Finding Auroville

In previous posts we have gone through the reasons why the idea of administrative autonomy is such a key topic of debate in Auroville. Administrative autonomy is indeed the central issue in the pitched battle that is ongoing in Auroville today. The small group of Aurovilians who have been running Auroville’s self-administration for the past few decades are in the process of losing the power, control and authority that they have enjoyed within the small bubble of Auroville, and they are not going down without a vicious fight. The allure of power, authority and control is well known and has been well documented throughout human history. People crave the immense validation, respect, awe and ego-boost that power brings with it. But in this post I want to take a look at the issue from a different angle, that of Integral Yoga. The popular maxim “What would Jesus do?” can be altered in Auroville to become “What would a sadhak do?” or “How would a sadhak react?” So how should/would a sadhak approach administrative authority, power and control?

To answer this question, we first need elaboration on the concept of the dissolution of the ego. This term has often been used in the posts of this blog, and it is one of the central tenets of Yoga and Integral Yoga. The dissolution of the ego can also be described as the movement away from identifying with our material self, and towards identifying with the self that is the Divine in us.

The idea of the Self is central in Yoga and Integral Yoga, along with the framing of Nature. Sri Aurobindo has elaborated that there exist three Selves (Purusha), and two Natures (Prakriti). He takes this conception from the Bhagvad Gita, which develops the idea from Sankhya and Vedanta philosophies:

We have always to keep in mind the two great doctrines which stand behind all the Gita’s teachings with regard to the soul and Nature,—the Sankhya truth of the Purusha and Prakriti corrected and completed by the Vedantic truth of the threefold Purusha and the double Prakriti of which the lower form is the Maya of the three gunas and the higher is the divine nature and the true soul-nature.

The Determinism of Nature, Essays on the Gita

Prakriti or Nature is two-fold, the lower form of which is material nature, Maya, in which the three gunas act. Everything we see around us, the Earth, the Universe, are all part of this lower nature. Our entire being, which includes our physical form, our thoughts, our emotions are all part of this lower nature.

Purusha is the conscious Being who supports all the action of Nature.

The Sankhya-Yoga System, Letters on Yoga I

Purusha is the name given to the Self, consciousness, which is ultimately the Divine consciousness. The three Purushas or Selves are the three levels of consciousness, if we can term them as “levels”. The first of these is known as the Kshara, the mutable Self:

The Soul that immediately informs the action, the mutations, the successive becomings of Nature, is the Kshara, that which seems to change with her changes, to move in her motion, the Person who follows
in his idea of his being the changes of his personality brought about by the continuous action of her Karma. Nature here is Kshara, a constant movement and mutation in Time, a constant becoming.

Beyond the Modes of Nature, Essays on the Gita

What we ordinarily think of our “self”, “me”, our material identity, is Kshara. This Self is taking part in the play of the lower nature of Prakriti, and is involved in this lower, material nature. This is the self that is mutable, changeable according to its karma, and it takes on the characteristics that we call the ego. When it is completely involved in material nature, this self identifies completely and only with the ego, and forms its identity from the assemblage of insecurities, fears, attachments, desires and passions of its vital energies, and identifies with its physical form and its mental faculties. During this process the identity of “me” is completely understood and experienced as the material self. This Kshara self gets so involved in nature that it starts to believe that it is the human body, thoughts and emotions, when actually those are a part of nature and are only the temporary abode of the Kshara. The material ego becomes conflated with the self, it becomes who we are and who we identify as. We identify ourselves with all our actions in the material world, our material achievements and disappointments, and all the emotions that come with these actions.

This mutable self is also the one which, when it aspires to move away from the imprisonment of the ego and towards the freedom of the Divine, begins the process of the dissolution of the ego. This self eventually becomes the psychic being, which identifies with the Divine. The psychic being is the mutable self when it has rid itself of the ego, but still continues to function in material nature, without any attachment to it.

Each individual material being has this individual mutable self in them. This mutable self is also an aspect of the Divine consciousness, but it is that aspect which has involved itself in material nature and has thus become a part it, and in doing so has lost touch with its Divinity. The mutable self, once it senses that there is something wrong with its identification with its ego in nature, begins the search for its way back to its Divine origins, back to being the psychic self.

Beyond material nature is the second Self, which is known as Akshara. This is the immutable, unchangeable self. This is the immutable aspect of the Divine consciousness that is present in each individual being, and is simultaneously also the one unified universal being. When the mutable self (Kshara) aspires to move towards the Divine, it moves towards this immutable self (Akshara).

For, beyond the soul manifest in Nature and bound up with its action, is another status of the Purusha, which is entirely a status and not at all an action; that is the silent, the immutable, the all-pervading, self-existent, motionless Self, sarvagatam acalam, immutable Being and not Becoming, the Akshara. In the Kshara the Soul is involved in the action of Nature, therefore it is concentrated, loses itself, as it were, in the moments of Time, in the waves of the Becoming, not really, but only in appearance and by following the current; in the Akshara Nature falls to silence and rest in the Soul, therefore it becomes aware of its immutable Being.

Ibid.

The third Self is Brahman or Purushottama, the infinite, eternal, ineffable, transcendent Divine, of which both the Kshara and Akshara are aspects.

The Uttama is the Lord, the supreme Brahman, the supreme Self, who possesses both the immutable unity and the mobile multiplicity. It is by a
large mobility and action of His nature, His energy, His will and power, that He manifests Himself in the world and by a greater stillness and immobility of His being that He is aloof from it; yet is He as Purushottama above both the aloofness from Nature and the attachment to Nature.

Sankhya and Yoga, Essays on the Gita

Having gone through the descriptions of these three Selves, we now get back to the question at hand: how would a sadhak of Integral Yoga approach the allure of power, authority and control?

The sadhak is the Kshara, the mutable self who has realized that they need to move away from their ego and towards the Akshara. They do this by engaging in the three foundational yoga practices of Integral Yoga: Bhakti Yoga (selfless devotion), Jnana Yoga (selfless knowledge) and Karma Yoga (selfless action). Jnana Yoga includes reaching a completely objective understanding of the self and of humanity, and an understanding of the base motivations for people’s actions. This helps us to understand that it is our ego that is the source of all our unhappiness and sorrow, and that the path to happiness, both for the individual as well as humanity collectively, lies in the dissolution of the ego. This helps move our identification as Kshara from the ego-self to the psychic self, and from there to Akshara, the immutable Divine consciousness that resides in each of us, and is beyond Nature.

When we launch ourselves on the journey of identifying with the psychic self or the Akshara, we begin to develop a deeper and deeper understanding of human nature and its material attachments, and an understanding that it is these attachments that cause human sorrow and unhappiness. These attachments are the source of all the negativity that exists in the world. We begin to observe the world from a high vantage-point, and are unaffected by its dealings and activities, and unaffected by any attachments to it. This includes rising above the hierarchies that all human societies create. We realize and understand that the clamour to rise in these hierarchies is the clamour of the ego trying in vain to get rid of its unhappiness by gaining control over other people. We realize that this desire to control others is a sign that we are not in control of our own lives. We realize that the desire for respect and validation from others is a sign that we do not yet respect ourselves and we do not yet feel validated. A sadhak has a deep sense of control over their own lives, a deep sense of self-respect, and a deep sense of validation from the universe. They do not need any of these from human interactions. Their only aspiration from human interaction is to radiate positivity to others, whenever others allow that to take place.

A sadhak who is in the process of leaving their ego behind will realize that any hierarchy, any source of power, authority and control, from the smallest local administrative setup to the largest national government, is ultimately only an emotionally immature structure that has been created because humanity has not yet reached the point of emotional and psychological maturity that it can self-govern. This is true no matter how grand a material edifice has been created around the hierarchy. Any such hierarchy is a representation of humanity trying to act maturely, trying to be orderly and disciplined, and convincing itself that it is doing so, when in actuality all that it is doing is showing how far it has to go to be truly emotionally mature, truly objectively, spiritually responsible and fair. The vantage-point outside of human nature allows us to see clearly just how many biases, attachments, preferences, fears, insecurities and desires are actually entwined in all these human hierarchies.

The sadhak therefore has no interest in any of these hierarchies, in any of these administrative structures and the power and authority that come with them, because to desire any of the material enticements they offer is a straight path back to the entanglements of the ego and a regression on the path to the Divine. The sadhak knows that the path to true human harmony, equality and unity does not go through the process of finding the right administrative structure or finding the right governance solution. It lies instead in the dissolution of the ego and the transformation of consciousness (from the Kshara to the Akshara), and this transformation automatically leads to the shunning of any attachment to hierarchy and power. Power and authority will always be a hindrance to harmony and unity until humanity can wield it without any attachment, and humanity hasn’t reached that point yet.

Therefore even when, as part of the material world, a sadhak is part of a hierarchical structure, as is usually the case, there is no sense of awe or fear towards those higher than them in the hierarchy, nor any disdain or sense of power and authority over those who are lower than them in the system. There is only a sense of equality with everyone, since equality is the truth of the matter, even when others around them are playing power games and acquiescing to the system.

When a sadhak is entrusted with administrative authority, they engage with it without attachment to the power and control that come with it, and are only interested in utilizing it for the purpose of finding the best solution possible for the largest section of the collective.

Therefore any craving for power, control and authority is automatically a sign that there is a long way to go in people’s sadhana, that people are still under the grip of their ego and desires, and that the levels of emotional and psychological maturity have not been reached where people can engage with administrative authority without attachment and coveting.

In Auroville, the focus of the Aurovilians should be in taking the purpose of Auroville forward. Who is in charge and is making the rules is almost a minor issue, as long as the rules stay true to Auroville’s purpose, and there is room for spiritual autonomy and growth.

This post has described how a sadhak would approach power, authority and control, but the general framework of it is applicable to almost any aspect of human society. The process of disentangling our self from one’s ego and moving towards the psychic being or Akshara allows us to get a high vantage point from which to observe human life, society and motivations, and allows us to clearly and objectively see how our egos continually thwart our aspiration for true happiness. The ego does this by convincing us that our happiness lies within the ego itself, and that any attempt to move away from the ego would result in unhappiness, when in actuality the opposite is true. When we finally become free from this deception and move to that high objective vantage-point, we see the reality of the ego’s control over humanity and all its conventions, systems and structures, and have no interest in taking part in them as they exist today. The aim then of the sadhak of Integral Yoga becomes to transform human conventions, systems and structures so that they are not any more in the grip of the human ego, but instead are illuminated by the immutable and uninvolved light, love and compassion of the psychic and the Divine consciousness.