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1114
4- On Economy.
Economy cannot be reduced to finances.
Economy is a field that embraces all of our attitudes towards matter and towards
life’ relationships and activities, as towards all the means at our disposal, beginning
with thought.
In the ordinary contemporary trends of development emphasis has shifted to
consumerism: it is the shifting of value on “to have” rather than on “to be”.
Whatever the focus that prevails at any stage of the history of mankind, it selects,
within the infinite range of possibilities, the tools and means most pliable to its
intent.
When we in Auroville find that we are in a mess of conflicting values, and that all
the mind ever does is to supply references and justifications for every single
attitude at play; when we are son confused and crippled that we believe no longer
in the possibility of a self-evident collectively acceptable direction; should we not
try then, rather than be cosmetically clever, to take the time to reflect more deeply
on every one of our assumptions and practices?
We do have the time: Auroville is that time!
The world clamours that there is no time, there is never time; and beneath that
clamour is the cry that some catastrophe will have to happen!
But the time is wherever there is consciousness.
To want the time to see is to want to be more conscious: it is to want for
consciousness to govern.
It is a trick of the mind to convince us that, if we do take the time, life will unravel
and go to pieces, unattended.
While, disengaged, consciousness tells us of infinite possibilities, takes us to
immediate discoveries, releases the capacity of choice and guides us onto a fresh
path to find new means and evolve new tools of manifestation.
Precisely what Auroville is for!
And so there are needs and there are needs, with their respective economies.
There are those needs or cravings that invade and colonise, eat and absorb.
And there are those needs that consciousness alone can fulfil, in its own true time.
What do I, for instance, need?
I need to discern, I need to feel and know that the tree under whose shade I rest is
as happy as I am of this sharing, that the soil I tread is a little of my larger body of
love, that the centre of my city is a throbbing of Her Presence, in powerful peace
and the quiet glory of beauty achieved by the joining of matter, nature and
humanity, within an embrace divine; that the eyes my eyes meet are open directly
from within; to feel and know that my body is whole and one with my soul and
partakes of a true plenitude that grows; that every moment is increasingly
meaningful and alive within the One; that the food I still taste is the form of the
nurturing of a larger identity; that the violence of nature teaches widening, and the
sleep that receives me still is the welcoming embrace of the Guide across an infinity