In continuation of the last episode, I want to show how the narratives of what I have called “the Aurovillage cult” always leave out lots of background, lots of facts and evidence that is needed to get a full picture. With only a small selection of facts, the CONCLUSIONS that they want you to draw, that are forced upon us by their media campaign, are difficult to counter and escape. The fact that much is left out, and that whatever claims they make are drowned in a large bowl of emotional soup, makes people not look at the puzzle and the picture, but quickly absorb and adopt the conclusions that are always put in the centre of their propaganda. The intent is not to inform you, but to have you on their side.
As was said and explained many times already, Aurovillage was created thanks to a very dominant propaganda campaign, which was naturally successful because of the initial physical isolation of Auroville at the start. To fundraise for the Aurovillagers, and to make sure the monopoly of the narrative about what was happening here remained in the hands of the Aurovillagers, the “Auroville International (AVI) Centres” were created. As already explained in episode 37, the people in these centres were generally very good-willing but totally brainwashed cult members. For whatever reasons, they were and are not able to actually come and live here and be official Aurovillagers, and as a consolation prize, the cult leadership allows them to “spread the word”, like Jehova's witnesses: not having any real understanding of what they are talking about, but convinced that the miraculous narratives they endlessly parrot are actually true.
It is therefore no wonder that when the Aurovillage cult was removed from power during 2022, the AVI centres immediately rushed in to defend their idols and masters from this great “injustice”. All the reveals of abuse of power, of hijacking and of colonial behaviour were immediately denied as if they were personal insults, and the AVIs frantically endorsed the Stand for Auroville Unity propaganda with almost sincere indignation.
They fell over each other in their eagerness to prove their loyalty to the Aurovillage leaders, seemingly unable to digest even the remotest possibility that the wonderful stories they had cherished as a counterweight to the nasty reality of our global, but Western, society, could turn out to be completely false after all.
Look at the picture at the top of this post: it was taken at a meeting of “AVI”, here in Auroville, in February of this year. Look at what you see. Is this an “international” group of people, or is this a group of almost purely Western people? Is the West the whole world? Why are there no non-white people in this picture? Where is Africa? Where is Arabia? Where are the Americas – the real ones, not the colonised parts? There are four people in this picture who stand out: they are young and three are East-Asian, in contrast to all the others.
Where is India in this picture, the home-country of the project they work for? How can they claim that are not defending a colonial, Western enterprise in South India?
This picture is one that they themselves show off with, can you believe it? How blind to our own white superiority indoctrination do we have to be, to proudly present this picture to the world as an achievement in "human unity" or even "international cooperation"?
In episode 37 I commented on a letter from the main AVI managers, and since then, the Working Committee made several attempts to meet with the AVI people. To work together meaningfully, it is urgently needed to have a dialogue about how their reporting on the events in Auroville is biased and reflects their allegiance to the Aurovillage narrative, in spite of the reality they can come and experience here for themselves. Many AVI people came to Auroville in January and February, and they had meetings as we can see in the picture. But they refused to meet with the Working Committee, the FAMC or the TDC. They did meet of course with the Aurovillagers who falsely – and illegally – appropriate these names and claim to be members of these groups. The absurdity of this situation seems not to bother the AVI cult members in the least: they meet with illegal, alternative shadow groups who have no power whatsoever in Auroville: their “Working Committee” cannot provide any visa or whatever other legal assistance to Aurovilians, their “FAMC” cannot create or appoint any unit or executive of Auroville, their “TDC” cannot create, allocate or approve any single physical change of Auroville's township, their “BCC” has no access to any rupee of Auroville's budget, and their “Housing Service” is not in charge of one single house in Auroville. They have literally zero influence on the material reality of Auroville. It is a total clown show, and a very sad one at that.
But still the AVI people had meetings with these imposters, and refused to meet with the people who are legally appointed to actually create Auroville in collaboration with the Governing Board, the Secretary, and with the approval of the many Aurovilians who are too scared by the decades of bullying and violent threats to openly speak out or come and work with us.
After their visit here to pledge of allegiance to their old master, the Aurovillage International members wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation, Dr. Jayanti Ravi, and published it in the News & Notes.
It is really beyond tiresome to hear the same talking points being repeated again and again and again and then again, endlessly, without any change, without any reflection or consideration for the situation on the ground, without any connection to reality. They just keep making proofless claims, like blind and deaf machines, as if somehow, somewhere, if they repeat it enough times, it will somewhat become reality.
The most basic fact, namely that Dr. Ravi started her work in Auroville by having endless meetings, for five whole months, with the people who call themselves the “RA” or who felt they were implicated or affected or victim or who for any other reason wanted to be part of the discussions, the very fact that the very FIRST thing that happened was that THEY WERE HEARD AT LENGTH, that fact is completely ignored, if not flatly denied.
Without the acknowledgement of that fact, any discussion of what happened in Auroville since July 2021 is already corrupted from the get-go: if it has to obfuscate or hide that very fact, any account or interpretation of what happened AFTER that cannot be honest or sincere.
Let's have a look at what the AVI members took away from their “reality-check” of the situation on the ground in Aurovillage – as they did not have the time nor the desire to visit the real Auroville, apparently.
To:
Dr. Jayanti Ravi
Secretary of the Auroville Foundation
Foundation Office
Auroville
Cc: Governing Board, International Advisory Council
Auroville, March 6, 2023
Dear Dr. Jayanti Ravi,
We would like to thank you for your hospitality to meet us and the International Advisory Council at your office on February 18. We appreciated the opportunity to give personal introductions by each of us as well as the open atmosphere and opportunity to discuss and exchange on several important issues.
Responding to our questions you emphasized that there is freedom of expression in Auroville. This affirmation is very important to us and for our work in our countries. In line with this mutual view and aspiration regarding the ground reality, we would like to ask you:
To arrange for everyone to be able to use free and uncensored e-mail traffic, as it used to be;
We're immediately off to a good start. After acknowledging that Madam Secretary had been courteous enough to meet with them, and in a positive, open and welcoming atmosphere, even though she is fully aware of the negativity that the AVI centres have spread about her and her work, they immediately revert to their basic, core attitude: make demands!
The Aurovillagers are not here to have unity and collaboration, they want that people do or give them what they demand. Colonial style never hides itself well, does it?
The first request is also immediately an idiocy: nobody has blocked or censored anyone's email. Access to email accounts for working groups that were abused by the Aurovillagers has obviously been given to the correct groups, but nobody's personal email was affected in any way. It is from point one a false statement or insinuation: what exactly do they mean? What is being claimed here?
When the Foundation Office took charge of the @auroville.org.in workspace, the Aurovillagers, angry for having lost another “position of power and control”, started screaming loudly that now suddenly everybody's email was compromised, that the Foundation Office could read all emails and see the full content of everyone's drives and email-account related content. Strangely enough, the fact that if that is true, then THEY themselves, without anybody's knowledge, had such access to every Aurovilian's emails and content for decades, was completely ignored, and actually denied. In spite of all their claims now of “no transparency” and “no accounatability”, when they were in charge of the workspace, they had never given any clarity or information on who was managing this workspace, and who had the admin access, and what it all meant for the Aurovilian users of this workspace that they had fully under their control and could spy upon. Up until today, they have refused to give clarity on this issue, pretending that the Foundation Office is a huge threat to everybody's privacy, but that they were not: we could trust them, they tell us. That simple statement is supposed to reassure us. The fact that they go to court whenever they don't get it their way is not alarming in the least, I guess.
From the moment they lost the control over the workspace, the Aurovillagers immediately started pressuring all their cult members into abandoning their @auroville.org.in emails, and create emails outside. A whole alternative Aurovillage email domain was set up, where all the people who want “unity” and “cooperation” and “dialogue” and “reconciliation” went to, separating themselves from the official Auroville email circuit. Loads of Auroville working groups data was copied over there and deleted from the original accounts. This comes legally down to data theft, but that doesn't bother the AVI cult members in the least.
Obviously, this alternative, illegal and shadow domain was blocked from interacting with the official and legal domain. If they choose to be a separate, alternative Auroville with everything moved over there, so be it. But what insanity is it to then cry that you are no longer part of the real and physical Auroville?
To allow the editors of News & Notes to be inclusive and include the reports of the RA groups as well, as it used to be;
This is absurd. The AVI people demand that Auroville has ONE News and Notes, but that it needs to publish and present BOTH the real Auroville as well as the illegal, fictitious Aurovillage. Obviously, that is legally undefendable. Legality does not matter for AVI, clearly: they fully support that the Aurovillage groups who are impersonating illegally as “WC”, “TDC”, “FAMC” and the lot, get to publish in the News and Notes their false statements as being working groups that actually have no meaning or legal standing or any say over Auroville's matters.
The situation is confusing enough as it is, there is no way that such an insane request can be honoured. Why would anyone want to have only more confusion, instead of less? What's the agenda here? Keep Aurovillage alive for as long as possible?
In the meantime (the letter I comment on is two months old), the Aurovillagers have started to publish a shadow Knews and Knots bulletin, in which they copy/paste most of the real News and Notes content. Are the AVI people happy with that development?
To ensure that Auronet is free from harsh censorship,so that it can again become a real hub of internal communication within Auroville;
Once again, they are turning it all upside down. Auronet was taken over because there was a police investigation in the content. It was after all a child of Aurovillage, and reinforcing Aurovillage narratives was on of its purposes: keep the cult members in line and comforted with the idea that everyone else was also believing the nonsense. Since quite some time, the Aurovillagers were censoring the content that was critical of Aurovillage.
In spite of its claim to be our internal forum only for Aurovilians, over time it became a very public space: a vast part of the accounts are people who left Auroville ages ago or never were Aurovilians in the first place. The choice of who got a login and who didn't was obviously very subjective and hidden, nobody really knew who and how this was decided, it was the little kingdom of the Auronet dictatorship. After the take-over, some accounts that called openly for rebellion and action against the Governing Board or who endlessly spam the whole forum with their personal content, were disabled. Some were put back already, I'm not sure who and how many, but it was really extremely limited.
Here also – what did you expect – the Aurovillagers have already since many months created a shadow alternative online forum to which I or other people who work with the Governing Board are not given access, obviously.
Really, all we need is for them to find an alternative location and have their Aurovillage copy/pasted over there, all cult members included. It will be outside of India though.
To take care to ensure better communication and flow of information to the whole community, built upon Auroville and worldwide recognized standards such as due process, proportionality, sincerity and substantiating allegations.
How people can write such things with a straight face is really beyond me. Through the years, Aurovillage's processes have been an outright violation of anything acceptable, transparent, proportionate, decent or proper, and the last adjective one could have given them is “sincere”.
The removal of the Entry Service members in 2016, and the overturn of the process to create a new Entry Policy, which had involved hundreds of people for several years, after only three months of its implementation, stands forever as proof and testimony of the total whimsical nonsense that has passed here in Aurovillage as “due process” for decades.
The Aurovillagers now use the words everywhere, but some years back, when Indian Aurovilians were demanding that Aurovillage provide some sort of natural justice, the whole claim was attacked as being “non-spiritual”, “non-Aurovilian”, “old-world”, in short: way too ordinary for Aurovillage to even remotely consider the concept. And so Aurovillage stumbled on without any justice for aggrieved people, unless they were loyal white Aurovillage cult members. Then any claim, true or false, would be accepted and acted upon.
“Substantiating allegations” was considered a criminal act, and if you had proof of wrongdoings and went to the police – because you could not get any kind of justice in Aurovillage – you were immediately designated persona non grata. Please check with Vikram Ram how much “world-wide recognised standards” were applied in his case.
We all agreed and shared the aspiration that all groups should work together to manifest Human Unity and the City the Earth needs. The Residents’ Assembly, one of the three core pillars of the Foundation, has been crippled.
Absolutely not. Not at all. They have nothing to prove this. What happened, as this blog tries to demonstrate since the very beginning, is that the illegal appropriation of the Governing Board's powers and responsibilities by the Residents' Assembly has come to an end, finally and way overdue.
The Residents' Assembly as described in the Auroville Foundation Act, has not started to fulfil its role yet. The residents as a whole have not yet begun to live and embody Mother's Auroville: the Charter is violated instead of implemented, what it means To Be A True Aurovilian is nowhere to be seen in Auroville, and almost all that is manifested is the total opposite of what the Mother had asked for. As said from the very first episode: it is the end of this hijacking by the Aurovillage cult that is perceived by them as a loss. In reality, it's an immense improvement. Forward, march!
This is one of the reasons why communication between the Foundation and the community isn’t developing in a healthy way at present, which also hinders progress in the building of the City.
Really? So you mean to say that unless you are allowed to continue your hijacking of Auroville, and illegally usurping the powers and responsibilities of the Governing Board, there will be no good relations between you and the Foundation Office? I guess we're all shocked to hear this!
Everybody can see clearly here why the situation at present is as it is. The Aurovillagers talk about “unity”, “cooperation”, “together”, “harmony”, but in reality, it is the old adage of “my way or the highway”. If they don't get 100% what they demand and claim to be entitled to, there is not going to be any cooperation, but only hindrance, blocking and boycotting.
They will do whatever they can to obstruct Auroville's development if it is not under their dictatorship.
In the interest of genuine communication and sound dialogue, in the way that Sri Aurobindo described in Human Unity, which implies that all three bodies are interdependent and thus work together at the highest level, we would like to ask you to restore the Residents’ Assembly and its Working Committee in their proper legal positions.
This is now clearly getting delusional. Sri Aurobindo could never have implied anything related to the Auroville Foundation Act, as it did not exist during his physical life here. It didn't even exist during the Mother's lifetime! The book they refer to is The Ideal of Human Unity for those interested. And genuine communication and sound dialogue will always start with sincerity, in any normal situation. Let alone what Sri Aurobindo requires to have a more spiritual conversation. Leaving out facts and being brainwashed cult members who unquestioningly repeat slogans is not really what He had in mind here.
As anyone interested can find out for themselves, the legal roles of the Governing Board and the Residents' Assembly are exactly now being restored. The Aurovillagers themselves are going to court over this, as they don't want this restoration. To their utter dismay, they get the truth told to them by judges there, instead of by us, mere mortals: “The activities which are to be undertaken by the Residents' Assembly, are only in the nature of supplementing, but not supplanting the main power and function vested with the Governing Board.” (See episode 48.)
But the AVI stooges pretend not to know or understand any of this. Why?
Once again: the Auroville Foundation Act makes it abundantly clear for anyone who cares to read it for themselves, that the three bodies are not equal in power. They have to work together, yes, but not on the same tasks. They are not given the same responsibilities and are not at all meant to do everything they do together. That is not at all what the Auroville Foundation Act describes or planned for. It would be quite silly also: why create three different bodies if they need to function like they were three hands holding one pen?
We suggest you consult with the Residents’ Assembly Service which is using the Masterlist to control the eligibility of who is allowed to vote. We encourage you to update the Register of Residents as soon as possible. The update may resolve any speculation that the lack of progress in the update prevents residents from expressing their voice in community affairs.
Once more taking Aurovillage as the reality and everything outside it as illusion.
No, dear AVI persons, the Aurovillage Masterlist is not a legal document and has no value whatsoever anywhere in the world. It was the first “shadow” thing to be created by the Aurovillagers, as they couldn't for the life of them twist the extremely explicit lines of the Auroville Foundation Act, saying
(2) The Secretary to the Governing Board shall maintain the register of residents in such manner as may be prescribed and all the persons who are residents of Auroville and who are of the age of eighteen years and above are entitled to have their names entered in the register on an application made to the Secretary in such form as may be prescribed
into meaning that it is actually the Residents' Assembly that is in charge of the Register of Residents.
Clearly, no matter how delusional they are, the Aurovillagers understood that this was a bridge too far, and therefore they left the RoR to rot in the Foundation Office and created their own list of Aurovilians. When I joined Auroville, the Masterlist was everything, the RoR was some stupid formality gathering dust in the office of the Secretary, whom we didn't like, if we cared about them at all.
Also, the AVI people seem to be willingly unaware that the Working Committee has repeatedly asked the Residents' Assembly Service (RAS) to give the names of everybody who voted, and give the names of the people who come to meetings and decide “by show of hands” (very very futuristic for sure – leaving aside the whole issue of voting and democracy in Auroville, which the Mother very clearly rejected). The RAS claimed that it would violate the right to privacy of these people (who go to court to claim that they are “the RA”), if these names would be given to the Working Committee! Only Aurovillagers are allowed to know who participates in their circus charades, and only Aurovillagers get to decide who all is allowed to be part of “the RA”. The “facepalm” emoji would be fitting here.
There is also the all-important issue of ensuring visa security for those who live here and those from abroad who are supported in their plans to volunteer or settle in Auroville by our AVI Centres. We support you in your wish to encourage and attract young people from all over the world to participate in building Auroville. A key factor for people coming, and staying, is the housing need and the assurance of a reasonable period of ongoing visa stability. Can you offer them the housing and visa security to make our work for Auroville sustainable?
Also for the umpteenth time: people who want security and stability, who need material, emotional and mental comfort, are not the persons that the Mother invited for Her “Great Adventure”. People who want life as it is, have no need for Auroville and no place in it:
For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no reason to exist.
(The Mother, August 1966)
Anyone who is not able to surrender their fear of “not having a visa” is clearly not meant for any spiritual life and can remain where they are, no need to bother: enjoy life and the world as they are, full of security and safety and no change! Auroville is created for those who want to join the Great Adventure, and surrender all their fears, worries and insecurities to the Divine.
Now, about that lack of houses? Well, if those same Aurovillagers hadn't flatly blocked the building of the city and refused to have anything built in Auroville, there would by now be a town with enough houses to lodge every aspirant-Aurovilian for free. How hypocritical is it to insinuate that the Secretary, who is actively securing unprecedented amounts of financial support for the building of the Auroville township from the Central Government, is unwilling to provide housing for the new Aurovilians?
We all expressed our support for the Dreamweaving process. We have provided some support for the operation of this process. You invited us to encourage the Dreamweaving process, which could also be applied in other fields of Auroville’s community life. As regards the City building, we understand that this collective process has been abandoned in favour of an authoritarian approach to city planning, characterised by a lack of communication, damaging effects and negative results for the current mobility in the city.
And here comes the mythological Dreamweaving process again. During their visit here, the AVI chiefs have been made aware of the fact that the Dreamweaving process had turned into another tool for rebellion against the Governing Board and the Aurovilians who work in cooperation with the Governing Board. This letter was written after that visit, so they willingly choose to ignore this fact, and to totally misrepresent reality. They also totally leave out the fact that the Dreamweavers reneged on their promise to give their report as suggestions to the ATDC, which is the legal entity appointed by the Governing Board to implement the Galaxy Master Plan. Now, if the Dreamweavers want to boycott the Governing Board and its committees, that is their choice, and that means that they then exclude themselves from participating in the creation of the City. But if the AVI people have a problem with that, they should go complain with the Dreamweavers and make them follow up on their promises, instead of blaming Madam Secretary for their own wrongdoings. As was touched upon in episode 47, there was a strange connivance between the Dreamweavers and Vastu Shilpa Sangham, the company of the celebrated architect Mr. B.V. Doshi, who had been in connection with Auroville's TDC years ago, and recently passed away. The fact that this company is now willing to work together with the fake imposters, shows that something is off. The management of Vastu Shilpa cannot not be aware that these people have no possible legal standing, so are they willingly participating in unlawful and rebellious action against Auroville and the Auroville Foundation? Quite questionable for such a reputed institution. Are they willing to get tarnished over Auroville?
And obviously, the AVI puppets need to repeat the favourite narrative line of the Aurovillagers: the “authoritarian” approach. What exactly is that? Is it “authoritarian” to not give the Aurovillagers the full dictatorship over Auroville? To not go along with their toddler-like tantrums whenever they don't get their way 100%? Most of us will be familiar with the Harry Potter books (or the horrible movies made out of them), and the character of young Dudley Dursley, who is a totally spoilt rotten nuisance. Well, the Aurovillagers are quite like this character: they will blow up in fits of rage whenever they don't get literally everything they demand.
The insinuations at the end are nothing more than copy/pastes of the Aurovillage “reports” filled with slander and negativity. They had 50 years to build the Crown Road themselves, and started it 12 years ago, leaving it unfinished after paving only a few bits and pieces.
If they are so concerned about good and proper roads, why was the Crown never paved over all of the land that the Aurovillagers live on? There were no obstacles whatsoever to do this: and still they refused, as they don't want roads and a city. So now that someone else is doing it, they throw another tantrum and drown the positive development in a sea of negativity and complaints about it not all going according to the most perfect perfection imaginable. While they themselves did nothing at all, only endlessly blocked all development. It's disgraceful.
Our recent initiative to invite both groups working on townplanning to sit with us and talk together about the current state of play regarding the Dreamweaving results unfortunately failed. The ATDC, the internal working group of the Governing Board, did not want to join a meeting with the TDC selected by the Residents’ Assembly.
Again, they desperately try to give credibility to their delusion by frantically repeating the words.
There are no “both groups working on townplanning”. There is one TDC which is legally appointed by the Governing Board. This was confirmed in the judgement of the Madras High Court on October 13th, 2022 (see episode 48).
The other group are impostors, illegally making claims to be something they are not. They are therefore not sincere, not honest and violating the Charter of Auroville: they are not at the service of the Divine and certainly not at the service of Truth.
If the AVI people want to see truth and falsehood join hands, they in fact want poison to mix with health. Who in their right mind would accept such a sick proposal?
Therefore, we urge you to do all in your power to reinstate this work in a
genuine way and in the spirit of the original process. This would engender a far greater support from the community for the planning of the city. We are still in favour of applying the approach of the Dreamweavers and look forward to the results of the Heart Weavers as well.
What on earth is all this gibberish? Is there any meaning to be purged out of this word salad?
Let's remind the wilfully confused AVI spokespersons that the whole of Aurovillage has been screaming since almost two years that “nobody is against the city!”. So why do they now suddenly reveal the shocking truth that there is no “community support” for even the mere planning of the city? Freudian slip? Saying the silent part out loud? Not gotten the memo? And who is this “community” that is not supportive anyway? The few hundred Aurovillagers? Another instance of the pars pro toto fallacy that Aurovillage is built on?
And when they speak about the “approach of the Dreamweavers”, do they mean the active corruption of an initially participatory process into a rebellion campaign that calls for total obstruction and boycott of all participation?
What is meant with the “Heart Weavers”? Is this the same thing? Corrupting the hearts of the Aurovilians who still might have some empathy left and turning them into full-out psychopaths, incapable of feeling anything but selfishness and hatred for the Governing Board and Secretary?
Finally, we would like to ask you to give clarity about the position of Friends of Auroville as they don’t picture in the new Housing Policy document. Does this mean any change in their status as stewards?
“Stewards” in Aurovillage-speak means “owners of houses”. So here the AVI people, who have been given the status of “Friend of Auroville” (which gave them the right to “own” a house in Auroville without being Aurovilian), are now getting very spiritually scared as well, feeling they might lose their investments in Aurovillage! Imagine the spiritual insecurity and material loss this may entail! It's not a requirement to be willing servitors of the Divine for Friends of Auroville, so apparently, no need to surrender any fear or worldly attachments here.
If I may answer their question: you will get to know it when it is time for you to know it. Also a spiritual attitude that you can practice. What's it to you anyway? Are you recruiting Friends of Auroville or what?
Looking forward to your answers and into designing a constructive way forward towards re-creating Human Unity in Auroville and building the City the Earth needs,
Yours respectfully,
Christian Feuillette Friederike Mühlhans
Chairman, Auroville International Secretary,
Auroville International
Email: chairperson@auroville-international.org
Email: secretary@auroville-international.org
On behalf of the AVI Board
My advice: let go. Let go of all of it. Aurovillage first of all. Liberate yourself from your shackles that hold you captive of the Aurovillage cult, of the Auroville narrative. It's nothing but a delusion anyway. No good will come from clinging to a sinking ship. If you feel like going down with the ship: you're free to do so, all the best. But nobody forces you. It's your own, free choice. Choose wisely.