Beauty: cultivating an attitude of humility

Christine: Do you think it’s possible to define a specific type of beauty in Auroville?

Jyoti: For me, the beauty specific to Auroville is the beauty of spontaneity, in any field. It’s something profoundly meaningful. India already has this spontaneity, but in Auroville, because of our intention, we experiment with a structured and conscious approach in order to create a vessel to capture that spontaneity. Of course, we have beautiful natural surroundings and an international community, which makes Auroville something truly beautiful and unique. But this spontaneity is something that exists independently of us and which we cherish, even though what manifests is often not what we expected.

We create a social structure, rules and regulations, but this spontaneous beauty always goes beyond all that, and in the end, we change, we adjust, and we smile at each other – that is the

beauty of Auroville. It’s subtly playful and unexpected. What we plan doesn’t manifest as we projected it, because we are meant to work together. Therefore, it transcends individualistic approaches. Something else emerges, and this “something else” can ultimately be appreciated as both process and result. That’s the beauty of Auroville: it consists of an intangible aspect (which is the most important), which also leads to a tangible one.

There’s a gradual disappearance of the beauty that once surrounded us. People involved in works (like the Crown Road or the developments around the Matrimandir) claim that for now they’re building the road, the lake, and that beauty will be added “later.” What do you think of this reasoning?

I have to speak from the Japanese context. We Japanese are influenced by animism, by Shinto — we live close to nature and collaborate with it. That’s the essence of the Japanese psyche and culture. Harmony is essential. To live in harmony, we cannot begin by imposing our ideas. First, before doing anything, we must study nature, the environment, everything around us, the context of the project, the people, and the whole society. We cannot impose our ideas on nature and the environment. For that, we must cultivate an attitude of humility. Not to try to impose our ideas. That is essential.

Beauty is the result of our aspiration toward harmony. The more we aspire to harmony, the more we arrive at beauty. That is our challenge. Of course, our context is international, and Auroville is located in India, and there are the ideals of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We must of course consider all three. But no one should claim they understand the ideals of Auroville, of Sri Aurobindo, or of the Mother. We need space for constant progress, space for collaboration. We must not fill this space with ideology and ego. No one owns the greater truth.

So we must start with an aspiration to manifest the highest beauty – something no one has ever seen! Beauty is not something you find in the programs of a computer like copy and paste. In Auroville’s context, we actually still don’t know what kind of beauty we are trying to manifest.

Personally, given my origins and background, I can bring something of Japanese beauty, of Japanese aesthetics – but that’s not the goal in Auroville. We must manifest beauty in an “Aurovilian” way. That’s what I try to do. And for that, we need to aspire to integral beauty, just as we aspire to integral yoga: beauty in planning, beauty in communication, obviously beauty in the attitude toward the project, and of course, when we come to infrastructure, we must think about safety. Safety is also linked to beauty. All of this contributes to the integral beauty of the project – whether it’s the Crown Road or the Matrimandir lake.

What I believe is that the Matrimandir was a great achievement. And we must aspire for all Auroville projects to come from an aspiration as high as the one that led to the Matrimandir. They must all be of that same quality or aspire even higher. Every project should be a child of the Matrimandir.

But, for example, the Crown Road is in total contradiction with the Matrimandir’s realisation, with Auroville’s aspiration. One cannot feel the Matrimandir’s presence in the Crown Road. The Matrimandir is for now the highest material manifestation of Auroville, and after that, we must not aim lower.

I also have doubts about how the Matrimandir lake project is progressing. Some people in charge say: “Beauty will come later.” For some people, unfortunately, beauty is just a superficial addition, or just on the surface. That’s a problem. Whether for the Crown Road or the lake, these two projects are being carried out hastily. Moreover, they’re being carried out in a way I would call capitalistic – in the sense of: “We have this much of money, so we can do this.” But that’s not true. This precisely separates us from the deeper connection with the matter. Money is not the first element to consider, whatever the decision to take. In my opinion, that’s a backward attitude.

You could say that money is just the fuel for the vehicle, not the reason for choosing a destination.

I worked on the Matrimandir and noticed this haste in many people. As long as they are in charge, they want to get as much done as possible, without deeply caring for quality or the future. They want to manifest quickly, with excitement. For me, that is contradictory – it’s a false attitude. If we don’t have the sufficient funds or the right plans or drawings, we should not start – otherwise, it will be a disaster.

When I worked there as part of the management team, I noticed significant issues at the Matrimandir. Besides the general rush, a major organisational problem concerns donations that are earmarked for development projects. Usually, the Matrimandir only receives enough monthly donations to maintain existing infrastructure, pay worker salaries, and partly compensate Aurovilian workers.

Developments like the lake and gardens largely depend on independent donors. But when non-Aurovilian donors lead projects with very specific ideas about how they should be done, they are no longer in the hands of Aurovilians. They may bring in designers, consultants, engineers, and material suppliers from abroad or other Indian states – but they don’t necessarily understand the ideal of Auroville or the reality on the ground. They may not really have experience with Auroville’s harsh climate conditions.

In my 20 years living in Auroville, spending most of the year here, I can confidently say it really takes time to understand Auroville and the living expression of this place. Above all, patience and humility are essential qualities for deeper understanding – and they don’t necessarily go along with linear, result-oriented planning or a capitalist mindset.

Beauty and harmony must also be integrated into the field of organisation. Intellectual understanding of Auroville is not enough, or rather it is detrimental. I often see that personal convictions contradict the essence of collective growth. What seems most important to me is to truly integrate and live the knowledge, and to cultivate a deeper sense of being in this dynamic and diverse society.

I humbly believe what The Mother said – “No words, acts!” – is anchored in this clarity; but some people vulgarly interpret it as “We must do this, we don’t care what others say!”.

The Matrimandir is truly an intense place for sadhana and transformation. We must be especially careful because of the powerful energy it generates. In my view, the Matrimandir constantly reveals both our light and our hidden shadows. It often inflates our ego. Everyone is exposed in the same way to its energy, and we must remain humble and deeply sincere in facing the experiences and challenges that the Matrimandir constantly brings.

Why this haste?

It seems that some people want to see tangible achievements and results in the very short term – that is, while they are still in charge, or still young, or still have money to spend. Unfortunately, I observe this impatience in many areas of Auroville, and the Matrimandir is no exception.

Our task is to manifest a beauty that humanity has not yet seen. Imposing old mindsets or applying rigid, outdated methods leaves no space to reach our goal. To create never-before-seen beauty, we need a new mindset, a new method, and above all, a new and open attitude. We must recognise that we still do not know. That should be the first step in building a new society for the future.

Beauty must be present from the beginning. Beauty must be integral. And that includes the process! Because in the end, beauty will be a conscious manifestation of the process. It’s the same as yoga: we can’t skip the process. But that’s what’s happening now. We’re even skipping the decision-making process! We’re taking shortcuts in our collective yoga.

Do you believe this is “repairable,” that the ugliness that has invaded Auroville can be eliminated? When we see what is planned for Darkali and these other areas, it’s frightening.

What they’re doing in Darkali is very dangerous – for workers, for animals, for nature. It’s the result of a purely mental process. Maybe they are using certain criteria – but the path of the heart is absent.

Of course, we probably cannot completely eliminate concrete and other materials – but we can take another approach. For example, the Matrimandir was built with a certain process. I’ve seen most of the process in photos, but I can recognise in those images the beauty in people’s attitude. You can recognise the attributes of Mahasaraswati and Mahalakshmi, even of Mahakali (transformation) and Maheshwari (highest aspiration). It’s tangible in all the photos of the Matrimandir’s construction. The dialogue with the Mother is tangible in the process. But now, what we mostly see is destruction – and we can’t feel that beauty will emerge in the end.

Destruction must serve a new creation – that is our aspiration. But for now, I personally see destruction for the sake of destruction in most of the recent developments.

It’s a delicate subject to bring up in an interview, especially at a time when we are still under intense pressure within the community. The tragedy is still ongoing. Learning from the past will be important for one’s growth, and that must also happen on the collective level. It will take time, because collective progress follows individual progress. We need time to reflect, to integrate, and to heal.

On the one hand, we could say we invited this tragedy. On the other hand, it was inevitable that we would face serious challenges, because the goal of building a new society in a highly diverse context is a great challenge in itself. It’s a unique experiment and one likely to provoke strong opposition.

After all, our concrete growth happens through experience, and education is only a support and guide. Even if we must restructure the society and heal the wounds as much as possible, I choose to be optimistic about the next phase of Auroville. For now, our priority is to rebuild a functioning community, to restore smiles to the community, and to make sure people can greet each other again when they cross paths.

At the same time, if we learn from this situation, we can do better in the future. There’s a certain naivety in our approach. We invoke the Mother, we wait for her intervention – and so we act less. Actually, we should act as if there were no Divine. We must do all we can, do our best – whether for society or for the progress of our yoga – and once that is done, we can wait for the Mother’s intervention. That’s how I see it.

“Help yourself, and Heaven will help you”?

Yes, something like that. Of course, I believe the Divine is always there. But we should not rely excessively on the hope of divine intervention, resting on it. It may seem contradictory, but if we are to go beyond the human, we must use all human potential. Otherwise, we cannot truly move forward.

We can’t leave things as they are – not the infrastructure, not the roads, not the decision-making process, not the present state of Town Hall, etc. We’ll need to rework each element. In the same way that we must use all our human potential to transcend humanity, we’ll also need to strive to transcend current material achievements, allowing them to become a higher manifestation of themselves.

I’ve always dreamed that Auroville’s roads would be built by Aurovilians. The symbol and the life must come together. Paving the roads by us Aurovilians means paving the roads for the future. It’s not just for Auroville – it’s also for human society. And it’s okay if it takes time to finish these roads, even twenty years – but we must pave the roads with our own hands.

And we’ll be proud of it collectively, and we’ll be able to show them – and even after a few hundred years, they’ll still be there. And later people will understand what we did, what we tried to achieve, and what we actually accomplished.

The Matrimandir could be manifested through great effort and constant challenges. Whatever challenges arose, Aurovilians and workers kept working on the site. It took 40 years to complete. Is it justified to question the time it took, whether it was too long or too short? It’s the process that matters! The question must always be “how” we manifest something – not how long it took or how much it cost.

For me, it’s also important to understand that work on the Matrimandir is never finished. Our ongoing task is to keep its presence alive and prevent the Matrimandir from becoming a conventional temple. We humans tend to find comfort in dogmas and rules. Even in Auroville, we tend to reproduce them – which goes against its very purpose. We must not underestimate this task.

If, in a few thousand years, Auroville no longer exists, perhaps people will excavate and find ruins of the Matrimandir, buildings, and roads. They will see the materialization of our aspiration as a message that we tried something. We tried to manifest and reach greater beauty by overcoming human limitations.

Our inspiration will inspire future people, just as ancient Egypt, Greece, Tibet, and many others inspire us. It’s not that they didn’t struggle to manifest their unique beauty. There must have been great struggle behind their achievements. In the end, they were probably grateful and saw all the challenges they had to overcome as necessary.