Untranslatable? The responsibility of communicating Auroville

I recently returned from several months at my university in the UK dedicated to writing up my doctoral research on Auroville, and a series of related presentations in various academic conferences throughout Europe and the United States. I usually feel limited and stifled in these contexts, divorced from the rich reality of Auroville, lacking the common ground of relatable embodied experience, and as a result, faced with a gulf in communication.

But my experience this year was markedly different. For the first time in my lifetime, I felt that a critical mass of people in ‘mainstream society’ are waking up to their need to actively participate in shaping society if they want a world worth living in. It’s no longer only a particularly awake, prescient fringe of radical or alternative people. In the present socio-political climate, Auroville suddenly becomes not only something people can relate to but which is also relevant, since we have been experimenting with this for the past 50 years. When I spoke of Auroville, I clearly noticed it was taken seriously, as opposed to being a curiosity. People were open and sincerely engaging in what the existence of something like Auroville means, and what it has to offer them.

It would be very one-sided of us, however, to place the onus of a successful transmission of Auroville on the receptivity of an outside audience. Yet this view has had quite a stronghold within Auroville. Many feel that Auroville simply cannot be defined, or even described by any framework outside of Integral Yoga, in any language other than Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s own words.

However, in order to participate in what are increasingly global conversations and shifts, we need to make an effort to actually communicate what Auroville is about – in words, in language, in contexts that others can relate to and understand. In refusing to translate it, we do a disservice to others, to our own experience, and to the purpose of Auroville – which is to participate in a transformation of consciousness that is not limited to a 20 square kilometre radius.

Doing so does not mean that we need to define ourselves according to other peoples’ terminologies, categorizations, frameworks. But we can use these as points of reference; we can unpack how Auroville does and does not ‘fit’ into these, and beyond that, look at how it informs, expands, and deepens the understandings they try to capture, for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

With academic audiences in particular, who understand that the way we conceptualize anything is simply an analytical exercise, there is far less risk of anyone actually identifying the categorization with the reality. When I go to different conferences and present on Auroville, there is, of course, always an overarching theme to the conference. As a result, I have presented on Auroville as a polity, as a site of utopian practice, as a learning society etc., but my experience was not of presenting a series of ‘categorized’ aspects of Auroville. It offered me enriching opportunities to explore Auroville through different lenses, each highlighting different aspects. Not at the expense of others, but as invitations to delve deeper into each, something which necessarily rippled out into my evolving understanding of the whole. For example, Auroville as a polity greatly informs and is included in how I understand it to be a learning society. That Auroville is a learning society is key to how I challenge common understandings of what it means to be utopian – a word many Aurovilians shudder at being associated with, for good reason.

Some of us, myself included, have questioned whether there is any point in presenting Auroville given that such a significant dimension of this ‘laboratory of evolution’ is one of inner transformation. Can any presentation on Auroville be a substitute for such experience? Of course not. But there is a vast spectrum of opportunity between experiencing it directly – a privilege denied to many – and knowing nothing about it. Besides, Mother did say Auroville is not the only answer. It is just one nucleus of transformation. So does everybody need to experience Auroville? From what I’ve observed, just knowing it is there, as one expression of this global transformation of consciousness, can go a long way to affirm and nourish others in doing what they feel called to in their own realms, spaces and communities – many of which have significantly contributed to my own evolution towards being “a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.”

Accordingly, I find myself called to present Auroville in a spirit of service, rather than as a demand for recognition. To me, this has to do with the quality of generosity, translating as a willingness to reach audiences in ways they feel they can relate to. In my experience, creating connection is what allows transmission beyond words to happen.