Unsurprisingly, stuff is going south very fast now. Everything is accelerating, and the death-struggle of the Aurovillage cult is becoming as ugly as we knew they would make it: there is no bottom to the pit, and now that they're going down, they become vicious and try to drag everyone they can down with them.
As was obvious, because the global society is going through the exact same struggle, the Aurovillagers can only expose their real intentions and faces more and more: the masks are coming off. With every move they make, they tighten the noose they put around their own necks.
As examples, I post here are two emails by two cult members, and my replies to them. I have decided that it is time to put the names publicly with the messages, as these people are so detrimental to the project of Auroville, so endlessly putting out lies and falsehood about what happens here, and on top of that are so unrepentant, that I feel it is needed to publicly expose the insanity of their actions and words.
Both of these emails were sent in a group that holds mostly non-Aurovilians linked with AVI centres, or being former Aurovilians who have gone back to their home countries.
Most of these people are older and have spent a lot of their lives in spreading the Aurovillage cult narrative.
They are apparently incapable of even remotely questioning those narratives, they are too tied up to some very deep emotions and identifications, and, very understandable after a lifetime of living in this delusion bubble, no longer able to even imagine that there might be a way out. The need for their beliefs to be true has become existential. Even though these kinds of beliefs are exactly what the integral yoga is meant to challenge, and the constant questioning and expansion of one's convictions is the core task of anyone who claims to be a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The first mail was sent out by Mauna, and deals with a parody-type “promotion” video for Auroville, made by and for Gujaratis. The script of the video is filled with exactly the claims that Aurovillage has been pumping out since decades, all the lofty generalisations that are in actual fact simply lies. Mauna clearly isn't aware of the fact that it is a parody, and that they use our own propaganda against us.
The meeting she mentions is nothing but the next attempt to desperately rope in the Tamil population of Auroville into the cult's attempt to stay alive. For five decades, the Tamils were the workers of Auroville, the poor sods that were treated like second or third class residents, who should be grateful for even being allowed into Auroville in the first place. Now that the cult is trying to convince the courts that they represent "the vast majority of the Auroville residents", they desperately need the Tamils to support them. The slaves now need to defend the slave-owners, as I have already mentioned before. That meeting has as little to do with "coming together" as with "being called by our Tamil brothers and sisters". Look at its motto: how much more clearly do you want them to tell us that "you need to stand with me to save my property"? How much more cultish can they sound?
It is such a blatantly obvious trap, that it is almost incredible that anyone still falls for such age-old tricks. (Still, some do. Old habits die hard.)
Please note that Madam Secretary has never said (let alone “promised”) what Mauna claims, and that Mauna is unable to show any evidence of her claim, even after being asked to do so.
As the current Secretary of the Auroville Governing Board has repeatedly promised us that great amounts of Gujaratis will want to come and build Auroville, here is an 8 mnt clip in the "Fun 4 Gujaratis" series that may tell you how this prospect is going to come about. (I forward this with deep deep embarrassment towards Mother and Sri Aurobindo, whose stand on publications and promotional materials we have always held high...) You find the English translation attached. Thank you for being with us in this unspeakable predicament. == This afternoon we have a community gathering, called by our Tamil brothers and sisters. Its motto is I am what I am because of who we all are We are our STRENGTH with love, -mauna
Dear Mauna,
What is Auroville about, in your opinion?
Is there any place for Integral Yoga?
Does Integral Yoga involve growing in consciousness, becoming more and more conscious of what the effect of one's words is? Becoming conscious of what one actually says? And to whom?
Did you feel any embarrassment at all when you – a westerner – proudly and firmly told a room full of Indian aspirant-Aurovilians that – of course! – it needed to be harder for Indians to join Auroville than for westerners?
Did you have any consciousness that somehow tried to make you aware that this was probably a very awkward thing to say in a country that has suffered 200 years of extremely brutal colonisation by westerners?
Does it help your growth in consciousness to reflect on this now, a few years later?
Does it help you, in any way at all, to be pointed NOW towards the warnings that were given back then about Auroville's general colonial and racist attitude, and that it was a time-bomb ready to explode?
Or is it all just too late?
Are you and your co-cult members just too old, too deeply rooted into the group-think that you are somehow "saviours", "chosen ones", here to bring something to poor dumb degenerates who are clueless and waiting for your saving grace to help them out of their own stupidity and incompetence?
Has a lifetime spent in superiority, constantly confirmed by your "sisters and brothers" who, just like you, keep repeating the cult narratives as religiously as if they were mantras – has such a life built a wall around your consciousness so thick, that no thought or circumstance whatsoever can reach it and make you think that maybe, just maybe, someone else could say something that hurts you, but nevertheless might be true? Are you so far gone that the very concept of introspection is no longer an option?
Look at what you put out here.
A claim that Auroville is going to be overrun by Gujaratis, because that's what the Secretary has announced everywhere.
Are you honestly incapable of seeing how idiotic, how delusional, how childish, how false, and above all, how ordinarily fear-mongering you sound? Where are Mother and Sri Aurobindo's words that inspire you to do such an action?
If you can't see all of this, then I hope you have a plan B ready, Mauna.
Because this location, Mother's Auroville, has no longer any space for racist colonials. We have tried to warn you, have tried to point it out to you, to bring you some awareness and make you see reality. All to no avail.
I wish you all the best with the rest of your life, in which you will have to face the material consequences of not wanting to even consider looking at reality when you were kindly asked to do so. And not even when the circumstances forced you to do so.
There is no need to feel vicarious embarrassment before Mother and Sri Aurobindo on our behalf.
You have embarrassed them more than enough yourself, and you best deal with that first.
Good luck,
Lieve
The second email is one of the several replies of Mauna's cult-sisters who came to the rescue to defend her. Mauna herself is clearly incapable of saying anything in her own favour, let alone show proof of the veracity of her scandalous claims. The “unspeakable predicament” is nothing but the very ordinary downfall of the cult she has been a member of for the major part of her life. So much for surrendering to the Divine and seeing that outer circumstances are the result of the inner state of affairs.
So after a few others, here came “big Jocelyn” to the rescue. That nickname is not my creation, she is known here as such since decades. There were two Jocelyns in Auroville already early on, and one was and is seriously voluminous, an a tad bit taller than the other.
Here's her two cents to try to save what can still be saved of the cult – in vain, obviously.
mauna, i would like to thank you for your years of service. we have all said and done stupid things from time to time, but your years of helping to hold the community, locally and internationally through your work has been a great gift that has been nearly entirely non-exclusive. i hope that whoever takes up this work is equally non-exclusive and allows us to communicate freely even if sometimes we say or do stupid things.
Dear Jocelyn, This all is not the point. The point is not that we are all nice people individually. The point is that we are here for a collective growth in consciousness. Read the below quote from Mother's Agenda. Is it somehow not clear enough? Is there any room left for ambiguity in Her words? Is it somehow not needed to listen to this? Is it something we can conveniently discard, with any excuse we have at hand? You are personally not "European" and therefore can technically exclude yourself, hooray? The whole point, which I and others have been trying to make clear since years now, is that we CANNOT grow in consciousness, CANNOT move forward on ANY spiritual path if we are wilfully blind to the deepest conditionings we carry within us. Western society brainwashes, conditions each and every single person FROM DAY ONE with a false and baseless sense of superiority. It is there since centuries, and it is present in EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of our society. If this most basic conditioning, one of the deepest roots of our personalities, inescapably, is not SEEN, not ACKNOWLEDGED, how on earth shall we pretend to be on our way to some higher spiritual life? NONE OF US IS TO BLAME FOR ITS EXISTENCE. ALL OF US ARE TO BLAME FOR ITS ENDURANCE. I speak from very harsh personal experience. Do you think I do not have this conditioning? Of course I have it, and coming to live in Auroville has given me the clear opportunity to be confronted with it. It was a very unpleasant discovery, but if you claim to be on your way to widen your consciousness, it's quite absurd to refuse the existence of the most ugly parts of our nature, isn't it? But our society has a solution for that too: we westerners have invented "spirituality light": the "easy" version of "spirituality": new age feel-good pretend stuff, focused on the OUTWARD SHOW of "look how spiritual I am doing here, goodness me, I must be on my way to Nirvana or what?!". Watch Muriel's superb video about this topic, almost solely made up of passages of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWOve6mCcPw The time now has come when looking away is no longer allowed. Humanity can no longer be dominated by the most stupid, the most selfish and the most arrogant. Those who refuse to acknowledge reality as it is will simply fall by the wayside. The future is being shaped only by the ones that have that most basic and needed characteristic of Youth: being curious, being willing to explore new things, being able to SEE what IS, not plastering the past known things all over whatever presents itself. Being willing to reinvent oneself every day, as Mother said it: TO BE YOUNG IS TO BE ALWAYS READY TO GIVE UP WHAT WE ARE IN ORDER TO BECOME WHAT WE MUST BE. Who said this was going to be a comfortable, plush ride? Who is so delusional to think that it will not take pain and sacrifice? Why did Mother not want retirees to come and settle in Auroville? Do you remember Mother's play "The Voyage"? The story of the people who set out for a great discovery and adventure, and all just stop at different stages instead of going on and on. She hadn't created Auroville or witnessed the Aurovilians yet at that time, and hence had not written them into the play. The Aurovillagers are the ones that went to their front door, looked around and boasted: "Look at where we have come! Look at us, so bravely walking up to this door! We are truly to be lauded for our efforts, and shall write great epics about our mighty and heroic deed!!" What is happening now is that the more sensible part of humanity is done watching this display of insanity, done listening to their endless chest-thumping, done standing in front of a blocked door. We are now – at long last, and having no other option anymore – simply pushing them aside and opening the door to finally start travelling on the road beyond. Whether or not these people were nice or not nice is irrelevant. They are totally obsolete – and only a blockage – for the real Adventure. Lieve
(Soon afterwards, regarding a European disciple who asks to help the Ashram’s “cottage industry.” This fragment of conversation, though rather prosaic, was preserved, as it is quite illustrative.) This cottage industry produces things that aren’t very pretty…. So she would like to know if you want her to go and work there or to do something on her own. I feel she has a capacity for handicraft that could be used. Pavitra read me her letter. I spontaneously answered him, “Oh, this woman is too perfect for me.” You know, “I can do this, I can do that, I do this so well, I do that so perfectly….” There were pages of it, mon petit! So in the end I said, “She is too perfect for me.” She is probably skilful. Yes, and this cottage industry has lots of resources that aren’t put to full use... I have never got involved in it — it’s been functioning for a long time and they’ve been producing their hideous things for a long time… Yes. And I have never said anything because… we don’t speak the same language. But perhaps G. [the head of the cottage industry] would be glad to have her? But that needs your approval. How should she go and see G.? She would need a note from you or… Oh, no! I can’t say anything. G. must be the one to ask. She should express to G. her wish to help, and he should spontaneously accept; otherwise it won’t work, mon petit! I’ll receive a polite letter for an answer. That’s strange! No, no, that’s how it is, humanity is like that. If she goes there, if she shows interest and a great goodwill, then it may work. Naturally, if G. asks if I agree, I’ll certainly tell him — but he must be the one to ask! (Mother laughs) She could bring some fresh air there... There was some repair work to be done in their house — she showed the workers how they should do it! — The workers preferred to go and work elsewhere. They all have that, all of them: the arrogance of the European, oh!... Because the European is indeed used to dealing with Matter, so he has a certain authority over Matter. That’s true. For instance they are much more orderly (I am talking in a general way, there are exceptions everywhere), they have a certain mastery over Matter that doesn’t exist here, and because of that they feel so superior that it’s disgusting. I find this in all those who come and I must admit I get... I let them flounder about for some years, until they suddenly realise that with all their superiority they are inferior. Then — then we can start getting along with each other! You understand? That’s true.
Mother's Agenda, 25 June 1966
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