Finding Auroville

In this series of posts that has been uncovering Aurovillage, we have defined what Aurovillage is in relation to Auroville, looked at the history of Aurovillage, differentiated between Aurovillagers and regular Aurovilians, seen how Aurovillagers have used duplicity and manipulativeness to create a convivial facade for Auroville that hides a very different and much more negative reality behind it, and that behind this facade Aurovillage has created and sustained a perverse emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave in Auroville for the past five decades. If all this is true, the question arises, how and why has Aurovillage been allowed to exist for so long? How has the Indian government allowed a relatively small group of people to run a colonial enclave in India for all these years, and why hasn’t anyone effectively stood up to the toxic, emotionally abusive atmosphere that this group has created here? This post discusses a few of the reasons why all this has been allowed to go on for so long. Most of the themes discussed here have been addressed in previous posts, and are being elaborated on and consolidated around the main topic.

The first reason we take up that has contributed to the continuation of Aurovillage over all these years is a combination of two factors. It combines the expertise that Aurovillage has in being duplicitous, dishonest and manipulative, with the fact that spirituality is seen as a very subjective issue, and that true spirituality is not an easy thing to understand. For example it is not at all easy to understand the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and it is not easy to grasp the spiritual philosophy of Integral Yoga that they have advocated, on which Auroville is based. And so, with the combination of Aurovillage’s expertise in manipulativeness and the fact that Auroville is based on a spiritual philosophy that is not easy to understand deeply, it was not that difficult for Aurovillagers to manipulate and derail the project of Auroville.

Lets look at this matter through the framework of emotions and emotional maturity: At an initial level, the path of spirituality can be understood as a path of gaining mastery over one’s emotions, i.e. of attaining control of one’s emotions rather than one’s emotions controlling our being and our actions. Therefore we can say that working on the emotional self and reaching deeper and deeper levels of emotional maturity are at the center of spirituality at this initial level, via the process of the dissolution of the ego. And humanity is still very much at the beginning stages of this initial level on its spiritual journey, is still very much dominated by its emotional self, and still exists today, on the whole, at quite an emotionally immature level. And so we can frame Auroville as being a project that is centered on deepening our emotional maturity via the dissolution of the ego, while humanity at large is still so emotionally immature that most people cannot understand this purpose unless they really apply themselves to it both mentally as well as emotionally. In fact when people are informed that this fundamental deepening of emotional maturity, at both the individual and collective levels, is the purpose of spirituality and of Auroville, most of us either reject this purpose altogether, or react by stating that the aims of this path are outlandish and unobtainable, at least in the present situation of humanity and the world.

And so even though there is a level of interest in spirituality, there is still a lack of understanding of what it truly represents and entails, and a disbelief and lack of confidence that the true aims of spirituality are obtainable. Even though there are people who have a willingness to open up to and expose their emotional selves, which is a necessity for people to grow emotionally through spirituality, there is still a lack of understanding of how exactly spirituality works on the emotions, and what the deepening of emotional maturity actually represents and entails in the context of spirituality and the dissolution of the ego. And there is still a sense of disbelief and lack of confidence in the obtainability of the mastery over our emotions and the control over our emotional selves that true spirituality ultimately entails. This kind of emotionally open and sensitive but emotionally immature environment then becomes ripe for emotionally manipulative people to take over, usurp and corrupt the narratives around the purpose and pathways of spirituality. And in the case of Auroville it becomes a ripe environment for emotionally manipulative people to usurp and derail the project towards their own selfish purposes. These are people who can reframe the purpose of the project in simplified ways that a general audience can accept as being the true emotional purpose of the project, or at least being true enough to pursue and allow Auroville to pursue. In such an environment and milieu, the voice of someone who presents the true purpose of the project, which is quite complex and difficult to understand, difficult to pursue, and audacious in its emotional and social scope and scale, can easily be drowned out and ignored. This is exactly what has happened in Auroville, and is one of the reasons why Aurovillage has been able to persist for so long. A group of emotionally manipulative people, who are themselves malignantly emotionally immature and who have no understanding of the true purpose of Auroville, but have potent tamasic and rajasic motivations to maintain Auroville as an emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave, have misused and manipulated narratives of spirituality and progressivism, including the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, to dilute and change the purpose of the project so that it becomes just a convenient place for them to live their lives. The malignantly emotionally immature atmosphere in Auroville has attracted people whose emotional dysfunctionality allows them to be pathological liars, which in turn allows them to be extremely successful at manipulating the seemingly subjective spiritual and humanistic goals of Auroville. These pathological liars become the most successful Aurovillagers, and contribute to the success of Aurovillage as a completely deceptive and manipulative collective, and as a network of people who coordinate their narratives to continue to deceive people about the reality that exists in Auroville behind the facade that they have constructed.

While it is true that there is a general lack of understanding in humanity at large about what spirituality actually is, it is also true that in India there has been over the past few decades a growing interest in its spiritual heritage and in the philosophy of Yoga. And once again because of the complexity and difficulty in understanding true spirituality and Yoga, this growing interest and understanding has been meandering and slow. But at a general level, the framework of Yoga and spirituality is becoming better recognized. This means that the manipulation and derailment of the project of Auroville will become more and more difficult for the Aurovillagers to sustain. Their narratives and the atmosphere that they have created in Auroville will become easier to identify as being false and manipulative. The currently ongoing changes in Auroville can be seen to be a part of this growing understanding of the framework of Yoga and spirituality in India, and its accompanying recognition of the need to make changes to the running of Auroville.

As part of this theme of the subjectivity of spirituality and humanity’s current inability to understand spirituality deeply, one of the narratives of Aurovillage is that the purpose of Auroville and its spiritual (and material) path forward are unknown and currently unknowable. In this ambiguous situation, Aurovilians are to be given a wide freedom in terms of the actions and activities that they partake in, and any and all forms of spiritual pursuits are to be allowed. Since we do not know the true path forward, the narrative goes, all paths are therefore valid or potentially valid. And then, at some point in the future this free and flexible pursuit of spirituality will lead to a revelation of the true purpose of and path forward for Auroville. And so of course this narrative gives license in the present time for people to ignore Integral Yoga and to feel no need to go too deeply into the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, The Mother or any other serious spiritualist. Just hovering at the level of “mindfulness”, chattering on about spirituality without any actual aim or sincerity, indulging in the kind of rhetorical spirituality that dominates the backpacker tourist circuit in India and elsewhere, and constantly humbugging with undefined claims of “spiritual exploration”, “finding oneself” and “seeking human unity” are adequate to justify one’s continued existence here.

However, the purpose of Auroville is not unknown nor currently unknowable. Even though the philosophy of Integral Yoga is not easy to comprehend, it is not impossible to understand either. With effort and dedication, we can arrive at an intellectual understanding of what Integral Yoga is, what the goals are that it aspires towards, and the paths that it propagates to attain them. And if we sincerely pursue the Yogas of Jnana, Bhakti and Karma, we can arrive at the experiential spiritual realizations that Integral Yoga tells us are the markers of progress along those paths. So the purpose of Auroville is not unknown, but to know and pursue it requires sincerity, focus, effort and dedication. When Aurovillage is presented with the fact that Integral Yoga is indeed the purpose and path for Auroville to pursue, it dismisses the idea by stating that Integral Yoga is too dogmatic and that its pursuit is too restrictive and inflexible. Aurovillage has many such arguments and narratives that it uses to counter the criticisms of its ways of functioning. Aurovillagers smugly assume that these arguments and narratives are very intelligent and clever, when what they actually reveal is the Aurovillagers’ ignorance about what Integral Yoga actually is and what the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother actually pertain to, both holistically as well as in their core and essence. The idea that Integral Yoga is too dogmatic and restrictive a philosophy is a prime example of this. If we actually read what Sri Aurobindo has written, he clearly and repeatedly states that Integral Yoga contains and allows for an infinite amount of diversity and variations in the paths towards the Divine and in the actions of people on those paths. The one commonality that all these paths have is the goal of the dissolution of the ego at both the individual and collective levels, which is what makes these paths a part of Integral Yoga. And this is the infinite freedom, diversity and variation in action that The Mother had envisioned for Auroville, held together with that one common goal. Integral Yoga is the purpose of Auroville, and this purpose needs to be more specifically defined and enshrined in the administrative structure of Auroville. Far from restricting freedom of action in Auroville, this defining of the purpose of Auroville will bring true freedom into the extremely conformist atmosphere that Aurovillage has created here behind its facade of “freedom” and “flexibility”.

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The second preservative reason that has led to the prolongation of Aurovillage’s existence well beyond its expiry date are the socioeconomic structural advantages that Western Aurovillagers possess in India, which they have shamelessly exploited since the beginning of Auroville, and which is the actual reason that the majority of them have come to live here. As explained in an earlier post, these factors have historical roots that go back to the colonial past of the modern world. Generally speaking, Indians have a social and cultural lack of confidence and a sense of inferiority vis-a-vis Westerners, which is the social structural advantage that Westerners have in India. Throughout Auroville’s history, Western Aurovillagers have used this advantage to their benefit in a variety of ways. For example, this social advantage in all probability played a significant part in the 1970s during the conflict between the Aurovillagers and the Sri Aurobindo Society, when local and national law enforcement and authorities gave significant leeway to the Westerners in their (mis)behavior, and allowed the Westerners to indulge in extremely entitled, privileged and arrogant behavior, which included acts of violence. Then in the 1970s and 80s this social advantage was at least partly instrumental in the Aurovillagers being able to convince the Indian government to take over the project of Auroville from the Sri Aurobindo Society and in the process hand over the authority to administer Auroville to the Aurovilians. Ever since then, this social advantage has permitted the Western Aurovillagers, with the support of their Indian coconut allies, to govern Auroville with the kind of entitlement, arrogance and racism that can be currently found in locations and spaces on the backpacker tourist circuit throughout India.

Westerners also have a general economic advantage over Indians, since the economies and currencies of the countries they come from are stronger than the Indian currency. They use this economic advantage to full bullying and arrogant effect when they are in India, including on the aforementioned backpacker tourist circuit. And they have used this advantage in Auroville right from the beginning, to economically influence their way through various situations and circumstances at the local level. One of the main reasons why most Western Aurovillagers have come to Auroville is to live easy, laid-back lives where they can permanently exploit this economic advantage. Under the pretext of an international township that is aimed at human unity, these Aurovillagers have employed their entitlement and privilege to create a colonial enclave here that unfortunately has been allowed to exist for all this time. And they have succeeded in passing off this colonial enclave as that experiment in human unity and harmony to the outside world. And the socioeconomic advantages of Western Aurovillagers has gone a long way in helping this to happen.

Once again, India is a rapidly changing nation, and part of this rapid change is a slow growth in confidence and international exposure amongst Indians. As this change occurs and progresses, it will become harder and harder for Aurovillage to sustain the colonial enclave that it has created. There is a drastic need to change Auroville from the permanent backpacker tourist circuit destination that Aurovillage has converted it into over the past few decades, and change it to have a much more specific institutional atmosphere and purpose, as an institution that is seriously centered around the pursuit and propagation of Integral Yoga. This will lead to a completely different profile of people coming to Auroville, both among Indians as well as non-Indians. The more the focus is truly on Integral Yoga, the better Auroville will be able to realign itself to its true purpose. If the Western Aurovillagers had not been allowed to make rampant and blatant use of their socioeconomic advantages, and had instead been presented with the option of either adhering to the discipline of pursuing the (infinitely diverse) institutional purpose of Auroville or pursuing some other life purpose somewhere else, Auroville would be a very different place, and Aurovillage would have had a much shorter shelf life.

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The Auroville Foundation Act of 1988 in effect gave Aurovillage the official and legal backing to administer and therefore derail the project of Auroville. This was of course not the intention of the Act on the part of the Indian government, but it has nonetheless been the consequence of it. And this is very much a consequence that the Aurovillagers who pushed for the passing of the Act foresaw, hoped for and worked towards. This Act is currently being been used as the bases of all the court cases that Aurovillage has filed against the Indian government as part of the ongoing battle over administrative control of Auroville that has been playing out over the past three years. This Act also bestowed onto Aurovilians, and therefore onto the Aurovillagers who have controlled Auroville since the 1970s, the authority to choose who can become an Aurovilian through the entry and selection process. Aurovillage has used this most powerful tool in their administrative arsenal to prolong the life of Aurovillage for as long as possible. By doing their best to only allow in people who would either support Aurovillage or would at the least not threaten the control that Aurovillage has had over Auroville, they made sure that Aurovillage not only continued to survive, but in fact ensured that the power and authority of Aurovillage become more and more consolidated as the years went by. They also used this selection process to make sure that Auroville remained as a colonial enclave, by systematically rejecting, as far as they could, Indians who would question and challenge the colonial enclave and thus challenge Aurovillage.

The toxic and emotionally abusive social atmosphere that has been created by Aurovillage in Auroville is also a strong deterrent to anyone who challenges the authority and dominance of Aurovillage. The hostile and bullying aspects of this atmosphere are employed most potently against those people who stand up to Aurovillage. If a resident conforms and acquiesces to the diktats and social structure that Aurovillage has put in place, their exposure to the toxic negativity is minimized, and they are permitted to live in relative peace here. But anyone who questions and confronts Aurovillage and it ways of functioning faces the full brunt of the hostility and emotional abuse of Aurovillage and its administrative system. And after being the target of this negativity for a period of time, most people who stand up to Aurovillage either stop questioning its dominance or leave Auroville altogether, and Aurovillage continues its reign over the project.

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Another factor that has contributed to the longevity of Aurovillage has been the success that it has had in manufacturing and maintaining the spiritual and progressive facade behind which it hides the toxic, bullying and emotionally abusive reality of Auroville. This of course is related to the expertise in manipulativeness that Aurovillagers possess and has honed over the decades, the subjectivity of spirituality that they have exploited, and the ambiguity in the purpose of Auroville that they have been able to create and exploit till now. People who come to visit Auroville for short periods of time, or those who come here to volunteer and to experience Auroville for somewhat longer durations, have an expectation and a desire for a humanistically, spiritually and emotionally positive experience here, and that is what the facade very deliberately provides for them. Because the have come here pursuing this positive experience, they focus on the positives that the facade gives them, and ignore as much as possible the negatives that seep through the facade. Because of this expectation of positivity and the resultant experience of positivity that is strategically provided by Aurovillage, Auroville has garnered goodwill and a favorable reputation among people who have experienced Auroville only at the surface level, which is the majority of people who visit Auroville. The number of people who want to engage with Auroville more deeply is only a fraction of the people who visit here, and these are the ones who then experience the much more negative and hostile atmosphere that exists beneath the facade. When this second group of people leave Auroville and go back to where they came from, they carry their negative experiences with them, but on average the positive surface experiences and stories outnumber the deeper negative ones. However the stories of the negative experiences, especially of the Indians who have faced the rampant racism that exists here, have had their effect and are a significant part of the reason why the Indian government is now intervening in the administration of Auroville.

Apart from the facade, Aurovillage also has a very potent propaganda and outreach machine that spreads positive propaganda about Auroville to the outside world. As part of this, a handful of Aurovillagers have been engaged in lobbying the Indian government and authorities, right from the 1970s till now, to make sure that the authorities remain appeased and keep their distance from the administration of Auroville. This lobbying mechanism has now crumbled, even though the Aurovillagers are still desperately continuing their lobbying efforts. The Indian authorities had quite some time ago understood the reality of what is going on here, but for reasons described later in this post are taking their time in implementing the changes that are needed here. As part of the racist and entitled attitude of superiority that the Western Aurovillagers have, their assumption has been that Indians and the Indian authorities are easily manipulable. Their entitlement, arrogance and emotional dysfunctionality have kept them blind to or in denial of the changes that have been happening in India, and are the reasons why they have foolishly assumed that they can continue indefinitely to deceive and manipulate India and the world at large and continue to perpetrate the fraud and charade that they have been able to perpetrate till now. Thankfully all indications are that this charade will soon come to an end. The Aurovillagers are too arrogant and conceited to comprehend and recognize that even after the barrage of court cases that they have filed against the Indian government, after training their emotional abuse and toxicity towards Indian administrators, and after all their obnoxiously entitled and arrogant behavior over the past three years (and before), the Indian government is still treating them with kid gloves when it has absolutely no requirement to do so. These Aurovillagers are so delusional and demented that they are denouncing and abusing the Indian authorities and the Indian government while simultaneously lobbying and pleading with these same entities for a continuation of their administrative autonomy and sovereignty.

Just as there is an expectation of a positive experience among people who come to engage with Auroville, there is also an expectation of sanity, that Aurovilians will behave in a sane manner. Nobody who comes here, at least no one who exists within normal ranges of human sanity, has any expectation of there being the levels of emotional and psychological dysfunctionality, manipulation, duplicity, dishonesty and abuse that exist here. This only gets revealed slowly, over months and years, to people who continue their engagement with Auroville. Aurovillage as a network of manipulative and duplicitous people is such an anomaly, at least quantitatively if not qualitatively, even if we consider the dishonesty and duplicity that exists in the world at large, that it fools most people, and most people cannot really understand the levels to which the duplicity and dishonesty exists here. Aurovillage is so good at their deception, deceit and gaslighting that the incongruity, contradictions and the contrast between their positive, progressive and spiritualistic rhetoric and narratives on one hand and the racist and emotionally abusive reality that exists in Auroville on the other are really difficult to come to terms with. And all of this, the racism, emotional abuse, manipulation and deception is done not in an overt and direct manner, but in a covert, indirect, passive-aggressive manner. Everything is hidden behind a facade of calmness and stoicity that only extremely emotionally abusive and manipulative people can pull off. As mentioned above, sane people only slowly realize the levels of emotional dysfunctionality that exist here here, and most of them simply leave. Among the people who stay, the sane ones do so without opposing the insanity too much, and the emotionally abusive and manipulative ones add to and contribute to the insanity. This has resulted in the longevity and continuation of the insanity of Aurovillage.

In other words, the level of pathological lying in Aurovillage is actually quite unbelievable. It is very difficult for people to understand and deal with even a single malignant narcissist person, and here we have a situation where an entire group of malignant narcissists is working in tandem to maintain stupendous divergences between rhetoric and reality, between what they say and what their actions are. Through the entry and selection process, this group has been able to control access to the reality behind the facade so that it is even harder to expose them and their insanity. Whenever sane people are able to gain entry into the reality and decide to stay in Auroville, because they want to retain sanity in their lives, they tend to block off the insanity, emotional abuse and gaslighting of Aurovillage. This makes the remembering and documenting of the insanity of Aurovillage even more difficult to pursue. The utter expertise that Aurovillage has in pathological lying, emotionally manipulative and malignant behavior, duplicity and deception have all contributed to the success of Aurovillage for all these decades. And part of their expertise is that they do all this with such a straight face that it is extremely difficult to realize that they are doing it. This is the level of psychological pathology that Aurovillage has accumulated within itself over the decades, which seems quite unbelievable for people who have only interacted with Auroville superficially, but all too familiar with sane people who have interacted with Auroville more deeply.

In all probability there will be some kind of an emotional and psychological reckoning in Auroville when the emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave are finally forced to close shop. There will be some kind of collective emotional and psychological outburst from Aurovillage that will be a sign of just how psychologically warped the Aurovillagers were. If this reckoning does not attract some kind of professional psychological evaluation of Aurovillage, it will be very difficult in the post-Aurovillage era to remember and understand the levels of psychological dysfunctionality and the scale and pervasiveness of pathological lying that was rampant, especially in the core group of Aurovillagers. Whether the correct technical term is malignant narcissism or collective sociopathy or whatever else, the levels of dishonesty and duplicity among Aurovillagers has been and is difficult to comprehend. And since as a group they have over time developed sophisticated common narratives and rhetoric, they all repeat the same duplicitous and dishonest arguments and reasonings that take advantage of the subjectivity of spirituality, the ambiguity around the purpose of Auroville, and the uncertainty and vagueness surrounding supposed progressive terms and concepts such as “human unity”, “freedom”, “flexibility” and “exploring ones self”. The fact that these terms, which we hear often in Auroville, are not contextualized within a philosophical and ideological framework make them effective and powerful weapons for Auroville to use in their manipulative rhetorical arsenal. The constant repetition of these narratives and arguments within this subjective milieu by people who are basically expert liars and actually think that they are speaking the truth because they do not have the emotional capacity to comprehend that they are lying, makes these narratives extremely convincing. And the reason why they do not have the emotional capacity to comprehend that they are lying is because they have so much at stake and are so deeply invested at an emotional and psychological level in maintaining the emotional sanctuary that they have created in Auroville, that they have convinced themselves that their lies are the truth. They are as a collective living in a completely delusional alternate reality here, where many of them actually believe that they are virtuous beings leading virtuous lives, chosen to come here by the Divine or The Mother. And they have an existential stake in the continuation of this alternate reality, because the other option is returning to the reality of the outside world from which they have run away in the first place. Part of the reason why I am writing this series of posts describing the emotional dysfunctionality of Aurovillage is so that, if no other psychological evaluation or study of Aurovillage takes place in the future, at least there will be these posts that will have documented just what has been going on here. And if Aurovillage does undergo an emotional and psychological reckoning and outburst, there will in all probability be a dire need for psychological assistance for many Aurovillagers.

The ambiguity around the purpose and aims of Auroville that Aurovillage has fostered since the 1970s was literally enshrined in the Auroville Foundation Act of 1988. It was purposefully put in there at the behest of the Aurovillagers, who lobbied for the aims of Auroville to be kept ambiguous in the Act so that they could manipulate and control the project. Aurovillage deceitfully took advantage of the diversity and variation of action that The Mother had wanted in Auroville to remove even the central core purpose of Auroville, which is Integral Yoga, from being mentioned in the Act. This error needs to be rectified, and the ambiguity needs to be removed and replaced by the diversity and variety that Integral Yoga not just allows but represents. This in itself will sound the death knell of Aurovillage.

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While all the factors mentioned above have contributed to the prolongation of Aurovillage, the most important factor has been what can be understood as Auroville existing in a “Goldilocks Zone”. During the time that The Mother established Auroville in 1968, she and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram had very good relations with some of the most important politicians and bureaucrats in India, and had a certain amount of recognition in general in India. For these reasons Auroville also received some amount of visibility and recognition in the years after it was inaugurated. Some of the early Aurovillagers and their allies also had their own connections with Indian politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists. As mentioned earlier, after the passing of The Mother in 1973, these Aurovillagers were able to convince the Indian government to take over the running of Auroville, institutionalize the project as a Foundation, and within this institutional framework also grant Aurovilians a large amount of administrative autonomy. So in the 1970s and 80s the Aurovillagers were able to use their connections, and the legacy of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, to obtain a legal status for Auroville as an official institution, and therefore a certain amount of official legitimacy from the Indian government. However after that, from the 1990s onwards, it does not seem like the Indian government was too keen to pay much attention to Auroville, to fund its development, or to bother too much with the activities and goings on within Auroville. A small amount of funding started to be allocated by the Indian government to Auroville for specific activities such as education and physical infrastructure, but other than that the government basically ceded the oversight of Auroville to the Governing Board that had been set up as part of the Auroville Foundation. So Auroville found itself in a position in the 1990s where it had been given an institutional status and a certain amount of institutional recognition by the Indian government, but the Indian government was not really interested in Auroville, its activities or its spiritual purpose. Auroville therefore found itself in a Goldilocks Zone where it had a certain amount of official and legal standing and support, but no one in the Indian administration really cared for it enough to commit to proper oversight, funding or development. In this “just right” state of limbo, Aurovillage was able to thrive and flourish and maintain its stranglehold over Auroville. It was able to translate the little bit of recognition and funding that Auroville got to sustain itself and the autonomous administrative and social structure it had created within the isolated bubble of Auroville, supplement that with economic activities and fundraising, and there wasn’t enough interest or oversight for anyone to really bother to investigate and intervene in the running of the project. All that Aurovillage had to do was lobby and persuade the few Indian officials who were charged with Auroville’s oversight, and they basically could do whatever they wanted here. And even though successive Governing Boards kept flagging serious issues with the administration and development of Auroville, as did many regular Aurovilians, there was no one in the Indian government who was paying enough attention to Auroville or cared for it enough to take up the task of seriously bringing about any changes.

So Auroville and its purpose were never a priority for the Indian government. Neither adequate funds nor attention were given to the project to develop it into a township as The Mother had envisioned, nor even to steer it in the direction that it should have been moving in. Even in the current situation, even though the Indian government seems to be showing more of an interest in Auroville and its purpose, it is still not high enough of a priority for the government to make quick changes, which is why the change is taking so much time to implement. If Auroville had been higher in priority, the changes would be happening much quicker and more efficiently. In this situation, the death rattle of Aurovillage is being prolonged.

All these factors discussed above have been responsible for Aurovillage still being the dominant and controlling faction in Auroville. Hopefully the current impasse that Auroville is in vis-a-vis bringing about the much needed administrative changes will soon be resolved, and Aurovillage will soon fade into oblivion, though they will not go away without a fight to the end, because they have an existential desperation in maintaining their hold over Auroville. Nonetheless fade away they will, because common sense, the natural passage of time and the changing world around them dictates that this is an inevitability. It is only possible for a group of racist, many of whom can only be described as white supremacist, delusional, emotionally dysfunctional and malignant Westerners and their equally emotionally dysfunctional and malignant Indian enablers to cling to the 1970s within an insular bubble for so long before they are forced to confront a very different present day reality, and the bubble bursts. We therefore have a very different Auroville to look forward to, and the hope is that the changes that the Indian government brings about realigns Auroville towards the pursuit of Integral Yoga as promulgated by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and Auroville begins to fulfill its role as a beacon of Integral Yoga as the path for humanity to move towards a harmonious and united future.

(This post was originally published on October 17, 2024 and then updated and reposted on October 28, 2024)