Finding Auroville

In a recent post about sociological intelligence I had written about how, as we move from self-centered tamasic and rajasic attributes to more altruistic sattwic attributes, our general thinking, understanding and outlook moves from being more insular to becoming wider and encompassing broader groupings of people. We begin to empathize and identify with an ever widening section of humanity. This widening of our outlook is accompanied with a broader sociological understanding and an ability to comprehend, appreciate and empathize with disparate societies, societal and cultural mores and interactions, and social systems at various scales. We are able to understand why and how social systems work and don’t work, and what will be needed to make them more equitable and harmonious. Much like the deepening of emotional intelligence, this is a deepening of sociological intelligence. And further, as we move from mental sattwic attributes towards the spiritual consciousness of the Divine, the aspiration for a harmonious, united and equitable humanity will become even stronger, and will become intuitive and obvious. Individuals will act for nothing else but this harmonious aspiration. And with this, sociological intelligence will also deepen further and become intuitive and obvious.

The mental and intellectual side of this process has already been ongoing for quite a long time, with progressive thought and humanism already having reached a point where they have a powerful aspiration for human harmony, and quite a broad and deep understanding of sociological functioning. In Auroville, the more vocal section of the residents here have been presenting themselves as being liberal and progressive, and so this sociological understanding and sociological intelligence should be well developed and clearly on display. These people also present themselves as being spiritual, and so there could be a reasonable expectation that this sociological understanding is even showing signs of moving towards the intuitive realm.

In a series of earlier posts, I had discussed the idea of autonomy for Auroville. In those posts I had written about the current conflict in Auroville which is a fight for autonomy, power and control over the administration of Auroville. The Indian government wants to exercise more control over the functioning of Auroville, and a group of Aurovilians, who were always interested in power and authority within the limited bubble of Auroville, are fighting to retain their administrative control over the project. The Indian government has till now allowed Auroville to function with a high level of autonomy, which unfortunately has led to this group of Aurovilians grossly misusing that autonomy and derailing the project from its intended purpose, which is why the government wants to take back some control.

From their side, this group of Aurovilians insists that Auroville as a project requires autonomy and freedom from outside interference, and says that The Mother had warned against governmental interference. In the earlier posts on autonomy, I had pointed out that The Mother had never said that Aurovilians should have administrative control over the project, and while she was alive Auroville was always run from the Ashram in Pondicherry. I had also written that a sadhak of Integral Yoga could easily deduce that the individual and collective inner discipline needed to be able to take on the mantle of administrative autonomy is something that Aurovilians are currently very far from. What is needed in Auroville is the freedom to grow spiritually, which will lead to the inner discipline that will eventually allow us to be able to handle autonomy. Our focus should be on this spiritual growth, and not on the insistence of autonomy. This insistence and clinging to power and authority is in fact a prime example of how far Aurovilians are from being able to handle autonomy.

In this post I want to add to this argument by saying that one doesn’t even need to be a sadhak of Integral Yoga to reach this understanding. The intellectual, sattwic, humanistic mindset that seeks a harmonious future for humanity within material nature has enough of a sociological understanding to see that humanity is very far from being able to self-govern, as are Aurovilians. The sattwic attribute recognizes the self-centeredness of the rajasic and tamasic energies, and recognizes the control that the vital ego has on the human mental and being. Therefore the sattwic intellect understands the barriers that it faces in its aspiration for altruism, and understands that the individual and collective vital ego is eventually going to stymie any movement towards altruism, especially any grand movement towards altruism. What the sattwic attribute, which can also be called progressive thought or the humanistic tendency, does not have the ability to figure out is the solution to this problem of vital control, as long as it searches for this solution within material nature. It is only when sattwa, in a continuing and unyielding quest to find a solution, reaches an understanding of and a realization about the true nature of humanity and the immaterial Divine consciousness (in whatever way the individual prefers to comprehend it), and reaches a realization about the need for the dissolution of the ego, that it can begin to move towards true solutions for the vexations of humanity.

So the sattwic intellect when it stays within material nature has to a large extent the ability to understand the factors that thwart humanity’s movement towards harmony, but cannot yet find the solution. As part of this, it understands that any group that is given the ability to self-govern will in all probability begin to abuse that freedom, and understands the reasons behind that probability. The Aurovilians who claim to be liberal and progressive, who claim to have come here from all over the world for an experiment in human unity, which is fundamentally a humanistic experiment, should have the sociological understanding and awareness to be able to comprehend that administrative autonomy is something that can very well be abused. And so the desperation with which they are clutching onto that autonomy, authority and control, and their obvious inability to understand that administrative authority is a very complex issue and needs to be constantly assessed and reviewed, puts into question very starkly their intentions. Their demand for a perpetual carte blanche, where no one outside Auroville can have the ability to question them or evaluate their actions, is extremely suspicious, to put it mildly. Even if some Aurovilians feel that administrative autonomy is necessary, it is quite easy to comprehend why that autonomy should always have some system of assessment and evaluation. But they are not willing to make any such compromise.

Over and above this, these Aurovilians are claiming to have spiritual aspirations, and that these spiritual aspirations are the reason why they have come here to Auroville. These spiritual aspirations, since they are not just for individual spiritual growth but also for collective spiritual growth towards human unity, should have honed their sociological intelligence even more. They should have made it even more obvious that functional administrative autonomy will exist only as a mirage until the intellect is free enough from the control of the vital ego for individuals to become self-disciplined. These Aurovilians make claims of already having attained the spiritual growth to be able to self-govern, but ironically, their desperate attachment to self-governance itself betrays this to be a falsity. Any way you cut it, the sheer number of court cases, and the time, money and resources put into these court cases, into protests, blockage and propaganda are all indicative of just how strong and rampant the control of the vital ego is amongst this group. For anyone who has spent some time here in Auroville and is able to see things with even a little bit of objectivity, this is all very obvious.

And once it is understood that humans are still far off from being able to sincerely take on the mantle of administrative autonomy in a place such as Auroville, sociological intelligence tells us that there will have to be a level of oversight from the Indian state. Aurovilians will have to collaborate with the Indian government to take Auroville forward along its intended path. If you really think about it, this is basically just common sense. The people who are demanding exceptionalism for Auroville are demanding it for reasons that have nothing to do with spirituality and Integral Yoga.

This whole situation is actually a good example to demonstrate the limitations of sattwic, progressive and humanistic solutions to societal problems. As mentioned above, the sattwic intellect has the ability to understand that the vital ego stymies all movement towards human harmony, but the only solutions it can come up with continue to lie within material nature, and so the vital ego, as the controller of material human nature, always derails these solutions. The history of the administrative setup of Auroville is a prime example of this, even if we take it at face value and consider this history to be a sincere attempt at autonomous self-governance. This history over the past five decades (or three decades depending on what event one wants to consider as the starting point), is one of a constant stream of attempts at creating systems, groups, sub-groups and panels to deal with the constant stream of problems that have faced this self-governance structure. The same issues, the same problems have cropped up again and again for fifty years, and instead of realizing that things are not working out as intended, the same attempts at solutions are repeated ad nauseam. A small handful of Aurovilians always seem to be at the helm of its governance structures, and the rules are constantly changed so that they continue to stay at the helm. This is the system that this group of Aurovilians is trying to protect so vehemently, instead of acknowledging the extent to which it has failed and seeking systemic changes to it. The world over, progressive and humanistic solutions constantly keep failing, and the one direction that things need to move towards, which is the direction of spiritual self-realization, is ignored for being supernatural and supposedly non-rational. The fact that Auroville is in the same situation and that there is so much opposition to change is clear proof that spirituality here has been nothing more than a rhetorical paradigm to be abused in order to maintain Auroville as an insular bubble free from external influence and appraisal.

Sri Aurobindo has written about a hierarchy of types of anarchisms. There is a vital anarchism that demands freedom for the fulfillment of vital desires and attachments. Then there is an intellectual anarchism that is able to assess the problems of collective governance and the uniformity and lack of diversity, variation and freedom that it entails, and seeks material solutions to try and rectify these problems. And finally there is spiritual anarchy, which is the result of the inner-discipline and inner-freedom that is brought about by the dissolution of the ego. When the control of the individual being is transferred from the vital ego to the spiritual consciousness of the Divine, the individual’s actions and existence in the material world becomes fundamentally selfless and desireless, and all action is automatically directed towards the betterment of humanity. In such a state, the need for external governance structures becomes redundant, since the individual is completely self-governing and self-disciplined (as well as completely free from social conventions and customs) and does not require external disciplining structures.

Humanity will move towards the ability to be self-governing when an increasing number of individuals make enough progress in the process of the dissolution of the ego to be able to have the inner-discipline to not need external governing mechanisms. This needs to be the goal of Aurovilians when it comes to the issue of administrative autonomy. A vital desire for autonomy betrays a desire for vital anarchy, even if that desire is cloaked in the rhetoric of intellectual and spiritual anarchy. The aspiration for intellectual anarchy, noble as it may be, will also always be thwarted by the vital ego, even if it understands the complexities of the task and attempts to solve them. By contrast, a true aspiration for spiritual anarchy fully understands that the true path to human harmony can only go through individual spiritual self-realization, and focuses on that as the goal. It has the sociological intelligence to understand that the attainment of this goal is very difficult and very distant, and that no amount of material attempts at and experiments in self-governance are going to lead to success. Even as it understands these difficulties, the true aspiration for spiritual anarchy is completely and fundamentally committed to the path of self-realization, precisely because it is the only path to true autonomy and self-governance.