The Passing of Dr. Kireet Joshi

95 Replies to “The Passing of Dr. Kireet Joshi”

1. it’s only Ma and Lord’s grace that has worked tremendously through a great but very humble instrument like Kireetbhai. i had the privilege to have his love when he was in Gujarat.

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2. In the passing away of ” dearly beloved Kireet Bhai ” not only the Ashram but India and the world have lost truly an iconic figure of boundless knowledge , limitless compassion and the singer of ” the Life Divine ” it is an irreparable loss of vast magnitude . He was truly a majestic exponent of this blue print of the divine life …He would go to any length to elucidate in his melliflous voice the complex conceptual knowledge issues ..He was gifted , as it were , with seeing intelligence ..which could instantly reach the core of the problem and resolve it ..He had phenomenal memory , understanding – rather over-standing of the supernal truths as enshrined in the Vedas , the Upanishads and the Geeta . Words are utterly inadequate to choreograph the many sided genius and the splendid life of ” dear Kireet Bhai ” based entirely on the Grace and Blessings of our Lord and the Divine Mother ..It was my fortunate privilege to be his student of the Life Divne where he had unveiled the mystery and mystique of this magnum opus . Let us salute this wondrous personality who dedicated his entire life cheerfully in the service of the humanity and Divinity .. Om Shanti .. Shanti .. Shanti .. “

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3. In Auroville we knew that Kireet, a renowned scholar and advisor to leading figures, had served in many important missions. There are no words to thank him for all that he has done for Auroville. But we will remember him as a most accessible person, over enthusiastic, always ready to listen and help.

   I was very close to Mohini Dadlani; she knew him since her university years and remained his pupil for life. Mohini had joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram one year before Kireet; the Mother appointed her not only as Kireet’s secretary… but also as his cook, yet there was a problem… Mohini had to learn to cook to fulfil such task! She lived in the Golconde prototype, opposite to Ganesh Temple; the only man among ashramites ladies, Kireet was given a room in the same compound.

   When Kireet became Chairman of the Auroville Foundation, before his house in Auroville was built he used to stay in his old Pondy room. And it was at lunch time, in Mohini’s kitchen, that I used to meet him and discuss many Auroville related issues revolving around the theme of the ideal society; from humanistic education to the Auroville organization and its group soul, to individualisation by the psychic being as foundation for life in Auroville.

   The great scholar was so simple and unassuming that I felt conversing to an old friend… He had been repeatedly awarded by the Kanceepuram Shankaracarya, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal, my Advaita teacher; once Kireet returned from Kanceepuram… with prasad for me from the Sankaracarya! Happy like a child to show me the photographs of the ceremony at Shankar Mutt…

   He, the man who received honours and achieved so much, spent the last years of terrestrial existence in a tiny room, with scarce daylight, perfectly at ease in it as in a palace. I felt that by his serene humility he was silently teaching a tremendous lesson to all of us; living there content was the last gem of his serving the Mother till he breathed his last.

   Yes, the Avatar takes birth with his own people, they come and go together. One more of them has left us. We are even poorer, more downcast. Yet we must hold on, preparing the ground for the next golden batch.

   Paulette

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4. Our sincere condolences for the loss of Dr, Kireet Joshi.

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5. We remember him for his Love for Mother and Sri Aurobindo. A great
   scholar and lover of humanity has done good work for education and Auroville.

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6. A great loss to Education in India. I will always thank him for having made so many good institutions real in India.

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7. We knew Dr Kireet Joshi from my early days and was influnced by his thoughts on education. It is great loss to the Country

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8. In the early 1960s the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education began getting grants every year from the Ministry of Education. It was for that purpose that Kireet had to go to Delhi every year for 10 days or so. From Delhi he used to write to Mother daily and Mother would send a telegram every day with her love and blessings.

   From December 1973, Kireet, Tanmay and myself would meet the Mother on alternate day in the evening between 7 and 7.30 pm. In January 1973 Kireet returned from his usual trip to Delhi and came straight to the Mother’s room at about 7 pm. When he recounted to Mother that many senior officers in the Education Ministry were showing a lot of interest and openness to Sri Aurobindo’s concepts of education, Mother was very happy. Later during the same conversation She added: “Whenever you are called to assist Indira Gandhi for education you should respond positively and accept it”.

   This is the background of Kireet going to Delhi to work with Indira Gandhi after the Mother left Her body.

   Kittu Reddy

   Source: http://kitturd.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/kireet-joshi-his-work-with-the-government-of-india/

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   1. “From December 1973, Kireet, Tanmay and myself would meet the Mother on alternate day in the evening between 7 and 7.30 pm.” I feel there must be a mistake in the month and year as the Mother passed away on 17th November 1973.

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      1. You are right. I think Prof. Kittu Reddy meant “From December 1972” instead of “December 1973”. It was surely a slip from his pen.

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9. we are very thankfull to overman foundation for introducing us the genius and personality that shri keerit joshi possessed.
   Indeed we have lost the ambassador of the intregal Education.
   On the 20th . a function was organised to pay the hommage to shri keertbhai by the children s’ university , at Gndhinagar., guj.
   we simply offer our PRANAM to the departed soul.

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10. An illumined soul of the highest level, a RISHI of the modern times, an ardent devotee of the Divine Mother and Sri Aurobindo, an humble bureaucrat par excellence, an educationist to the core – all these adjectives fall short in profiling a towering personality that our Dear Uncle – KIREETKAKA was. I consider myself highly privileged to be born in his family. Being a friend, philosopher and guide to peoples of many countries, he was an international personality in true sense. Everyone who came in contact with him considers himself or herself to be very close to him. To fathom his life seems to be beyond my capacity…..and yet he was MY, NO OUR, LOVING KIREETKAKA, who always showed great concern for all of us in the family. Whenever we met him it seemed as if we were never away from him, and yet he was so detached. I fondly remember all the meetings we had at Pondicherry, at New Delhi and at various places where I attended his lectures and seminars. I bow down to that Divine Soul with great humility. May he guide us on the right path of our lives!

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11. I will never forget Kireet-bhai and the gratitude I owe to him.

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12. YES…we know that his body is not with us now…

    BUT… his gentleness – sweetness – and love_ful smile are there with all those who have met him even once…

    AND…when they think back on him, they do see him in his body_form too…

    THUS…he continues to be with us even now…

    ” AU REVOIR ” Kireetbhai…….

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13. श्री किरीट जोशी जी जिनका के जन्मदिन है।आप जी भारत के पूर्ण अवतार(Perfect Person) एवं भारत के महारत्न थे।आप के द्वारा श्री अरविंद जी एवं श्री ओरोविल माँ की नैतिक शिक्षा व अध्यात्म क्रांति का विश्वात्मा बन कर विश्व में उदय किया।सांदीपिनी महाऋषि की शिक्षा को विश्व में रखा जिसके कारण 2013 में श्री कृष्ण जी का जन्म हुआ।आप जी 2006 में दे गए ‘I have reached the goal.’अर्थात हमने अपना लक्ष्य प्राप्त कर लिया है।जोकि 2014 में उनके विद्यार्थीश्री नरेंद्र मोदी जी के वर्तमान भारत के प्रधानमंत्री बनते ही समस्त विश्व को पता चल गया कि भारत ही विश्व का 21वी सदी में जगद्गुरु के रूप में नेतृत्व करेगा।जय श्री कृष्ण।जय श्री अरविंद जी।जय भारत।

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14. I express my regards, gratitude and pranam to all those who acted like gods and goddesses surrounding Prabhu Sri Aurobindo and The Mother for uplift of the mankind. Pranam Prabhu Pranam Maa.

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15. All that is fine and most laudable. There was something exceptional about him, without which he would have never come close to the Mother. Yet, what disturbs one is his role in seeing that Auroville was taken over by the Government. He made mountains move to achieve this calamitous event. There might have been many grave matters of impropriety and bungling; but they have to be sorted out within the set-up itself. The Mother would have never approved going to the courts and inviting external agencies in the management of Auroville. Did he not betray the Mother in that respect? When we see in retrospect this becomes disastrous to the free spirit in which Auroville must grow and flourish. It maybe that Aurovilians are not “mature” enough to come up to the Mother’s expectations, stand up to her demands. But that is precisely which has to evolve and assert itself. We have to go only by the Mother’s principles and, in spite of a thousand odds, stick to them, implement them. Kireet-bhai failed in that respect. Sorry to say that.

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16. In our adolescent years we used to hear that Jawaharlal Nehru admired the Mother’s gift as the founder of the Ashram and the international centre of education as a homage to Sri Aurobindo; he seemed to have asked the university grants commission to examine possibilities of some financial help to these institutions without imposing any obligation.
    While looking for the compatibility between this Nehruvian respect and Joshibhai’s efforts to put an end to the spirit of liberty I have always failed.

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17. “Auroville is from the beginning a symbolic concentration of human interactions on Earth. Am I wrong if I say that the events you are talking about took place between 1974 and 1989 in a crucial period of the cold war? What is reported by Dr Kittu Reddy if of great importance: Mother, in the last year of her most material life, instructed directly Kireet Joshi this way: ” Whenever you are called to assist Indira Gandhi for education you should respond positively and accept it”. There is no ambiguity at all about it.

    You said: “The Mother would have never approved going to the courts and inviting external agencies in the management of Auroville”, but what’s at stake here is evident: We have on Earth a potentially mortal conflict between a structurally controlled collective organization of life, which is socialism, and an organization founded on the principle of liberty. The issue had to be dealt with in a symbolic way in Auroville. This was done in the manner which the degree of civilization hitherto attained considered most appropriate, the reference to the Supreme Court of Justice of India, and Kireet Joshi seems to have been instrumental to do so. It was certainly no coincidence. Soon after these events, the Berlin Wall fell, which theorically consecrated the victory of freedom over state control. As was described by Sri Aurobindo in the Human Cycle, an important cycle was over. It was all part of a vast universal cycle that far surpassed Kireet Joshi and the other actors of the time. But he seems to have been chosen by Mother as the representative of this important current of universal thought of that time, even if this current was destined to lose.”

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18. But one thing: when the Mother had asked Kireet Joshi to assist Indira Gandhi in educational matters she did not mean that he should leave the Ashram and take a bureaucratic job in New Delhi, within 3 years of her passing. He could have been in the Ashram to give her all the necessary help and support and advice. But then he also exceeded the Mother’s brief, which was only for educational matters; instead he became more active in Auroville related issues.

    An organisation founded on the principle of liberty is for them who also go by the sense of duty and responsibility. It is for an enlightened community and that has been operationally missing in Auroville, be management or what we may call the plebeians. In the deepest sense, for true freedom my soul should be released from the universal Ignorance and my spirit free from the bondages of Nature. There have to be the “static Oneness and dynamic Power” — to quote from “Savitri” — operative in us. Often there is the Mother’s phrase “divine anarchy” tossed in the course of discussions; but that anarchy, that free will is for them who have that release and that freedom of their souls and their spirits. In the meanwhile we have to rise to our superior status. All the activities have to be an expression of one’s longings in the spirit of man’s nobility, la noblesse, nobiltà, adel, āryanhood, mahānatā, greatness and grandeur and glory, its meritoriousness. If people have to come here they have to have that motivating sensitivity.

    Sri Aurobindo says: “Democracy is by no means a sure preservative of liberty; on the contrary, we see today the democratic system of government march steadily towards such an organised annihilation of individual liberty. … The tyranny of the majority has become a familiar phrase.” What is needed is respect for freedom of the human soul, “because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one’s own nature, dharma. … It will give the same freedom to man’s seeking for political and social perfection and to all his other powers and aspirations. Only it will be vigilant to illuminate them so that they may grow into the light and law of the spirit … .”

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    1. “He could have been in the Ashram to give her all the necessary help and support and advice.”—
       From what I have heard from the siblings of Sujata Nahar, Kireet Joshi had no other alternative but to leave the Ashram. As he was supporting Satprem who was trying desperately to publish the ‘Mother’s Agenda’ which the Ashram authorities were trying to prevent, he fell into the bad-books of the authorities. Just like Abhay Singh Nahar, Sujata’s elder brother, who was in charge of nineteen departments of the Ashram when the Mother was physically present. But in December 1977, the trustees put Abhay Singh in a position where he could do nothing but resign from the ‘Atelier’—the Ashram Workshop which he was managing for a number of years—on 19th December. In a letter dated 6 January 1978, Satprem (who was expelled from the Ashram four days earlier) writes: ‘We are also expecting Abhay Singh’s expulsion, as well as Kireet’s.’ It was at this point of time that Kireet-bhai received a formal invitation from Indira Gandhi to help her in educational matters and he accepted it.

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19. Let me quote here from “Down Memory Lane” by Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala the following, (p. 26)

    ‘André was sad over Auroville happenings and just repeated to me more than once what Mother had told him. “For God’s sake, keep Satprem out of Auroville.” ‘

    André, the Mother’s son, passed away on 29 March 1982. I don’t see any reason to doubt the authenticity of this, even as I had some genuine contact with Shyam Sunder-ji.

    I am sure Satprem must have been aware of it, what André had told SSJ, directly or indirectly, even as the atmosphere was thick with it; but as the Mother was no more there physically he went by his own understanding, by his own needs based on his saṃskaras and upbringing. His “good” in recording the Mother’s Conversations should not blind us to see these other aspects of his personality.

    It was unfortunate Kireet Joshi went in that way with Satprem.

    The human play is with all the Shakespearian characters in life, bursting in its madness, in its frenzy and ferocity, — even if one is close to the Divine. One may be very close to Him/Her yet never know Him/Her.

    O loss, if into its elements is shattered this human vase before it breathes its sweetest and the noblest! It is only when we free ourselves from ourselves that does she help us, take us on her way. Ce n’est que lorsque nous nous libérons de nous-mêmes qu’elle nous aide, nous emmène sur son chemin.

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20. Satprem has not only captured a large faction of the Auroville becoming,
    he has succeeded establishing himself as the third Avatar, by the side of
    the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. “O loss, if into its elements is shattered this
    human vase before it breathes its sweetest and the noblest! It is only when
    we free ourselves from ourselves that does she help us, take us on her way.”

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21. I don’t see anything wrong in Kireet Joshi’s role in involving the Govenment in Auroville. Not that he worked very well in Auroville, but he understood that militant people with vested interests had taken control of the place. There was no other option. Without Mother’s wish we couldn’t have a positive force as Dr. Jayanti Ravi. About Kireet Bhai’s attachment to Government affairs, it maybe seen as his swadharma. I wonder how he could write so much being in politics. Not that he wrote like Sethna and RY Deshpande, but he was a great summariser and clarifier. The Mother assigns each of us with a specific role. Kireet Joshi was a force, and that was never negative.

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    1. Kireet Joshi joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1956, became Registrar of its Centre of Education and looked after its administration; he also taught philosophy at it. But more importantly regarding educational matters he was in direct contact with the Mother for seventeen years. After the Mother’s passing away in 1973 he left the Ashram and in 1976 under unsavoury conditions and became the Advisor in the Ministry of Education, Government of India, in New Delhi. This was a job that was natural to his soul’s temperament, his pīṇda, and its urges and ambitions. During the next twelve years he got actively associated with the government responsibilities related to Auroville. In fact connected with Auroville he was greatly instrumental in the passing of legislation in 1980 and 1988 in the Parliament of India. During this period he was super-active with various court issues and cases about Auroville, working more on behalf of the Government than as a disciple of the Mother. That was all in the undesirable companionship of Satprem about whom the Mother had said that he should be kept outside the Auroville matters. Kireet Joshi became Brutus in the drama of the Mother’s Auroville, she crying “et tu, Brute”. During his nine-year tenure as the Chairman of Auroville Foundation what did he really do? Not even one industry came to Auroville, industry that would contribute funds for the development of the city.

       There is honour, and respect, for him for his deep scholarship and understanding, but there is the reproach for his going against the Mother’s principles. Whatever good it might have brought in loses all its worth, that Auroville lost its freedom, lost its freedom.

       Now, luckily, at present there is the government machinery and Auroville must learn how to get along with it, instead of a group establishing its own non-effective but negatively obstructionist parallel setups, with its own working committee and email services and media outlets and fund collection. Luckily we have dynamic people at the top of the administration with all their genuine concerns for the Mother’s city, and spiritual wisdom will lie in seeing that things do move forward. Is there any other way?

       We have to do things now in the pragmatics of the situation, invoking the Mother’s working in it. If the option is not the winding up of Auroville this is the only way one sees, to remain firm in the Mother, keeping aside all personal ideas and ideals. She will, doubtlessly, bring about the miracle. That has to be the faith and conviction

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    2. The principle is, a bad action does not get nullified by another bad action.

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       1. The situation is this, it is the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation and representative of the government, who refuses to communicate and to collaborate and to involve the Aurovilians in her work of building AV.
          ​
          ​There is a smal group of Aurovilians who work with her but they only follow her orders like soldiers and they do not represent the community in Spirit. The Secretary is in charge, nobody else.
          ​
          ​She refuses meetings, discussions, involvement of the experts of Auroville. She employs outsiders to do the construction work and who do it unprofessionally, ignoring the knowledge and the expertise gained by the Aurovilians who have lived and worked and dedicated their whole lives to Auroville, many of them for the 55 years Auroville is now.
          ​
          ​If she would collaborate, work together, involve all Aurovilians and distribute the various responsibilities over the larger community, everyone would be happy to work with her. A top down autocratic system will never work in Auroville. The idea that you can step away from democracy and then choose to be exclusively authoritarian is not exactly in Sri Aurobindo’s spirit. No one is claiming divine anarchy as AV is very well organised internally. Divine anarchy only starts with supramental beings.
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          ​She also follows the idea that AV needs to be build now very quickly not realising that people need to have this inner call to join Auroville. You cannot just advertise and acquire people out of the blue. There is also now the danger that only Indians will come to AV and the ideal of being an international community, as the Mother intends, will get far behind.
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          ​From the beginning it was never intended that the government would rule over AV. Kireet Joshi was actually a protector for that. The Auroville Foundation Act he established with the government states:

          The 3 authorities of the Auroville Foundation: the Governing Board, the International Advisory Council and the Residents’ Assembly – work together in spirit of mutuality.
          ​
          ​The Aurovilians have been addressing this Act continuously but the Secretary does not want to hear of it. She is the yoke that needs to be rejected. If not now then hopefully a new and better government comes to power.​

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22. Fifty five years later, in 2023, we still face the same or similar challenges. Who has the superman vision and power to change the situation in the Ashram and in Auroville? After the Mother’s withdrawal, the SAS, Sri Aurobindo Society, stepped away from their assigned duty of generating money for building Auroville. Instead they became power-hungry and took full authority over Auroville, deciding which projects got priority and who could stay or had to leave Auroville. Pure dictatorship. Who would want to work with them? Today there is apparently no change in their attitude toward Auroville.

    Aurovilians are now blamed not to have accomplished much in AV’s 55 years which is false. The real issue is that thanks to the SAS, AV is not able to generate money for building the city. The place depends now on private donations. You cannot build a city from donations. Where are the enlightened persons among us who come with a constructive solution to bring unity between Ashram and Auroville? The prejudice against Aurovilians is not justified, most of them came to Auroville by the inner call and what did they find but harsh and raw living and work conditions.

    Obviously, we ourselves are not developed high enough in consciousness to know the solutions to all these challenges while the incompetent keep their power.

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23. Please, now that all this has been said, let the past be the past. Let us all unite at the service of our Masters for the advent of the golden future they have prepared for us.

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    1. If we only could do that, Claude. I like your good sentiments but the past is not the past, unfortunately, the past is repeating itself today. While the government in those days, as Goutam Ghosal confirms, was a helping hand for Auroville and established stability, the current government’s take-over of Auroville in 2021 is the opposite.

       They are not Aurobindonians who understand the depth of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as they think they just need to build Auroville quickly, to get to the 50 000 inhabitants as intended. The current government and its representative in AV, also manifest the dictator’s role and step on the Aurovilians and the True Auroville Spirit. No collaboration with the Aurovilians who have lived and worked there for decades and who have the full understanding of the land and their community. It is today maybe worse than in those days of the SAS. What happened to the Joy to work for the Mother? What is it with those people who think they are smarter than the rest and impose themselves?

       I understand the struggle of Truth versus Falsehood but that this happens within our own collective should not be the case. If the SAS had been truthful to their mission as assigned by the Mother we would probably have a blossoming Auroville today. A glorious Joy is the basis of true collaboration.

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       1. From the Essential Agenda:
          “19 July 1972
          The subconscient is a mass of defeatism. That’s what keeps rising to the surface. As we ABSOLUTELY need to change that, the subconscient must be clarified so that the new race can come. We absolutely must be categorical and vigorous—fearless. Change it MUST. A fantastic energy is checked by that, by that foul thing. Defeatism is anti-divine. There’s but one way: to want what the Supreme Consciousness wants. Like: to want what You want. WE are the Divine who has forgotten Himself. And our task is to re-establish the connection. It’s the Perfection we must become, that’s all. The Perfection, the Power, the Knowledge we must become. That’s the aspiration we must have. We must get out of this mire, stupidity, unconsciousness, this disgusting defeatism that crushes us because we allow ourselves to be crushed. And we fear. We fear for its life, for this thing, as if it were precious, because we want to stay conscious. But let’s unite with the Supreme Consciousness, and we’l ll stay conscious. And that’s all accumulated in the subconscient: everything we have rejected is there, and now it must be brought in contact with the transforming Force … unconsciousness has to end.” -Mother

          Let us all get rid of that defeatism and open quietly to the Grace.

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24. Let me quote from the Agenda, 23 April 1968:

    Did I tell you that a Swedish or Norwegian lady wants to send me a big crucifixion?… I did. But I didn’t show you the two texts. You see, I chose a photo of the galaxy, then a photo of Auroville that somewhat looks like the first, and then, under the crucifixion, we’ll have in big letters (Mother reads):

    “The Divine Consciousness crucified by man’s desires.”

    Then, in very small letters, like this, we’ll put under the photo of Auroville:

    “The Divine Consciousness manifested through human unity.”

    Let us hold on to that Auroville.

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25. I don’t agree to any of the arguments of August Timmermans. I am sorry. Auroville is on the move despite obstructions. For me, the Secretary, Dr. Jayanti Ravi, has the Mother’s force behind her work till now at least. All the movements, allegations etc. against her have failed till now. She maybe new to the Sri Aurobindo world, but as per my understanding her knowledge of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is slightly sounder than that of Michael Danino, who has compiled some quotations from Sri Aurobindo without any introduction. If that gives him a “specialist knowledge” to pass judgement on the Mother, Sri Aurobindo and on Auroville, well, I have nothing to say. The opposition in the development work in Auroville is from people who have long used the soil for their own benefits. I understand the reasons of revolt against Jayanti Ravi. Auroville is on the move after half a century. Now or never.

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    1. GG writes “The opposition in the development work in Auroville is from people who have long used the soil for their own benefits.”

       It is unfortunate that the earlier managements allowed things to grow in a way which are now proving anti-Auroville.

       Karan Singh sat comfortably in New Delhi and oversaw Auroville matters from there, only occasionally visiting Auroville. In his laissez-faire approach, not to displease or offend anyone, perhaps for personal popularity or gains, he allowed unplanned wild growth to take place, it desecrating the Master Plan prepared by the Mother’s architect Roger Anger. There is now a violent opposition for clearing it, not only opposition but court cases against the administration; and there is the contention for entitlement of things, these being claimed as private properties. During his slothful two-decade tenure Industrial Zone of Auroville has remained without any recognisable industry appearing. The necessary crucial sense and the responsibility to take vigorously and dynamically the Mother’s Auroville forward were disconsolately lacking.

       This status quo must disappear. But it is always painful to challenge any status quo, primarily because of self-interests. Karan Singh by his non-action allowed these flashpoints to grow, even to multiply.

       After the Auroville Foundation came into existence — the Auroville Foundation Act was passed in September 1988 — what did the earlier illustrious chairmen do? Karan Singh was there for a total of twenty years, Kireet Joshi for nine years, Swaminathan for three years. It was only laissez-faire business, with all its boneless easy complacency, pleasing each other and putting on happy smiles of collaboration, even while a good number of dedicated souls worked hard for the Mother’s project. Not one Industry came out during the entire period, which is a glaring failure of those administrations. One may even say that their commitment to Auroville was never total.

       It was a long Auroville winter.

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26. Maybe some other quotes will contribute to a wider perspective of it all. This comes from the Residents’ Assembly in Auroville:

    Regarding Mother’s words, She has always been very flexible in the instructions she gave about Auroville in general. As such, here are some of the quotes that are not being taken into account in the current misguided narrative:

    * “I know that Auroville will be. It may be in 100 years, it may be in 1000 years.”
    (The Mother, 21/09/1966)
    * “It will take a long time. Sri Aurobindo says 300 years. I am learning that impatience is
    no way. In 300 years Auroville will be a very nice place.”
    (The Mother, 31/10/1968)
    * “In Auroville I do not want many men. I want some people, but true people.”
    (The Mother, 01/10/1972)
    * “There is no need to build another ordinary city in Auroville; already there are so many.
    If people are like that, it will become an ordinary city and our money and efforts will be
    wasted.”
    (The Mother, 08/01/1973)

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27. I don’t mind people disbelieving me, but is it not our duty of aspiring souls to communicate with each other when there are disagreements? How can we ever come to Human Unity if there is autocratic rule?

    So, I would like to give some quotes, like statements from the annual report 2021-2022 published by the Secretary and submitted to the government but this time with the fact checking comments by the Working Committee of the Residents’ Assembly of Auroville.

    The statements are by the Secretary’s Working Committee. The Facts are by the Working Committee of the Residents’ Assembly of Auroville. This is not the complete report, only quotes taken from it.

    Statement: Auroville must be completed quickly.​

    Fact: The recent emphasis on rushed ‘development’ over the past 18 months has only created more
    disharmony, destroyed well functioning infrastructure and resulted in works of substandard
    quality. Auroville’s success and value requires a skilled and conscious approach that is
    incongruous with rushed attempts to impose concrete-based roads and buildings, especially if
    it truly wishes to become the “city the earth needs”.​The topic of town-planning in Auroville has always been a complex one, and summarizing it to “an insufficient direction and focus towards a city” doesn’t honor the realities at play. Considering its financial and human resources, Auroville has achieved an impressive amount of development over the past decade.​​

    Statement: Aurovilians “have taken possession ” of Auroville’s lands​​

    Fact: Auroville has been developed according to its financial capacity and available funds, mainly contributed by residents and well-wishers from around the world. This statement appears to be a blatant attempt to tarnish the first generation of Aurovilians, which is disrespectful to the energy
    and resources that were put into making the area liveable for the many future residents.​​ Aurovilians over the past 54 years have put in their personal resources, time and effort to create a large number of units and services that support the growth of the community based on its​ ​needs.

    Some examples are schools, health centers, outreach programmes, grocery outlets, farms,
    and forests, all for the benefit of the Auroville community and beyond. Painting those
    achievements as complete failures and attempts to “own” the community is willfully misguided,
    and extremely disrespectful. The whole community benefits from the work of each member – to
    name these developments as anti-growth is antithetical to their very nature.​​​​

    Statement: The Residents’ Assembly is against Auroville ideals​​

    Fact: According to the Auroville Foundation Act, the Residents Assembly (RA) is a central body of
    the Auroville Foundation. Over the past 2 years, however, there have been concerted attempts
    by those aligned to the Office of the Secretary to reimagine the RA as subservient to the Governing Board.​​

    When the Mother asked that Auroville transcend democracy, we believe she meant to go
    beyond a democracy, not to throw out the concept and institute an autocracy. In many ways we
    attempt to transcend the status quo democratic system by encouraging consensus, taking time to
    come to decisions with the whole community, experimenting with systems such as the Citizens
    Assembly model, and more.​Statement: The Secretary and Governing Board have implemented high speed development at an unprecedented scale.​​​Fact: Since Dr. Ravi’s appointment, it is the scale of the conflict, and types of actions she has condoned that have been unprecedented. Disagreements and differences within the community have never been dealt with in such an aggressive and unprofessional manner. It appears that it was her intention to stir up conflict as it was her choice to target the most contentious areas of the Crown Road using violence and to evict and destroy homes without adequate time for relocation. There has never been any sincere attempt to meaningfully engage with the community by the Secretary or the Governing Board, only top-down decisions forced through with the assistance of a small clique of Aurovilians. The Secretary continues to try to promote a picture of community participation, as we have seen with the recent round of community
    meetings, however there has been no meaningful engagement during the meetings which appear
    to merely be a PR exercise.​​​

    We only need to state that 10 months after the Crown Road works were started nearly 1.5 km of
    good road has been demolished, while a mere 100m of road has been completed to a substandard quality. This is the result of incompetent ‘planning’ by people who clearly do not have the necessary professional skills and expertise to carry out such a project.​​​The outsourcing of the development work to the Central Public Works Department, namely to build the Crown Road as well as other unspecified projects, has led to massive waste of GoI funds, environmental catastrophe, accidents and chaos and disarray across Auroville.​

    The restructuring of the Auroville working groups by the Office of the Secretary has not only
    ignored all of the established community processes but has repeatedly dismissed the members
    of well-functioning groups. Aurovilians who are highly skilled in all the above mentioned fields have been removed from their posts because they do not support the actions of the AVFO. They have been replaced with persons who have little or no ability or experience, the only criteria being their loyalty to the Secretary. This has led to organizational chaos across Auroville.​​

    Statement: A small section of the RA is conspiring to block development, using court cases and other tactics.​​

    Fact: What has been asked for repeatedly over the past 2 years is for true collaboration and that the 3 authorities of the Auroville Foundation (the Governing Board, International Advisory Council and Residents’ Assembly) work together in a spirit of mutuality, not that the RA has ‘sole decision making power in Auroville’.​

    In addition, the RA does not seek to ‘malign’ the Secretary and those who work with her. It is ironic that the AVFO appointed Working Committee makes false accusations of the appropriation of “two thirds of the residents”, when their own organization follows an authoritarian top-down system that has routinely ignored the voices and decisions of the RA.

    Their groups operate without accountability or transparency, in direct opposition to established
    community processes.​​The court cases are not ‘against the development of Auroville’, they were made in order to ask for the respect of a proper governance of Auroville, and are against those who are acting in ways that are both illegal, unethical and unjust. They are aimed to prevent the attempt to
    impose top-down control over Auroville and Aurovilians in a manner that is entirely out of line with the spirit of Auroville.​​

    Statement: The Secretary has not prevented any visa recommendations.​​​

    Fact: In some cases negative letters were issued by the Secretary to the FRRO that has led to visas
    being withheld; moreover when letters of recommendation are withheld indefinitely, allowing valid visas to expire, the result is the same as a refusal.

    Hundreds of people from foreign countries have left their lives, homes and families to come
    to Auroville because they aspire to serve the ideals of Auroville. In recognition of that, special visa arrangements were made to offer them a certain level of security. Now that these arrangements have been weaponized by the Secretary, including a recent quit notice to one of our members and more notices threatened, we wonder how many future potential aspirants will be deterred from joining Auroville?​

    Statement: These actions have been a ‘big jump’ in Auroville’s progress.​

    Fact: ​It appears that instead of ‘a jump forward’ there has been a big step back. The last one and half
    year has witnessed the slowest growth in Auroville in recent decades, existing infrastructures have been demolished and left incomplete and the social fabric of Auroville has been disrupted to an unprecedented level. It seems that the AVFO appointed Working Committee has a very different idea of progress than the one we stand by. We believe progress in Auroville can be both tangible in the form of building and roads, and intangible in the form of creating good processes and fostering healthy community spirit. In the past two years neither meaningful tangible or intangible forms of development have been fostered by the Office of the Secretary and her self-appointed groups. The violent, authoritarian and destructive approach that has been adopted and condoned by these groups and the Office of the Secretary since 2021 is in complete contradiction to the ideals of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and the path to development and growth in Auroville.​​

    The Working Committee selected by the Residents’ Assembly​​
    ___

    You can read that the fact-statements are realistic and openminded and and invitation for collaboration in all the fields of building Auroville.

    Reply

28. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:

    (Part 1)

    I think this Act (Auroville Foundation Act) has some very unique features, which you will not find in any act in the country. If you read between the lines, you will find that the whole Act is so formulated that it would facilitate what Mother has called “divine anarchy”. Now this is not written anywhere in the Act itself, but it would facilitate. In one of the chapters Sri Aurobindo has written a few lines on what he calls theocracy. Theocracy is a word today which is very much abused and misunderstood. But divine anarchy is nothing but the rule of the Divine; and since the rule of the Divine is to be conducted from within every individual, the individual is not ruled by somebody outside himself; therefore there is no rulership outside individuals, and since it is the same Divine that rules all the individuals, that Divine causes unity even while permitting diversity. It is for that reason it is anarchy, that is to say, there is no rule from outside. All kind of rules are rules from outside, whether it is monarchy or oligarchy or any kind of democracy. All forms of government that have been formed in the history of the world are forms where some kind of rulership is attributed to some authority outside the individual. If therefore you have an Act in which the individuals constituting the totality have the freedom to grow, and if it is laid down in the Act itself that this freedom is to be ensured, the residents of Auroville should feel free and if any attempt is made to curb this freedom, then there is a provision in the Act itself of an authority whose very duty it is to advise the Governing Board in such a way that this freedom is not curbed. Secondly, this totality of residents has not been given any particular form of governance. Sometime some people reading from outside may feel it is a lacuna in the Act, that no form is given for the Resident Assembly. But from another point of view, it is a safeguard against imposition of any form. So you might say that there is an utter freedom given to the Residents’ Assembly to experiment, to make research and to devise forms by which the divine anarchy can be realised. If the residents of Auroville know how to do it, if they ripen themselves into that consciousness, this freedom is ensured in the Act. In the meantime, there is also a provision in the Auroville Act that although there is a Governing Board which may from outside seem to be a Board which would control, superintend, supervise, intervene, supervene and you might say it is a final authority, this Governing Board is required to consult the Residents’ Assembly according to this Act itself, and there are provisions in the functions of the Residents’ Assembly where it is laid down that Residents’ Assembly will organise all the activities of Auroville, so the scope is widest. There is not a single activity which Residents’ Assembly cannot organise. As a result I find that Mother’s intention that Auroville will be a field of research and particularly the concept of divine anarchy, if the residents of Auroville decide to conceive of the forms, of this form of development and organisation, it would be perfectly possible to do so within the frame-work of this entire Act. These are the special features of the Foundation Act. You will find that as compared to other organisations like there is a Company Act, there is Societies Registration Act, you will find that in these Acts the forms of organisation are already laid down and you can’t escape from that. If you have a Society Registration Act you will see that there shall be such and such governing body which shall be elected and there are many rules under which election will take place in one form or the other. Everything is straight jacketed. You have no freedom at all to organise in the way in which you want, whereas in this Act there is no such provision. I personally feel therefore that Auroville organisation for the future should really be developed so that what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said — the rule of the Divine in each individual — may ultimately operate. This is entirely within our hands, in the residents’ hands. But it has a big responsibility and that responsibility is that every individual has to be tended, and this is a very important condition. It is not a question of majority and minority, it is not a question of opinion building, it is not a question of a few against the others. If you read Sri Aurobindo’s writings, there is a constant emphasis on all, and therefore our organisation must be such that it serves all. That means every individual. The truth of individualism, as I said earlier in another context, is not merely the guarantee of individual freedom. This is something that is highest in many constitutions — that the moment you give the freedom of expression, freedom of association, you have given the best and the highest. That is not the concept of Auroville. Individualism is fundamentally service of the Divine in each individual. This is the real truth of individualism: to regard every individual who carries within himself the Divine and therefore the discovery of the Divine and manifestation of this Divine is the fundamental truth of individualism. And since this discovery and manifestation cannot take place without the freedom, therefore underline the freedom. You can’t compel an individual to discover the Divine, you cannot compel, by very nature you cannot compel. It is only by freedom, by willing consciousness, by voluntary consciousness that the Divine can be discovered. So, when we say that Auroville is for freedom — this is very often voiced among many people, that we are here free — it is an incomplete sentence. We are here for freedom certainly, but freedom to discover the Divine. In fact, the very first article of Auroville Charter speaks of the willing — willing means freely willing — servitors of the Divine Consciousness. So, merely saying that we are free is not enough. Merely because we are free, it doesn’t mean that it is only to be limited to framing of free opinion. Framing of free opinion, freedom to question an opinion is sometimes regarded as the highest height of democracy and freedom, but freedom to question is only the first step. We question anything for what? Not for the sake of questioning but for a quest: questioning to arrive at a conclusion, free conclusion, freedom to frame an opinion. In the consciousness that opinion-making is only the first step, the larger step is that an opinion is to be contrasted with another opinion and that with another opinion and to realise that behind every opinion, there is a truth and that ultimately you have to arrive at the highest synthesis of all opinions, so that each opinion is satisfied. In other words, in fact, it can even be said that you go beyond opinion making. This is the kind of freedom that we have and this is what is proposed to us. This is how I understand. I am only giving my reflections on what Mother and Sri Aurobindo have said, what the different statements which Mother has made even with regard to admission to Auroville, with regard to the development of Auroville, many other things.

    Reply

29. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:

    (Part 2)

    I think the first important point that has to be noted is regarding the entry of people to Auroville. I had recently a discussion with the Entry Group and I had an occasion to learn what is being done in regard to the entry and I had an occasion to read once again and there is a statement of the Mother: “Are invited men of good will who aspire to lead a higher and truer life.” Now, these words are extremely important. I think many people feel that good will is good gentlemanliness. I think this is general — to many people, when you speak of good will, this is how it is translated. If you are a good neighbour, if you are decent and if you have good manners and you are not quarrelsome, you are fine, then you have good will. I think we have to understand — that is my reflection on it — that good will is a concept of a much higher dimension. In the western philosophy, good will came to be defined best in the philosophy of Kant, in German philosophy. In fact, his whole philosophy is called the philosophy of good will. This whole ethics is an ethics of good will and his definition of good will is that good will is a free will that has decided to counteract everything that pulls you down to a lower life, and deliberately puts itself towards three concepts: God, freedom, immortality. This is his definition of good will. On one hand, you deliberately decide that all lower impulses will be combated against, and on the other hand there is a constant push, free pursuit, not under compulsion: You have really decided deliberately that you will constantly move towards God, freedom and immortality. In fact these three concepts, he says, are the postulates of good will, real postulates, that means goodwill does not exist if these three things are not pursued. And if your read The Life Divine, the very first paragraph of The Life Divine where the human aspiration has been described by Sri Aurobindo, he speaks of this very ideal, where he says that the earliest formula of wisdom also promises to be its last: God, Freedom, Bliss, Immortality. Same words, almost, have been repeated by Sri Aurobindo. In fact, this pursuit of these ideals is the very condition of divine life. And I personally believe that when Mother put down the word good will, it is not gentlemanliness, it is not good neighbourliness — that of course should be, that is understood. I always felt that Auroville is a field of advanced research, not only a field of research, but advanced research. And this, I think, people should make it very clear to everybody: that certain ordinary things have already been overpassed by the people who are here. They have tried, experimented many things. This is not a field of experimentation of fashions of life. There are many fashions going on. There are one fashion over here, another fashion over there, third fashion over there and some people, if they feel that they are now tired of one fashion and want to try another fashion and they come to Auroville and say that Auroville is a field of freedom and you can experiment with this fashion or that fashion, I personally would like to tell them very clearly, “This is a field of advanced research.” That is to say you have already finished your journey with freely making experiments with various fashions of life. Having done it, now you have come to the conclusion that you want a higher and truer life. The very first proposition of the Mother is: we are aspiring for higher and truer life. If this decision has not been arrived at, it is incomplete, you are not yet ready to entry into Auroville, this is according to me. There are many other opinions and I am not speaking anything dogmatically, but this is how I reflect, when I reflect upon Mother’s words. And then, when you read further, you find certain further elucidation in some of the statements of the Mother. Take for example this statement of 21st March 1956 — much before Auroville’s birth. This but small statement is very important where Mother has said, “The age of Capitalism and business is drawing to a close, but the age of Communism too will pass.” In 1956, at the time when Communism was at its zenith, Mother has said, “but the age of Communism too will pass”, and thereafter she says, “Communism having no more utility will be transformed into something else, that will express a higher truth.” And the last word of the Mother is, “We know this truth.” This is a very categorical statement, “We know this truth and we are working for it so that it may rain upon earth.” Now I would like to submit that everybody who wants to enter into Auroville should read this statement. We are not here to experiment with capitalism and communism. Both of them are outdated as far as Auroville is concerned. We have to ask ourselves when Mother says “We know this truth”, what is this truth.

    Reply

30. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:

    (Part 3)

    Now in this context, I would like to refer to a very important statement that Sri Aurobindo has made in The Human Cycle, while describing the ideal law of social development. This is the statement which, I think, is one of the elucidations of the statement “We know this truth”: “The law for the individual is to perfect his individuality by free development from within, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development in others.” It’s a very important statement. To say, “Oh, I want to develop myself freely”, very good, very fine, but add this statement also, “but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development in others”. “His law”, that is to say the law of the individual, “is to harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate and to pour himself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity.” (The Human Cycle, Vol. XV, p.63, Cent. Ed.) (As I opened this page I found the Mother’s picture here, so I feel as if Mother wants me to read this very sentence once again.) Now in addition to that, Sri Aurobindo says, “The law for the community” — just as there is a law of the individual there is a law of the community — “the law for the community or nation is equally to perfect its corporate existence by a free development from within” — Auroville should feel free to develop from within and that is why I referred to the Foundation Act in the very beginning, that this freedom is granted, is guaranteed by the Act itself, and this guarantee is given by the Parliament, so that nobody can change it. It’s a very important guarantee. Just as in the case of the individual, so in the case of community: “aiding and taking full advantage of that of the individual, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development of other communities and nations.” This also is a very important qualification. “Its law is to harmonise its life with that of the human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity.” And now comes the third law, the law for humanity: “The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only ideally one divine family, but even then, when it has succeeded in unifying itself, to respect, aid and be aided by the free growth and activity of its individuals and constituent aggregates.”

    Now this full paragraph to my mind gives us a perfect understanding of the goal that we have, and that is involved in the very concept of Auroville and in the entry into Auroville. I think this statement should be given to everyone who wants to enter into Auroville. This is my suggestion to everyone, particularly those who are in charge of Entry Group. They should get this printed and say, “Well, this is how we look upon: ‘This truth — what Mother has said, we know this truth, and we want to express this truth so that it may rain upon earth.” Now there is another statement elucidating this very thing. You know, Mother’s statements are very short, but very pointed and very sharp. Sometimes because they are short, they seem to be very simple and therefore we feel that “Oh, this is a very easy statement”, but when you study it, you find that a very high level of research is demanded. Now here, on 7 September 1965, she says, “Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all communities will be able to live in peace and progressive harmony”, and then comes a very important qualification, “above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities, straining to realise human unity.” This is a very fundamental statement about Auroville. So anybody who wants to enter Auroville has already to arrive at this point. He has experimented with all creeds already, or at least he has arrived at the consciousness in which creeds don’t matter to him at all. Politics is not at all in his veins, in his arteries. Politics meaning thereby all kind of manoeuvring — what the Vedic call a crooked thinking — this is the Vedic word. All crooked thinking is given up. This is politics: the fundamental aim, the fundamental crux of the word politics, its meaning is: all crooked thinking. You want to achieve some goal and you start immediately winding up. I create one opinion here, one opinion there, canvas it here, canvas it there, all kinds of matters which have been adopted in so called democratic parliament and so on. I want to achieve the success of my opinion, so how shall I do it? All kinds of campaign, slogans — this is politics — instead of stating straight. We have to distinguish between what is called propaganda and action. All politics is propaganda. Without propaganda, there is no politics. All Auroville, according to me, is action. It has nothing to do with propaganda. Once Mother had told me… There was a big debate in the Ashram at one time, when some of us had gone out in the country in 1972. Some people in the Ashram criticised some of us and said, “You are now making a propaganda of Sri Aurobindo.” Why, because we were telling people what Sri Aurobindo had said, because Mother had told, at least to some of us, that “this is the year in which you should tell the people what Sri Aurobindo has said for the solutions of the problems of the country.” This was the time when Mother told many of us, “You read Sri Aurobindo”. Because most of us didn’t know what solutions Sri Aurobindo had given to the problems. Even those who felt they knew, when they began to study Sri Aurobindo, they found that they hardly knew, and that there was a need of deeper and deeper study. In fact, I tell you the truth that by that time I had read The Life Divine twenty-five times, and yet when I started to find out Sri Aurobindo’s solutions in many books — I read many other books also equally — but if somebody said: “Tell me what is the solution,” I had no answer as yet. Because Sri Aurobindo’s writings are so global and so vast that you have to make a real pointed study again and again to arrive at solutions. This is what I found and I really started studying Sri Aurobindo in 1972, which is a fact in my personal life. And even today I cannot say that I have graduated. Even today it is a fact. This is the difficulty; this is a very tremendous task. So at that time when this was being done, this was the criticism levelled by many people in the Ashram itself: that now here goes the propagandist team outside in the country. So, in order to clarify ourselves whether we were doing right thing or wrong thing, the question was put to the Mother. In fact there is one very good statement of Sri Aurobindo where he says, “propaganda in a work like ours is poison.” Very, very stark statement he has made. “Propaganda in regard to the work like that of ours is poison.” He says propaganda, advertisement are all right for patent medicines but not for a work of that kind. So this statement was also put before the Mother and then we had put the question, “Mother, what is your directive?” So, She said there is a distinction between propaganda and action. When you put an ideal before the people in such a way as to make a popular appeal so that people may accept it, with a desire that people may accept it, it is propaganda. There is an ideal you put before the people with a desire that people should accept it and then, for that purpose, you turn the phrases, you speak in a language which you think people will understand, will appreciate. You twist it in one way or the other — that is propaganda. And Mother says, “When you put an ideal as it is without any kind of twist, without any compromise whatsoever, then the very statement of the ideal is action, if you can make that statement straightforward, without fear or favour.” And I can tell you that thereafter, many of us really felt a need of hard searching: “Are we putting Sri Aurobindo’s solutions simply because we want to succeed, that people should come forward and say, ‘Oh, there is a big movement’ and many people will join and there will be large adherence and large number of people?” We found that all these tendencies in our heart had to be completely washed out. This was a tremendous enlightenment to us and we then said — at least many of us, who then went out, were very, very particular that we don’t make any kind of statement in regard to Sri Aurobindo which is not in his stark statement, as Sri Aurobindo has stated. Whether people like it or do not like it, whether people follow it or do not follow it, whether people will join you or do not join you. In any case it’s a long practice… In fact, Mother says “beyond all politics”. I personally believe that this is the kind of attitude that we should have in Auroville. It is not public opinion making, it is not flagging out an idea for others and then trying to convert the people to that idea. We are here simply to state the ideal as it is, uncompromisingly, and let it be left to the individuals to respond to that ideal. I think this should be the real method of action in Auroville. I am only suggesting what I feel, I have thought over these problems for years, and I am only sharing with you, again I tell you, without dogmatism. There are many ways of looking at things and this is one way of looking at this, and this is how I would like to put it before you. Now let us go forward. Another statement that Mother has made in regard to Auroville, and which is very directly connected with the entry of people to Auroville, Mother says, “Auroville must be at the service of the Truth, beyond all social, political and religious convictions.” Now this is again a very important statement. As long as we have a religious conviction or a political conviction or a social conviction, we are still to be probationers perhaps, but not yet Aurovilians. We must have gone beyond these convictions and we must be in search of something that goes beyond all social, political and religious convictions. Then we can say that we are now fit to enter into Auroville. Then there is another note on Auroville where Mother has said, “Humanity is not the last run of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and men will be surpassed. It is for each one to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of the new species. For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no raison d’être.” It’s a very categorical statement. I would like to underline this statement very much because very often I am told, “Auroville is for all men of good will”, finished, full stop. It is true! Actually in “good will” everything is contained. If you understand the word “good will” in the way which I have tried to explain. But to elucidate this good will, all this is involved at the present level of our evolution. It is only at this stage that Auroville begins to develop, this is a first starting point. And then there is… I would like to read one last statement of the Mother: “For millennia we have been developing outer means, outer instruments, outer techniques of living and finally those means and techniques are crushing us. The sign of the new humanity is a reversal in the standpoint and understanding that inner knowledge and inner techniques can change the world and master it without crushing it.” It’s a wonderful balm to mankind which is striving to find the true solution. And I read again, “The sign of the new humanity is a reversal in the standpoint and understanding that inner knowledge and inner techniques can change the world and master it without crushing it.” And then Mother adds, “Auroville is the place where this new way of living is being worked out. It is a centre of accelerated evolution, where men must begin to change this world through the power of inner spirit.” I think this should be stated to all the people who want to join Auroville. Because this is the starting point of Auroville and this is elucidated by the Mother further where She says, “We will strive to make Auroville the cradle of the superman.” I wanted to read out these few statements from Mother to underline that Auroville is a field of advanced research. People should really make… and particularly for those people who are educated, who are intellectually developed, for them what I say is directly relevant. It is true that there are many people who are simple hearted, sincere and they are devoted in their own way to what is supreme. Maybe when you read out all this it may make no meaning to them. This doesn’t mean that they have no place in Auroville, that only those who understand all this will have a place in Auroville. But then you can be sure or you have to be sure that they have this heart of sincerity. This is the very important thing, because if the heart is sincere and if there is an opening, very soon they will understand this very easily. There is also a third category to my mind of the people who are…

    (end of the cassette first side)

    Reply

31. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:
    (Part 4)
    (…) invitations in the month of November and December at the time of admission, we used to receive hundreds of applications and I used to make classifications of these applications. And Mother used to see every application in detail and ask me many questions about each one. And then she used to decide and she used to make very interesting, amusing remarks: “Take this one, he is a very sincere child”, “He is mischievous but take him”, and for somebody, “He will give trouble but take him”, or “This one is very, very bright, very open, very receptive, take him”, or “Oh, no, this won’t do”, “People will think that he is very bright, but he is not bright”, things of this kind. Mother used to make these remarks — very, very profound statements. And then after taking large numbers of them, She used to ask me, “Now let us make a category of useful children.” This is a very interesting concept: useful. Now if you apply it to Auroville, I really find, you may have a need of a gardener, you may have a need of a cook, you may have a need of an assistant, stenographer, you may have a need of somebody and the given person has all the qualities and in general he is a very nice person, open, you might say, what Mother used to say open, receptive. I think in the Entry Group, all the three categories of people should be seen quite clearly, and accordingly a decision should be made. There are many other considerations which have been made here at present, which I think need to be reconsidered, reviewed, understood properly. It’s a matter of detail and I am not worrying upon this now, this is all that I would like to say as far as the entry is concerned.
    There is a very interesting statement which I have received from a few people who have made statements on “Auroville in the new millennium”, and there is a statement here about entry which is very good. I don’t know if people have read it, many of you might have read it, but I find it to be very interesting. Not that I agree with every statement which is here, but it is an interesting statement, worth studying. There is also a statement that just as there is an Entry Group, there should be a group in Auroville which can advise people after sometime, when they have come here, lived here: ask them whether they find that they are in the proper place here — not with an intention of expelling or throwing out or not caring for them, no, with a deeper consciousness. There are people who have come, they have experimented, they have lived here, but they may genuinely find that they are out of place here. We should help them instead of just going on and on and on. A person who is not in his proper place is always a problem to himself and to others. Now this also, there should be something on the subject.

    Reply

32. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:

    (Part 5)

    Now I come to another subject of the organisation of Auroville and this is connected with the concept of Residents’ Assembly. The very word gives a kind of notion, to many of us who are educated in political science, of what is now called Parliament. And Parliament has to do with what is called Parliamentary democracy. This is the concept which automatically arises, and therefore it is natural for some people to think that here we are to develop a kind of Parliamentary democracy. Now this is a subject on which Sri Aurobindo has written at quite good length. What is Parliamentary democracy and whether, in the view of Sri Aurobindo, Parliamentary democracy is the last form of organisation, or whether it is only a step, or whether it was only a step which has outlived its utility. Now Sri Aurobindo has said first of all — this is the conclusion I have arrived at after reading Sri Aurobindo several times, but again I am only speaking my reflections. No dogmatism in it. People might have read Sri Aurobindo in many other ways and we can always share our views. I would like to submit what I think Sri Aurobindo has said. Parliamentary democracy was developed in Great Britain. This is the first thing. It was a stepping-stone. It was valid for a small country like England. It was valid for the leisurely times in which it was developed. But when you have those conditions overpasses, in which the country is not small, or where the times are not this leisurely, Sri Aurobindo said: this form will pass away. It will come to a crisis and will pass away. Second point about democracy itself: Sri Aurobindo has said, democracy is a sign of the coming of the true subjective age. Whenever there is a development of subjective age, that is to say, whenever there is an emphasis on the individual, democracy will flourish. This is what has happened even in the previous cycles of human development. In India we know there was democracy, and even monarchy in India was a democratic monarchy, not an absolute monarchy. It is afterwards when the Muslim invasion took place that they brought into the country, into India, what is called absolute monarchy, where the monarch is the final authority, even an arbitrary man who decides everything dictatorially. Such was never the concept in India. Sri Rama, for example… In India, even now we speak of Ramrajya as an ideal, and Kautilya has written that a real king is one whose own welfare is in the welfare of the people. That is to say that he has no personal welfare at all, his own welfare is in the welfare of the people. A real king is one whose happiness is in the happiness of the people. In other words, he has no personal happiness. As long as he says ‘my happiness has to be reconciled with the happiness of the people’, he is not the king. He has no personal happiness that is all, finished. His happiness consists in the happiness of the people. If he has not risen to that level, he is not fit to be a king. He should not be a king. In other words, the king as conceived by India had no personal life. He must have already reached the point where everything that he does is for the collective good. Now, in democracy as at present, many of these elements are absent, but Sri Aurobindo says, “The coming of democracy is a sign of the true subjective age.” But it doesn’t mean that democracy is therefore the final form of the subjective age, not at all. In fact Sri Aurobindo has said that parliamentary democracy as it is practised in most of the countries — elsewhere other kind of democracies are practised, presidential form and so on, but ultimately it comes to parliamentary democracy, because even in America where it’s a presidential form there is a Senate and the House of Representatives. Seen one way or the other it is a kind of Parliament — what is happening is, Sri Aurobindo says: all parliamentary democracy ends in plutocracy. Now it’s a very important word: Parliamentary democracy ends in plutocracy. And what is plutocracy? Plutocracy is the rule of a few rich and wicked people. This is the very definition of it. There is no need of being more blunt. Plutocracy means a rule of a few rich and wicked people. This is the conclusion of all experiments in parliamentary democracy. And this we must know already, because Sri Aurobindo has written very clearly, this is a study already assumed. When we start making a new form of political organisation, or any kind of organisation in Auroville, we must know that we must not fall into a trap, of developing a parliamentary democracy. Residents’ assembly is not the forum, according to me, of a parliamentary democracy, not at all. Sri Aurobindo speaks of democratic democracy. There is somewhere an expression of Sri Aurobindo: democratic democracy, not parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary democracy is a democracy which is run by representatives.

    Individuals are put aside in whose name the democracy actually has come into being. All democrats speak in the form of individuals as if they are the greatest advocates of individuals. But each candidate in the Parliament says: I am the representative of individuals. So all individuals are thrown into the background. Individuals are in the background. I, I am the representative.

    There is a very interesting account of democracy given by Laski. You know Laski is one of the greatest political thinkers of today. And he says that parliamentary democracy… he was himself a great democrat, but he has made a scathing criticism of parliamentary democracy. He says, the individuals who represent or who pretend to represent individuals, which individual do they represent? Can anybody represent another? This is a basic question. Who can represent every individual, you tell me, each individual is a spark of the divine will. Who will represent this individual? And supposing, your individuals who have sent you, change their opinion, what will happen to you? What is your representation? Is there something like a common will of all the individuals: will of A + will of individual B + will of individual C? Is it ever possible to have made a kind of calculus of this kind? So right at the very bottom, even theoretically, parliamentary democracy is based upon some kind of compromise and falsehood. So my request is that we are here to make a very detailed research — this is what I mean by advanced research. And Mother says that in life we have to make a research. We have to make and see surely that ultimately the Residents’ Assembly is really a Residents’ Assembly. It is not a representative assembly. It is Residents’ Assembly and don’t compromise on it. It is an assembly which looks after each and every individual resident. We have to arrive at that point where each individual resident is awake, he is alive and he is very keen, as Sri Aurobindo says, to perfect himself and to aid and to be aided by others’ perfection. This is the stage where we should reach. And the Residents’ Assembly is an instrument for springing into this. As long as individuals are simply put aside or simply taken up sometimes for getting their opinion, it is a mask and it is very inadequate and very, very unsatisfactory form of service to the divine consciousness. This is my reflection, it might be unpopular, but I must say what I feel personally.

    Reply

33. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:

    (Part 6)

    We must take care that every individual develops. Today I find that we do not even know all the Aurovilians, which is a fact. There is only Mr Bala Baskar perhaps who knows all Aurovilians. He has a list of all the Aurovilians. And one of the members has come to me and said: one of the greatest difficulty in Auroville is that of communication. I was even telling the Entry Group day before yesterday that you should be able to communicate with all the Newcomers and they said there’s no way of communicating at all! If I want to send a message to anybody, people are so far apart, there’s no way unless you’ve got a e-mail which everybody may not possess, you can’t communicate. Now this, I personally feel, is a great lacuna. We should find means of… I gave the example of Nolini-da, in early times of the Ashram: Sri Aurobindo used to write letters to sadhaks and Nolini-da — the greatness of Nolini-da we do not sufficiently know or estimate. He used to take a bag of all the letters of Sri Aurobindo and go from home to home personally to give these letters of Sri Aurobindo to each sadhak. This is called true individualism. Every individual was served by the secretary of the Ashram, and a very eminent person, as I told you: his Himalayan greatness cannot be measured. And that was a man who used to take the post — a kind of a postman who used to take to everybody Sri Aurobindo’s answers. Because it was Sri Aurobindo’s answer, it was such a precious thing! But this arrangement was made by the Ashram with one man who was fixed, who will take messages. And I think, with so many people here you should be able to find ways and means by which a message can be sent to anybody in Auroville. Why should it not be possible? This is one of the simplest things, if you really want to serve each and every individual, there should be at least a few people who know all the individuals quite well. If we do not know, it means that we are not caring for the Residents’ Assembly really, we are not caring for individuals and whenever a society neglects some individuals there is bound to be pain, there is bound to be some kind of abscess, bound to be some kind of wound. We have got to redress this. There should be some individuals who are in charge. The very charge should be: please know all the people in Auroville. I would like to make a suggestion — a concrete suggestion: that Residents’ Assembly — just as we have got a Working Committee, there should be a Unity Committee. There should be a Committee consisting of five, ten, twelve people which can be called Unity Committee, and I would like to suggest that this Unity Committee should have three or four fundamental functions. First of all, it should be a Committee which should constantly — you know like the Ganges in the plains, there should be constant flow of the waters of unity. They should initiate, they should spread constantly the ideas of unity. All that unifies, all that harmonises, they should emphasise. The very function of this committee will be to emphasise the forces of unity in Auroville. They should be really in charge: whatever harmonises should be really brought to the notice of everybody. That is the first task, that is to say, all that Sri Aurobindo has written on unity should be brought to the notice of people from time to time so there is constant awakening, reawakening among the people. We speak of the everlasting day. In fact Sri Aurobindo wants an everlasting day and I think Auroville should be an everlasting day. It is not for some time but there should be a constant stream in which there is a constant awakening to the idea of unity. That will be the first charge of it.

    Second charge will be that whenever there is a conflict, this committee should come into operation and should see how the conflict can be resolved. Sometimes you call it conflict resolution committee and so on. I would prefer to name it Unity Committee, because it is more than overcoming a conflict: how the forces of unity can be introduced.

    Thirdly — in fact recently I came to know that the Working Committee has written a letter to Development Group on a certain subject regarding the installation of high-tension wires. Development Group had proposed it, approved of it and Working Committee had opposed it. Now how are you going to resolve this problem? Who will resolve this problem? It is residents who should do it. And it’s this Unity Committee, if there is one, if it is constituted, who should be in charge of such a problem and see that all the interests — and this is one of the important preconditions I would like to make, as to how… Mother has said that anybody who is in charge of unifying should be capable of understanding very well all the conflicting opinions, with so much of identity that he can argue in favour of both the opposite points of view. This is the capacity he should have; and they should have a real love for everybody. This is a very important point. Once Mother herself told me, “You should love everyone.” It was a tremendous commandment on me! One day, there was some problem and Mother told me, “You should be able to love everyone.” It was like a blow bursting on my mind at that time with these words. Even now it continues, goes on bursting in my mind.

    It is when a person is able to form a thesis, contrast it with antithesis, and arriving at synthesis that a true unity can be established. And Mother has said that synthesis is one in which all the conflicting views are satisfied. It’s not as if you annul any point of view, they are really satisfied. That is the true synthesis. Everybody finds in it the affirmation of his own point of view. So I think that this should be the method, not only of this Unity Committee, but I would like to expand this and say that in all the committee meetings — there are many, many committees here, many meetings are taking place and many of them end in some kind of inconclusiveness and so on. I would really like to suggest, if you really want to make Auroville organisation a new kind of organisation, with a new stand, with a new vibration, I would say that there should be some specific rules, not in the form of rules and regulations, but specific modes of conducting a meeting. I was talking to somebody in the morning and I was saying that in every committee meeting you should first of all lay down the rules of the game, just as in cricket! If you want to play cricket, you have to follow the rules of cricket. If you want to play tennis, you have to follow the rules of tennis. Similarly, if you want to debate or if you want to discuss any point, there should ground rules for discussing. Discussing doesn’t mean “I have an opinion” or “I don’t object” or “I object with it”. This is not really discussing. Three points I wanted to make were that in any discussion you should really appoint an umpire. For three things: he should not allow anybody to raise his voice beyond a certain pitch, because many of the quarrels arise because people speak in a certain aggressive manner. Maybe you are very greatly convinced about something and if you raise your voice there’s nothing wrong but there is an aggressive voice. The umpire should say, “Please, as long as you make a point with an aggressive voice, it will not be counted. Speak in a very gentle, in a very steady manner, strong manner quite all right, but no aggressive manner.” Heavens are not going to fall if your point of view doesn’t get in. Keep very, very quiet. Secondly, if there is a difficulty of resolution, then you should bring the opposing points of view… The umpire should state that these are the opposing points of view, as I understand. Then he should ask the opponent to defend the proponent. That should be the capacity: if you are really opposing a point of view, you should have understood the other’s point of view very well, and you should bring out where exactly you differ from it. And this you can do only when you can show that you have understood the proponent’s point of view and ask the proponent to argue for the opponent’s argument.

    I tell you that with this kind of a development, people really think over problems seriously and sincerely. It’s not merely public opinion making and throwing opinions. We are here in search of truth, not of opinion making. We are not here for likes and dislikes: “Oh! this I don’t like, this is my preferred idea, I’ll come to the conclusion.” This is not a game for it. This game of a quest of the truth and the harmony. So the umpire should really ask if there is a real conflict and a real impasse. This is the ground rule, that he should be able to tell both the parties: now you argue against your own point of view. And then let us see where you stand. And I tell you, once you come to this, you’ll be able to come to a good agreement. And thirdly, we should follow this in any discussion, even without Unity Committee. Every discussion can come to harmony if what Mother has said can be followed. Mother has said, “There is no problem which men of good will sitting together with an ardent aspiration to harmonise, cannot resolve.” There is no problem, therefore the umpire should say that now if we are still remaining at an impasse let us contemplate, let us bring all our good will into the picture, with a great quietude.

    This, I think, is a kind of a yogic method of resolving the problems and I would really recommend that our Auroville organisation should develop methods of discussions on these lines.

    Reply

34. Kireet Joshi’s Talk on the Internal Organisation of Auroville (25 August 1999)—transcribed from audio cassette:

    (Part 7)

    To come back to Unity Committee, I would like to say that Unity Committee finally should have one very important function: to organise meetings with children, meetings with youth who are normally marginalized — which is a great pity. Young people are the real soul of our Auroville existence and we have to encourage young people, understand their problems. Unity Committee should have a special function: to keep in contact with children and young people and bring their aspirations to the forefront and find solutions to their problems. I would like to suggest that you should have Unity Committee formed and actually the Act says that apart from Working Committee, the Residents’ Assembly can form any number of committees and it is perfectly possible within the present constitution to do so. There are many aspects, and I will not touch upon them, but I’ll only speak of one or two more things and then conclude.

    There is a suggestion that you should have a parliament consisting of thirty people chosen by the Residents’ Assembly. That is one of the suggestions which have been made somewhere. Now one of the difficulties in Auroville that I find is choosing — and there is a lot of confusion on this subject: shall we vote, shall we not vote, shall we nominate, what shall we do? There is also an argument that Residents’ Assembly consisting of at least one thousand people or more — this is a very unwieldy number, even if you bring them together at one place, it is a very difficult thing to have a debate and so on. I am not very sure but even if you need to have a smaller body, I’m not at all opposed to have smaller bodies representing a larger body but again you remember my word on representing. Don’t call it a representation because that is not a very true state of affairs. You cannot represent, but you can say that for the sake or convenience of work, you can have smaller groups. Now, I am personally very happy that Auroville has developed several groups. Some people think it is too much and there should not be so many. I am not so very sure about it. I personally feel that although Residents’ Assembly doesn’t meet in a certain way, because of these small groups which have been formed — and some of them are very active and I have seen the quality of the work which is remarkable, like the Land Use group and Development group and Matrimandir group and… very, very… sincerely, they have done such a detailed work, amazing… the amount of devotion and commitment they manifest — through which the will of the people is being expressed in many ways. There need not be only one instrument through which the will of the people is expressed.

    In Indian ancient system, they had actually ensured that the will of the people is expressed through various organisations, not one organisation. If in Auroville therefore there are many working units, economy units, there is FAMC, and then there is ABC and then there is Working Committee and many other groups, it’s all healthy. The only problem is that there is no method by which propositions and oppositions which sometimes emerge because of multiplicity are resolved. That is why I suggested once again Unity Committee. Let there be so many groups, I do not mind. If you have a thirty people parliament, also I do not mind, but I would really recommend, please do not fall into the trap of electioneering. Electioneering is one of the processes by which many things which are not really healthy, certain unhealthy things, begin to develop.

    In India at least, the ethos of India is such that no noble man comes forward to be elected. He cannot say, look I am better than all others and you elect me. This is supposed to be something that is entirely unethical. To say: “Look, I am better than all others, you all people come together, now you elect me.” This is not regarded as noble at all! So how can you have this ordinary system of electioneering where everyone has to declare, “I am better than all others and all people reject those people who are my competitors because they have no worth and I have the worth”. This is egoistic. You should not oblige anybody to be put in a position of this kind. This is one of the reasons why I do not favour electioneering. I was told this morning that one of the good methods which were developed is that there is a method of nomination. The individual himself does not come forward but each resident may have the possibility of nominating. And then if these nominations come forward and there are so many of them, then, somebody told me that then we are referring again to residents to give votes which I’m not very much in favour of personally. I’m not necessarily opposed to a voting system. I mean there are some circumstances in which voting system is good. In certain circumstances voting system is not good. I have made a study of some of these problems and I tell you very rapidly two conclusions I’ve arrived at.

    If there is a situation — everything depends upon the situation, don’t make general rules: voting, no voting, one fourth majority, three fourth majority, don’t make such rules — consider what is the situation that we want to deal with. Supposing I have a room in which five people are living together. Now the question is how shall we organise that room? Where shall we put the sofa? Where shall we put the bed? Where shall we put the table? This is the problem, this is the situation. Here perhaps if you take vote of all the five people and three people favour one, I would say allow this, three people’s decision —majority decision, but for some time. After some time, allow two people’s decision also. Let everybody have his own way of organising the room, do not object to it. It’s a question of situation. Which situation do you want to deal with? There are situations where there is a debate on the principles of truth and falsehood. It is not a question of convenience of a room or likes or dislikes or a kind of a dining room where you have to see whether you should make this vegetable or that vegetable or more people will like this vegetable or less people will like that vegetable. These questions can be decided with majority or minority and you give sometimes preference to majority, sometimes to minority, and then everybody enjoys, by rotation. Don’t make any kind of rigid rule that there should be really one-fourth vote or two-third vote, nothing. Situation doesn’t demand that kind of rigidity. But sometimes there may be questions of truth of Auroville. Truth on which we stand. And there, opinions can be quite powerful. This is a different situation, when the conflict between one opinion and the other is quite sharp. In fact one of the reasons for freedom… There’s a beautiful article written by Mill. In English… for those who have studied English literature, Mill’s essay on liberty is supposed to be the final word on freedom. Because he says that there may be a debate in which all except one agree on a principle, but only one of them differs. And the truth may lie with that one and not with all the others. This is the reason why, he says, freedom should be allowed. And even the overwhelming majority has no right to impose its way upon that individual. Now in such a situation, according to me, there is no way of resolving a problem by majority, or minority or any such principle, or by voting one way or the other. There are three things that should be done in such a situation: first of all, when anybody raises a point of truth, one should be very respectful, first of all. Truth is the one thing on which we stand and by abdicating truth we fall. Therefore if anybody raises a question of the truth, we should be very quiet and respectful and try to understand what that truth is.

    In India we had a system of shastrartha. You know there was a real debate, and winning of shastra was supposed to be something very fundamental and there used to be a debate. And one debate never… even if you win in the debate, it’s not a winning. You should do at least six shastras, seven shastrarthas — seven times you should debate it with seven different groups, and in all of them you should win before you establish your point of view. This was the system. Now I don’t recommend that you should have this very system, but try to understand the spirit in which it was proposed. It is not a matter of calling a meeting suddenly and saying what is your view, what is your view, what is your view… and suddenly somebody airing one opinion, another, another opinion… This is in any case not the right thing for Auroville to do, this is not the way in which a meeting should be conducted. There should be a real study of any proposition of this kind — a real study. Quest is the real method and if nothing ultimately succeeds, Unity Committee should be given a proposition. And even if there still remains a problem of anybody’s principle of truth not being satisfied, he should at least be free to pursue what he believes is true.

    This is where I leave at the present moment because I feel this is a very complex problem but I would like to underline: it’s a complex problem and should not be resolved in an ordinary manner. As Sri Aurobindo says, very often great issues come before politicians but they don’t deal with them greatly. This is Sri Aurobindo’s statement in his chapter on Inadequacy of the State Idea (The Ideal of Human Unity, p.278) Great problems come before politicians but they do not deal with them greatly. Similarly, we should also — if any great problem comes, please deal with those problems greatly, not in the ordinary manner. In other words, we must distinguish between the problems, the situations: one situation, another situation, varieties of situations, varieties of propositions and deal with them properly.

    Reply

35. (Kireet Joshi concludes) :
    My final point is, regarding that very important statement that Sri Aurobindo has made about dominant minority. In every organisation, in every society, a time will come when a few people will automatically become dominant. And there are very important statements that Sri Aurobindo has made about dominant minority. Sometimes dominant minority is condemned by most of the people, criticised unnecessarily. In fact some of them are split (?) vehemently. Now, Sri Aurobindo has said, and I would like to read out to you a statement from The Ideal of Human Unity. These are the words, Sri Aurobindo has said: “The perfect counsel for a dominant minority is always to recognise in good time the right hour for its abdication and” — this is very important, not only abdication but before doing so: “and for the imparting of its ideals, qualities, culture, experience to the rest of the aggregate or to as much of it as is prepared for that progress.” In Auroville at least, I think, the time has come when young people should be allowed to come up. They should take charge of so many things, and I tell you, some of the young people whom I have met are extraordinarily good. They are doing their duties so well, so conscientiously. There is a possibility of their being criticised and they are discouraged: “Oh! they are not competent, what can that person do? Oh! he has no experience!” Please be very kind.

    To develop what I would say deliberate training programs, deliberate. You need to prepare a band of new teachers. You need a very good program of training teachers. You need experts. You need to develop young people to arrive at expertise; deliberate attempt should be made to do that. You need new people who have got certain skills. Please train young people to have those skills. This is all that I would like to plead for in the present meeting because there are many other problems like villagers… Bhavana is just before me and people like her have done so much work for villagers and I fully appreciate, but there are many problems and I think that I have taken more time than what I had intended, so if you permit me, I would like to close here. Thank you so much for all this time that you gave.

    Reply

36. The Mother emphasized over and over again that She wanted the city to be built within a short time-span, she said 10 years. That was in 1968. She wanted a CITY. The Galaxy model which she worked out with the chief architect Roger Anger in 3 years was displayed at the entrance of the Amphitheatre on the Foundation Day 28.2.1968 — The City the Earth needs. Nobody can deny that she wanted a city from the very beginning. The next 50 years did not see any serious city building. On the contrary, whenever an element of the Galaxy came close to be proposed to be manifested, huge resistance was drummed up by many residents of Auroville and subsequently the project was abandoned. 50 years Auroville was kept hostage by a faction of anti-city Aurovilians, who actively prevented the city because they sat in key-positions all over the working groups, and called the shots and guarded their power. Previous Governing Boards mentioned this again and again in their reports, but did little to change it. Only the present Governing Board with the TN Governor R.N. Ravi as the Chairman, finally took it upon themselves to push through and start the Crown road, an important feature of the Galaxy plan, interconnecting with a circular road all 4 sectors of Auroville. As expected, a huge resistance movement started, resulting in the split of the community, and the division ran deeper and deeper. Without the active support and especially the funding of the present Government, Governing Board and the Foundation, Auroville could not be built, ever, it would probably sink into an utopian nothingness in the coming years and decades and would cease to exist one day. Aurovilians lived happily in a resort-like forest environment, in sprawling communities here and there, 3000 people occupied 3000 acres of donated land ; now the present Secretary is accused of ‘disrupting ‘ the harmony and peace of the community. What kind of harmony and peace was that ? Did anybody care to build the city the Mother wanted ? No, of course not. As soon as the first trees made way for the Crown, certain Indian Aurovilians filed court cases against the Foundation to stop the development. The current NGT (National Green Tribunal) running court case which sits right now in the Supreme court and should come up for a hearing soon, aimed at changing the aims and objective of Auroville : Instead of a city, they demanded that Auroville is declared a ‘deemed forest’ = a grown forest. Not a city. What would this have meant for Auroville ? Fortunately, the ‘deemed forest’ was rejected by the courts.
    The resistance against the city gained momentum when the Youth Center, who occupied the Crown road area without permission, refused to vacate the place even after 55 meetings with them, first in order to dig an electricity HT cable financed by the GOI in the ground which was lying on both ends of the Youth Center for more than 2 years, then to start the road. The HT electricity cable was meant to supply underground uninterrupted electricity supply FOR ALL. But the youth refused to collaborate, fired up and manipulated by senior Aurovilians and certain architects and offered stiff resistance. Those Aurovilians who wanted the city were always in a minority and had little chance to make their voices heard or push through this immense resistance. The entire split which we witness now could have been avoided if Aurovilians had themselves started to build the city. But decades of useless and endless discussions and disagreements and meetings lead to nothing, instead, trees and forests were declared sacro-sanct, above Mother’s city plan, environmentalists demanded that the roads and buildings go around trees and nothing and nobody was allowed to touch the trees — at least not for building the city proper. If trees had to be cut for a development which the anti-city faction wanted, they had no qualms cutting them for their own projects, or even just for firewood and money for their own pockets. Collaboration is a magic word which still needs to be explored and put into practice. The government will hopefully continue building the needed infrastructure and the skeleton of the city plan because the RA = Residents Assembly had proven over the last decades that they are unable to agree with each other if and how to build the city. The Master Plan was approved in 2010, but was stuck in the drawers of L’avenir d’Auroville and could not be implemented for many reasons, financial and because the resistance was too strong. People would not allow city development. Having been a member of L’avenir d’ Auroville myself for a few years, and having started the Crown road with the then 1st team which was initiated by Roger himself, i can attest that all hell broke lose when the first spate hit the ground for the Crown on Auroville’s birthday and our email inboxes filled up with insults. And here we are — the same resistance like 15 years ago, and the same section of people resisting as well. In the meantime, a parallel Auroville has been created by them, a parallel FAMC, BCC, ATDC, Working Committee … in order to oppose ‘the governmental interference’ and not to collaborate. According to the Auroville Foundation Act of 1988, the Residents Assembly ‘advises’ the Governing Board, while the GB takes the decisions. The RA was used to be the undisputed master in their own house, and it took them a long time to understand that decision power doesn’t rest with them. Probably many still live in their unreal illusionary world. In the recent past, these people have inflicted a huge damage on Auroville, they have damaged the image and name of Auroville for decades to come, and they are still doing it. Their media campaign maligning, insulting and demonizing the Secretary Dr Jayanti Ravi and those who work with the Foundation and the GB has gone beyond national borders into all countries, to newspapers, magazines, Consulates, Embassies, ministries via articles and videos, promoting their distorted view only. They don’t seem to understand that the more resistance they offer, the more crushing the force will come down. I can only hope and pray that one day we will be mature enough to govern ourselves without outer interference, guided only by Mother’s Force.
    Auroville is meant to prepare a way into the future for mankind, and we are not only miles away from this vision, the majority of Aurovilians has obviously not even understood what this means. Many are here just for themselves, for an easy living, for comfort, to take advantage and abuse a free system, which cares for all. Big changes have to still come, painful if need be, and joyful if accepted and welcomed, since this is just the beginning of some birthing pangs. Auroville is not separated from the world which is changing rapidly as well, it seems we are limping behind ? She wanted a collectivity of 50.000 people, now these hardly 3000 present residents block the entry of the other 47.000 in all kinds of ways. Why did Mother want 50.000 inhabitants for this experiment in Human Unity and spiritual progress ? The question & effort for the next years will be, how to attract more people to participate and live here. Once we will be 10.000 and 15.000, it will be easier and more impersonal, with more possibilities than now. Rather than opposing the current flow & change, we should concentrate at least on those aspects we can agree on, at least we can try to identify those aspects, and work together. Is this possible ? Perhaps, i don’t know, only the future will tell.

    Reply

    1. Let me quote here Anu Majumdar, a responsible Aurovilian: “A small new generation of architects, fresh out of school, landed in this burgeoning ecological heaven with strong ideals of their own. They took one look at the Galaxy plan a d declared it a mistake: an unsustainable, un-ecological, a socio-economic horror, un fit for ground realities, a piece of 1950s fruitcake and suspiciously like a megacity. And bingo< Auroville went for a rapid makeover. It was full Roger ban. The Mother was found to be clueless, a failed environmentalist and totally out of fashion. … "

       And there is a young man, born in Auroville, who says that this Galaxy and the Master Plan are "sterile" in 2023.

       These neo-enthusiastic people want a city of their own design and their own liking and to suit their own tastes, call them modern or whatever. Surely, there cannot be any objection to have them their latest ideas of the city. Nobody will prevent them executing them, but in their own independent counties and — not in Auroville. Auroville has to be, absolutely, according to the Mother's vision, mapped out by Roger Anger in his architectural drawing, fully made under the guidance of the Mother. Any change in it is non-negotiable.

       To be in Auroville be an Aurovilian, as a seeker and expounder in the highest spiritual consciousness. It is absurd to think that one can be more luminously different than the Mother. Auroville is her creation, that it is she who got it directly from the supreme Creator. And let it be clearly understood that the Mother's Auroville is a City and not an Eco-village.

       Reply

37. This is apropos of the “divine anarchy” that has been, not spiritually but philosophically, lauded by Kireet Joshi in the context of the Auroville Act passed in 1988.

    Here is a spoken comment of the Mother which was noted from memory by a sadhak and approved by her for publication. She was asked: “What political organisation do you want for Auroville?” And she replied:

    “An amusing definition occurs to me: a divine anarchy. But the world will not understand. Men must become conscious of their psychic being and organise themselves spontaneously, without fixed rules and laws―that is the ideal. For this, one must be in contact with one’s psychic being, one must be guided by it and the ego’s authority and influence must disappear.”
    [28 December 1972]

    In her answer the Mother is not tying herself with any theoretical or academic or speculative definition, belonging to any brand of metaphysics or philosophy or idea-system. She is simply giving an “amusing definition”. This is delightfully very smart of her. The meaning is, it should not lead to any dissertation or elucidation or discussion, least to logic chopping. Her statement has a luminous sweep and movement and elasticity that which can be perceived only when we have ascended to that superlative degree of spiritual attainment. Certainly it eschews any attempt of being put in any pigeon slot. It will be a travesty of supreme revelation when it is contextualised in the modes of obtuse mind, of human reason and logic and judgement.

    This is what we have in Kireet Joshi’s assertion that the Auroville “Act is so formulated that it would facilitate what the Mother has called ‘divine anarchy’.”

    My God! This is atrociously terrible. What is proclaimed is that the divine contents are caught in a legal document, that a legal document has seized the sense of something that is most esoteric, that which is a revelation. Salutations to human reason and sophistry! What is upsettingly bizarre about this sophism is that “the divine anarchy which is nothing but the rule of the Divine” is getting its authentication from leather-bound tomes of jurisprudence, getting the stamp of validation from a legal bench.

    Is that a new brand of spirituality? never known to mankind? I am amazed that erudite Kireet Joshi should have argued for a court of law proposing the takeover of Auroville by the Government. In it is the fulfilment that “the Mother’s intention that Auroville will be a field of research and particularly the concept of divine anarchy” is assured. Can any government or political set-up assure us “divine anarchy”, when everything is mentally-vitalistically done in the loud and shrieking greatness of Ignorance.

    For conflicts to be resolved there cannot be a legalistic-bureaucratic-administrative solution. The rightest Auroville in its deepest sense and significance and substance has to be free even of the Constitution of India. It has not to be the human made construction; it has to be the Law of the Spirit in its manifesting dynamics that has to be present. The self-discovery of that distinctive Law of the Spirit is the very raison d’être for the existence of Auroville.

    That is the efficacious and eternal Dharma proclaimed by the mighty Mahābhārata; that is the Satyadharma of the Upanishads. However, until that happens one has to accept all the provisionalities and contingencies, and suffer their terrors and their stupidities; but, ultimately, it must be that. Indeed, it is for that collective purpose is the necessity of Auroville.

    That is what Auroville is for, in every part of its harmonious implementation; it has to move in that direction and achieve it. If this has not happened it does not mean that it will not happen.

    It is then that there can be the true and genuine “divine Anarchy”, an anarchy governed by Satyadharma, the Law of the Righteousness in its operative dynamics. But the divine Anarchy comes only with a tremendously big prerequisite. It can be only when the soul is released from Ignorance into which it has entered, and the spirit is free from the bondage of Nature that it has accepted for it to be worked out in the integrality of working.

    It is self-deception to think of free will and free speech and free action, it is self-deceit to consider the right to freedom of opinion if not accompanied by the sense of responsibility. There has to be by the side of Statue of Liberty the Statue of Responsibility too. In fact when one is under the sway of unregenerate Nature, lower Prakriti, there can never be one’s free choice; it is already governed by the habits of the past insisting for their continuation.

    What is necessary in the meanwhile is, says the Mother, “obedience as a part of perfection, a free and natural obedience to a true guiding power and not to a mechanised government and rule.”

    Sri Aurobindo writes: “A spiritual or spiritualised anarchism might appear to come nearer to the real solution or at least touch something of it from afar. … The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order.” It is that which will lead to “ecstatic anarchy”; otherwise it is “tangled anarchy called fate”, “grey anarchy”. One has to be clear about it.

    The first and foremost condition for me to live in divine anarchy is, I must be free of myself. My soul has to be released from individual and cosmic ignorance, and my spirit from the bondages of Nature, my physical and vital and mental purified by the divine Agni, Agni the Purifier.

    Sri Aurobindo writes: “If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.”

    That is the primary condition if there has to be the “divine anarchy”. In its absence let us not be maladroit and absurd, let us immediately stop talking of the Auroville Act assuring one to be a “true doer of divine works”.

    Reply

    1. Kireet Joshi would speak for himself and re-explain if he was still alive. The way Kireet speaks about divine anarchy, in my opinion, is as poetic as the Mother’s amusing definition of the psychic being being able to create a divine anarchy as it is divine.

       Kireet Joshi emphasises continuously that he is referring to the Divine in each person that needs the freedom to manifest. Without this freedom the blossoming of the psychic being is frustrated just like what we have in ordinary society. The collective of Auroville needs to guard this freedom that is needed for the Divine in each individual to come to the front. That is the way how I understand him. And, thus, the Auroville Act wants to guarantee this freedom.

       Reply

38. Respecting “divine anarchy” let us go Sri Aurobindo’s “Savitri”. We talk of free-will and free-speech and free-action without realising that all that talk is in the heavy opacity of our multilayered ignorance. We have to have the truth-will. And the beauty is, when it is in Truth there is no clash of one truth-will against another truth-will. There is in them mutual rapport and understanding and harmony, — because the Truth has inherently in it the deep urge, a thrusting instinct to truthfully multiply in the expression of its possibilities. When such truth-wills come into operation then we have the “divine anarchy”.

    Here is Aswapati who has stepped into the mortal world to solve the problem of the death-bound mortal world. As a Yogi his soul first gets released from Ignorance, his mind and body’s first spiritual change. with it

    The universal strengths were linked with his;
    Feeling earth’s smallness with their boundless breadths,
    He drew the energies that transmute an age. ||9.12||
    Immeasurable by the common look,
    He made great dreams a mould for coming things
    And cast his deeds like bronze to front the years. ||9.13||
    His walk through Time outstripped the human stride. ||9.14||
    Lonely his days and splendid like the sun’s. ||9.15||

    The next mighty attainment is freedom of the spirit from the bondage of Nature. He is moving in “sunbelts of knowledge and moonbelts of delight”. He explores the cosmic vastness and sees its difficulty and problem. Finally he realises that the solution is only in calling down the divine Force and dissolve this mortality. He meets the divine Mother on the threshold mind towards this marvellous objective. She first tells him that Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth and hence he must leave for the slow-paced Time to do its work.

    But Aswapati is Aswapati and tells, “Madam, I am sorry, I am not going to accept your advice. Instead I propose that you should take the mortal birth and seize the earth’s problem.” She obliges him, by granting him a boom:

    One shall descend and break the iron Law,
    Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power. ||91.4||

    The point is, with the kind of Yogic strength he had established in his soul he could argue with the mighty Mother and win a boon from her. That does not mean that she got defeated. That “Voice absolute and wise” saw another wisdom in its absolute strength of truth. Another truth-will was allowed to prevail.

    The same we see in the case of Savitri. After winning victory over Death she was told to stay with her Satyavan in the realm of the transcendent Spirit. She had the Yogic strength to decline it. Instead she wanted her Satyavan to do the Divine’s work on earth.

    We have to acquire that will-power to claim to be the followers of “divine anarchy”.

    Reply

39. Wow! How interesting it is to go through all your recent commentaries. And all this on the revival of a post dated 19 September 2014, following the departure of Dr Kireet Joshi, of which I knew nothing, here in my city of Montreal, seemingly far away from you all, but at the same time experimenting on a very very small scale the same collective experiment here in Montreal.

    Anurag, it was a famous idea to publish here the serie of talks given by Dr Joshi in 1999, as It does justice to the greatness of this very devoted man, which I think, sincerely consecrated his life trying to put in application what he studied, again and again, of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

    August, it was a good point you made whenyou told me a few days ago that I was living in the land of the unicorns with my “good sentiments”, mainly because the past I was talking about is not the past yet!

    Of course that is true. And you all bring here the privilege of reading all kinds of diverging points of view on the burning news of Auroville, thereby demonstrating the desperate need for unity for which I prayed, as prayed before me, but in a very intellectual way, Dr Joshi. And what I undersatn of him is that he was trying to find a solution from the angle of actual governance of a collectivity. You can guess the difficulties of the challenge when you look at the past, a little bit further, after the French Revolution: The period, of which Sri Aurobindo has said that it brought “more social progress in 10 years than 300 years of reforms in England”, was not a long quiet river.

    As a gift, we thus received here, thanks to Deshpande-ji, to Mrs Neuman, to Mr Timmermans and to dear Anurag of course, the most brilliant exposé of the main currents exposing different needs of Auroville, for which very devoted people are now fighting energically, with all the faith of their being.

    I persist in saying that, despite appearances, it is the Divine who expresses himself here and He will bring the results none of us could arrive at, but of which each of us, by manifesting the partial point of view our nature allows us to perceive, will bring a part. Is it not already the beginning of a Divine Anarchy, even though for the moment, this anarchy is, in the image of our brain, made of grey rather than golden cells?

    I persist and sign, but with a minor actualization: “Let us all unite at the service of our Masters for the advent of the golden future they ARE PREPARING for us. Thanks to you all for the exposition of these facts, texts, events, quotations, experiences and points of view, all of them bringing forth a necessary synthesis. And as Dr Joshi brillantly exposed: Try for a moment to defend with all your energy the opposite point of view of yours. And he adds: Mother has said, “There is no problem which men of good will sitting together with an ardent aspiration to harmonise, cannot resolve.”

    Reply

    1. Claude says: August, it was a good point you made when you told me a few days ago that I was living in the land of the unicorns with my “good sentiments”, mainly because the past I was talking about is not the past yet!

       Of course that is true.

       Always enlightening, Claude, to see when someone has a little self criticism, so much needed to come to progress.

       If I understand you well, the consensus is for all parties to sit together with good will and with an ardent aspiration to harmonise, to come to a synthesis. Yes, that is what Auroville is for and which is its aim and without such effort for a synthesis it is not representing the freedom of the Auroville Act and not representing the Mother’s true Spirit of Auroville.

       Reply

40. Actually, this “divine anarchy” is in the context of an Individual. It doesn’t tell us anything about the collective, how one individual is going to interact with another individual.

    But the Mother was not going to write a thesis or an essay which Sri Aurobindo would have done.

    In that respect the questioner failed to see this aspect of the collective, and did not pursue his original query about what kind of political organisation she wanted to have.

    What is to be understood here is, in the “divine anarchy” it is the individual who is going to first get ready for that life and action in life. Which also means that he is complete in himself and does not need anybody else for his fulfilment. The question of mutuality and collective harmony in a collective living and growth would not, in that case, arise.

    It would be something analogous to Gods when each God is all by himself, complete in himself, with a functional role for himself, without any dependence on other Gods, without the collective operation or working of all the Gods together in a system.

    There is multiplicity without unity.

    The idea of a community of Gods indispensably engaged together in an activity is imperative.

    In the supramental creation both will go together, the Individual and the Collective. It is that which will make it a ‘manifestation’. In that widened collective anarchy there is the necessary interdependence, of one on others. That will be the fullest sense of divine anarchy.

    Reply

41. The individual who is the expression of the Truth is the key of the evolutionary movement. His true importance is, through him “the cosmic spirit organises its collective units and makes them self-expressive and progressive and through him that it raises Nature from the Inconscience to the Superconscience and exalts it to meet the Transcendent.” And again, to quote Sri Aurobindo: “The principle of individualism is the liberty of the human being regarded as a separate existence to develop himself and fulfil his life, satisfy his mental tendencies, emotional and vital needs and physical being according to his own desire governed by his reason; it admits no other limit to this right and this liberty except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others.”

    When seen this in the context of “divine anarchy” we could say that it is in the context of an Individual. It doesn’t tell us anything about the collective, how one individual is going to interact with another individual. But the Mother was not going to write a thesis or an essay which Sri Aurobindo would have done. In that respect the questioner failed to see this aspect of the collective, and did not pursue his original query about what kind of political organisation she wanted to have.

    What is to be understood here is, in the “divine anarchy” it is the individual who is going to first get ready for that life and action in life. Which also means that he is complete in himself and does not need anybody else for his fulfilment. The question of mutuality and collective harmony in a collective living and growth would not, in that case, arise.

    In the supramental creation both will go together, the Individual and the Collective. It is that which will give meaning and sense to the Auroville experiment. If the stages are mental race, intermediate race governed by the Mind of Light, the supramental race of gnostic beings, this “earthly life become the life divine” envisioned in “Savitri”, this City of Dawn is meant to prepare the mental race to grow into the intermediate race .

    Reply

    1. It is in the book The Human Cycle that we find these references that Sri Aurobindo makes explicitly to Divine Anarchy as the foundation of perfect social evolution. The subject is found in chapter XX entitled “The end of the curve of reason”, chapter which follows chapter XIX “The curve of the rational age” and which precedes chapter XXI “The spiritual purpose of life”. The whole chapter should be read (in fact, the whole book!) to really grab the context of the following quotation:

       “A deeper brotherhood, a law of love still unknown, is the only possible and sure foundation for perfect social evolution; nothing else can replace it. But this fraternity and this love will not follow vital instincts or reason, for they would soon be confronted by opposing reasoning, thwarted or diverted by other discordant instincts. They do not nor will they rely on the natural heart of man, where so many other passions hide to fight them. It is in the soul they must take root; it is a love based on a deeper truth of our being, and a brotherhood or rather, a spiritual fellowship that is an expression of an inner realization of unity-for it is a different sentiment from any fraternity in the vital or mental sense, of a more quiet and more durable dynamism. Only in this way can selfishness disappear and the true individualism of the one divinity in every man to base oneself on the true communism of
       equal divinity in the species; for the Spirit, the deep self, the Universal divinity who resides in every being, seeks, because his very nature is unity in diversity, to achieve perfection
       of his individual life and nature in the existence of all, in universal life and nature.”

       Please read the original English version, because the only version I have with me is the French translation (of Mother) that I had to retranslate into English with my internet translator. Therefore, forgive me for the inevitable discrepancies with the original version in English.

       Reply

42. Let us be realistic about Auroville today. It is at the stage of an aspiring humanity, of many different countries, races, religions, cultures. Aspiring for the Divine and for Human Unity. The Mother’s Auroville gives the space and the freedom to the individual and to the collective to realise this highest aim of Human Unity. Only from there, higher states can be reached as a collective.

    The Mother is very clear what she means about Divine Anarchy. Kireet Joshi is very clear what he means about Divine Anarchy – giving the guarantee to Auroville that each individual is assured of the freedom to find the Divine within, the psychic being. While this happens, you get a collective of psychic beings that “naturally” become a divine anarchy.

    Auroville is not at that stage today. It needs to come to Human Unity and it is obvious that this requires good will and aspiration and collaboration among all who live there, with the support from the larger Yoga collective worldwide.

    Reply

43. Let me quote here the last chapter of my “Book of Love”, the love story of Françesca and Leon, taking place in the Topland Park.

    An Amazing Spectacle
    Oh! It was a huge multicoloured kite with a variety of sheets of paper joined together, sheets and sheets of paper, all made of flame, and it carrying a bird on its back! And it danced upward and it danced downward, the diamond thread holding it, joining the wind and the joy in the wind. And the glimmering bird had a joy-ride! What a spectacle! And fire-crackers bursting in a variety of colours and shapes making every pattern, of delight!

    And came Virgil from Mantua to witness the spectacle. Even as he sat in a chair in the open veranda, on the first floor, looking up into the sky, came Dante of Florence and sat by his side, and Augustus Cæsar, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and a few others. They were jubilantly participating in the display of wonderment about to be.

    The son will be born. And there was the shout of mirabile visu, wonderful to behold, mirabile dictu, wonderful to relate.

    In that birth of the son, the flame-child, born in the fire of love, love itself the fire, will be our new birth, said Virgil to Dante. We do not go to Beatrice; it is Beatrice who will come to us, who will live in our midst, amongst us, live in our house, of glowing-breathing transformed clay. There will be no more the need of our parting, indeed, on the contrary, there will be the joyous participative enterprise in the glory of love and beauty.

    It is not faith that counts then; because when one is oneself a part of that reality, one yet having one’s free-will, free-will that becomes the truth-will, it, faith, loses its sense, God having faith in God. Faith, piety, devotion, worship, adoration, loyalty, grace, everything ceases to be there, in that oneness and identity.

    Each one has one’s own truth-will and in the Truth-Will truth-wills do not clash with each other; rather they bring out the multiple dimensions of Truth into play of manifestation. There is the play of truth-wills. To acquire Truth’s free-will is all our effort, in it is all our progress. Life’s dynamism is then what works in the individual’s truth-will.

    There is no question of crossing to the other shore, there is no question of staying in Limbo, no question of waiting passively for a command, Limbo a soundless borough for musing, for silent meditation. No question of, — in his will is our peace, e’n la sua volontade é nostra pace.

    It is truth-dynamism in truth-dynamism.

    Light eternal, luce etterna, dwells in every part of existence, Light eternal, luce etterna, that comes from Love alone, Love, supreme Love, Love that moves the sun and all the stars, Love that shall enter into the very cells of the physical body.

    That is the birth of the son, of the flame-child, and we rejoice in it, we rejoice in it to participate in it.

    Dante was in complete agreement and promised to rewrite his Comedy as the Book of Love.

    Reply

    1. Beautiful. This is the true key.

       Reply

       1. In the Truth-Will truth-wills do not clash with each other … Eternal light, supreme Love

          Reply

44. It is in his thesis on individual and society in the Human Cycle that Sri Aurobindo corrects the errors of Russell and Marx showing how the individual n collective are dependent on each other. In Auroville I see either superior individuals like Vladimir or many varieties of the cunning Philistine who cannot be called ” individuals” going by Russell’s definition in his essay ” The Role of Individuality”. The first resistance to them came from Dr. Jayanti Ravi. That is why she is a villain to them. Auroville is on the move. Perfection in work comes through work. Let us see how it takes shape. Prof. Sarraju ji understands the financial affairs well. Aravindan ji has picked up the ideological issues quickly. We have a cultured GB this time, harmonious. Let’s pray to the Mother for her help in her work. Pl ignore the noise and try to see that it is no more a stagnant project.

    Reply

45. Well, let’s make some “warning” noise.
    ​
    ​The Mother is generally not associated with:
    ​
    ​making false statements; denial of Auroville’s history; triggering conflict and division; denying collaboration; manipulating the Indian Press; kicking persons out of AV (one who was born in AV, and one who worked in AV for 34 years); weaponising visa extensions (when you differ of opinion there is the pressure now that you might have to leave India); stealing the meaning of the word Sincerity; all is ongoing.

    Reply

46. The stamp of “Auroville” has become a shield for some Indians and foreigners to do all sorts of nuisance inside and outside the Auroville ( to expand personal businesses) ! We have decided to stop it, whatever maybe the consequences. About the exit notice given to a person recently, he has destroyed quite a few houses inside Auroville. We have brought out pics with proofs of his atrocities done to some Aurovillians. Arguments like this will continue, but I think I have nothing more to add against the narrative of the faction re-mouthed by their friends .

    Reply

47. “… kicking persons out of AV (one who was born in AV, and one who worked in AV for 34 years); weaponising visa extensions (when you differ of opinion there is the pressure now that you might have to leave India) …”

    What is wrong in that? Is it not strange that you should have first called for the government takeover, and you are now complaining against it? Auroville lost its freedom, thanks chiefly to Kireet Joshi, Auroville lost its freedom, and the greatest wisdom will now lie in your seeing that it is reclaimed. Until then suffer the sad consequences of the loss of freedom.

    But it should stand even to logic that, whatever be the issues and conflicts present now, the Mother-Roger Galaxy must be carried forward, essentially that alone in all its glowing firmness, the implementation being done without obstacles and hindrances.

    Surely, if there are obstacles and hindrances present any working administrative system will employ whatever means are available at its disposal, — because the job has got to be done. If someone does not like it he is absolutely free to go elsewhere and try his own way to build things according to his ideas and notions and perceptions. Who prevents him doing that? None will, none can. But it is discourteous, even insulting, to put spanners in somebody else’s work.

    After all, he must have come here out of his own urges and promptings, and was never invited; if he doesn’t like things any time he should just walk away. That is what a gentleman will do. It is as simple as that, just walk away into the wide world which is there everywhere.

    The simple plain fact is, working for decades in Auroville or birth in Auroville does not give any birthright to anyone to do things that will prove to be blocks in the execution of the work.

    Be it realised that at Auroville the Mother-Roger Galaxy is the given, the Mother-Roger Galaxy is the given, the Mother-Roger Galaxy is the given, and it must start taking shape.

    We have the lovely beautiful Matrimandir, but the four zones after five decades, where are they?Isn’t that upsetting? If there is now the awareness for that we must favourably shout with the joy of hurrah, and commit ourselves spontaneously in that joy for its getting done.

    Reply

48. This is my last comment on the post

    Reply

49. What’s wrong with that? I am surprised about your understanding of human aspiration. If you lose your freedom you fight as long until you regain it. That is the True Spirit. Anything weaker would not be Aurobindonian. Building the City without humanity. That is very funny. Removing people with another opinion than yours is not more than Putin style.

    The true root of the problem is not Kireet Joshi or the government. It is the SAS that failed right from the beginning. I understand that for the Ashram it would be risky to bite the hand that feeds it. And it would be risky to criticise the current government. However, what are Aurobindonians for if they don’t stand for the Truth?

    In today’s case, the government is not complying with its true duty, just like the SAS. The Auroville Foundation Act is very clear about true collaboration, as it should be, and as it is understood by the other parties.

    You build Auroville together with all who live there. Period.

    Reply

50. I have been close to Kireet since 1985 when I left Pondicherry for Auroville. First as a member of the Laboratory of Evolution (Integral Yoga) and the Auroville Development Scheme (research and publication on Mother’s guidelines for Auroville, the town and Matrimandir), both instituted by Kireet and funded by the GOI, over the years I have been sharing views with Kireet on education and culture, Auroville, Yoga; sometimes discussing delicate questions while having lunch with Mohini Dadlani, Kireet’s former student who preceded him in becoming an ashramite, and my confident. Such proximity allows me a non-ideological, stereotyped perspective of the role this sadhak and scholar played in Auroville.
    In reply to R.Y Deshpande, there were special reasons, which is not for me to disclose, for Kireet moving to Delhi. Anurag mentions Satprem, and in fact Kireet always stood for both, Satprem and Roger Anger, the Mother’s architect; but there were other concerns too, not of a personal nature. As for Kireet going to court against the Sri Aurobindo Society, this has nothing to do with the Cold War etc., as Claude Chamberland suggests. Regardless of his unique position in Delhi, Kireet expected from us in Auroville the complete abstention from politics: didn’t the Mother veto politics, at the Ashram as much as in Auroville? This was Kireet’s steadfast position throughout his tenure as Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation. In 2003, when the war to dismiss Roger as the architect whom the Mother chose for Matrimandir raged at its worst, Kireet paid with open heart surgery, and was not reappointed as Chairman, because of his strenuous defence of Roger, regardless of politics.
    It is moving to go through again all that Kireet has conveyed to us, thanks Anurag. In private, Kireet could be even sharper – as when he spoke of the necessity for the dominant minority to abdicate to favour the youth, one of Kireet’s main concerns; this speech is but a milder version of what he told us in his room, closed doors, when I first introduced to Kireet the architect Anupama Kundoo, herself a debutant.
    Kireet’s speeches are his priceless gift to Auroville; it will take years and decades to come closer to the truth they unveil. His legacy to us is a throve of theoretical discussions, delving into medias res cum organisation steadily referring to Sri Aurobindo, whose language became his own. Sri Aurobindo purusha is the great theoretician – but the Mother prakriti is the organiser and shakti: “Without him, I exist not; without me, he is unmanifest” she wrote. It is the shakti aspect, the emphasis upon the day-to-day minute organisation of life and lifestyle in Auroville, which the Mother foresaw in great detail (as she did with the Ashram), which were missing in the Auroville debate during Kireet’s times, centring upon the “Divine anarchy” paper – and still are missing today.
    In Mother’s town there are no servants and no paid workers. There are no cars, only electric vehicles at a maximum speed of 15 kms by the hour. Singles live in 30 square metres flats plus the collective spaces, and a family of four in 75 square metres. There is no private property and no private profits, everything goes to the Central Fund for the wellbeing of all. Auroville is an economically self-sufficient town, with no money circulation; only the surplus is sold outside. If people are taken in charge by Auroville, they work full time and have no pensions or other incomes.
    These were my findings in the eighties, distributed to the whole community as stencilled compilations along with the Auroville News; on behalf of the Auroville Development Scheme, instituted by Kireet and funded by the GOI. We also organised exhibitions on Mother’s town and Matrimandir; we were the reference point, in the Bharat Nivas compound, anyone was welcomed to come and discuss – but we always stressed the need for Mother’s guidelines: one cannot be without the other. It is on this basis that I first met Kireet in Chennai; when I told him my name he held long time my hand, looking into each other eyes…
    I had joined Auroville in 1985, after 12 years safely living in Pondy, in and out. From there cycling to work on the Matrimandir’s roof in 1977 I started asking myself, “Who the real sadhaks are? Me, cutting the faded flowers inside the Ashram compound, daily offering a samadhi flower to Nolini, in complete silence, looking into each other eyes? Or the Auroville pioneers who happily lived with nothing? Red feet and legs and chappals and t-shirts, in the fields or at the Matrimandir construction site, under the scorching sun or the monsoon’s torrential rain?” More and more I felt humbled and one day I could but join, sharing hardships and joy.
    What’s left of it? Is the idyll really over? The gap between Mother’s undiluted guidelines versus the various Entry and other working groups kept widening; from the nineties onward, enrolling new people with no awareness of the frugal, simple life, materially, we are expected to live: pure sattwa. Entry fees for newcomers were introduced (the Mother didn’t ask any); this excluded automatically youth and idealists of all ages for whom money does not exist – nor do career, success, prestige matter. An ever-growing army of cars replaced walking and cycling. Petty bourgeois settlements, villas and huge flats, a host of servants and gardeners replaced the spartan huts and capsules of the pioneers, who during the toughest years went on living below the minimum material needs.
    Hardly anything of those precious memories remains but the consciousness of having done what the Mother expects from ‘the great adventurers’ she called: throwing everything on the plate. No bargain. No turning back. Complete surrender. I had no choice but giving up everything. This is what the Mother means.
    “I call you to the great adventure…” The summa of minute guidelines that the Mother transmitted us, defining from the utmost spiritual to the most material all aspects of life in Auroville, is the lever. Only out of this treasure can HER town – THEIR town: apprenticeship to the supermind – manifest. “The Avatar’s model town”, as I announced in my first compilation, 1986, out of a left-over SAIIER budget. Nothing less will do. Nothing less.

    Reply

    1. Mother’s guidelines have been the object of two of my books. “The Auroville Foundation Act and the Mother’s guidelines”, which I published in 2005 on the invitation of the then Secretary to the Governing Board Shri Sharma, who wrote the legal sentences in the first chapter, dedicated to the Act. The archival material and the historical narrative in that chapter were provided by gen. Krishna Tewari, a war-hero who took Auroville’s defence during those troubled years, and the founder of the Auroville Archives. This book, now out of print, was listed for years in the Auroville Foundation website and routinely given to the Governing Board members. Kireet Joshi was the first one who received it, and I gave the last copy to the present Secretary Dr. J. Ravi.
       The second book, “The New Being and the New Society”, is an enlarged version of the previous one minus the chapter on the Auroville Foundation Act. I also gave a copy to the Secretary Dr. J. Ravi, shortly after she took office, and forwarded one as well to the new Chairman, Dr. R. N. Ravi – like usually, since when SAIIER (Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research) published it in 2012.
       Auroville cannot be, unless we spontaneously abide by Mother’s guidelines.

       Reply

51. The Mother instituted the Auroville Prosperity, in kind, a few months after founding Auroville. Akin to the Ashram model – even the form to be filled monthly was similar – it strictly run on the basis of the minimum material needs. But alas, during the conflictual years with the Sri Aurobindo Society, not even these minimum needs could be afforded… There were days when the Aurovilians only had peanuts and roots in the empty stomachs… It is out of the sacrifice of the early Auroville founders that the Auroville (Emergency Provision) ordinance Act, first promulgated by the President of India on November 10, 1980, one month later replaced by an Act of Parliament, and crowned eight years later by the Auroville Foundation Act, was born. I will never forget when dr. Kamla Tewari (formerly a medical doctor and gynaecologist in the Indian army, and the wife of gen. Krishna Tewari) told me that, in great distress – they still lived in Pondy, she worked at the Ashram dispensary – they invited for a complete meal their daughter Deepti and son-in-law Arjun but… both refused to touch food, in solidarity with their starving Aurovilian pals!
    This was the scenario. I had not joined Auroville yet, but the awareness of what those early settlers went through left me no choice, I gave up the last possession left to me: the mystic atmosphere radiating from the early sadhaks of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I became an Auroville newcomer in July 1985, to keep working on the roof of Matrimandir. In the Pour Tous baskets food still was rationed: we ate what we could get. And lunch for us working at the Matrimandir construction site was rice. Ten months later I was made an Aurovilian. It is this sacred memory that still keeps me in Auroville, no matter what. “I invite you to the great Adventure”: HER Auroville.
    Then all started changing. As stability returned, following the enactment of the Act in 1991, some money started flowing and things eased up and; concomitantly commenced the gradual erosion of Mother’s guidelines, initially applied, crowned by the institution of the Auroville Prosperity in kind system. Such is human nature: extreme situations call for heroism and self-sacrifice; when routine sets in, shortcomings and impossibilities start all over. We post-World War II children already witnessed this on the grand international arena; could Auroville’s living laboratory be different? Isn’t this the work we are called to do? The lotus blossoms from mud.
    So here we are. Today, whether pro-town, pro-forest, pro-anything makes no difference; it’s just plain rhetoric, invectives whirling all over, empty shields. The Mother (and C. G. Jung) would call this projection of the shadow – the collective shadow. The simple, human truth is that hardly none, today, fulfils the Mother’s guidelines, whatever the camp (or no camp). And it is not even their fault: most people, taking the status quo for granted, have never been informed. How can they be thrown out, then, from one day to the next, for faults they were not informed to commit?
    Let’s stop hurting each other, information first! Then, in the silence of one’s consciousness, let’s ask: “These are the guidelines the Mother gave for life in Auroville, day in and day out, monsoon or sunshine. How do I fit? Am I ready, having no other aspiration but to live the Mother’s way?” Then only something real may commence. And the town – the true one, not some cheap counterfeit – with the true people, be born.

    Reply

52. I forgot a major detail. When in 2012 SAIIER, via a GOI grant, funded the publication of “The New Being and the New Society”, I was contacted by the editor of “Mother India” to get permission to reproduce, in chapters, the entire book. This came as no surprise, for the Ashram Prosperity, and the Auroville Prosperity, are indeed one.

    But as the Mother told Satprem, she expected even more from the Aurovilians — physical work to begin with. Henceforth she wished no servants here, and paid workers for no more than a year, just in time for an Aurovilian to be trained to do the same.

    Reply

53. You build Auroville together with all who live there. Period.
    August Timmerman

    But if those ‘all who live there’ don’t want to build a city, but want to live in a forest, and block the city? What if those ‘who live there’ file a court case with the NGT = National Green Tribunal in Chennai to change Mother’s vision into a “deemed forest” which has nothing to with Auroville, with what Mother wanted for Auroville, or why she founded Auroville ?
    It is not enough to pay lip-service: “We also want the city. ” We heard this sufficiently enough . It means, f.i. Mother’s Galaxy plan is not to be implemented but roads and other infrastructure have to around trees and follow existing mud paths
    The Galaxy Plan is Mother’s Vision for the City the Earth needs. It is our duty to Her to build it as she envisioned it. In the Galaxy plan is concealed Her cosmic support for the great transformation in the way the Lines of Forces are arranged, in a sweeping circular pattern , and we have not yet discovered yet what energies will be at play to support the transformation of our human-ness. We also have not discovered yet what energies are at play at the Matrimandir and how Matrimandir supports the transformation concretely.
    It is understandable that anti-Divine forces will do anything to prevent Auroville to develop as it should, as per Her plan. World wars have been fought to delay the advent of the supermind, does anybody think this is a cake walk ?

    Reply

54. What a precious information, Paulette. The Mother’s guidelines for living in Auroville. We all need to get a new, refreshing, look on Auroville by comprehending the Mother’s guidelines and what they mean for Auroville today.

    Reply

55. Dear Tine,
    I concentrated on Kireet and the Mother’s guidelines for, let’s be truthful, the guidelines are the elephant in the room no one talks about. Retaliation, revenge are not my way; I am too much of a sadhak, in my warring for MOTHER’S GUIDELINES CUM THE SYSTEM ENGINEERING GALAXY (yes, the Galaxy was to be built in five years via the newly applied SYSTEMS ENGINEERING, vide Mother’s package to the FORD FOUNDATION ON 13.3.1969!), to degrade the debate the way is done for the past two years, internally as well as publicly.
    I won’t mention names, but in Auroville we do know who is who, who has done what, who lives how. Madame Secretary, the honourable GB, external well-wishers may not know, bless their innocence – but we do know who lives in villas and on top has guest houses (or alternatively occupies 432 square metres for just two people); who has cars, servants, gardeners, some have horses too; how abruptly fortunes are created. And so on. In all sincerity, Tine: do you believe that living this way deserves to be called “Mother’s city”? With haves and have-nots and cruel disparities? “Human unity” – with servants and paid employees? Is this “the adaptation of the communist system” the Mother told Satprem? The apprenticeship to the supermind, with which she kept hammering the Aurovilians, in a dramatic crescendo particularly since 1972 onward? The Mother, two years before founding Auroville, called for “the cradle of the superman”: is this the way, what I just listed???
    Do you know that Nolini Kanta Gupta (the third in line for the Supermind, Sri Aurobindo stated), had to cross two courtyards to go to the bathroom? Nirodbaran too, Dyuman, had no private bathrooms. I lived for three months, with a special permission of the Ashram Trust, with Mother’s attendant (28 years) Jiji Kiran Kumari; we were six ladies sharing a bathroom, in the open courtyard! It is the shining example of the greatest sadhaks that still keeps me here, on the battlefield, regardless of whatever happens here.
    Have you seen my most popular book, printed 4 times, “Becoming One – The Psychology of Integral Yoga” (I must have given a copy of the first edition to Deshpande), compiling from the Mother, chapter on the shadow, SUBCHAPTER ON PROJECTION OF THE SHADOW? This is the elephant in the room n.2: PROJECTION OF THE COLLECTIVE SHADOW. No need to read C. G. Jung, the Mother describes the operation perfectly well. And so does Saptrem, describing the EVIL PERSONA (Sri Aurobindo commenting on Jung) – which I published in the Appendix, on our Jungian therapist Siegrun’s recommendation!!! Please go through, if I gave you a copy; otherwise I will leave the last edition with Toby at the ATDC.
    This is what it is all about: ALMOST NO ONE HERE ABIDES BY MOTHER’S GUIDELINES. THE MORE THE GUIDELINES ARE VIOLATED, THE MORE VIOLENTLY PEOPLE PROJECT THEIR SHADOW ON OTHERS. TO THE POINT THAT – THE MOTHER MAKES IT CLEAR – IF PEOPLE FEIGN NOT TO KNOW WHAT THEIR SHADOW IS, JUST LOOK AT WHAT THEY PROJECT ON OTHERS: THIS IS THEIR SHADOW!
    This is the Mother, Tine (and of course, Jung). If instead of tearing each other to pieces, hurling abhorrent insults and initiatives each of us was busy confronting how we – not our rival and enemy! – CHEAT with Mother’s guidelines, then we would have a chance to start emerging from the quicksand submerging us. Then, and then only, we could find the dignity, the right to stand, in sheer honesty pledging our lives to THEIR CITY: THE AVATAR’S MODEL TOWN. But to reach this stage all of us, no one excluded, must first clear the stable: our own. The way the Mother describes in the chapter I mentioned. Btw, I gave a copy of the last edition to Mme the Secretary too.
    Of course, the Mother wished a town of 50,000 SADHAKS – with parks and gardens, not a forest; rejoice, people are coming to terms with this (apart a few recalcitrant ones, but there are always exceptions; we are humans, not gods). From this new base, now let’s start the work: meeting our own shadow.

    Reply

56. Please post this comment instead, repeated adding the footnotes, as these were not reproduced automatically:

    From “The New Being and the New Society”, SAIIER, 2012:

    Always behind even the Mother’s simplest messages to the Aurovilians, those quoted over again and again, is the Truth-Consciousness or Supramental Gnosis. The guidelines given to us by the Mother are those of a spiritual society. As she observes, a truly spiritual being has no material needs. The treasure is within; it is a jewel that no outer riches can buy. Thus, commenting on the nature of the true hierarchy in Auroville, the Mother stated:

    ““Théon said something in this regard, he said, “Those who are all the way up” (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each one’s power of consciousness), “one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases.” And it’s perfectly true. It’s automatic and spontaneous; it’s not the result of an effort: the vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs become – automatically so – because they lose all their importance and value. It’s reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
    And that’s easily recognizable, of course. It’s difficult to feign.”
    [ Reference: Mother’s Agenda, IX, 10.4.1968. A Cabbalist and an occultist, Max Théon was considered by some to be an epitome of Gnosticism. He was the master who taught occultism to the Mother, at the time a young woman by the name of Mirra Alfassa, who had met him in Paris in 1905. {This note now should be re-written; through Theon the Mother had confirmation of her own experiences.}]

    “There’s something very interesting on a psychological level: it’s that material needs decrease in proportion to the spiritual growth. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said), not through asceticism, but because the focus of attention and concentration of the being moves to a different domain…”
    [Reference: Mother’s Agenda, XI, 25.3.1970.]

    Did not the Mother stress that the first necessity is the inner discovery, and that this should happen before coming to Auroville? The way pointed to by the Mother is that of material needs progressively shrinking to basic necessities, for this goes hand in hand with inner progress, both being interdependent and equally necessary for the establishment of the spiritual society into which Auroville is meant to grow. Then things make sense, as this statement by the Mother, which translates the full significance of her vision of Auroville into one’s mode of life, reveals:

    “M: It’s a kind of adaptation of the Communist system, but not in a spirit of leveling: according to everyone’s capacity, his position (not a psychological or intellectual one), his INNER position.
    S:In democracies and with the Communists, there’s a leveling down: everyone is pulled down to the same level.
    M:Yes, that’s just the point.
    The true part is that every human being has the material right… (but it’s not a “right”…). The organization should be such, arranged in such a way, that everyone’s material need should be met, not according to notions of right and equality, but on the basis of the most elementary necessities; then, once that is established, everyone must be free to organize his life, not according to his monetary means, but according to his inner capacities.”
    [Reference: Mother’s Agenda, VIII, 30.12.1967.]

    For average human beings there is no ceiling to their ‘needs’, nor is money ever enough. But as one advances on the path a moment comes when there is nothing to renounce. Material cravings collapse, effortlessly, giving way to the real thing: sadhana as service to the Divine, without expecting anything in return, being just content to serve. When the spiritual conversion takes place a few square metres to rest at night, simple food and inexpensive clothing are enough.

    Reply

57. This thread originated from Kireet Joshi’s role, to whom I paid tribute evoking the task we initiated as Centre for Human Unity, and which I picked up as svadharma: Mother’s guidelines for Auroville. But this is only one side of the coin; the other is THEIR town. And this leads to Roger Anger, who in fact was also deeply involved with the Mother’s guidelines, often drafting texts which the Mother will bless and sign – from no cars to no servants; besides the general guidelines for Mother’s town, from which we grow more and more remote.

    In 1987, following a first victory returning Matrimandir to Roger, the town was the new call. Roger asked me to prepare a fundraising album – and Kireet, one for his newly launched CIRHU (Centre of International Research in Human Unity). But internecine struggles sabotaged their request and nothing happened: nothing new under the sun. At the same time, I was confided by Suresh Hindocha (the family who donated most of the Matrimandir land) copy of his archive: the most precious documentation about the only Galaxy plan the Mother saw and approved, crowned by her 13 pages request to the Ford Foundation, to build it in five years via the systems engineering. The Planning Research Corporation, Los Angeles, contacted by Suresh with Mother’s blessing, had just cooperated with NASA sending the first astronauts to the moon… In 1972, the United Nations requested a plan to build the Galaxy accordingly, but…

    I have PDF files of all the originals, also converted to Word. An audio cassette is available too, recorded at the Town Hall on 24.2.2009 when I invited Suresh Hindocha on behalf of L’Avenir, Auroville Town Planning section. Kailash Jhaveri (Mother’s secretary to UNESCO) also participated in the debate, and is recorded; my third book on Auroville, “Interacting with UNESCO during Mother’s years”, is a compilation from Kailash’s autobiography. Among those commenting, Tine is recorded too.
    If Anurag agrees, I will initiate a separate posting with relevant excerpts from this massive documentation; so that all know, first hand, what the one plan the Mother approved, and wished to build in five years, is about.

    May the light shine again.

    Reply

    1. “If Anurag agrees, I will initiate a separate posting with relevant excerpts from this massive documentation; so that all know, first hand, what the one plan the Mother approved, and wished to build in five years, is about.”

       Dear Paulette,
       Please go ahead.
       With warm regards,
       Anurag

       Reply

58. Dear All,
    I am taking the liberty of sharing with you some letters written by Satprem to his various Aurovilian friends. Hopefully these correspondences would throw some more light on the ongoing discussion.
    With warm regards,
    Anurag Banerjee

    Here is the first letter dated November 10, 1975:

    I have been spending my life outside all “Institutions,” whatever they may be. I even went off into the forest because I did not want any law nor any rule.
    Here, I have been near Mother, and that is that.
    I have always seen and felt that people need to let themselves be ruled because they are Unable to have the inner vision and knowledge by themselves — though it is the only true rule, the only one I can accept. Otherwise, the forces don a different mask and everything starts off again with different egos.
    Thus, the situation of Auroville, whatever it may be, is a last resort until everyone has lost their ego enough to see things clearly and to spontaneously obey the Rhythm of the perpetually changing Truth.
    “We want a race without ego,” Mother said — this is the key to the true rule of Auroville.
    Sri Aurobindo says:
    “Governments, societies, kings, police, judges, institutions, churches, laws, customs, armies are temporary necessities imposed on us for a few groups of centuries because God has concealed His face from us. When it appears to us again in its truth and beauty, then in that light they will vanish?” (Thoughts and Aphorisms)
    In the meantime, may Aurovilians follow their higher consciousness, and the result will be exactly proportional to their sincerity and lack of ego.
    Satprem

    Reply

59. [Satprem’s letter to two Aurovilian friends dated January 30, 1976]

    Yes, you have seen exactly: the dark forces that incite the masses to everyday fascism are there, and it is not surprising in the least. When you read the rest of the book, you will see the formidable story and how they sent Mother over to the other side. They would like to send Satprem, too, to the other side — and I never once doubted that the forces behind would do their best to disturb A.’s work. We really are in the Hour of God — an Hour of God without appearing such, very much Chicago style. And the book you have in your hands, which is only a little beginning, is formidable dynamite whose significance you will soon be aware of. When speaking of “dynamite,” I don’t mean the words or the ideas or even the facts expressed, but the Force behind. It is Sri Aurobindo and Mother who have begun to walk upon the world — just wait and see. We are all going to see. We delight in speaking of the “new world,” everyone repeats the word or brandishes it or hides behind it — but one day the new world establishes itself. And masks drop. We are reaching this point, at long last! So now is the time to keep our helmets on and to hold on — this book is a great battle. We are waging a great battle.
    Here, we went through death for two days before the Forces about to unleash themselves were “miraculously” stopped. All that had been foreseen, foreseen long before. The day after her departure, Mother told me, “You must hide.” And when I saw the danger come nearer, a few months ago, She told me, “No-no, you must not take to the street (God knows! I would have been torn to bits): you must go and see the «Governor»” — I wondered who this ‘Governor’ was, until one fine evening I saw Indira Gandhi’s adviser, unknown to me, appear at my place. It is thanks to him that we are still alive. The Government of India knows and protects us … as far as it can, because the masses are moved like puppets: one wraps oneself up in Mother’s flag and wants to save Mother’s work from the clutches of the “devil.” That is the way things are. But we keep holding on and advancing imperturbably.
    Keep all that to yourself. The situation is already dangerous enough! I told you about it, because it is so nice to find a brotherly echo in this black mixture!
    Come on, a great hope is beating in our hearts, we are reaching the Moment at last. The white pigeons represent the smiling Grace which leads things — that is, the world — toward its ineluctable Victory. Look closely around you. You will see everyone and everything as they are under their masks. And Auroville will be. In fact, we are waging the battle of Auroville and of the new world.
    My door is open to you at any moment. If I have the time to call you, I will do it. I well know the lights which burn in the great Night, and I know where every heart is. My brothers and sisters from Auroville are invisibly around “me.” One day we will meet, when the Work is done. We are doing it.
    Your brother,
    Satprem

    Reply

60. [Satprem’s letter to an Aurovilian dated February 28, 1976]

    If only the Aurovilians could understand that the only solution is not to stand for this one or against that other one, for this solution or against that other one — but to be purely, simply and starkly for the sake of Truth, the Truth whatever it may be, the Truth that we cannot know and do not even understand, whose Plan and means we do not know, but which itself knows and which we can pray for. Praying and praying is the only solution, oh! for the reign of the Divine to come, for the reign of Harmony to come, for the Earth to be true, free and beautiful — praying for the Earth. If the Aurovilians, forgetting all “solutions” and all individual aspirations and all hopes of personal realization and all desires of personal “experience,” could only and simply get together, so as to pray for the Earth…. That is all.
    It is the Hour when one has to pray for the Earth.
    May all these scattered flames join and melt into that one prayer for the Earth, as at the beginning of time people huddled together around a fire against wild beasts.
    Then the heart of Auroville will take shape, and this pure nucleus will draw the force that can overcome obstacles. Then the Truth will be forced to show itself and It will find the solution nobody had thought of. Truth alone has the power.
    For fifteen years, day and night, till her last breath and even now, Mother has kept repeating one prayer with all the cells of her body:
    om namo bhagavate
    May this become the ceaseless prayer of the Aurovilians, may they drive it into themselves with every breath, every gesture, at every minute and in whatever they do, and that single prayer will topple all the walls and Auroville will be.I am with you in that prayer. May it be the mantra of Auroville and of the Earth of tomorrow.
    Satprem

    Reply

61. [This letter was written by Satprem on May 21, 1976 to a young Aurovilian]

    29th May is a very good day.
    I have read your project for a “Governing Board” of Auroville. It may be premature and there is not the something spontaneous which springs from the New World. It is a kind of improvement of the same old Machine. First of all to want to include there some representative of the Sri Aurobindo Fallacy-Society is to introduce at once the Falsehood. As long as the Aurovilians have not understood and felt the complete rottenness of this Society, there is no hope, it means that they share to some degree this Falsehood. This corrupt seed must be completely eradicated from the mind and body of Auroville. Then you mention my name as a representative of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. But I do not belong to an Ashram nor to any Institution past or future. I belong to Mother, I belong to the Fire which is not to be imprisoned in any human construction. And lastly by whom is your project to be signed? A few days ago a short declaration was circulated in Auroville to the effect that the Aurovilians had no trust in the Sri Aurobindo Society for carrying out Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s ideals. Only 86 signatures were collected, not even half of the Aurovilians, while their own brothers were blackmailed, pursued by the police and menaced with expulsion under the instigation of the impostors from the Sri Aurobindo Society. As long as the Aurovilians will see some arm or leg of their own body being torn and cut without feeling concerned, then they will call on themselves a lot of misery and more misery till they understand fully that they are one and that one cannot cut a piece of the body without hurting the whole body. This is exactly the thing. One may ask not when Auroville will be free, but when the Aurovilians will cease to deserve their masters?
    I am with you deeply in the living body of Auroville.
    Satprem
    You can show this letter to anyone. I have nothing to hide and I have no fear of anything. Who can burn the Fire, tell me?

    Reply

62. [Extract from a letter of Satprem to Aurovilians, originally written in English dated May 30, 1976]
    I have the dolorous privilege of seeing a little better than you, because I am your brother a little more ahead, and I have said to you, repeated, with my brotherly heart, that there was a poison in Auroville. But if you persist in believing or in thinking that one can come to terms with potassium cyanide, then there is no other solution but for you to become poisoned slowly, implacably. And finally your vision and your perception will be so obscured that you will no longer even perceive that it is Poison.

    Reply

63. [Excerpt from Satprem’s letter written to Sir C.P.N. Singh dated June 18, 1976]
    Another kind of sordid “religious” circus is going on in the Ashram, but this one will automatically disintegrate when the real Auroville will emerge fully protected from the religious, political and financial octopus which was ready to swallow Mother’s practical field for its obscure purpose. Now the thing is clear and I trust that the practical steps will be taken at governmental level. Mother’s Mantra is planted there and already acts powerfully as I can see and will dissolve in its fire whatever stupidities and absurdities may remain within Auroville itself. The Mantra will take care of Auroville’s future without any need for outer compulsion and regulation — this is the beauty of the Mantra. One day recently an Aurovilian wrote to me asking why I would not come and live in Auroville to help them directly — I laughed. The Mantra itself will do its job very well and Mother’s job, why should I meddle there! The one thing was to protect the young sprout from immediate danger — this is now done or about to be done. So I am nearly at rest on this side. Though too much time should not elapse — you have seen this remarkable anonymous letter suggesting to burn down some huts (in Auroville), etc … I could literally hear the voice behind this letter, and some obscure force is obviously active there, awaiting an opportunity.

    Reply

64. [Satprem’s Letter dated July 16, 1976,written apropos of an Aurovilian woman’s fall from a scaffold, at the Matrimandir]

    To my brothers and sisters of the Matrimandir. To Auroville.
    This accident should not have happened. According to the spiritual law, it is the sign of a Falsehood. And those who think that it is an “accident” bury their heads in the sand so as not to see.
    I like Auroville enough to tell the truth to Auroville — for, after all, Auroville interests me only insofar as it is a place where the Truth can become manifest. So, excuse me if the truth is not pleasant.
    There is a double Falsehood, and I have known for a long time that something is going wrong at the Matrimandir, but to tell it, I had to wait for the right moment — people, alas, do not understand until they start receiving blows.
    First Falsehood: those who think that the Matrimandir must be built “at all costs” and that the Goal is to build one Matrimandir or two hundred Matrimandirs are grossly mistaken. It is not a question of building the Matrimandir: it is a question of building the people of the next world by using their symbolic effort. Mother does not care about tons of cement — She cares about an ounce of sincerity, a pure little gesture, consciously made. If each of the workers’ gestures were really filled with consciousness, the Matrimandir would shine all by itself like a divine Act and those men would already no longer be men, but divine beings. It is this divine world that we want to build, it is these divine men that we want to create, or else the Matrimandir can crumble along with the dust of all the useless temples that fill the banks of the Nile. It is not that that we want, but a new species upon earth, a supramental species.
    So, you think that you are going to build this new species for 1978? — second Falsehood, which is perhaps the most disgusting of all. All those admirable fakers are about to bury Mother a second time, as if all their lies had not already been enough to bury Her a first time. A second, solemn burial for the Centenary of Mother — now that She is dead all right, they think, one can celebrate Her. But when she was really there physically among them, all their little Lies were raging and in revolt. And you want to repeat this disgusting masquerade for Mother’s Centenary? You think that She is dead? You think that you can go on cultivating the countless little Lies under the protective tons of cement of the Matrimandir? But this is not what we want! But Mother is not dead, and Mother does not want this masquerade — She wants pure, true, sincere people. Will there be three of them only in all Auroville for the 21st of February 1978? If there were only three of them, the whole Earth would be saved.
    So I invite you to build a few men — as many men as there are in Auroville, if possible — pure and luminous, exact in each gesture, each reaction, each word and each movement. And if you have succeeded in doing that, Auroville will shine upon earth like two hundred Matrimandirs, because it was for this that Mother wanted Auroville, not for one more temple. Then perhaps Mother herself will come and shine among us, for we will be able to stand Her light. She is waiting for us to be capable. It is not the second burial of Mother that we want to celebrate in 1978, but the first advent of a new species which will be capable of seeing her right in our midst.
    Satprem

    Reply

65. [Letter written by Satprem on November 1, 1976, to Auroville’s friends in Paris]
    A small sentence from a London letter which has been conveyed to me makes me feel the necessity of putting the question of Auroville — and ultimately of the Ashram and of the entire Work — in its real general perspective and finally its world perspective for it is all the same world and the same question of the world. There is no “Pondicherry” and “Paris”: there is one and the same formidable, worldwide snake-pit where a few intelligences and especially a few pure hearts are striving to disentangle the truth from falsehood and to draw a line of conduct.
    But in reality falsehood cannot be disentangled from truth because Truth is actually entangled in Falsehood everywhere: we are born with a load of atavistic and evolutionary and chromosomic Falsehood from which the pure hearts are desperately and painfully striving to extirpate themselves — without ever succeeding completely because it is not at the Mental level that one can extirpate oneself from the Falsehood, nor at the Mental level that one can disentangle truth from falsehood — it is at the level of the body and of Matter, and this is the whole evolutionary, worldwide story of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The Supramental lies in the depths of Matter, as Truth-Consciousness is to be found in the atom and at the heart of the cell. It is the very story and the very question in which we are bathed, kneaded and hammered in all possible ways, in all countries and in each group, each Church, and in the least recesses of consciousness. This great Exact Consciousness, or “Straight” Consciousness, as the Rishis used to say, is what has been awakened, set to work by Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and it is now piercing through all the thick and sordid layers of our animal evolution to burst forth into the broad daylight of the world. It is only there that the truth will spring out, pure, in each cell restored to its divine movement, and it is only there that the divine, pure vision in a cleansed body, will make us touch the truth of things and the exact movement, infallibly.
    Until then, we are in the same boat, sordid, increasingly sordid. It is enough to turn on the radio for us to understand the extent of the cleansing, from Capetown to Peking, without forgetting Pondicherry along the way. One can also look into one’s own consciousness.
    So what hope do we have to understand a little the situation in Pondicherry and to know where to set our feet? It is here that we are entangled a lot, not by bad wills and a swarm of liars, but by good wills and good thoughts — which are as bad as everything else because everyone kindly shares the same Mud Bath. It is the great Mental Mud whose reign is drawing to a close. And it is here that the little sentence from the London letter goes straight to the heart of the problem, we might say to the side of the problem which is the most solidly muddy, for nothing is more solid than Truth when it is caught in a mudhole — this is what is happening everywhere in one thousand six hundred and fifty languages. Well, this person met the “President” of the Sri Aurobindo Society in London and she says very kindly: “I have been helping Nava (the said President) a bit with finding information … putting him in touch with people, etc., and trying to feel unity with the best in him.” One cannot think better, even Pope Paul VI would say as much to the Protestants or the Copts. One has broad views, you know. The trouble is that the whole View is muddy, as we have said. Where is the “best” in a rotten fruit? And the reasoning keeps unfolding (you can catch it in letters from New York or Nairobi, it is the perfect halo over the general mud) the reasoning unfolds imperturbably because there is nothing more imperturbable than an entrapped Truth (fortunately the Supramental is creating a serious perturbation in all that), it further says: in each man the Divine can be found, so let us embrace our brothers; besides, in each being there are both errors and a spark of truth, so let us embrace again our sinning brothers; in each camp there is some truth and some falsehood, thus there must be a bit of falsehood in the Aurovilians and a bit of truth in its glorious President, a bit of falsehood-truth in the Ashram and a bit of truth-falsehood in the Administrators of the Ashram — let us all embrace one another and may those petty “internecine” quarrels stop at last. Those are the world’s intestines indeed. And as a result, no one knows where they are any longer, no one knows where the truth is any longer, no one knows where the falsehood lies any longer. Everything is true and everything is false. It is the Truth which lies. It is the great intestinal Embrace of the general mud.
    But all the same …
    And it is “objective,” of course, one distinguishes right and wrong, one gives each one their “due.” But this “due” is worth nothing. Our total ineptitude is being dinned into us in one thousand six hundred and fifty languages.
    Now is the time to try and really understand what Sri Aurobindo and Mother have done, their real work in this total “Mudhole,” as Mother would say. They did not soar into the heavens of Consciousness, no; they worked for the World as a whole. So they gathered around them, in this Laboratory of the Transformation, a number of terrestrial samples taken from the different kinds of mud or of negation that had to be transmuted for the operation to be complete, that is, global. They swallowed up these little ingredients of the world Difficulty in their own bodies: their negations and resistances, their incomprehension or so called comprehension and sometimes, rarely, a little spark of pure love which made, as Mother said, a “drop of eternity” in that opaque and mortal mixture — mortal indeed, They died of it fifty times a day and each time They squeezed out a drop of pure Life from this encircling, harassing and voracious Death. They transmuted, they kept digging up, they swallowed all the dregs and the mud to wrest a pure little response in the cells of their own bodies — and finally in the cells of the world s body, for there is but one body. You know, when you swallow typhoid, you have to “work typhoid out” — They “worked out” all the diseases of the world and all the dirty things of the world, one after the other. First and foremost, the “disciples” were the samples of the collective Negation.
    The result of Their unthinkable work? — we see it now and we shall see it more and more. As Sri Aurobindo put it, “The Supramental will explain itself,” and it is vigorously and irresistibly explaining itself, through all the layers of filth which up to now provided a pretty veneer over our decent civilizations. But the veneer is cracking. Saintlinesses are cracking. It is one and the same rot desperately trying to clothe itself in black or white and to put on the halo of all possible saintlinesses: religious, patriotic, Marxist, or whatever “ism” we choose to wrap it in — one even wraps oneself in Mother’s flag and one knows Sri Aurobindo to one’s fingertips. But it is cracking, everything is cracking. It is the time when everything cracks — except what is pure. And what is pure is not located in the head or in the virtues of the old world, but at the level of a little cell.
    To know where to go and how to walk in this general snake-pit, we have to find this “pure” something.
    The Ashram?… “I did not come upon earth to found an Ashram,” Mother wrote, “that would have been a poor aim indeed.” Yes, God forbid! But, of course, they are the “heirs” of the Work, just as the other is the “proprietor” of Auroville. It is “mine,” I defend the “interests of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.” It is swarming, charming to see, as in the rest of the intestines of the world. And it waves Mother’s flag about marvelously. If you dare to say anything, you are a traitor and a heretic, and you are sent to jail, like the Aurovilians, or they take away your passport. Or else they wage the sordid war against you. It is full of claws, slimy. These are the residues of Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s Laboratory, the small triumphant samples — and a few pure, silent drops, thanks to which all that is not complete mud. One could even say that these pure drops give more force to the reigning Falsehood. “What is an Ashram without a guru?” a certain French writer asked us — “It is a Church.” Such is the simple answer.
    And such is the choice the Ashram is faced with: to break the walls of the Church and to be reborn in the living truth, in other words, to do Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s experience, to live it, to bring it down into Matter and into the cells of our bodies, or to rot: the great speeches on Sri Aurobindo’s “philosophy” and Mother’s “teaching,” while underneath one goes on and on with the old atavistic and genetic and orthodox rot. It is all stuffed with haloes. We shall celebrate Mother’s centenary with great pomp, we shall bury her a second time after having buried her a first time beneath our general Falsehood.
    But who wants the living truth?
    Auroville? It is riddled with contradictions, it is full of non-haloes which flounder right and left, make mistakes and bump into things, but seek and climb up and bite the dust again — without putting on airs, without even a single text of Sri Aurobindo’s to brandish. It is perfectly incoherent and even in-cohesive. But all that tends toward something. It is a world which tends toward. It has no good reason, no virtue, but it is in tension. And it is this tension that interests us.
    Always in History there were those who clung to the evolutionary summits, as one clung to the Italian Renaissance or the priests of Thebes or Mr Karl Marx. It becomes very comfortable in the end, one can even be a bureaucrat or rather a “paintocrat” of Raphael and carry on with Raphael or Karl Marx for three hundred years — or with little Ashrams forever. Then there are those who seize the small uneasy vibration, that “something” within which keeps breaking through walls, all the walls, until it reaches the pure little truth, total and without any wall, in the depths of the atom or of a cell. These ones live Sri Aurobindo and Mother. These ones laugh at the “proprietors” of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. These ones are in motion: they are tending toward.
    And the Truth, this Truth that we were all seeking so as to distinguish right and wrong is neither of the right nor of the left nor in the Ashram nor even in some future city: it is in the sole fact of tending toward. It is this Movement which is True.
    So what we have to embrace are not dubious “brothers” or a Church or proprietors of all kinds or good or evil, but this sole Movement, and we have to learn how to distinguish between the rot clinging to its privileges, its powers and its virtues and all the excellent virtues of the old, presiding species — and this uneasy, awkward, stumbling little vibration that nonetheless desperately wants Something Else.
    No, it is not a quarrel between two “camps,” but an evolutionary choice between the past of the earth and its future. And ultimately it is the choice of the whole Earth, as one day we had to choose between Hitler (another “brother”) and the Resistance, or between the pithecanthropus and the Homo sapiens. And now it is another species, it is another little vibration to catch and live.
    This particular little vibration is unmistakable. It is what distinguishes the ghosts from the living. It is Truth on the move which has not caught all its glories and its fanfares; it is even a rather ragged truth, but it is moving on.
    So, are we going to move on?
    Are we going to create this New Species?
    That is the question.
    It is a question to be lived out: to live is the very answer.
    As for the others, let them celebrate Mother’s centenary with great pomp — for our part, we want a living Mother, a living Sri Aurobindo, we do not believe in their tomb nor in their Church, but in their new World. And we are building this new world, we are desperately in need of it.
    Satprem

    Reply

66. [Satprem’s letter to an American Aurovilian, originally written in English, dated December 21, 1976]
    I like your letter very much, it is a change from the spate of mental muddle and arrogant cries I receive from all sides. There is a Need in you, you want to really know what is happening and it is your heart which cries at last. I shall try, though English is somewhat difficult for expressing with clearness my feelings.
    We may start from any end, it leads all to the same point. It is very striking that none of you seem to have grasped the basic fact that after all Mother and Sri Aurobindo wanted to establish a supra-mental world, which means first of all that the mind must either disappear or be replaced by something else. Now all of you are joyously wallowing in the Mind, each with his war-cry, his “Truth,” his idea — specially this “at the service of Truth” has become a disgusting farce. Not only so, but all of you are very eager to seize all of Mother’s words and align them nicely if possible in ten little paras, clean and dry, for hanging at his own special door, like Moses with his Ten Commandments. But truly we are fed up with this kind of Sinai, and so were Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So if you hope to seize Mother’s Truth in writing and deliver it to the world and to Auroville, you will land exactly in the kind of mess you all are in Auroville and in the world. Because the Truth is not a mental thing and Mother is hammering this on the head of all nations and all groups and individuals till they realize their own ineptitude and floundering panacea.
    This is especially hammered on Auroville’s reluctant head. Mother is purposely reducing the whole mental world into such a suffocating imbroglio of Truth-lie and lie-Truth, or true lies and lying truths, that people will really need and want to breathe another air. Then the Supramental will have its chance, not before. Until then you can align the whole of Mother’s Agenda and put in writing all of Her wonders, people will simply see nothing — the secrets are transparent. Another kind of eyes are needed, other organs of understanding. And Auroville must understand in the first place that her raison d’etre is to work out other organs, another level of understanding, and finally another being beyond the mental being. We are not here to build a Matri-mandir (and I will repeat that until I get a hoarse throat) nor to grow cabbages, but to build a new being, and incidentally some cabbages to help his transitory way of meditating — and both are most useful as a means toward developing this other thing, supramental thing, which will dispense very well with all our radishes and more or less spacious buildings. Sorry if I hurt your feelings, but this is a fact, an evolutionary fact, and we are here to make a new evolution, is it not? So, by the same stroke, we put in this real perspective all of our provisional attempts, be it a Committee, a kitchen for all, an external relations office, a Matrimandir or what not. And if we miss the central thing, we miss everything — and we truly are in the process of a resounding crash if we do not seize on this central fact.
    Now, see how it works at the mental level. I can give you here a very good example of the mental prowess (mind is the king acrobat). As you know some people in “Aspiration” [One of Auroville’s communities of which most of the then inhabitants were French people who represented the center of resistance against the Sri Aurobindo Society’s takeover] have tried to work out something for organizing this collective body dealing with external relations — good or bad, I am not here to judge their merits nor the soundness of the thing — but they have tried and called all others to join in the attempt. The mental response may be taken from a letter of one of you whom I do not wish to name, and it is very illustrative of the mental “understanding,” it might have been written by a dozen other Aurovilians here and there: “So,” says sarcastically the letter, “after an Auroville ‘gestion Navajata,’ an Auroville ‘gestion Shyamsundar,’ we will have an Auroville ‘gestion frangaise’…” Then, really, if such is the reaction in peoples minds, there is nothing left but to have an Auroville “gestion nothingness” or call back Navajata, for, indeed, this is exactly the kind of force which is destroying or wants to destroy Auroville. It plays on the mental level, destroys every attempt, corrupts every endeavour, sows its seed of doubt and distrust and jealousy, pushes up everyone against everyone. If Frederick had wanted to try some organization, it would have been the “German gestion,” nicely labeled and condemned in advance. And everything is rottened and corrupted in advance with this kind of reasoning — nobody can try anything, there is nothing to be done except to entrench ourselves into Swedish radishes, Italian Matrimandirs, and Swiss cows. And we are supposed to be here to build another being! Moreover, mark that this kind of reasoning puts on the same footing and by the same breath “gestion Navajata” and “gestion frangaise” — of course those wonderful acrobats have a wide mind and liberal views: those who put the Aurovilians in jail and blackmailed the Aurovilians are just human beings like those who are put in jail and resist the blackmailing — the complete muddle. Result: nobody knows anymore where he stands and “everything is the same” and all are equally the children of the Mother and long life to Hitler! or to any brother in the world. Now you have understood “everything” and you are stuck like a fly in the mental “honey.” And Auroville is nowhere. And the funny thing in this mental game is that Satprem receives the same treatment from those Aurovilian voices as he receives from the Ashram voices — the same kind of arguments and doubts and this and that… as if it were the same voice. And it is the same voice, the same force, which is trying to corrupt all our attempts in advance. Now Satprem does not care for himself, but he cares for this child of the Mother which is Auroville. He has no ambition there except to see this naughty child standing on his own feet and developing the real organs of perceptions and the new level of understanding as a first step toward the “other being.”
    I have come to one conclusion. Men — I mean the male species — are hopelessly shut up in their ineffectual and triumphant Reason — they can reason out anything and everything. After 2000 years of male speeches, we will be exactly where we are today and maybe Auroville will have a dozen Matrimandirs, French, German, etc., … but not a single heart. We will have missed the purpose for which we gathered here. I have always seen that women have a deeper perception and more direct understanding, something which is at the level of the body because they bear children — this corporeal level is the one on which Mother and Sri Aurobindo work. We could say a physical understanding which can pierce through the mental mist and seize directly on the reality of beings and facts and forces. Men have built around themselves a mental fortress and what is outside the particular fortress is an “Enemy,” a “rival,” a German or French or Indian Someone-else, a foreigner of this or that Community, a suspect. It is a huge fog which distorts everything, every idea, every attempt and throws a shadow on every candid vibration. At this stage, I do not believe that any man in Auroville can do something useful for Auroville — but I believe that women can. If only they could throw themselves with all their hearts and break those pygmean male barriers more solid than the Himalayas, and join together and try together to make this real heart of Auroville beat and pray and repeat the Mantra together, then there is a hope for Auroville, then a new level of understanding will develop; then all these mental ghosts and scarecrows will dissolve, this unreality of Auroville — and the Truth will shine in its bare reality, physical reality, out of the mental mist. Something will be born by their united hearts. Something true and simple and joyous will beat among you — and suddenly, unexpectedly, you will find that the new species is born among you. Mother’s Truth will be like the air one breathes, escaped from all books and paras. Everything will be seen in its simple clarity and the old mental world will crumble in a laughter of unreality. And Auroville will be. Now go on, join together, find out the new living path.
    With love,
    Satprem

    Reply

67. [The following letter was written by Satprem on March 24, 1977, to his companions in Auroville]
    We are here, in Auroville, to learn the law of the new World, which is neither a mental law nor an economic or a political one, nor any of all the bankrupt panaceas. And all events — whatever they may be, apparently happy or apparently disastrous — are meant to teach us this Law and the mechanism of the true Power that will finally transform the world and our body. It is what you came here for: to learn the secret of the New World, to understand the true Law and to find the true Lever.
    It is obvious that as long as we place our hope in the old mechanisms, as long as we depend on the old powers and seek protection in the old world, we cannot accede to the New World, we cannot find the Lever. Everything must drop from our hands, really, the old hopes and the old ideals, as must the old filth and the old means.
    Today, it may be the hour when everything drops from our hands, all the old supports, for us to find the one Support — that which really can and will make the New World and will make Auroville. So long as there is any hope other than that one Hope, we miss the point, we bang at the old doors in order to try to open the only keyless Door.
    For that Door has no key. It has no outer means, and no trick can open it.
    Up to yesterday, we had too many “tricks,” we counted on too many means, we looked for old keys.
    Everything is being taken from our hands. Perhaps it is really the Hour of Grace for Auroville. The hour when we can open the Door, because we no longer know anything.
    It is possible, it is probable that all the old counterfeiters will reappear triumphantly. They will make their great spiritual circus and a tremendous touristic Matrimandir, behind which they will shelter their profitable business. They will celebrate a tremendous Centenary of a Mother deified at last thanks to them. Mother’s words will flow in torrents, the high priests of the Truth will have laws, governments, dignities and immaculate dhotis on their side, to replace a bunch of ill-shaven rascals who wanted to create another sort of world. Cement-mixers and bank-notes are against us. It is the old story of Christ and his disciples, of Karl Marx and his disciples — the living Truth hacked up and legalized by its legal owners, in Rome as in Pondicherry. The “dissidents” are excommunicated. Perhaps their passports will be confiscated from them. All the reasons of the world will be against them — they are stuffed with good reasons. The police are with them.
    We may well be the thieves of the New World, the reasonless people of another Reason. We have nothing in our hands, nothing in our pockets. Our powerlessness is our only Power.
    For when there is nothing left, something else must necessarily arise. When there are no means left, no doors anymore, the only Way out has to open up.
    So, my companions, do understand this:
    We are placed exactly in the circumstances needed to open the only Door, create Auroville and seize the Lever of the New World. Do understand that all our obstacles, our apparent defeats, our apparent impotence are the Means and the Lever. For it is only in that Nothing that Something can spring up. Do realize, do understand that everything is the path of Auroville, and that even if you are expelled from Auroville, you are still hewing the path of Auroville, and that if in your heart, wherever you are, banished or not, you grasp the only Positive fact in all this huge non-sense, the only Mantra throbbing in this triumphant Darkness, you will open the door to the true Matrimandir within, and you will come, you will come back to build your Work without, because no one can triumph against this living Truth, it is the only Reality amidst phantoms.
    All is the path of Auroville.
    We have reached the hour of the Path.
    One cannot cheat in making it: one has to be the path. The Mantra must be throbbing on and on in your hearts. You must call Mother and Mother again. You must be naked and true. You must find That which is the very Power of the New World.
    Then, all the phantoms will collapse.
    This is the very Meaning of Auroville.
    Satprem

    Reply

68. [Satprem’s Letter written to an Aurovilian dated April 26, 1977]
    B., my friend,
    Your letter makes me feel very sad — not only for you but for Auroville. It sounds like a death knell. I do not worry here about your good or bad reasons — I am not interested a lot in reasons. Everyone is right, everyone is wrong too, in a way, because the big “wrong” consists in not being divine. The reasonable weathercock can spin as much as it wishes at the mercy of the winds. But there is an infinitely precious thing which is the true, secret force of Auroville, the very one we had so much trouble building and which a number of you paid for with imprisonment: a first coherence of the soul, a first unified soil, a tiny little nucleus of pure aspiration. And it was so strong in its simplicity that it had the power to resist everything, even to turn catastrophes into liberations. There were traitors, there were indecisive persons, all the usual jumble of Falsehood, but there was this united, pure nucleus, which had the Power to check the Falsehood, to save all the rest thanks to its purity. Of course, the invisible Enemy, he who manipulates all the human little puppets, rushed on that — he knew very well that this little purity was his death. First of all, you have been blacklisted, you were the “French group,” the fanatics, the militants — they tried to isolate you, you were the cause of all the evils of the world and of Auroville, you were an obstacle to the “unity” of the Aurovilians, I do not know what sins you had not committed. And behind, of course, silently or not: it is Satprem’s fault. I know this voice well. This force is the very one that pushes the Ashram against Satprem, or rather against what Satprem represents. We are a public menace for that force, it goes without saying. They tried to kill me, but that is nothing compared to all the silent little assassinations I have been suffering every day and every night, since May 1973.
    In that melee, I only knew one Force, that of my power-lessness, I only needed Mother, needed Her so much — whether they won or lost, killed me or not, were right or wrong, whether I was all alone or not, Auroville or not Auroville, the Ashram or no Ashram, I only needed to hear Her beat in my heart, so that it would be Her and only Her in all that chaos and that painful night. Mother’s physical departure, Her withdrawal from our eyes, was a kind of asphyxia for me, I had lost all my air, all my fullness, all my love, so how could I give a damn about Auroville, the Ashram, the friends or the enemies, the wrongs and the rights — I was, I am only this burning hole that needs but one thing: Her, “That,” no matter, that something which is absolute forever and every day. It is in that burning Nothingness, which was the only Fullness of something in the end, that I was compelled to act, to take action, to write, to intervene in Auroville, to take a stand — but I could not have cared less about all the stands and all the cities and all the stories: I was, I am in the only breathable Standpoint, whence I act, do and write. Wrongs and rights are scattered to the four winds, but there is this lone Breath within, this lone supreme Right within. This is what I tried to communicate to my brothers of Auroville as well as I could, wherever I met with a glimmer of aspiration, a spark of the real Need — because I knew, I felt and lived that it was the sole Power within the great night, the only Reason in all that strangling non-sense. I bent over you as in the midst of the great drowning. They said I wanted to be the guru of this or that, they twisted all my acts, all my words — I only saw that great drowning, that great Pity. Was everything about to be carried away in the Night?
    Here and there, a few responded. A small nucleus reacted and understood the great Challenge. We were alone among tremendous forces which for millennia have frustrated all prophets, all Avatars, all crucifixions — was it all to start over once again? One more Church, triumphant reasons again, and the rot of money again…? And the more that nucleus took shape, the more it was attacked within Auroville itself. And now, what neither Nava nor the hostilities toward Auroville have been able to do from without is being done by the Enemy within: you are being broken, disbanded, made rotten and thrown to the four winds of the excellent reasons of this or that, of this one or that other — but in reality the only reason is to break this first coherence at all costs, this tiny little nucleus of united aspiration, this only little purity of a few hearts together which is the sole Power of Auroville, the sole Hope for Auroville, the sole salvation in the midst of this great drowning. So, B. is right in this way and A. is right in that way, others and all the others are stuffed with equal reasons — but you have had it, you dropped the only treasure, the imperceptible thing which made it all able to resist everything. You lost your Miracle. Are you really going to lose it? Will Auroville have to descend into the Night once again and deserve the hard lesson?
    So, you may be right to try and build bridges with the Green Belt [of Auroville] and prevent them from toppling to the other side — this is all very fine. But if you cannot even get on with your close brothers, if you cannot even plug the gap under your own footsteps, if the abyss is widening between yourself and those who shared the same aspiration, what bridge will you build there, what pure seed, what indestructible cement? If you do not plug the hole here, you will plug it nowhere. The “other side” has already begun cracking your own house apart. You will tell me that it was “the others” who “excommunicated” you. This is possible. But I witness, distressed, your sole Power and your sole Miracle going downhill. I witness the great Night rising upon the earth, and I wonder who has understood?
    Satprem
    I am not talking especially to you, but to all my brothers up there. It is so much the hour of being brothers….

    Reply

69. [Satprem’s letter to Gloria, an Aurovilian, dated April 27, 1977]
    I like your letter very much, it is so clear, so sincere — how I wish everyone in Auroville had this same dispassionate honesty! I think the position of the Matrimandir, as you define it (“not to care about the S.A.S., because it still amounts to building bridges to let them in — but to repel them inwardly by the means of the Force, without any physical action always mixed with impurity”) is right in theory, but practical and everyday life obliges you to act, it does not take place in the abstract world of principles. I do not speak about acts of provocation, of course, it would be too childish and stupid, but about situations stemming from the circumstances. For instance (in concrete terms), the people of Aspiration have their clothes washed on Auroville beach, as there is a well there — one single well. The S.A.S.’s friends want to prevent them from having their clothes washed by frightening the washerwoman, bribing the chief of her village, and finally by stirring up the water of the well and rendering it muddy, so that nobody could use it. One can give up and wash one’s clothes elsewhere, though it is not very courageous, and if you give in on one point, you are likely to see the Enemy spreading its stratagems everywhere and gaining all the Ground point after point. Today a well, tomorrow something else. It looks like a snake swallowing his victim’s tail first — when it has begun, it goes on until the end. So it would be both legitimate and wise, according to circumstances, to fight every inch of the way without violence or provocation, until one can do nothing more — when you can do nothing more, well, you give up or you leave. The obvious goal of this force of Falsehood is to eliminate from Auroville everything that holds a little bit of simple, sincere truth, because that little light means its death. All that belongs to the mongoose race is dangerous and lethal to snakes. There are many (or rather not many but a number of) very kind little mongooses in Auroville, here and there — they are not specialized or reserved for a particular piece of land or a particular community. But in Aspiration, they are, let’s say, more energetic, because the French little mongooses are more combative (more arrogant, too). So, of course, the force of Falsehood has been directed toward them in a more special way — above all, it tried to cut them off from the rest of the Aurovilians or the little mongooses, saying: you see, that race is very bad, it is the one that hinders the fraternal unity of mongooses and snakes; without it, everything would work in harmony and unified peace in Auroville. This untruthful force turned out to be rather effective: the people of Aspiration, the “French mongooses,” are unbearable and quite malodorous in Auroville, they have committed almost all the sins (and of course, it is Satprem who is behind it all; he is the absolute sinner).
    So, these are the two “positions.” I think the Enemy’s voice will make itself increasingly sweet and charming and say: see how kind we are, we don’t want to hurt anyone, let’s embrace one another. And those who will not like this embrace will be more and more isolated, cut off from within by the Aurovilians themselves — and they will have to leave in the end, because they will be all alone. Then, it will be the snakes’ big day: little mongooses will all get caught in the Falsehood and will even no longer understand where the truth lies and where the falsehood lies — but they will be left in peace, they will have their “prosperity” [daily ration at the Ashram], something to eat every day, a safe passport and great works to impress the world. There will be a big jamboree in Auroville. But there will be no little mongooses left, only fat little snakes — unless there is a “new species” of snakegooses or mongoosnakes which will be the nice mixture of truth and falsehood we have known for millennia. In fact, each of us is already a nice mixture of the two forces, which is why it is so easy for the Enemy to appeal to the little brother-snake which lies in each of us. Where is the pure mongoose?
    In fact, I do believe that the only true Position in Auroville is a third position, which does not focus on the Enemy, because, as you say, it is still offering a bridge to the enemy, giving him a reality; but to focus on the unity of the little mongooses and the purity of the little mongooses. Their life depends far more on that unity and purity than on their aggressiveness and ability to fight. Thus the first necessity would be to reunite the French mongooses, the German Mongooses, the Matrimandir mongooses into one body of Mongoose. As for purity … saying the Mantra is what creates purity. But this third position, which is essentially an inner one, should not lead you to forget the practical necessities of everyday life and the daily struggle for not letting yourselves be swallowed up point after point. Whatever error of action such and such persons have made (most of the time, it is only an error of words) you should not cut off any group of mongooses, for that amounts to our death. That is what the Enemy is playing on. It is simple and easy to understand. In fact, one tries to put up ideologies and philosophies against one another, but the brutal, real fact is that one tries to make the little mongooses kill each other off.
    Now, to get back to the problem you are raising, let us quote Mother in The New Species: “ In fact, it is mental error which makes us want to choose one thing and reject another: all things must be together — what we call ‘good,’ what we call ‘evil,’ what we call right and what we call wrong, what we find pleasant and what we find unpleasant, all that must be together…. Rejection of the one and acceptance of the other is childishness. It’s ignorance.” Mother never philosophizes, there is not a being in the world more “practical” than Mother is: for Her, everything is a means of action, of progress. Doubtless, cancer and death are very useful to awake in man the necessity of finding a way to cure cancer or the cause of cancer, and to cure death or the cause of death. Which does not mean we must embrace cancer and death, it only means that we must find in cancer and death what can overcome and go beyond the Evil: to change it into a third thing which will no longer be either our false good and false remedies or this appearance of evil and its eternal domination. Undoubtedly, the S.A.S. did help the Aurovilians to find their true center, the necessity to find the true Position which will save us from disaster. Without them, we would have remained in a spiritual and well-bred mediocrity. Thanks to them, we are compelled, obliged to find the true solution, the one which will have Power. So, this is not inviting you to embrace Nava, but to wrest from the Enemy himself the force which will help us grow. Mother never accepted Death, but in the very midst of the thousand little deaths her charming disciples were inflicting on her, She looked for the practical secret of Immortality — thanks to this very death. So, our charming and so-called “spiritual” little mongooses do not need to throw themselves into the serpents jaws, but to develop in themselves the Strength to change themselves into a supermongoose or another species which will go beyond both spiritual mediocrity and the wickedness of the serpent — precisely a third position in which nothing will be able to touch them any longer. A new life. A new Species which will no longer be snakegooses or mongoosnakes, but Something Else, which we do not know yet.
    What also remains true is that Snakes, too, if they have a spark of sincerity, can equally take advantage of the opposition of their Enemy, the mongooses, to change their bag of venom, not into a bag of “benevolence,” which would be only the reverse of their venom, but into something Else: perhaps a third position, a bag of ambrosia or nectar. But it is not us who will change them, no one can convert serpents : if they are sincere enough, they themselves will be obliged to change in order to survive. In other words, the purer the mongoose will be, on the way to transformation, the more its pure, simple presence will oblige the serpent to transform itself or die. That way, we can say that the mongoose is an instrument of the transformation of the serpent, as the serpent is an instrument of the transformation of the mongoose. But both must go beyond themselves or die.
    There we are: we have to change or to die. We have to find the true Position or die. We have to be one and pure or die.
    With much love
    Satprem

    Reply

70. Thanks Anurag. Please do a new posting, independent, public, for everybody to read Satprem’s letters. After the Mother told him, in two conversations, about Roger and the new consciousness, he steadily rallied with Roger, like Kireet, unflinchingly.
    Do you know that Roger was the first one to resign from the Administrative Committee of Auroville (CAA), in solidarity with the Aurovilians’ independence struggle? Have you read Savitra, “Auroville sun world raising”? I read it in one night, at the Delhi Ashram, and took instantaneously the resolve to quit the Ashram and join Auroville. It was in June 1985; the fight would continue three more years — but the Delhi Ashram was selling that book!

    Also, please consider making also this long exchange public, as August wishes. Everybody should pick up one’s responsibilities, eventually admitting of having been carried away.

    The Systems Engineering files that Suresh Hindocha confided me are a hydrogen bomb. I will forward you relevant excerpts, hoping that one day this unique documentation will be duly published in a book for everybody to know what the only plan the Mother approved for execution truly is. This, alone, shuts down the dispute on town versus no town: the magnificence of Mother’s Galaxy, for people serving day in and day out in a city that is the material embodiment of the consciousness of people spontaneously living her guidelines — versus the desecration of all that THEIR town and THEIR people are.
    Unless we pick up the real call, whatever travesty we display means nothing. “NO WORDS, ACTS!” is my favourite New Year message by the Mother.

    Reply

71. Thanks Anurag for this valuable exposé of “the third Avatar”. It sounds more like a golden calf bellowing from its affected throat.

    I am reproducing here one of the comments I had posted earlier.

    Let me quote here from “Down Memory Lane” by Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala the following,
    (p. 26) ‘André was sad over Auroville happenings and just repeated to me more than once what
    Mother had told him. “For God’s sake, keep Satprem out of Auroville.”

    “For God’s sake, keep Satprem out of Auroville.” It says everything.

    He found a wonderful ally in Kireet Joshi and with that began the cruel drama of Auroville. Certainly, behind it are powerful occult forces bent upon destroying the Mother’s dream.

    Reply

72. Sri Aurobindo considered Nolini Kanta Gupta the third one in the supramental pursuit, and the one who best mastered his teachings. I bring to everybody’s attention a footnote he inserted in a memorable article, “On the Brink”:

    “Sri Aurobindo in one of his private notes discloses that most of his disciples were Asuras, the bigger the disciple the greater the Asura. Perhaps they, impelled by a higher Call, came of themselves in order to surrender and be converted to the new life. It may be that that urge wore off in the end and had to be postponed for its fulfilment. It is significant what Sri Aurobindo says in his Hymn to Durga:
    “0 Mother, give to our life and mind the Asura’s strength, the Asura’s energy and to our heart and intelligence a God’s character and a God’s knowledge.”
    [Nolini Kanta Gupta, Collected Works vol. 6, “Sweet Mother”, p. 20]

    This footnote raised a storm at the Ashram; but I have a copy of this volume and in my research and publication work over the years I gathered considerable evidence of such truth. One is who sabotaged Mother’s request to the Ford Foundation re the systems engineering Galaxy; yet the Mother kept the personage, even after he betrayed her a second time! Inviting a town-planner from the United Nations whom the Mother dismissed, telling Shyamsunder that she would not sign a copy of Savitri for Prof. Newcombe, he doesn’t have the truth.

    Most of his disciples are asuras, the greater the disciple the greater the asura: Sri Aurobindo said it. He also wrote about a cosmic double. And the Mother said that a Titan takes birth every time with her, to kill. I call Integral Yoga the Russian Roulette yoga; unless we are aware that there are tremendous forces at play, in one’s individual sadhana as well as in the collective one, none should embark in so perilous path.

    The greater the sadhak, the greater the danger, no one escapes. Satprem, Kireet, Navajata, Shyamsunder, Huta, even Roger and Nolini did commit huge mistakes, yet the Mother kept all of them. This is Integral Yoga, and it is not for us to question the Masters.

    Nolinida’s footnote says it all on Auroville, the Ashram or any other Aurobindonian community. Take it or leave.

    Reply

73. Please remove the postscript, starting a second comment:

    I have never been a satpremist, and for reasons independent from Auroville. Yet the fact remains that Satprem gathered a throve unique, in spite of himself. Volume 1 in the Agenda describes how deeply he had to fight his own demons – and how the Mother kept encouraging him, one crisis after the other, divinely loving him.

    At a certain point in Auroville Satprem went too far, as it is always the case with people playing the guru (there is quite a lineage, starting at the Ashram). But an initial reaction was necessary, flanked right away by Roger (who resigned from the CAA in solidarity with the Aurovilians) and Shyam Sunder himself. The problem was Navajata and a few proxies; most members of the Sri Aurobindo Society had no knowledge of his actions and some even supported the Aurovilians. Significantly, the Delhi Ashram held copies of Savitra’s book “Auroville Sun Word Rising” in its library, and sold it in its bookshop.

    Ultimately, the psychic being knows who is who. And knows what good to take from others, and what to discard. The Mother also told us to concentrate exclusively on the light, till the shadow dissolve. These are THEIR sadhaks, “Let Thy will be done.”

    Reply

74. The Golden Calf Bellows
    http://overmanfoundation.org/the-passing-of-dr-kireet-joshi/#comments

    Thanks to Anurag for posting the original letters Satprem wrote to his followers and admirers and friends. Apropos of these here are, in square brackets, some immediate observations.

    10 November 1975:
    I have been spending my life outside all “Institutions,” whatever they may be.

    “We want a race without ego,” Mother said — this is the key to the true rule of Auroville. … Sri Aurobindo says: “Governments, societies, kings, police, judges, institutions, churches, laws, customs, armies are temporary necessities imposed on us for a few groups of centuries because God has concealed His face from us. When it appears to us again in its truth and beauty, then in that light they will vanish?” (Thoughts and Aphorisms) In the meantime, may Aurovilians follow their higher consciousness, and the result will be exactly proportional to their sincerity and lack of ego.

    [But the plain reading of it is, if you go only by what I say then you are following your “higher consciousness”; that is the understood stipulation. Otherwise you are deluded. Here we have a very smart devilry, in its usual Mephistophelian idiom.]

    30 January 1976:
    Yes, you have seen exactly: the dark forces that incite the masses to everyday fascism are there, and it is not surprising in the least. When you read the rest of the book, you will see the formidable story and how they sent Mother over to the other side. They would like to send Satprem, too, to the other side — and I never once doubted that the forces behind would do their best to disturb A.’s work. … The Government of India knows and protects us … as far as it can, because the masses are moved like puppets: one wraps oneself up in Mother’s flag and wants to save Mother’s work from the clutches of the “devil.” That is the way things are. But we keep holding on and advancing imperturbably.

    [They killed the Mother, they will kill me, but here comes the Government of India to protect me. Can the Divine be killed by the mere human? the week mortal? And where does one go seeking for protection in case there is a danger to one’s life? To the politicians who have only their greatest self-interests in the calculations? politics entirely governed by the darkest and ugliest falsehood? It defeats every sensible logic that, in spite of long intimate association with the Mother one goes elsewhere for shelter and safeguard. One may be very close to the Divine but never know the Divine, never seek succour and safety from the Divine. That is human pity.

    28 February 1976:
    Then the heart of Auroville will take shape, and this pure nucleus will draw the force that can overcome obstacles. Then the Truth will be forced to show itself and It will find the solution nobody had thought of. Truth alone has the power.

    [That is of course true. But the devil will always quote the scripture. But here the implication is, it is my Truth that has the power to bring solutions to your problems. It is my Truth that will be forced to show itself. One has to have genuine spiritual discernment about the true Truth.]

    21 May 1976:
    I have read your project for a “Governing Board” of Auroville. It may be premature and there is not the something spontaneous which springs from the New World. It is a kind of improvement of the same old Machine. First of all to want to include there some representative of the Sri Aurobindo Fallacy-Society is to introduce at once the Falsehood. As long as the Aurovilians have not understood and felt the complete rottenness of this Society, there is no hope, it means that they share to some degree this Falsehood. This corrupt seed must be completely eradicated from the mind and body of Auroville. Then you mention my name as a representative of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. But I do not belong to an Ashram nor to any Institution past or future. I belong to Mother, I belong to the Fire which is not to be imprisoned in any human construction. And lastly by whom is your project to be signed? A few days ago a short declaration was circulated in Auroville to the effect that the Aurovilians had no trust in the Sri Aurobindo Society for carrying out Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s ideals. Only 86 signatures were collected, not even half of the Aurovilians, while their own brothers were blackmailed, pursued by the police and menaced with expulsion under the instigation of the impostors from the Sri Aurobindo Society. As long as the Aurovilians will see some arm or leg of their own body being torn and cut without feeling concerned, then they will call on themselves a lot of misery and more misery till they understand fully that they are one and that one cannot cut a piece of the body without hurting the whole body. This is exactly the thing. One may ask not when Auroville will be free, but when the Aurovilians will cease to deserve their masters?

    [Sri Aurobindo Society, whose President was the Mother herself, after her withdrawal in 1973 has overnight according to this become a corrupt seed. Then, Sri Aurobindo Ashram bearing the glorious name of Sri Aurobindo since 1926 after his Overmind Siddhi in the Physical has, again after 1973, become a disdainful place with which one need not associate at all. Has his creation failed? Was it vainglorious on part of Sri Aurobindo to have written in Savitri this line: “I know that thy creation cannot fail”? And here is what Amal calls self-aggrandisement of Satprem: “One may ask not when Auroville will be free, but when the Aurovilians will cease to deserve their masters?” The Golden Calf is at its hoarsest and shrillest bellowing.]

    30 May 1976:
    … there was a poison in Auroville. But if you persist in believing or in thinking that one can come to terms with potassium cyanide, then there is no other solution but for you to become poisoned slowly, implacably.

    [But chemistry tells potassium cyanide is not that fatal as hydrogen cyanide, the strongest is Fugu poison which has no antidote; it is 1200 times stronger than cyanide.]

    18 June 1976
    Another kind of sordid “religious” circus is going on in the Ashram, but this one will automatically disintegrate when the real Auroville will emerge fully protected from the religious, political and financial octopus which was ready to swallow Mother’s practical field for its obscure purpose. Now the thing is clear and I trust that the practical steps will be taken at governmental level. Mother’s Mantra is planted there and already acts powerfully as I can see and will dissolve in its fire whatever stupidities and absurdities may remain within Auroville itself. The Mantra will take care of Auroville’s future without any need for outer compulsion and regulation — this is the beauty of the Mantra. One day recently an Aurovilian wrote to me asking why I would not come and live in Auroville to help them directly — I laughed. The Mantra itself will do its job very well and Mother’s job, why should I meddle there! The one thing was to protect the young sprout from immediate danger — this is now done or about to be done. So I am nearly at rest on this side. Though too much time should not elapse — you have seen this remarkable anonymous letter suggesting to burn down some huts (in Auroville), etc … I could literally hear the voice behind this letter, and some obscure force is obviously active there, awaiting an opportunity.

    [This is a letter addressed to CPN Singh, a powerful hard-core politician who picked up Kireet Joshi from the Ashram and started activities against Sri Aurobindo Society. Charges were framed in connivance with the lame Lt-Governor Pondicherry, BT Kulkarni. However, nothing could be established; the CBI report was never tabled in the Parliament. And here is Satprem seeking protection from a politician who will always have his pound of flesh extracted, this the Satprem who had the exceptional privilege of recording the Mother’s Conversations.

    17 July 2023: In the evening there was in my big study room a small cute little beautiful bird, just two and a quarter inches long, chirping all the while happily, flying from one point on the wall frame to another. I had responded to its chirping several times. But then I had to go for my exercises. After half an hour when I came back I found the bird on the carpet, lifeless. It had a quiet death, in the pure loneliness, the room having the Mother’s presence. The bird had died in the Mother’s lap. What a lovely death! It needs such purity and such silent devotion not only in life but in death also.]

    16 July 1976:
    This accident [the fall of a woman from the scaffolding at Matrimandir construction]should not have happened. According to the spiritual law, it is the sign of a Falsehood. And those who think that it is an “accident” bury their heads in the sand so as not to see. I like Auroville enough to tell the truth to Auroville — for, after all, Auroville interests me only insofar as it is a place where the Truth can become manifest. So, excuse me if the truth is not pleasant. There is a double Falsehood, and I have known for a long time that something is going wrong at the Matrimandir, but to tell it, I had to wait for the right moment — people, alas, do not understand until they start receiving blows.

    First Falsehood: those who think that the Matrimandir must be built “at all costs” and that the Goal is to build one Matrimandir or two hundred Matrimandirs are grossly mistaken. It is not a question of building the Matrimandir: it is a question of building the people of the next world by using their symbolic effort. Mother does not care about tons of cement — She cares about an ounce of sincerity, a pure little gesture, consciously made. If each of the workers’ gestures were really filled with consciousness, the Matrimandir would shine all by itself like a divine Act and those men would already no longer be men, but divine beings. It is this divine world that we want to build, it is these divine men that we want to create, or else the Matrimandir can crumble along with the dust of all the useless temples that fill the banks of the Nile. It is not that that we want, but a new species upon earth, a supramental species.

    So, you think that you are going to build this new species for 1978? — second Falsehood, which is perhaps the most disgusting of all. All those admirable fakers are about to bury Mother a second time, as if all their lies had not already been enough to bury Her a first time. A second, solemn burial for the Centenary of Mother — now that She is dead all right, they think, one can celebrate Her. But when she was really there physically among them, all their little Lies were raging and in revolt. And you want to repeat this disgusting masquerade for Mother’s Centenary? You think that She is dead? You think that you can go on cultivating the countless little Lies under the protective tons of cement of the Matrimandir? But this is not what we want! But Mother is not dead, and Mother does not want this masquerade — She wants pure, true, sincere people. Will there be three of them only in all Auroville for the 21st of February 1978? If there were only three of them, the whole Earth would be saved.

    So I invite you to build a few men — as many men as there are in Auroville, if possible — pure and luminous, exact in each gesture, each reaction, each word and each movement. And if you have succeeded in doing that, Auroville will shine upon earth like two hundred Matrimandirs, because it was for this that Mother wanted Auroville, not for one more temple. Then perhaps Mother herself will come and shine among us, for we will be able to stand Her light. She is waiting for us to be capable. It is not the second burial of Mother that we want to celebrate in 1978, but the first advent of a new species which will be capable of seeing her right in our midst.

    [“Mother does not care about tons of cement.” But she does. Witness in the first instance Golconde the architectural marvel in steel and cement, Sri Aurobindo himself yogically supervising it. Matrimandir is a part of the Mother’s vision-plan. She herself has described it in detail. What a funny thoughtless comment, who none else but Satprem alone could make. It is there now in spite of Satprems. There will be only one Matrimandir, only one, the Mother’s Matrimandir, the one that has descended from the realm of truth and beauty and joy and harmony and sweetness and all-love.]

    November 1, 1976
    Mud Bath. It is the great Mental Mud whose reign is drawing to a close. … in each man the Divine can be found, so let us embrace our brothers; besides, in each being there are both errors and a spark of truth, so let us embrace again our sinning brothers; in each camp there is some truth and some falsehood, thus there must be a bit of falsehood in the Aurovilians and a bit of truth in its glorious President, a bit of falsehood-truth in the Ashram and a bit of truth-falsehood in the Administrators of the Ashram — let us all embrace one another and may those petty “internecine” quarrels stop at last. Those are the world’s intestines indeed. And as a result, no one knows where they are any longer, no one knows where the truth is any longer, no one knows where the falsehood lies any longer. Everything is true and everything is false. It is the Truth which lies. It is the great intestinal Embrace of the general mud.

    Where to go?

    The Ashram?… “I did not come upon earth to found an Ashram,” Mother wrote, “that would have been a poor aim indeed.” Yes, God forbid! But, of course, they are the “heirs” of the Work, just as the other is the “proprietor” of Auroville. It is “mine,” I defend the “interests of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.” It is swarming, charming to see, as in the rest of the intestines of the world. And it waves Mother’s flag about marvelously. If you dare to say anything, you are a traitor and a heretic, and you are sent to jail, like the Aurovilians, or they take away your passport. Or else they wage the sordid war against you. It is full of claws, slimy. These are the residues of Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s Laboratory, the small triumphant samples — and a few pure, silent drops, thanks to which all that is not complete mud. One could even say that these pure drops give more force to the reigning Falsehood. “What is an Ashram without a guru?” a certain French writer asked us — “It is a Church.” Such is the simple answer.

    Auroville? It is riddled with contradictions, it is full of non-haloes which flounder right and left, make mistakes and bump into things, but seek and climb up and bite the dust again — without putting on airs, without even a single text of Sri Aurobindo’s to brandish. It is perfectly incoherent and even in-cohesive. But all that tends toward something. It is a world which tends toward. It has no good reason, no virtue, but it is in tension. And it is this tension that interests us.

    [Here one does not see even one ounce of spiritual discernment. All froth and fury because Pranab Kumar Bhhattacharya, the Mother’s personal attendant for decades, stopped on 19 May 1973 Satprem’s recording sessions in her Room. For him he was the greatest Asura causing every mischief in the glorious work of the life divine upon earth.]

    December 21, 1976:
    Moses with his Ten Commandments. But truly we are fed up with this kind of Sinai, and so were Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So if you hope to seize Mother’s Truth in writing and deliver it to the world and to Auroville, you will land exactly in the kind of mess you all are in Auroville and in the world. Because the Truth is not a mental thing and Mother is hammering this on the head of all nations and all groups and individuals till they realize their own ineptitude and floundering panacea.

    This is especially hammered on Auroville’s reluctant head. Mother is purposely reducing the whole mental world into such a suffocating imbroglio of Truth-lie and lie-Truth, or true lies and lying truths, that people will really need and want to breathe another air. Then the Supramental will have its chance, not before. Until then you can align the whole of Mother’s Agenda and put in writing all of Her wonders, people will simply see nothing — the secrets are transparent. Another kind of eyes are needed, other organs of understanding. And Auroville must understand in the first place that her raison d’être is to work out other organs, another level of understanding, and finally another being beyond the mental being. We are not here to build a Matrimandir (and I will repeat that until I get a hoarse throat) nor to grow cabbages, but to build a new being, and incidentally some cabbages to help his transitory way of meditating — and both are most useful as a means toward developing this other thing, supramental thing, which will dispense very well with all our radishes and more or less spacious buildings. Sorry if I hurt your feelings, but this is a fact, an evolutionary fact, and we are here to make a new evolution, is it not? So, by the same stroke, we put in this real perspective all of our provisional attempts, be it a Committee, a kitchen for all, an external relations office, a Matrimandir or what not. And if we miss the central thing, we miss everything — and we truly are in the process of a resounding crash if we do not seize on this central fact.

    The mental response may be taken from a letter of one of you whom I do not wish to name, and it is very illustrative of the mental “understanding,” it might have been written by a dozen other Aurovilians here and there: “So,” says sarcastically the letter, “after an Auroville ‘gestion Navajata,’ an Auroville ‘gestion Shyamsundar,’ we will have an Auroville ‘gestion frangaise’…” Then, really, if such is the reaction in peoples minds, there is nothing left but to have an Auroville “gestion nothingness” or call back Navajata, for, indeed, this is exactly the kind of force which is destroying or wants to destroy Auroville. It plays on the mental level, destroys every attempt, corrupts every endeavour, sows its seed of doubt and distrust and jealousy, pushes up everyone against everyone. If Frederick had wanted to try some organization, it would have been the “German gestion,” nicely labeled and condemned in advance. And everything is rottened and corrupted in advance with this kind of reasoning — nobody can try anything, there is nothing to be done except to entrench ourselves into Swedish radishes, Italian Matrimandirs, and Swiss cows. And we are supposed to be here to build another being! Moreover, mark that this kind of reasoning puts on the same footing and by the same breath “gestion Navajata” and “gestion frangaise” — of course those wonderful acrobats have a wide mind and liberal views: those who put the Aurovilians in jail and blackmailed the Aurovilians are just human beings like those who are put in jail and resist the blackmailing — the complete muddle. Result: nobody knows anymore where he stands and “everything is the same” and all are equally the children of the Mother and long life to Hitler! or to any brother in the world. Now you have understood “everything” and you are stuck like a fly in the mental “honey.” And Auroville is nowhere. And the funny thing in this mental game is that Satprem receives the same treatment from those Aurovilian voices as he receives from the Ashram voices — the same kind of arguments and doubts and this and that… as if it were the same voice. And it is the same voice, the same force, which is trying to corrupt all our attempts in advance. Now Satprem does not care for himself, but he cares for this child of the Mother which is Auroville. He has no ambition there except to see this naughty child standing on his own feet and developing the real organs of perceptions and the new level of understanding as a first step toward the “other being.”

    [In Spanish “gestion” means management. So, we have Navajata Management, Shyam Sunder Management, Government Management, Ashram Management ,“everything is rottened and corrupted”, and nowhere the Mother’s Management, the Divine Management, these people having the least notion of it, — except the Messiah, except the Messiah. Hail to the Messiah, Glory to the Messiah. “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world”. And what a mess he would make should he come to this world! Let him be better there. And what does he think of himself, this Messiah, the fake Messiah? That he “receives the same treatment from those Aurovilian voices as he receives from the Ashram voices”? All is steeped in utter falsehood, except of course me. Certainly the Mother must have been aware of this trait of him, yet she chose him for recording her Conversations. That is the Divine Discernment. She was with Théon, she was with Paul Richard, and for her own occult purposes she had Satprem to get certain things done. That makes “all’s right with the world”. The play has to be fully played out, that it gets exhausted to clear out the way. Nothing is otiose in this wonderful creation.]

    March 24, 1977:
    It is possible, it is probable that all the old counterfeiters will reappear triumphantly. They will make their great spiritual circus and a tremendous touristic Matrimandir, behind which they will shelter their profitable business. They will celebrate a tremendous Centenary of a Mother deified at last thanks to them. Mother’s words will flow in torrents, the high priests of the Truth will have laws, governments, dignities and immaculate dhotis on their side, to replace a bunch of ill-shaven rascals who wanted to create another sort of world. Cement-mixers and bank-notes are against us. It is the old story of Christ and his disciples, of Karl Marx and his disciples — the living Truth hacked up and legalized by its legal owners, in Rome as in Pondicherry. The “dissidents” are excommunicated. Perhaps their passports will be confiscated from them. All the reasons of the world will be against them — they are stuffed with good reasons. The police are with them.

    [“It is the old story of Christ and his disciples.” And Sri Aurobindo wrote in one of his letters: “It was inevitable that in the course of the sadhana these inferior parts of the nature should be brought forward in order that like the rest of the being they may make the crucial choice and either accept or refuse transformation. My whole work depends upon this movement; it is the decisive ordeal of this Yoga. For the physical consciousness and the material life cannot change if this does not change. Nothing that may have been done before, no inner illumination, experience, power or Ananda, is of any eventual value if this is not done. If the little external personality is to persist in retaining its obscure and limited, its petty and ignoble, its selfish and false and stupid human consciousness, this amounts to a flat negation of the work and the Sadhana. I have no intention of giving my sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco, a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature. If, then, any sadhaka refuses in practice to admit this change, or if he refuses even to admit the necessity for any change of his lower vital being and his habitual external personality, I am entitled to conclude that, whatever his professions, he has not accepted either myself or my Yoga.”

    In her talk dated 21 April 1951 the Mother explains this old fiasco: “It refers to all the Teachers who have come to the world. One has said, “I bring Love”, another “I bring Peace”, another “I bring Liberation”, and then, there has been a little change within, something has awakened in the depths of men’s consciousness, but externally everything has remained just the same. It is this which makes it a fiasco.”

    The first step to get out of that old fiasco was the founding of Auroville by the Mother, the city the earth needs. And yet wise clever people rush to the courts to get what they call “justice”. It looks that this new fiasco is antagonistically more powerful than the old fiasco.]

    26 April 1977:
    And it was so strong in its simplicity that it had the power to resist everything, even to turn catastrophes into liberations. There were traitors, there were indecisive persons, all the usual jumble of Falsehood, but there was this united, pure nucleus, which had the Power to check the Falsehood, to save all the rest thanks to its purity. Of course, the invisible Enemy, he who manipulates all the human little puppets, rushed on that — he knew very well that this little purity was his death. First of all, you have been blacklisted, you were the “French group,” the fanatics, the militants — they tried to isolate you, you were the cause of all the evils of the world and of Auroville, you were an obstacle to the “unity” of the Aurovilians, I do not know what sins you had not committed. And behind, of course, silently or not: it is Satprem’s fault. I know this voice well. This force is the very one that pushes the Ashram against Satprem, or rather against what Satprem represents. We are a public menace for that force, it goes without saying. They tried to kill me, but that is nothing compared to all the silent little assassinations I have been suffering every day and every night, since May 1973.

    And now, what neither Nava nor the hostilities toward Auroville have been able to do from without is being done by the Enemy within: you are being broken, disbanded, made rotten and thrown to the four winds of the excellent reasons of this or that, of this one or that other — but in reality the only reason is to break this first coherence at all costs, this tiny little nucleus of united aspiration, this only little purity of a few hearts together which is the sole Power of Auroville, the sole Hope for Auroville, the sole salvation in the midst of this great drowning. So, B. is right in this way and A. is right in that way, others and all the others are stuffed with equal reasons — but you have had it, you dropped the only treasure, the imperceptible thing which made it all able to resist everything. You lost your Miracle. Are you really going to lose it? Will Auroville have to descend into the Night once again and deserve the hard lesson?

    [The best is to study a passage from Savitri in which Yogi Aswapati is arguing with the Divine Mother who speaks to him in a voice absolute and wise.

    In a brute world that knows not its own sense,
    Thought-racked upon the wheel of birth we live,
    The instruments of an impulse not our own
    Moved to achieve with our heart’s blood for price
    Half-knowledge, half-creations that soon tire. ||90.16||
    A foiled immortal soul in perishing limbs,
    Baffled and beaten back we labour still;
    Annulled, frustrated, spent, we still survive. ||90.17||
    In anguish we labour that from us may rise
    A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,
    A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,
    The executor of the divine attempt
    Equipped to wear the earthly body of God,
    Communicant and prophet and lover and king. ||90.18||
    I know that thy creation cannot fail. ||90.19||
    For even through the mists of mortal thought
    Infallible are thy mysterious steps,
    And, though Necessity dons the garb of Chance,
    Hidden in the blind shifts of Fate she keeps
    The slow calm logic of Infinity’s pace
    And the inviolate sequence of its will. ||90.20||
    All life is fixed in an ascending scale
    And adamantine is the evolving Law;
    In the beginning is prepared the close. ||90.21||
    This strange irrational product of the mire,
    This compromise between the beast and God,
    Is not the crown of thy miraculous world. ||90.22||
    I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
    Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
    Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
    Forerunners of a divine multitude
    Out of the paths of the morning star they came
    Into the little room of mortal life. ||90.28||
    I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
    The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
    The great creators with wide brows of calm,
    The massive barrier-breakers of the world
    And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
    The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
    The messengers of the Incommunicable,
    The architects of immortality. ||90.29||
    Into the fallen human sphere they came,
    Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
    Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
    Bodies made beautiful by the Spirit’s light,
    Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
    Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
    Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
    Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
    Feet echoing in the corridors of Time. ||90.30||
    High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
    Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
    And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
    And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
    Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
    And justify the light on Nature’s face. ||90.31||

    Auroville is a preparatory step to justify the light on Nature’s face.]

    27 April 1977:
    I like your letter very much, it is so clear, so sincere — how I wish everyone in Auroville had this same dispassionate honesty! I think the position of the Matrimandir, as you define it (“not to care about the S.A.S., because it still amounts to building bridges to let them in — but to repel them inwardly by the means of the Force, without any physical action always mixed with impurity”) is right in theory, but practical and everyday life obliges you to act, it does not take place in the abstract world of principles. I do not speak about acts of provocation, of course, it would be too childish and stupid, but about situations stemming from the circumstances. For instance (in concrete terms), the people of Aspiration have their clothes washed on Auroville beach, as there is a well there — one single well. The S.A.S.’s friends want to prevent them from having their clothes washed by frightening the washerwoman, bribing the chief of her village, and finally by stirring up the water of the well and rendering it muddy, so that nobody could use it. One can give up and wash one’s clothes elsewhere, though it is not very courageous, and if you give in on one point, you are likely to see the Enemy spreading its stratagems everywhere and gaining all the Ground point after point. Today a well, tomorrow something else. It looks like a snake swallowing his victim’s tail first — when it has begun, it goes on until the end. So it would be both legitimate and wise, according to circumstances, to fight every inch of the way without violence or provocation, until one can do nothing more — when you can do nothing more, well, you give up or you leave.

    The obvious goal of this force of Falsehood is to eliminate from Auroville everything that holds a little bit of simple, sincere truth, because that little light means its death. All that belongs to the mongoose race is dangerous and lethal to snakes. There are many (or rather not many but a number of) very kind little mongooses in Auroville, here and there — they are not specialized or reserved for a particular piece of land or a particular community.

    But in Aspiration, they are, let’s say, more energetic, because the French little mongooses are more combative (more arrogant, too). So, of course, the force of Falsehood has been directed toward them in a more special way — above all, it tried to cut them off from the rest of the Aurovilians or the little mongooses, saying: you see, that race is very bad, it is the one that hinders the fraternal unity of mongooses and snakes; without it, everything would work in harmony and unified peace in Auroville.

    This untruthful force turned out to be rather effective: the people of Aspiration, the “French mongooses,” are unbearable and quite malodorous in Auroville, they have committed almost all the sins (and of course, it is Satprem who is behind it all; he is the absolute sinner).

    What also remains true is that Snakes, too, if they have a spark of sincerity, can equally take advantage of the opposition of their Enemy, the mongooses, to change their bag of venom, not into a bag of “benevolence,” which would be only the reverse of their venom, but into something Else: perhaps a third position, a bag of ambrosia or nectar.

    But it is not us who will change them, no one can convert serpents : if they are sincere enough, they themselves will be obliged to change in order to survive. In other words, the purer the mongoose will be, on the way to transformation, the more its pure, simple presence will oblige the serpent to transform itself or die. That way, we can say that the mongoose is an instrument of the transformation of the serpent, as the serpent is an instrument of the transformation of the mongoose. But both must go beyond themselves or die.

    [Let me repeat once more what the Mother had told to André: “For God’s sake, keep Satprem out of Auroville.” The occult seems to be that the Lord of Nations found someone who could do his work. The Mother’s Essential Agenda was a direct challenge to his authority and design. Was that the reason the Mother chose Satprem for her work? We can only say: Possibly.

    Here is what the Mother spoke in her Playground Talk of 8 March 1951 in which she spoke of the being that possessed and “guided” Hitler:

    “Hitler was in contact with a being whom he considered to be the Supreme: that being would come and give him advice and tell him all that he had to do. Hitler would withdraw into solitude and wait long enough to come into contact with his ‘guide’ and receive inspirations from him which he would afterwards carry out very faithfully. That being whom Hitler took for the Supreme was quite simply an Asura, the one called in occultism ‘the Lord of Falsehood,’ and he proclaimed himself to be ‘the Lord of Nations.’ He had a resplendent appearance and could pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, except one who truly had occult knowledge and could thus see what was there, behind the appearance. He could have deluded anyone, he was so splendid. He generally appeared to Hitler wearing a breast-plate and a silver helmet (with a sort of flame coming out of his head), and there was around him an atmosphere of dazzling light, so dazzling that Hitler could hardly look at him. He would tell him all that he had to do—he would play with him as with a monkey or a mouse. He had set his mind on making Hitler do all possible kinds of folly… until the day when he would come a cropper, which is what happened. But there are many cases like that one, on a smaller scale, naturally. Hitler was a very good medium, he had great mediumistic capacities, but he lacked intelligence and discernment. That being could tell him anything and he would swallow it all. That’s what prodded him on little by little. And that being would do that as a pastime, he didn’t take life seriously. For those beings, people are very small things with which they play as a cat plays with a mouse, until the day when they eat them up.”]

    Reply

75. The Auroville conundrum has its genesis in the Mother’s Agenda. The problem of Auroville is an occult-divine problem, and the human has a relatively small part to play in it, relatively. Yet the human is exploited by both the Divine and the Anti-Divine.

    Man’s wisdom will lie in making the right choice that upholds the prospects of a higher and a superior life in the preciousness of the manifesting Spirit, of love and beauty and harmony and truth and joy. This choice has become an imperative one with the appearance of the Mother’s Essential Agenda. This Agenda is the modus operandi for this earthly life to become the life divine, as is repeatedly claimed by Sri Aurobindo in “Savitri”. That force is there in the Agenda.

    Understandably therefore, there is the fiercest battle against it from the powers born from the darkest and stubbornest Inconscience, they waging the last battle. Auroville must be seen in the totality of that context. The Lord of Falsehood who calls himself the Lord of Nations is making his final gamble against the Mother. And she has been in personal contact with them, and we need not name them, they who are under the sway of that Lord.

    The only thing for us is to have an authentic psychic perception of these aggressive forces and align ourselves on the right side, which a psychic being will always do. It is never by mind and by the formulation and pursuit of liberal ideas and concepts that all this can be seen; all old habits and saṃskaras have to go, dissolved in the purity of the stream grace. It is only by developing that psychic-spiritual faculty the Mother’s dream-city can get built in its goldenest greatness and glory. And she is there to achieve it. Her smile alone can do it.

    Take a golden coin in your hand and toss it up, high, in the air, and the head you will win is her smile. Let us smile in the Smile that will change the whole world — Sourions du Sourire qui changera le monde — समग्रं जगत् परिवर्तयिष्यमाणे स्मिते स्मितं कुर्मः — Sorridiamo nel Sorriso che cambierà il mondo intero — Lasst uns mit dem Lächeln lächeln, das die ganze Welt verändern wird.

    Reply

76. With due respect to all and offense to none : The Mother left Her body when I was 13, and during the Ashram school’s annual vacation in 1974, I took up Jan and Johnny’s kind offer to spend a month at their community of 7 Banyan’s . That was Auroville for me, as well as the weekly night digging work for Matrimandir’s Foundation.
    This paradise founded by The Divine Mother ( from whom I was blessed and fortunate to recieve my name at birth ), was misused for the sake of power and wealth by those who were supposed to be guardian- trustee administrators/financiers.
    Consequently, the govt. intervened with Kireet Bhai’s participation and that was the beginning of the end. Im no one to judge Kireet Bhai or anyone else for that matter and I refrain from that as much as possible.
    The new folks ” in power”- without- appearing- to -be -in- power, gradually and eventually – became a mirror image of that bery thing which they had opposed and been oppressed by.
    They too ultimately succumbed to the same allure of power and ill-gotten wealth albeit well covered.
    We silently watched the entry of Satprem on the Auroville scene and the consequent hostility of Aurovillians towards us. In 1977, My former teachers and then new Aurovillians – Goupi and Jean and several others – always remained friendly and affectionate as ever.
    As I went into the Higher Course studies in the Ashram, we began hearing of drug parties and orgies in Auroville – all initiated and conducted by some of the Westerners there.
    In the 1990s, Whenever I visited Auroville on Sundays or other days, I used to return totally exhausted and couldnt understand why. But by now “normalcy” had returned substantially between Ashram folks and Aurovillians.
    In 1998, I came to know and become friends with ( not anymore definitely ) , a man who had just begun professional work with Auroville.This highly qualified and certified , erudite and experienced person full of idealism and
    quiet humiltiy was starry eyed about Auroville.
    But then, in the course of his work, he inadvertantly stumbled , gradually, upon the layers and levels of corruption and malpractice in Auroville .
    For a long time he strove diligently to get the ” higher ups” in the admin structure to take remedial action. For years.
    Then he gave up and took recourse to external – eventually, legal and governmental “remedies”. Because, rightly or wrongly, he decided that he was the one to clean up all the rot and corruption that permeated most levels of the power structure. And so with documented , legally valid proof he fully backed another man who actually went to the Courts against Auroville. ( This second man is closely connected to a regional politician now based in Chennai with his own political party, who is a former student leader from the mid 1960s, and whose then political party was actively anti ashram in the pondicherry riots of 1965 and 1979 in which I happened to be one of the many students guarding the Ashram in the absence of Police. This politician
    has also been vociferous about the need to revert Auroville to the original people of the villages as well as to remove the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother from the Ashram Courtyard. He has also spewed venom on Sri Aurobindo in his speeches and or writings.)
    Coming back to my point earlier – These Westerners had repeated the SAS game in a far more camouflaged manner for their own benefit.
    The Govt which under former well-meaning political dispensations in decades past, had kept its distance and refrained from undue interference, was now a different kettle of fish and smelt quick goodies, along with more political (mis-) appropriation of Sri Aurobindo – all in the legitimate and sorely required cause of cleaning up a corrupt and rotten clique who it was said had turned a blind eye to dark stuff like paedophilia ( ref. a BBC documentary ).
    And thus there is the present situation for all to see – where speeded up “development” is being pushed through the roof faster than the speed of light by people who have weaponised Mother’s words for their ends, and who have no business, no aptitude or fitness – not to mention any moral or spiritual authority for it – other than the legal, judicial power and authority given by our Constitution which rightly and naturally is neither to be questioned nor challenged in any manner.
    Mother had said that Politicians will be the last of the last – to be transformed. But once the politicians get in anywhere – that pretty much is an RIP situation for that entity.
    Auroville had three types of rulers – sorry administrators, and all arrogant – from its beginnings to the present, and all were corrupted by the lure of power and pelf not to speak of the perversities of some.
    Had the majority of Aurovillians been true to The Mother, these people would never have pulled it off , nor would the govt. have the legally sound and unchallengeable cause to interfere, that it now clearly and rightfully has.
    So, it is a bit rich for some or many of these old timer types to be creating parallel systems now whilst crying victim – what were they all doing for 50 years in this regard and perspective !?! Some were guilty by complacence, some by participation, and many by being in Auroville for the social freedom and ease not otherwise available to the lowest socio-economic strata of the West that largely comprised the Westerners there. I have been told this repeatedly by very many French and other Western visitors/academics/industrialists visiting Pondicherry.
    i’ve tried to express my perhaps limited understanding and perspective of the matter here . But also, why was not The Mother’s detailed guidance implemented as Paulette rightly points out – in 50 years !?! Because of everyone’s vested interests and now it is hard to know which way auroville is going, only She knows. But for such an obvious reason or factor like greed for Power and Pelf we surely dont need volumes of quotations, letters and what not , to understand what any child would see effortlessly – exactly why hasn’t anyone brought these things up instead !?!
    The Ashram, sunk in similar if not identical mire – has untill now, escaped Auroville’s fate by some action of Grace , not that the powers that be over there have not done their darndest to invite such disaster. They also edited out from the 1972 Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo’ s His statement that an Ashram ceases to be one after the passing of the Guru/s. ( So yes it is there as a ” Trust” legally. Very different from an Ashram. Additionally, The Mother is on tape record in the Agenda : ” This Ashram doesnt belong to me anymore”. Volume 13 probably or Vol.12.
    Lastly, all is directed by Her Power and Grace – even this present state of affairs, but we forget that at a practical, realistic level – it is also a case of reaping what one sows.
    I choose not to get into any slanging match or any further ” discussions” here on the above.
    Peace.

    Reply

77. I read this comment of yours on the other post. Paulette’s. I understand your standpoint. But please also keep open to what has been written about Kireet Joshi whom I knew personally and that we have respect and regard for each other. You will get relatively good idea about him if you go through A Dream Hijacked. You have there Kireet Joshi in his full and forcing action. One cannot ignore that for historical reasons. For other reasons we just keep everything aside of no deeper consequence.

    Reply

    1. Replying to R.Y. Deshpande : Thanks for commenting.
       Im indeed well aware of Kireet Bhai and am open minded on this.
       He had given some lectures or talks rather – even to our class ( Gauri-di’s Section in 1974 ). Moreover , because of his negligence or whatever it was ( I dont know ), my mom was one day asked to pay up hostel lodging dues to the then ( 1976 ) huge amount of rs 5400 or more, with total indifference to the well known fact that it was The Mother Herself who had told me in Her room on 16th august 1972 : ” Tell your mother that I have accepted you and taken you in and she does not have to pay for your Boarding ( Hostel ) charges.” However, after 1973 – Both Kireet bhai and Counouma the Ashram Managing Trustee remained callously indifferent on this , when my mother went and pleaded with them that she was not and never had been in a position to pay and that The Mother Herself had taken that responsibility. Only Dada (Pranab-da) said that since he was in the know of this matter he would make Corner House free for me. But still, my mom broke her health working hard overtime to pay back the dues – so I understand these people in power from this personally aggrieved angle. Also, my teacher, mentor and guide in the Ashram later on, confirmed my experience as it was similar to his. My teacher however had promptly gone and told it to The Mother , who sent Counouma to his house with the instruction that he should type out all details and submit it to Her the next day. Which was ofcourse done. Anyways, sorry, I know this is not directly relevant to this Post. Just sharing after reading your reply.

       Reply