The ship is sinking very fast now.
As I've said a couple of times already: everything the Aurovillagers say or do is now revealing their true colours, and clearly testimony of the total panic going on inside the cult.
It will be clear to all that a cult functions through psychological pressure and bullying: making people believe that the prison they find themselves in is for their own good.
Everybody in a cult feels the discomfort. Maybe not immediately, but certainly after time: things do not add up. Words contradict actions. Something FEELS wrong.
That is the moment where the cult needs to step in and make sure it keeps the members inside the cult. Otherwise everybody wakes up and the cult dissolves: the leaders lose their power and their benefits of having a large group of people believe their nonsense of “being special”.
The best trick ever (and tried and tested through centuries of Western politics) that will make sure people do not WANT to wake up or expose or leave the cult, is to make the members believe that it is UNETHICAL to step outside of the prison. Create such a huge guilt-trip that people feel WORSE if they “betray” the cult than the discomfort and injustice they experience living INSIDE the cult.
Of course, when big shocks are happening and the cult is on the verge of collapse, the psychological and emotional pressure has to be increased also, which is not what psychological warfare wants to do: it works best when it is surreptitious, when it is thin, soft, but all-pervasive. Psychological pressure works by being innocuous, constantly in the background, well-masked, hidden behind a curtain of gentleness that pretends to be benevolent and covers the real and very crude intentions.
We're now beyond that point, and that is why the Aurovillagers are doomed: they have no choice anymore and have to be more and more crude and direct, and they loose the veil of good-willing niceties that they could wrap their tactics in. The narrative nonsense has to blow itself up to the size of elephants, and those are not so easy to dress up with gift wrapping and ribbons.
Take a look at a snippet from the meeting that the Auroville Council had organised to address the collapse of Aurovillage: they sent out a call to come together to share the kool-aid and convince each other that their little world is not really falling apart here.
That's obviously so delusional that it will only convince the most die-hard cult members (you can look at our dear Edzard's pledge of allegiance to the cult here), and was straightforwardly contradicted by some people openly admitting that “we are losing control”. (I suppose that the cult will be seriously trying to avoid such public acknowledgements of reality from now on.) Such statements are of course a confirmation of what we've been saying since the start: that this battle has nothing to do whatsoever with trees but is all about who has the control over what happens in Auroville. The report that the Council published about this meeting is also interesting. They go to great lengths to thank by name everybody that helped in organising the meeting (it's the most common job in Auroville as “having meetings where everyone can share” is the main occupation of many Aurovillagers), clearly in order to make sure that everybody who is still the least bit loyal to the cult is flattered and stays put.
Another interesting point is the following paragraph:
The meeting started with Fif introducing the structure of the meeting which was then followed by a minute of silence. Then the below quote from Mother was read in 4 languages, Tamil, Hindi, French and English:
The city the earth needs. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human Unity.
They all freak out when I use the word “cult”, but how cultish is this kind of stuff?
Note that they always choose the quotations that are as vague as possible, and fit with the "we're so special" cult narrative. Ego-boosting quotes, quotes that are so high and lofty that any direct link with the actual, practical reality is lost. Why did they not quote Mother's words on how the present Aurovilians are a sub-humanity? Wouldn't THAT be something more practical and down-to-earth to brainstorm about? The next practical step of the plan on how we're going to realise this human unity? Because how would YOU plan on ACTUALLY realising human unity? The same way they do? By having endless, repetitive, meaningless meetings? By never touching the lower nitty-gritty? By not changing anything and keeping our present oh so special and precious sub-human swamp fully untouched?
Well, they're clearly not getting it their way, and the rug is being pulled from under their floating feet.
The most interesting part of this meeting, however, was undoubtedly Elvira's psychological trickery to try to save what still can be saved: put emotional pressure on the cult members by making EVERYONE INDIVIDUALLY responsible for the cult's survival. What she advocates and instils in the minds of the listeners is actually: YOU PERSONALLY are to blame if our cult perishes now. YOU have to do MORE to save our cult. The GROUP LEADERS are no longer going to save you. The people who you were trained to follow blindly are not going to save YOU. YOU need to do this YOURSELF. And don't dare to look for “saviours” outside yourself! How's THAT for some psycho-bullying?
(By the way: she actually indeed answered “yes” when Suryan asked her if she was proposing to dissolve the Auroville Council. As far as I'm concerned, that can't happen soon enough.)
If you look at this short message and how it is presented from an outsider perspective, if you have no emotional ties to Aurovillage, you can see the creepiness of what she does here very clearly.
It is uncomfortable to witness, but it is also laughable and silly: she is telling the listeners that they are personally responsible for making sure that stay LOCKED INSIDE the prison they live in, while that very prison is breaking down before everybody's eyes.
It's as if the direction and guards of a real-life prison one day would tell all the inmates: “Look people, we're not able to make this work anymore, and all of us are going to go look after ourselves only. We count on you guys to make sure the prison keeps functioning in an orderly fashion.”
It's really idiotic beyond belief.
Do I even need to mention that Elvira and Fabian live in a large house in Pitchandikulam, a 63-acre wooded area in the “Green Belt”? This “forest” is taken mainly as private property and has only some 25 people living in it. Joss and his acolytes, who “started” the “community”, and who never had to pay anything for this land (they are magnanimously “stewarding” it “for humanity as a whole”, you see?) are of course the “owners” and will decide who can and cannot come and live in this little kingdom. That's how the Mother – and all these beautiful propaganda videos – always described Auroville, right? Isn't this how you always imagined this peaceful city full of loving spiritual people to be?