Bits of Boris

On science and yoga

For more than twenty years I worked legally in the Soviet Science Academy, and I practiced illegally yoga for fifteen years. I started from Hatha Yoga, Pranayama and was (not officially) in the society of Agni Yoga – Yoga of Fire. Now Agni Yoga is very popular in Russia. I was a workaholic – I was happy to do something for science. When I started my life in yoga, I understood: science is nothing compared with yoga. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, chemical pesticides and artificial manure – that is all science, not yoga.

In the Russian language, there is a word vedima – witch. Nowadays this word has a negative significance, but a long time ago it had a good Sanskrit meaning: “mother who knows”. Yoga gives joy, health, wisdom for all the people of the world. It is from God. Science on the other hand can be, at times, from the asuras. (Nov 2018)

On oceans and seas

If we can in any yellow submarine fall in the oceanic bottom, we can see that wonderful world. I understand well the English song lyric: “Mother Earth, carry me back to the sea”. Can I incarnate again as a dolphin and play joyfully with the waves? (April 2019)

On beauty and ugliness

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” (John Keats, “Endymion”)

Some people are very beautiful: Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Leonardo da Vinci, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, etc.

But many human beings hate one another. According to the Latin proverb, homo homini lupus est – “one man is a wolf for another man”. They started the wars, created nuclear bombs, chemical pesticides, deforestation of the planet….

Once I walked with my two long sticks between Center Guest House and Solar Kitchen. Opposite me about 100 children moved on bicycles, together with some adults. One of these adults (evidently a teacher) stopped near me and said: “Auroville is beautiful.” Of course, I agreed with him. Auroville is a fine example of collaboration of beautiful people with beautiful nature. But it was an ugly place before 1968 – a semi-desert landscape, erosion. Sunny beams fell here and return to the cosmos. It’s called entropy.

But now we have the opposite process in our beautiful city: the numerous plants catch the sunny days and use them for photosynthesis, they create oxygen and biomass. The ecosystem of Auroville is almost perfect. It is an example for the hope of mankind; the future of Homo sapiens is not only dark in perspective. (July 2020)

On Nature

If the human population on Earth is growing in geometrical progression, Nature creates its own limit – the pandemy of virus. Est modus in rebus – “there is a measure in things”. This expression belongs to Horacius, Rome’s poet. It is true in any time. People became the slaves of industry, machines. But Nature repeats again and again: “I am living and not so weak.” It can give more lessons to mankind.

Auroville shows the positive way for humanity: it needs collaboration with nature, not confrontation. Nature awaits from us amicus curiae – friendly care. (Dec 2020)

On the ‘Sunlit Path’

Sri Aurobindo received a classical Western-education in England, studying, for example, Latin and Greek language. In Latin there is an expression: sol omnibus lucet – “the sun shines for everybody”. But in India the sun is hotter than in England. Many Englishmen used the sun-helmet in India, but not in their home-land. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, was born in cool Tibet. He visited Auroville in 1973 and 1993. He said in 1993: “Twenty years ago it was difficult to find the shadows in the city, but now this problem has disappeared.” The name of the sun in Greek is Helios. Biologists use the special term: heliotropism.

There is a famous Latin expression: lux ex oriente – “Light from the East”. Of course, we see sunrise not in the west, but in the east. The Mother arrived in India twice, the second time from Japan. She liked that country so much, especially Japanese children. They have nice names – Shigeko (luxuriant child), Hanako (flower child). I also like the Indian name Surya – sun. (Dec 2020)

On Auroville and youth

Sometimes it seems that Auroville is a city of utopia, its dwellers are idealistic ones and they haven’t a practical future. I arrived in Auroville almost thirty years ago, in 1991. Then I saw a child in every Aurovilian. And now my vision isn’t changed. It is a city of very young people who created their own young world. This reality has a great perspective. The physical and spiritual atmosphere of the city creates the constant youth of Aurovilians. In both hemispheres of our planet the air is polluted. (Jan 2021)

On living creatures

For Aurovilians, the respect of serpents is a part of the normal ecological consciousness. Let every God’s creature feel comfortable and safe in our city. (July 2021)

On visas and magic

I arrived in India on 21 September 1991 [when he was 54 years old, eds]. It was for me a really new world, a magic world. I had only a tourist visa for three months and lived in Auroville with it for five years. Magic, fairytale! Everything is possible with Divine help. (2021)

On speed

“Don’t hurry, be happy.” Of course, I felt more happy on the bicycle than any people on motorbikes. According to the Roman wisdom, “festina lente” – “be in hurry slowly”.

One Aurovilian used a motorbike and met a holy cow on the road. He was sure that it would be easy for him to pass the creature without problem. But man conjectures; God disposes. The cow suddenly changed direction – and this unhappy Aurovilian fell and lost his consciousness.

The animal moved with natural speed but man – with supernatural speed. Crime and punishment. (Jan 2022)

On motorbikes

On 2 January, there were two meetings – one in the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium and the second in the Bharat Nivas parking place. An ocean of motorbikes were before the Bharat Nivas gate. Of course, these motorbikes don’t need forests or wildlife.

What they need are roads. Plants produce oxygen, motorbikes are exhausting gas. (Jan 2022)

On the ‘road to hell’

Mankind is killing the biosphere of the planet. But there is a boomerang principle: evil returns to its source. The Mother wrote: “Each one seeks his own balance in order to stabilise himself.” Human beings named themselves Homo sapiens. In Latin, sapiens means “wise”. Maybe a better name is Homo a-sapientissimus.

Environment and people are one. Sri Aurobindo thought that yoga is in a state of samata – equality to all things. For thirty years I lived in Auroville and I was always sure that a spiritual Green City is the future of civilisation. Was it Maya, illusion? Would it transform in the hierarchy of roads like any common city with bad health and without a future? Will it be a system of black roads instead of green Divine anarchy? No, no, no! I want to breathe the living oxygen of plants and do not want to live in the atmosphere of exhaustion-gas.

We cannot betray the first Aurovilians’ dreams and use an involutionary path instead of evolution. They created a green world by their own hands, but now a herd of machines starts to destroy it. Human beings are diurnal creatures – normally active during the day. Asuric force is in attack day and night. Aurovilians created the forest slowly, according to the natural laws. But the power of darkness wants to destroy it very quickly, before a resistance will be strong enough.

The Mother wrote: “Time presses: the divine powers must come, O Lord, to the help of the agonised earth… Hear us, for we must conquer at any price.”

There is an ancient rule: primum ne noceas – “first, do no harm”. Let there be creativity, not destruction. The planet is in a dangerous sickness. Our Kurukshetra battlefield for its healing is here, in Auroville. We cannot retreat on this field. The real yogi can transform a poison into honey. Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and all Aurovilians who have passed on – their spirit is with us, we are invincible.

All the nature of the world helps us too. Our weapon is in the old Indian principle ahimsa – nonviolence, and compassion. Let go to hell violence with its bulldozers, police, bands from villages, night attacks, destroying greeneries and buildings. Nike, the goddess of victory, is with spiritual people against murderous technology. (Feb 2022)

On a Green Tribunal in Auroville

We urgently need our own Tribunal in our city for the trial of the direct and indirect killers of the ecosystems, soil in Auroville 4th-10th December of the last year. It needs to punish them for the tragedy, disaster, catastrophe of these days, for unprecedented violence in the city. In the first years of Auroville the pioneers gave life to dead ground, but in December the eco-criminals killed this life.

The Mother wrote: “Look at the flowers and trees. When the sun sets and all becomes silent, sit down for a moment and put yourself into communion with Nature. You will feel rising from the earth, from below the roots of the trees…”

It will be right if the Tribunal will decide to keep the life’s killers sitting on the place of their crime before the new life again appears instead of lifeless “clearing”. Auroville will use the sunlit path, not a pogrom for life. Let the criminals pay for their crazy, lunatic actions. Why would some Aurovilians stop the merciless violence? The spirit of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother helped them. Let’s publish the lists of the names of both sides: the murders of ecosystems and the heroes which stopped the enemies of life.

Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Brotherhood exists only in the soul and by the soul.” Can the bulldozers, roads, motorbikes have souls? Never! All forms of life are the brothers and sisters for the human beings, but the Asuric force uses the soulless technique for its dark goals.

In December last year the poisonous snake crawled into the city and its venom killed the harmony in Auroville. On 20 December there was a meeting in the Unity Pavilion with a very bad atmosphere, great noise. Narad successfully used an antidote, magic sound “OM” against that disbalance.

The Mother once went to a lecture in Paris about travelling in India. The lecturer was not interesting, but once he pronounced the sacred sound “OM” and for the Mother this sound-mantra filled all the world for some time. Ancient achievement doesn’t lose its power in our days. The great wisdom was born in the forests, not in “cleared” places.

The initiators of 4 – 10 December events opened Pandora’s Box; they brought a Trojan horse into Auroville. Their actions must receive the suitable reaction. Let there be a Green Tribunal in Auroville. (Mar 2022)

From sin to butterflies

If a Catholic asks God to forgive his sin, he is told: mea culpa (my sin). Mea maxima culpa (my biggest sin) is that I forgot the Japanese word for butterfly. Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1929) created the opera Madama Butterfly (chio chio san). (2022)

On animals

Auroville has some animal farms, they are not similar to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where animals revolted against humans with the motto: “Four legs are good, two legs – bad.” I think ants and termites can say: “Six legs are best” and spiders: “Eight legs are better.”

Not long ago, Prof. N Numen in Sri Lanka wrote the remarkable lines: “Do not insult animals, animals are friends of human beings. You and I cannot live in a world without animals, animals do not throw bombs and kill people.”

Animals cannot live without plants, but plants need animals too. Bees and butterflies pollinate flowers. The wildlife of Auroville is the biocenosis of plants and animals. The great trees banyan and peepal live in symbiosis with pollinators – the tiny wasps.

The biocenosis of Auroville is an ecosystem, a product of long evolution. New roads in the city are like knives which murder the natural body. These roads are a part of the global attacks of industry against nature. Asuric forces now are very strong but darkness will be defeated, light will win.

Industry was born in England. The colonial regime of India was born in this country. But Lux ex Oriente – “Light is from the East”. The evil of the west is too weak for light. Industrial and colonial power retreats.

A long time ago, in England, they killed off the last of the wolves. The country doesn’t have full biodiversity. In India the last cheetah was killed in 1947, but now some specimens of the species were brought from Africa. (Jan 2024)

On Love in the Matrimandir gardens

The Matrimandir gardens are a very lovely place. Patricia and I visited it and she received from Kartik two nice plants. Now her balcony garden is exactly like the Matrimandir gardens.

I received from Kartik a beautiful flower Hibiscus mutabilis. According to the Mother, its spiritual name is “Divine Grace”. The Mother commented: “Thy goodness is infinite. We bow before Thee in gratitude.”

Many flowers and butterflies are in the Matrimandir gardens. There is symbiosis of plants and animals. Sometimes people call butterflies “flying flowers”. The scientific name of butterflies is Lepidoptera which means “scale wings”. Some years ago in Auroville appeared one fellow from Odessa University (Ukraine). He was a lepidopterologist and could identify butterflies in flight. It is a pity that he isn’t in Auroville now.

In the Matrimandir gardens, I found a dead butterfly. My attempt to identify it was without success. I named it Mystery butterfly. Maybe it died from loving flowers and before its death it sang a love song, “O sole mio”. (Oct 2024)