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Report of the 22nd meeting of the Auroville International Associationin Sant Feliú de Guíxols/Catalunya/Spain September 25 – October 2, 2005 Theme: Fraternity in Truth
Participants: Members of AVI Centers and Liaisons: Canada: Christian Feuillette France: Devasmita Patnaik, Sylvie Piot, Francine Finck, Satyakam Karim Germany: Marianne Soerensen, Friederike Werner, Uschi Ernst, Wolfgang Schmidt-Reinecke, Helmut Ernst, Rudolf Bauer Spain: Trinidad Blanch, Uma Giménez, Kathy von Korff, Josefina Prieto Molina, Yolanda Pintor, Ascension Villalba, Ila Nadja Zadrozny, José Luis Alemán, Teodoro Lara, Jose Luis Subirats, Kitxu Sanchez The Netherlands: Mia Berden, Marjorie Heebink, Jettie Zwaans, Tobi Neuman, Ben Loos Switzerland: Camille Egger UK: Sonia Dyne, Pat Kaye, Dany and Martin Littlewood, Alan Vickers (Vikas), Jim Hassell USA: Wendy and Julian Lines, Chandresh Patel Auroville: Kathy Walkling, Lisbeth Nusselein, Hasi Grandcolas Guests: Maroc: Imane Chatt Norway: Inggerd and August Duedahl Spain: Iratxe Acha, Rosana Agudo, Adela Innerarity, Amparo Moreno, Savitri and Satyavan Galiana Switzerland: Tanya Birri
Minutes: Friederike Werner
Structure: Introduction Board meetings General Assembly Presentations Report from Auroville Cultural Program Final Sharing
Introduction
Throughout our meeting we felt the strong presence and guidance of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo – not least because of the beautiful morning concentrations our Spanish hosts chose: each day we had a different bunch of flowers in the middle of our circle. Alfonso started by quoting the spiritual significance the Mother had given to the flower, like “Integral Attachment to the Divine” (white orchids), “Human passions turning to Divine Love” (red roses), “Purity that grows from perfect consecration” and “Integral Receptivity” (pink lilies and white gladiolas), “Mastery in the Vital Work” (purple phlox) and “Consciousness turning towards the Light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother” (Sunflowers). We slowly passed the flowers round the circle, each one of us concentrating on the flower´s message. Then each day a different Spanish lady read one of the four aspects of the Divine Mother from Sri Aurobindo´s book “The Mother” in Spanish, followed by a recording of The Mother reading it in English.
For our first morning session Alfonso and Uma had prepared a “Game of Consciousness” to which also the non-board members already present in San Feliú were invited. Alfonso first asked each of us to write down our answers to the question: “Meeting between you and Auroville – Remember the first call, the real touch, the pure moment… Try to be there again and write from that space”. The atmosphere was tangibly filled with intense memories of a very special moment or situation in our lives. We put our little sheets of paper together, they were well mixed and five people each took one sheet out of the bowl to read it to the audience. What a beautiful bunch of memories were put together and how diverse and interesting are the ways each one of us heard the call! Our poet board member Chandresh shall be quoted here:
It was the moment The second question was “Today, here, now, where are you in respect to the Charter and the Ideal?’’ Here again we drew five answers and put them down in the five fields of a big Auroville symbol Alfonso had prepared – with interesting results! 1: new sense of life – be an instrument; 2: digging for a new birth – work for perfection; 3: sky – earth – work; 4: peace, certitude, hope – be a child of the mother; 5: (top field): truth – brotherhood – victory. A beautiful introduction for several days of intense work to follow! (The complete set of answers has been collected together in the paper “Meeting between You and Auroville” which will be attached to this report)
Board meetings
The Board met for two full days before the general meeting started and there were in addition several smaller interim meetings between the longer sessions.
(The full text will be attached to this report)
Even if this text reminded us of the immensity of the long-term tasks lying ahead of us, we had to first deal with some very down-to-earth, very human problems and tensions between some board members. Luckily we had our new Auroville representative Kathy as the facilitator of our board meetings. She helped us establish the needed atmosphere of safety and trust, honesty and truthfulness, by introducing us to some “guidelines for community building” developed by her own Auroville community during a period of problems and tensions:
What is needed to create a space of love and healing.
This acceptance must aim to be 100 % and allow us to share everything present in the forefront of our minds.
The key to this is the identification with, or non-identification with, what appears in the mind. For example:
If I understand that anxiety about condemnation hinders the desired process (Love Space) and I agree to be non- judgmental, but at the same time I am still remaining judgmental towards another and I communicate this, then if it is possible to observe ourselves from a higher perspective, there will occur an automatic non- identification with our judgments after some time. At this point then we are able to meet at a deeper level.
To enter this Space of Love means to invite the Divine/Great Spirit to be effective. Besides understanding these thoughts we need a common platform of agreement:
The Divine/Great Spirit is a field of self-organizing principles.
Reasoning keeps me in the mind/intellect and is destructive for the process because it insists on being’ right’.
This last agreement creates the basis for staying always in truth, and has the capacity to keep our expectations out of the space. 7. I have the right to say that I do not wish, at the moment, to speak.
Tune in prayer - This is training for the unconscious and for surrendering ego. It is helpful to reconfirm before every session what the intention is, and what basic guidelines have been agreed. For example: I agree to be 100 % honest. I acknowledge that the outer world is mirroring my inner world. I give to everything the meaning that it has for me.
Following some intense discussion the Board unanimously agreed on the following statement:
“The Board wishes to express its regret that AVI Board members have been hurt as a result of the circulation of gossip in a clandestine way. We wish to state that such behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
We unanimously expressed our full trust in our Executive Director Wolfgang, who, as Mia put it, has been a strong pillar of our work for many years.
In order to avoid similar experiences in the future we decided to develop our own code of ethics on the lines of our guidelines for email communication already worked out by Martin. A group has been formed to formulate them, and finally they will be added to our website. We agreed on the following inclusions:
1. Communication between Board members should be transparent, truthful and direct. 2. Gossip is unacceptable. 3. When conflict arises, we wish to deal with it in a healthy and conscious way as an opportunity for growth. At the conclusion of our “code of ethics” still to be formulated we will state the following: “A serious breech of our code of ethics will be the subject of an independent inquiry and may result in disqualification from membership of the Board”.
During our Board sessions we worked through our agenda points:
We confirmed that our next meeting will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, from the 17th to the 26th March 2006. As there were still some open questions regarding this meeting we wrote an email to Jasmin asking for clarification. We wanted to clarify the question of “sustainability” i.e. who would take over once Jasmin and Aravinda have settled in Auroville, which they plan to do next year? We also expressed our wish to make as many contacts as possible with the black community of South Africa, since our meeting there would be the first manifestation on African soil of our aim to bring the whole of the African continent in contact with the Auroville idea. Jasmin promptly replied to our full satisfaction. We were happy to hear about the African event in the Unity Pavilion, which obviously met with great interest. We will also try to get into contact with Doudou Diène, a member of the International Advisory Council (IAC), asking him for support and possible contacts. It remains uncertain whether our meeting can be linked up with the establishing of the African Peace Table. We agreed to ask Jasmin to give enough space for a presentation of our AVI network idea to the interested public. Due to the travel distance to South Africa and the costs involved it was clear that not all Board and interested AVI members would be able to go to the meeting. In view of this we decided on a shorter Board meeting which would take place towards the end of our gathering and focus on an evaluation of decisions taken in Spain. The General Assembly is also expected to be a shorter. Toby and Christian volunteered to prepare an agenda for our Board meeting. The invitation letter and tentative program will be attached to this report.
We felt the need, whenever we go to far away places like South Africa, to have a second meeting during same year at a more accessible location, probably in Europe, where a maximum of interested people would be able to attend. Earlier this year, AVI Italy informed us that a South Italian municipality had offered to host an AVI meeting in their town. Unfortunately Marco was not with us in Spain to give an update, so we contacted Sauro by email. As his answer could not yet fully clarify the situation, we welcomed an invitation from AVI UK to host a second 2006 meeting in case the invitation by the municipality did not work out.
We confirmed our decision to have a meeting in Montreal, Canada in 2007, probably in July. Christian informed us that they had already chosen a focus for the meeting: “Auroville and the Future of the Human Race”. He announced that AVI Canada is planning to invite Sraddhalu Ranade and IAC member Marc Luyckx to the meeting.
We also confirmed the decision to hold our 2008 meeting in Auroville to take part in the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of Auroville.
Since there was also an invitation from Kazakhstan for 2007 we agreed to ask our friends there if we could hold the AVI meeting there in 2009 instead.
In advance of the meeting Helmut had distributed a background paper on his proposal. He presented it in brief to start a discussion about it. In summary he is concerned about the slow and diminishing growth of Auroville. He attributes it, among other reasons, to the weak economy and insufficient income of Auroville, which is not even adequate to meet the running cost let alone provide for investments and expansion. He therefore proposes to look for ways to strengthen the economy in general, and new sources of financing and regular income. The latter might come in future from "education", since Auroville has a great deal to offer in this field. In order to organise collaboration with Auroville in fostering the above objectives he proposed to form working groups consisting of AVI Board members, regular AVI members, outside invited experts/consultants and Aurovilians. Julian mentioned that well-known experts in the field of alternative economy and alternative money systems are already in contact with Auroville - people like Margrit Kennedy and Bernard Lietaer, who is also close to our present IAC member Marc Luyckx Ghisi. Martin stressed that in-depth enquiries into the problem have to be carried out before concepts can be developed. He added that Norman Myers, former IAC member, is still willing to act as an advisor to Auroville/AVI. He reported also that IAC member Sir Marc Tully had expressed concern about the slow growth rate of Auroville A lively discussion followed but a final decision of the Board was postponed till the end of our meeting after we had digested the input from various presentations on economic and educational subjects still to come.
The following statement attempts to summarize the spirit of our discussions:
“AVI wants to work together with Auroville in preparing and organizing conferences in a spirit of collaboration that does not seek to impose any pre-conceived ideas on the pattern of its free organic growth’’
Kathy supported the idea of organizing joint conferences of Auroville and AVI, for instance on the topic of “Education and Economy”. Education could be an economic motor but capacity building is a big piece of the work. A lot of energies are waiting to enter but the question remains whether Auroville is ready to receive them, also in very practical terms. From her work for CIRHU she knows that there is great support for the idea to develop the International Zone as an international university campus. In this field AVI has a great deal to offer.
Mia mentioned that a conference in February 2006 on the topic of “economy” is already planned and being organized for Auroville by a special working group. We could support it with input and contacts.
Wolfgang reminded us that we developed the idea of creating this network at a time when there was no IAC for more than two years. Now that a new IAC has been nominated, our first need is to be clear about what we need from our consultants and to formulate “terms of reference” for possible members of the network. Since we expect to have more contact with governments, the media and other official bodies in future, we want to create a raft of knowledgeable people willing to be in dialogue with us. (Julian called them AID partners, Auroville International Dialogue partners). We decided to form a group to develop a kind of job description. Kathy, Sylvie, Julian, Martin and Wolfgang will be members of this group, Julian being the convenor. Nominations will be only the second step. The problem of having no budget came up - most consultants would expect to have at least their travel expenses paid.
The Board expressed its regret that Savitra Lithman, who was a first nominee, has stepped back. Poor communication on the part of AVI may have been a factor in his decision. We recognised that we have to improve our performance in this respect, and hope that Robert Aarsse, our second nominee, will bear with us!
An informal meeting took place in London between Sir Mark Tully, the IAC Chairman, Sonia and two other members of AVIUK. They appreciated the friendly and open exchange of views that took place. The IAC has some concerns that Auroville's rate of growth is increasing too slowly. They would also like to ensure that young people in Auroville have good exposure to the teaching of Sri Aurobindo, through the schools or other means. Asked about the role of AVI, Sir Mark thought that as an independent association it could be a valuable bridge between Auroville and the outside world. He would be pleased to assist us in our work for Auroville. If the IAC meets in Auroville in February, he would gladly meet AVI representatives present at that time.
Our treasurer Sylvie gave her report on our financial situation. We stated that the change of our financial year back to the calendar year accords with our statutes. Our previous practice of June to June was only for convenience since we used to have our meetings around that time. This practice has changed in the recent years however. We plan to set up facilities for online credit card transfers since this is the cheapest way to transfer our annual fees. Bank fees are just too high. The Centers should consider upgrading their contributions since our expenses are expected to grow, for example when we have two meetings per year or publish a brochure. Wolfgang stated that ideally all national AVI associations would adopt a membership scheme and out of the membership fees a sum like € 5 per person could go to our international budget.
We will hand in our second application to both the Department of Public Information (DPI) and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN, hoping for the support of IAC member Doudou Diène and other personalities with good contacts in UN circles, like Enzo and Luigi. We stressed that this second approach has to be based on close cooperation between AVI and Auroville. We formed a group to follow up on this - members are Devasmita, Kathy (in cooperation with Mauna), Sylvie, Toby, Wolfgang and Julian.
Wolfgang reported from the AVI Germany’s annual meeting where some German Aurovilians were pushing to become AVI Germany members. He also referred to Carel´s proposals for an amendment of our AVI statutes, which would give Auroville a stronger role in our association. It is believed that he may have been misinformed about some “imminent danger” that AVI wants to loosen its bonds with Auroville.
The Board stated that it is clearly laid down in our statutes that AVI acts at the service of Auroville as envisaged by the Mother. In several respects, for instance in contacts with official bodies like governments, the UN or also the IAC, Auroville needs AVI as an independent organisation since Auroville itself is, formally through the Foundation Act, regarded as a body of the Indian government.
Regarding membership of Aurovilians in AVI it was confirmed that it is up to each national AVI center and liaison to decide this question, since each association functions in a different way and national laws for charity organisations can differ. Basically it should be the individual center or liaison inviting Aurovilians to be members, honorary members or Board members. This can be the case when Aurovilians have proven to be active collaborators with AVI or when active AVI members settle down in Auroville.
Kathy mentioned that it might improve our cooperation and also support her mission if each national group in Auroville appoints somebody to serve as a bridge person with AVI.
Finally the board unanimously agreed on the following statement:
Auroville and AVI Relationship - Declaration by the AVI Board:
‘’It is agreed that Auroville and AVI share the same ideals based on the Auroville Charter, and need to work in partnership together. In the present circumstances, for the success of the work, AVI and the AVI Centers need to function as organisations independent of Auroville, as one of the three bodies founded by the Mother. We welcome to membership of our national organisations, with the approval of the Board of that organisation, any Aurovilian who respects the above principles.”
Wolfgang will start writing a regular email newsletter, which will be sent to a list of subscribers of presently around 300 addresses. Sonia volunteered to proof read the texts. Friederike reminded us that we had planned for two AVI brochures, a smaller one with basic information as a handout to be placed in guesthouses and such, and a more comprehensive one presenting our AVI family in a more personal way. We finally decided to skip the small brochure since Kathy had developed a nice AVI poster. She will check before the guest season starts, to see if they are well positioned in the guesthouses. We agreed in principle about the bigger brochure, but no material has been gathered so far. Friederike now asks all centers and liaisons to send their material to her before the end of this year at the latest. She and Wolfgang will work on a draft. In future all AVI centers and liaisons will be provided with a key to manage their own updates on the website. Wolfgang will take care of this. It was mentioned that we should establish a closer co-operation with the Auroville Outreach team, and request them to inform us about publicity items on a regular basis. Quite often important information does not reach us in time to organize support from our side. We should also co-operate better with Nicole and Tim from the Visitors Center regarding the “Auroville Introduction” leaflets. It has been noticed that often these provide outdated AVI addresses. In order to get contact addresses from Auroville visitors, the centers and liaisons should ask Guy from the Land Service to provide them with the data he collects for his files.
Kathy expressed her feeling that she is slowly stepping into the work. She had to carry a heavy workload this year that demanded a lot of travelling, so Tine (and also Mauna) were helpful in replacing her on site. She plans to improve the information exchange between AVI and Auroville´s official bodies and media. During the guest season visitors will be invited to information afternoons to hear about AVI. A regular presence at the AVI desk in the Unity Pavilion will be shared with Tine. Kathy reported that Tine wants to slowly withdraw from the AVI work but plans to take part in the South Africa meeting since she was very active in helping to prepare it. We asked Kathy to bring back our recurring question to Auroville, about whether an AVI India should be created, since we feel it missing in our circle.
Different initiatives are presently emerging to embrace Auroville with a bigger network of collaborators and supporters:
Already existing for many years is the “Golden Chain” of ex-Ashram students living around the world. Since all these ideas are very similar to each other and also similar to our basic AVI idea it makes sense to combine and link them together. It seems that we can offer a lot to these emerging initiatives from our longstanding experience, so we should contact Enzo, Grace and also Luigi who is one of the most experienced networking and outreach people of Auroville. Kathy promised to speak with Luigi and establish a contact with Grace. Wolfgang and Devasmita will try to meet Enzo in Paris. (Enzo was invited to our meeting in Spain and showed his interest but was unable to attend.)
11. Statutes Martin, who had been very active in preparing the previous revision of our statutes, which provided him with a good overview, described the situation as follows: At present AVI is a small organization, based on and aiming towards trust. Our statutes were previously rather restrictive and not really serving us well, so we decided to make them more flexible and agreed upon an amended version. Earlier this year, at our meetings in Auroville, there was evidence that a lack of trust in the process of group dynamics by which we arrive at consensus caused some to look to the statutes for support, but found that they did not help them. This resulted in voting problems, which we had never experienced before. But instead of reformulating the statutes once again we felt that it would be more productive to first try to rebuild trust and develop a common agreement on voting procedures. We unanimously agreed on this proposal. Martin, Friederike and Helmut will formulate the guidelines for voting procedures. It could include the rule that, as in previous times, the centers themselves should reserve the right to decide by whom they want to be represented on the AVI board.
12. Co-opted board members As was decided during our last meeting in Auroville the Board has confirmed its decision to co-opt again the same members for another year, even if some national groups are presently over-represented.
13. Telephone conferences It was felt that even two meetings per year with only email communication between meetings might be insufficient, in view of the tasks lying ahead. So in future we will have telephone conferences at regular intervals. Toby volunteered to organize them.
At the end of our two days of Board meetings we all expressed our gratitude to Alfonso and his organising team for being such wonderful hosts, to Sonia and Kathy for guiding us so well through our full agenda with sometimes difficult issues and to Friederike for taking the minutes. Toby put in words what seemed to be our common impression, that he felt privileged to be part of a growth process from our individual to a collective consciousness – an experience in collective yoga!
General Assembly Sonia opened the assembly by giving a report of the Board meetings, pointing out that the process by which we reached our decisions was in many ways more important than the decisions themselves. She described our AVI association as just the tip of an iceberg, the international Auroville community being a still invisible circle of “universal Aurovilians”, which is in the process of emerging more and more. She reminded us of our situation, that a lot of AVI members go to live in Auroville, so we experience a constant shrinking and growing process and fresh input is always needed. We are all Aurovilians in our hearts, but it is to the benefit of Auroville that our association functions as an independent entity. The Mother founded three bodies, the Ashram, Auroville and AVI, like the three steps of Vishnu, AVI being the youngest and smallest of these children of hers. However, we do not feel that we are a marginal but rather an essential factor in Auroville´s development, which does not mean that we want to impose anything on Auroville, because we know that Auroville has to grow organically from within. We trust that everybody who is drawn to work for AVI has been chosen by Mother. It is interesting to note that for the first time at an AVI meeting, all continents are represented by at least one person, with Ila for South America, Imane for Africa and Kathy for Australia. In response to questions from new members - “What can we do here and now? What does AVI expect from us when we want to collaborate?” - an interesting discussion followed. Of course we could mention a hundred and one projects to support, but the colour of the work of each AVI Center depends a lot on the individuals involved, on their own initiative and inclination. Like Auroville, we too have entered a new age of freedom, also freedom of choice, which can be sometimes disturbing. Mother invited us all to an adventure, not knowing herself all the ways and means. It is a completely new yoga path we are following - the collective yoga for the earth Sri Aurobindo explored and called us to experience. So we are all “global amateurs”, discovering step by step what this collective yoga means – the deeper reason why we came to the meeting. Since we already had a meeting earlier this year there were only a few new reports from the Centers. Christian gave an interesting update on activities of AVI Canada, based in Montreal with its two antennas in Toronto/ Ontario and British Columbia. While staying in Auroville for our meeting in January he organized a Canadian gathering with 15 people attending. He pointed out that they opted for a “North American approach”, which means direct, concrete, immediate action versus “the European way” of too much discussing, exploring and mentalizing. They have marked an area in the International Zone for their future pavilion. There they plan to build an Inuksuk (“walking man”), 3m high and turned towards the Matrimandir, a stone monument in human form, which the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic used to build to mark a territory. Interestingly the Olympic Committee has also chosen an Inuksuk as its emblem for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. The $2.000 needed to build it is already collected. AVI Canada enjoyed the visits of Suhasini and Nadaka from Auroville this summer and is happy to announce that the cultural branch of the Montreal municipality has accepted to host an Auroville exhibition in its Maison de Culture. Camille spoke about our Swiss liaison, which she is representing. They are helping to set up an Auroville exhibition in Geneva at a world conference from October 11-13 on “Urban and Sustainable Development in the Cities of the World”, organized by the town of Geneva and supported by the Swiss Government´s office of Cooperation and Development. Auroville was invited to hold an exhibition and send a speaker, which was Lalit K. Bhati, an Auroville city planner. Camille complained that the Swiss liaison office was only informed at very short notice and had difficulty organizing everything in time. Other AVI members reported similar experiences so we asked Kathy to communicate to Auroville that the centers and liaisons ask to be informed well in advance about activities in their countries. Camille also spoke about the Swiss “Fondation Diagonale”, a foundation, which she is also representing. This foundation recently funded the translation and printing of Joan and Aloka´s “Awareness through the Body”. Wolfgang reported about recent developments in AVI Germany. All members of the association are invited for a retreat at the end of October since there are personal changes ahead with Wolfgang going to settle in the US, and Marianne, the longest-serving board member, stepping back from the board. So a “change of generation” calls for a vision quest, which the Helga Breuninger Foundation offered to support by sending coaches. Marianne reported on the successful German program to send young men doing their alternative service, a program that is officially recognised by the German Government. It has been running now for 5 years, and altogether 30 young men have served in Village Action and Health Care undertakings. Their reports are very uplifting since they all speak about the better orientation they have found for life. The requirements are rather high since they have to finance everything, tickets, food, lodging etc., out of their own pocket. Unfortunately a donation of € 5.000 to support them with lodging could not be spent although it was given 3 years ago, because a suitable place in Auroville could not be found. Friederike added that more and more young women contact AVI Germany wanting to spend a year in Auroville doing social or environmental service. The Auroville Volunteering, Internship & Studies Program (AVIS), which Kathy helped to set up, is very helpful in finding them places to work. August from Norway told us about the Vestoppland Folk Highschool of which he is the principal. It is a school “for young adults between 18 and 60”, dedicated to self-realization, creativity and the quality of life. As part of their training, 70 students have already come to Auroville and felt very inspired by this living experience. The holistic approach of this school, which is very similar to Auroville´s approach, is documented in a book written by an American, Scott Forbes. August and his wife Inggerd now want to start AVI Norway with a lot of their students interested in joining, the school being able to function as a physical center. He is in good contact with Hans Krogsetter who has been our liaison person in Norway so far but is too busy to become more active. August has also close contacts with Jaya who presently lives in Sweden. Asked whether they consider creating an AVI Scandinavia, August said for practical reasons it is better to have separate associations. Applications for project funds for common Scandianvian projects always have to come from a single country. We welcomed August´s initiative, which would upgrade one more liaison to a center.
Presentations Rosana, Adela, Amparo and Iratxe of the Lur Gozoa group from the Basque region joined the meeting on Saturday morning. Lur Gozoa, meaning “Earth and Joy”, started 3 years ago as the manifestation of an inner aspiration to concretely work for Sri Aurobindo´s vision. They are very much inspired by Sri Aurobindo´s book “Ideal of Human Unity”, which they translated into Spanish and published with a photo of Auroville´s galaxy plan on the cover. Rosana gave a really inspiring talk on “Human Unity”, mentioning the great sufferings the Basque people still feel in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war and the great identity problems and political divisions they still encounter. They think it is time to touch these deepest, darkest parts, so they are grateful to find in Sri Aurobindo´s work, in his invitation to join in “The Adventure of Consciousness” the tools to deal with it in a positive, practical way. It is their approach to combine the inner work in a Womens’ group and in a School for Active Meditation with work aiming at the creation of “conscious companies”. They have developed a “Technology for Inner Transformation”, which they teach to business people. It is their experience that strong energies for transformation are already prevailing in the business world, so there is openness for an integral approach and the need for a “code of ethics”. To quote Rosana: “…from now on, prosperity and profits will be the consequences of how well-aligned businesses are with the forces of evolution.” In the afternoon Iratxe gave a Powerpoint presentation on Lur Gozoa´s “Proposal for the ‘Business with Consciousness’ Development of Auroville’. She also spoke about the creation of a “School of Business with Consciousness”, as one of the outcomes of the recent Auroville seminar on “New Business and Global Consciousness” with participants from the Indian and international business world. Rosana had presented the concept of “Technology for Inner Transformation” to this seminar. Iratxe also spoke in favour of the creation of an Auroville “Board of the Wisest” which could encourage and guide business activities. An interesting discussion followed. Similar attempts were mentioned which all failed because people were reluctant to accept “wiser people”. Vikas spoke about the danger of creating a “priesthood” caste because we are all still imperfect individuals who are prone to fall for power games. That is why Auroville has opted for the “divine anarchy” approach so far. Rosana insisted that past failure should never prevent new and fresh attempts. And Wolfgang mentioned Ken Wilber´s work on “holarchy” as opposed to “hierarchy” systems. We should not be afraid to accept that more advanced personalities exist, the quality of trust is very much needed. There are highly dedicated people in the business world who already speak a lot about new ethics or new thinking, which is a kind of code-word for spirituality or a change of paradigm. Very practically speaking the introduction of an “Auroville label” was mentioned which stands for social responsibility and sustainable management, similar to the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 business standards. Also on Saturday afternoon José Luis Alemán presented the interesting paper “Economic Revolution in Auroville” which he developed after living in Auroville for some time. Basically it deals with the introduction of an alternative currency system in Auroville in order to encourage and liberalize economic activities without disproportionate personal enrichment. His paper will be attached to this report. In our discussion other people were mentioned who work in the same direction, like Bernard Lietaer and also Margrit Kennedy, who is member of the AVI Germany advisory council and has already tried to get Auroville interested in alternative currencies. It seems that the perception of money is still a problem and many do not accept business activities as “part of the game”, even if Mother and Sri Aurobindo wanted us to end with the separation of consciousness from matter. Money is a divine energy, which has to be conquered back for the divine and Mother often spoke of prosperity being the natural state and result when money energy is allowed to circulate freely.
Report from Auroville Sunday morning, our last meeting session, was reserved for reports from Auroville. Lisbeth´s lively description of her involvement with different educational activities allowed us a deep insight into Auroville realities. She spoke about her work as a teacher in Transition School and Future School and as a teacher trainer in the Nadukuppam School in the Auroville bioregion, which Joss from Pitchandikulam supports and which some of us had the privilege of visiting earlier this year. She referred back to Auroville history when old schoolbooks were burnt because people took Mother´s word of “no school” too literally and it was only on parents´ initiative that the first schools started. Meanwhile all school levels available, from pre-crèche to Future School, The Auroville website provides excellent information, with 170 articles on education. Future School is now ready to receive students from abroad for internships and Last School and After School accept children of long-term guests, but Transition School and the Kindergartens are reserved for Aurovilians and Newcomers. Lisbeth spoke impressively about her involvement with the Nadukuppam village school. Auroville should never forget that the Mother spoke about the Tamil people as the “first Aurovilians”, so Auroville´s progress can never be separated from the development of the villages around. Julian reminded us that a special gift from Auroville to the world is the “Awareness through the Body” that Joan and Aloka developed and their origin is from Catalunya. Aloka lived in the Ashram for many years, added Devasmita, where two to three hours of physical education in the morning were the rule. Asked about connections with the Ashram school, Lisbeth said that there are good contacts but no official exchange programs yet, though some older Ashram students come to join special programs in Auroville. Then Kathy took over with a long list of Auroville projects and reports. For details see attachments, contact the email addresses mentioned or visit the Auroville website.
Cultural program Our Spanish hosts had chosen a beautiful meeting venue – a hotel built on rocks on the Northern coast of Spain, the Costa Brava (“wild coast”). From the panoramic window of our meeting room we had a magnificent view to the Mediterranean and the hotel complex with its three pools and gardens. Unfortunately only some of us managed to go for a quick swim as the program was so packed with meetings and discussions. But otherwise our bodily needs were very well taken care of – the cuisine was just excellent with its fresh salads and vegetables, fruits, paellas, pasta, delicious deserts and a Saturday special treat – a glass of Cava (Spanish champagne)! Lisbeth´s body awareness classes in the morning helped us counterbalance the many hours we spent sitting on chairs. The ping-pong table was also well frequented and many went for a walk in the beautiful surroundings. One full afternoon was reserved for a visit to the Salvador Dalí museum in Figueres, some 80 km away. The second option, sailing the cliffs along the coast, could not be undertaken due to unfavourable weather conditions. Certainly two highlights were our dance evenings, one with a lively flamenco group of young girls and women, and a second one with Devasmita presenting us with a beautiful Odissi dance performance. After two traditional dances she improvised on music by Nadaka –two great artists joint in their inspiration! Devasmita and the flamenco group exchanged information about the common roots of Indian and flamenco dance and the young dancers were enthusiastic to learn some hand postures of Odissi dance. After her own performance Devasmita invited the audience to join her in a Spanish “folk dance” circle, which snaked around with great joy and a lot of laughter. Another highlight waited for us that same evening: Toby from AVI Netherland had a precious gift for each one of us, a copy of a brand-new edition of Medhananda`s “Eternity Game” - a “space-age game which knows no rules but the truth, no limits but the infinite, and no walls but those which we have built around ourselves”. Beautifully fitting, indeed! Toby had prepared a PowerPoint presentation to explain the rules of the game, and interpreted cards for a curious audience. We also had the opportunity to watch some very interesting videos. One on the inspired Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí, another one on the famous “Castellers”, a cultural phenomenon particular to Catalonia, the building of human pyramids. Finally we watched the American new-age film “What the Bleep do we Know”, which gives superb insights into quantum physics’ discoveries paralleling spiritual awareness.
Final sharing Our last session, Sunday morning, started again with the flower ceremony, followed by a reading from Savitri, first in Catalan translation done by Alfonso and read by his daughter Savitri and then in English read by Sonia. Unlike in other meetings we did not manage to have a common sharing session at the end, so packed was our program till the last moment. That is why Friederike invited all participants to send their thoughts and impressions via email. The different sharing contributons are put together in one document and will be attached to this report. To give only one example our Dutch friend Ben shall be quoted, a first time participant in our international meetings: „I found:
We all parted full of gratitude to our Spanish friends for being such generous hosts, for creating an atmosphere that was genuinely helpful in establishing trust and harmony amongst us and for giving us another taste of what our collective yoga path really means. In her concluding remarks our chairman Sonia expressed her feelings that we have made a real breakthrough in our work together, and that now at last we will be able to harness the great potential of AVI to become a full partner in Auroville's development, by making good use of the considerable expertise and dedication of our worldwide and expanding membership. More than ever she is convinced of the importance of our role in Auroville's future growth, provided that we remain committed, independent, and above all united in our purpose, so that the inevitable differences of opinion arising are never allowed to interfere with the main thrust of our work.
Attachments to this report (sent on request only): Full text of „The last hope“ by the Mother Invitation to the South Africa meeting ‘’Economic Revolution in Auroville“ by José Luís Alemán ‘’A Divine Organism“ by Grace Aroha Auroville Unity Fund ‘’Deva“ initiative by Cecilia Tsunami information Research proposal by Harini Update on Unity Pavilion ‘’Support fund for young professionals and volunteers“ by Shivaya Sharing by meeting participants
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