Now if this was NOT about power, about ruling a colonial settlement, running a cult and having control and authority over Auroville, then what would the reaction of the Aurovillagers be?
If we assume for a moment that these are sincere people honestly trying to be True Aurovilians, create the Mother's Dream, trying to find a higher form of society, working in harmony and peace, being benign and kind, benevolent, welcoming, not interested in money and personal gain, if all of that were true, how would they react to the arrival of Madam Secretary, bringing in a lot of great intentions to help Auroville manifest the City that the Mother had spoken about always when she spoke about Auroville?
First of all: this very simple thought experiment is already a complete absurdity and contradiction: because IF these people were so well-intended and devoted followers of the Mother's wishes for Auroville, the present situation could not have existed, and there would be no reason for the Government to send Dr. Jayanti Ravi to start a speed-up, unblock, move-on, refresh, clear-out, pump-up booster campaign in the first place!
So yes, it's rather totally impossible to assume even the most simple honesty on the Aurovillagers' side, because the reality is so utterly blatantly the opposite of what the Mother wanted, but still, let's just ignore the jarring contradictions for a second, and look at how good-willing people would react to the arrival of a huge amount of help.
The general understanding of who is living here, based on the propaganda that is being put out, is one of caring, gentle, peaceful, warm, spiritual, harmonious and generally nice people, right?
So such people would have no difficulties whatsoever in collaborating, no?
Then what happened here? Why was collaboration not possible?
The Secretary has held more than 50 (FIFTY) long meetings with all kinds of groups, in order to reach an agreement about finally, after 12 years, unblocking the issues that have stalled the completion of the Crown Road and the linked infrastructure grid.
Because you see, these very harmonious and loving people have not managed to create a small and simple electricity grid in 54 years. Auroville is getting its electricity from individual connections to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB), which means that there is not 1 electricity bill for Auroville, but a few thousand. On top of it, it means that everybody is dependent on the power cuts and rates of the TNEB. It's not so hard to see that having our own electricity grid for the whole of Auroville, connected to the TNEB by only ONE connection, is rather the most obvious and simple thing to do. If you are Auroville, that utopian city where everybody lives in harmony and peace, right?
So why is it not the case? Why do these so aspiring spiritual harmonious peace-loving people make promises and then do nothing? Why are they not able to actually DO some collaboration, SHOW some harmony, LIVE some unity? Why is it always only in their anonymous publications that this place is so ideal and great, and never on the ground?
And why on earth would people who do not cling to possessions and the land they have taken for themselves, why would Aurovilians who live according to the Charter and do not want any ownership, why would such people go completely berserk over a tiny round road crossing “their territory”? It is simply not compatible. The reaction and the claim are in total collision.
The only reason that people freak out over a public project that benefits the whole community, is because they claim the location that the project is going through BELONGS TO THEM.
Darkali, since it became the "property" of Gopal, Agnes and Auronevi, and until now, has been considered and treated as private land. It was given to them to develop it as some piece of one of the four parks – most obviously PUBLIC parks – of the Galaxy plan, but they never allowed the public to enter! Not even Aurovilians! Darkali was NOT a public park, it was a totally PRIVATE park!
And THAT is why they created the whole immense uproar when the Secretary wanted to complete the Crown Road. Because they suddenly were forced to show in public that they did claim all this land as THEIR PROPERTY, and not at all as public property that they had been “stewarding for the future generations”.
They were suddenly forced to admit that they had given themselves the ownership and authority over this large part of the Auroville City, without ANY democratic or community process.
No matter how much they suddenly claim to worship democracy and community processes, there was NO process at all that allowed Gopal and Agnes and Auronevi to take possession of the Darkali area. It was given to them by the cult-leaders, and that was it.
Why would sincere people spend day and night and all their energy in pumping out propaganda, doing everything in their power to convince the public, the outside world, that they are good and decent and not colonial and not possessive and not violent and no bullies? Where is the spirituality in the immense need of being PERCEIVED as the victim, as these poor harmonious peace-loving persons who – for no reason! – are being punished, being tortured, being harmed, being done great injustice!
Why would people, if they are honestly interested in living in harmony, in working together, in creating Human Unity, why on earth would such people become extremely violent, specifically in their vocal behaviour, demonise their fellow Aurovilians, look at them as if they were the most disgusting thing they had ever seen instead of recognising the Divine inside and greet them and respect them as such? Why would they slash their “fellow sisters and brothers'” car tires, put stickers of cockroaches on their scooters, scream insults at them when they see them? If these people were all the things they claim to be, the spiritual sadhaks, the good-willing, yoga-focused, soul-searching, higher consciousness seeking human unity-explorers, then how can they shout and scream, boo and call names at the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation, have the most ordinary and low-level smear campaigns against her spread far and wide, and be more in Delhi than in Auroville in order to make sure they get the highest level politicians to ruin her career for having attempted to help them in their so sincere effort to move Auroville forward? And all this immediately from the very moment that they suddenly don't get to have their full dictatorship over Auroville anymore?
Would that be the reaction of someone who really wants this city? Who really wants more humans here so they can have a much better and bigger experiment in creating human unity? Would they want to live separated, isolated, left alone to be lords of the lands that they were supposed to not at all take for themselves, but steward for humanity, as the place that belongs to nobody and where the whole of humanity is welcome?
Is it not really the most obvious, blatant thing that what these people DO is the total opposite of what they SAY?
Of course these people and all their friends who had divided up the Auroville lands and properties among themselves were furious when the Secretary started to point out the contradictions of what happens here with everything that the Mother had intended Auroville to be! How dare anyone ask for accountability to these Aurovillagers! In the 50 years of their de facto ownership of Auroville, NOBODY had ever dared to question their “good intentions” and their propaganda narratives.
Remember – and I cannot stress this enough – that at the very start, Auroville was extremely isolated, and only the people living there could know what happened there.
And of the people who were living there, the most selfish and perverted people would automatically dominate what happened, and would therefore also decide what was told to the outside world of what happened.
Because they would not have any spiritual or humane limitation to get what they wanted, and therefore would fight with different weapons against people who do have self-imposed ethical standards. Since the early days, they usurped the monopoly on what the world could hear about Auroville from the very start, and nobody – let alone someone with more honesty – has been able to take it from them. Until now.
And therefore the world has never learned of the reality of what happens here. Every attempt to give a true account has been immediately crushed with the power of their propaganda-mill. And with huge intimidation and bullying and physical violence if needed. There never were limits for these people when it came to defending the kingdom they had built here: they do what it takes, at all costs. Because they have no other goal in life.
Even today, the lawlessness of this area is very real. The Aurovillagers always rely on their 50-year old propaganda track-record to claim they have nothing to do with the murders in and around Auroville, but it does not take much insight to see that the lawlessness is shared. Murders here are never solved, as this area, since the Aurovillagers settled, is one where law enforcement does not reach. In the war with the SAS, friends in Delhi would make sure that the local authorities were powerless against the crimes of the Aurovillagers.
So many decades later, it has become the normal way of life: there is no law-enforcement in Auroville, it's locally accepted as a fact and implemented, no matter what happens here.
I don't want to make a case for old-world law-enforcement, as I strongly believe that the Mother created Auroville to move beyond these things, but the fact of the matter is that the reason why this is accepted as “the way it is”, is not because of a HIGHER consciousness that has established itself here, but because the whole project was from the very start hijacked by a LOWER consciousness than the average situation in 1970. That is why She said on March 30th 1972:
Since we have set aside all conventions, immediately everybody thinks: “Ah! Nice place to satisfy our desires.” And they nearly all come with that intention.
And because I built a maternity clinic for the children of people I was obliged to send away from the Ashram, so that they would have a place to have their children, people think that the maternity clinic is intended for all illegitimate children.
I am not concerned about legality, I am not concerned about laws or conventions. But what I do want is a more divine life and not an animal life.
And they turn freedom into license, they use it to satisfy their desires. And all the things that we have truly worked all our lives to master, they indulge in ― a dissipation. I am absolutely disgusted.
We are here to give up all desires and turn towards the Divine and to become conscious of the Divine. The Divine we seek is not remote and inaccessible. He is at the core of His own creation and what He wants us to do is to find Him, and by our personal transformation to become capable of knowing Him, of uniting with Him and, in the end, of manifesting Him consciously. This is what we should consecrate ourselves to, this is our true reason for existence. And our first step towards this sublime realisation is the manifestation of the supramental Consciousness.
To realise and manifest the Divine in our own lives is the way, not to become animals and live like cats and dogs.
Just the opposite! The greater part of the population of Auroville is a subhumanity instead of a superhumanity. Well, it is time for all that to come to an end.
It did not come to an end. It had only just begun!
On March 8th 1972 She had already told Satprem
Oh, they're all quarrelling among themselves! And some even disobey deliberately, they refuse to recognise any authority.
And on his insistence to intervene, she had answered
You see, I can’t make decisions anymore because they don’t listen to me. As long as they listened to me, it was easy – it was easy, there was an influence. Now, something has happened, I don’t have any authority at all anymore, so what can we do?
Finally, the Mother would leave her body and not give any new physical messages anymore to the Aurovillagers. They were now free to claim total control over Auroville, expand their subhumanity, claim the territory, the power to rule, and the name of Auroville as their rightful property, and make sure any criticism or opposition would be nipped in the bud.
Every aspect would be perverted, and Roger and “his” Galaxy would be bullied out of the project he was put in charge of by the Mother Herself.
On April 4th 1972, he had complained to the Mother that
Auroville is burdened by a small group of people who are contaminating its life and spirit and jeopardising its progress. They thwart any effort to implement safety and hygiene measures, working decisions, and they behave in contradiction to Auroville's ideal. One solution would be to send some of these people back home and, for a certain period, to limit newcomers to those elements directly useful to the building of Auroville.
A quite practical proposal, but it was not implemented, as the Mother's reasons to accept or send people to Auroville were quite beyond the grasp of her helpers, who knew that She was prone to attract difficult and sometimes nasty characters for spiritual reasons, and who also did not want to be or seem little dictators who admit or dismiss people whimsically or arbitrarily.
And so Roger finally left, and Auroville was taken over by the lower forces that had wrestled themselves to the top of the small group of people in this remote, isolated “settlement”.
Mainly left to their own devices, with high ideals, great words, and no outside authority to speak of that could check what exactly was going on here, the collection of individual fiefdoms we see today were bound to sprout and grow into settled and established realities.
If this seems exaggerated to you, just look at what they do today.
See how they are fighting for their lives, in the most unspiritual way. Notice how they violently refuse to accept the reactions and consequences of their decades-long action, and how they claim to be victims, pushed innocently and powerlessly in situations of huge distress, uncertainty and fear, by horrible people coming from outside!
Where in the world is THAT the sign of spiritual growth, of a higher consciousness, of a deeper understanding, of a surrender to the Divine?
For half a century, so many of us have suffered under their hijacking, have lived in the perverted mud pool they made of the Mother's Dream. Have we screamed out to the world how horribly we were being wronged, what injustice was being done to us?
No. We tried to put the rather very unpleasant reality on the table inside Auroville, to show everybody present that the reality and the words were so flagrantly contradictory, thinking they had some honesty and goodwill in them, that they would be honest enough to acknowledge the truth, and rectify the negative course they had turned Auroville onto, as this was never about blaming anyone, but about bringing in a different future and correcting course so we can end up where the Mother wanted it.
Silly us. We now see that we were never going to be able to negotiate anything, as the whole affair was rotten to the core from the very start: there never was the WILLINGNESS to do what the Mother wanted.
Here is a post I put on Auronet in early 2019, more than two years before the inevitable winds-of-change “suddenly and unexpectedly” swept the self-erected thrones from under these poor willing-servitors-of-falsehood's well-fed bums.
Dysfunctional
Dysfunctional. Um, what would that word mean? Certainly nothing in the context of Auroville. Our dysfunctionality is nowhere in our propaganda, so it doesn't exist. Hurray!
For anyone who still – or finally – has some sort of discernment, it will be as blatant as the sun that we have an astronomical dysfunctionality. But actually doing something about that would mean throwing so much away – in fact: throwing everything away – and starting from scratch, and that obviously is not going to happen in a gerontocracy. After all, we have sooooooooooo much to reminisce about and look back at and cherish and make videos and expositions about that it would be rather impossible in the City of the Future of the Seventies to simply stop looking back, drop all nostalgia and get to work to create Mother's Dream.
Mother's what now? What old and dead cow am I now dragging into this? I must be out of my mind to come with such a pipe-dream!
Don't I see that we have no intention to do anything like that? That it simply won't work? That it never did, and that we've given up on all that? That we have toiled long and hard enough in the tough but glorious old days and now deserve some personal comfort and quiet and rest while clinging to our positions of power?
Don't I see that we have no basic agreement on anything related to Auroville? That we don't all agree to be willing servitors of the Divine, that we don't all agree that this place should become a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity, that we most certainly don't all agree that the only way to achieve such stuff is to build a city so that we are confronted with each other instead of trying to avoid each other's presence as much as physically possible so that we don't have to do the hard and rotten work of looking at our petty reactions every single second of the day and see how utterly small we still are and how childish we act and react all the time?
Oh, yes, I see that. As clearly as I see our dysfunctionality. And as clearly as I see that even acknowledging it, putting this stuff on the table is too uncomfortable, and that our unwillingness to admit to our smallness, in all honesty, openly, in the face of the whole world, is the one thing that we all agree upon, and hence is the foundation stone of the present 'Auroville'.
Let's have some more 50th Anniversary celebratory self-glorification! Yay!! :-D #MotherCanWait
And here is what the Mother wrote on November 26th 1972:
Before dying falsehood rises in full swing.
Still people understand only the lesson of catastrophe. Will it have to come before they open their eyes to the truth?
I ask an effort from all so that it has not to be.
It is only the Truth that can save us: truth in words, truth in action, truth in will, truth in feelings. It is a choice between serving the Truth or being destroyed.
