Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville
Has anyone noticed the concerns expressed at the first general meeting of the Selection Process for the new Working Committee and AV Council: that the RAS has not fulfilled its purpose of communication and information between the RA and WC-AVC, that the WC has not reported regularly and taken feedback from the community, that the members need to be changed now and by a more representative process? And yet, a week after the GB meeting a follow-up meeting of the Selection Process has still not happened?
Has anyone noticed the long list of contentious problems and the “tortuous process” reported by the AVC last week, concerning the behavior of Aurovilians which is not acceptable, and which in a normal society would be illegal. When issues of illegality cannot be handled adequately by an alternative process, and when issues of social and cultural disharmony cannot be resolved by a community dedicated to Human Unity, do we not see that all is not well in the city of the future? And when the WC insists in its self-assessment that its mission for the past two years has been to exclude outside interference in the decision making process and to ensure that all decisions are “only ours”, does it not occur to us that a place which belongs to nobody in particular might actually require a much larger sense of inclusion, and outreach, and openness than is possible to such a meager representation of humanity? Do we wish to simply ignore all of this?
Rod
commented by philippe on May 11, 2011
Dear Rod,
The question does not consist in having noticed any dysfunction in AV and to wish or not to wish to ignore them.
The ignorance by which AV is dramatically touched is a self ignorance, a sorcery stemming from a false centralisation of the self-conscious power, a black clouding that has the capability to distort horribly the all phenomenal experience up to a point that can lead to its destruction (pralaya). Without a shadow of a doubt it’s much more a matter of realising than noticing.
A true aurovillien has to be abble to uproot the cause of the source of all evil. That is the real service to be done to the Divine, The true Person, and consequently, you may become a aurovillien even if you live out of India.
AV is a battlefield whose tremendousness most people are not aware of since they came in, at best, through moralism or sentimentalism. You know full well that the enemy is far beyond little persons and egos : mankind is only a coating for Krishna –the living deity- in order to enter the creative field, the Open , namely the phenomenon of creation of space and time that we so poorly call Nature since the roman empire conquered the ancient greek and so translated what the greek experienced and named Phusis.
It’s beyond impersonality that lay the secret of light : the immortal truth of the individual and its unconceavable delight.
The mother said once that the last assoura will die at her feet : that’s exactly what is happening in AV ! The greatest light is always neighboured by the darkest opposition. The darkest assouric force has taken hold of most people I met in AV according to their weaknesses in order to do his job : to stop for ever the supramental descent in the material forms, to hijack the only place where it can be done and organised, and to put an end to thousands years of work ! The aim is the annihilation of the all world for the sake of this perversion : the sad joy to hate and destroy.
It’s absolutely logic that the place is confronted to such a enemy : for those who are seers it’s even the sign of a special grace from the Supreme as a Fighter.
AV has to be liberated from the most disgusting and disastrous falsehood I have ever been in contact with during my stay there in 2008 which left me speachless until your mail , and it will be done either by good will either by a foreign will.
Only the all powerful infinite Joy of the truth consciousness (that joy of which Sri Aurobindo says it’s the only thing that made him tremble of fear) only the essential Ananda is capable to win this victory : to firmly possess it one has to be a true servitor of the divine consciousness. AV is made for those ones, not for a apartheid organisation bothered with ufo, sex ,drugs and domesticity who preach the Ideal to betray it.
The all world is at the doorstep of the next and last pralaya : one place is supposed to counteract the ferocity of those forces of refusal : Auroville ! which at present is just a accomplice of those forces of destruction !
More flexibility for the entry group process ? My goodness ! the entry group is just a trick from the lower vital mind to prevent the 48 000 missing people to join in by maintaining those who are hijacking the kshétra. Careful, when the real Indians will realise that, those who have kept alive the vedic lamp, they will throw you out by any means. Beside that, the fondamental quality that makes people to debark on the supramental shore is plasticity, suppleness.
So, flexibility itself ougth to stand majestically at the entrance, like a friend, a helper, a teacher, a mother etc…instead of that stand dogs guarding the perverse privilege of ego-centric imbecility against which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have fougth to death : hideous ! disastrous !
Even the film used to present AV is a falsification : the text is a letter from the Mother to Kroutchev, during the 50’s, a political action and not at all a presentation of AV. AV is not a dream, true unity is not association or interconnectedness. AV is a direct action from the supramental shakti, the conscious power of essential and eternal oneness.
Do you think she will accept her work to be betrayed and turned into a under wellness centre, a under ibiza, a under old age resort ? I greatly doubt that !
« don’t try to cheat the lord »
« to be young is to know that nothing is irreparable » The Mother.
Philippe Auroire.
I see what you are talking about, and am aware of the occult point of view or explanation of things. But I prefer the philosophical approach, for a couple of reasons.
If there are dogs at the gate, which I agree that there are, and asuras using people for their hostile purposes, which there are, we still have to deal with the humans. Even if we have realized, and not only noticed, both the darkness and the light, and are relatively liberated, the manifestations are still there. So what do we achieve with this kind of interpretation? The dogs have to be removed, the falsehoods exposed, and the social sphere engaged through educational, political, spiritual and other means.
The other reason is that it can happen that people begin to imagine that their role as representatives of the dark forces and the light forces are destined and they assume that this is hat they are supposed to be doing; they justify and intensify their behaviors instead of changing them. One of the results of this pattern, which can be seen in Auroville, is a kind of mass paranoid psychosis. Instead of addressing the behaviors of people in a direct and rational way, people are overcome by their fears and their righteous delusions, etc.
I prefer using Occam's razor, if possible. The law of parsimony was effectively used to combat religious obscurantism during his time as well.
Human unity, yes ! but which kind of unity ? UDHU : university of divine human unity. As the mother says somewhere, av is for those who want to rapid it up.
One is not dealing with humans in av ; nature : the untrembling heart of the well-rounded unconcealment and the self that is one are dealing with themselves only. The only medieval obscurantism I saw in av was in the thick untransparent dress the living god is forced to wear that prevented me from seeing the immortal beauty of the beloved we are supposed to crave for possession when one is a true aurovillien. The physical consciousness in av is in a dreadful state.
Rationality ? The ratio as it has been repeatedly said by all the great founders of the great indian civilisation ( which has nothing to learn from the west except how to protect herself from such a desastrous influence that is trying to spread all over the world-if not too late-) this ratio cannot gouvern the Being, provided perfection of the Being is aiming. It cannot be the king but at best a good minister or a honnest finger pointing to us where stand those two doors : infra rationality and supra rationality. That is its « juste place », a good watchman who deserves only a few hundred roupies and certainely not the billions dollars the western spirit is dangerously drunk with.
A historical exemple of rationality trying to rule the Being : the great ancient greek thinker and seer Parmenides, one of the few fathers of philosophy, has given birth to occident with this saying : « to gar auto noein estin te kai ennai » , translated and distorted by the europeen christian spirit : « being and thinking are the same » . This translation shows the fondamental attitude of the western spirit : division !
This translation is not innocent, it serves a purpose of historical domination by hiding to us the profoundness and the tremendous secret of a suprarational « dynamis » leading to a higher living vehiculed by Parmenides saying. The great thinker is not pointing at a sameness of two opposites, that is such a banality, he tells us something essential, something of the upmost importance about the selfhood of humanity, he gives a response to that question of all the questions : WHO is humanity ?
Oneness ! Humanity is not primarily a We as a community but Being itself grounded in oneness. Noticing a sameness between two opposites is just a means to settle the division which always stands at the basis of all domination. The western spirit is inherently a power of domination , division is the very stuff of which its identity is made of, that is its fatal weakness : all-mightiness stands in oneness.
This higher knowledge Parmenides saw like rishis did but successfully since India is still in being, he warned us is hard to be taken into keeping. Rigth after him , Socrates mediated by Plato proclaimed, installed the reign of rationality (in to which europeen christianity will engulf itself ) resulting in a few decades later in the destruction by Philippe de macedoine of the greek splendour. That’s why the city of Athenes felt the need to condemn Socrates to death but it was too late.
The problem is not rationality vs obscurantism, even the english empiric philosopher David Hume has described the reason as a delirium of the sensation. Descartes too, the french rationalist by excellence and his famous « cogito EGO sum », I think so I am, of which all europe is so proud, says that the intellect is a passion of the soul. Interesting to point that for Descartes the soul is called « mentis » in latin, coming from the sanskrit manas which has given : mental. How Not sharp is Descartes’ power of discrimination : rationality seems to work better irrigate by true religious feeling . This cartesian ego sum, I am, has metaphysically legetimated the triomphal material expansion of europe during the 16 century through slave trade of africans, colonisation and genocide of south america, spoliation, racialisation, millions of dead and has open up the ugly and very dangerous reign of machinery and technology. Assouric powers are very clever.
Western rationality clearly stands under the upanishadic golden lid, it is not rationality that has to be removed but the lid we are dying under. The discovery and the opening up of the lid is the historical force that has destined India to be the leader .
Rationality cannot combat the pseudo, the twisting, the distorted, av is facing. It cannot even identify clearly the enemy. Here is the struggle : pseudo AV vs un-distorted AV. I do not think people need to be protected against any mass paranoiac psychosis, they rather need protection against soul’s assassination. They have to be protected from what I saw when I was in av, a enourmous hammer made out of the strongest teek wood a faithful and noble warrior dressed in white is handling firmly while riding a gorgeous white horse and checking who is still under the mental lid in a place created for supramental freedom and joy and beauty and power. Terrible headache is the real danger. Better to spread all over the place a mass supranoiac psychism. No psychic, no av !if not, better to leave as fast as possible to reach safe distance from big hammer knight : what occam’s razzor can do against dourga’s sword and her lion ?
Falsehood too has not and cannot be exposed ( its very nature is to conceal) but must be transformed into its truth , because falshood do not exist, it is not grounded in being, it is a mask or a lid the beloved enjoy a lot to couragously play with in order to save us from that dreadful quaternary of ignorance and embrace us for ever in an endless delight no ratio will ever be capable to dream of. Truth is not a quality of being as the west believes, it is being which is a quality of truth as the east reveals.
Philippe Auroire.
Rod, isn´t the Occam´s razor a western appropriation of Adwaita and neti-neti?
Sorry, I see little that is "new" in the West. Greed and taking has been going on for a longer time than we would like to admit. Dhumralochana and Kumbhakarana keep changing forms.
Hope that at Auroville leaders do not miss on the urgent need for the embodiments of stitha prajna in India to lead the West, before it (or the bankers ruling US interests, and the sterilization of all seeds, the militarization of space and propaganda instead of education) destroy this extraordinary fertile loka or dynamic battlefield for spiritual evolution.
Om Shanti!
vrinda
Good points, Rod.
Yes, it is important while ‘trying to be spiritual’ to remain also human and rational at the same time not changing too soon into ‘spiritual’. If rationality is removed too soon before it has completed its painful transformational work, the dogmatic approach may take over and spoil our attempt to become spiritual by dragging us back to a dogmatism and religious obscurantism. And we know very well by experience what it means. And since our aim is an integral realization, which includes matter and physical life, we must remain both spiritual and rational, allowing a new way of being to emerge.
This implies to be critical, but, again, not overcritical.
commented by Vrinda Estela Pujals on May 5, 2011
The points that you make are sadly important, but cannot be ignored.
We ignore insularism, isolation at the peril of embodying the essence of the
teachings of Holy Mother, Sri Aurobindo, Shankara, Patanjali and all great sages and saints of the past and present.
It is true that the exclusion of the "other" has to be revisited. As a person who was born in the west, with a mind and heart informed by India's sages from childhood, I passed through a stage of searching for my spiritual lineage. I found this lineage in the US, as an "inmate" disciple of an Indian Sage who teaches Patanjali, Samkhya and Vedanta (Upanishads, Ramayana, Gita and Yoga Vasistha). After twenty-two years involved and enriched by Ashram life, Satangs and Guru Kripa, the beloved teacher instructed me to move on and teach.
At the present time, I am not a westerner because my mind, heart and spirit are immersed in Sanatan Dhrama. Neither am I Indian, because those born in India, though they may have their mind, heart and spirit set on the West, see me as the "other" unwelcome to postcolonial India. So, the law of Karma and reincarnation have all to do with text, theory, and are very difficult to apply to one who looks too white to be accepted or welcomed in India. Though my mother is Mataji and my father, friend, beloved and all is Bhagavan Sri Krishna, Sri Raam, and the Brahman of the Upanishads, Aurobindo Ashram would not have any of this.
In a world where our children may gain the vision of Vishwa Swarupa, Virat, by the gradual recognition of the inclusion of the "other" into Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, without the history of the past preventing a place like Auroville from adapting to the changes that press us now for embodying the vision of a village of humanity by expanding the hearts further into space, I hope that disciples and ongoing senior students of Yoga-Vedanta like myself are not deemed useless in India and in the West.
I am presently a graduate student at the California Institute of Integral Study, founded by Sri Haridas Chaudhuri, and inspired by the teachings and ways of Sri Aurobindo and the Holy Mother. When I chose to enter CIIS-School of Consciousness and Transformation in 2009, I was optimist to find this ideal place where the West meets the East in a recognition to the fact that most of the best in social sciences and "pure" sciences keeps drawing much from India´s ancient sages. When I started at CIIS, I felt that I was going to be virtually moving between India and the US, between Auroville and home. Then I learned it was not so.
Still, we dream of the possibility to extend Integral Yoga, and the dream of Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Shivananda, and Gandhiji into a practice that informs us about how different and similar systems integrate and support each other outside of the scope of hierarchies. As Integral Yoga keeps informing Systems Thinking, Systems Theory, Transformative Leadership Theories, Organic Inquiry practices, and many other Western academic emerging theories, those of us who are best positioned to put Integral Yoga into practice for conflict resolution find ourselves handicapped and unable to get over one or two concepts, false identities...
Wishing you all the best: Ishwara Kripa, Atma Kripa, Guru Kripa! and transcendence beyond the three, trigunateeta!
Om Tat Sat!
Vrinda
As for your question of yoga on some collective level, it seems from a closer of reading of Sri Aurobindo that everything really depends on the individual effort, and divine grace. A collctivity of yogis can't be artificially created. I have commented on the paradox implied for Auroville in my presentation at the conference on Spirituality Beyond Religion held here last year. The integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother enters into the field of evolution. It aims for spirituality to become an evolutionary pathway. That means leaving behind all the religious trappings and making life a sacrifice, not just for a new consciousness, but for a new species. This is what it means, however little it is understood as yet. There is definitely scope for bringing this discussion into the academic arena through philosophy and religion as well as through psychology and the other human sciences. But to do this requires quite a lot more than academic credentials.
When we started to put our courses on line we had in mind the students of CIIS. I have met with Joe Subiando about this several times, but I don't know whether it is understood.
I knew Haridas Chaudhuri well and he introduced me to the ashram, which I joined in 68, and he visited me here in 72.
I hope to hear more from you. om namo bhagavate sri miramabikaye.
Sorry to see that perhaps too much intellectualism may come in the way of practical solutions. Knowing the language, or the mathematical formulas does not mean that we can swim--as the old wise teacher´s analogy illustrates. While the chitta may be paralyzed by a double-bind, closely informed by ahamkara, it may help us to move forward in the spirit of "beginner's mind". After reading an impressive short biography of Sri Aurobindo, one of the things that have stayed with me the longest is the period of time that Sri Aurobindo had to spend deconstructing Western influences from his mind, in order to unravel the unnecessary and get to the essence. Unfortunately, the experiment stops the moment we believe we have reached "perfection." This process, or experiment, took Sri Aurobindo years before returning to India and years after returning to India. Was Sri Aurobindo applying the formulas of vicharana and neti-neti? We need more sages like Holy Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Is s/he going to emerge out of the intellectual group in Auroville or from elsewhere in Mother India?
Are those who care to embody, or "be the change"for following the footsteps and applying the theories lived by highly politically involved spiritual leaders like Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Holy Mother, Gandhiji willing and able to adopt a heuristic approach to the analysis and practice of Integral Yoga, the thinning-out of ahamkara, in order to see new mahatmas, leaders emerge?
Rather than a need for more intellectualism, and further mathematical metaphors, we may need to recover beginner's mind of Indian sages. But I wonder if we are ready to become the subject, object and witness of the experiment withing a group or system of similarly inclined others? A group experiment of this kind may require a monastery, or people with unlimited humility. Is the sukshma sharira, informed by Western concepts able to think like Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi, S. Vivekananda and Holy Mother?
A deliberate experiment, starting from the beginning, applying Patanjali and Sri Aurobindo´s heuristic approach to Leadership for Transformation, Leadership for Enlightenment may be the most thrilling process that can happen to any Consciousness, Spirituality, Theology/Thealogy university Program of our times.
I do not know the particulars about the issues and problems at play in Auroville´s administration at the present time. I only wish you all the best, as the best is what I wish myself when things get difficult. But the best remedy for this one, when is to apply a blend of Bhakti and Jnana, "humbler than a blade of grass..." and "All is loved for the sake of the Self," respectively from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the dialogue between Maitreyi and Yajnavalkya (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 2.4.5).
But here the question of what is dear becomes dangerous... like a a sharp sword in the hands of a child... what is this entity, this self? A gradation ad infinitum from lower to higher Self? But these are not questions for intellectualizing, these are questions to live and die for. Vicharana and neti-neti are not the favorite pass time of intellectuals, for Yogis they are.
Om Tat Sat!
Vrinda
om namo bhagavate sri miramabikaye
It is an honor to correspond with you. How wonderful that you met Haridas Chaudhuri, and what a pivotal association for you. I wish you the best in your administrative efforts at Auroville, you have so much to teach us; there is nothing like it in the US.
I hope to join a group of students from Auroville and CIIS interested in bringing up these issues to incorporate principles of Integral Yoga-Vedanta in a heuristic exchange program. So much can be done online, the wealth of Karma Yoga has room for lots of expansion here in the US... As a student in the west, the appropriation and distortions of the East by the West are a very delicate matter, but I keep bringing it up whenever they arise... Systems Theory = Kundalini, etc.
Jai Ma!
v
As a student in the School of Consciousness and Transformation, some of us can appreciate the extent of academics appropriation, distortions and the limiting theories that are emerging just because western academics read Patanjali, the Upanishads or the Gita and take a few words of wisdom out of context. Saussure and Chomsky have much to thank Patanjali for the sutra on the theory of cognition. What I was hoping was to see more Indian academics immersed in engaging Integral Yoga-Vedanta to address the vertiginous appropriation of Vedic theories into emerging western academic theories and discourses that keep Eurocentric interests defining values, human-spiritual identity into a system for profit.
Since, Indian scholars may be addressing these issues, and their works do not reach us, I appreciate and welcome your suggestions to read about the arguments on this direction.
This may be a peripheral topic to Inclusion and Exclusion in Auroville, but at this times when the global political is personal, academic misunderstandings, from inside and outside,can be important and fertile ground for revitalizing Sanatan Dharma from the point of view of those who have grown at the lap of the Mother.
commented by Rod on May 5, 2011
For example, if we look at the principles for decision making published by the AV Council (N&N 9 April), we read: "There is no exchange of money, or as little as possible. Work is not performed for earning one's living but to serve and to progress." When an ideal like this is made a rule against which people are judged it automaticaly sets up a principle of exclusion. It is well known that at least a third of Aurovilians work to support themselves and do not take "maintenance". That group would be automatically excluded and at any point could be judged negatively against the principle. In practice, the principle would probably be used selectively to discriminate against some person or group for their behavior.
Another example from the same source: "Aurovilians do not belong to any ideology, race, group, religion or nationality and therefore cannot represent any of those..." This of course directly contradicts the Mother's idea of the International Zone as well as the fundamental nature of everyone and every group of human beings. It is also a statement of ideology in itself. And it can easily (and falsely) be used to exclude Koreans, Tamils, French, or anyone else, for just about any reason.
It is exactly this kind of behavior that I have pointed out with the GB decision that our school isn't in conformity with the Charter. In this example, the Charter is held up as a principle for judging and excluding something about which it in fact says nothing. It is just someone's delusional state of mind that finds a talisman for conveniently excluding others.
The next step is Fascism.
- people's intellectual ability (being well-read etc.)
- and people's inability
commented by Kirti Hemsell on May 5, 2011
commented by Oli on May 4, 2011