Welcome to Auroville
auroville.org
auroville.org
My family are all based in Pondicherry and have very strong historical links with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Mother. And are also involved in the Auroville administration and management. I've been there a lot, I've stayed there, met many people who live there and work there.
And it's an unusual place. Some of the folks in Pondy call it "Horrorvile" because of the reputation of seediness that some residents are alleged to have (sex abuse of local children, if you want to know). There is also a unusual "un-Indian" feeling about the place because of the nationality of its residents (global).
However, I have met only nice people there, doing wonderful projects (solar bike sheds, environmentally-suitable architecture) and it is well worth a few visits.
On the other hand, there is quite a difference between the mission statement and the practice of its values. Money isn't really supposed to change hands for work and housing. This is bullshit; many people have commercial sidelines and housing does get bought and sold. Rules are there to be bent and of course, they are.
Some of the security staff can be real jobsworths and exceedingly officious, which can irritate people. And it feels a bit lawless in some regards, hovering uneasily between spirituality, cultishness and the Indian democracy.
It's a peculiar place. But you probably got that already.
I always view these types of movements with a lot of suspicion. Mainly because of the falsehoods they present. Self-realization is not something that can be taught by following someone else. You can spend your entire life looking for it in other people. But you have to experience it, to truly understand. You shouldn't even listen to what I'm writing here, as this entire comment could be a similar falsehood that detracts you in your search.
If you believe that, why are you writing it then?
I think, because you do believe, that text can help others understand something. Not always, though.
If you believe that, why are you writing it then?
People are not simple flowcharts. They can have all sorts of motivations that aren't literal interpretations of what comes out of their mouth. But you know that. So why are you asking the question?
"Question reality", as they say.
"Language itself is a distortion of your thoughts" is just one of those truths, one of the first things any growing human being sees when they start on a journey of spiritual growth. The point of it is not to stop using or stop trusting the language, stop communicating. The point is to see how it works and how it relates to the rest of the self, so that it can fulfill its great potential as a tool for spiritual growth and learning.
sounds about right for a commune
The Auroville Charter Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But, to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity."
Well that sounds completely normal /s
I've seen Midsommar, no thanks
Also, when you actually visit Auroville, you find that it has splintered into disparate communities that sometimes outright dislike one another. Again, this seems very different from cults, which tend to insist on forced unity and orthodoxy among its membership.
I remember there being some slightly strange rules you had to agree to in order to stay there (e.g. no sex) but the "staff" (don't know if they were employees or devotees?) were welcoming and the accommodations were great. The compound is right on the Bay of Bengal and sleeping in that room with the windows open and the waves crashing was an experience I'll never forget.
That's not uncommon for a spiritual retreat type of place.
Though I'm told everything almost fell apart after a founder or big leader died and the government had to step in. It's the Indian government so usually that's a disaster but this one seems to have turned out okay.
Anyway, it's unlikely the website can handle an average company let alone HN so mirrors:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200427170816/https://www.aurov...
The ban-hammer heavy moderation doesn't really help. I would post this criticism on the subreddit itself, but it would be removed as any criticism of the sub/mods is against the rules and is automatically caught by the AutoMod.
The sub seems to really be in favor of progressive skeptical thinking but the manner in which the mods operate the subreddit is exactly the opposite.
Please don't say it unless you visited all of them. I've been to places where this is not true.
I have a mixed feeling about Auroville too like some other comments here. I have visited couple times. But never actually got what they are trying to do. This is another part.
But I want to mention, TBH: It is like ANY OTHER ASHRAMS or communal living, I would say. Even to the one I visit often. People are different, sometimes they are nice and sometimes they behave downright silly and rude.
That said, it could be a practice if you take it that way :)
They are much more precious for you in the long run if you are into spiritual practice.
It's like Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo puts it "Instead of seeing other people as an obstacle to our path, we recognize that they are the path. That learning on how to deal skillfully especially with unskilfuled people is how we learn, how we grow and how to begin to mature."
In the middle of all of that, I found Sadhana forest to be a wonderful community in Auroville that is far away from the madness of Matrimandir both physically and spiritually. Aviram and his family, along with volunteers, are doing a fantastic job of reforesting the area west of the Tindivanam highway. If you are going, once we are past this global Covid19 pandemic that is, I would highly recommend a volunteering stay at Sadhana forest.
There's a book called "Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness" by a guy named Satprem, which pretty much gives you the founding story of the place.
Caveat - Satprem was a disciple, so this is not a view from the outside.
BTW, their course offering looks very good: https://edu.auroville.org/courses
- Construction & application of Ferrocement
- Production of & construction using CSEB
- Arches, Vaults & Domes - Masonry
I kind of would have expected Yoga and spiritual things, but it appears they are genuinely interested in the technical skills required for hands-on self-sufficiency.
There is an element of cult to the place but their message is good
Nothing new, really: and this is pretty sad.
These places make great sets for fun movies though ...
'Kids born it poverty can't go to University so factory work is their 'choice', why should we deny them work at the factory?'
Seriously?
If it were just 'some place' then it would be more of a rhetorical question, but the entire point of the villages is to create a place where people are equal irrespective of clour or creed, so the hypocrisy looms large. Maybe they can take their free time to ponder such questions because though answers are never obvious, there are opportunities for improvement.
Away from the residents, the place was very peaceful and serene. But, it felt like a few decades of social stratification had created a power hierarchy.
Even the stuff they say - I can at least sit down and consider it without freaking out instantly.
In some ways they resemble the very modern panpsychist school of thought (Giulio Tononi, Sam Harris). Consciousness is a basic ingredient of matter. Both matter and consciousness are real. Evolution is real. There is no biblical god. Cosmology - they defer to science when it comes to that, but having consciousness as a major ingredient does shift the perspective a bit (everything becomes "evolutionary" in a sense).
The way they think of the future reminds you of the Singularity theories. If Ray Kurzweil and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote a book together, it wouldn't be far from this.
The one thing that's a bit far out is the claim that consciousness could, in theory, interact with matter directly, not just through regular mechanisms (brain, nerves, muscles, etc). They do insist it's super-hard to do in practice. They do shun the miraculous stuff, they insist that the change of consciousness is all that really matters here and now in a spiritual endeavor. In this regard they're not very far from, say, your run of the mill buddhist school of meditation.
As long as Aurobindo and Mirra were alive, they kept the place as non-cult-ish as humanly possible. I would say they even had a remarkable amount of skepticism, aside from the claims mentioned above. I'd like to visit Auroville one day, to see how things have changed in the decades since Mirra's passing.
Hard to explain. I've seen plenty of crazy places (adventurous youth + interest for spirituality, yadda-yadda), but the stuff that Aurobindo + Mirra started strikes me as remarkably... rational, I guess?
Read and draw your own conclusions.
I think that claim like this alone, is not so far stretched, when you assume consciousness comes from brain activity, ~ electricity - and with classical physics, magnetic/electric fields or even quantum physics, everything is connected and interacts - consciousness do influences matter. So when you have a different thought, a different magnetic field is the result, etc. that does influence matter directly.
The far stretch claim is, that conscious can have a directed, focused effect and not just be random.
Anyway, the idea that mind can influence matter directly(magic thinking), is a very old one and I think the majority of the world population is still holding to it. Allmost every religious person does (in a different way). And in nonreligious, educated, western people I have seen it quite a lot, too. Most are not really conscious about it, though.
> Radiating out beyond the Matrimandir Gardens are four Zones, each focusing on an important aspect of the township’s life:
> Industrial (north). Cultural (north east), Residential (south/south west) and. International (west).
Feels so weird and dystopian when places try to enforce some sort of segregation
this picture is bit aspirational compared to satellite pictures of the area: https://goo.gl/maps/4xqCoBVwbbqy51Z29
What a random memory to relive. Lovely :)
Many of the younger people I met were only living in Auroville because they were born there, and they had little to no interest in spirituality, the Mother, Sri Aurobindo, etc.
P.S. not a nomad.
You need gatekeepers, else the deer eat all your roses.