Finding Auroville

In the previous post we looked at how the conception of the term community in the context of Integral Yoga differs from the general understanding and connotations of community in our present everyday existence. In the current state of humanity it is individual and collective egos that are at the forefront of human interactions in groups and communities. As opposed to this, when individuals in a community move towards self-realization, the interactions in that group will undergo fundamental transformations, and the collective actions and solution-finding processes will become spontaneously selfless. In this situation the group of self-realized individuals will automatically seek solutions that lead to the maximum benefit for the maximum number of people, without individual or collective egos getting in the way. Let’s now take a look at how all this could be applicable in the context of Auroville.

Auroville has been functioning very much in the mould of how communities in the present state of human evolution operate as described by Sri Aurobindo. The simplest and most basic way to describe this is that the activities of Auroville, its collective community interactions, decision-making processes, socio-economic processes and socio-cultural life have all been dominated by the play of individual and collective egos, right from the time the project was established. And Auroville has developed over the past five decades in this context of an ego-driven atmosphere. Instead of allowing this ego-centric life to develop, Aurovilians should have dedicated themselves much more sincerely to the pursuit of the spiritual philosophy of Integral Yoga, to the process of the dissolution of the ego, to the aspiration for self-realization and the transformation of consciousness. This would have led spontaneously to the material transformations that would have been the signs that Auroville was actually making some progress in its intended direction.

What has been described in the preceding paragraph is the simplest version of what has been versus what could have been. Let us now go a little deeper into what has happened in Auroville over the past few decades, without making this post inordinately long.

Part of the domination of the ego in the workings of Auroville as a community has been the fact that the motivations and aims of the interactions in Auroville have been very much confined to the material realm, even as the rhetoric includes spiritual aspirations. As has been mentioned in another part of this website, a facade of progressive and spiritual intentions and objectives has been erected on the surface of Auroville for the consumption of visitors and short-term residents, with a very different atmosphere, much more negative, parochial and tribalistic, existing behind the facade. Auroville is projected to the outside world as a sattwic space, when in reality the rajasic and tamasic tendencies dominate here, as they do anywhere and everywhere in the material world. The reason why Auroville is shown to be sattwic is because in today’s general worldly understanding Auroville is at its best conceptualized as a sattwic space, focusing on things like mindfullness, undefined and open-ended conceptions of spirituality, alternative health, wellness and lifestyle practices, ecology and other such activities that fall under the general umbrella of liberal and progressive thinking with a spiritual twist. In many ways, Auroville has become a space for sattwic and progressive consumption, selling activities and products that appeal to people with assorted liberal and spiritual bents of mind. And mapped onto this in addition is Auroville as a space of consumption as an “international community” for Indian tourists and visitors to spend their disposable income in. All of these aspects, along with the internal politics, power games and the allure of authority and control within the bubble of Auroville, have been part of the ego-driven atmosphere that has emerged in Auroville over the decades. And it is very important to understand that the need to show Auroville as a sattwic space, because that is what is expected of Auroville by the outside world, when the reality of Auroville is much more tamasic and rajasic, has led to the creation of a very duplicitous atmosphere in Auroville.

This is yet another example of how the scale of action in Auroville has been severely (to put it mildly) restricted over the past few decades of its existence from its intended purpose and scale. Instead of aspiring and working towards a spiritualized community as outlined by Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, the term “community” has here come to mean a small, parochial, tribalistic group of people whose only catalyst for cohesion is fear of the outside world, and who direct their energies towards making sure that the parochial bubble that they are living in is kept intact. To do this they have created and work constantly to maintain the hoodwinking liberal facade that they display to the outside world.

While this description may be disappointing to some, it is not surprising for those who have an objective understanding of how things work in the world today. What has been described above is similar to the fate of communities, including so-called “intentional” altruistic and spiritual communities, throughout the history of human civilization. The tamasic and rajasic tendencies will always overpower the sattwic aspirations in any space like Auroville while the focus of its energies and activities remain in the material realm, and spirituality is at best given lip service. And all this is still completely in keeping with what Sri Aurobindo has said about the reality of community interactions in today’s world. The individual and collective ego will always win out until the focus shifts completely and sincerely towards the transformation of consciousness. In Auroville the dominance of the ego has found the need to create a sattwic facade for Auroville so that the ego may continue to dominate activities behind the facade. This will always be the case until humanity, or at least a section of humanity, moves beyond material nature and the material world, and beyond the tamasic, rajasic and sattwic modes of nature.

This aspect of the promotion and selling of Auroville as a sattwic, liberal space with spiritual undertones (or overtones?) is an important aspect of the analysis of Auroville over the course of its history. Auroville as a sattwic, liberal space is much more understandable not just for guests and volunteers coming to Auroville for short durations of time, but also for Aurovilians and potential Aurovilians who have been living here for decades, or who are planning to move here on a long-term bases. This is much more understandable than the philosophy of Integral Yoga, with its audacious aspirations for self-realization, the dissolution of the ego, the transformation of consciousness, and the movement beyond material nature to the state of trigunateet, beyond the three modes of nature, and union with the Divine consciousness. And because of the ease of understanding of a sattwic space as opposed to the audacity and complexity of a trigunateet space, the sattwic option was adopted by the Aurovilians as the objective to aim for and with which to sell Auroville to the outside world. And so the writings and teachings of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were reduced to serving the promotion and propagation of Auroville as a sattwic space. As mentioned above, there has been a lot of duplicity involved in maintaining even this severely reduced aim for Auroville, and the tamasic and rajasic energies involved with that duplicity will always be part and parcel of maintaining any sattwic space.

What the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother tell us is that till the aspiration for a trigunateet space, with its completely selfless and egoless actions, becomes all-encompassing and the only aim of people in a place like Auroville, we will keep making the same mistakes that humanity has made throughout its history. True progress towards a harmonious future for humanity can only be made once the illusions of sattwic-ness are broken and the hard work of moving towards the trigunateet state is undertaken with complete sincerity and honesty. The severe reduction of the purpose and aim of Auroville to a sattwic and liberal space is in itself evidence of the failure of liberal, progressive, sattwic thinking, because the best such a space can do is self-perpetuation for the material benefit of the people who are residing in and occupying it. If it is allowed to continue as it has been functioning over the past few decades, Auroville will only continue to remain a sattwic, liberal space, constantly peddling the same progressive and spiritual jargon, remaining a space for liberal consumption, presenting itself as an ecovillage when it actually operates as a parochial and tribalistic gated community, without making any real difference in the world and to the world. Or it will adapt to some other form of dishonesty to be able to maintain the dominance of the ego at its heart.

The move to create a trigunateet space in Auroville to replace the duplicitous sattwic and liberal space is an extremely tall order. What Sri Aurobindo has described as a community of self-realized gnostic beings is an extremely difficult, extremely audacious aspiration. It seems to be almost impossible to implement in today’s world and even into the future. And yet this is the task that The Mother has set for Auroville. People in Auroville have been diluting The Mother’s aspiration for Auroville since its inception. In effect, they have replaced the purpose of Auroville as described by The Mother with what she has described on a few occasions as the minimum requirement for acceptance into Auroville. Sri Aurobindo’s teachings have been reduced to a vague and undefined promotion of “human unity” as the goal of Auroville, which on the ground has been reduced to an enclave for Westerners to live cheaply in an Indian setting. The immensely difficult but imperatively important work of the transformation of consciousness has been replaced with demands for administrative autonomy for Auroville.

All of this subversion and sabotaging of the purpose of Auroville will continue to happen while Auroville is reduced to being a sattwic, liberal space. It will only begin to make progress when more and more people come to Auroville who understand, support and work towards Auroville becoming a trigunateet space, a space beyond material nature within material nature, no matter how impossible and audacious that aspiration seems to be. Till then, as already mentioned above, we will keep repeating the mistakes that have been made throughout human history in Auroville as well. The reduction of Auroville to a sattwic, liberal space is a sign of the failure to pursue the purpose of Auroville, a failure of Auroville itself. Success will only come when we embrace the definition of a gnostic, self-realized community given by Sri Aurobindo and dedicate ourselves completely to that aim and aspiration. No half-hearted measures will work. We need to reorient and rededicate Auroville to its true purpose of being an experiment in Integral Yoga.