Exploring Auroville International

Are you irritated that some Aurovilians still see AVI’s role as being simply a funding agency for Auroville projects?

Camille: At our last meeting in Auroville, two years ago, I felt we were very much looked upon like this. Many projects were presented to us but at the end there was always a request for financial help. But this year it is completely different. There is more of a feeling that people want to share with us what they are doing: the money aspect no longer comes first.

Isa: This is part of a larger acceptance of AVI in Auroville. Before, the feeling was “You’re only here to give money” but this year, in particular, we felt very welcome.

Friederike: I think the many volunteers who are coming here with the help of the Centres have changed this attitude. They have helped Aurovilians understand that we are also there to help rejuvenate Auroville through bringing these young people here, who will then go out and spread the word and give an ever broader basis for Auroville.

One of your other main functions through the years has been to give information about Auroville. How do you go about communicating with such a complex entity as Auroville?

Friederike: In a recent meeting, the Working Committee said they are very concerned that we should not propagate a too idealistic version of Auroville. I describe it as a laboratory, pointing out that Auroville is a representation of all problems in the world and we cannot expect it to be ideal yet.

Jürgen: I say it is an experiment. The Aurovilians are 2000 guinea-pigs in a big cage, and they run around and that’s the starting point for interesting things to happen.

Isa: Actually, we cannot really tell people what Auroville is; they have to experience it. And each person who comes here has a different Auroville experience. All we can say is that the ideal has not yet manifested completely, but we appreciate that there are people here who are really working for human unity.

Vikas: I am very careful not to give any false hopes. The only real hope of Auroville is that people are trying, and that people here still believe that the answer to the world’s problems is a change of consciousness.

Friederike: But communication is not just one way. Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s action is not restricted to Auroville and to India. It is a worldwide action, and the world is developing in a way that sometimes appears to be more advanced than what is happening in Auroville. So I think another of our roles is to bring this knowledge of advanced developments here.

Bryan: And Auroville is everywhere too. Some of us are very much involved with concrete activities in our own communities which further similar ideals to those of Auroville. For example, I and my wife are both involved with the peace and justice network in the U.S. and are volunteering in a seniors centre and free health clinic.

This reminds me that in 1978 Satprem wrote a letter to the Canadian Association in which he says that ‘Auroville makes sense only in so far as all of us, in every country, can house the spirit of Auroville in ourselves…It is not the Auroville over there which is the most important, it is Auroville wherever you are – in your heart first of all, in your own experience.’ In other words, Auroville is everywhere where you live the ‘Auroville spirit’. Do you relate to this?

Alfonso: Very much so. In our different countries we have decided to be Aurovilians, to live as Aurovilians.

Friederike: Perhaps this is the part of our work which is least understood by those Aurovilians, who tend to see us only as funding agencies or a means of giving active help. This quote by Satprem says it very well.

Isa: I think what we have done in AVI over the years is to create a network beyond nations. We’re establishing a friendship beyond national and cultural appearances, based on trust in each other. In this way, we are creating this feeling of being Aurovilians outside of Auroville. At the beginning I felt we had to manifest things, and I got frustrated when nothing much happened, but then I felt it was much more important to get to know each other beyond our surface differences.

It seems that the membership of many Centres is stagnating, and the members predominantly belong to the older generation. Is this a worrying trend for you?

All: Yes.

Camille: We cannot find new people, young people. In our small association we are all in our 50s and 60s. The young people don’t want to commit themselves because they have too many other things to be interested in.

What could be done to change this?

Vikas: We are already working on this in AVI-UK. At the last meeting, before our long-term secretary Martin Littlewood left to join Auroville, he organized the involvement of his own son as well as Angiras, who was born in Auroville. Angiras is planning to contact Aurovilian youngsters who are now living in the UK and get them involved. But there is a very practical issue here – they don’t want to sit around and listen to a lot of blah blah. They want to do something else, not knowing quite what that is. And we don’t know what it is, either!

Alfonso: Young people want experience, not responsibility. What they’re really interested in is to come to Auroville and experience something here, not to be part of any organization or to go to meetings.

Friederike: I think it has something to do with two very different generations. Our generation who came out of 1968 wanted to fight for a better world. Our children don’t need that, they don’t want to fight. One of them told me, ‘We are not fighters, we are lovers’. So they are happy to stay closely linked with their network of friends and family, whereas we wanted to run away and do our own thing. Today it is a different situation for the youth. They feel they are left with a mess in the world and they have to struggle more to get their things together. So they focus more on building their private networks because this supports them when times are hard.

Camille: They have a different mentality. They share much more than we did.

Isa: There are quite a number of young people, volunteers, who have been to Auroville and come back. They don’t necessarily want to be members of AVI but they have new ideas, and they want to work for Auroville. AVI-Germany has a small plot of land which is meant for growing vegetables, and these young people have been coming there and helping us. We’re just at the beginning of this, but we enjoy working together and a creative flow has started. Now we dream of opening an Auroville café. Maybe in this way we can attract young people who are looking for something practical like this, because the Sri Aurobindo Centre in Berlin is a bit ‘holy’ for them – a place where you sit and meditate and read Savitri.

Friederike: Although we do organize our meetings in a different way; we don’t sit endlessly. Isa’s daughter, Muna, has great skills in facilitating meetings in a very lively and playful way, which young people can really relate to.

Jürgen: In Auroville, Sadhana Forest has no problem attracting youngsters. They are happy to go there, to be told what to do and work hard.

Bryan: It’s because it is like the early Auroville, the pioneering Auroville. Interestingly, in the US we have more money coming in for Sadhana Forest than for any other single project. It comes in hundreds of small donations from people who have lived and worked there.

Camille: They are attracted to a project like Sadhana Forest because it is like many small movements in the world which are exploring other ways of living which are ‘degrowth’, not consumeristic.

Do you see any need to give a new direction to AVI?

Alfonso: We need to change. In this we are in a very similar position to Auroville itself, because we are the same body. But in what way should we change? I don’t know. I think we need to call upon Her for help.

Friederike: The International Zone is very important to us and here AVI needs to become stronger, more proactive and more concrete. We’ve made the first decision to fund a well there. We have also developed first links with government agencies, which is what Mother explicitly wanted. These contacts have to be strengthened. But to reach out on the level of governments and other official agencies we need clarity. We have to work out, together with the Auroville groups concerned, a concrete development plan and, based on that, prepare appropriate material with which to present our plans.

Isa: One of our aims is to broaden the network of like-minded people round the world. This is why we have produced a book about AVI, to let people know that there are people out in the world who are Aurovilians at heart. We want them to join with us and work together for Auroville, as well as working on the consciousness in their own countries.

Bryan: In AVI-USA we are making a big push to make Aurovilians more aware of what is happening in AVI-USA. We've just brought out the first issue of ‘AVI-USA Connect’ to help in this.

Would it be fair to say that AVI suffered a little bit in the past from a certain inferiority complex vis-à-vis Auroville? And maybe now you are coming to a point where you feel you can start leading Auroville in certain areas?

Vikas: I very much feel that; I think AVI can take a much more leading role. Some people living in Auroville have got worn down, burnt out, by the combative process here but we are not subject to that. This gives us a degree of freedom and the energy to agitate for the things we think need to be worked on and changed. Of course, we need to find the right way to do this. But we would like to be a partner in helping Auroville move on, rather than us simply standing on the sidelines and providing funding.

Alfonso: I agree, and we have shown we can do it. We were very active in organizing the recent rededication ceremony for the International Zone, and we made a very fast decision to fund a new well in the Zone.

Friederike: There were very few Aurovilians at the ceremony, but we had the feeling that something really beautiful happened there; it was such a concentrated atmosphere. I think the first step in getting things moving here is to create an energy field, to call in a different energy to take hold of the thing and guide it, and that is what we in AVI have helped with.

Vikas: That ceremony had such strength for me. It was as if we uncovered what was already there, our essential unity. What we didn’t do, and what I had wanted us to do, was to allow everyone to express their feelings of what wants to come down for the International Zone. I think this is where AVI could play an important role, using the skills of people who can mediate to see if we can’t come up with an integrated solution to how to proceed in this Zone. Because it’s one thing to have a ceremony, but we still have to decide whose pavilion goes where and what they are going to build.

At the meeting in Berlin we had decided that after all the talk the essential thing would be to physically do something. When we had that recent meeting in the Unity Pavilion when everybody quite spontaneously said they would put money towards this well, I really felt the shakti power at that moment. This is the way we should go.