Peace Trees – Teamwork ’88

Auroville Today: What were the most interesting experiences you have had over the last week? 

Morgen: The most interesting thing for me was to go to the villages, to see how people live, a lot of them comfortable, in circumstances that in the US we would not consider acceptable, meaning we would not accept people living like that. Here they are all living in the same way and they are all respected.

Getting to know the students of the group has instilled a lot of hope in me, for my future and everyones else’s future, just knowing that we can work together very well and that we can communicate if we really try and that we have fun and understand each other as people. I take this back with me to the USA. 

Colleen: The peace of mind that one gets when one stays here a couple of days is most impressing: if I had an ulcer before, it is gone now. I’m more relaxed, self-confident, more than when I came here. I can take things more easily in now. 

Sergei: The most important thing for me was to come to know the ideas of Sri Aurobindo. There are no books of Sri Aurobindo translated into Russian at all; there seems to be a small group translating some books now but the result can only be expected in some years. 

Andres: I like this psychological place. Here there are people like me, who think about world problems and who look more inside and not only outside. 

Olga: I liked most the working together; there appeared something between us, and that was most important. 

What did you actually learn about Auroville?

Andres: I learned that people from different nations and cultures can live in peace together and live normal. This is very important for me. I am from Latvia, where there are also many nationalities. And I must say that for the first time in my life I feel that I love snow. 

Morgen: I think I will tell them that Auroville is an international community that is working incredible wonders on the land that normally would be considered impossible. A place where people are creating a lot of hope and beauty that will hopefully spread into the rest of the world. 

Anupama: Auroville is like a dream come true. That so many people from so many nations have come together is so amazing, and their working bereft of nationalities. 

Colleen: Basically that you are building here a society that no-one thinks will work. There have been thinkers since time began that have been wanting something like this to start. They started and it failed. Now I see it happening here ... About Auroville itself: overwhelming. It is beautiful to see the afforestation work done. 

Sergei: Auroville is a very interesting experience from the political side of view. Ordinarily you have in each country first a government, and the process of democracy comes only in the second place. In Auroville, the process of democracy is first, government is there only afterwards. 

Would any of you consider coming back to live and work in Auroville? 

Jonah: Definitively. I want to finish my semester, and enter the school system here for the next semester. Thereafter I would like to work and live here. 

Nickel: Ten years from now, when I have made myself a living, I’ll come back and help Auroville financially and with my energy. 

Colleen: It is hard to imagine not to live here. The wonderful feeling and joy that you get here are unequalled with anywhere I have lived. I need this place to come to get in touch with life. I have been drained, but not sufficiently yet ... it may sound terrible, but I think I have to get drained more before I come here. 

Andres: I want to be here more times, but I cannot find the peace in myself. In Latvia there is such a hard time now, I must go there and make my folk free. 

Can you think of anything practical that you would like to do when you go back that would somehow continue what you have been doing here over the last week? 

Jonah: I’m going home, I'll pack and come back here.

Andres: I am a teacher and think that I must teach my children the peace in the world, the peace between the people, which is a very concrete work and to teach them that they must listen more, not only speak. We must listen. 

Anupama: I will maintain contacts with Earthstewards in the USA and Savitra in Auroville and will help to organize more youth camps like this. I am doing a course in mass communications, and I like to help to get through this message of people coming together. 

Olga: This summer, on the island Walam in the USSR, there will be a camp in which the children from the USSR and Czechoslovakia will live and work together. A part of the Russian delegation which is here will be there, and we will try to repeat there all the best we have learnt here.