People seem to think that I am not aware of how I write and sound. I can tell you: I am very aware of it. And I do it purposefully. (Ooh, doesn't THAT make me a bad lower vital witch!)
This current series of blog posts resulted from the fact that I started to write comments on FB posts about the frantic SOS Auroville petition. (This SOS is not valid: it's an SOCZ: "save our comfort zones!") The screaming nonsense that came with these posts just needed something that would balance them out and give a voice to the very different reality. Well, not just “very different”. In fact, this reality was the total opposite of what was being claimed. The people behind this campaign claimed to be the victims, and portrayed the government as evil attackers. Historically, that's a VERY easy narrative to get emotional support for: we all have lived all of our lives as part of a mass ruled by a small elite. Whatever our political stance and whatever we think of it, we all react automatically when we hear about governments abusing their power on the powerless. Add to that the claim of “ecological disaster”, and they were SURE to get the sympathy of huge swaths of nice people anywhere, who are totally ignorant about what actually happens in Auroville. “We trust that your goodness will make sure you will help us continue to do bad”, the story of our lives, isn't it? The reality here being the complete opposite of these claims, I felt that the truth needed a voice, and I started writing. At the start, I did not really aim at a specific audience, even though I was clearly talking to two groups: first of all people who were being sucked into the SOS panic narrative without being able to know or understand or verify anything for themselves, and also the Aurovilians who are too scared to speak up. There's plenty of them, whether you believe me or not. The reason that I very quickly became very harsh, is that there simply is no other way at this moment to counter the shrieking voices of the Aurovillagers. They are constantly claiming the moral high-ground, turning literally everything on its head, defending with all kinds of spiritual blabber the most unspiritual actions here.
This is not new. This has been done and perfected here since 54 years. It has been made our first nature, it is the most normal thing for Aurovilians to do: defend Auroville! No matter what the accusation is! Lie for the truth! This toxicity is so indoctrinated into the minds of Aurovilians that it oozes out of Auroville and whenever you meet an Aurovilian. The critical voices are extremely rare, as is with every cult: you are brainwashed to feel enormous guilt when you “betray” the cult. So people spout the endlessly repeated rosy narratives, or they shut up. And if someone is having some critical point here or there, they wrap it in thick blankets of excuses and acknowledgements of how obviously their criticism does not mean they are against the cult or denouncing anything really wrong here, just putting a tiny question mark with this or that, admitting fully how impossible it is to really do something the Mother asked of us.
The reality is very simple. It's absolutely not difficult to practice anything the Mother asked. It's not difficult to not lie. It's not difficult to be sincere. It's not difficult to give yourself to the Divine. It's not difficult to let go of comfort. It just takes the honesty to really want to do it. To be at least so honest as to not lie to oneself. And in case it really is too difficult for you: fine, no problem, doesn't make you any bit less of a valuable human being. Just don't live in Auroville, it's simply not your path. Or at the very least don't block and obstruct the movement of Auroville into the future. One of the main things that struck me here from the very beginning is how indoctrinated we are to consider that we all need to copy each other. If I tell you that I am very happy with my toothpaste, it comes across as an advice to you to get the same. Better still: if I tell you what I eat and why, it is next to impossible for any of us to not hear the suggestion that we need to copy my food behaviour. Whatever someone speaks about in an enthusiastic manner, as a great discovery or help in their life, it will always sound as “and YOU should do this also!”
I discovered this very quickly when sharing my enthusiasm about Auroville. Whenever I spoke about how interesting and special I found this place, and how it changed my life, I got these looks as if I was recruiting members. I quickly started adding things like “I don't mean that this is the best place for you too, you have to feel what YOUR path is and follow THAT, no matter where it leads you”. Many people I love would absolutely be miserable in Auroville, including my family members. Their place is absolutely NOT here. That doesn't make them any less valuable, obviously. On the contrary: following one's own path is the only thing we're meant to do in this life. The world is a large place, and there are all kinds of experiences to be had in all kinds of different locations. And I am strongly convinced that we all can figure out where our path leads us, if we listen to the voice inside. So why am I so “divisive” and keep talking about “them” as if we are NOT all one or equally valuable? Because there IS the reality here in Auroville that does not allow change to take place. There IS the reality of division. There IS the reality, as has been very crudely shown over the past months, that ANY means is good for a group of people here to stop ANY development of the Mother's City. Isn't that strange? Isn't it so contradictory to what is being claimed, that it should be simply very easy for everybody to acknowledge? If Auroville is so “peaceful”, if Auroville is so “spiritual”, if Auroville is so “special”, if Auroville is so full of people living in a “different” way, why did these Aurovillagers react so utterly ordinarily and violently to a development that was on the table since before anybody here arrived on the scene? Why is there no space for ANY development that goes against their material comfort? Isn't that contradictory? Ah well, you see: “We are not against the development, it is about HOW the development is done”. Really? So you mean to say that I was hallucinating every time that I heard people proclaim in meetings how utterly out-dated the Galaxy was? How utterly outdated it is to have a 'zoned' city? How the Mother would have adjusted all of her plans for Auroville to “adapt to the ground realities”? I was hallucinating when I heard and saw all efforts to build a real township being ridiculed, haughtily, as if the very idea was preposterous, delusional? I have imagined the endless discussions and negotiations over several years in which eventually, representatives of “Bliss Forest” went to every single “community” (another feature of Aurovillage that completely contradicts the Mother's plans for Auroville but fits perfectly in their lifestyle and comfort requirements) to canvas and plead for support against the laying of the high tension electrical cable along the Crown, needed to create the Auroville electricity grid that will make Auroville fully self-sustainable for its energy needs? I have apparently dreamt all of that, all of the endless opposition and blatant unwillingness to create anything that even remotely resembles a small city, no matter how “green”? And the “how” is what they now stumble over? REALLY?? How should it have happened? Through negotiations? Through meetings? Through agreements? All of those have happened over and over and over again, for decades. Promises were made and immediately ignored. Agreements immediately violated. Every aspect of Aurovillage was set up to make sure there would never ever be any actual way to build the Crown or any other major part of the Galaxy. There was literally not one scrap of land that was not in personal “possession”: Auroville as a municipal entity did not have ANY right to decide what to do on its own territory. All land was held “privately” and the only “how” to develop the city was to actually politely go ask the “owners” (euphemistically called “stewards” here) to please agree that we use the land for city development instead of for their private benefit. So if that is the only “how” that is acceptable, what happens if these “stewards”, these “placeholders for future generations”, these unrightful “owners”, these land-grabbers of the place that “belongs to nobody in particular” decide to NOT agree? What then? Until now: nothing at all. Because they HAVE effectively never agreed, no matter how politely they were asked and what compensations were made. That's why the GoI effectively has stepped in: to unblock that holding hostage of the city development. So if all normal, polite, decent, mature ways of developing the city – which everybody now magically claims to be in favour of – are thrown back into our face, which “how” is then left for the City of Auroville to start building itself? Uh, guess what: we have no other option anymore than to wrest it by force from their clutches! Futuristic and special and exemplary and spiritual and completely not attached to material things, no?
And now they are outraged and claim they are the “victim”? What kind of a blatant bull-shit story is this? (Pardon my French; I hope it is forgiven to use an expletive here and there when confronted with so much – well, bs...)
How on earth can people lie so blatantly, so openly, so shamelessly?
The answer is simple: because they need to, in order to keep their narrative alive. They have no other option anymore. They are being extremely violent in their defence of the narrative that kept Aurovillage a reality over all these years. I am so harsh, because I am fighting that narrative. A story made up to excuse very nasty facts. This narrative has unfortunately become a belief for many people, a creed, a religion, and they are defending it as if their lives somehow depended on it. Well, for them, their lives indeed depend on it, as their belief in this narrative has become the main reason for most of their actions. And for some of the most decisive actions they took in their lives. They have shaped their material lives based on the fact that they fully believe this story. Therefore, if someone says that this story is not real, that some people decades ago invented this story to cover up their very egoistic behaviour and acts of pure selfishness, they are lost. It is extremely difficult truth to accept. Because their lives by now depend on that lie. Very big personal decisions were taken based on that lie. So many years have been lived in a small society in which this lie was “the truth”, in which everybody else believed it too.
Every time the lie of Aurovillage being a glorious, special, peaceful, harmonious, successful, spiritual, new, remarkable, different, important, non-colonial, non-racist, egalitarian, moneyless, non-religious, international, idyllic, utopian, human-unity-expressing society was challenged, the collective grouped together to fight the challenger. From time to time, a person who was not believing the story at face value, or who did believe it but needed to get some facts together in order to back that belief up, found out that the story CANNOT be true, because the material facts are not only not in line with it, but also show clearly that the opposite is in fact the material reality: unwillingness to do what is being claimed, and personal profiteering that ultimately unveils a long-standing culture of deep and normalised hypocrisy, lying, abuse, small criminal activities and covered-up, off-topic larger criminal activities.
The persons discovering this reality are generally not so happy with what they discover, because the narrative about how SPECIAL this place is, how Auroville is a shining example of a different society, is not only omnipresent here and elsewhere, but it is that same narrative that brought them here! Several of the people who discover the harsh and contradicting reality therefore don't dig very deep: too uncomfortable, too unpleasant, why bother? It's not their fight necessarily. If they keep their message rather superficial and stick to the outcome of a study that only looked at one aspect of Aurovillage, they can still keep most of the narrative alive and already give excuses for their unpleasant finds: they do not accuse the cult leaders of anything, but simply point out the “difficult” reality that is not in line with the “aim” of Auroville – and do not openly say that their finds oppose the cult narrative. The messengers who DO go full-out with claims that the reality is totally different from what Aurovillage pretends and pumps out on a daily basis, are completely vilified. Their messages, of course, seriously shake up the cult members. Meetings are organised very quickly in order to get everybody together so they can patch up the holes in the reciprocal belief-bubbles by confirming to each other that the cult belief is actually true and not a lie, and that the material facts are not at all what they are claimed to be. Everything is done to repair the damage to the religious belief in the delusion bubble.
Now we've reached the point where the material reality is not only laid bare, it is also not allowed to be covered up anymore. The material reality of Auroville is being reshaped according to the original goal of Auroville. It will be much harder to get away with the decades-old abuse, and what is more: the cult leaders won't be the leaders of the new Auroville anymore. They are being dethroned, and that in fact is the biggest blow to the cult. Their reaction, obviously and naturally, is to inflate the cult narrative as big as they possibly can, claim that the clean-up team is in fact a dark, evil villain, sent by asuric forces to undermine this beautiful, peaceful, harmonious society of special people doing the yoga of works and other spiritual exercises all day. OM Auroville, Peaceful City! As I've said before, the claim that Auroville was “peaceful” is the most brazen lie ever: Auroville has NEVER been “peaceful”. There is a facade of peacefulness that is projected to the outside world, to guests and visitors (“thank you for spending your money with us, and now be on your way”), but try and dive a little deeper into this place, and all the rottenness starts to become clearer. The fact that the Youth Centre, which was started purposefully on the Crown Road markings in order to make sure there would be an outright FIGHT over the ground realities when the road would be developed, and the fact that this same Youth Centre was called “peaceful city”, is enough to show anyone the depth of the hypocrisy that Aurovillage is rooted in. The so much worshipped “water catchment pond” in Darkali is nothing more but a pit dug by people living there, just like there are so many all over Auroville. Just as with the Youth Centre, it was put straight on top of the Crown Road location, and is now claimed to be somehow not just a pit but some kind of special and remarkable “water catchment”, suddenly essential to Auroville's water system that does not exist. We have dozens and dozens of these pits, and it could have been dug anywhere else, but suddenly it seems to be made out of fairy dust and unicorns. Anyone with a little bit of critical thinking left can come and examine the situation, and conclude that it is an enormously hypocritical balloon, made on purpose to block the building of the Crown. Is that “peaceful”? Is that “harmonious”? Is that anything worthy of respect and consideration? The majority of the cult members have gambled most of their lives on the cult lie, unfortunately. And until it is physically impossible to maintain the material realities of their lives here, they will do everything they can to keep the cult narrative alive: the belief in the truth of their lie is vital to their existence here. Several cult members will most probably keep believing in the narrative for many many years, even if no longer here. The fusion of a true and deep spiritual calling with the cult narrative delusion bubble is too complete to still be able to separate one from the other. Others will simply not be able to accept reality, as the indoctrination of the Western society has made them stick to comfort as the basic tenet of their personality – a real spiritual life was anyway not in the cards.
The main point is that, for whatever reason, people here (and some elsewhere) are constantly fighting to keep the narrative alive. They are defending it with all they can, and refuse to see the toxicity of what they defend, and the toxicity of how they defend it. If I want to fight the narrative, I have no choice but to fight them too, apparently. I don't want to and, in my view, I don't actually do that: I do not identify people with their belief in this narrative. I do not think of people as a set of opinions. Who someone is, at the core, as a divine being, has nothing to do with what they believe. I consider people mislead and misinformed or disinformed, and I don't consider that a big crime in this global society: it's extremely hard NOT to be. We all were sucked up by completely idiotic narratives that are denounced by the simple realities we can see with our own eyes (anyone ever seen videos and the results of controlled demolition and seen videos and the results of a fire in a high-rise?), so it is the most common feature of our present society's population. But apparently, the way they see me is very different. They identify so deeply with the narrative, that me attacking the narrative is for them equal to me attacking THEM, personally. Whether I name them here or not does not matter, they experience it as a personal attack because I attack what they identify with. That fact is not my doing, and not my choice. The narrative is the core of the problem here right now, it is the poison in the well that makes everyone who lives off its water sick, as they have nothing else to drink. It really needs to be rooted out, it needs to go from Auroville once and for all.
And many good-willing and goodhearted people cannot accept this, and keep, endlessly, putting up excuses for this or that part of the narrative. They over and over again blame ME for being divisive, and try to save every possible sliver of the narrative they can. They refuse to accept that if the root of your bush is rotten, it can never grow healthy fruit. You may claim that this little leaf is still somewhat green or that that little berry seems ok to eat or that this branch is not so very thorny, but why on earth would you do so? What is the goal? Why do you want to cling to a bush that is based in rottenness? Who in their right mind does that? Who will not say, “ok, this didn't work out, let's start again with another and better root”?
The ongoing, endlessly repeated defence of the undefendable is what keeps me whacking on the narrative, as it has to go. I will keep repeating this until it is gone. It won't take that long anymore, but it has to be fully removed from Auroville. Auroville is the Mother's project, and it cannot be based in hypocrisy. Auroville is meaningless and will be dissolved if the hypocrisy is not rooted out of here. And the force that is behind the existence of Auroville is endlessly stronger than the forces that want to keep the hypocrisy going. It's over, already. The dead horse is still propped up and paraded around, however. The same propaganda outlets are still active. And it will be spread from outside of Auroville for many years to come, out of spite, and out of habit. I am writing to counter that output. I am not writing to convert the inconvertible, I am not writing to convince the cult members.
I am writing to give the dominated and scared Aurovilians a voice. I am writing to have the known truth spoken out-loud.
I am writing for the ones outside of Auroville, who have no clue and no means to understand what is happening here. I want them to at the very least know that there is a dissenting voice here. That maybe what they think they know is not the full truth.
But I am also writing for the coming Aurovilians, the thousands of people who will join in the coming years. I want to give them a warning, so that they are armoured against the toxicity of the cult narratives they will come in contact with, from within or from without. I want them to be able to stay firm in their own observations and conclusions.
I am writing so that these people understand how toxic narratives work, and so that we can avoid falling into the same trap once again. There's a Dutch saying: “a warned man equals two”. That could be somewhat translated as “once bitten, twice shy”. But that only works if you acknowledge that you were bitten in the first place.
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