Finding Auroville

This post is the second in a series that had started off under the category and title “Uncovering Auroville” but which I’ve renamed/re-categorized as “Uncovering Aurovillage”. This is a better categorization because what I’m endeavoring to uncover with these posts is what is referred to as Aurovillage by some people, as opposed to Auroville as a whole. So what is Aurovillage and what is the difference between Auroville and Aurovillage? This post will answer these questions.

Auroville is of course the township that was envisioned and initiated by The Mother close to Pondicherry. It is an actual physical place on the map that people come to, but it is also a latent place that is yet to manifest, or is on its way to manifestation even against all the blockages that have been put on its path since its inception. Latent Auroville is based on the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and is project and an experiment in which people try and move towards living the life Divine, and try and move humanity in that direction.

Aurovillage exists within the physical Auroville of today (and also has its tentacles stretching out outside it), and has existed here right from the inception of the township. It is a network of people who have, as some say, “hijacked” the project of Auroville to suit their own personal preferences and comforts. These people want to keep Auroville small, insulated and insular, a parochial tribe that remains under their control and authority, a place that continues to benefit them, their families and friends. As has been mentioned in the first post of this series, to achieve this they have had to create a facade that the general outside public would consider to be agreeable for a place like Auroville. They have created a nice innocent-looking “ecovillage” for the consumption of outsiders. But a much more unseemly and nasty reality exists behind the facade.

Aurovillage has expended a lot of energy over the decades trying to maintain the insulated bubble that Auroville exists in presently. This includes trying their best to only allow people into Auroville who would conform to the contours and diktats of Aurovillage. In fact it can safely be said that this aim of the protection and preservation of Aurovillage has been one of the central concerns and priorities of the Aurovillagers right from the beginning of Auroville. This is why Aurovillage is so good a propaganda. It has been a central activity of theirs right from the start, honed to perfection over the years and decades. It is also the reason why Aurovillage is full of extremely deceptive and manipulative people. More on this in later posts.

Aurovillage is dead-set against the growth of Auroville into the township that its founder had envisioned, because that would mean a loss of control and authority over the small bubble that they are currently ruling over. A larger agglomeration, more people, more complex society, economy and administration is exactly what they are set against. It is what they have run away from in the outside world.

Materially, one of the central aims of the experiment of Auroville is to see how a township that is based on the spiritual philosophy of Integral Yoga can function in all its complexity. Auroville was never meant to stay at the scale of an ecovillage, nor was it meant to be a place where the philosophy of Integral Yoga would take as much of a backseat as it does in Aurovillage. Thankfully, Aurovillage seems to be in its dying throes at the moment, though the Aurovillagers cannot accepted that because what is to come is completely antithetical to their existence here. They have put up court case after court case against the changes, unable to accept that change is the only constant, and that in Auroville of all places the future should be embraced with courage and optimism, instead of petrifiedly clinging on to a barren past. The focus of this series of posts will be on uncovering the reality of this Aurovillage, so that Auroville can move on to a much better future.