The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber are a series of documents written by Thea (Patrizia Norelli Bachelet) from January 2003 through March 2004 in her role as Convenor of the Matrimandir Action Committee. Thea was living in Pondicherry, at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, during the early years while construction of the Mother’s Temple was just beginning. She kept diaries and letters of her numerous meetings with architects and administrators in her attempt to have the Chamber of the Mother’s Temple built according to her exact vision.
Later, when Thea began to write the Chronicles she was living at Aeon Centre of Cosmology, a research centre she had established near Kodaikanal India. There were numerous people throughout the world who saw, along with her, that the Temple in Auroville was not the Mother’s original vision but what she called a ‘shadow temple’. They joined with her to form the Matrimandir Action Committee. In the Foreward Thea wrote: ‘The following material is brought out by the Matrimandir Action Committee (MAC) so that the Mother’s vision of the inner chamber of her temple would be recorded for posterity and would be recognised as the finest example of sacred architecture the world has known, comparable only to the Great Pyramid of Giza. This document will serve future generations in the discovery of the ‘the symbol of the future realisation’ – her own words to describe the Core of the chamber and its place in the Supramental Manifestation.’
Excerpt: Chronicle 9 – The Bridge of Gnosis
“What exactly has been lost of the Sacred Vision in what was constructed in Auroville? The 24-metre diameter does not exist; the 15.20m measure of the Ray does not exist; the 15-step entry from below into the floor of the chamber facing north does not exist; Sri Aurobindo’s symbol in the Shalagrama does not ‘exist’; the translucent Globe does not exist; the stone Pedestal does not exist. Is there anything then of gnostic significance and value in the structure? And even if only one or two items of the Vision have survived – such as the 12 columns – the fundamental feature proper to all great sacred art is absent: its unity. In these matters it is all or nothing. Unfortunately, for disciples and devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, they are left with nothing.
“But the Vision itself lives on; its Knowledge has been revealed and preserved. This is the focus of these Chronicles.”
Excerpt: Genesis of the Mother’s Temple
In the first days of January 1970, the anticipated vision (of the Mother) did materialize. It was so precise that she was able to draw up plans for its construction with specific details of design and, above all, measurement. She immediately called an Ashram engineer to undertake the task, and by 10 January she was able to present the plans for this special chamber to her disciple, and finally to the architects. A series of discussions on the chamber with the architect/designer and her disciple were recorded (and later released and published in 1981).
These recordings reveal that the architect and disciple made no effort to give shape to her vision according to her plans. Rather, for 18 days they argued each point with her until finally her vision was dismantled entirely, though she had made it clear, as the dialogues reveal, that she did not want an architect, rather an engineer, since the work had to be very ‘precise’, something the architects were not capable of, she felt. She also made it clear that there were to be ‘no changes’. These tape recordings are available…
In l971, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet came to the Ashram. Graduallty an entire body of knowledge came to her, a new cosmology. Ultinately, at the heart of this cosmology was the original vision of the Mother’s Chamber…’
Paperback, 8x11, 295 pp., 2019; ISBN 978-1-64324-550-8
$15.99 [India - Rs. 570] Plus shipping fees.