The sense of community

Auroville Today: How do you experience, or how have you experienced, community in Auroville?

Sathish: I joined Auroville in 2007 and for some years I was just trying to sustain my life. Using my computer skills, for a long time I helped the wider community in initiatives like fundraising for land, but in those years community for me was primarily the settlement where I live. But since I joined the Residents Assembly Service two years ago, I’ve learned a lot about the wider community of Auroville and the other meaning of the word ‘community’. 

In recent times, I experienced a sense of that larger community when many of us came together in a General Meeting to discuss serious allegations made against Auroville. There was a real feeling of togetherness, a sense that we all care for Auroville and each other.

Alain: My experience of community was quite shaped by what happened in the 1970s. I came in 1973 and very soon there was a fight with the Sri Aurobindo Society. This created a strong sense of community, at least among the so-called ‘French group’, for when there is feeling of threat it helps to bring people together.

But as for what the real community of Auroville is, while I’m sure it exists, it’s… a mystery. Maybe it’s something to do with an assembly of souls brought together to do a certain work.  

But there is also the very human aspect of the community. On several occasions, close friends who became seriously sick told me how deeply touched they were to discover the care and tenderness of Aurovilians. It was a very deep experience for them. So, in a way, living here is like being in a family where you often fight with your siblings, but if one of them is suffering you all come together to support them. 

Manoj: My sense of community began strongly the moment I landed here in 1995. I got off the bus and asked the way to Auroville, somebody pointed up the road, and I began walking.  Then somebody with a bullock cart gave me a lift to the Aurelec turning, and then another man on a moped gave me a lift. This man, who I had sensed was an Aurovilian, took me home, gave me breakfast and explained what Auroville is. And immediately I had this feeling of being welcomed, as if I was coming home.

Does that strong sense of community remain with you today?

Manoj: After joining I started learning about the outer aspects of Auroville, some of which are not so attractive, but that soul connection, the sense that I belong to a family presided over by Mother and Sri Aurobindo, has never left me. The rest is just the outer details that keep changing. I don’t really get disturbed by the diversity of opinions or the struggles that are part of the churning here because it’s only on the surface:  below there is solidity.

Alain: One thing I remember clearly from some early Pour Tous meetings was the moments of ‘grace’ when somebody would say something, there was this ripple, and everybody felt, yes, yes, that’s it!. It’s because people were listening to each other, but also calling for something, calling intensely for guidance. I don’t experience this in our meetings today. Now we are either lectured to or we just sit and look at screens.  There is hardly a feeling of being together.

Are there other challenges today to experiencing community in a living way?

Alain: If Auroville is as important as Mother said, it’s not obvious we can easily reach harmony because there will be forces which will try their best to disrupt it. And they are being quite successful at present. I don’t know what we can do but I wonder if the present system has a future because it doesn’t seem to be bringing us closer together. 

Manoj: At the moment, some seem to equate collective intelligence with majority votes. But it’s not. Besides, it’s the voice of the collective soul we must discern. But to hear this signal, we have to filter out all the noise. When I became involved in Auronet, I imagined that we would be able to harness multiple voices and get that signal. But I was naïve about human nature; I was naïve to think it would show up through so-called freedom of expression. On the Auronet discussion forum today, I would say 80% is sub-rational, some 15% is the voice of reason and only 5% the voice of the soul.

Sathish: In the RAS we try to be as neutral as possible but at times both working groups and residents complain about us. We’re not perfect, but I tend to lose my sense of community when people don’t try, don’t make any effort,  to understand what we’re trying to do or how we operate, or when they start pointing fingers at the RAS when they don’t get their own way in something.

Manoj: But I have seen the true community coming forward in moments of crisis. When the tsunami hit, there were no big discussions, people spontaneously took up what needed to be done and did it fast and efficiently. At these moments, the soul of Auroville comes forward. Once that crisis pressure is over, we have time to think and discuss and we get lost in the mind. 

And then, since we really don’t base our discussions or decisions on knowing the facts, we have a lot of opinions. At the moment, there is more and more political mobilization based on opinions, there are pressure groups and ethnicity-based parties, and this is very dangerous to our sense of unity, to community.

Sathish: I think we need to stop misusing the word ‘community’ in connection with decision-making. We have a 10% quorum of adult residents for decision-making, but it’s rare that we get much more participation, so you can’t call that a ‘community’ decision.  Also, people who want a certain decision taken sometimes say they represent the ‘community’, even though they have little real support. It’s convenient to refer to ‘community support’ when you want to push a particular proposal.

So what is the way forward? How can we strengthen the feeling of community?

Manoj: We need to do a lot more work on organization to increase efficiency and transparency. Some of our basic processes, like the entry process or building permission process, are very vague and operate in a very impersonal way, and the process is very cumbersome and not transparent. We need to make these processes simple and transparent, and here a certain amount of automation can help.

But how can this build community?  

Manoj: Because transparency builds trust.  Presently our processes are opaque and anybody can accuse them of being manipulated. This breeds the rumours, fear and distrust that break up the community.  

Alain: We need to learn how to use the new tools well. At the same time, we have to find a way back to simplicity and rediscover the spontaneous interactions that were there at the beginning of Auroville.  I also remember Satprem saying that the basic currency of Auroville is sincerity.  So we have to trust, to assume that people are sincere, and not become obsessed with creating processes to catch those who are seemingly not.  

Sathish: For me it has a lot to do with transparency.  It’s clear that many people feel there is a big gap between the residents and the working groups, there is no transparency and so trust is not there anymore. I’m sure things will change if the community feels they are listened to and everything is done transparently, which is what we try to do in the RAS. When people feel nothing is being hid from them, a feeling of togetherness comes.  

Also, voting has become the first resort when it comes to community decision-making. But voting is divisive: it results in winners and losers and it can be manipulated.  We should seek consensus instead. 

Alain: I have the impression that many people feel we cannot go on as we are doing at present, something needs to happen. But what? Maybe when we come together we could be mostly silent and call for something, and out of that something new could emerge. 

Manoj: I think we need to connect the wisdom of the individual with the wisdom of the collective.  At present, these are seen as almost incompatible but I have noticed that when somebody says or writes something from deep within,  it touches the group soul and there is a wave of inspiration. 

But how to access the wisdom of the collective? We need to rapidly collect feedback from the community on an issue or proposal: that will be the main role of the RAS. Then we need to process that feedback so that the intelligent will of the collective is filtered out, purified.  And this requires a higher intelligence. 

Alain: There is no escaping from the fact that for the true Auroville to exist, people need to be deeply in-turned, deeply connected to something inside themselves. I have a vision of an Auroville where people are really centred in their true beings, and because they are connected there, they are a community. 

Meanwhile, all we can say is that we are the foot soldiers of something we don’t know or understand, of something much larger than us….