After having for the first time since his nomination accepted to meet the bonafide Working Committee of the Residents Assembly, the chairman of the Governing Board, one of the 3 governing bodies of Auroville had requested the community to come for a meeting where a question/ answer moment was supposed to happen. The Working Committee of the Residents Assembly had on a communication to the community (Nov 4th 2022) invited all Aurovilians to attend the meeting as they were foreseeing this initiative as an opening, ” We hope this upcoming community meeting with the Chairman will allow for sincere and honest, yet respectful conversations to happen. This would lay the grounds for a fruitful and positive way forward in Auroville’s growth and development.”.
This meeting didn’t allow any conversation to happen, No questions and sharing were permitted, the chairman did a speech of one hour and left the venue.
The members of the community who attended this meeting with the expectation of a start of dialogue have sadly observed that the chairman had come here to make another lecture to Aurovilians.
In his first speech just after his nomination, the chairman had qualified the Aurovilians as a “failure”. This time he has given a lecture questionning their ” Spiritual” Involvement.
One Aurovilian shares here below his answer to the chairman.
“Honourable and Respected Chairman of the Auroville Foundation,
Thank you very much to have come to Auroville and shared your thoughts on Auroville.
Though I could not attend your lecture, as I am blocked in France for the reasons that you know, I was told the content of your intervention. Therefore, I would like to mention again here what the spirituality in Auroville is about and what we are trying to do here. You will find attached only the page 3 of my presentation on Auroville and 54 years of realization, that Valli gave you last Monday and that I sent you by email.
As wrote the Mother on 17th July 1957 in the “Great Adventure”, “You are not to repeat spiritually what others have done before us, because our adventure begins from beyond that stage.”
Do you really think that Aurovilians have lost or forgotten the ideal of Auroville? What can make you think that? Do you really think that because we did not reach yet the final goal of Auroville, Human Unity, we failed or forgot the ideal?
The search for Human Unity, in the history of the world, is probably attempted for the first time in Auroville. Do you think that it is so easy to reach it and that every Aurovilian could be in contact with his own psychic being, and that everyone could see the Divine in each other so easily? Do you think that this can be reached in the present atmosphere of threats, coercions, takeovers and violence which started on 4th Dec. 21?
Do you think that Human Unity should be reached only by an elite, the Aurovilians, when the rest of the world still lives in the present condition and that mankind still struggles, competes and fights everywhere? Why do you think Aurovilians have done so much work in the villages of the bioregion for 54 years? Do you think that people who do not have the basic material and psychological needs to live a decent life can afford to think of a spiritual life and Human Unity?
For years, Aurovilians have given life again to this land and tried to uplift their Tamil brothers from the bioregion. Do you really think that this was a waste of time and goes against the ideal of Auroville? Thus, we have left aside the construction of the city for this reason but also because we did not have the resources and knowledge to build the City at the Service of Truth. Now time has come, and we can focus more on that.
Yes, everything in Auroville is not yet perfect and a few things were not done in the spirit of Auroville. Things must be corrected, perfected and transformed. This is part of the work we must do here. Being a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness has many expressions. The Mother did not call for sadhaks, in the traditional sense, in Auroville.
Do you really think that Aurovilians do not have an inner search, that there are no bhaktas or devotees in Auroville? How much time have you spent with Aurovilians and how many have you met? Of course, the inner search of everyone can always be more sincere and higher. But who can judge that, except the Divine?
Further Sri Aurobindo wrote the following about Spiritual Transformation in the “Life Divine”:
“It must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience… they still belong to the mental evolution, the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.”CWSA, Vol. 21, Pg. 890
More inspirational quotes from Sri Aurobindo can be found in the fourfold transformation.
Very sincerely,
Satprem”
Auroville 54 years – Extract Spirituality in AV