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The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. |
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Fall 2003 trip to Auroville, Hyderabad, and Pondicherry India |
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Contents India calls. India's great poet, politician and seer Sri Aurobindo called India the spiritual heart center of the earth, with its incomparable tradition of saints, visionaries and spiritual paths. India repels. Everything - death, beggars, filth, poverty, air polution, piles of garbage, polluted rivers and seashores - everything is out in the open, parading by, assaulting the senses, the conventions, the morality of the visitor. Where would you look? The inner life of the spirit that has produced some of the world's greatest scriptures, visionaries and art? The grinding poverty of the untouchables, the smog, the pervasive corruption, the crowding? Or both, the bright and the ugly, the spiritual wealth and the material poverty, the warmth and friendliness of the people or the theft and corruption rampant? India is on the move. It's people, more than a billion of them, with living cultures reaching back several millennia, are stretching vigorously into the 21st century. This India log is a record of my third journey to India, this time with a group of 18 people, many from Barbara Marx Hubbard's Gateway process, who answered India's call. My old friend, Prapanna Smith, John Robert Cornell Related Links Foundation for Conscious Evolution 
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Pondicherry First Day I am sitting outside the main Ashram building waiting for Prapanna. This morning our group boarded a rented bus for our first visit to Pondicherry, a growing seaport about 6 km south of Auroville. Pondicherry is known internationally as the home of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The rest of the group is going on the Ashram tour. Since I've been here before, I'm skipping the tour to take care of some other business.
Outside the main building, Pondicherry is a steady heartbeat of activity, softer here in the Ashram quarter of the city where the buildings and streets are clean. Everything has a soft core. The dirt and chaos of the other quarters of the city are gone. Inside, a gold light swirls, mixes with the darkness. The crows cry hoarsely. The sky is brightly overcast. I met Ashok in front of the Ashram building before going inside. I brought him some electronic recording equipment from the US. He is tall, balding with gray hair on the sides and a beautiful smile. He went to the Ashram school with Hemant Abbu, brother of Arvind, an intense, brilliant friend from the past. Ashok records and mixes music for the Ashram composer Shobhadi. The Pondicherry ashram community, like Auroville, is alive with artistic expression of all kinds: music, dance, painting, drama, poetry. I just saw Richard ride by on his scooter, a little smile on his face. It's the first familiar face I have seen in Pondy. I almost didn't get back to Auroville this afternoon. The bus carrying the rest of the group left while I was having lunch in the Ashram dining room with my ashramite friend Lynn. Prapanna just happened to notice that I wasn't on the bus and came back on his motorcycle to look for me. At lunch I told Lynn the story that Prapanna told me last night about an interesting pair of visitors to the integral education school he has started in San Diego. When the landlord called last spring to let him know that they would not renew the building lease, a bird flew into the classroom, circled around several times, and then flew out. After much searching, the school's staff found a new site and celebrated with an open house for parents and students in the new location. During the festivities, a small bird flew in and circled around the main room. This area had been open before for many hours during remodeling without any such visitor. Obviously frightened, the little fellow found his way into Prapanna's office and landed in a potted plant. There he put his head under his wing and went to sleep. Prapanna found him there, almost invisible on a branch of the plant. He had found a resting place. Perhaps the school has, too. Prapanna took some video of the little guy perched on the plant in his office. Then he thanked the bird for the message and took the plant outside so that the messenger could fly back home. On the way back to Auroville, a young man in the road tried to lean into the motorcycle as we sped by. Prapanna dodged him and remarked that the man could demand money from the "rich Americans" if he were hit. We arrive back at Pour Tous, the temporary administrative center of Auroville, to set up credit accounts for the group to use in the town. The office is closed. Siesta time. Next the motorcycle refuses to start. We push it in the sultry heat into the village of Kuilapalayam and past the bakery to New Creation Corner Restaurant. An old woman who hangs out near the cycles and scooters approaches to beg. When we leave, I notice an Aurovillian handing her a piece of bread from the restaurant. The motorcycle still won't start. Finally a boy, about 10, at the New Creation Cycle Shop takes the cycle from Prapanna with a grin, adjusts a screw on the engine, and the cycle coughs to life. The guys at the cycle shop direct us to another community, Fraternity, to rent motorcycles and scooters for the group. We wander down a dirt road and stop at a house to ask directions. A Tamil woman doesn't understand what we are asking nor does a man working in the yard. The woman disappears into the house. Soon a little girl with dark skin, about 7, clad only in panties, but with a dignified, almost regal manner about her, comes out of the house. "What do you want?" she asks in perfect English. She gives precise directions to the cycle rental, still a couple of blocks and turns-in-the-road away. Prapanna compliments her on her English. "Thank you," she says without a smile and turns and walks with calm deliberation back into the house. We look at each other. Wow! With that kind of bearing already, what will she be like when she grows up! I rent a scooter from Fraternity and we ride back to Verite. I am starting to remember my way around the back roads of Auroville again. Soon the guys from the Fraternity bike shop bring scooters for other members of the group. We will probably double up, as some people don't want to drive. Several of us set out on a trial run for people new to scooters and Indian traffic. Kathleen takes one, Ron takes another. Janette rides on the back of my scooter. We will go back to Fraternity to rent a scooter for her. Before we get to the blacktop road to Kuilapalayam, Kathleen has already wiped out twice, bruising her hip and leg. We are cruising along on the blacktop now, and Janette looks back. Kathleen and Ron are out of sight again. Dodging a big truck on the narrow road, Kathleen has bumped an old Tamil man, knocking him down. When we get back to the scene, they have already paid him off, but he is campaigning for more. Prapanna pulls up, too. Kathleen is shaken and frustrated with her clumsiness on the scooter, so we regroup. Janette takes Kathleen's scooter and Kathleen rides with me. No more wipeouts. We get to the turnoff for Fraternity when it starts to sprinkle. Monsoon season has just arrived. Time to head back to our home base.
The first time to the inner chamber of Matrimandir, you just get to peek in. Then you have to walk the 4 blocks back to the entrance station if you want to request a meditation pass. The caretakers of Matrimandir do this to weed out the throngs of tourists that come to Auroville these days just out of curiosity. Half a million came last year. One has to make that extra effort to spend time concentrating in the inner chamber. Most people don't bother. Most are satisfied with that one glimpse of this white chamber of silence. After dinner, John and Carolyn finally do their opening ceremony for the group. We have been together since Monday evening, but haven't officially "opened" yet. The journey itself has taken up our time until now. During the ceremony we invoke humanity's spiritual teachers, saints, and guides. We renew our intention for the trip and offer our gifts. A recognition ceremony ends the meeting, greeting each other one at a time silently with heart. I remember Katherine Roske's wonderful laughing eyes. Both of the Roske's are lovely and loving beings. Carolyn is a high being. John seems a little lost right now. I discover later that he is in a lot of physical pain, as well as in a new and strange culture. Prapanna has love in his eyes. Some people are closer and more available, others are more distant and inaccessible. After the ceremony, I head for the showers. The two indoor showers are occupied. Mosquitos wait at the outdoor ones at this time of evening. Maybe tomorrow. It's been a long day.
Auroville Tour The liquid whistling chorus of the jungle begins a little after my alarm sounds this morning at 5:30. I get clean in one of the outside showers, exciting a crowd of mosquitos, the most I have seen so far. I volunteer for breakfast duty with Rajavini and Bharat. They are playing popular Tamil romance music on the tape player in the kitchen. Rajavini manages the female village workers at Verité. Bharat is an architect currently living at Verité. Verité has a pioneering bent toward sustainable living. It operates on 12 volt, solar-generated electricity. They have many photovoltaic panels and several banks of batteries to store the electricity. After breakfast I get a little laundry washed - Verité doesn't want the Tamil workers to wash our underwear. I didn't ask why but I can guess. The Tamil culture is quite conservative, especially when it comes to women's clothing. Then we head out with Ross, an Australian Aurovillian for the first day of the Auroville tour. Prapanna has arranged three days of tour for us. Auroville, with its wide forests and unmarked paths, is unknown even to long time residents like Abbe, an American teacher living here. She is coming along to help with the tour and to learn. Ross shows us a magnificent video of Auroville at the Visitor Center. Lunch there also. Clear and engaging talk on Sri Aurobindo's philosophy by Bindu, an Indian Aurovillian. Sri Aurobindo's cosmology is vast and wide and modern, but with roots reaching back into India's ancient spiritual realizations. It is the inspiration for Auroville. And Bindu is like an emanation of Mahalakshmi, so beautiful, elegant, precise.
Ross takes us to the American student guest house. Auroville, the city of human unity, intends to have pavilions representing all of the nations of the world in its international zone. This first building of the American pavilion is still unfinished, and we begin some intense discussion about the pavilion plan. For example, whether it is to be the Pavilion of the Americas or if there should be separate pavilions for each nation state. How the Aurovillian ideal of human unity relates to the current division of the world into separate nations. Whether the guest house as constructed represents the soul or genius of the American people. Storm clouds are coming up. They toy with us on the way over to the Tibetan pavilion. Meenakshi is there, Tamil poet and educator, a calm, wise, dignified presence. It's very good to have visionary Tamil individuals like her connected to Auroville. They help bridge the gap between the Westerners and the Tamil villagers in the Auroville area. Meenakshi is working here today. A weekend training that she organized for teachers from the surrounding villages is in session now. We make it to Bharat Nivas, the Indian pavilion, before the deluge begins. It pours! Lightning and cracking thunder punctuate more intense conversation about Auroville and the world situation on the huge, circular open porch at Bharat Nivas. American foreign policy, Aurovillian politics, Indian culture and spirituality - it's a wide open forum. When the rain lets up, we slide and ford our way back to Verité through the mud and potholes on our scooters. Katherine and Carolyn ride back on the same scooter. They are giggling and grinning from the adventure. I finally get connected to the net across the road at the lovely Afsanah Guest House and send my first email to Karen since arriving. Tomorrow I need to make travel arrangements for the trip to and from the inland city of Hyderabad early next month. I am combining business (Hyderabad) with my personal pilgrimage (Auroville and Pondicherry) this time.
Adventures All Day I am awake at 2:30 am this morning needing to relieve my bladder. I make it down the capsule ladder when my flashlight goes dead. It's dark out here! I find my way to the bathroom and back - it's at least a block away on the jungle path to the clearing where the buildings are. I wake up Prapanna to find out if I closed the trap door when I returned. It's so dark that one could fall down that hole. We get to talking. After a while he says, "You know, I feel like getting up and going into the Samadhi to meditate. I like getting there first thing when they open it." I am quiet for a minute, considering the mud, rain, and darkness implications of that statement. "OK, let's go." "You mean it?" He is excited. We both are - a little adventure! By 3:30 we are on his motorcycle scooting toward Pondicherry. Beautiful night with a moon and a few stars peeking out of the clouds. The air is fresh and cool. The rain has left large puddles on the roads. No one in sight till we get within a mile of the coast highway. We find a detour around a small lake blocking the junction, but our luck runs out on the outskirts of Pondicherry. A big truck passes just as we approach a street-wide puddle. One does not like to think about or smell what else besides muddy water is in the spray. Prapanna bears the brunt. I'm riding behind him on his motorcycle. We arrive at the Ashram by 4 but the main gate doesn't open until 4:30. I have a long meditation in the Meditation room, at the foot of the stairs leading to Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's rooms. Then we stop by to see Prapanna's sister-in-law and her husband. Her husband's mother is also there; and their two-year-old daughter, Kamali, is still asleep on a simple tarp on the floor. They have hopes for her because of Prapanna and Indu, his Tamil wife. Kamali's parents would like to send her to school in America. They would give up raising their only child so that she could have the opportunities that America offers! Prapanna's sister-in-law is almost giddy with happiness that he has stopped by to see them. With many pretty smiles she serves us chai, idly, and sambhar for breakfast even though it is only 5:30 and still dark outside. We can't really refuse such generous hospitality, a trademark of India. Very tiny and poor, their house is right between the road and the ocean: cement floor, tin roof, no screens, practically no furniture but a TV, some plastic lawn chairs and a tiny table. Prapanna's brother-in-law tries his English on us and shows us his new autorickshaw. If not America, he hopes to get his daughter into the Ashram school in Pondicherry. We ride to Matt's flat but no one is there. Matt, Prapanna's son, has been here in Pondicherry at the Ashram school since he was 12. Down a side street, however, we bump into him along with schoolmates Dave, Barosh, Udita, and Ahana. Another synchronicity. Prapanna has invited them to speak to the group this morning about their experiences of integral education at the Ashram school. They follow us to Verité in Dave's private car, very new and shiny. It is very unusual for a student to have a car in India. We arrive back at Verité before some of our group have gotten out of bed. Carolyn and I walk over to Ganesh Bakery. Since we have brought extra guests to Verité for breakfast, we want to make sure there is enough to eat. The Verité folks have scolded us for not signing up properly for the meals they prepare for us. The lady at Ganesh lets me have a pie pan with half of the pie I am buying to take back to Verité. "But bring it back this evening by 5:00," she asks. I promise and we thread our way back along the muddy path. I eat breakfast with Prapanna and the kids on the kitchen porch. Such a lively and intelligent bunch, a pleasure to be around. These young people are enthusiastic without that edge of cynicism so common in Americans their age.
The idea seems foreign to them. Freedom is one of the foundational principles of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, and the "free progress system" is one of the principles of integral education that Prapanna helped them to put into practice when he was teaching at the school in Pondicherry. Matt and his classmates cannot stay for the afternoon. They are practicing for their final production in front of the school staff. It is the closest thing they have to a graduation ceremony at the Ashram school. At lunch I meet Chris, a "newcomer," to Verité and Auroville from Germany. Newcomer is an official status in Auroville, a probation period for people to test their commitment to join the Auroville community as permanent residents. Chris has been here on visits, but now he plans to stay. He is working on his Ph.D. in anthropology and is interested in conflict resolution. There is plenty of conflict in the "City of Human Unity." One of the things I love about Auroville is the candor of the residents about the gap between their ideals and the reality on the ground. These are tough folks. They have had to be strong to tackle the "impossibility" of building a city of the future out of a dream on a dusty desert in a foreign land. Strong people have strong opinions and strong egos. So conflict resolution is a recognized need here. And some members of our group have brought expertise in that very area. More about that later. In the afternoon there is a meeting of members of our group and some Aurovillians who have been participating in Barbara Marx Hubbard's Gateway process. Linking these far-flung participants in Barbara's conscious evolution process was one of the inspirations for this journey. Jan, a Gateway guide, plays a tape of one of Barbara's recent talks. Afterwards I leave to get a shower. Little things like getting a shower and clean clothes can loom large at Verité. The humidity is about 115%. Clothes don't dry; in fact, they mildew easily - and there is no electric dryer. It is so warm and humid that you work up a sweat just towelling off after a shower! It can rain at any moment, but the community is short on water because the windmill has not been getting enough wind to pump water from the well. Often the lights don't work this time of year. Solar panels have a hard time filling up the community's batteries on cloudy days like today. And the dampness is hard on electrical connections. And there is the matter of transportation on muddy roads. Mud is tricky on two wheels, and I have to take Prapanna to get a motorcycle that the community of Adventure has offered to rent. Auroville has a well-deserved reputation for ecological friendlliness, but we have already left the simplicity and silence of our rented bicycles for the convenience, noise, and pollution of motorbikes and scooters. Kathleen and I ride to the Matrimandir for meditation when I get back from Adventure. Matrimandir is a whole adventure in itself. Auroville is full of them. It's dark when we get back to Verité for dinner. I can't find the pie tin I promised to take back to Ganesh Bakery. I'll have to go over there tomorrow morning and pay them for it. I find a mosquito-free haven in the Verité library to write for a little while after dinner. My eyes keep trying to close as my pen scrawls across the paper. Another full day.
Auroville Tour Second Day Today we picked up the tour where we left off on Saturday because of the downpour. Aspiration, the largest Auroville settlement, with about 60 people, is our first stop. It's a 15 minute ride on scooters from Verité, but our guide Ross takes us first to New Creation Corner to get petrol and shake down our new wheels. Aspiration was one of the earliest Auroville communities, started in 1967 just before the inauguration of Auroville. We stroll along quiet green lanes between thatched huts that hug the ground like hobbit houses. Nobody else is around... except for a black statue of Ganesh, the Indian god of good fortune, decked in flowers in a little shrine under a big tree. Taking a cue from him, we puzzle over the economics of life in Auroville. Auroville's economic ideal, described by The Mother, is a moneyless internal economy. But Auroville has many economic relations with the outside world, and even internally how do you approach this ideal? Economics is a fertile field of experimentation in Auroville. We begin to glimpse that in fact the whole of Auroville is a field of experimentation. So how does an Aurovillian provide food and shelter for himself and his family? Some have an independent income. Many do not. For them, the Auroville Maintenance program supplies about 3500 rupees per month, but "we need about 10,000 rupees per month to survive," Ross adds. He lives on about 6000. At the exchange rate of .024 US dollars per rupee, that's $144 a month. All of the real property in Auroville belongs to Auroville itself, and "Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole," according to the charter of the township. You can build a house in Auroville, but legally it belongs to Auroville. There is no inheritance of real property. There is also no official rent for "your" house, if you go abroad for, say, a year or two; but unofficially you can have "paying guests." The discussion turns to newcomers, people who want to join the Auroville adventure. A ban on newcomers because of the scarcity of housing has recently been lifted. Auroville requires a two year commitment from newcomers before they become Aurovillians. The first year, Ross remarks, newcomers "get taken apart." A self-sorting out happens. Some stay. Others find out that Auroville is not for them. We walk over to the Last School campus and get another dose of Middle Earth. Roger Anger, the architect who designed Matrimandir, also designed Last School. A language laboratory with a new theory of language learning is coming to this campus soon. We have difficulty learning other languages, according to this theory, because we simply do not hear sounds that we are not familiar with. Hence the emphasis on listening in this promising approach. Near by is the Pyramids Art Centre. We slip in quietly... to an atmosphere of quiet, concentrated beauty in the making. Teachers are giving some teenagers from one of the local village schools individual instruction in painting and clay sculpture. We will find this cultivation of beauty over and over in this township. Click here to see photos of Aspiration settlement and these two schools. In the afternoon, we travel to Adventure, another settlement in Auroville that, like Verité, is pursuing community sadhana (spiritual practice). In Adventure's open air community kitchen and dining area, Klaus tells us the story of Adventure's beginning. Several newcomers formed Adventure in 1997 when Auroville bought a parcel of land and needed residents to settle on it. Without settlers, local villagers would squat there and the land would be lost for 15 years to legal proceedings. These first residents fenced the whole parcel and built huts and capsules for themselves within a year. Adventure is in Auroville's greenbelt, and fences protect young trees from browsing cattle and goats. (See the link at the bottom of this page for information about the greenbelt.)
Eventually they agreed to a "rubber web," a flexible set of principles to give structure to the community. They had a ceremony to ground the agreement. There are very few out of about 100 settlements in Auroville, Klaus notes, which aim at a community consciousness. Verité, Creativity, and Adventure are the three he can think of. Many settlements in Auroville simply don't have a shared vision. Ross categorizes groupings in Auroville into settlement, intermediate community like Aspiration, and intentional community. Here in Adventure, residents cultivate a shared vision of transformation and evolution of consciousness. It's hard work. You see that listening to these earnest, committed pioneers. In the evening we scramble to Pondicherry for a variety performance of the 12th graders at the Ashram school. Each year, the graduating class puts on a show for the community to highlight who they are and what they have learned. |
organized the trip. Like his name, Prapanna is a mixture of East and West. He has lived in India and taught at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry. He has founded the 
It's my first visit to the Samadhi since we arrived. It has the same feeling of vast, calm peace. One is swimming, floating in silence and peace. The Samadhi is a white marble shrine in the courtyard of the main Ashram building. The bodies of the founders, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, are laid to rest there. An "authorized persons only" sign warns on the way from the Samadhi to the meditation hall near the stair to the second story quarters. Not knowing if I am authorized, I postpone visiting until I can ask. 
I take Kathleen to get her Matrimandir pass while Ron and Janette return to Verité. Kathleen missed the group trip to Matrimandir yesterday. 
She paints in broad strokes Sri Aurobindo's cosmology, beginning with the supreme divine trinity known in Sanskrit as Satchidananda - Sat (Existence), Chit (Consciousness Force), and Ananda (Bliss) - and proceeding down the planes of being to the lowest, darkest realm, that Sri Aurobindo called the Inconscient. But the Divine has buried himself even there, which drives evolution upward, from the lowest planes up toward the heights. Humanity represents the mental stage of the cosmic evolution, but by no means the final stage. Prapanna fills in details here and there. We are just scratching the surface, but the whole vision is accessible. All of Sri Aurobindo's major works were penned in majestic, some say mantric, English.
Our group gathers in the meeting hall and throws out questions to our guests. Prapanna has taught some of these youngsters and wants our group to see the results of the kind of 
After a year of hard work, Adventure's residents discovered that they shared no common vision for the settlement. Long and painful conflicts over pets and livestock highlighted differences. A resident's dog was digging up newly planted trees. Another resident far exceeded the limit on chickens agreed to by the community. Eventually some people left. The rest began to work out a vision or charter for their community. The first given, says Klaus, was their work in the greenbelt forest and the second was sustainable living. They also agreed that they would not break up the community into little pieces when there was a conflict, as they had seen happen in so many other Auroville settlements. |
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