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Welcome to Auroville

auroville.org

31–40 of 83 posts

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#31

> "Auroville was born on 28 February 1968. Its founder, the Mother, created the Auroville Charter consisting of four main ideas which underpinned her vision for Auroville. When Auroville came into being, All India Radio (AIR) broadcast the Charter, live, in 16 languages. Aurovilians apply the ideas of the Auroville Charter in their daily life, in policy-development, and decisions, big and small. The Charter thus form…

Thought the same thing. The second I saw a reference to someone titled "The Mother", all my "cult!" alarms went off.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#33

I stayed at the compound in Pondicherry. 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.

> some slightly strange rules you had to agree to in order to stay there (e.g. no sex)

That's not uncommon for a spiritual retreat type of place.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#34

I went there, it’s pretty weird if I’m honest. I felt as if I was living in an Indian Hitchcock film. It felt as though there were people who were tourists and people who lived there and they were very separate. I have this feeling the whole place is a riddle, I’d like to go back and try to understand it again...

> I’d like to go back and try to understand it again

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.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#35
This is literally the last thing I expected on the front page!

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.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#36
Tbh this may sound cultist to others, but it's really not. You'll need to understand the philosophies of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo first for it to make sense. It's sets the example of a Utopian society. One shouldnt simply look at it from that angle and discard it without understanding the history and vision behind it.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#37
I lived at Auroville for 3 months for a college study aborad. Wild experience. The Matramandir (the big gold dome) was a very remarkable and weird building. Definitely cult-ish, but also so truly different and innovative.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#38
So it seems that they do handle the Visa situation for you (it appears that you enter India on an Entry Visa; which I understand you don't have the right to stay in India just the right of passage). There are still two other things: Taxes and Healthcare. Are you supposed to be paying taxes on your activities (if you are doing Online/Offshore work since there are no private companies in Auroville). How is healthcare handled since it can get very expensive for old people.

Re: Welcome to Auroville

#40
post #36

Tbh this may sound cultist to others, but it's really not. You'll need to understand the philosophies of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo first for it to make sense. It's sets the example of a Utopian society. One shouldnt simply look at it from that angle and discard it without understanding the history and vision behind it.

I agree - as far as spiritual movements go, this is one of the least cult-ish I've ever seen.

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.

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