Towards a conscious collectivity

AVToday: Deepti, to what extent do you consider Auroville to be a collectivity? And what kind of collectivity do we speak of? A collectivity of souls or a collectivity of egos?

Deepti: What is brought out in Bhavishyate is the fundamental demand of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga the necessity of a dynamic, inwardly conscious, aspiring collectivity. Humanity’s socio-political progress over recent centuries has largely focused upon developing social Liberty and/or social Equality, as can be observed in the spirit of capitalism and socialism. There has been no socio-political attempt to embody Fraternity, the last great mantra of the French revolutionists. But, as Sri Aurobindo so cogently shows, brotherhood, fraternity, is a truth of the soul. It cannot be artificially generated because it is quite beyond the capacity of social and political devices: it has to be born as a living soul-state.

To recognize fraternity as the core truth of any sort of collective living is the first step on the journey of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga. It is also the reason why, in a yoga aimed at transformation, a conscious collectivity of aspiring individuals is of fundamental importance. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother maintain that the individual may give the impulsion, indicate the path by embodying self-realisation, but there are certain group laws that demand a collective body for the fulfillment of earth’s destiny, particularly if we recognise that earth’s purpose is to be an embodiment of a Life Divine. This is the very aim and purpose of the yoga Sri Aurobindo has put forward. To illustrate this truth, I gave, as examples, the seemingly spontaneous manner, with no mental intention, with which the first collectivity, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, grew organically around Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Later, and in a wide universality of spirit, The Mother launched her great evolutionary experiment – Auroville.

In both places the one prayer of the body collective is a harmonious ‘working together’ for this is the only way of enabling and embodying a collective sadhana. As it is an active, dynamic, materially effective action that is sought, sitting quietly in meditation seems not the most purposeful means of progress. This is a yoga whose core demand is dynamism, is visible material change. In all circumstances, it is a quietude of consciousness that must be maintained as a vibrant inner condition of the being. For it is this atmosphere that radiates outward into the collectivity.

Sri Aurobindo has written about the fundamental necessity of a larger change brought about by a conscious and united collectivity, something he called a deva sangha. But he warned that “a collective yoga is not like a solitary one, it is not free from collective influences; it has a collective soul which cannot afford to be in some parts either raw or rotten.” In other words, all those who are part of the collectivity must be absolutely conscious of the Truth of their being, which is the only source of true action. The issue for a group is that there is always a mixture of obscurities, a mixture of unconsciousness, and each one absorbs the prevailing atmosphere which then creates the quality of the collective consciousness. To escape this there is but one means: to become conscious of oneself, more and more conscious and more and more attentive. This is why The Mother called the process of self-finding, of bringing to the forefront one’s inmost self, the first necessity of becoming a True Aurovilian. This is the only means to achieve evolutionary acceleration.

My answer to your question then is that the only true collectivity is the one connected to the soul, not the ego. We didn’t choose each other, it’s our soul that brought us here and it is a soul demand that we work together in spite of our very resistant minds and vitals. Yet, what we continue to encounter in our collective life is the gross vulgarity of the outer natures of people, and darker ego characteristics of those who seem unable to practice self-limitation. Indeed, I had assumed that the collective atmosphere of Auroville had overpassed certain stages of human behavior; but recent times have demonstrated how extraordinarily ordinary the atmosphere of Auroville can be. Personally, my solution is always to turn to the words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to find within myself a ground of trust and faith. These journals are a result of that quest!

I would argue that these 2 chapters of the journal are not the only ones relevant to Auroville. Most of what’s in this issue is meant to put before those who have chosen to be here a few of Sri Aurobindo’s trenchant remarks. For instance, the one about religion, or about doing what is called ‘good works’ in the world. He insists that he seeks “a way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded”. Religions create rigid and fixed approaches, but here he requires us to transcend all types of exclusivities, to bring all the extremes together to be worked through. This is precisely the purpose of his yoga. Humanity has failed so far because the mind tends to be exclusive but Mother insists that she wants all the extremes brought together so the ‘real force’ can be discovered. Such remarks are so profoundly relevant in this moment when we appear to be ‘celebrating’ the 150th year of his birth. We need to be rigorously true to him, and not reduce him to a comfortable, moral, easy to understand human teaching!

Sri Aurobindo, in the Life Divine, warns about the development of a communal ego, based on the ideas of the mind and the drive of the vital, not on the soul. Is that what you see developing in Auroville?

We should not forget what Mother said of the fascination that power, money and control over others exercises on the egoistic human consciousness. She says such traits will be the last to change as they are the most recalcitrant characteristics of human consciousness. Distortions can be generated by any exclusive argument. For instance, at the moment the overriding weight being given to one of Auroville’s collective purposes: ‘we are here to build the town’. Of course that’s the intention of the collective experiment – but it is the means – it gives us the critical mass for the true purpose, which is a concentrated collective change of consciousness. I often wonder: ‘what sort of town’ as if it were the town and not the dynamic intensity of collective aspiration which could generate the new consciousness. Mankind has built towns for millennia, but the human vital physical consciousness remains just as it is!

You cannot fix this profound problem using artificial social and political devices. And you certainly can’t impose it. This is the reason why all spiritual philosophies, religions and yogas have not succeeded in fundamentally changing human consciousness.

What ‘state of consciousness’ do you think is required to manifest the town?

This is not something we humans can achieve. Therefore Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is primarily one of surrender; of offering oneself in one’s entirety to the Universal Mahashakti who will work in us. But in the interim The Mother spoke about spiritual hierarchies and suggested for Auroville “a hierarchic organisation grouped around the most enlightened centre and submitting to a collective discipline”. What does this mean – have we even begun to understand this? In other contexts, she explains what a true spiritual hierarchy means. If we look at our past history, people’s behaviour has been egregiously defective in this sphere. And this has created karmic cycles we are still working through. Mother clearly stated in a handwritten note of February 17, 1968 that “Here nobody can be the exclusive leader – everybody has to learn to collaborate” and she adds “This is a profound guidance for the assertive darkness of human egoism.”

Spiritual hierarchy is a hierarchy determined by the purity of one’s link to the Divine and the inner purpose of one’s present life upon earth. It’s not something that can be asserted and claimed arbitrarily. One’s status or position in this outward world, which is a world of falsehood, has nothing to do with this. Mother said that all conscious individuals are part of a hierarchy, but there is no arbitrary will which places them. She said that “it’s not a decision, we don’t want any categories: there are these, there are those, and then this one will come in here and that one will come in there – all those are mental constructions, they’re worth nothing! But the true thing is that NATURALLY, according to his receptivity, his capacity, and his inner mission, each one takes his place in the hierarchy, the place he truly, spontaneously occupies, without any decision.”

There are people in Auroville who occupy positions for which they seem to have no inner sanction. But there are also many who are perhaps in their place – some of whom are now threatened with arbitrary removal. Mother, in Her Dream, said that ‘positions’ should be replaced by ‘opportunities to serve’ and there are many in Auroville who do just that – they serve without calculation, in the place they have to be, and they form the true scaffolding that holds our inner collectivity together. For me, Auroville is a collective soul, the collectivity exists, even though it is missing a lot of elements. Yet there is no question that its external forms of governance are the most vexed of all things.

Could you explain what you mean by this?

When we study Sri Aurobindo, we discover that there are truths that prevail upon one plane of consciousness which may become completely false upon a higher plane. This is supremely illustrated in the debate between Love, embodied by Savitri, and Death [Book 10 of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri]. She calls death a “dark browed sophist” and accuses him of putting forth “a truth that slays”. On the contrary, Savitri says her “god is love and sweetly suffers all”. That is the Supreme Truth that Auroville wants to serve. We live in a world governed by death’s truths, but Auroville is created precisely to serve the forces that will bring forth a world governed by Divine Love. This demands from us very rigorous laws of collective functioning. Auroville is a creation of Divine Grace: therefore we must treat all disagreements as things to be worked through patiently while holding the awareness that our minds may take positions completely contrary to our soul’s choice. If we recognise that opposing arguments are relative, are the “truths that slay” then it is precisely the process of putting things in harmony that must be painstakingly achieved.

I hold that Aurovilians, largely accept the idea of a town, as was powerfully demonstrated in the Dreamweaving exercise. I was delighted by the approach that was adopted. For me it met the standard of the Auroville spirit: no one attacked or put down another’s proposal. Rather, each one open heartedly adopted the wider idea; the more comprehensive spirit wherever and from whomever it emerged. This is precisely the method of the Upanishadic mantras – it’s always the wider intuition that is embraced. I was glad to attend a collective effort after more than two decades of avoiding large meetings. It is a great loss to the body collective and a sign of the difficulty that this effort has not yet been adopted.

Auroville will fail if it is built merely in the manner of another ordinary Indian city or if it is not universal, if the international aspect of Auroville becomes a travesty. One of the things that makes Auroville so stimulating is that people from more than 50 countries are living here. It is a truly such a rich international mix. In Last School we have sometimes more than 10 languages being studied. Where would you find such a variety in such a small collectivity! Reducing this is to push the spirit of Auroville into the unmanifest. Yet, I have the faith that this can be only a temporary setback. For one of the things that is clear is what Mother said, that “Auroville will be because it is decreed.” No human agency can stand in the way of that.

How do you personally deal with the present difficulties?

I try to abstain from interacting with people who have rigid positions. It’s a very dull exercise to interact with those who think they are absolutely right. You meet a wall; you are confronted with arrogance. And if, moreover, both parties are not on equal footing, nothing can come out of such a discussion. Harmonisation needs conscious collaboration, needs a will to find a higher position, which is the only place where a meeting ground exists for all opposing positions.

The spirit of Auroville demands that such an effort will need to happen at some point in time. Auroville exists only in its effort and aspiration for unity. And we are all called upon to be heroic. In a seminal conversation in 1972 with Roger Anger, Navajata and Udar Pinto [the Auroville Architect and the heads of Sri Aurobindo Society and Sri Aurobindo’s Action respectively, eds.] The Mother described heroism as the power to be completely united, and she added that “the divine help will always be with those who have, in all sincerity, resolved to be heroic.” She called upon them to make an effort, conquer pettiness and limitations, and above all tell the ego: “your time is over”. “We want a race without ego, with the divine consciousness in place of the ego. That’s what we want: the divine consciousness, which will enable the race to develop and the superman to be born.” That’s also what she expects from the Aurovilians. And then we may experience what Sri Aurobindo says in Savitri: “to love and feel oneness is to live”.

People may not be heroic yet, but I think I see many individuals who are intensifying their lives, probably in response to the difficulties they experience at present.

That’s also my experience. I have personally experienced an exponential growth in people seeking to explore the spiritual ideals of Auroville. This year I have offered, on their request, a long series of exploratory session to the teachers of an Auroville primary school as well as an Outreach school. Presently, I find myself exploring such topics in different locations literally every day of the week as well, of course, at Last School which has been holding such sessions for almost three decades. Is it the Time Spirit which is awakening more and more the need to know ‘why are we here’? For me, it’s clear, the only solution to problems is to live consciously in this collective experiment the dynamic yoga of Sri Aurobindo that will create this dream of a conscious collectivity. I believe many Aurovilians are stepping deeply into themselves. That, and the movement towards having more mutually supportive activities, will help build our inner collectivity.

A copy of the magazine Bhavishyate # IV can be obtained by emailing [email protected]