Finding Auroville

When discussing the various issues related to the malediction that is Aurovillage, it is important to point out a specific group of people within it, who could be called the Children of Aurovillage. In Auroville there is a special category known as “Children of Auroville”, which includes anyone born and raised in Auroville, or who came to Auroville as a young child. These children have grown up in Auroville and most of them have studied in Aurovilian schools. Since Auroville was established more than 50 years ago, many of these (erstwhile) children are now in their 20s, 30s, 40s and some even in their 50s. Many Children of Auroville decide to leave Auroville once they become adults, but some decide to stay on here or return to Auroville after spending some time outside, and become Aurovilians. We have defined Aurovillagers as those Aurovilians who have a stake in maintaining Auroville as an insular bubble. The Children of Aurovillage can be defined as those Children of Auroville who: a) are now adults in their mid-20s or older and have decided to live their lives in Auroville, and b) have a stake in maintaining Auroville as an insular bubble. And just as the majority of Aurovillagers are Westerners, the majority of the Children of Aurovillage are also Westerners, in fact in all probability overwhelmingly so. In some cases these Children of Aurovillage have been working very hard and very shrilly, over the past three years and even before that, as part of the core group of Aurovillagers, to try and make sure that their insular Auroville bubble remains intact.

While most Aurovillagers come from outside of Auroville to live within the perverse insular emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave of Auroville, what makes the case of the Children of Aurovillage particular and intriguing is that they were born within the insular bubble or came to live here as young children, and have still chosen to stay within it and support its protection and continuation. It is quite easy to understand the attraction for Westerners, including the Children of Aurovillage, to want to live relatively easy and cheap lives in Auroville. What is more interesting to analyze is the aspect of emotional dysfunctionality and insincerity that is needed to be an Aurovillager, and how that fits in with the case of the Children of Aurovillage. The Aurovillagers who settle in Auroville bring their emotional dysfunctionality and insincerity from the outside, and come here specifically because their emotional dysfunctionality makes it difficult for them to live their lives in the regular outside world. However in the case of the Children of Aurovillage, they seem to have been made emotional dysfunctional and insincere within the perverse emotional sanctuary of Auroville. They readily participate in the emotional abuse, malignancy, duplicity and manipulativeness that is the hallmark of Aurovillage, and their ability to lie and live lives of insincerity and dishonesty is on power with the Aurovillagers who have come pre-emotionally-dysfunctional from the outside. And the fact that they have also been raised within a colonial enclave means that they have either assimilated the racism that is rampant in the enclave, or have come to consider it to be something that is acceptable as a fundamental part of their lives and are at ease with the racism. In this post I will delve a little deeper into these aspects of the Children of Aurovillage.

Since Auroville is in India (despite the constant contestations of Aurovillagers to the contrary), there are no international immigration laws that restrict the movement and activities of Indians between Auroville and any other part of India. And so for Indian Children of Auroville, there are no legal restrictions on studying, working or living either inside the institution of Auroville or outside of it. However for non-Indian Children of Auroville, these restrictions definitely apply. They are living and working in Auroville on special visas, and they along with all the other non-Indian Aurovilians spend their entire lives here on this special Aurovilian visa status. I do not know of a single case of a non-Indian Aurovilian who has obtained Indian citizenship, though a small few have tried, and a few have OCI status. So non-Indians Aurovilians are, technically and legally at least, restricted in terms of working, earning and even living in India outside of the few square kilometers of the institution of Auroville. For non-Indian Children of Auroville, this means that even though they were born in Auroville or came here at a very early age, and though they have grown up here and lived all or most of their lives here, they can only legally work and live within the small area of land that is Auroville.

The alternative for these Children of Auroville would be to go back to their home country, which is the country that they hold a passport from, for education, work and to live their lives away from Auroville. Many of them do just that. However some of these people, growing up and living within the insular bubble, have become culturally alienated from their home country, and are therefore kind of stuck in Auroville. Others go back to their home country, stay there for a while, and then decide to return. For these people, what they are returning to, or what they cannot leave, is not the ideal of Auroville as an experiment in and propagator of Integral Yoga. What they are returning to or staying put in is the emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave. This is what is “home” to them. There is almost nothing in their upbringing here that has taught them what Integral Yoga is, what the actual teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are, or that the purpose of Auroville is Integral Yoga. In fact what they were taught is the opposite of this philosophy which is fundamentally rooted in sincerity: they were taught to be dishonest, duplicitous and manipulative about the purpose of Auroville so that they can continue to maintain that insular bubble. Some of these Children of Aurovillage go to the West for higher education and then return. They get bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and a few even obtain PhDs, mostly specializing in fields within the purview of environmental studies and social studies. When they return, they employ their acquired knowledge and skill not in helping Auroville to truly move in the direction of the intellectual and spiritual humanism that it is supposed to aspire towards, but instead in aiding the manipulativeness and duplicity that goes into the preservation and continuation of the emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave.

As mentioned above, for the Aurovillagers who come from the outside, it is their emotional dysfunctionality and emotional malignancy that drives them to come and live in Auroville, because to be a part of Aurovillage one has to have a certain level of emotional dysfunctionality as a base criterion. In the case of the Children of Aurovillage then, the question arises: is their emotional dysfunctionality implanted in them during their childhoods in Auroville? We need to keep in mind that when we are talking of these Children of Aurovillage, we are talking of only those Children of Auroville who are now well into adulthood, have decided to stay in Auroville or return to it, and who are supporting and working towards the continuation of Auroville as an isolated, insular bubble. If any of these three criteria are not met, then they are not Children of Aurovillage as is being discussed here. If we study the actions and intentions of these Children of Aurovillage, we have to conclude that yes, they have been made emotionally dysfunctional by their upbringing in Auroville. Aurovillage, which includes the parents of this group of children and the other elders that they have grown up around, has brainwashed and indoctrinated them into becoming Aurovillagers as well, with the accompanying emotional dysfunctionality, often emotional malignancy; the acceptance of and promulgation of an emotionally abusive conformity; the willingness to be manipulative and duplicitous; the willingness to lead lives steeped and pickled in dishonesty and pathological lying and falsehood; and steeped in the overt or covert racism, or at the least being an accessory to racism, that is necessary to be an Aurovillager.

The indoctrination that these Children of Aurovillage are subjected to includes convincing them that they are special and superior, especially vis-a-vis the Indians that they live amongst. They all possess the belief that they can in perpetuity continue to manipulate and deceive Indians and the Indian authorities. If they didn’t have this belief they would not be behaving in ways that clearly indicate that they think they can. And their belief is not based on naivety, it is based on delusion. In this way the Western Children of Aurovillage are inculcated with the delusion of Western superiority that most of the Aurovillagers live with and have brought with them from the outside. The Children of Aurovillage are also trained in the staple Aurovillage techniques of passive-aggressiveness and the outward display of a calm facade while indulging in extremely emotionally abusive actions and rhetoric, which are the signs of a person with a fractured personality.

Many of these Children of Aurovillage behave as if they believe that the abusive and toxic community that exists here and which they have been a part of since childhood is a positive endeavor, and is what Auroville is supposed to be. The conformity, exclusion and emotional abuse that exist in Auroville are presented as being part of the spiritual and progressive superiority that Aurovillagers possess over those who do not conform and who do not accept the emotionally toxic and abusive atmosphere. This is the level of depravity and delusion that exists in Aurovillage. The Aurovillagers have literally indoctrinated their children into believing that emotional abuse, manipulation and insistence on conformity to the diktats of Aurovillage is what Auroville is about as a spiritual experiment, and that as children of Aurovillage they need to be experts in these traits to show that they are special, superior and exceptional. Spirituality, Integral Yoga and the words and writings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are not teachings that need to be studied, understood and pursued with sincerity and dedication, but rather are the subject matter and tools with which people are to be rhetorically manipulated and deceived for the preservation of the insular bubble.

In a way, it is not that surprising that someone who has grown up in the perverse emotional sanctuary of Aurovillage would end up normalizing its emotional dysfunctionality and malignancy, and think that this is what the world at large is like, or at least what life in Auroville is supposed to be like. In such an atmosphere, manipulating and deceiving people is seen as a sign of intelligence and superiority, and so the malignant tendencies of narcissists that lead to such manipulative and duplicitous behavior become normalized in these Children of Aurovillage. In other words they have either internalized the pleasure that malignant narcissists get when they deceive and defraud others, or they do not really know of any other way to behave, at least here in Auroville. Duplicity and deception then become a way of life, and are justified by the goal of keeping the perverse insular bubble of Auroville intact. If we observe their behavior, body language and facial expressions closely, we can detect within the facade of calmness and impassivity an unmistakable quality of rigidity and stiffness that betrays a strong element of emotional straight-jacketing. This is true for both Aurovillagers and well as the Children of Aurovillage. And among some of the Aurovillagers, if we observe closely, their eyes sometimes betray the utterly panicked, desperate insecurity that hides behind the meticulously maintained ocular facade of arrogance, strength and determination.

The parents of these Children of Aurovillage had themselves come to Auroville to run away from the outside world, to come and live in the emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave that has been created here. These parents are examples of the Aurovillagers who are unable to function in the outside world due to their emotional dysfunctionality and malignancy, and so have come to find shelter in the perverse emotional sanctuary of Auroville. It should come as no surprise then that these parents have raised their children with the same manipulative and duplicitous traits, and have inculcated in their children the same manipulative and duplicitous attributes.

Along with this aspect of indoctrination, there is another powerful motivation for these Children of Aurovillagers to be dedicated to the preservation of the insular bubble, and that is the entitlement and privilege that they enjoy here in Auroville. In this way, the entitlement and privilege that Western Aurovillagers who come to Auroville from the outside demand and exist with here is also bestowed onto the Western Children of Aurovillage who are born here. In fact they are given even more entitlement than the Aurovillagers who come from the outside. They are treated preferentially in their schools and while they are growing up, they are given jobs, access to money-making opportunities and amenities, and they are provided for and supported by the Auroville system in much more preferential ways than others. Many of them are given houses surrounded by acres of land that they treat as their private property. They are living a quality of life here that would be unheard of back in their home countries for anyone other than very affluent people. And they end up expecting these privileges that are given to them on a silver platter as being part and parcel of their lives here. They develop a sense of ownership over Auroville, and convince themselves that they belong here more than anyone else. When they go to the West to visit, study or work, they experience how “difficult” life is in the “real world”, and come running back to embrace their Aurovillage lives of entitlement and ease.

Part of the backward-looking nature of Aurovillage is a celebration and reverence of the “pioneers” of Auroville who came here in the early years; a hierarchy based on how long people have been living here; and the placing of the Children of Aurovillage, many of whom are the children of these “pioneers”, on a pedestal. And the racist nature of Aurovillage is betrayed by the fact that this reverence, hierarchy and pedestal are mostly reserved for Westerners. This is the “royalty” of Auroville whose privilege, entitlement and exceptionalism Aurovillage fights with all its might to preserve as part of the insular bubble.

The sheltered upbringing, entitlement, nepotistic advantage and sense of ownership that these Children of Aurovillage have in Auroville makes it very compelling for them to strive to save the insular bubble and colonial enclave within which they enjoy all these privileges. If Auroville opens up and many more people come here, the emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave will collapse, and along with that their advantage and privilege will collapse as well. Life in Auroville without all this special treatment will be very different, and they are not at all interested in letting that go. And so they willingly and eagerly become part of the manipulation machine of Auroville, partaking in the propaganda that promotes the facade of Auroville and hides the reality behind it, and by being part of the activities of the facade. The Children of Aurovillage are given preference in becoming part of the administrative structure of Auroville, where they can exert power and control along with the other Aurovillagers. The Children of Aurovillage are poised to “inherit” Auroville from their elders, in terms of control over administration; being part of the hierarchy of authority; control over Auroville’s resources and assets; and access to money-making opportunities. They want to make sure that the insular bubble of Auroville remains intact so that they can indeed inherit this unique socioeconomic windfall.

The colonial enclave and perverse emotional sanctuary that Auroville is being run as is producing Western Children of Aurovillage who think that they are special people who are the proprietors and inheritors of Auroville, and have the divine right to administer Auroville for their benefit while selling Auroville to the outside world as an international community working towards human unity. The socioeconomic system that has been put in place by Aurovillage makes sure that Auroville has actually been functioning in ways that allows these Children of Aurovillage to live here akin to a class of nobility.

In a previous post I had mentioned that if Aurovillage were to be studied by psychologists, it would probably be studied as a cult. And if the framework of a cult is the correct one to study Aurovillage with, the cult aspect would be strongest amongst the Children of Aurovillage, since they have been indoctrinated from an early age. However, the fact that both Aurovillagers and the Children of Aurovillage have deeply vested interests in the maintaining of the insular bubble of Auroville might take the shine away from the cult hypothesis. As discussed above, these vested interests include an easy and cheap life; power, control and authority within the bubble; an escape from the outside world into an insular sanctuary that allows them to exist with their emotional dysfunctionality and malignancy; and the ability to live lives of entitlement and privilege. In a way, the purpose of the indoctrination of the Children of Aurovillage is so that they can continue to maintain the insular bubble within which they benefit greatly. The longer that Aurovillage is allowed to exist, the more the Aurovillagers and the Children of Aurovillage get entrenched in and dependent on the insular bubble, and the more desperate they become to hold on to their power and control over the bubble. This entrenchment and desperation has unfortunately already been allowed to fester and grow for way too long by the Indian authorities, and when the bubble of Aurovillage bursts now, it will be quite catastrophic for Aurovillage and its progeny.

And when the insular bubble, emotional sanctuary and colonial enclave of Auroville finally does come to an end, the inevitable emotional and psychological reckoning and outburst that Aurovillage will go through will be most concentratedly seen among the Children of Aurovillage. This will signify the level of dysfunctionality among this group, and the indoctrination that they have been subjected to by their Aurovillage elders who were ostensibly supposed to be looking out for them. The outburst, in whatever form it will occur, will reveal the fact that this group of people have not been living in the insular bubble of Auroville to work towards any kind of spiritual or progressive purpose, but instead because they have become emotionally and logistically beholden to and stuck in the bubble. It will reveal the level to which they had become emotionally attached to the privileged and entitled life they were living within the bubble. This is the predicament that the Children of Aurovillage find themselves in today. The world that Aurovillage has created within the insular bubble of Auroville is so perverse, so far away from what it should be, so unacceptable by any norms of basic decency, leave alone the higher human tendencies that Auroville is supposed to aspire towards, and has been allowed to fester for so long, that the end of the bubble will be quite catastrophic for the Aurovillagers.

Instead of this depravity masquerading as an international community, Auroville, as an experiment in Integral Yoga, is supposed to be providing the children growing up here and studying in its schools an Integral Education following the guidelines set by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and worldwide best-practices of pedagogy aimed at a well-rounded, empathic and humanistic education. While Integral Yoga is shunned by Aurovillage other than for completely disingenuous rhetorical purposes, even they acknowledge that the schools in Auroville need to be engaged in Integral Education. Unfortunately, like everything else that Aurovillage does, this is pursued in a completely superficial, duplicitous and insincere manner.

One of the main pedagogical tasks that Auroville should be engaged in within the arena of basic and secondary education is research into the elaboration of what Integral Education actually entails, what it’s goals are, and how it connects with the movement of humanity towards a more sattwic, egalitarian, harmonious and peaceful world at one level, and towards a spiritualized, gnostic humanity at the next level. In other words, education in Auroville should be founded on inculcating in students a deep and fundamental aspiration for intellectual and spiritual humanism, and providing them with the tools and skills to work towards that aspiration. This pursuit should be the reason why parents come to Auroville and put their children in Auroville schools. And then the Children of Auroville who stay on in Auroville for the rest of their lives should be those who have understood the purpose of Auroville as an experiment in Integral Yoga, and have decided to dedicate their lives to that purpose or to the support of that purpose. These are the parameters that should apply to anyone wanting to come and live in Auroville as well.

The Mother has said that she knows with certainty that Auroville will become a center for Integral Education and the teaching of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga at all levels. The best possible outcome of the changes that are currently taking place in Auroville will be a concerted effort and progress in this direction to truly make Auroville an educational center for the propagation and dissemination of Integral Yoga. If the bursting of the insular bubble that Auroville currently exists as leads to this outcome, it will be a giant stride in moving Auroville towards this vision that The Mother had foreseen, and towards the fulfillment of the purpose of Auroville as a center for the propagation of Integral Yoga. This is the exciting, uplifting, dynamic and challenging aim for the development of Auroville that everyone here should be focused on and dedicated to. The universal township that Auroville is supposed to develop into is meant to support this universal educational purpose and educational institution, in whichever way it emerges and evolves. This is the “site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity” that the Auroville Charter alludes to. This is what Aurovilians should dedicate their lives to, and it is towards this aim that Indians and the Indian government have given their support to Auroville, and are allowing an international institution to exist in India. This is the aim that has been derailed and hijacked by Aurovillage for more than five decades.