Auroville’s spirituality

Are Aurovilians spiritual? Some Aurovilians are clear about this. “Whenever I talk to people, I have the impression they increasingly are,” says Shraddhavan. “I see a collection of beautiful souls and Auroville as a beautiful garden that is coming up,” says Ashesh. “I see more and more people trying to make a difference from an inner perspective,” says Manoj. “There is a growing thirst. People are taking yoga seriously.”

The question is often asked by outsiders who have difficulty understanding what Auroville is all about. Many are aware of Auroville’s outreach work, but few understand the peculiarities of its spirituality. There are no mandatory spiritual group practices, such as collective meditations or devotional chanting. And joining Auroville’s Hatha Yoga classes is done for maintaining good health, rather than for following a spiritual path.

“It’s in everyday life that we have to find the Divine,” says Shraddhavan. “That is the great work that Auroville is trying to do. Aurovilians are asked to do their work as Karma Yoga, where the attitude in which something is done, the inherent spirit of offering, makes it yoga. And that attitude is mostly invisible. It is a natural outflow of what Mother called ‘the inner discovery’ – ‘the light within that never wavers, the presence which can guide you with certitude’ – which, she said in a conversation with early Aurovilians, ‘ideally should have been made before coming here’.”

Does Auroville have such people?

“There are many Aurovilians who have that psychic quality and who are in the process of organizing themselves around their inner being,” says Ashesh. He has been seeing the change ever since he joined Auroville eight years ago. “It is as if every few weeks a new feature is being added to Auroville, very much like a beautiful garden where a new flower opens. Auroville is growing by the blossoming of people in various activities and relations.”

Shraddhavan concurs. “There is a solid core of people who know what Auroville is for and why they are living and working for Auroville. They accept the difficult climate, the limited level of comfort, the daily challenges and material obstacles, because they are inwardly-driven.”

Yet, for many Auroville observers this inward dedication is not so evident. The lack of outer progress because of difference of viewpoints is notorious. “In Auroville,” said a member of Auroville’s Governing Board some years ago, “when you want to do something there is always somebody who disagrees and opposes you. At any moment the best work gets stalled because someone has a fight with someone else.”

If people are inwardly-driven, how is it that harmony appears so distant?

“It all depends on the level of consciousness,” says Ashesh. “In the absence of the inner experience and realization, we try to find harmony through outer means, by talking to each other, by pushing people to do things or demanding things from people. That is the mental-vital attitude. An inward turn would change this.

If you are able to step back from the surface moments and allow a deeper level of consciousness to emerge, life gets a completely different dimension. The vision which finds fault and expresses itself in a primarily negative way is contrary to the psychic vision. The psychic vision invokes positive responses from the other person and from the group. It has the capacity to visualize the positive and the beautiful in the person and then build on it. If this vision is realized to a larger degree by more people, our communications will be much more positive and creative.”

Education in consciousness

The fourth point of Auroville’s Charter says that ‘Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity’. “We are known to be doing a lot on the level of outer material research. It is less known that the inner research has also started,” says Manoj. “For example, an increasing number of Aurovilians are attending workshops to learn about inner development, meeting techniques and how to deepen personal interactions. That has an immediate effect on individuals’ interactions.” He mentions the recent experience of the Working Committee, which reported in a General Meeting about a difficulty amongst its members which was resolved after they jointly meditated in the Matrimandir. “If a group has difficulty in collective decision-making, experiences a disturbed meeting, or when there are difficulties between its members, the willingness should be there to introspect on what went wrong and how it can be amended. The members should try and understand why certain meetings suddenly open up and give energy to all present, while other meetings are extremely frustrating. That would give clarity on how to transform the difficulties.”

The Auroville Retreat held in March [see AVToday # 309, April 2015] underlined the need for education in consciousness. The overall goals of the Education Action Group, created in its wake, are to build Auroville “into a learning society of constant progress guided by the emergence of the psychic being” and “a unified integral youth education aiming to include dignity of all work as a means for inner and outer research and discovery.” One of its milestones is “to understand with awakened discernment what integrality means in Sri Aurobindo’s perspective – each and every plane of the universal manifestation (seven-fold); the development of the psychic being towards oneness.”

Education in consciousness is offered by many people from outside who are coming to Auroville to give workshops [see: The Workshop Wave in AVToday # 295, February 2014], Yet, Shraddhavan is not impressed. “For all the good they may be bringing, most of these workshops have little to do with the raison d’être of Auroville. For many, it is just a commercial venture,” she says. Ashesh agrees. “Much of what they teach was first introduced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They were the main contributors of these new features of life, based on the inner experience of oneness and harmony. If you have studied their work, you won’t find much new in these workshops.” Manoj points at the risks of confusion. “The tools from outside bring with them different reference systems, processes and terminology that can cause a great deal of confusion. A Vipassana retreat, for example, is not compatible with Sri Aurobindo’s yoga as it negates the dynamic side and does not include the development of matter.”

“Auroville has been created as a place for the implementation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision and Aurovilians should know what that vision is,” says Shraddhavan. “That’s why we created Savitri Bhavan”. Its present focus is on Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri and The Life Divine, but classes are also given on other topics such as his social and political writings, on his books The Future Poetry and Essays on the Gita, and on the writings of The Mother. Classes are free and well-attended. An introduction to the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is now part of Auroville’s Newcomer orientation programme. “It should include an introduction to Sri Aurobindo’s The Foundations of Indian Culture, to show the tremendous gift India has given to the world, as well as allowing Auroville to happen,” says Shraddhavan.

In fact, everybody who comes to Auroville for a visit, for joining a course or for an internship or volunteering, should know about Auroville’s ideals and aspirations. The exhibitions and videos at the Visitors’ Centre and at Savitri Bhavan are a help. “But I am also urging the organizers of all educational programmes held in Auroville, regardless of the topic they deal with, to include at least one hour of introduction to the spiritual background of Auroville,” says Shraddhavan. “People should know what is different about Auroville.”

The Auroville schools

But she is concerned that many of Auroville’s youngsters hardly know about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and that most of the Auroville schools do not communicate anything of their vision. “I am aware that they do not want to indoctrinate the children. But when these children grow up and meet others who know about Sri Aurobindo, they suddenly find they know nothing and are often upset that they haven’t been taught. It is essential that they should know something.” Savitri Bhavan has a standing offer to all Auroville schools and outreach schools to help develop tailor-made programmes for their students. It is slowly bearing fruit. Deepanam primary school came with a group last August and in February this year, around Mother’s birthday, Transition School organized an introduction for the 10-year olds. But a sustained education in aspects of their vision is only happening at Last School, which has a limited outreach.

“I often compare the education system of Auroville with that of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram,” says Ashesh. “At the Ashram there is emphasis on the direct study of the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and from childhood a psychic attitude is being cultivated towards the masters. But compared to Auroville, the richness, the wide embrace of life, is lacking. In future, the systems may incorporate parts of each other. I do hope that in Auroville their works will become part of the curriculum. For that brings a different dimension to individual and collective life. If people study more, they can contribute so much more to the future.”

Creating tools for understanding

More Aurovilians than is usually realized have published books on spiritual issues. The late Georges van Vrekhem’s voluminous output of books on Sri Aurobindo and The Mother is well known. Joan and Aloka published Awareness through the Body, a pioneering work on body consciousness. Shraddhavan has been making substantial contributions to explicating Savitri and The Life Divine, Rod Hemsell has written on The Life Divine, and various anthologies of recollections of people meeting The Mother have appeared. Two videos on Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga have been released. The works of Auroville’s poets – Meenakshi, Rod, Shraddhavan, Roger, Anu, Noel, Lloyd, Abha, Alan, to mention a few – all reflect spirituality. Santé, the Integral Health Institute, has opened its doors, aspiring to look at the healing of the body in connection to spiritual psychology. In brief, Auroville is becoming a hub for spiritual research, attempting to find ways to communicate the higher laws of the spirit in everyday life.

Sharing the Vision outside

But are Aurovilians teaching spirituality outside? This outreach is beginning as well. Shraddhavan has been giving Savitri classes and Ashesh has been teaching about Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s yoga in some countries in Europe and in the USA. Manoj is part of the Telos team (www.telos.org.in), providing courses on self-awareness and integral Karma Yoga at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. “It’s a semester course, an elective which students and faculty members of all branches can attend. It includes a visit to Auroville and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The courses are now in their third year.” In parallel, he is investigating the pedagogy of transformational practices.

“The demand for introspective education is increasing,” says Newcomer Sheba, whose work in offering leadership courses all over India together with Newcomer Leena, is now taking off from Auroville. “They include quite a lot of personal reflection, looking at one’s self and one’s leadership style, understanding how people see you and to what extent you are motivating them. Many senior leaders in industry talk about ‘legacy’, what they intend to leave behind to the next generation. This includes their motivation to do business, which is often on an inner level. In these discussions spirituality always comes up. But I only talk about Sri Aurobindo when asked – I use words such as ‘connectedness’ or ‘linking to the source’, as the word ‘spirituality’ has become something of a jargon for some people. But the fact that I come from Auroville has a big impact – many people say that they want to come to Auroville. They all have heard about it.”

“More and more people are coming to Auroville to learn about Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s vision. I would like to see Auroville developing like Taxila or Nalanda, India’s ancient centres of learning, and becoming a world university where one can learn about practical spirituality,” says Manoj. “Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s framework is so comprehensive, there is nothing which comes close to it. There is an enormous potential, and there is now an enormous demand. ”

“Auroville is a place with a purpose, and to the degree we are able to manifest that, we can share that with the world,” says Ashesh. “And we are helped. There is something in Auroville which is very psychic, something very intimate. The Mother has put a force here and many people who come here feel that. I believe Auroville is a specially-chosen and charged place where people are being prepared for something – a collection of souls with a very special mission in the world – even if their outward personalities show little to indicate this. A distinct psychic Auroville is being developed.”