Finding Auroville

The ongoing conflict in Auroville over administrative authority and control has been painted and promoted in part as a fight between conservatism on one side and liberal and progressive values on the other. The narrative is that the conservative BJP government in power at the center in India wants to take over Auroville as part of its religious Hindu agenda from the progressive international residents of Auroville who have nurtured the green, spiritual and alternate-thinking space that exists here today. This narrative has been promoted by the section of Aurovilians (known as Aurovillage because they want to keep Auroville small and insular) who have held sway over Auroville for the past few decades and who now stand to lose their control over the project.

In previous posts we have seen the deep affinity between progressive thinking and the spiritual philosophy of Integral Yoga that Auroville is based on. We have also seen the limitations of progressive thinking, and how progressivism will keep failing in the materialization of its aspirations for a better world till it makes the turn towards spirituality, the dissolution of the ego and the transformation of consciousness. The human ego – our vital desires, attachments and insecurities, will keep coming in the way of progressive solutions until the essential need for that spiritual turn is realized and the pursuit of spirituality is undertaken with complete sincerity.

We have also seen how in Auroville a facade of liberal-spirituality has been erected and maintained for the past five decades by the Aurovillagers in order for them to protect and continue the insular, parochial and tribalistic bubble that Auroville has existed in almost since its inception and definitely since the passing of The Mother in 1973. Aurovillage is teeming with people pretending to be liberal and progressive but who are in reality extremely self-centered, often pathologically so.

The irony of Auroville as it has existed over the past few decades begins with the understanding that this derailment of the project by self-centered Aurovillagers is exactly the kind of result that Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga assert will happen to progressive spaces (or spaces being projected as progressive) because the human ego will always thwart and derail the activities and solutions being undertaken there. The “intellectual religion of humanity“, even though it has the high aspiration of arriving at a true human unity and harmony, will never succeed in achieving these aspirations while the vital desires, attachments and insecurities of the human ego are in control of human beings and their actions. It is only with the turn to spirituality and to the “spiritual religion of humanity” that these aims can be attained. This is exactly what has happened in Auroville, where the spiritual aims of Integral Yoga have been waylaid by the collective ego of the people who have been residing here.

While there are legitimate concerns with regard to the central government’s appropriation of powers in Auroville, another layer of irony lies in the fact that Aurovillage itself is in actuality an extremely conservative place behind the liberal facade. It exists, as mentioned above, as an extremely parochial, insular and tribalistic bubble, with the maintenance of that bubble being one of the main activities that Aurovillage occupies itself with, which includes fermenting fear of outsiders and of any outside interference. The reason why the Indian government has deemed it necessary to intervene in the functioning of Auroville is because the derailment of the project has now become so obvious, and because of the incongruity of the bubble with regard to the actual aims of Auroville and its situatedness in this day and age in India and the world at large.

The fact that Aurovillage is framing the current conflict in terms of a conservative government’s takeover of a liberal space is in itself a sign that Auroville is still stuck at the level of the material and the mental. And the fact that they are putting in so much energy, time and money to maintain their power shows just how much Aurovillage clings to power, control and the vital ego. A spiritualized community would not really be that concerned with who is in charge of administration, but rather would be focused on its spiritual growth, both individual as well as collective, and focused on the attempt to steer Auroville along the path of the propagation of Integral Yoga, no matter who is in charge of administrative affairs. To think that administrative control holds the key to this propagation is in itself a vital folly, because it betrays a continuing desire for power and control.

Therefore, the fact that Aurovillage is trying to project the current conflict as a fight to protect Auroville as a liberal/progressive space is a double irony. Firstly, Aurovillage is very far from being a liberal space even though it has quite successfully put up a facade of being so, and is in actuality a very conservative place. And as the power-center of Auroville, Aurovillage has a very strong influence on the social atmosphere of Auroville at large. Secondly, as already mentioned, Integral Yoga and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo inform us that such liberal spaces, even if the attempt to create them have a level of sincerity, are bound to fail, and it is only with the true and sincere turn towards the spiritual and the path to the transformation of consciousness that success on the progressive, sattwic path can be reached. No watered-down versions of spirituality or “mindfullness” can achieve this goal. A complete dedication to the path has to be made, even while functioning in the material world. Therefore a call to protect Auroville as a liberal space is a misdirection, because the call should be to make Auroville into a space dedicated to Integral Yoga. Everything else, all the liberal and progressive goals, will happen as an outcome and aspect of this true dedication. To want to protect Auroville as a liberal space when the philosophy that Auroville is based on has specifically critiqued liberalism as something that is bound to failure is quite ironic.

Auroville as a liberal/progressive space with a spiritual influence might seem appealing to someone who has had a surface interaction with Auroville, or who sees Auroville as a space of consumption where one can experience and partake in liberal-spiritual activities. However, that is not the purpose for which Auroville has been created. If one considers in its entirety what The Mother has said about the purpose of Auroville, it is very clear that it is a project dedicated to the propagation of Integral Yoga. Integral Yoga has been the life’s work of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and it should be obvious that a township built on their philosophy would be based on that philosophy. It is the reason why Auroville exists in India and not anywhere else, since India is the birthplace of the philosophy of Yoga. And it is the reason why the Indian government has agreed to support Auroville and allows its continuation.

As mentioned above, what is also very clear from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is that mere progressivism will not work, since insincerity is baked into progressivism, because progressivism is a mental construct and the mental is under the control of the vital. Auroville as it has existed over the past few decades is a prime example of this. Despite the spiritual rhetoric that is rampant in Auroville, it is very much still stuck in the material and mental realm, attempting one mental solution after another, without the sincerity to actually work towards and achieve the solutions, and indeed without even the sincerity to truly understand what the path towards those solutions would look like. No amount of mental, material, mechanical solutions are going to lead to true human unity and harmony. True sincerity and true solutions can only come from the spiritual turn.

While Auroville is supposed to go beyond progressivism, whether that progressivism is sincere or projected, it is important to consider what will happen if in the near future Auroville becomes exposed to openly conservative influences. For example, what if religiosity and ritualism start getting practiced here? The brief answer to that is: that will tantamount to a new form of parochialism replacing an existing parochialism. What is happening in Auroville at the moment with the ongoing conflict is that one stage of Auroville is coming to an end, and the next stage is beginning. Auroville will probably pass through many such stages and transitions in its future. Each stage will bring its own set of challenges and its own set of parochialisms. The job for us here in Auroville is to set our sights on the actual purpose of the project, which is the individual and collective transformation of consciousness, and the propagation of the spiritual philosophy of Integral Yoga. The teachings and philosophy of Yoga have been a signal that has been pulsing over the millennia ever since the Vedas were put together. It has been and continues to be a beacon showing humanity the way to the future. Along the way this signal has been honed and elaborated upon, making it clearer and more potent. Whatever the particular parochialism is of the stage that Auroville finds itself in, the true work of Aurovilians is to counter that parochialism, and to focus on propagating the signal, to amplify it and pass it on into the future, so that one day it leads to the transformation of humanity.