Sunday, May 21, 2000

Auroville. Inscrutible. The two words have become synonyms in my personal lexicon. After four days I know only a few trivial details more than I knew when I first arrived -- and the bulk of those from reading the guest handbook.

It's not that they're secretive -- to the contrary, the people I've talked to have been very open in answering questions. The hard part has been finding people who are actually helpful -- I don't know what questions to ask, and nobody's holding my hand and making sure I get all the details straight. I guess I should have believed them when they said they weren't really set up for tourists and that they prefer visitors to stay for weeks rather than days. I thought six days would give me a taste of the culture at least, but now I've come to believe that I'm doing the equivalent of going to McDonald's on Haight Street to see what the food in San Francisco is like.

Maybe I should start at the beginning: what is Auroville? The simple answer is that Auroville is an experimental city, currently in developmental stages. The vague, abstract answer is that Auroville is a dynamic blending of intention with reality. The etymological answer is that Auroville was named after its conceptual creator, spiritual guru Sri Aurobindo. The historical answer is that Auroville was planned and executed by Aurobindo's right-hand woman, known as The Mother, while he was in meditative seclusion. The project was begun in 1968 with the intention of creating an exemplar city, a template the rest of the world could follow, a community of 50,000 people from around the world in an environment promoting spiritual evolution. The present-day snapshot is that Auroville is home to 1500 people, two-thirds of whom are foreign nationals.

I'm hesitant to even share my first impressions, because I'm sure they don't reflect the reality of life in Auroville. However, since they do reflect my experience, here goes.

First, in spite of the failure to integrate visitors into the culture, we are treated very well. The guest house I'm staying at is the cleanest and most luxurious I've stayed at in India (not that that's particularly difficult to accomplish), with reasonable impressions of european cuisine at mealtimes, and a variety of services like laundry and mopeds. If nothing else, it's been a relaxing place for me to practice my Yoga asanas.

The overwhelmingly highest profile project in all of Auroville is the Matrimandir. To describe it as a meditation hall would be like calling the Taj Mahal a mausoleum. While true, it hardly captures the essence of the structure. Surrounded by several acres of gardens and what I think will someday be a large fountain and pond, the Matrimandir itself, spherical in shape, reminds me of a UFO. By its size, I would guess that it is suitable for an exploratory mission to a distant galaxy but is probably not large enough for a full colonization effort. The finishing touches are still being applied, completion date unknown due to the complexity of following The Mother's precise specifications. Therefore, as teleportation is not yet functional, you enter at the base via old-fashioned steps. Inside, two ramps spiral up the walls of the sphere, taking you to the meditation chamber which fills the top third of the globe. This round, air-conditioned room is completely white, with twelve white pillars standing in a circle around the centerpiece: a huge, perfectly smooth crystal ball, illuminated by sunlight concentrated through lenses in the ceiling (or auxiliary high-powered lamps on cloudy days). With such intense serenity, I'm still trying to work out why I didn't reach enlightenment the moment I sat down in the half-lotus position. No matter -- tomorrow for sure.

But seriously -- while it is definitely an impressive symbol, there is rumored to be some controversey about the appropriateness of spending vast amounts of resources on something primarily symbolic. Is a three foot crystal ball really going to give you that extra push you need to get over the speed bump in your meditation? I guess it doesn't matter, really; that's the way The Mother wanted it.

There are many, many other projects, or communities, established in the roughly ten square miles of dirt roads and forest land. They range from infrastructure services to handicraft shops, from scientific research to energy healing, from tree nurseries to nursery schools. Most of these are invisible to guests by virtue of being on unmarked roads and having no signs, though if you make personal contact you might be granted some attention. I managed to secure a position serving cucumbers one afternoon at the Solar Kitchen (which, though not particularly solar, is very definitely a kitchen), where I saw the smiling faces (or furrowed brows, in the case of vegephobes) of hundreds of Aurovillians of all races, colors, and creeds (actually, only two creeds were readilly discernable -- the creed which likes cucumbers, and the creed which doesn't).

So what have I learned from this experience? Well, maybe that if I don't know what I'm looking for, I'm not likely to find it. Being open to whatever may come is fine and good, but it helps to also use your own energy to make something good come. Otherwise, you're just a tourist.