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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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Discipline and Mud Bricks This morning our group follows Ross over narrow muddy trails to Discipline Farm. Despite its severe name, Discipline is lush green even now at the beginning of the monsoon rains. We walk fields that grow papaya, pineapple, basil, spinach, corn, mango, yams, passion fruit, custard-apple fruit, coconuts. I see my first castor tree. (Remember castor oil?) Workers raise cattle and provide milk to the Solar Kitchen. Jeff, an Australian Aurovillian, manages Discipline. Jeff is wiry, calm, energetic, knowledgeable. His operation is completely organic and largely self-contained. Ditches channel waste from the barn back onto the fields for nitrogen fertilizer. That's a clue why the soil is not the same red clay I've seen elsewhere in Auroville. They have been building up the soils here for years, Jeff remarks. Discipline has several very deep pit wells to bring up water for irrigation. After a heavier than normal monsoon, the wells are nearly full. Today, four years into a drought, you look eight or ten stories down into the pit before you see water. Jeff also has "stories" of people falling into these open holes. A man in his eighties fell in one moonless night. Fortunately, someone heard his cries. The water was much nearer to the top of the pit, so he landed in the water instead of hitting the stone sides that we see when we look down. He was shaken but uninjured when they pulled him out. After touring the farm we sit in a stone gazebo sharing hard cookies with tiny red ants and coaxing fresh milk out of coconuts with straws. We fire questions at Jeff. Auroville grows less than half of its own food. Farming is hard work in the tropics, and there are not enough Aurovillians involved in it to make Auroville self sufficient. Janette and Jeff discuss EM, something I haven't heard of before. Jeff finds EM (Effective Microorganisms) effective for fungus, root rot, and leaf blight. He even gives it to the cattle in their water. Janette is using it for personal health. She says that we have so sterilized the soil in the US with industrial agriculture that many necessary nutritional elements are missing in our diet.
The little ones are beginning a session with clay. We watch tiny hands and eyes. Some of the teachers and children try out their English on us. When our time is up, Diane can hardly bear to leave. In the afternon we get a taste of the ongoing research in Auroville. The Center for Scientific Research (CSR) is pioneering sustainable construction and energy use in this area. We watch workers compress a carefully formulated mud-sand-cement mixture into bricks that skip the energy-intensive firing stage and still withstand the elements. One brick in the demonstration area has been immersed in water for seven years without any sign of deterioration, an important feature in this humid climate. Ferrocement is another building material being developed at CSR. A cement and steel mesh sandwich enables much stronger and lighter construction than cement alone. CSR designs biogas plants, waste treatment processes, solar technologies. The list goes on. Later in the afternoon we stop by the Matrimandir office hoping to see Barbara, a long time Matrimandir worker, and hear about this "central Force" of Auroville from her. She is not there, but many of us have been experiencing this force on our own every morning or evening when the inner chamber is open to residents and guests.
Auroville Tour Last Day A visit to Matrimandir has become a happy morning habit during my stay at Verité. The inner chamber is open to residents and guests between 6 and 8 every morning. Kathleen and I ride over in the morning twilight and walk the long path across the Peace Area. When you approach the Matrimandir, you leave your shoes on the ramp that leads down into the earth to the base of the outside stairs. It reminds me of descending into an Anasazi kiva. Down into the earth, and then the ascent: up the staircase on the outside to the big double door and then up the spiral ramp inside the golden sphere. I feel like I am enacting a decent of Spirit into matter and then the evolution of consciousness up the rungs of being as we climb up toward the inner chamber, which sits in the top hemisphere of the sphere. At the entrance to the inner chamber you put on white socks and enter into a deep white silence. The walls are white marble. The floor is white marble covered with white wool carpet. The cushions are white. The silence is soft and white and clear. Only a handful of people are here at 6 am. Carolyn and John have introduced another regular element to our day, a morning "checkin" circle after breakfast for our group. Each person has an opening to speak from the heart about his or her experience of Auroville. For many it is strange, stressful, and wonderful all at the same time. We speak and listen, and find a bond growing among us. Abbe introduces our group to Transition School this morning. We decided to add an extra morning to the tour because of the rainout our first Saturday. We have hardly scratched the surface of Auroville in three days. We stay in the parking area with three curious cows. The school staff jealously guards the privacy of the classroom. But Abbe is a teacher at Transition School, so she can give us the story. She calls it a really solid school with a good reputation. Transition has children from 6 1/2 to 14 years of age. From small beginnings it has grown to about 130 students from 20 nationalities with library, computer facilities, and an integral approach to education. Teachers find a wide range of skills in each classroom. Instruction is in English, but students can also study Tamil, French, and German here. Two Spanish Aurovillians run the renowned Awareness through the Body Center here that is all the more tantalizing since we do not get a peak at it. They are writing a book about this method of educating the body. In addition, students must participate in 1 1/2 hours of sports after school every day. Abbe remembers the difficulties of starting a school with no curriculum and few materials. Teachers would create theme-based materials for a term, and gradually incorporate them into the regular curriculum. The result is a value-oriented education. Dr. Kireet Joshi, she says, would like Auroville to write a value-oriented curriculum to offer to the Indian public schools. Examples of value themes: respect and honesty. The whole school assembles every week for some kind of centering and concentration. These children are getting an introduction both to world-knowledge, as we emphasize in Western education, and to self-knowledge, which is missing in the West. We scoot down the road to the new Future School campus and bump into Chali leaving for an appointment. Chali was born in Auroville and grew up here. She left for eight years, and returned to start this school with Luc, another Auroville native. Ross persuades her to tell us a little about the origin and purpose of this school. Until now, education in Auroville, so experimental like everything else here, offered no diploma or certification recognized anywhere else in the world. Future School was founded to fill this gap. Here students can get a diploma/certificate based on the British system that is valid anywhere in the world. Still, there is a mix of traditional high school education and more wholistic education. For example, the school has science and computer labs but there are no real "grades," as in groupings of students at a particular age or level of achievement. Instead students are separated into working groups and help direct their own education at their own pace. Ross shows us three more communities before the end of our tour. Arka is a project under construction for senior citizens. Nobody is living here yet. Later I find out that my ashramite friend Lynn has bought one of the flats here.
From the roof we can see miles of Auroville's jungle in every direction. From Vikas Ross will move into Creativity, another complex under construction. Ross's apartment in the new place will cost about $7000. The whole complex is about $400,000. The prospective residents are paying for the infrastructure and community facilities at Creativity by fund raising. We end our "Ross Tour" at the fabulous Solar Kitchen for lunch. There I bump into Jill, an American Aurovillian I've met several times in the US. She and her partner Swar invite Bill and me to dinner on Friday evening at their place. My first visit to a home in Auroville! Back at Verité I do a little laundry and look for John. He has been having severe back pain, especially at night. He is not yet back from the Visitor Center, so I do some Feldenkrais with Kathleen. She still has bruises and some pain from the falls she took on the scooter on Friday. John comes in for some work a little later and Kathleen, a health care professional, watches. At 3:00 in the afternoon, Guy, a Belgian Aurovillian, gives a presentation to us on the land situation in Auroville at the new Town Hall Annex. The situation is critical. Auroville owns only about half of the land within the city and greenbelt zones, and land prices have gone up 650% in the last 10 years! Auroville needs help to acquire the rest of the land. Before dinner I get off an email to Karen from the internet station across the road at Afsanah Guest House. I am dragging as I put in an hour before bed on Carolyn's handout for the workshop on Friday.
Richard, Kailas, and Danya Prapanna and I get up at 3:30 this morning. My gecko neighbor is on the mosquito netting over my cot again. A good friend to have in a land of many mosquitos. We are going to Pondy with Kathleen this morning. She wants to buy some clothing before the trip to Tiruvannamalai on Saturday. Kavitha, an American who lives in Tiruvannamalai and will be our guide there, told us that conservative clothing is in order for that trip. The Ramana Maharshi Ashram, our destination there, is a traditional brahman ashram, unlike the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The predawn sky is overcast with a few lightning flashes far off, but no rain. Very little traffic this time of morning. The red dirt roads are slightly muddy, but surprisingly few puddles left from yesterday's rain. Prapanna leads with Kathleen and I following. This is a good time to practice navigating Indian traffic. It reminds me of schools of fish. There are some close calls, but there is a flow to this traffic. As long as you are aware of the pattern of the flow and the breaks in the flow, you can move through it like water moving through water. Sudden, sharp, angular movements cause accidents. Kathleen says that the place is filled with feminine, mother energy, round and fluid. The peace energy is strong at the main Ashram building in Pondicherry, but the human energy isn't always so helpful. Kathleen has to go down to a boarding school in the dark to find an open bathroom. After meditation at the Samadhi and in the meditation hall, we wander around Pondy for a while looking for breakfast. Nothing is open till 6 am. I step in a ripe cow pie in a dark alley. Someone has told us that cow dung is a disinfectant, is used to paint walls, is a cooking fuel, and has many other benefits. I try to wipe it off my foot. It clings. We finally find a restaurant with some curd for Kathleen along with idly and sambhar. Like Karen, Kathleen gets vague and indistinct without a good dose of protein. The owner crosses his arms over his chest and comments with pride, "We serve only real south Indian breakfast." While we eat, Prapanna tells Kathleen the life story of Indu, his Tamil wife. It's so dramatic that he plans to write a screen play about it some day. Going through the Ashram quarter with Prapanna is fun because he knows every second person on the street. We meet the mother of the Italian girl who was in the 12th grade performance on Monday evening, Kalu's wife (I didn't recognize her), and 10 or 12 other people that stop him on the street. He takes us to visit the "Flower Room," grades one to three of the Ashram school, where he first taught when he lived in Pondicherry. Then to the main school grounds where grades 4 through 12 work. Teachers and students smile at him and stop to chat. The Ashram School is smaller than I expect. Maybe 20 or thirty students in each grade. The early grades are beginning to use the "free progress" system, with the teachers setting up environments for the students to explore, experiment, and discover their own interests and inner discipline.
Prapanna has to go back to Auroville. I take Kathleen to meet Richard and Kailas, long time ashramites and dear friends of mine. I notice the cow dung still on my foot when we get to their door. Hmmm. I think there is a message here. Kathleen makes an instant connection with both of them. Richard tells her stories of darshan with Sri Aurobindo and Mother both present. He came here with his dad as a boy before Sri Aurobindo left his body in 1950. Kailas is wearing dark glasses because of a recent cataract operation. She tells Kathleen stories about her relationship with The Mother. When I take out my camera to get a picture of them, Kailas complains: Why are you taking a picture of someone so old? Because you are so beautiful, I tell her. The white teeth in her smile match her white hair. Kailas gives us directions for shopping. Kathleen finds a clock and some Indian outfits for Tiruvannamalai. We weave through traffic back to Auroville, missing the turnoff and taking the second entrance in from the coast road. I have not seen this part of Auroville before. Green and scarcely developed at all. We rejoin the main road in the village of Kuilapalayam. Auroville and the Ashram are both full of synchronicities. We bump into Susan and Janette at New Creation Corner for lunch and then Prapanna. Afternoon details have escaped me. Probably chores like charging my laptop from Verité's solar electricity system and washing clothes. And a shower. Lots of thunder and hard rain in the afternoon and evening. At dinner time I find out that Verité has changed the meal rules. If you want to eat you have to sign up, rather than the reverse (sign only if you are not eating). I am not very satisfied with Verité's attitude toward guests. Some of our group have already relocated across the road to the Afsanah Guest House. I have a long evening discussion about it with Danya, one of the founding members of Verité. He is not surprised at my feelings. Many Aurovillians missed out, he observes, on the human potential explorations of the 1960s and 70s. They were planting trees and digging wells instead, and managing human relations remains hard work. But Danya is not discouraged. He has big, creative plans for this community.
Sraddhalu and Prarthna I missed the co-creation workshop that Carolyn, John, and the Roskes gave for a group of Aurovillians today. Katherine and Carolyn have written a Co-Creator's Handbook with details about this work. But I make it to Sraddhalu Ranade's weekly lecture on the Synthesis of Yoga at the Savitri Bhavan, an Auroville center dedicated to Sri Aurobindo's magnificent epic poem, Savitri, and his other written works. Sraddhalu is already speaking to a packed house about helps along the path when I arrive. He reviews the four ways the guru initiates the disciple: a look, a gift or verbal communication, or a thought, or even through reading a book. Then he gives the punch line: Once the initiation happens, he recalls, Mother promised that she herself would take up the burden of the disciple's yoga, thus insuring the realization. I feel waves of relief and gratitude, remembering my own initiations. I first heard Sraddhalu speak in Pondicherry when Karen and I were there in 1994. Probably in his late twenties, he was already a refined speaker then. Now the words and examples flow out of him like liquid joy. It's a calm, quiet joy, contained in the words, but luminous and unmistakable. His thoughts and images come without hesitation. You can tell he lives in the world he is speaking about. There is no effort of thought, no struggle to grasp a meaning. It flows effortlessly. Back at Verité I look for Bill and Janette. Bill and I are going to Jill and Swar's house in Prarthna for dinner. (Click here and scroll down for information about this Auroville settlement.) Janette wanted to make contact with Jill, too, but I have not been able to get in touch with Jill today to ask her about it. Janette, however, is nowhere to be found; so Bill and I head into a cloudy, slippery night on Bill's scooter. He wants to practice with a rider on the back. I'm his guinea pig. At Prarthna, I ask a man with white hair and beard for directions. He points straight ahead, and we find Jill waiting to welcome us at the door. "How did you know we were here?" I ask her. "Oh, it's 6 o'clock and you're Americans," she laughs, "right on time." Bill presents them with some rolls of scotch tape from the USA. What a practical idea! The little things that we take for granted. But not Bill. He has been to Auroville twice before. In fact, he was here in 1968 for the inauguration. Jill introduces us to a young Tamil man with a kind face whose name I do not catch. It sounds like he and Jill have a long history together in Auroville. He is living with Jill and Swar until he can move into Ross's current flat at Vikas. |
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 
Back on our cycles and a short ride to our next stop, "Indian eyes." They turn their glow on us when Diane and I peek into the kindergarten class. They take my breath away, these dark, alive, luminous eyes of the children. We are at 
Next Ross takes us to the community where he currently lives: Vikas, a large apartment complex several stories high. 
We are still waiting for the shops to open, so we visit the traffic ashura in the big park by the governor's palace. Teachers bring young students here to learn about the dangers of traffic in Pondy. He may pounce on them if they don't listen well. |
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