-Neel. I am sending you a photograph of her. I was impressed by the hardships she endured and by her study of Tibetan mystics. But I don’t know whether what she writes is authentic.

(Sri Aurobindo:) This is a photograph of Madame David-Neel taken long ago when she was much younger. Her story about her travels is perfectly authentic. She came here once to Pondicherry and saw me on her way to the North — that was before the Mother came here. Mother knew her very well in Paris. Even before she went to Tibet she was a Buddhist and deeply versed in Buddhism. As to the authenticity of all in this book (magic, mysticism) Mother cannot say as she has not read it. But she is not a woman with any imagination or invention and has a rather hard positive mind, — if there are any ‘travellers’ tales’ she is more likely to have heard them than invented them.”[2]




  1. Glimpses of the Mother's Life, p.50
  2. Letters on Himself and the Ashram, p.183


See also