Finding Auroville

I had originally wanted to title this post “Aurovillage as a Mental Asylum” because that describes Aurovillage quite appropriately, but mental health is an issue that needs to be taken seriously, and that title was a little too frivolous despite its pertinence. Previous posts in this series have described how the atmosphere and environment of insincerity, deception and manipulation that has been created and sustained in Auroville right from the 1970s has led to deceptive, deceitful and manipulative people being attracted to Auroville, resulting in Auroville having a concentration of these kinds of people. These people become part of the loose network of Aurovilians known as Aurovillagers, who work to make sure that Auroville remains an isolated, insular, parochial, nepotistic, colonial enclave that is oriented towards continuing as a safe-haven for such deceitful and manipulative people. Aurovillage is full of pathological liars who are adept at feigning spiritual and progressive aspirations, which helps them in the maintenance of the spiritual and progressive facade that exists on the surface of Auroville and which hides the much more negative, toxic and emotionally abusive reality that exists behind the facade. Aurovillage attracts people with the kinds of emotional and psychological disorders that allow them to be pathological liars, and that allow them to live lives in a perpetually deceptive and manipulative environment. These are people who are unable to function properly in the outside world, and have come to Auroville to live within the protected insular emotional sanctuary that Aurovillage has created. They find within this sanctuary a space where they are allowed to live with and live out their emotional and psychological pathologies, as long as they conform to and support the system that has been created within the bubble of the sanctuary.

Aurovillage and Auroville function like a bubble within a bubble. Aurovillage as a network of people has functioned as a communal bubble and an insular emotional sanctuary for these people. Auroville itself is an institutional bubble that has been controlled by Aurovillage, which has made sure that Auroville as a physical space continues to exist as a material manifestation of this insular emotional sanctuary. In this post I delve a little deeper into certain aspects of both Aurovillage the network and Auroville the location and institution as an overlapping collective emotional sanctuary.

It should be noted here that non-Aurovillagers, i.e. regular Aurovilians, also reside within the institutional bubble of Auroville, and while they do not inhabit the communal emotional sanctuary of Aurovillage, the do inhabit the physical emotional sanctuary of Auroville created by Aurovillage. However their motivations for staying in the physical, institutional emotional sanctuary are very different from the emotional insularity needed by Aurovillage. Regular Aurovilians do not need the emotional insularity provided by either Aurovillage or Auroville.

The first aspect of this emotional sanctuary is the loyalty that it engenders among the people who reside in it, i.e. the Aurovillagers. The people who visit Auroville from all around the world and stay here for some period of time as volunteers and guests are mostly exposed to the spiritual and progressive facade that Aurovillage has created for the consumption of the outside world. From among these guests and volunteers, a few decide to stay on longer to see if they want to commit to living their lives in Auroville. This is when they cross through the facade and begin to experience the much more hostile, intimidatory, bullying and emotionally abusive reality that exists underneath. Most of those who have a genuine interest in themes such as intellectual humanism, spiritual humanism and Integral Yoga, and even those who are genuinely interested in the progressive themes that Auroville engages in, recoil from this atmosphere and leave Auroville sooner or later. On the other hand, the people who find the existing reality of Auroville most attractive are those who find kinship in and thrive in the bullying and emotionally abusive atmosphere below the facade. These are people who thrive in duplicity and manipulation and find in Auroville an entire ecosystem that is built on these traits. This profile of people in all probability can pick up cues of this duplicity and manipulativeness in the facade itself, and therefore very quickly get a good sense of what lies underneath. These are also people who, because of the same traits that allow them feel at home in this duplicitous environment of Auroville, have constantly been at odds with society in the places that they have come from. They have found in Aurovillage an emotional safe-haven, a sanctuary that finally allows them to live lives much closer to their genuine selves. They find here the possibility of obtaining a level of emotional validation that they are either unable to find in the outside world, or would have to work much harder to find outside. Because of this, they develop a deep loyalty to Aurovillage, and work with a fierce energy to protect it. This loyalty is currently on full display in the ongoing battle over administrative control over Auroville. In effect, it is a loyalty that arises from the existential need to maintain Auroville as an insular, duplicitous space that suits their genuine selves. The only problem with this is that their genuine selves are either deeply toxic, emotionally abusive and manipulative, or are accepting of existing in and supporting this kind of atmosphere. The two-facedness of the outer congenial facade and inner emotionally abusive reality of Auroville reflects the two-facedness of this profile of people. People who are high on the narcissistic scale are experts at projecting an outer facade that hides a very different and much darker reality behind the facade, and the situation in Auroville is a physical manifestation of this phenomenon. Whether these are people who are at the center of Aurovillage and are actively engaged in the facade, deception and propaganda, or are on the side-lines and periphery of Aurovillage and spend their lives turning a blind eye to the duplicity and manipulation, they all possess an emotional and psychological ability to live within and support a bubble of lies and deception. Their loyalty is not to Auroville as a spiritual experiment, nor as an experiment in progressive administrative autonomy as they profess. Instead, their loyalty is to Auroville as an insular emotional sanctuary for emotionally and psychologically dysfunctional people. Escape from the outside world into the sanctuary of Auroville, and its associated emotional and psychological dysfunctionality are the two fundamental commonalities amongst all Aurovillagers.

This loyalty gives Aurovillagers a perverse sense of community, based on exclusion, intimidation and conformity. Their inherent negativity, both covert and overt, does not allow them to get the sense of community and community validation that they crave in the outside world, and so in Auroville they have created a community centered around negativity that they can feel a sense of kinship with. People who are drawn to this negativity find a home in this Aurovillage community, and in the process they further and deepen the toxic and emotionally abusive atmosphere in Auroville. In this way the emotional sanctuary sustains itself and persists as a place that thrives on emotional toxicity and abuse, duplicity and manipulativeness. Those who are repulsed by this negativity and toxicity either leave Auroville after attempting to stay for a while in the reality that exists behind the facade. Others, who are the regular Aurovilians, create their own refuge from the negativity within Auroville and continue to stay here because they have some other motivation to persist here. This is the reality of the much vaunted “community” in Auroville that is sold to the outside world as some kind of spiritual and progressive model of community making.

As has been mentioned in the post on Auroville as a colonial enclave, the formation of Aurovillage and the derailment and hijacking of the project of Auroville dates back to the 1970s in the immediate aftermath of the passing of The Mother. The genesis of Aurovillage and the root cause of the derailment of Auroville seems to have occurred with the latching on to the idea of administrative autonomy as the central facet of Auroville by these early Aurovillagers. This group saw an opportunity to create an isolated and insular enclave in which they could hold power and authority, and they have grabbed on to that enclave and that power and authority ever since then. This hijacking of Auroville from being an experiment in Integral Yoga to being an autonomously governed enclave and bubble has had two significant consequences. First, it has resulted in the emotional sanctuary described in this post. And second, due to the fact that the early Aurovillagers were mostly Westerners who have been allowed over all these decades to exert, live with and act out their entitlement and privilege, Auroville has existed as a colonial enclave. The emotional sanctuary and the colonial enclave are the the two main functional outcomes of the administrative autonomy that the Indian government has bestowed onto Auroville and Aurovilians. Both the sanctuary and the enclave exist behind the facade of spirituality and progressive values that Aurovillage has so skillfully created and maintained here. And both are inextricably linked with each other, feed and nourish each other. Both the Westerners as well as the Indians who inhabit Aurovillage have an existential need to preserve both the colonial enclave as well as the emotional sanctuary. So we can see that there are five central aspects that define Aurovillage and the Auroville that they have created: escapism into a cheap and easy life; insularity, autonomy and the lust for power and control; the emotional dysfunctionality that the emotional sanctuary harbors; the Western entitlement and privilege that the colonial enclave sustains; and the spiritual and progressive facade behind which all this reality of Auroville is allowed to exist.

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Another aspect of the emotional sanctuary of Auroville is linked to what can be described as the wider progressive world’s current situatedness in the space of “therapy”. Before we go into this further, let’s first set the context for this line of thinking. In his writings, Sri Aurobindo has charted a path for humanity as it moves from its current mental and materially-focussed state towards the spiritual state of the Divine consciousness. This is a path that will take humanity from its present state of individual and collective self-centeredness towards greater and greater selflessness and desirelessness. It will take us from limited, insular, parochial and myopic modes of thinking and identifications towards wider and deeper understandings of and identifications with the variedness of human cultures and societies, till we identify with all of humanity and then with the Divine beyond material nature. It will take humanity from its current entanglement with and attachment to the myriad emotions and sentimentalities of our vital ego embedded in material nature to a vantage point above these entanglements and sentimentalities, from where we will be in awareness and control of our emotions as opposed to our emotions being in control of us. Using the terminology of material society, this can be understood as a movement first from conservatism and parochialism towards progressivism and humanism, i.e. from tamas and rajas towards sattwa. Then, it will be a movement of progressivism and intellectual humanism towards purer and purer sattwic thinking, till humanity reaches an understanding that it is only with the complete detachment from material nature and detachment from the emotionality and sentimentality of the vital ego that true harmony within the individual as well as true harmony and unity in humanity can be achieved. This will be the turn from intellectual humanism towards spiritual humanism, the turn from material nature towards identification with the Divine consciousness, which will finally lead to the fructification of the ideals of human unity.

By the adoption of the philosophy of Integral Yoga, the path that humanity takes towards this goal will be much more direct and quick. If humanity does not embrace Integral Yoga, the path will be much more circuitous and cumbersome. This circuitous path is the one that humanity is currently on. Along this path, progressivism and intellectual humanism are currently attempting to make their arduous trek towards purer sattwa while still being attached to and bogged down by the vital ego, and so this path is replete with obstacles, blockades and backsliding. It is on this arduous path that progressive thinking is currently very much situated in the space or zone of therapy. In this zone, people discuss their feelings and emotions with therapists and with each other as a way of dealing with their emotions and as a means of psychological self-improvement. This is a stage in the psychological and sociological development of humanity, and is a vast improvement from the stages that have come before it, or is at the least an imperfect movement in the right direction. However, this stage of therapy does not get to the heart and source of the emotional problems of humanity, which is our attachment to and identification with our material selves and our vital egos, which includes our thoughts and emotions. This attachment occurs at both the individual and collective levels. Similar to all other aspects of progressive thinking and intellectual humanism, therapy attempts to rectify the problems of humanity while still being attached to the vital ego, unable to see that it is the vital ego that is the root of all problems, and that it is only by the dissolution of the ego that these problems will be solved at a fundamental level. The process of Jnana Yoga allows us to dig deep into our individual psychologies and into the psychology and sociology of humanity to get to the root motivations and sources of our emotions and thus to the root of human sorrow, unhappiness and insecurity. Integral Yoga, of which jnana yoga is a part, is the process that will finally allow humanity to move beyond its sorrow and insecurity towards the bliss that lies in identifying with the universal and transcendent consciousness which exists beyond material nature. This bliss can be understood simply as the true and complete absence of unhappiness, sorrow and insecurity.

In Auroville, it is this path of jnana yoga that we should be pursuing. Instead, what we find is an embeddedness in the zone of therapy, with people sitting for hours on end, day in and day out, talking with each other about their feelings and emotions. There is an absence in Auroville of a clear understanding of what Integral Yoga is and what it entails, and even an absence of understanding that Integral Yoga is the purpose of Auroville. In fact Aurovillage both ignorantly and purposefully disparages any such declarations as being too “dogmatic” and being antithetical to the “freedom” of thought and action that should exist in Auroville. So what we have instead is a vague milieu in which an undefined and changeable admixture of mindfullness and progressive tropes stand in as the purpose of Auroville. The mutual and collective therapy sessions fit very well into this milieu, with people considering them to be part of the progressive and emotionally open environment that is appropriate for Auroville. To be sure, psychotherapy is an immensely useful and important tool in mental and emotional well-being, and it is presently as important within the setting of Auroville as it is outside. And people talking with each other in a positive and supportive environment about emotions and feelings is equally useful and important. However in Auroville there needs to be at least a mental understanding that these methods are all still within the emotional and mental realms of our human material nature. These methods are part of the human mind trying to deal with its vital emotions while still being enmeshed in those vital emotions. And Integral Yoga tells us that this is never going to be a solution for humans to come to grips with and master their emotions. There will come a time when humanity will move beyond this stage of therapy in its evolution, but until then therapy will remain a necessity. However in Auroville there needs to be an understanding that, even as we engage in therapy, the goal is to ultimately move towards a place where human emotions have been understood and dealt with at such a fundamental level via jnana yoga that therapy is not really needed anymore.

To many, gaining mastery and control over our emotions sounds like the extinguishing of human sensitivity, human empathy, and our ability to feel and revel in emotions such as love, joy, sorrow, awe etc. However, the dissolution of the vital ego does not mean the dissolution of our emotions. It means the dissolution of our attachment to and identification with our vital emotions. The emotions still exist, and we can still feel them, but the potent power that they have over our being and our actions is removed. Instead of these emotions forcing us to think and act in self-centered ways, we can put these emotions to use at the service of the Divine consciousness and the greater good of humanity. Over and above this, the bliss of the Divine consciousness that one gets to experience with the dissolution of the ego makes the experience of all vital human emotions pale in comparison. And while it may seem that the dissolution of the ego leads to a diminishing or severing of one’s sense of empathy, what actually occurs is that our sense of empathy gets loosened from our personal attachments, preferences and our need for our own emotional validation. Our sense of empathy expands from a personal, localized and self-centered scale to a more universal and humanistic scale. Our vision, understanding and solution-seeking expand from that personal and localized scale to an ever widening scope which ultimately encompasses humanity as a whole. We reach the realization that localized and small-scale solutions are always restricted and ultimately still linked to the ego and to our material attachments, while universal solutions go beyond individual and collective egos and seek the betterment of as wide a section of humanity as possible.

When we are attached to and controlled by our vital emotions, we are susceptible to manipulation by people who play and prey on our emotions and sensibilities to benefit themselves. Or we are the ones who manipulate the emotions of others to gain benefit for ourselves. When our empathy expands, we are no longer susceptible to such manipulation, nor do we have any interest to be emotionally manipulative ourselves. With all this in mind, it is no surprise at all that Aurovillage revels in existing within the zone of therapy that currently exists in Auroville, and has no intention, understanding or ability to move beyond it. Aurovillage’s interest in this zone is not because of the benefits it can potentially provide to people, but because living within and fixating on this zone of therapy allows Aurovillage to exploit and manipulate emotional vulnerabilities. Staying in this zone allows it to continue to attract emotionally vulnerable people, and continuously strengthens the loyalty that these people have to the perverse emotional sanctuary that they have created here. Ultimately, the people who thrive the most and function best within this sanctuary are those whose emotional vulnerabilities have mutated them into being emotionally exploitative people. This is the main reason why Aurovillage is so good at deception and manipulation. Ultimately, the commonality between emotionally vulnerable and emotionally exploitative people is their emotional immaturity, and Auroville has become a sanctuary for this profile of people, who then have very strong motivations to keep emotionally secure and emotionally mature people away from Auroville, and for stopping Auroville from developing beyond this perverse emotionally immature sanctuary. Aurovillage and Auroville have in this way become a sanctuary governed by emotional immaturity. Emotionally immature people find here a societal ecosystem that is itself emotionally immature, and a governance structure that accommodates, validates, supports and promotes their emotional immaturity. It is like a perpetually ongoing version of Lord of the Flies.

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Integral Yoga can be said to function at two distinct but interconnected planes. The first is the plane of existing human reality in which, as we have discussed above, humans will in due course progress from intellectual humanism to spiritual humanism, and in which the spiritualization of humanity will lead to fundamental harmony and unity amongst humans. The second plane lies beyond the current reality of humanity and looks to the more distant future, dealing with how spiritualization will affect the evolution of the human race and eventually take it closer and closer to the Divine from which it came. This blog on the most part deals with the first plane. My primary interest is in how Integral Yoga and spirituality will lead to a fundamental transformation in how humanity understands and interacts with itself and with the material world, leading to human harmony and unity. Within this context, the paradigm of emotional intelligence and emotional maturity are a useful way to track the movement from tamasic and rajasic qualities towards sattwic qualities. A deepening of true emotional intelligence and maturity indicates a movement towards greater selflessness and desirelessness, and a growing detachment from the material self. Conversely, emotional immaturity indicates self-centeredness and a greater attachment to the vital ego and material nature. Along with this, sociological intelligence can be considered to be another facet of emotional intelligence, in which people with deepening emotional intelligence also gain a deeper understanding and tolerance of the variedness and workings of human sociology and culture.

What Aurovillage has been attracting over the past five decades are people who are so emotionally and sociologically immature that they cannot function properly in the environments that they are coming from, whether they are from India or outside it. The Westerners who are coming here do not have the emotional and sociological intelligence to understand and acknowledge their entitlement and privilege, and have instead escaped to this insular refuge where they can take advantage of their entitlement and privilege, and not face any consequences for their toxic, bullying and intimidatory behavior. The most successful Aurovillagers are people who are mentally intelligent but emotionally immature, and who then employ their mental intelligence in the maintenance of the facade and the propaganda machine that allows them to continue to live in the insular and isolated emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave. These are the “high-functioning” emotionally dysfunctional Aurovillagers who have manipulated their way into controlling Auroville right from the 1970s till the present day. Within the sanctuary, the machinations and power-hungriness of these high-functioning emotionally dysfunctional Aurovillagers creates a toxic, emotionally abusive atmosphere, which is a manifestation and reflection of the deep emotional immaturity, going into the realms of psychopathy, that exists within them and that they perpetually exist in, and which they would be living with irrespective of whether they were in Auroville or not.

These Aurovillagers have an inability to accept criticism or to be self-critical, and have escaped to this sanctuary where they can justify their actions as being spiritually sanctioned. They expend copious amounts of time and energy coming up with elaborate spiritual justifications for their actions, and twist and decontextualize the words of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo to support these justifications. They have no real interest in spirituality, but are extremely adept at lying to themselves, to each other and to the world at large about being spiritual. Many of these people are so delusional and psychologically desperate to continue their existence within the emotional sanctuary of Auroville that they have absolutely no ability to recognize the toxic and abusive nature of the environment they are living in and contributing to, let along be able to rectify it. Some of them actually believe that their blind conformity to the toxic social system and environment created by Aurovillage is a sign of their spiritual accommodativeness, and a sign of the spiritual, psychological and material sacrifice that they have made to The Mother and to the Divine by coming to Auroville. The issues that have been criticized in this and other posts in this series should have been rectified internally in Auroville a long time ago. Reflection, acceptance of appropriate criticism, self-criticism and self-correction has to a part of any autonomous decision-making process and structure, and this self-correction process has to be completely sincere and transparent. All of this itself requires emotional and sociological intelligence and maturity. The fact that Auroville’s problems have been allowed to fester and metastasize for so long is an indication of the emotional and sociological ignorance and immaturity of the people who have been at the center of governing Auroville.

The profile of the people who should be coming to Auroville is basically the diametric opposite of those who have been coming here. We need people with deep emotional and sociological intelligence and maturity, who are genuinely interested in and engaged in the pursuit of intellectual humanism. Ideally, these would be people who have also reached some kind of understanding that the path forward for humanism and human harmony goes through spiritual humanism, and they are ready to dedicate their lives either to the pursuit of this path or to support its pursuit. These would be people who have realized that the world at large is itself extremely emotionally immature, that the rectification of the problems of the world will come about with a deepening of emotional and sociological maturity and intelligence, and that Auroville is an experiment that is geared towards creating an environment, or one could say an institutional sanctuary, where human interactions and social systems are based on deepened and increasingly deepening emotional maturity, sociological intelligence and selflessness. These are people who have reached an understanding that humanity needs to move away from its tamasic and rajasic qualities towards sattwa, and then towards purer and purer sattwa towards the trigunateet. These are people who are aware of their privilege in whatever forms it exists, and work to make the world a more equitable place. They do not deny their privilege and strive to live in situations where they can take advantage of it. And we need people who are sincere and are truly committed to pursuing these goals, instead of engaging in rhetorical smokescreens behind which they derail the project for their own self-centered purposes. Auroville needs to reorient its stated purpose, its governance and its outlook towards the pursuit of Integral Yoga so that we can attract people who are ready and willing to pursue these goals. This reorientation would lead to an openness and a free exchange of people, ideas and energies between Auroville and the wider world, as opposed to the insularity and arrogance that exists here now, with only the limited and controlled exchange that is permitted by the Aurovillage powers that be. An Auroville that is growing in population and social complexity will be much more difficult for Aurovillage to control, and will probably quite quickly go out of their control. A growing Auroville will quickly cease to exist as a perverse emotional sanctuary and a colonial enclave, which is why Aurovillage is hell-bent on keeping it small.

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At the heart of the philosophy of Yoga lies the precept of the dissolution of the vital ego. This involves the transfer of control of our being from the vital, which is the seat of emotions, to the spiritual, which implies our identification with the Divine in us that is beyond material nature. With this transfer, the being is controlled not by their vital emotions but by the peace and bliss of the Divine consciousness. Our emotions are then under the control and guidance of the Divine consciousness. Therefore, in a manner of speaking, mastery over our emotions and our emotional self is the goal of Yoga. Even our attachment to our physical and mental selves occurs through our vital emotions, as does our attachment to external material things. Our emotions are thus the crux of our identification with our material being and material nature. And the more mature and intelligent we become emotionally, the more we are able to detach from material nature. We can then say that part of the purpose of Auroville is to deepen our emotional intelligence and maturity via Yoga. It is then highly ironic that what Auroville has become is a sanctuary for emotionally dysfunctional people with extreme levels of emotional immaturity. Or perhaps it is not so ironic that this has happened, and in fact quite inevitable that this would happen. The path to emotional maturity that Yoga and Auroville represent is not at all well understood in the wider world in which Auroville and the philosophy of Yoga are situated. Despite this broad lack of understanding, Auroville was set up as an intentional community, which was subsequently institutionalized, for the purpose of pursuing this path to emotional maturity. Auroville is therefore an institution whose purpose very few people understand. In this vaccum of understanding of its emotional purpose, it was always going to be very easy for emotionally manipulative people, who are always themselves emotionally immature and dysfunctional, to manipulate the purpose and hijack the project. This is exactly what has happened in Auroville. Under the pretext of spiritual autonomy, this emotionally dysfunctional group of people, whom we are collectively calling Aurovillage, have twisted the purpose of Auroville and created here the existing sanctuary of emotional immaturity.

If we substitute the paradigm of emotions with the paradigm of energies, we can frame this issue in a different way. Many people who visit Auroville experience and feel a strong positive energy here. Whatever the cause of that experience may be, many people can vouch to have had that experience. Emotionally dysfunctional people have a deep need for such positive energy, because they have a grave lack of that energy. This profile of people then get attracted to Auroville and feed on its positive energy, but because they themselves are only able to disseminate negative energy, no matter how much positive energy they absorb, they perforce can only create an extremely negative environment here. So the positive and negative energies now exist side by side. Visitors to Auroville, who only partake in the facade and do not interact with the dysfunctionality of Aurovillage, mostly experience the positive energy that exists here. Those who decide to stay here for longer and are then inevitably forced to interact with Aurovillage at a more substantive level, begin to experience the negative energy that emanates from Aurovillage. This is the energetic consequence of Aurovillage’s emotional sanctuary.

As I had mentioned at the beginning of this post, mental health, which means emotional health, is a serious issue. The human world as it exists today is emotionally wrought, and life is not easy for anyone. Navigating through life is an emotionally arduous process for everyone. Everyone needs emotional help and support at some point or at various points in their lives, and an emotionally supportive environment is preferable for everyone to live in. And people with more serious emotional disabilities need proper diagnosis and care. However Auroville is not supposed to be a sanctuary for people with emotional disabilities and dysfunctionalities. On the contrary, as this post discusses, it is meant to be a place where people with deep emotional maturity and intelligence chart a path for humanity towards deeper and deeper emotional and sociological maturity and intelligence. Auroville will be able to fulfill its role in the world when more and more people start coming here who have the emotional intelligence not only to be able to deal with their own emotional lives, but are able to envision and find solutions for the emotional well-being of wider and wider collectives of humanity. This is when a collective of people will emerge that does not need to look after its own self-interest, but will look towards the self-interest of humanity as a whole. And the success of this collective will be measured by its general openness, openness to scrutiny and its transparency. Insularity and isolationism will be the last thing on its mind. The insular, parochial, emotionally hostile, abusive and toxic environment that exists in Auroville today is in direct contradiction to the emotionally mature environment that should exist here.

Perhaps the emotional immaturity, duplicity and manipulativeness that is rampant in Auroville today is a reflection of the condition that the wider world is in. The world is so complex and difficult to navigate that everyone compromises on their morals and ethics, everyone lies, to themselves and to others, and everyone deceives and manipulates to one extent or the other. In an emotionally difficult world, emotional maturity is a luxury that few can afford, which is why emotional immaturity is so rampant, both in the world at large as well as in Auroville. However we always need to remember the purpose of Auroville. We need to remember the audacity and of its purpose. We have not come here, as The Mother said, to do easy things. Coming to Auroville is a privilege, not a right. It is not a refuge for a few people who cannot cope with the emotional complexities of the world and have found here an emotional safe-haven. It is a place that requires people who have the emotional and psychological strength to be radically honest with themselves and with the world. It is only with this radical emotional honesty that Auroville can become a beacon of emotional maturity and emotional intelligence for the world. And it is Yoga and Integral Yoga that are the path to this radical emotional honesty, via the dissolution of the vital ego in which all of material nature’s emotional entanglements lie. This is why it is so important to establish Integral Yoga as the central purpose of Auroville, because if we don’t do that then all kinds of other purposes will keep flowering here in its stead, and as has been happening for the past fifty years, many of these alternative purposes will be completely antithetical to the goals and aims set forth by The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.