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1109
- 1998 -
Note: I think it was in 1998 that one of the issues uppermost in the community’s
atmosphere was that of the International Zone of Auroville, in which the Mother had
planned to have pavilions representing the spirit and soul of each nation of the
world. Since 1968, thirty years earlier, many countries had changed their names,
and even sometimes their boundaries; large alliances or dominions had ceased,
while new groupings had become geopolitical realities. The strong emergence of
Europe as a unified power made it inevitable to wonder about the continuing
validity of representing, say, the soul of Yugoslavia. Entire cultures were seen as
trans-border, migrating phenomena, and the lessons of the past, such as, for
instance, had to be assimilated by the people of Germany, brought about new
scepticism towards the very notion of a country’ soul.
I had felt very much interested in trying to “see” and design, for example, a model
for the pavilion of France: it was a large cube, with a solid and very cohesive
appearance from the outside; but inside, it was developed in tiers descending onto
a central arcaded atrium.
About that time, I think I must have drafted the following paper.
*On France and Nation Souls.
“While searching for a definition which may be faithful enough to the inner reality,
the psychic reality, of a country, of a nation’ soul, it may be interesting to have the
notation of someone who has left that country a long time ago and yet retains a
measure of identification.
Here I offer my notation, as regards France, for whatever it is worth.
In my case, from the moment of leaving France as a country and a home, there has
been no sense of need, no nostalgia, and no wish to maintain any ties.
Perhaps, this was due to the inner fact that both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have
together integrated, purified and manifested, from Their unique poise, the very
essence of France.
The chivalry and honour, the generosity of heart and the elegance of refinement
and the rich and lucid precision of thought and a certain universality of ethics and
codes of conduct: They have brought these to living perfection.
There was in me for some years a voluntary movement of distancing myself from a
set of negative expressions and stances which were also, and still are, typically
French: each nation, as each person, carries its own contradiction.
I was particularly sensitive to a specific mix of vulgarity and exclusivism, the
arrogance of a people which thinks itself to be entitled to every earthly domain and