Auroville stories 1968–2068

Auroville Today: Where did the idea come from?

Dan: When I came back in November I felt the heaviness, the depression. As a visitor I have the privilege of being able to come and go and my visa and my living situation are not threatened, so I had the opportunity to connect to the essence of this place, the vision. And I felt that the vision hadn’t changed, it still feels inevitable, but I think it’s the attachment to form – the trees, the Master Plan etc. – which is keeping us stuck, and maybe we need a little shaking up.

I recognise that such a statement is triggering for some people. After all, I am not suffering as they are, and if I was in their place I would probably be feeling as they do.

So I wondered what I could offer in the present situation. One thing I have done in the past is courses around storytelling, which I’ve found very useful for freeing up different ways of looking at things. So I thought I could try this here. But it wasn’t easy.

Why not?

It was hard to get across to the community what I was trying to do. The first couple of weeks I wondered if anything would happen because I was putting out the invitation for people to come and tell their stories, but nobody was coming.

I learned that it is not in the culture of this place to share personal stories. Also, I wanted to engage students in dreaming about what a fully manifested Auroville would look like, but a teacher told me that they do not want to pull students into the present crisis. But I said it’s not about that, it’s about what they want Auroville to be.

There’s also a lot of self-censorship at the moment because people fear repercussions if they express themselves in public.

I think that’s the biggest challenge: there’s a lot of fear around. I understand the fear but I also know that that fear is holding us back. In this context, I don’t think the present polarisation is around roads or city or forest but because people are feeling constrained, not able to say what they think or do what they feel called to do. My dream for Auroville is that it becomes a place where everyone can do what they feel deeply called to do. This, for me, is divine anarchy.

This is where imagination comes in because I think essentially we always have access to divine anarchy. The image I have is that when we are doing what we are called to do, we become neurons in the heart of Gaia, we become wholly ourselves while serving something larger. For me those are the conditions for building a city that the world needs; that we all have the ability to follow our bliss, to wake up every day and feel what divine anarchy is calling us to do today.

So organising this storytelling was something I felt called to do at this time to help us move forward.

What do you mean by ‘storytelling’ in this context?

I mean a short, inspirational narrative about an important moment in an individual’s past in Auroville or about their vision of a future Auroville.

My original intention was just to put the idea out there and then people who were interested would work out how to take it forward: I would just be part of the team. But I soon realised that those who wanted to participate needed some guidance. For example, some people were so encyclopedic in their knowledge that they found it impossible to cram what they wanted to say into a five minute story. Others didn’t want to personalise it but just give a factual chronology of events.

What kind of guidance did you give?

I gave all the participants one page with my best tips for storytelling, about how there should be a beginning, a middle and an end, and how it should be personalised, not just a recitation of events. There was also a section around how to give and receive feedback, for this was another part of the exercise: we worked on each other’s stories through giving respectful feedback. As a result, some people reworked their stories three or four times.

Soon we established a routine. For six weeks on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons those who were interested would meet, we would do a little attunement in silence and then see who had a story to share. After that, time was allocated for feedback.

The people who went through this process said it was incredible to be able to share something personal, to listen to other’s stories and to be able to give feedback. That alone made the whole thing worthwhile.

I feel that the crisis we are experiencing in Auroville as well as in humanity as a whole is a crisis of imagination because, when it comes to envisioning the future or an alternative way of being, it’s very difficult to imagine something very different from what people are experiencing today. Imagination is the ability to step outside of that, it’s releasing the attachment to all of that. And my experience is that it is this that actually allows wisdom, the deeper me, to come through. Imagination is opening to a bigger way of being, which, for me, is what Auroville is all about.

While the stories from the future were the highlights for many, the personal stories from the past were also appreciated. After the final storytelling presentation, a number of people commented that they had known a particular person for 40 years but had never before known their story.

One thing I missed was a sense of engagement with the present situation, about changes that can happen now that could lead to a very different future, for the stories we heard were either about the past or about an idealised future.

I don’t feel we could have brought the present directly into the stories. I just wanted to see how we could get creative again, and have a little fun, in envisioning our future because I felt we have lost some of that creativity. But I think that in future stories we can also include looking at the present, including honouring the grief, as one of the audience suggested.

However, I do have a story about changes we could make today which could lead to a very different future (see box).

Regarding the present difficulties, I believe that human unity can only happen when we have a collective faith that we all are trying to do the best that we can. And, rather than judging others who are thinking differently from us, we realise that if we had been born and grew up in the same the way as they did, we would be thinking and doing the same things as them.

Do you hope that the storytelling will continue?

Very much so. I hope that next year there will be a hundred stories because it is important to honour our history and the reasons why we came to this place, and, even more importantly, to dream into the future to help transform and transcend the present issues.