Offerings on the 50th birthday

The exhibition in the Town Hall entitled ‘Matrimandir : A Labour of Love’ has archive photos of pioneers building the Matrimandir. There are also shots of the disc-cleaners at work today along with beautiful images of the structure and the gardens. Interspersed are a number of texts. “The quotations I displayed to evoke Auroville’s fiftieth anniversary are of particular importance,” says Paulette. “The beginning of “The Hour of God” highlights two antithetical possibilities. The ‘Hour of God’, Sri Aurobindo writes, is a period when little effort produces great results and changes destiny. However, Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it. Isn’t this where we are? If we miss our chance Auroville will happen anyhow, but it may take a very long time.

I have also displayed a quotation from Mother on the true hierarchy in Auroville, which is spiritual: as one advances on the Path the material needs drop spontaneously.”

What was the intention behind the exhibition? “It was an attempt to reconstruct what we have lost, but not completely, for some newcomers still convey that aspiration as it is immortal,” explains Paulette. “Many Aurovilians feel that some of that early spirit was gone when we stopped working physically at Matrimandir. But when I am taking photographs of the people cleaning discs, I feel that the human vessels change yet the urge is the same: those who built the Matrimandir in miraculous conditions do acrobatics cleaning its discs today.”

“Once, in the eighties after cleaning clamps for hours in the Matrimandir chamber, I felt as if I was floating in the sky; even patches of dry cement were a work of art. This is why I am into macro photography because the camera has the eye of a yogi, catching the beauty of infinitesimal details in densest matter. But couldn’t this be the key to the joyful work on the Matrimandir construction, turning life at the basic Camp into a blissful experience?”

What was that earlier spirit? “Simple, sattwic living. People like Ruud Lohman, highly cultured, lived very simply because their mode of life was spiritual, making material possessions redundant. I had come for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and yet in that early Auroville I felt at home, humbled by the joyful daring of the pioneers. Conversely, now we are building in such an ostentatious way that we only attract people who want to live that way. So I felt it necessary to remind us what the real Auroville is; this is the raison d’être of these two exhibitions.”

The early days of Auroville are the theme of Paulette’s second exhibition, ‘I Invite You to the Great Adventure’, held in Pitanga. “Exclusively dedicated to the pioneers without whom Auroville would not have ever been possible, through photographs by Dominique Darr and others, it shows what life in Auroville was like when there was nothing but sand. It needed the bravery of ardent souls, defying outer impossibilities in pursuit of the Dream.”

Paulette feels that the main problem in Auroville is that today there is little awareness of Indian spirituality; nor are we aware of the long tradition of Western mysticism and that the summit is one, whatever the path chosen. This lack of awareness hampers the understanding of integral yoga and of the inner Auroville.

She sets out to remedy this perception in a beautifully produced book for children of all ages, The Little Child and the Holy Knight: a Vedantin Tale.

“The journey has to start from childhood – the sooner the better – when the psychic being is still to the forefront and the sense of the marvellous is fully awake. Mother wrote that if you ‘build a beautiful story as a child... it will tend to come into material manifestation.’ Portraying the inner experiences of a child in the form of upanishadic questioning and, as a youngster, visions of sages preparing for a new world and consciousness, the book is a synthesis of integral yoga and advaita vedanta – the summit of Indian spirituality – as a pathway to the gnostic society of supramental beings.”

Paulette reveals that the book was based on her own experiences as a child. Her grandfather was a Futurist painter and the images on the front and back cover and a few others are by him. She has also used images by the greatest fairy tales illustrators, by Futurists and Deconstructivist artists, as well as photographs of the Matrimandir and of nature as a visual representation of the unfolding story.

“All this is my offering to Auroville on its 50th birthday.”