Finding the intermediate path

Over the years, many Auroville projects and initiatives have been still-born or have failed to fulfil their promise. These include early attempts at an ‘all from one pot’ economy and a more recent attempt to improve our decision-making through the Integral Sustainability Platform. There may be many reasons for these failures. Lack of resources (human, financial), wrong timing, an unwillingness to embrace change, are just a few of them. But there is one reason I seldom see mentioned. And that is the Aurovilian propensity to aim very high while neglecting the intermediate steps.

Perhaps a falling Icarus would be the appropriate logo for such failed attempts. Icarus, in Greek myth, was the boy who, along with his father, Daedalus, attempted to escape from Crete using wings made of feathers and wax. When he disregarded his father’s instructions and flew too close to the sun, the sun melted the wax and he plummeted into the sea.

In some ways, of course, to aim high is admirable. At times, we need to build a Matrimandir to escape the gravitational pull of the known, of our comfort zones. We need even our extravagant failures if they serve to pull us forward. At the same time, we need to remember that the price of failure can be high: not just a waste of energy and resources, but also disillusionment and a reluctance to make further experiments.

But there is another reason I’m concerned about our failure to consider intermediate steps. And that is that if you do not provide intermediate steps you make it harder for people to behave in a certain way, to make the ‘right’ choices for the community as a whole.

Take water, which is very much in the news at present. We know, or should know by now, that water is an endangered resource in both Auroville and the bioregion, yet there continues to be a great deal of water wasted through leaky taps and pipes, poor irrigation practices and wasteful consumption.

Simply telling people to be more efficient in their water use is unlikely to lead to significant change. The gap between what should happen and what could happen is just too big for most individuals to bridge. However, an intermediate intervention could bridge that gap. For example, what if there was a group that would come to your place to do a water audit, make recommendations about how water could be saved, and then, rather than disappearing back into the wilderness, actually went out and bought the necessary appliances and fitted them, all at cost price. Wouldn’t this make it more likely that more Aurovilians would be motivated to save water?

What you are doing, in fact, is not only providing help in practical terms. You are also providing an environment in which it is easier for the individual to make wise choices. At present, we lack enough such ‘environments’ and individuals have to battle against a host of material and psychological roadblocks if they want to make the smallest personal or collective advance.

Actually, I am somewhat overstating the case, for we now have more people willing to work on intermediate solutions. This is mainly because a young generation of Aurovilians has returned to the community and an influx of new people have joined the community who, while being no less idealistic than the pioneers, are much more practical and focussed upon creating supportive steps and environments for change.

So we have the home gardens initiative in which experienced gardeners and farmers offer to come and start vegetable gardens in people’s communities; we have the Integral Entrepreneurial Lab which provides support for the first baby steps of starting one’s own unit; and, of course, the Pour Tous Distribution Centre is an inspiring first step towards a cashless and non-consumeristic economy.

So why are we not creating more such stepping-stones? Some people, perhaps, do not see the necessity. Either they believe that we must always aim high to avoid being dragged down into mediocrity. Or they feel that the community will advance only when enough individuals have reached a certain level of consciousness through their individual efforts, and that the environment has only a very limited influence upon personal sadhana. (In fact, some may argue that an adverse environment may actually accelerate individual progress in the yoga. This, as told in many myths and legends, is the ‘hero’s route’to salvation.)

Others remember how concerned Mother was about creating a favourable environment for spiritual progress but believe we lack the resources. However, the real problem is not lack of resources: it is that the intermediate zone requires a different kind of imagination, a different kind of mind-set. It is easier to find imaginative ways to fly straight at the sun than to skim the waves, because sun-seeking is so big, so glamorous. No doubt, a balance of the two flightpaths is necessary, and we must always have something to aim at. But, in many ways, taking the lower trajectory, finding the small steps, is a much more difficult, because more humble, work. And this is why it often gets neglected.

The author of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, was not exactly a ‘small’ thinker. But it was he who reminded us that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.