The pitfalls and promises of joining Auroville

If you join Auroville looking for a spiritual utopia, look again. If you are expecting a city of divine peace, where people wear white, have blissful smiles and sit in circles chanting “Om”, radiating the tranquility and serenity you have always longed for, think again. If you think that your presence in Auroville will be welcomed and you will talk with interest, better change your assumptions. For Auroville isn’t like that.

Seen from a superficial level, Auroville is a city where people live their lives just like everywhere else in the world. Aurovilians have their difficulties, their relationship ups and downs, feel happy, sad, content, at peace, in bliss – just like anywhere else.

The difference is at a deeper level. From what I have seen and experienced, there is an energy in Auroville so powerful that it will force you to change. Whatever you have run from, denied, hidden, been afraid of, or spent your life shutting your eyes to, you will be forced to face it. That energy will bring every demon in the darkest corners of your being to the surface, it will turn you inside out, knock the stuffing out of you, all in order to change you.

If you are here for only a few weeks or months you may be lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) if it doesn’t happen to you. But if you are thinking of coming to Auroville for a prolonged period of time, prepare for the ride of your life. For the power of this place is not seen, it is felt through your blood, your cells, through the very air you breathe. Your soul feels this, your spirit reacts and answers the call, if you are ready.

That energy not only brings up what was hidden, but also the help to conquer. It manifests through your fellow Aurovilians, who will be there as and when you need them. You’ll find healers who will allow you to scream and shout and cry out your pain with an understanding, calmness and acceptance so great it will shock you. You will find a support system here like none you have ever known before.

I myself have been through this ‘hell’ and am still partly within it. Soon after I joined Auroville, I started working but my four-year old back pain got gradually worse. Though I tried hard to ignore it and said to myself “NO this is NOT happening”, the inevitable happened. I fell apart. It was as if, because I would not look at the truth, my body took over and stopped working, leaving me only wanting to sleep and cry. For I was feeling pain like never before, a non-physical pain. I was facing the torment of my own inner demons and the traumas of my past, the dark hidden secrets deep inside. But I have been helped – by my fellow Aurovilians who did so without condition or judgment.

Since then I have been moving slowly but surely forward, in territories I never had the courage to enter before. It may be two steps forwards and one step back but it is still a movement and it is a gift. It makes me aware of the reality of having the Divine, the Mother’s presence within oneself, throughout and around. I am One, I am loved and I will come through this. This I know with absolute surety.

So, for now, my priority is working through whatever needs to be worked through, whatever the energy of Auroville brings up, with the help, support and love of the family I have found. I do so with the absolute knowledge that I will become stronger and forever changed and healed in ways that I never could have imagined.