QUOTATION FROM SRI AUROBINDO
“All this insistence upon action is absurd if one has not the light by which to act. “Yoga must include life and not exclude it” does not mean that we are bound to accept life as it is with all its stumbling ignorance and misery and the obscure confusion of human will and reason and impulse and instinct which it expresses. The advocates of action think that by human intellect and energy making an always new rush, everything can be put right; the present state of the world after a development of the intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no historical parallel is a signal proof of the emptiness of the illusion under which they labour. Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the rule. But within does not mean some quarter inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us.”
(The Mother reads a note written from memory by a disciple)
“Auroville will be a self-supporting township.
All who live there will participate in its life and development.
This participation may be passive or active.
There will be no taxes as such but each will contribute to the collective welfare in work, kind or money.
Sections like industries which participate actively will contribute part of their income towards the development of the township.
Or if they produce something (like foodstuffs) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind to the township which is responsible for feeding its citizens.
No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate.”
I thought I had said more than that because I said a good deal about it, inwardly,—on the organisation, the food, etc. We are going to make experiments.
Some things are really interesting; first of all, for example, I would like each country to have its pavilion, and in the pavilion there will be the cooking of that country,—that is, the Japanese will be able to eat Japanese food if they want to, etc. But in the town itself there will be food for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and there will also be some attempt to find the food of tomorrow.
The whole process of assimilation which makes you so heavy—it takes so much of a person's time and energy—that should be done beforehand, you should be given something which is immediately assimilable, like the things they are making now; for example they have vitamin pills and proteins which can be assimilated directly, nutritious elements which are found in one thing or another and which don't have much volume,—a huge quantity is needed to assimilate very little. Now that they are skilful enough in chemistry, it could be simplified.
People do not like this simply because they take an intense pleasure in eating; but when you no longer take pleasure in eating; you still need nourishment without wasting your time on it. An enormous amount of time is wasted,—time in eating, in digesting, and all the rest. And there, I would like an experimental kitchen, a kind of culinary laboratory for experimenting. People would go to one place or another according to their tastes and inclinations.
And they don't pay for their food, but they should offer their work or their produce: those who have fields, for example, should give the produce from their fields; those who have factories should give their products; or one gives one's labour in exchange for food.
That in itself eliminates much of the internal exchange of money. And for everything we could find things like this. Basically, it should be a city for study, for study and research into a way of life which is both simplified and in which the higher qualities will have more time to develop.
It is only a small beginning.
(Mother goes through the text sentence by sentence)
“Auroville will be a self-supporting township”: I want to insist on the fact that it will be an experiment, it is for making experiments—experiments, research, study. Auroville will be a city that will try to be, or will tend to become, or attempt to be 'self-supporting', that is to say…
Q: Autonomous?
“Autonomous” is understood to mean some kind of independence which breaks off relations with others, and that is not what I mean.
For example, those who produce food, like Aurofood —of course, when we are 50,000 it will be difficult to provide for all the needs, but for the moment we are only a few thousand at most — well, a factory always produces far too much, so it will sell outside and receive money. 'Aurofood' for example wants to have a special relationship with the workers; not at all the old system, something which would be an improvement on the communist system, a more balanced organisation than sovietism, that is, something which does not err too much on one side at the expense of the other.
There is one thing I wanted to say: the participation in the well-being and life of the town as a whole is not something calculated on an individual basis, that is, this individual should give so much, it is not like that. It is calculated according to the means, the activity, the capacity for production; it is not the democratic idea which cuts everything up into equal pieces, which is an absurd machinery. It is calculated according to one's means: one who has much gives much, one who has little gives little; one who is strong works hard, one who is not strong does something else. You see, it is something truer, deeper. That is why I make no attempt to explain now, because people will start to make all kinds of complaints. All this must come about automatically, so to speak, with the growth of the city, in the true spirit. That is why this note is extremely concise.
For example, this sentence: “All who live there will participate in its life and development.” All who live there will participate in its life and development according to their capacities and means, not mechanically—so much per unit. That's it, it must be something living and true, not a mechanical thing; and according to each one's capacities, that is, one who has material means, such as those provided by a factory, should give in proportion to its production, not so much per individual, per head.
“The participation may be passive or active.”: I do not understand what 'passive' means; I said it in French and it has been put into English. What could that mean, 'passive'?… It would be something more like planes or different levels of consciousness.
Q: You meant that those who are wise, who work within, do not need to…
Yes, that's it. Those who have a higher knowledge do not need to work with their hands, that is what I meant.
“There will be no taxes as such, but each one will contribute to the collective welfare in work, kind or money.” So that is clear: there will be no taxes, but each one will have to contribute to the collective welfare by his work, in kind or in money. Those who have nothing but money will give money. But to tell the truth, 'work' can be inner work—but one cannot say that, because people are not honest enough. The work can be an occult, completely inner work, but for that, it must be absolutely sincere and true, and with the capacity for it: no pretension. But not necessarily a physical work.
“Sections like industries which participate actively will contribute part of their income towards the development of the township; or if they produce something (like foodstuffs) that is useful to the citizens, they will contribute in kind to the township, which is responsible for feeding its citizens.” This is what we were just saying. The industries will participate actively, they will contribute. If these industries produce articles which are not constantly needed and therefore in amounts or quantities that are too great to be used within the city, but which will sell outside, they, of course, should participate with money. And I give food as an example; those who produce food will give what they produce to the town—in proportion to what they produce, of course—and the town is responsible for feeding everyone. That means that people will not need to buy food with money; but it must be earned.
It is a sort of adaptation of the communist system, but not in a spirit of leveling; according to the capacity, the position—not the psychological or intellectual, but the inner position of each one.
What is true is that materially every human being has the right—but it is not a 'right'… The organisation should be such, should be so arranged, that the material needs of everyone are assured, not according to ideas of rights and equality, but on the basis of the minimum needs. And once that is established, each one should be free to organise his life according to—not according to his financial means, but his inner capacities.
“No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate.” What I mean is that usually,
—always so far, and now more and more—men lay down mental rules according to their conceptions and ideals, and then they apply them (Mother brings down her fist to show the world in the grip of mind), and that is absolutely false, it is arbitrary, unreal—and the result is that things revolt or wither and disappear… It is the experience of Life itself that should slowly elaborate rules which are as flexible and wide as possible, to be always progressive. Nothing should be fixed.
That is the great error of governments; they make a framework and say 'There you are, we have set this up and now we must live by it'; and so of course they crush life and prevent it from progressing. Life itself must develop more and more in a progression towards Light, Knowledge, Power, little by little establishing rules that are as general as possible, so that they can be extremely flexible and change with the need—and change as quickly as the needs and habit do.
The problem finally comes down to this: to replace the mental government of the intelligence by the government of a spiritualised consciousness.
+30.12.1967
… That is how life in Auroville should be organised, but I doubt whether people are ready.
Q: That is to say that it is possible so long as they accept the guidance of a sage?
Yes. The first thing that should be accepted and recognised by everyone is that the invisible and higher power—that is, the power which belongs to a plane of consciousness that is mostly veiled, but which is within each; a consciousness which can be called anything, by any name, it does not matter, but which is integral and pure in the sense that it is not false, it is in the Truth—that this power is capable of ordering material things in a way that is truer, happier and better for everyone than any material power. That is the first point. Once people agree on that…
It is not something one can pretend to have; an individual cannot pretend to have it, either he has it or he hasn't, because (laughing) in any circumstance of life, if it is a pretension, it will show clearly! On top of that, it does not give you any material power. There again. X once said—he was speaking of the true hierarchy, the hierarchy based on each one's power of consciousness—the individual or individuals who are at the very summit necessarily have the least needs; their material needs become less as their capacity of material vision grows. And that is very true. It is automatic and spontaneous, not the result of an effort: the wider the consciousness, the more it embraces things and realities,—the less its material needs; automatically, because they lose all their importance and value. The need for material necessities is reduced to a minimum, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
And that is easily recognisable, isn't it: it is difficult to act the part.
And the second thing is the power of conviction, that is, the highest consciousness, when it is brought into contact with Matter, spontaneously has a greater power of conviction than all the intermediary planes. By mere contact, its power of conviction, that is, its power of transformation, is greater than that of all the intermediary planes. That is a fact. These two facts together make it impossible for any pretension to last long. I am looking at it from the standpoint of a collective organisation.
As soon as you come down from this supreme Height, there is all the play of the various influences (gesture of mixture and conflict) and that in itself is a sure sign: even a slight descent—even into the domain of higher mind, higher intelligence—and the whole conflict of influences begins. Only what is right at the very summit and is perfectly pure, has this power of spontaneous conviction.
Therefore, whatever one may do instead of that is an approximation and it is not much better than democracy,—that is, the system which wants to rule by the greatest number and the lowest level—I mean social democracy, the latest trend.
If there is no representative of the supreme Consciousness — that can happen, can't it? — if there isn't any, there could be instead, it could be tried, government by a few—a small number set between four and eight, something like that, four, seven, eight—who have an intuitive intelligence: 'intuitive' is more important than intelligence—with an intuition that is manifested intellectually.
This would have its drawbacks from the practical point of view, but it would perhaps be closer to the truth than the lowest level—socialism or communism. Everything in between has proved to be incompetent: theocracy, aristocracy, democracy and plutocracy, all those have been a 'complete failure'. The other one, the socialist or communist government is proving itself a failure as well.
Basically socialism and communism correspond to a kind of absence of government, because they do not have the power to govern others; they are obliged to transfer their power to someone who exercises it, like a Lenin for example, because he was a brain. All this has been tried and proved to be incompetent. The only thing that could be competent is the Truth-Consciousness which would choose instruments and express itself through a certain number of instruments, in the absence of one—'one' is not enough either, 'one' would necessarily have to choose a group.
Those who have this consciousness may belong to any social class: it is not a privilege of birth, but the outcome of personal effort and development. In fact, that is an outward sign, the obvious sign of a change from the political point of view — it is no longer a matter of classes and categories nor of birth — all that is obsolete. It is the individuals who have attained a certain higher consciousness who have the right to govern — not others, regardless of their social class.
This would be the true vision.
All those who participate in the experiment should be absolutely convinced that the highest consciousness is the best judge of the most material things. What has ruined India is this idea that the higher consciousness deals with higher things and that lower things do not interest it at all, and that it understands nothing about them! That has been the ruin of India. Well, this error must be completely eradicated. It is the highest consciousness which sees most clearly, — most clearly and most truly — what the needs of the most material things must be.
What political organisation do you want for Auroville?
With that, a new type of government could be tried. +10.4.1968
An amusing definition occurs to me: a divine anarchy. But the world will not understand. Men must become conscious of their psychic being and organise themselves spontaneously, without fixed rules and laws—that is the ideal.
For this one must be in contact with one's psychic being, one must be guided by it and the ego's authority and influence must disappear.
+28.12.1972
Auroville wants to be a new creation expressing a new Consciousness in a new way and according to new methods.
18.8.1969*