HER VISION OF AUROVILLE..from bulletin ...talk of ..December 30, 1967 About Auroville, Mother reads a note written from memory as to what she has said :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 foodstuff) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind to the township which is responsible for the feeding of the 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 had said a good deal, a good deal about it, internally, on the organisation, the food etc. We are going to make experiments. There are things which are truly interesting; for example, I would like there should be... First of all, each country will have its pavilion, and in the pavilion, there will be a kitchen of that country, that is to say, the Japanese will be able to eat as they want to etc., but in the town itself, there will be food for the vegetarians as well as food for non-vegetarians, and also there will be an attempt to find the food of tomorrow. Well, all this labour for assimilation that makes you so heavy—it takes so much time and energy of the person—it ought to be done before and you must be given something which is at once capable of being assimilated, as is done now : for example, they have vitamins that are directly assimilable and also... proteins, the nutritious principles that are found in such and such things and that are not bulky—a huge quantity is required to assimilate just a little. So now that they are clever enough from the chemical point of view, one is able to simplify. People do not like it simply because ... because they take an intense delight in eating, but when one does not take pleasure in eating, one requires nourishment and does not lose time in that. You lose time enormously: the time for eating, the time for digesting and all the rest. And so here, I would like to have a trial kitchen, a kind of culinary laboratory, for experimenting. People will go here and there or otherwhere according to their taste, and their inclination. And then food is not paid for, but work should be offered or materials ; those, for example, who might have fields, should offer the yield of their fields; they who would have factories should give their products, or one gives ones labour in exchange of food. This eliminates a good deal of the internal monetary circulation. In this way things can be found for everyone. In reality it should be a township for study—study and research as to how to live in a way at once simplified and wherein the higher qualities will have more time to develop. It is only just a beginning. Mother now takes up 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 to make experiments—experiments, researches, studies. Auroville will be a city that will try to be or will lead towards or will want to be self-supporting, that is to say... Autonomous ? Autonomous, it is understood as some kind of independence that cuts all relations with others, I do not mean that. For instance, they who produce food like Aurofood (naturally, when there will be 5O,OOO people, it will be difficult to meet their needs, but for the moment we are only a few thousand at the most), well, a factory always produces too much, so it will sell outside and receive money. Aurofood for example, wants to have special relations with the workmen, not at all the old system, something which would be an improvement on the communistic system, an organisation more balanced than the sovietism, that is to say, which does not sin by leaning more on one side than on the other. There is one thing I wanted to say : the participation in the wellbeing and life of the town as a whole is not an individual calculation : such an individual should pay so much. It is not like that. It is calculated in accordance with the means, the activity, the possibility of production; it is not the democratic idea which cuts up the whole into equal bits, it is an absurd machine. Instead it is calculated according to means; one who has more gives more, one who has less gives less , one who is strong works more, one who is not strong does another thing. Well, it is something truer, deeper. That is why I do not try to explain it immediately, because people will start protesting in all sorts of ways. The thing must create itself so to say automatically, as the township grows, in the true spirit. It is why this note is altogether brief. For example, this sentence : All who live there will participate in its life and development. All who live there will participate in the life of the town and in its growth—in accordance with their capacities and means, not mechanically, as through unity. Yes, it is that ? It must be a thing living and true., not a mechanical thing. And according to capacities, that is to say, one who has the material means, such as those furnished by a factory, should supply proportionately to its production; not so much per head and per individual. The participation may be passive or active. I do not understand what passive means (I spoke in French and that has been put in English). What can it mean exactly, passive ?... It would be rather, on different planes, different levels of consciousness. You mean to say that they who are wise, that is to say, who work internally, need not... Yes, it is that. They who have a higher knowledge, need not work with their hands, that is what I meant. There will be no taxes as such, but each will contribute to the collective welfare in work, kind or money So it is understood, there will be no taxes, no dudes, but each one will be expected to contribute to the collective welfare by his work in kind or money. Those who have nothing else than money will give money. But work may mean truly an inner work (but this cannot be said of people who are not honest enough), the work can be an occult work, altogether within oneself, but for that, naturally one must be absolutely sincere and true, and as to capacity, there must be no pretension. But the work need not necessarily be a material 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 food-stuff) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind to the township which is responsible for the feeding of the citizens. That is what we have said. The industries will participate actively, will contribute; If these are industries that produce articles that are not in constant demand, and therefore in quantity or number much too large to be used up in the town and will be sold outside, they naturally must participate with money. And I give food for example : those that produce food will give it to the town (in proportion to what they produce, naturally) and the town is responsible for the food of everyone. That is to say, there will be no need to buy food with money, but one must earn it. It is a kind of adaptation of the communist system, but not in a spirit of levelling : according to capacity, position—not psychological or intellectual—the internal position of everyone. 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 necessities of everyone will be assured not according to ideas of right and equality, but on the basis of the most elementary necessities. And once this is established, each one will be free to organise his life according to—not monetary 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 to say is that usually—always till today and more and more—men are establishing mental rules according to their conceptions and ideals, and they apply them (Mother puts down her fist to show the world as under the mental fist), and that is absolutely false, it is arbitrary, it is unreal, and the result is that things revolt or wither and disappear. ... It is the experience of Life itself that should slowly work out rules that are as subtle and as wide as possible, so that they might be always progressive. Nothing should be fixed. That is the great error of governments : you make a frame and say there you are, we have put that up and we must live under it, and therefore naturally you crush out life, prevent it from progressing. It must be Life itself developing more and more progressively towards the Light and Consciousness and Power that should slowly establish the rules, making them as general as possible so that they are extremely supple and amenable to change according to need and as quickly as habits and needs change. The problem finally reduces itself almost to this : to replace the mental government of intelligence by the government pf a spiritualised consciousness. This is a very interesting experience : how the same actions, the same work, the same observations, the same relations with the environment (near and far) take place in the mind through intelligence, and in the consciousness through experience. And that is what the body is now learning, to replace the mental regime of intelligence by the spiritual regime of consciousness. That does bring about (it looks like nothing, you may not notice it), but it does bring about a tremendous difference, so much so that it increases hundredfold the possibilities of the body.... When the body is subject to rules, even if these be wide even if they are comprehensive, it is the slave of these rules and its possibilities are limited by these rules. But when it is governed by the Spirit and the Consciousness, that gives it an incomparable possibility and flexibility. And it is that which will give it the capacity to prolong its life, prolong its duration, it means the replacement of the intellectual government of the mind by the government of the Spirit, of the Consciousness—the Consciousness. From the outside it does not seem to make much difference, but... my experience is this (because now my body no more obeys the mind of the intelligence, not at all—it does not even understand how that can be done), but more and more, better and better, it follows the guidance, the urge of the Consciousness. And then it sees, almost every minute, the great difference that it makes.... For example, time has lost its value—its fixed value. Exactly the same thing can be done in a short time or a long time. Necessities have lost their authority. One can adapt oneself to this or to that. All laws, these laws that were laws of Nature have lost their whole despotism, one might say : it is no longer as before. It is enough, if it is always, supple, attentive and... responsive to the influence of the Consciousness—the Consciousness in its omnipotence—to pass through all that, with an extraordinary suppleness. That is a discovery which is being made more and more. It is wonderful, it is a wonderful discovery. It is as a progressive victory over all the imperatives. Thus all laws of Nature, naturally, the human laws, all habits, all rules, all that becomes supple and ends by becoming non-existent. And yet one can maintain a regular rhythm that makes the action easy—it is not contrary to suppleness. But it is a suppleness in the execution, in the adaptation, that comes in and changes everything. From the point of view of hygiene, from the point of view of health, from the point of view of organisation, from the point of view of relation with others, all that has lost not only its aggressiveness (for it is sufficient to be sane—sane and sober and calm—for the aggressiveness to go in all that), but its absolutism, its imperative rule, it is all gone, gone. So, one sees : as the process becomes more and more perfect— perfect means integral, total, leaving nothing behind—it is necessarily, inevitably the victory over death. Not that the dissolution of cells which death represents does not exist, but it would exist only when it would be necessary; not as an absolute law, but as one of the procedures, when it is necessary. Above all, it is that : all that the Mind has brought as rigid and absolute and almost as invincible... will disappear. And simply that, by passing the supreme power over to the Supreme Consciousness. Perhaps it is that which the ancient seers meant when they spoke of transferring the power of Nature or the power of Prakriti to Purusha, transferring it from Prakriti to the Purusha. It is perhaps that which they expressed in this way. The Mother
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 12:28:20 +0000
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