Can we improve how we communicate with each other?

Can we improve how we communicate with each other? Do we want to meet? If so, how? What do we want to discuss? How?

These were some of the questions that stimulated an open discussion on communication during Auroville Today’s 30th birthday celebration.

Around seventy people had come to the Unity Pavilion to hear reminiscences of the early days from the original Auroville Today team and to enjoy the mocktails. But they were also drawn by the opportunity to discuss Auroville’s communication culture.

The majority view was clearly that we could do a lot better. But how? How, for example, should we meet?

Many of those who came were clearly missing physical community meetings where we could openly discuss topics of the day together, something which is a rarity in the present day Auroville where we only attend carefully prepared community presentations or communicate through our computer screens.

But why is it important to come together like this? After all, Mother never mentioned the need for gatherings to discuss or decide upon community matters. On the contrary, she emphasised that the governance of the community should be in hands only of those with the highest consciousness, and that the rest of us should follow a collective discipline.

“We need to have a shared sense of being on the same page”, said one participant. “We are here to build something together and the collective work cannot happen with just an avant-garde who think they know everything,” said another. Yet another recognised its efficacy for personal growth. “When I need help to grow, I need to bring my personal issues to the collective table.”

At a deeper level, another participant pointed out that Mother had said she was waiting for the Aurovilians to realise their group soul and without the group soul there could be no real community. “So one reason for us coming together as a community is to grow into the group soul.”

One long-time Aurovilian missed the community meetings of the early days. “People sat on shelves and among the groceries in the cramped old post office but those were fantastic meetings: they were the most successful forums we ever had. In contrast, I find the community meetings of today totally aseptic. We are just looking at technology; it is not living at all.”

But how practical is it to meet as a physical community when we have an adult population of over 2,000 and our largest hall can only accommodate 200 – 300 people? Can we really call this a community meeting? When the notes of the 30th discussion were posted on Auronet, the community intranet, somebody remarked that the number who actively took part in the 30th birthday discussion (around 60) was about the same as participate in discussions on Auronet. “The biggest difference is that on Auronet hundreds more Aurovilians can be and are first hand silent observers.”

“But sitting in front of your computer is not conducive to good behaviour so it is necessary to create ways and means for us to actually relate,” remarked someone at the 30th meeting. “It could be something like a ‘stammtisch’, an informal meeting around a big table where people come every months or so and talk.” “Let us come together, share, let us see each other again,” was the heartfelt cry of another.

But what could or should we talk about?

“I would really like a regular forum where we meet and there is no set topic. The topic would emerge from whoever attends,” was one suggestion.

So would this include facing the collective ‘shadow’, all the things we usually prefer to sweep under the carpet?

The response was a clear reluctance to restrict the frame. “There should be no rules and regulations. Life itself will present us with what needs to be discussed at any moment,” said one participant. “I do not think there are any topics which cannot be shared with an open heart and an open mind,” said another.

Others preferred more structured meetings, more focussed on the issues of the day. Regarding this, there was a pervasive sense that community members are being excluded from discussing important community matters. “Before, the residents used to discuss most issues together, but now they are discussed only in the Council, Koodam and restorative circles and I think we are losing something,” one participant lamented. “If somebody could communicate what is happening in our groups in a living way that would also be useful. Now people feel very disconnected. It’s not helpful for the people slaving on those groups or for the rest of the community.”

Yet another participant objected to the fact that all our meetings today seem to be recorded or filmed (as was the case with this particular meeting). “I think this makes it very difficult to express yourself because you have to measure very carefully what you say; there is no room to make mistakes in a society that has become very legal-minded and where people are ratting on other people and copy-pasting elsewhere what is written on Auronet. There is a lack of trust in the community and all this doesn’t make people feel safe.”

This, in turn, introduced the topic of how we communicate with each other when we meet. Our public meetings have not always been a pleasant experience. Indeed, the ‘aseptic’, controlled quality of our present meetings is partly a reaction to the unruly

meetings of the past where rudeness and character assassination seemed to be the norm. As participants in the 30th discussion seemed to resist any restrictions being imposed on what we discuss in community meetings, the question arises, how can we to discuss sensitive matters in a way that builds unity and brotherhood, rather than fracturing the community?

Auronet is an interesting test case. At present, Auronet, our Internet, is the closest we have to an open forum for public discussion. There has been no moderation for four years now. But how successful has Auronet been in allowing free expression while keeping a certain level of consciousness?

Not successful at all, according to some. “At present it is an awful forum. You have to put on armour to go on Auronet because you are going to be hammered,” said one Aurovilian. “On Auronet we can see our shadow starkly in raw, crude, often violent forms,” observed another.

“I’m very concerned by what is happening on Auronet because I believe it is a tool that we need,” said a concerned user. “It is for all of Auroville and we have many things to discuss, but this is a tool which is going down and down because of a few elements who are discouraging other people to participate.”

One of the administrators of Auronet observed that this was a common perception. However, he had made a ten year study of postings and the conclusion was that more positivity than negativity has been expressed over that period. “It’s like when we have a wound in the body it takes all our attention, even if the rest of the body is healthy.”

He went on to explain his understanding of what is really happening when someone expresses themselves negatively. “The community’s pain shows up in the few representatives who hold that pain in themselves. This is our own pain and somebody is symbolically going through that journey. So the challenge is how we hold the space for them without getting aggressive and without trying to shut them down, because when we release that voice we are also releasing that pain.”

He acknowledged, however, that the expression of pain triggers pain in others, and then the pain can snowball.

So can we find a way to improve communication on Auronet?

There were a number of suggestions. One was to raise the standard by periodically publishing articles from Auroville Today on the forum. Another suggestion was to create a ‘high-quality’ forum on Auronet where Mother’s criteria about how to discriminate between truth and falsehood (To discriminate the impulses of truth from the impulses of falsehood, one can take as a guiding rule that all that brings with it or creates peace, faith, joy, harmony, wideness, unity and ascending growth comes from the truth) would be applied to every posting. Those who disagreed with the application of such criteria could continue to post on the existing discussions forum.

Another participant suggested that the Rules of the Game – agreements about basic communication behaviour which everybody who posts on Auronet signs up to but which are never enforced – should be ratified by the whole community and this would give the moderators the right to delete posts which do not conform. Another agreed that that ‘freedom of speech” requires ‘some form of moderation’.

This, predictably, evoked howls of rage when this was reported on Auronet. “Freedom of speech on Auronet needs some form of moderation: this oxymoron notion needs to be looked at in light of its utter contradiction,” wrote one ‘Auronetter’ who felt that moderation was definitely not the path to be pursued.

Others were more nuanced in their response. “It would seem that the need of the hour is to come to a collective agreement regarding in which spirit and to which end the interactive part of Auronet is made use of. Once that is achieved, moderation would only have to come into play whenever the agreement is broken,” wrote another frequent user.

However, in the 30th birthday discussion one of the administrators pointed out that moderation need not imply Aurovilians passing judgement on fellow Aurovilians. “Another way is shifting to self-regulation where participants earn their rights to participate in a forum by their behaviour. We have installed the Discourse forum as a test sample.” Moreover, “In terms of emerging technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can give instant feedback on what you are going to post before you publish it. AI can ask you to rephrase it in such a way that the emotional content of your writing can be lifted up and made more rational. This is where AI will help humanity to move on.”

However, some were sceptical of the usefulness of Artificial Intelligence when it comes to improving communication generally in the community. “I don’t think technology is the answer in a multi-cultural community. It’s on the human level we need to work,” said one. “I think there has to be clarity on our common ground, on what brings everybody here, and agreement to strive towards this before all the diversity of our individual expressions happens,” noted another.

The question of trust, of feeling in a safe space, was also mentioned as critical to good communication. One participant noted, “I am desperate to communicate but I can’t communicate if I don’t think I will be understood. If I am in a small circle where I can be trusted and I can trust the others, I can open up.”

Yet another participant noted that what really mattered is not the topic but the level of consciousness with which we discuss things. This focused the discussion upon the individual’s responsibility in ensuring that communication takes place in the right way. “The word is an invocation. So we need to consider what we are invoking through using words, regardless of the topic,” observed one participant. Another spoke of the need to work upon the ‘internal dynamic’ that precedes communicating one’s thoughts and feelings to others. “I need to be able to translate what I hear in a way that can be accommodated inside me and then be communicated back. I appreciate technology and tools but I am here to grow, and if I want to use communication as a very powerful means of growing, then I need to study and practice this internal dynamic.”

And what about that other much neglected side of communication: listening? “Communication works best when listening has happened. I do not believe we are very good at listening and training in this has to happen,” said one participant.

In fact, there seemed near unanimity in the room that much more needed to be learned and done to determine not only what we want to communicate but also how best to communicate with each other in Auroville.

This is why the editor of the News and Notes, who is often in the firing line when it comes to people wanting to use the News to express their feelings publicly and who is concerned how false rumours go worldwide now, would like to initiate a one-year study programme on communication in Auroville. “I would like the community to decide how we want to communicate, at any level, and then apply this. It could start in small groups discussing how we communicate with each other now. We could also look back and see what worked and what didn’t work in the past, as well as find new ways.”

The nature of communication and the need to communicate better with each other has been much neglected in Auroville. It seems to have been widely assumed that communication happens naturally, and that anybody can do it, anywhere. Moreover, nobody has a right to interfere with someone else’s mode of expression.

But we are beginning to realise that none of these assumptions are necessarily true. Rather, that good, effective communication is something we need to work at, to practice and refine continually, that unconscious expression and ad hominem attacks can do great harm to individuals and to the community as a whole, and that certain milieus are more supportive of good communication than others.

Hopefully, this lively 30th birthday discussion will be just the prelude to further discussions and initiatives to improve our communication with each other and advance us on the rocky road to human unity.