I believe in Human Unity. Which does not mean for me "holding hands, sitting in meetings together, chanting together, meditating together, eating together" or whatever else people can do in groups. If the goal of Auroville was "to do something in a large group", I don't think the Mother would have bothered to create a city for it, and on the other hand, it would have been achieved long before Auroville's inauguration. Human Unity, as I see it, is an experience. A way of life. A most basic attitude, something that runs below or in the back of everything we do on the surface. It is the certitude, the concrete experience, that in spite of all our superficial differences, we are all a spark of the Divine. That knowing brings an unshakeable sense of unity. How to express that in ordinary, daily life? By being conscious of it, always. Now in spite of that conviction, I don't see much hope for the divide in Auroville being solved. It's not possible, because even though this divide plays on a very superficial level, it has, in my opinion, for many of us here become our whole "world". This is why I speak of a cult with a cult narrative. From what I see, that narrative is literally all some people have: they were either born into it or have given up all other beliefs and taken this one as their core conviction, cherishing it as a religion. Why can I be so blunt (many will call it "judgemental") about this? Because I was like that when I joined Auroville. I know from experience how it is to live in a cult delusion, and how impossible it is to accept or even acknowledge that criticism may be correct. It's a state in which the existence of the cult bubble is denied, so it is really impossible to have a meaningful discussion about it with the people inside of it. Better still: it's not ALLOWED to discuss the possibility that there may be a cult narrative! Within the narrative, the narrative is all, and nothing can possibly exist outside of it... I define a cult as a group of people who adopt, share and propagate a belief in a rosy narrative, and who through that false narrative justify and perpetuate a (very) negative reality. Every member of the cult who has material or emotional benefit from believing and reinforcing the cult narrative, is actively and constantly pushed to keep the narrative afloat, and has every incentive to deny that the narrative exists. Even though reality shows to everybody that the narrative is a lie. Now normally, it wouldn't be so hard to point out the blatant contradictions between the narrative and reality. But our present global society is in itself such a cult, with absurd narratives such as that we need eternal wars so we can live in peace, and that billionaires need to get even more astronomically rich in order for poverty to end. Our global society is almost made up of cognitive dissonance, it's become absolutely normal to hear people claim that black is white 24/7. This is a level of societal sickness that is beyond healing: it's terminal. Accepting such a level of falsehood can only mean that total collapse is very near: it takes unbelievable amounts of energy to maintain an imbalance of this magnitude. It's impossible to sustain for a longer period of time. The same level of insanity is visible in Auroville: we're not talking from within a shared reality anymore. What words mean, what actions do, what things are: all these most basic notions are not shared. I wanted to write "are NO LONGER shared", but I've come to the conclusion that in fact, it has been like this for a very long time. Longer than I can remember. I simply wasn't aware of it, because when you're inside the bubble, it all simply doesn't exist. This brings us to one of the main issues we see here: the claim that we lived in harmony until very recently. All of these claims ("nobody is against the Galaxy", "nobody is against the city", "nobody is against the Crown Road") are factually lies, and discord was at the order of the day, every day, in the 5 decades Auroville has been allowed to exist so far. (If nobody was against the Crown, why were the Youth Centre and all the trees put exactly on top of the markings soon after the marking?) This denial shows the deeply rotten state we are in. If in spite of indicting realities, in spite of all logic and rationality, false narratives are STILL upheld and repeated endlessly, with total impunity, a straight face, and are even applauded, then there is nothing left to be saved. There is no discussion possible, as reality is no longer defined in common terms. There simply is literally not even the tiniest spot of common ground left. Not on the surface reality anyway. And it seems that for the Aurovillagers, that surface reality is all there is. They are fighting for it as if their life depends on it. Which it probably does. Because that life can only exist within the cult narrative delusion bubble. The idea that it may be a bubble, that there may be a totally different reality outside of it, is an existential threat. If they are able to come out of the bubble, there's all to discuss and share and unite. If they cannot come out of it, we've got nothing left but "So long, and thanks for all the trees!"
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