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I.
‘Blessed are those who take a leap towards the Future’ was the message [of The Mother] on the New Year calendar of 1971.
After receiving this calendar I walked up to Aspiration, Auroville. I settled down in my hut near the community kitchen.
I had a dream in my heart. In fact all of us who had gathered there, in Auroville had our own dream of Auroville – sharing in an infinitesimal manner
the Divine’s Dream of Auroville. It is to be the city sanctioned by the Supreme! And we shall be the instruments to manifest the Dream!
In the beginning we, at Aspiration, would go daily in the morning to Matrimandir to dig the large pit for the foundation of Matrimandir (the Golden
Tower in Auroville). Then after two hours of dedicated and hard physical work, I went to the Aspiration School for that was my work given to me by The Mother.
All along it was like living in the Garden of Eden. Innocence prevailed. Love of the ideal dominated. The Mother was there to guide us, so we had no
worry. She would do the needful on all levels, that was our inner conviction and we let go ourselves carefree.
Those were the times when the love of the ideal took us through all physical difficulties and inconveniences. At the same time there was a strong
psychic feeling of togetherness which got translated into oneness with all. There was therefore romance in the air and beauty on Earth.
II.
Into that Garden of Eden came the snake, the vital force, tempting us all to eat the forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Some took hungry bites
of the ‘Apple’ and then somewhere a breach began! Discrimination and division began, we began to look at each other differently: people from this country and that; persons from this group and that; members from
Auroville and from Sri Aurobindo Society. Auroville was divided against itself: there was a fall in the spirit and consequently there crept in disharmony, falsehood, discord, perversion, pain and suffering.
The Period of Innocence was over – we had stepped into the Period of Experience. Paradise was Lost. We were all on the hard realities based on division
and hatred which led to violence on all levels. Heart had given place to Mind and unity to division. Lost was the Dream and forgotten the Dreamer. The Glass Dome of Auroville was shattered! It came down crumbling.
The Mother had left Her body and the earth seemed to have been rent apart from under our feet! In this apparent vacuum many sought to be leaders of the new –born Auroville! In the process confusion reigned.
Did we go on a wrong path? We thought the city we were out to build was a matter of a few years away. But now, all was a confusion worse confounded.
Some like me withdrew from this violent confusion and started to think… to think where we had gone wrong. As She had said, we had started falling towards the ‘subhuman’ instead of rising towards the ‘superhuman’!
That, indeed was our mistake. We thought that we could build Auroville with the instrumentation we have – the instrument of the Mind and the Vital and all that the Mental-Vital consciousness had given to mankind
until now. We were trying to build the City of Tomorrow on the Foundations of Yesterday!
The answer to Auroville’s growth and decline lies perhaps in the general pattern of human evolution itself.
III.
On a brief analysis, we see that mankind has passed through several stages of growth and development in its march of evolution. It has gone through the
stages of family, clan, village, city- state , state and lastly it has arrived at the stage of the nation. This aggrandisement of a socio-political consciousness has been a direct reflection of man’s inner growth of
consciousness, opines one of the disciples, Nolini Kanta Gupta.
The first three levels of family, clan and village are more or less the reflection of the Physical man. These stages are so very closely knit that they
seem more or less the extension of the physical consciousness of man. The city-state and the state are more the reflection of the Vital consciousness of man when his ego is hungry for the possession of material
objects and seeks the pleasures of materialistic life. Then the experiment of the empires - the racial or religious or proletariat ones — and the nations, the expressions of man’s Mental consciousness which has some
kind of an ideal, either ethical or humanistic or religious.
Now Human Unity seems to be the higher and inevitable step towards which humanity seems to be moving. And, as inevitable is the need of the spiritual
consciousness to bring about this next step in man’s evolution.
IV.
In this development of the Mental consciousness, of which nationhood is the highest achievement, there has been a specific pattern in the West and in
the East. According to Sri Aurobindo, Sachchidananda (Satya: Truth, Reality. Chit: Consciousness. Ananda: Bliss) or Existence, Consciousness and Force or Knowledge and Will and Bliss are the basic expressions of the
world.
The aspects of Force and Knowledge were developed predominantly by the West says Sri Aurobindo. Force is the first aspect of the world-- war and the
clash of energies. Knowledge in the form of Reason came with its attempts at justice, social harmony etc. Later Science took possession of the development and utility of Force: Rational Philosophy and Religion
seized higher secrets of Life; and the Reality expressed itself in a higher moral, ethical, religious life. Where as in the East it was the third basis of Ananda that was realised in all its life patterns.
V.
Auroville too seemed to have undergone the same process of evolution. The first thing to manifest itself was Force – the period of the call of the
French for Liberty! Just as in the case of the French Revolution where the king was guillotined, but his despotic rule was replaced by a more ruthless Bourgeoisie – so too in Auroville the Sri Aurobindo Society was
ousted only to bring in its place the more impersonal road-roller of a Government rule and authority. It sought liberty but ended up in greater chains.
The second thing to manifest was Reason in its multiple forms of justice, social harmony and development of systems in economy, ecology, science,
education etc. Auroville is at present in this stage – the stage of the development of the forms of Reason applicable to a Spiritual life.
It will take a long time and sincere efforts – long efforts that will involve success and failure and hardships until the time when there is a
consciousness attempt to go beyond the Rational and the Logical Mind and we base ourselves on a deeper foundation of unity and harmony. And that deeper foundation is the Psychic which in reality is the integrating
and synthesising and unifying factor within man. Until this Svarajya is attained (control of self-unity within), Samrajya cannot be established. (Control and order outside – A sense of world-unity).
This is the third element of the discovery of the inner Ananda that India and the East have achieved. Along with the second stage, this third stage has
to be practised at Auroville – at least by a few to begin with. It is imminent and urgent for Auroville.
This may seem to be a far-fetched ideal for Auroville, far too time-distanced and we may in our hurry to get going with our Projects – of Science and
Technology, of Ecology and Economy, of Art and Artisans – tend to overlook this need of the inner being. But the Gita says – ‘Yad yad acharati sreshtah’ – let the few practise and the mass will follow. So let the third aspect of the inner Ananda based on the psychic contact be the base of action in the few.
This in fact is nothing but the principle of Symbiosis in Nature – the Principle of the Inner Contagion – the Principle of the hundredth monkey! Some
pioneers are needed to take up in all earnestness this ‘Psychic-Symbiosis’ so that Auroville may grow integrally – the inner leading the outer. Otherwise, we may land in the same mistake as was done by societies and
collectivities in the past and in the present.
Along with the building of the ‘Golden Tower’ – the Matrimandir – there must be a simultaneous birth of the ‘flame-child’ within us. Or else, instead
of becoming the ‘wonderful slaves of God’ – we may become the ‘miserable slaves of Man’. It shan’t be so… with all the Grace and Will of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother on Auroville. Auroville cannot but succeed in its
integral flowering into The Mother’s Dream for it is but a part of Sri Aurobindo’s own Labour:
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
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