Find the answer within yourself

Auroville reaching 50 signifies a turning point. The first 50 years served to consolidate the bridgehead; now the bridge is to be built, not only by manifesting the town, but also by connecting with the wider world. I have a feeling that with the Matrimandir in place, not only Auroville is becoming activated, but all over the world something is emerging. It is like in a science fiction movie where the movement in one part awakens similar movements elsewhere. There is a reception for Auroville’s message – Auroville can become a saving grace for many people who are looking for an alternative.

I had an experience before the inauguration of Auroville. It was in 1967. There had been talk about the new Supramental consciousness having come down and The Mother’s saying that it wasn’t clear if it would spread out all over the world or would come to one place only. While I was thinking about this, sitting at the place where Auroson’s home was to be built, and looking at the gathering monsoon clouds, I had a very strong experience that actually both had happened – perhaps with the difference that in the Ashram and Auroville people had been made aware of it.

I have often been asked if Auroville has lived up to my expectations. Obviously it hasn’t. If I now read what I wrote in the 1970s about what Auroville is going to be and see where it is now, it doesn’t match. But I do not take that ‘not matching’ as a negative – on the contrary, it would have been rather negative if 50 years ago, I would have known what Auroville would be in 50 years.

In fact, the word ‘expectation’ is out of place in the Auroville context. You have expectations when you look for results and so determine the future. But the word for Auroville is ‘aspiration’, where you have a drive and a thrust into the future, where you try to serve this unknown in front of you but without expectations or determinations of what might come. For Auroville means a continuous stepping into a new adventure. That’s the raison d’être of Auroville, that sense of adventure and moving forward, never enjoying the fruits of the past but always reinventing oneself. That’s what Mother invited us for: the big adventure, and She put the urgency to manifest a new environment and that new consciousness.

That sense of urgency is not unique to Auroville; it is also felt by many people outside whose aspiration for change is as intense as here in Auroville. The world is coming to such an absurd level, to such a mockery of values and virtues, that the moment has come that Auroville’s raison d’être has to manifest.

In the early days, Auroville was seen as a place which was to be protected, as it were with a large wall around it, with less influx of people; a kind of biosphere. But that never happened. As Kireet Joshi once told me, the Divine sometimes changes its scheme. And I feel we are watching a change of scheme for the raison d’être of Auroville. Auroville is not a place for a few selected people; that which Auroville aspires to manifest is working all over the world. Auroville is a place that can help people to become conscious of that.

That’s what the Mother did for me. It was not that She put something in me which was not there before. She created in Auroville an environment, a space in which I could come into myself. For me, the most important aspect of Auroville is that it is a place “to give the soul a chance “. That’s what you often see when people first come to Auroville: it’s all smiles and honeymoon – the promise of the soul in front. But when they return to join Auroville, they experience their shadows, and have to get rid of them to bring their soul forward.

There is another aspect to Auroville which is its ‘collective psychic being’. You can perhaps compare it to a football team where the players – if it is a good team – are one organism. They complement each other. My way of being, for example, is to think in utopian terms, in large contexts, expansive. Others, who think of the details of manifestation, pin me down and ask me how on earth I think my ideas can materialise – and in doing so, they get under my skin. It took me some time to realise that, just because we are together, I can be myself and so can others. I do not need to shrink and think about specifics because there are others who do that better than I can. And I have come to appreciate the contradiction, and see how my ‘large panorama’ gets morphed into something else.

In other words, the Aurovilians are one large composite being where the individual components complement each other, and in working together are able to manifest something which is larger than the total of their individual contributions.

Take, for example, that proposed Line of Goodwill [see AVToday # 338, September 2018]. Twenty years ago, I would have pursued the manifestation of the Master Plan in all its details and have battled all those against it. Today, I smile and say to myself that it would be nice to have an apartment on the 17th floor, and look at the Matrimandir with an orange-laced Campari in my hand. But it no longer matters to me if this building or that one comes up – what matters is that we all understand that with the contribution of each of us, something much better can manifest. We have to get out of the old habit of bouncing off each other. We have to work together so that the gap between our aspirations and what manifests will no longer be a cause for nihilism or cynicism.

It is not a question of religiously or devotionally following the Master Plan or the Words of the Gurus. For too much proselytizing, too much ‘heavy duty’ talking, too much ‘we represent the next future of Auroville’, too much ‘The Mother said ...’ only creates opposition. When it comes to Auroville, you have to find the answer within yourself. We have to let the atmosphere of Auroville guide us. So with respect to the Line of Goodwill, I would like to support it and raise funds for it, but whether it will manifest the way the project originators now think about I don’t know and, I believe, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are open to guidance. Then Auroville will show in what direction we have to move. And then, a quantum jump is possible.