ON AUROVILLE

It appears from the indications given by the Mother and from the flowers chosen by Her for these twelve gardens that the over-arching atmosphere of the gardens should be filled with intense sense of devotion and surrender filled with aspiration that is surcharged with psychic consciousness and which strives

12 Gardens of Matrimandir

General:

It appears from the indications given by the Mother and from the flowers chosen by Her for these twelve gardens that the over-arching atmosphere of the gardens should be filled with intense sense of devotion and surrender filled with aspiration that is surcharged with psychic consciousness and which strives for the ascent to the supermind and for the manifestation of the supermind in order that the entire earthly life becomes divinized. An overview of the gardens should vibrate with the divine joy that is beautiful and which expands itself for youthful progression towards majestic and sovereign perfection that is perfectly perfect.

All symbolisms in the gardens may therefore aim at manifesting the following:

(a) Synthesis of calm and strength;

(b) Nestling of the finite and the infinite;

(c) Union of the individual and the universal, of the union of the universal with the transcendental, union of the individual with the transcendental; and union of one and all with all and one and all enveloped in supreme oneness;

(d) Eternity and Infinity of the Spaceless and Timeless and Eternity of Space and Time;

(e) Sovereignty of the divine power filled with ecstatic delight and fathomless compassion;

(f) Breezes and winds carrying the music of offering, devotion, worship and all-consuming surrender;

(g) Inexhaustible richness, aristocracy, refinement, complexity and inscrutable subtlety that tend to point to the wonderful profundity and wisdom and power and opulence and perfection of the Divine Mother.

The above seven themes can suitably be symbolized by the disposition and cluster of flowers, rows of flowers, designs of placement of flowers as also through symbolic groves, waterfalls, bridges and designs of display of colourful pebbles and stones or hills of clay and sand and modern gadgets that can emit light and colours and sounds of various murmuring melodies that induce silence, contemplation and delightful sacrifice of the heart and the mind and the body to the Divine Mother.

Specific Remarks:

I. Existence:

To be represented by the flower no. 600: psychic power in existence.

(All numbers of flowers are numbers in the Book: “Spiritual Significance of Flowers”)

The experience of the garden could be that of utter sweetness that arises from the illumined, heroic and faithful surrender to the Infinite and the Eternal that has endless manifoldness and yet stands out inexhaustibly in an unimaginable tip of transcendence as indescribable as a zero which is the womb of all-comprehensiveness.

Three images occur as we contemplate on Existence:

a) Image of the Rock presented in the Mother’s painting of “Ascent to the Truth”. On the top of the rock is spread out the sky of infinity in which one can plunge and abolish oneself in complete self-surrender that gives birth to manifold, imperious and irresistible sweetness which is comprehensive.

b) An image of innumerable pebbles of manifold colours, each reflecting in its crystals a massive ascending mountain of flowers (Hibiscus Rosa sinensis).

c) An image of an ever developing spiral reflected in a pool of water below which is studded with heaps of precious stones, all scintillating with multisided and multicoloured lights, and all of them forming circles in circles symbolizing all comprehensiveness.

II. Consciousness: Supramental consciousness.

The images of the supramental consciousness could perhaps be formulated in terms of the forms of flowers which have been shown at 637, 638, 639, 640, 641, 642, 643.

The supramental sun, Anthocephalus Cadamba in golden yellow seems to be the best symbolic form of the supramental consciousness: the complete roundness of the form indicates the comprehensiveness of consciousness; sharp projecting needles indicate the straightness of the rays of the light of the supermind; (Vedic Rishis distinguished between the straightness of the supramental consciousness which they called rita-chit, from crooked consciousness, which they considered to be the nature of the consciousness that deviates from the truth, anritam). The unity of the roundness of the central ball of the flower symbolizes unity which manifests diversity. The sharpness of the needles indicates the infallibility of the supramental consciousness, considering that the supramental consciousness infallibly moves straight towards its target and expresses the uniqueness of the point of diversity which infallibly manifests the underlying oneness and unity. The golden colour indicates ever wakefulness in vigilance that is always bright, resplendent and golden.

The garden of consciousness may therefore combine variously images of fullness, of straightness, of sharpness, of multiplicity that is always subordinate to unity, and of golden luminosity.

A special characteristic of supramental consciousness is its dynamism, its creativity, and its harmonious unity. Creativity of the supermind always harmonizes, and the form of the flower 637 symbolizes both creativity and harmony.

Supramental consciousness manifests omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. It is not easy to symbolize these three characteristics, but a combination of the forms of flowers no. 634, 635 and 638, culminating in 643 may help to visualize or symbolize these three characteristics.

The supermind has three poises, and these three poises are simultaneous: it is at once comprehensive, apprehensive and projecting. In the comprehensive poise, the Unitarian consciousness is predominant, even when diversity manifests out of its Unitarian consciousness; in the apprehensive consciousness, uniqueness of each individual consciousness which is embedded in the unity, begins to be emphasized: the play of hierarchy, which is not inconsistent with unity, has a special role in this second poise. In regard to this second poise, two forms seem to occur: first, there is a harmonious hierarchy of wisdom, strength, harmony of interchange, and obedience to execute to the utmost point of perfection. Forms of these four elements can be so designed that they are all harmonized in the relationship of mutuality. The second form manifests the joy of the unity of each individual with the universal and transcendental, even when these three terms constitute the hierarchy of trinity in which the individual even though manifested through the universal is directly a frontal aspect of the transcendental. The Rāsa Formation which is a circle symbolizes the universal, permits each individual to have direct union with the transcendental.

In the projecting consciousness of the third poise of the supermind, the figure of the Rāsa continues to have persistence, but diversity gets more prominence than unity and the individuals arranged in the hierarchy of harmony underline more emphatically their individuality.

In what form all the three poises of supramental consciousness can be simultaneously symbolized, can be variously conceived, but this is the task of the genius of the creative artist. Perhaps the figure of the flower 643 may seem to indicate a beautiful representation of these three poises.

The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of immortality; it is imperishable even when it is continuously mobile; it is immortal because it is immobile even in mobility; it is inexhaustible even when it expands itself constantly; it is inalienably transcendental, universal and individual even when these three terms are united and reunited constantly in harmonious rhythms which are endless. A figure of the immortality is that of unending wideness which sustains endless curls of individualities, something similar to the form of the flower no. 636 and 638.

III. Ananda

The Mother has identified Hibiscus Rosa-senensis (flower no. 565) in cream colour, and She has given the following characteristics: “calm, tranquil, equal, smiling and very sweet in its truly simple austerity.”

Sweetness that vibrates in all its subtleties even while retaining simplicity and austerity. Ananda unites essence and power and this unity or union causes joy and harmony and beauty; this joy is calm and tranquil and not exuberant because it is not like a bubble that can burst and perish; its seed is in essence, in infinity, in eternity. Ananda is equal because the power that is united with essence is omnipotent; and this omnipotence is always omnipotent in all forms and in all states; it has no partiality and its justice is the spontaneous smile of constant grace. It is pure like Jasmine (flower no. 317) and austere like Dhatura (flower no.194).

Ananda is freedom, since its play has infinite possibilities and each possibility is as harmonious and perfect as every other; it, therefore, chooses one or the other, not because one is superior to the other, but because both are equally perfect and harmonious. There is no compelling reason why one is chosen instead of another; it is sheer freedom and sheer delight of play. All forms of modesty and humility and purity that are spontaneous and which convey tranquility and power through the simplicity of the Smile of Infinite Grace are forms that can symbolize the atmosphere of the garden of ananda. The garden of ananda will be the garden of what can be called Sri Aurobindo’s smile, ‒ soft, sweet and infinitely compassionate.

Ananda is a laughter of the snow of the Himalayas, and that is one figure that presents itself when one tries to give a form to the garden of ananda.

Ananda is a fire of purity which creates all and devours all by the tongue that drips with honey. This is the second figure that occurs when we contemplate on ananda.

Ananda is the cool breeze of sweetness and fragrance that animates the flute of Krishna and dance of Krishna, ‒ dance of leisurely power of creativity that has endless forms. This is the third figure that emerges when we contemplate on ananda.

A short note of reflections:

I think that the gardens that we are contemplating will be primarily of gardens of flowers, which will be symbolic flowers indicated by the Mother but which will be arranged in various symbolic forms that will bring out the nature and qualities which are to be signified in the garden. As these will be the gardens of flowers, and the concerned flowers will have to be fresh every day, they will not be static gardens, but they will be flexible and changeable periodically. Hence, forms and designs of arrangement of flowers can be varied from time to time. In order to facilitate this variation, there will be freedom to the designers of the gardens to conceive and execute varieties of arrangement of designs and forms. Miniature bridges, sculptures and various kinds of models can also be displayed for presentation of varied forms. Each garden will be a melody of silent music, and the totality of the gardens would whisper into the ears of the viewers an inaudible orchestra that would express varieties of harmonies of sounds, colours and rhythms.

Please send me your comment on the above understanding of the nature of the gardens that you think we should conceive and imagine.

IV. Light

The Mother has given the flower “Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis ‘Vaimaea’ ”. The colour of this flower is white, and the Mother has called the flower “Light of Purified Power”.

This flower (No.606) is explained as follows: irresistibly simple in its power consecrated solely to the Divine.

Three ideas occur: 1) there is a close connection between light, purity and power.

It is light that purifies power; power is always dependent on light: in other words, power is basically Will-Power, and Will emanates from light. This idea is brought out forcefully in the Vedic concept of Agni which is described as ‘kavi kratu’ in Rig Veda I.1.5. “Kavi kratu” is a compound of two words: kavi and kratu. Kavi stands for wisdom or light and kratu stands for will for action. Wisdom and will are combined in Agni, the fire, which is the purifier, which is always lifted upwards and irresistibly erect and its highest point of flame burns always upwards where the Supreme Divine is seated and who presides and controls all movements of manifestation and action of power, power that is luminous, the power that is purified is a power that is white.

An image for a form that would probably symbolize the idea that has to be manifested in the garden of light would be a galloping white horse that is keen to reach its destination and to be consecrated to the Divine who is omnipotent. Could we have in this garden something to symbolize the movement of the galloping horse and the direction of the movement which can be symbolized by that image of the Lord of Power, ‒ somewhat like the snow white peaks of unshakable Himalayan Mountains?

2. Power that is consecrated to the Divine is the power of heroism, but heroism that is keen to sacrifice all and in all manner of being before the manifestation of the divine will which is always luminous and therefore white. The image that emerges while contemplating on this concept is that of rows of heroic soldiers, ‒ strong, effective and triumphant, ‒ but all of them in salutations and in complete self-giving to the Divine. This will be an image similar to the image of Arjuna at the feet of Sri Krishna, ‒ a hero that salutes the divine Lord from all sides and directions in a completely white state of submission to the Lord whose white light bursts out in great resplendence as though thousand Suns have come to shine all at once.

3. Power flows from a commanding position. The image of the power that is consecrated to the Divine could therefore be an image of a commanding position. A throne can normally be regarded as a symbol of a commanding position, provided that the throne is placed in the centre of an assemblage or on the top of the assemblage. Whether at the centre or at the top, the power that is white is inalienably submitted and surrendered to the Supreme Divine. A central throne or a top throne offered totally at the feet of the Lord could perhaps be a good symbol for giving a form to this third idea.

V. Life

The Mother has given the symbolic flower for life “Hibiscus rosa-sinensis” at No.592, which she has called “Power of Consciousness”. The colour of this flower is raspberry-pink to red, double. The meaning that She has given to this flower is: “All the powers of controlling and governing the lower movements of the inconscient nature.” There are two paragraphs in ‘The Life Divine’, which can help us in conceiving an image of the garden which is expected to symbolize Life. They are as follows:

“Therefore the perfect solution of the problem of Life is not likely to be realized by association, interchange and accommodations of love alone or through the law of the mind and the heart alone. It must come by a fourth status of life in which the eternal unity of the many is realized through the spirit and the conscious foundation of all the operations of life is laid no longer in the divisions of body, nor in the passions and hungers of the vitality, nor in the groupings and the imperfect harmonies of the mind, nor in a combination of all these, but in the unity and freedom of the Spirit.” (“The Life Divine”, Ch.21, p.206)

Next paragraph:

“…it (human race) must aspire to this ascent, conducted indeed through love, mental illumination and the vital urge to possession and self-giving, but leading beyond to the supramental unity which transcends and fulfils them; in the founding of human life upon the supramental realization of conscious unity with the One and with all in our being and in all its members of humanity must seek its final good and salvation. And this is what we have described as the fourth status of Life in its ascent towards the Godhead.” (Ibid, Ch.22, p.217)

In the light of the above an image that seems to emerge is the following:

An image of the ocean with a number of ripples on the surface. These ripples symbolize the lower movements of the inconscient nature. Over these ripples, four layers one above the other can be visibly laid out. The first layer could represent or symbolize the power of love, and the flowers of this layer could be in the formations of mutual interdependence and intermingling; the second layer could be that of flowers arranged in the form that would symbolize heroic self-giving or sacrifice; the third layer could be the layer of flowers organized in the formations of stars that could symbolize the rays of illumination; but the fourth, top layer could be that of flowers arranged in a formation of comprehensive sky from which would fall rows of flowers, and these rows of flowers could be fitted with bulbs of light and they could all be tied mutually so as to symbolize a net of perfect harmony.

The flowers that would form the ripples of the ocean on its surface, which all represent the movements of the inconscient nature, all though black in their origin but become under the influence of the four above layers of flowers raspberry-pink and even red.

VI. Power

The Mother has chosen flower No.609, which is entitled aesthetic power. And the Mother has commented: Beauty is a great power (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis – reddish pink)

Power emanates from the Force, which is always subordinate to consciousness but the quality of the power seems to depend upon the position and the disposition. Power dominates, but the nature of domination has various qualities. The right position of domination emanates from the state of victory which is totally obedient to the Supreme. Victory and obedience combined harmoniously. Their harmonious blending of victory and obedience expresses Ananda, and when this Ananda is expressed, we have beauty which is a great power. It appears that the flower, aesthetic power, symbolizes the manifestation of Ananda emanating from the harmonious blending of victory and obedience.

There are several other flowers which are connected with beauty and harmony, and the forms of these flowers can guide us in conceiving the formations of arrangement of flowers of 609 in the garden devoted to power. These are 572, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 608.

In physical terms, however, circle, square and curves of various kinds express forms of beauty.

But beauty as a power is primarily the beauty of vision and the beauty of the image of the reality and the beauty of rhythm of expression.

It appears that the Mother underlines beauty instead of domination to be the vehicle of the atmosphere that is to be created for the garden of power. Joy of harmony, joy of triumph that comes from complete surrender to the supreme, and the joy in obedience to the supreme should surcharge the atmosphere of this garden.

Love, joy and beauty are the expressions of Ananda: all the three are interdependent, and yet each is unique. In the expression of love, mutuality of relationship is important; in the manifestation of joy, the power of out bursting of fullness is important; in the experience of beauty, the touch of the stuff of the eternal harmony inherent in reality which strikes and awakens in the consciousness, ‒ that is important. It is rightly said that a thing of beauty is joy forever. But the beauty which is the joy is the expression of the inherent harmony which is a mysterious blend of being, consciousness and bliss in a manner that strikes and awakens by virtue of what it is and by virtue of the manner in which it expresses. In that experience, all manners are beautiful, since they inevitably express the inherent harmony of the mysterious blending in Reality of being, consciousness and delight.

Aesthetic power is the power that is manifested by beauty. Beauty which is a power that blends and harmonises, and harmonises the victory of the consciousness and obedience of being and delight.

In the ultimate analysis, beauty which is power does not dominate or exploit, it serves, heals and nourishes.

I think that the garden of power should be the garden of service, healing and nourishment.

On Internal Organisation of Auroville

25 August 1999

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.

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.

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)

(...) 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Inner Dimension of the City

Sisters and brothers,

I think Auroville as it exists today is the most precious gift that the earth possesses. It has momentous potentialities and responsibilities. All of us who are here have to bear a new kind of torch that is still in the making. I think in the background of Auroville there is, what we may call a strategy. How to bring about a radical change in humanity as a whole and how to make the whole world a happy family? A family in which there is spontaneous sharing and a spontaneous move upwards.

It was in 1912 that Mother wrote for the first time of a place — in order the whole humanity may move upwards — she spoke of a place to be created. In the last chapter of The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo speaks of the arrival or the emergence of a new humanity and he speaks of the method by which a new humanity can be created. And he says that there are two possible ways: one is that human beings in different parts of the world prepare themselves while living in the world and developing very far and then later on combining together to make a nucleus of new humanity. Or else, a method by which people who aspire for truth and truth alone would come out of the old world, built a nucleus in a favourable climate where everything is turned to the truth, and then gradually growth. And he foresaw that it is perhaps this second method which nature will prefer.

But he has laid down there a very important warning: the warning is that people who would come together with an aspiration and who would have the favourable climate; by living together they will increase the force of the truth. But at the same time by living together in a concentrated circle each one will contribute to the incapacity that each one possesses. And therefore the force of incapacities also would be concentrated. Thereafter, he said, that in the past it is this concentration of incapacities which have not been able to meet the concentration of the Truth Force and as a result there is a break down and such groups have therefore not flourished to a very long extent and there has been a failure. Lastly, he said that this failure could be prevented only if the Divine Will has taken a decisive decision to protect it, to develop it, and that Will is maintained. We have seen that the Ashram, as Mother herself pointed out in her statement of the Dream, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a modest effort to build up that ideal grace, of which she speaks in her Dream, and for such a long period this nucleus has been developing.

At one time Mother said to me, at a very important stage in my own life, that I have three steps of my work. The first step was the Centre of Education (she referred to the Ashram Centre of Education). My second step is Auroville? She told me this in 1971. And my third step is India and the world. This was the time when Sri Aurobindo’s birth centenary was being celebrated all over the country, and some of us in the Ashram were discussing the question of Sri Aurobindo’s solutions to the problems of the country. And a group of members of the Ashram were discussing various problems, studying Sri Aurobindo’s works and then writing down in brief the problem and the solution given by Sri Aurobindo. And I had the privilege of reading out to the Mother the solutions given by Sri Aurobindo and Mother was correcting the statements that we were making in regard to the solutions given by Sri Aurobindo. And then, she wanted afterwards that whatever final document we produced (it was a very short document), She wanted the country to know about this document and that it should be spread all over it. And I was to go around the country at that time.

It is this vision of the Mother that inspired me tremendously. First step was, according to the Mother, a Centre of Education; the second step was Auroville; the third India and the world. The ultimate goal is the whole humanity. How does humanity move upwards and arrive at solutions of the problems? When I try to understand this aspect I have always referred to the last prose writings of Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation on the Earth. In these eight chapters which he wrote in 1949, he has put forward a vision. To us it is a vision, but when we read Sri Aurobindo we feel as if whatever he is writing is actually happening. For example he wrote in these chapters a chapter on the divine body. The divine body as an important or a crucial step for the manifestation of the supermind on the earth, and at that time the divine body was already being made ready in his own body. As Mother has said: “Whatever Sri Aurobindo writes is the result of his own experiences.” And then, we will read the Mother’s Agenda, thirteen volumes, it is actually the fabrication of the divine body. Without the divine body? one body at least? which is perfected, where the matter becomes conscious of the indwelling spirit and manifests the spirit, that great task had to be completed. And on the 14th of March 1970 in the Agenda you read Mother’s declaration “The work is done”, and she repeats this statement several times: “The work is done.” That is to say the divine body was ready. She says: “The work that Sri Aurobindo had given to me has been done.” And the work that Sri Aurobindo had given to her was the impregnation, the permeation of the Supramental force in the physical body. And then she says, working it out may take hundreds of years, three hundred years, four hundred years, it does not matter, the work is done.

During the conversations around this time, there is a very important statement that Mother has made and that is that however great, however luminous and powerful one central body would be, there will be a necessity of a collectivity which responds to it. One superman coming on the earth, without that collectivity around, would not be able to accomplish the task. It is very significant that it is around this time, in 1968, that Mother inaugurated this great city, Auroville. And all this has a connection with the statement of the Mother in 1912, Sri Aurobindo’s statement in The Life Divine, the statement on the divine body, and the experiment that Mother made to manifest the divine body. All this is the inner dimension, the basic inner dimension of Auroville.

I think Mother felt a need to create a body, a collectivity which would serve the purpose of receiving the light of the divine body, of organising itself into higher and higher moulds of living? not only of being and thinking and feeling but of living, so that the work of the Supramental Manifestation could move faster and faster, and would succeed. In other words, the most important foundation of Auroville is the Supramental Consciousness. And I think when Mother wrote the invitation to men of goodwill, it is an invitation to all to understand the supermind; to participate in the activity or action of the supermind and to respond to it.

In the book The Supramental Manifestation on Earth, Sri Aurobindo has made a statement in four chapters: Supermind and Humanity, Supermind in the Evolution, Mind of Light, and the last chapter also Supermind and the Mind of Light. These four chapters are directly relevant to the work of Auroville. It is, you might say, the manifesto of Auroville. We are here for the Divine in humanity; the Divine that is moving upward with humanity. That is why the very first article of the Charter of Auroville is that: “To live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine consciousness.” Because that is the basic condition in which the study of the Supermind becomes possible.

I am reminded of the Mother’s vision of the boat, many of us have read it, and I think that Auroville is a boat in which we are all recruited for purposes of training, and that is why Mother spoke in the second article of the Charter of Auroville of perpetual education. We are all under training and we must be here as candidates under training. All our imperfections, our human weaknesses, which particularly here will become manifest more and more because of the pressure… The difficulties, which I see in Auroville, are natural difficulties. There are difficulties of the pressure under which we put ourselves in the process of training. One may become disheartened to see the difficulties but that is one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that we are under training and the sooner we embody more and more the aspiration and the effort to surmount the difficulties, the better and more glorious will be the outcome. But this is one part of what I call the foundational inner dimension. And there is a second aspect of the inner dimension.

The second dimension is the process of our training. Mother spoke of Auroville in two very important statements. One was that humanity has made a big mistake in the production of armaments of destruction. And, she pointed this out in this conversation which is in The Agenda. In 1981 when Mr M’Bow (The then Secretary General of UNESCO, who was a member of Auroville’s International Advisory Council) came to Auroville and when Deepti in a meeting read this statement it inspired Mr M’Bow tremendously, because here Mother had declared the purpose of Auroville — and it puts a tremendous light on the work of Auroville — what I call the process of training in Auroville. She said, that because this mistake has been committed there is a tremendous danger because there is a psychology of the instrument of destruction? Not only of the human beings who possess the instruments of destruction but the psychology of the instruments themselves. And that psychology propels its use. You produce an instrument of war, an instrument of destruction and that instrument by its very existence produces a propulsion: “Use me”. It should be used and this is a tremendous danger. Many people have piled up the armaments with a very pious wish and hope that they will not be used. But this psychology which Mother had explained propels all the time: “Use, use me!” Now, what is the remedy for this? What is it that can counter-act this psychology of the instruments? Mother said, when I was contemplating this question I was told: it is for that purpose I have created Auroville. To counter act this mistake which humanity had made in producing armaments of destruction. How to counter-act? We have to realise that today’s armaments are so deadly that if they are used there will be irremediable destruction — which cannot be remedied afterwards. Not only ecologically but even the instruments of the human body. So, this task is very important and is something that cannot avoid at all. This is the large context in which Auroville exists today. And we are undergoing a training because she said that the very process of the development of Auroville – not only when Auroville will be completed but the process of its development will be a remedy to this psychology of the use of armaments.

And, it is one of the reasons why I feel Auroville has been attacked. The one instrument that Mother has produced here to counter-act all the piles of the armaments, if this instrument can be destroyed then the destruction of mankind will be very easy. Therefore it is a very precious gift which had been given by the Mother. If Auroville can survive, can develop, can move forward the whole of humanity can be saved. And therefore, in fact I am a personal witness, the terrible conflict and struggle that had gone into the process, and at many stages I could see that Auroville could be destroyed. Fortunately, I personally feel that we have passed through that difficult period. Auroville exists! Continuously exists to survive, to develop, to try. And a new consciousness is holding us on, and we are conscious today of the gift that this Auroville is for the mankind. But this gift can continue to survive and continue to develop only on one important condition: service to the Divine Will, discovery of the Divine Will and effective use of our being in the service of the Divine Will.

So, the question is what is the Divine Will? According to many religions Divine’s will is manifested. It is written down in the Bible or the Koran or that kind of a scripture. It is, as it were, revealed once and for all. And the call is to implement what is now known to be the Divine will. But in Sri Aurobindo’s vision there is no book, however great it may be, it may be the Veda, or the Bhagavad Gita, or any other, in which we find an answer to the question as to what is the Divine’s Will? at the highest crest of humanity’s development today. Therefore Sri Aurobindo says: “The sadhaka of the Integral yoga is not the sadhaka of any book, he is the sadhaka of the infinite.” And therefore, every individual who wants to discover the Divine Will may take the help from the past, from all the revelations, but he will not be bound by any one of them. It has to be a fresh discovery. Truth is constantly manifesting and the truth of yesterday is the not the truth of today. And one has to constantly be fresh to discover the truth at every moment.

Now what is the method of discovering the Divine’s Will? The truth is triumphant only when it is fresh. Therefore there should be fresh inquiries every day. And the only method is a synthesis of knowledge, devotion and action. There is a very important sentence in the Bhagavad Gita which brings out the necessity of combining knowledge, devotion and action. In one of the chapter of the Bhagavad Gita it is said: “All my devotees are very dear to me, but, the devotee who combines knowledge with his devotion is particular dear to me — Ativa priya.” And it is mentioned at a point where action is already described as a necessary part of this process and it is explained why this combination is necessary. It is said that only when the three are combined together that immortality is possible? Amritam. It is a very important statement. You may have revelation at any stage without combining knowledge, action and devotion but that will not give you immortality? it may be liberation.

Immortality was a great search of the Veda, Upanishads and the Gita. And it is immortality of which Sri Aurobindo speaks now in his writings. The conquest of death, not only by going above the death because that is also one of the conquests, when death does not affect you, but the elimination of the principle of death which can be achieve when you combine these three aspects. Intensification of cognition, conation and affection? the three powers of our psychology. To intensify them, to purify them, to combine them together progressively, potently. This particular movement is a movement that Sri Aurobindo describes in a very important chapter in The Synthesis of Yoga, connected with Karma yoga, where he describes the works of knowledge, the works of love and the works of life force. When the three activities in which we are constantly engaged can be constantly utilised by us as a sacrifice, as an offering to the Divine, then love, knowledge and action can be combined and we discover the Divine’s Will.

In very simple terms, once Mother has explained to me, when I had to give a message from her to some group. She told me to give a message from her: “We are here to discover and execute the Divine’s Will.” And then she said you tell them how to discover the Divine’s will, and she said, when you go above all desire, the root of the desire, all preferences, then only are you fit to discover the Divine’s Will. To my mind the second inner dimension of Auroville is connected with this. While doing every activity we offer it to the Divine in search of the Divine’s Will, so that we can serve it by offering our preferences. In fact, it is easier to give up desire but preferences are extremely difficult? our preferred idea particularly, to offer the preferred idea. The preferred idea to which you arrived after a lot of consideration, and when you arrive at a conclusion then to give it up.

We have for example Mother’s statement as to how at one stage, between 1926 and 28, she was creating a new world and she was inviting the gods on the earth so the new world can be built. And she had prepared the whole strategy and every aspect of it and then she offered it to Sri Aurobindo and he said -it is a very interesting statement-that he appreciated her work very much and that it would make her very celebrated in the world, but then he added: “But this is not our work. We want the Truth in its entirety. We want the supramental Truth not the overmind Truth.” And when she had heard Sri Aurobindo, she went to her room and simply destroyed the whole strategy that she had prepared. It is this attitude of surrender, that all our preferred ideas, all that we have prepared if it is necessary, if we find it is not the Divine’s Will, to be able to give it up. To my mind the second inner dimension of Auroville is this fire in us, a constant fire which is in search of the Divine’s Will, which wants to offer every idea, every wish which is personal to us, which does not bear the imprint of the Divine Will. This is what I call a training. We are here for a period, for a great stage of training.

The third is… This is the outer manifestation of Auroville: the organisation of Auroville. A progressive organisation because we do not know what is the ideal organisation. It is to be worked out. We have guidelines, we have glimpses of what is to be, but how it will work out we do not as yet know. To be in search of an ideal organisation, inwardly devoted to this task, very sincerely. Our organisation should be such that it does not prevent, that it does not become an obstacle for the free growth of the Spirit. How to avoid mechanisation of life? How to avoid routinisation of life? How to make life constantly fresh? This is our search.

Fortunately, Mother has given detailed guidelines on this subject. Sri Aurobindo has given detailed ideas on this. Even recently an Aurovilian wrote a note to me in which he quoted a passage from the Mother. When an American had come to see the Ashram and yet made many remarks about the inadequacies of the processes of the organisation of the Ashram. And how Sri Aurobindo came to the Mother and said to her to write down and gave a guidance to what is the ideal way of organising. Since I do not remember every word of it I will not repeat myself but I suggest that this is a very important passage that Carel has discovered in the writings of the Mother and it should be given to everyone, because while we are trying to make a new organisation this statement is very important.

Once Mother had told me, I do not have a set of pigeonholes in which I can then put pigeons. That is the normal mental method of organisation. You develop constantly with the fire and with the will a constant burning goodwill which simply says: truth, harmony, goodwill, discipline. In fact these are the four words which Mother has written in a message which I find in the Matrimandir. Very beautiful? goodwill, harmony, discipline, truth. If you keep in mind this proposition, all the time, these terms in all your activities and allow them to flow then gradually the ideal form of organisation will emerge. And this has a tremendous effect because the whole world today is at a halting point. The whole world is moving round and round without an issue, without a solution because the world does not know how to organise itself. The organisational problem is extremely important. If you can therefore develop an organisation with this kind of fashioning tool, a burning goodwill then it will be very useful for the whole of mankind. This is according to me the third inner dimension of the city that is in making.

Thank you.

Spring 2001

On Super School

Before you all leave I want to tell you that we are now building up Super School. We are sitting today in a Super School. This is the Hall of Super School. I am very keen that all of you from today graduate into Super School. You have left the Last School. You have gone into Super School!

And I want to tell you what I mean by Super School.

This is my interpretation.

Mother has given the word "Super School". She has not said what it means. We can only try to understand. So I want your participation in that sharing. We will all enquire, what is this word "Super School" that Mother has used? So I have been making a research for the last several months now. In fact right from the time that I came to you first, I was as it were, blessed by all of you and I felt a Grace on me, that I am now given a chance to make a research. You know whenever you have chance to make a research you should think you are blessed, because all life is to be a research. So I felt very greatly blessed and for which I have to thank you again and again for it is you who gave me the chance of research.

And I found that what I was doing in these sessions with you was already Super School. It is like Harpagon. You know the story of Molière, isn’t it? Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Harpagon discovered that what he was speaking was already prose and he found out that what he was speaking was already prose! Similarly, when this word "Super School" came — Deepti brought to me what Mother had written. At that time I did not even know that Mother had written the word "Super School" and in that document Mother had written only five terms: Last School, After School 1, After School 2, After School 3, Super School and No School. So I came to know of it only a few months ago. And then I enquired as to what it is, that I was doing with all of you, I discovered that I was already doing Super School.

Super School I discovered is to my mind — at least at present tentatively — a school. First of all it is a school. And school is what? A school is a place of schooling. And what does schooling mean? Schooling is a place where students are helped. In comparison to that, No School is a place where students are not helped. They are left to themselves. You do everything yourself. You discover all yourself. There is no school. So if we are in a Super School it means that you are in a school where a lot of help is being given — as I am bringing in Parmenides, his statement which you may not know and which you will take a long time to find if you have to do it yourself. But here you are given help. Somebody who has read this for the last forty years is getting a chance to bring it to your notice, saying look there is a big treasure here, and this one sentence here, this jewel, is a very important jewel, he brings it to you and gives it to you. So this is schooling. Schooling is a place where lot of help is given.

But help about what? Help about higher realms of thought and action. You can help children in writing the alphabet that is also help. That is also schooling. But here, in Super School, you are given help in the higher realm of thought and action. So this is one mark of it being a Super School. We are now dealing with the higher and highest thought. In fact, just now we did the highest thought that can be envisaged. So we are dealing with the higher and highest thought; that is our main content. That is the mark that we are now in a Super School, dealing with higher thought and action.

Then, in giving you help, there is a kind of a speed; a Super School is to ride on a galloping horse. A horse which is galloping neither trotting, nor cantering but galloping. You go from what is written in the Twentieth Century to Fifth Century BC. At one stroke you were taken as it were, from one point to the other at a gallop. And again you come back to the present day — by gallop. The speed is galloping. You are summarizing the whole store of thought as quickly as possible, with a tremendous speed.

What Mother has said in the third article of the Charter, it is a tremendous task. "Taking advantage of all the past discoveries" — unless you gallop you cannot do it because Mother also wants you to spring towards the future, because if you take all the time only in galloping and assimilating the past, there is no time for the future. So we have got to gallop very fast.

The speed with which we are going to do our work will be a very super speed. Like a Japanese train. The bullet train. In fact the mark of any achievement of a higher level is measured by, the speed. The quicker you can move spontaneously, the better is the sign of your great progress, already achieved. Little children can progress little by little by little by little. But as you move forward the mark whether you belong to a higher level or not is this — whether you can make galloping speed.

After studying you for the last six months, I then told Deepti that you belong to higher education already. This is my judgment on all of you because what I was talking to you I could not have talked and I tell you that I did not come to talk to you with any prepared plan. I just sat with you and allowed my mind to tune in with you and speak what I felt could be absorbed by you. And I found myself so happy that I could speak at the highest level that I could think of. Therefore it was to me a mark that you all belong to higher education. Whether you pass exams or don’t pass exams, I don’t mind. For me examination is not the measure of your achievement. The fact that you are absorbing these higher levels of thought automatically proves that you belong to higher education.

Super School is a place where you are aided, you need aid. You still do not belong to a stage where I can say now you need no school. You don’t belong to that level. You will belong to that level and we are preparing you in such a way that you will be able to say one day that we don’t want you. Bye bye. We shall move forward ourselves. And we wait for that happy day when that will come. But now you need help. So this place is a place where you expect a great deal of help. I am giving long lectures. If it were No School, perhaps you would not need any lectures at all. But at present I am deliberately giving long lectures because I want to gallop very fast. As if I want to fly with you and go far and then I want to leave you. I will say now you can fly yourselves. This is my aspiration.

So I am talking you to a field, which is supposed to be very difficult. Even great philosophers do not read The Life Divine. This is a very difficult book. But I want to read with you this very book because it will take us to very, very far off regions and very quickly I want to do it. What I want from you is a great readiness to fly and if you are tired any time, please tell me very frankly. Because I should stop — for that moment we shall fly slowly. Because I don’t want that you should suddenly say that now I won’t come at all. No, I want you to be with me all the time. Even if you are slow, I shall slow myself down and go slowly with you. Even if it takes many years it does not matter. But we shall do this course, regularly and assiduously. If I ask you to study please study nicely. Be prepared, don’t be tired. That is all I ask, don’t be tired. We want to rise to very high levels of thought and action. We want to do this very speedily and we want to prepare you for No School. Till that time we shall be with you.

I have said therefore that the program of this Super School is the following. We shall concentrate upon two great books. The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga. The Life Divine is the highest book of thought and The Synthesis of Yoga is the highest book of action. So these are the two focuses of our work. At the same time, to understand these two books we have to assimilate the whole past — in its essentials at least. Therefore I have said, to begin with, I want to give six lectures on Western Philosophy, six lectures on Indian Philosophy, six lectures on World History and six lectures on Economics — at least six lectures so that you can enter into the field. We shall have some kind of cyclical movement and then you will find yourself better and better equipped to read these two great books.

You should be able to read these two books by yourself basically. So even now I am trying to have you read basically without my telling you and asking questions to you in such a way that you read yourself and tell me the answers. That will be our style of studying.

This is a book called General Knowledge book. Don’t be frightened because we will not study this book at all. But it only shows that if you want to appear for highest examinations then of course this book is necessary. As I told you I don’t want you to appear in examination at all, but as an amusement we should be prepared to read such a book. As an amusement, there is no compulsion at all but in due course it may take four years, five years, six years, , doesn’t matter, time is enough. In any case some of the very interesting part of the book should come to you as soon as possible.

So there is no fixed program, no syllabus, nothing, no examination. I would like you swim freely in the field of wide knowledge of the world. And then I have told you that whatever you are interested in — of you are artists, some are physical educationists, some of you are musicians — I would like you to specialize in all this. It is a part of Super School. I would like everybody to have some skills. And I have told you that one skill that you should possess is speedwriting. As students of Super School you should all be able to do speedwriting. Either stenography, shorthand or you find your own system of shorthand, but you should be able to take notes very quickly. It is one skill which is absolutely indispensable. So do it. Capacity to summarise, capacity to report, these are some of the skills which you should develop. So whether you are taught or not on your own you should do this, so you will gain real confidence when you are able to summarise. After finishing the first Chapter I shall tell you to summarise. And don’t worry I shall summarise with you. It is not as if you will be left without aid, I shall work with you to summarise the whole Chapter.

Apart from that you should have some other skills in which you are interested. Right from gardening to cooking to brick-making or architecture. There are so many things in Auroville, so many skills are manifested, kindly look out and see what you would like to do, that you must develop skills. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of four aspects of your personality — Wisdom, Heroism or Courage, Harmony and Skill. We want each student to develop these four things. In his own some way, in her own way, at once own speed, but ultimately at the end of Super School you should feel that you have sufficiently shape your personality in these four directions.

So this is the programme of Super School that I have so far discovered and I am sharing with you. We should still discover more, may be that our programme will become longer and longer, but that doesn’t matter, without any restrain of time or space we fly higher. Alright. Good!

Auroville Education - After School 1, 2 and 3 (28 April 2000)

Auroville Education - After School 1, 2 and 3

28 April 2000

In answer to a question.…

.. I personally think that for younger children when lot of help is needed there is a need of schooling. The word schooling means a place where you need lot of help and lot of help is given.

This is my interpretation because Mother has not written what is Last School, what is After School and so on. This is my interpretation which is to be given, the interpretation of somebody who has thought over it. It may be helpful so I am not putting any authoritative statement on this subject. It is only my own research

I think that the kindergarten is already no school. Children are free, they can do whatever they like, and it is very pleasant. In fact, everybody agrees all over the world that kindergarten schools are the best schools. Children are so happy, they can do whatever they like, they swim- here for example you have got a swimming pool for younger children which is a very rare thing, even anywhere in the world. But you have such beautiful experiences that you might say it is no school.

But then when you come to Transition, the kind of experience that you have got is also very good. The structure that you have created is neither a structure nor that kind of complete wildness which happens in some of the progressive schools in the world. It is a very good blend, and the possibility has been helped by the architectural design. What I call hall of culture and laboratories are already combined as it were in each classroom. This is what I would call a place where schooling is needed but as a last school, because that the children know that after this schooling will become less and less. Because when you begin to grow and you need less help, then you need to have a new kind of structure. So I would say actually, in term of these words, that Transition school should be really called Last School. It is a last school. It is a good schooling because all things have been taught in a way where the freedom and structure are very well blended. I think that you have done something that is excellent. It is why the idea came to me that you should have somebody to report on the research that has been done in the emergence of Transition school. It is a beautiful school I tell you. Every child is happy, every child. For example, there is one girl who was writing a story and she said: “I don’t want anybody near me. I have to write a story and think.” She was allowed to sit alone at her table. This freedom is rarely obtained anywhere. A child who would say: “I want to write alone in my own small table...” So, first of all a child who is able to express this wish, her own decision that she needs solitude so much so that even when you are present she hardly looks at you is unusual. We were present in the classroom. She hardly looked at us. She wrote very seriously... So, I suggest that you should now have somebody to report, somebody who will interview the teachers and students and makes a good report of fifty, sixty, eighty, hundred pages on how this has emerged. But don’t disturb it, don’t make more structures side by side than there is now. It is very well done; it is a kind of optimum level that has been reached. I would really call this Last School. In the sense that I would tell the children as they grow up towards the class 6 to 8 or whatever, that now you will learn more and more by yourself.

It is a last school. Not that you don’t jump immediately from last school to no school. So I am very happy that Mother has spoken of three schools in between: After School 1, After School 2 and After School 3. After school is something which corresponds to what children do at home in regards to homework. After school is a time for homework, for what the children do for homework?

What I find, for example, in Deepti’s school, which is called Last School, is exactly this. Every child is doing his homework. There is so much of individuality, so much of doing by oneself. The kind of drawings they have done

I must tell you it is something you should exhibit in Auroville in a very central place so that everybody can see the line of drawings and painting that they have done — such beautiful things. It will be amazing. I would really say that somebody should photograph and keep them in your archives. It is very important.

So I conceive that what is done actually in Last School is what is should be named After School. Not Last School but After School because it is what children are doing when they are at home. When you want to individualize everybody in that school. It is a real freedom there is no structure as it were, which perfectly corresponds to the needs of the children at that stage. They can read by themselves, they can write by themselves. You know on the lower level you need to teach the children how to read and write — unless they need no reading and writing otherwise how can they do work on their own. They need lot of schooling before that, so I would say that from class 1 to 8 should be called Last School.

Then after you should have After School. But Mother has spoken of three stages, and I was wondering what these three stages correspond to. In any case what is done here at Last School is one of the three stages of After School.

Intervention not audible.

We have to see. I am not proposing anything. It is up to the teachers here what they decide to do, but if you ask me, I would like to give the name of Last School to the present Transition school. I would like to give the name of After School 3 to present Last School. What is being done in After School that is for me After School 1. The school Center for Further Learning I would name it After School 2. And this one which is Last School now After School 3.

You see the progression. From the blend of structure and freedom in the classes of Transition school you come to another kind of structure — it is more like tuition which is given, like tutors who are teaching children at home. It is what I call After School 1. When I visited the school Center for Further Learning which is such a beautiful school I saw there is lot of freedom there and there is some structure.

Then I came to Last School which is really After School 3. And now I am taking classes with the students there and I find that what I am doing is Super School.

This is a novel experience for me because I was wondering what is Super School? And I find that the class that I am giving to them again involves a lot of teaching and there is no freedom. It is Super School. So I was wondering what are the characteristics of Super School First of all, the subjects that you are teaching must be of a high level, therefore super. Secondly, you are not actually schooling them but preparing them to learn higher subjects by themselves. It is schooling, but the purpose here is to enable students to follow higher studies by themselves.

It is only a kind of a preparation. So still schooling is needed. And third in this process of preparing you don’t trot or canter, you gallop. Therefore at Super School the speed with which you prepare them is not a slow, gradual development. You take subjects of such nature that even if you give hundred lectures it is galloping.

As Mother said to prepare for studying The Life Divine you need ten years of preparation. This can be bridged you might say — bridged to some extent — if you are at Super School, if you have the possibility of meeting students for two hours, three, four hours at a stretch and you can engage them and take them.

For example I cover logic and which I have done in six months, in only two days which is like galloping. You go from one idea to the other. Because you know, most of the time in ordinary colleges, courses are lay down, periods are fixed, teachers come in their own way, many students are not attentive, you have to repeat so much, so it takes such a long time. But if you have students like this who are prepared — those who have gone to After School because they are ready to learn a lot by themselves so that their attention, their consciousness is already developed, then you can gallop in your movements. This is a personal new experience in my life; how you can teach a large number of subjects. First of all I made a survey of the different subjects which are been studied in the world, a very brief and rapid survey. And I fixed in this large survey where philosophy comes, where logic comes, where epistemology comes, where cosmology comes, what is metaphysics and how logic has to be seen in The Life Divine. If you want to study logic what is the process of ratiocination, what is the process of application of the law of identity, of the law of contradiction, law of extreme middle, law of sufficient reason. Now all this can be rapidly gone over as Sri Aurobindo said.

I have been very much aided by one sentence of Sri Aurobindo: “You should take the children rapidly to that which is the most interesting in the subject” This sentence is very important and I found in Super School you should have such methods of learning, such processes of learning where the children gallop from one point to the other and go straight to the thing that is very interesting. Super School is a place where you need lot of schooling with regard to very high subjects, very difficult subjects and then you go as fast as possible, as rapidly as possible, you take the students to the heart of the matter as it where which is the most, interesting part of the whole subject.

So I would suggest that the students of Last School could now go into Super School and then they can be trained to enter into No School/ where one does not need schooling anymore.

This is how I understand what Mother had written. This is my present interpretation. You have today in Auroville Last School, After School 1, 2, 3, and now developing Super School which can then prepared at No School, and it is exactly what Mother has written. Isn’t it? It is how I understand and therefore now to answer to your question about growth and structure I feel that at every stage if you have architectural design in such a way that ball of culture and laboratories are or there for shorter period or longer period and it is a teacher who will observe all this. This is the only structure I will plead for. All right.

Value-Oriented Education at the Tertiary Level

VALUE-ORIENTED EDUCATION

at the

TERTIARY LEVEL

A PROJECT OF educational RESEARCH

SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE

OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

AUROVILLE

It is often argued that while value-oriented education is important at the elementary and secondary levels of education, it is not required at the tertiary level. It has been urged that values can be taught or caught when children are young, and when they are grown up they have already a formed character, and education in character development at a higher level is therefore unnecessary. But this argument misses the point that it is only at the tertiary level that one can institute a critical examination of the concept of values and how values can be inculcated in the personality. In fact a critical examination of values is by itself an important part of value-oriented education. Values which are simply transmitted without examination can only result in some kind of dogmatism or even indoctrination. Therefore value-oriented education is absolutely essential at the tertiary level.

Considering, therefore, the importance of value-oriented education, one can think of two kinds of courses at the tertiary level. One course could be common to all students of undergraduate level. In addition, there could be a special course of value-oriented education which could even be called a course in applied philosophy.

We may suggest that the programme that we have indicated for classes I to XII could be presented in a different fashion so that the content of school education in regard to value-orientation could be examined by students of undergraduate level. A critical examination would be relevant also in respect of the questions of the aim of human life.

Study of the aim of human life can be viewed under four headings:

1. The supra-cosmic aim of life;
2. The supra-terrestrial aim of life;
3. Cosmic-terrestrial aim of life; and
4. Integral aim of life.

Secondly, one could discuss the question of relativity and subjectivity of values and how values have changed from time to time and from country to country. In this connection, one can introduce the question of definition of values and distinction between moral and spiritual values, as also values related to aesthetic and emotional life and values of intellectual and physical culture. Ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity could also be studied at this stage.

The study of values in relation to the psychology of development of human personality could also be important, and it could be suggested that the following ideas which are essential for the development of personality could be a subject matter of a detailed study, namely:

1. Ego, memory and self; Indian and Western views;
2. Planes and parts of the being;
3. Inconscient, subconscient, physical, vital, rational, aesthetic, ethical, psychic, spiritual, supramental and transcendental.

Next, there could be a discussion on the multiple personalities in man and conflicts within man and how these conflicts can be resolved by harmonization of personality. The question of free will and determinism can also be discussed in this connection.

There are also other aspects of personality which need to be studied in this connection. These relate to multi-dimensional personality, balanced personality and personality of equanimity. There is also in India a concept of four-fold personality of Wisdom, Power, Harmony and Skill.

One part of the important concept of value, which should be examined at the higher level, is that of the relationship between science and values. Here one could study the nature of the scientific thinking and pursuit of the value of Truth through science. There is also the contention that just as there is science which deals with the knowledge of the outer universe, even so there is a science which relates to the domain of inner universe. Both these sciences need to be harmonised.

At present there is a new subject which is coming up in the forefront, and that is the theme of consciousness. This subject should be introduced with a special emphasis on the relationship between body and mind, and also the study of the body and mind as the science of yoga looks upon them. This subject can also be studied in the context of evolution, and it can be argued that evolution does not stop merely at the evolution of man and that there is a possibility of mutation of species.

What is called philosophy of religion could also be a part of the curriculum at the tertiary level. It is here that certain features of universal religions could be studied with the methods of comparative studies. Particularly we may emphasise the study of Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism. Along with these religions, there should be a detailed study of the lives of great personalities associated with these religions, or various systems of yoga such as Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed, Guru Nanak, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo. What is called psychology of religion and spirituality could also be studied at least at the elementary level, and here the emphasis could be on the study of psychology of worship and prayer, psychology of action without desire, psychology of concentration including that of meditation and contemplation. Yoga and psychology of spiritual experiences could also be included such as those of liberation from ego, cosmic consciousness, transcendental consciousness and spiritual transformation.

Along with the subject of science and values, one could also have in this programme the study of art and values, and in this connection, the following questions could be discussed:

1. What is art?
2. How is ant viewed in India and the West?
3. Six limbs of Indian art: Rupa Bheda, Pramaana, Bhava, Lavanya, Sadrishya, Varnikabhanga.
4. Art and the pursuit of the value of Beauty in relation to poetry, music, painting, architecture, dance and drama. Important illustrations on these themes could also be provided.

Another important subject which could be proposed is that of environment and values, and the following themes can be discussed:

1. The present trend towards depletion of environment and likely consequences which would be injurious to the species on the earth, including human species. In this connection various attitudes towards environment which are present in Indian culture and ancient culture could also be emphasised.
2. The subject of harmony with Nature and love of vegetable and animal kingdom also could be stressed.

Finally, special studies should be made for physical culture and its values. This study should include the concept of health, strength, agility, grace and beauty. One could also introduce here the concept of ideal sportsman and sportswoman, and one could explain the specific contribution that can be made for the promotion of values of physical culture through gymnastics, athletics, aquatics, martial arts and games.

A programme for value-oriented education at the tertiary level should also include a special study of Indian culture and Indian system of values. It should also include the study of Indian religion and spirituality, Indian ethics and Indian concept of dharma, Indian literature, Indian art, Indian architecture, and Indian polity.

It may be suggested that these programmes can be spread over three years of courses and can be common for all the disciplines, whether of arts or science or commerce or all other theoretical or practical studies.

Quality Improvement

Directions to Teachers: How to observe students and how to guide students −

Some special hints that result from the application of methods of psychological and value-oriented development are suggested here:

(a) It may first be noted that good many children are under the influence of inner psychic presence which shows itself very distinctly at times in their spontaneous reactions and even in their words. All spontaneous turning to love, truth, beauty, knowledge, nobility, heroism is sure sign of the psychic influence.

(a) To recognize these reactions and to encourage them wisely and with a psychic feeling would be the first indispensable step.

(b) The best qualities to develop in children are:

sincerity perseverance honesty peace straightforwardness calm cheerfulness self-control courage self-mastery disinterestedness truth patience harmony endurance liberty

(c) These qualities are taught infinitely better by examples than by beautiful speeches.

(d) The undesirable impulses and habits should not be treated harshly. The child should not be scolded. Particularly, care should be taken not to rebuke a child for a fault which

(e) one commits oneself. Children are very keen and clear-sighted observers; they soon find out the educator’s weaknesses and note them without pity.

(f) When a child makes a mistake, one must see that he confesses it to the teacher or the guardian spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed it he should be made to understand with kindness and affection what was wrong in the movement and that he should not repeat it. A fault confessed must be forgiven.

(g) The child should be encouraged to think of wrong impulses not as a sign of offences but as symptoms of a curable disease alterable by a steady and a sustained effort of the will falsehood being rejected and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by sacrifice, malice by love.

(h) Great care should be taken to see that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the overflowing of excessive strength, greatness and nobility.

(i) An affection that is firm yet gentle, clearly, and sufficiently practical knowledge will create bonds of trust that are indispensable for the educator to make the education of a child effective.

(j) When a child asks question, he should not be answered by saying that it is stupid or foolish, or that the answer will not be understood by him. Curiosity cannot be postponed, and an effort must be made to answer questions truthfully and in such a way as to make the answer comprehensible to his mental capacity.

(k) The teacher should ensure that the child gradually begins to be aware of the psychological centre of his being, the psychic being, the inner seat of the highest truth of our existence.

(l) With that growing awareness, the child should be taught to concentrate on this presence and make it more and more a living fact.

(m) The child should be taught that whenever there is an inner uneasiness, he should not pass it off and try to forget it, but should attend to it, and try to find out by an inner observation the cause of the uneasiness, so that it can be removed by inner or other methods.

(b) The second aspect, which is related to interdisciplinary presentation, demands a larger point of view. Every subject has connections with a number of other subjects, and the quality of education improves when the teacher is able to relate a given topic with topics in other disciplines, and when the teacher can place a given topic in the prospective of the vast or holistic universe of discourse.

There is, today, a great tension in the education system, which arises from two apparently opposing tendencies. The first tendency counsel us, to provide to students wider and wider perspective. The second tendency is to to lead the student, as soon as possible, to become a specialist and thus to narrow down the focus of the study, Both tendencies are useful, but when we try to synthesize these two tendencies, we arrive at a kind of a compromise, which is quite injurious to the psychological health of the learner. In the interest of widening the horizon of knowledge, we tend to prescribe increasing number of subjects, and in the interest of specialization, we tend to put in the curriculum of each subject unbearably high load of contents.

Education thus tends to be a more and burdensome, and when this system is examination-oriented, students tend to study by taking recourse to memorizing instead of patience process of understanding and comprehending.

Quality improvement demands a satisfactory solution to this problem.

Structural changes in the curriculum as also methodological changes are required to effect actually satisfactory solution. In the mean time, however, a new programme of quality improvement can be suggested in this context, and this programme would consist of creating a room for one hour per week during which special lectures could be arranged in connection with what can be described as a Course in General Knowledge. This General Knowledge Course could serve as an introduction to a Paper, which is generally included in the Civil Service Examinations conducted by Public Service Commissions in connection with testing a candidate’s familiarity with important domains of knowledge, public affairs, and important events of Indian History and World History. In addition to this, it may also be suggested that during this proposed hour, the education institutions can present to the students varieties of programmes of educational films, dramas, story-telling, dance programmes, music programmes and programmes connected with elocution, recitation and appreciation of poetry. Programmes of demonstration of interesting and instructive experiments relating to physics, chemistry and biology also could be included. Programmes that would stimulate explorations, discoveries and inventions could also be conceived and presented.