India, Jan. 16 -- The Mother is part of a series of biographies called Indian Lives though neither the subject nor the author of this book is Indian. While the subject, Paris born and educated Mirra Alfassa chose India to pursue the call of her spiritual life, American author, Peter Heehs chose to settle in Pondicherry (as it was then called) in the 1970s. The book's foreword establishes that "Indian Lives was never intended to be narrowly xenophobic." And indeed, The Mother is a biography that's global in essence.

Peter Heehs minutely tracks how Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa, a Jew of Turkish-Egyptian origin, born and raised in France, travelled to Japan and then India, staying back here to be with her spiritual mentor turned collaborato...