Healing the social fabric

For it is unrealistic to believe that those Aurovilians who now strongly disagree will suddenly fall into each other’s arms if outer circumstances change. In fact, our experience is that it took many years for some of the ‘neutrals’ to be accepted into the community again after they were perceived not to be aligning themselves with the rest of the community in the struggle against the Sri Aurobindo Society in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And today the tearing of the community fabric is on a far more extensive scale.

In other words, if there is a solution, it doesn’t appear likely that it will be on a level where hardliners in each party sit down to dialogue over a cup of tea. This is because the disagreements we see today regarding, for example, how the city will be manifested and how this relates to the growth of consciousness of the residents have existed almost from the beginning of Auroville and, so far, neither side has managed to convince the other that they hold the sole ‘truth’.

The need, then, is to try to contact a space where, in spite of our surface differences, we experience that we are one; where we not only accept, but are able to celebrate, our differences and are able to move forward together because we understand we are part of each other and of a larger whole.

However, such true ‘fraternity’ or ‘brotherhood’ in Sri Aurobindo’s definition (and he clearly intended these terms to be gender-inclusive) cannot be achieved by external means, for it is based upon a spiritual recognition of our essential oneness. As he put it, “brotherhood exists only in the soul and by the soul; it can exist by nothing else” for “spiritual comradeship … is the expression of an inner realisation of oneness”.

Moreover, he pointed out that it is only the individual’s realisation of his or her profound oneness with others as expressed in their outer actions which can create a “perfected community”.

But until then? Until we have realised our essential oneness, the “actual human unity” referred to in our Charter, are we condemned to continual conflict? Are there no stepping-stones on the way?

Perhaps, just perhaps, a beginning might be made by cultivating the power of imagination, for when imagination is used consciously, creatively, it can be a means of prefiguring and bringing us closer to achieving something we do not feel fully capable of at the moment.

So what if we practiced seeing others, including our opponents, as part of ourselves, as simply another aspect of our own deeper being, however different the surface manifestation? Even if at first we didn’t feel it, if it was only a mental exercise, wouldn’t it begin to change things? While our disagreements would not vanish, wouldn’t it change the way we hold our differing perspectives and how we relate to those who see things differently?

For example, if it led to the dividing lines between us being drawn less harshly, couldn’t it open a door to us reframing some of our past differences regarding, say, the development of the city? To viewing them not so much in terms of zero sum conflicts – where the ‘truth’ of one perspective must triumph over the ‘falsehood’ of the other – and more as differences of perception where elements of truth exist on both sides and a collaborative effort is required to winnow out the grain from the chaff.

Those who believe we are at a decisive moment in the battle between the forces of darkness and light over Auroville’s future would probably reject any such reframing. But even if they are correct, if we tried to see others as aspects of ourselves, wouldn’t we, at a bare minimum, begin to be more caring of others, more careful of causing hurt, even while we continue to stand for what we believe in?

There may, however, be another more powerful route than imagination to healing ourselves and our community, and that is by opening ourselves to the light of the New World which, according to Mother, is growing more intense and more powerful as it breaks through the crust of the old. For by opening ourselves to this light, we identify, we become part of a wave, a vibration, which is intrinsically healing and integrating.

This isn’t a recipe for ‘blissing out’, for ignoring the very real challenges we are facing today. On the contrary, if we can align ourselves with this light, whatever we decide to do regarding these challenges will have real power because we will be basing our actions upon a much deeper truth than anger, frustration, or the desire for revenge.