Highways and byways

I’ve always been fascinated by the contrast between highways and byways. In Auroville the byways – the cycle and footpaths – may be only separated from the highways by a few metres, but what a difference!

The hard, gradually curving highway encourages speed and a focus upon getting to one’s destination as quickly as possible. The winding, uneven byways, however, force you to slow down, to pay attention to what is beneath you, around you, as you negotiate tree roots, potholes and low-hanging branches. In this slower world, you absorb the different shades, textures and smells, you have more time to greet the people that you meet, and to cultivate a more meditative, less goal-oriented, state of mind. 

But there are many other ways of interpreting highways and byways. Culturally, the highways can be seen to represent reason and commonsense. The byways are the subterranean, less rational influences which are sometimes the springs of true creativity and inspiration.  In ancient Greece, for example, it was represented by the Apollonian sunlit highway versus the dark Dionysian byways. The highways and byways can also be seen in the arts and culture as the contrast between mainstream and the underground movements which challenge or reject the prevailing orthodoxy.  Of course, what begins as an underground or avant-garde movement often turns out to influence the mainstream or even, like psychedelic art, rap or punk, becomes mainstream in turn, or prized by the mainstream. Note, for example, the recent astronomical prices paid at auction for Banksy’s street art. 

In fact, in the cultural world there often seems to be a mutually dependent relationship between mainstream and underground. The mainstream creates the need for an underground movement to question or explode its conventions, yet the underground sometimes needs the mainstream as some kind of referent, even if that reference is ironic (as in ‘culture jamming’).  

The highways of life are also the public sphere, the official version of what is happening or happened, and of how decisions are made. The byways are the hidden springs of action, the hidden relationships, considerations and personal agendas which often shape public activity.

In Auroville, the highways are our official policies which are discussed in public forums and executed by our appointed groups. The byways are the hidden concerns and motivations which underlie our public discussions, as well as the undercover and backdoor dealings, the shadow politics, through which certain individuals and groups seek to manipulate the community to their own advantage. The highways are also the institutions we create to serve the community – the Financial Service, FAMC, Health Fund etc. – while the byways are the human relationships and informal groups, the invisible glue of this community, which often fill the gaps when our institutions fail.  

As individuals, too, we have our highways and byways. Our highway is the face we project to the world, the way we like to be seen by others and by ourselves. The byways are the hidden influences, fears, aspirations, which shape our behaviour but of which we are often unaware.  

Finally, yoga itself, as that famous drawing of Mother makes clear (see illustration), has its highway and its byways. The highway is the direct route to the Divine, the byways our wanderings in ordinary life.  What is interesting about the yoga highway, however, is that it integrates the finest qualities of the byways – the opportunity to celebrate the moment and to dive deeper into the self – while it redefines goal-oriented activity as a profound, directed aspiration, not the frenzied pursuit of goals on the hard-metaled highways of life.