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*Open letter to all, March 31, 2002:
“Please everybody, bear with me; I undertake to give you fairly good reading.
Why do I write now, so late in the day? I can see two different reasons.
One is that “my team”, the MMCG, is no more officially accountable for any of its
members’ actions, and therefore I am freed of that consideration.
And another is that a last ditch attempt is being made at neutralising a certain
number of voices, of people, who constitute a persisting obstacle to the realisation
of a “Chief Architect”’s concept of the Matrimandir.
The members of the ad hoc Matrimandir Design Study Group, whose mandate was
to assess and study the pending questions, problems, issues of design for the
completion of the Matrimandir and the Peace Area, and then make a presentation
as impartial as possible to the community of their findings and their conclusions,
instead of fulfilling this mandate, have taken it upon themselves, in cahoots with
some of the members of the newly elected Interim Working Committee, to
recommend the urgent formation of a “new” Management Team with full decision
powers – with the understanding that none of us of course would be part of it.
I am perhaps conservative in that I firmly believe that the means one uses to
achieve one’s goals are even more important than the goals themselves, in the
sense that the means are used in the present and one becomes what they
manifest.
In other words, I believe that the means one uses must be inspired by the goals
one dedicates oneself to. The higher and deeper and vaster the goals, the more
demanding they are of that quality of integrity in the means that are chosen.
If and when one uses means that are low, cheap, calculating, conniving,
manoeuvring, which involve untruths, calumnies, campaigning, then what these
means reveal is the actual nature of one’s goals, regardless of what the professed
goals are.
I shall come back to this, with examples that are proven and documented.
I have several times been told that I was being perceived by the “chief architect”
and his entourage as one of the main, if not the main, causes of conflict and
stalemate at Matrimandir.
The present Chairman himself, upon his last departure from Auroville, has felt it
indispensable to tell me personally that, although he himself wholly embraced me
and was committed to a “no exclusion” course, one of the main aspects of the
problem at Matrimandir was the relationship between the “chief architect” and me.
But here lies the very essence of the trap that is trying to engulf much more tan a
few of us, and my purpose in writing this letter to all is to show how this is indeed a
trap, and a covering up of the real issues.
I am referring here to the age-old trick of masking the issues of choice and
direction by focussing everyone’s attention onto exaggerated personal portraits,
aiding oneself with “interesting” rumours and the universal taste for gossip.
I am not “against” the “chief architect”.
There have been periods of time when it was possible for me to relate happily to
him – for he is a very likeable person.