Auroville

Auroville is a unique place in all the world. I have never seen such a deep and natural blending of race, ethnicity, language, and culture. In the US there is a melting pot, but baggage of hostility, exploitation, mistrust, and division between races and ethnicities. In AV there is a sense of not just tolerance but embrace and joy in diversity, borne from a strong intention of unity. There are white Europeans speaking fluent Tamil, and rural native Tamilians speaking French, drinking kombucha, and eating and serving stinky cheese and sourdough bread. There is a place in Pondy called White Town, which flips the dynamic and marginalizes the white people. The kids' dynamic was fasinating. The Tamil kids bully the white kids! A young Basque raised in AV says he has a 3,000 person family and is grateful to his parents for moving to AV from Spain when he was young. It is surreal and encouraging to witness.

Auroville is not a utopia, it is a microcosm. It has myriad issues and edges. There are factions and differences between foreginers and locals, with old and native-born youth generations, between those that to re-interpret Mother's vision and purists that believe there is a 5,000 year plan that isn't meant for modification 50 years in. While I was there the first election fraud occured where the voting box for committee membership was tampered with, and a revote was required.

It is a community built on practice of spirituality, though there is a wide spectrum of "practice" and "spirituality" followed by residents. If you have an intention to live a spiritual life, you will find plenty of people genuinely striving along their own path and can support your journey (and vice-versa). But you can also live in AV as a spiritual dabbler, spiritual in name and not in practice, not spiritual at all, all the way to living with amorality and vice. The freedom afforded in the Mothers' vision is both a gift and a challenge for achieving higher collective and individual conciousness.

To me the most notable and special contribution of AV to the world to this point is its relationship to nature. Every other city in the world is a city with nature sprinkled in. AV is nature with a city sprinkled in. There is modern amenties within the framework of and respect for nature, not in domination of it. You never forget that you are surrounded by forest, even as you enjoy the conveniences of concrete and glass, gym, cafe, and asphalt. Living there, especially in Bharat Nivas, surrounded by bodhi and banyan, hearing birds and breeze instead of horns, my body and mind were relaxed and quiet. The pace is slower and saner. There is no garbage, and there is an inherent understanding of reducing waste and minimizing footprint. I feel convinced that though AV is not perfect, it is definitely a step in the right direction from curent disfunctional state of human civilization.

While there for a six-week workation, I kept a photo diary. Enjoy!