An invitation to Grace

Auroville Today: How did the Gene Keys come into your life?

Natasha: A personal crisis brought the Gene Keys to me. I was going through a complete change - my entire personal life was being dismantled, my outer world didn’t make sense anymore, everything hurt and I was forced to question my identity. It’s quite interesting now that Auroville is being dismantled. The whole basis of Gene Keys ‘siddhi’ / gift lies within the shadow, and spending enough time in contemplation which brings you to realisations which makes the receiving of a crisis very different. Suddenly you can see it as growth or potential, like a seed sprouting out of the earth, as rebirth. Personally, this experience took years and years.

Can you elaborate more on the gift within the shadow?

What struck me most about Gene Keys is the realisation that even when I am evidently in my lowest frequency, a more favourable state of being is not so far away, but embedded within that lower state. I simply have to change my orientation slightly to access that state. It’s like Russian dolls which sit within each other, it’s really about opening up another door.

Each person has a different opening and the heart is the easiest place to go. That’s why in Auroville we are recommended to approach it through the psychic being. We need to have these openings – as we all have walls and masks to unveil what sits in the centre, right there in front of our nose.

What is the basis of the Gene Keys?

Gene Keys is a synthesis of different schools of thought using the i-ching as its base, but including human design and astrology. It also involves the biology of our genetics, and how through the art of contemplation we can effect our own transformation or evolution. The material is beautifully crafted in the language of poetry: that is what actually got me hooked.

There are two main things you learn in Gene Keys. Firstly, the highest frequency sits within the lower frequency, and secondly simply contemplating an idea brings you closer to it. The simplicity of that really struck me.

The Gene Keys is a modern day, ‘in life’ practice. It’s not going to a cave and meditating but the practice happens in community, in family and moreover in challenging states of being. It’s so doable, this art of contemplation. You can make it your practice every day, making the possibility for that shift every moment.

At different times we go through different ‘openings’ in our lives. I had an opening to Savitri ten years after I arrived. Initially I was studying it more intellectually but it wasn’t really hitting the spot. Ten years later I really opened to Savitri and gained a connection with it. In the same way that Savitri has a mantric effect even if one doesn’t understand it, so Gene Keys has an effect. The words work on your system and there is a certain power in them.

What do you feel the Delta programme offers Auroville right now?

I hope it helps in the integration of different groups in Auroville, as it does within the parts of our own being. There is nothing political about it. It touches upon how we work collectively with our subtle bodies: it is inner work. It’s really a fertile ground for all factions of Auroville to come together. The Delta gives us the ability to turn inward as a collective and no matter how far we are from the Auroville we dream of, all we have to do is dive deep into the planes of our own being.

In our situation right now in Auroville there is a feeling that we must try all avenues to reach what’s best for Auroville, but there is no doubt in most of our minds that the real answer will come from a different source, from Grace. This is what motivates me to offer a Delta and the Gene Keys, to make that collective attempt to invoke grace. When we launched on 5th December, eighty-four people invoked The Mother’s Grace.

In the initial meeting, seeing Richard Rudd, the founder, and Pia Mark (who runs the Delta programme), it was notable to see how committed they are to supporting us in Auroville.

It’s a gift that they gave for free. They are trying to make a change in the world from the inside out. Pia has a Findhorn background, she lived there for almost thirty years, and has a strong belief that communities around the world will play a significant role in the shift that the earth needs right now. Together Pia and Richard decided they would take the step of gifting communities around the world the Delta programme for free for people already on the path.

They gave this gift to Auroville at a time of a great divide, when our woundedness as a community had never been so apparent and our identity of belonging to a unified whole was being challenged. When the Delta is played in community, it helps us in knowing ourselves as part of a greater whole. In the same way that we feel Findhorn is a sister community, so too is the Gene Keys. The first time I spoke to Richard Rudd, the founder of Gene Keys, he pulled out a picture of Sri Aurobindo that sits on his desk.

You have been at the frontline of some of the recent conflicts, especially in Evergreen and now in the RA Town Development Council. How has that affected you?

Somehow, I found myself in the frontline on many fronts but what’s going on in Auroville has affected all of us. Of course, it’s taken a toll and demands a certain kind of energy. So I made an extra effort to dig deeper into spaces within myself that nourish me and allow me to face my next day. This includes the capacity to accept what is, the ability to surrender to what is coming, the deep yearning for peace within and without, by calling upon grace. Gene Keys just happens to be one of those tools that I use precisely for that.

In Raghu’s presentation in Unity Pavilion to the community you mentioned that you were taking a stand but staying open to all sides.

I do that with everything, it’s really an art of trying to be open to what you are called to do. It’s not like a stubborn stance of ‘I will stand for this no matter what’, rather it’s a stance of listening, really listening to what is being asked for and trying to follow that, in every moment. There is an art of deep listening, not only to each other but to the situation and what are we being called to do, and this can be different every day.