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cooperating and collaborating towards a comprehensive, ever more complete
realisation.
Which brings me to the question of inspiration.
I don’t see how anybody could object to the fact of the Mother’s appointment of a
particular architect for Her city.
An architect is necessary. An architect is an architect; he is also a human being,
and perhaps a sadhak.
This appointment does not constitute a fiat on the whole of the experiment, it does
not make the architect a leader or a king or a divine messenger. It is simply the
allotment of a task to one of Her children. And “come what may”!
For there are all the other necessary tasks and instruments, too.
When the Mother wanted, in January 1970, to have the plans drawn of Her direct
vision of the Inner Room of the Matrimandir, She specifically did not want an
architect to do it; She asked for an engineer to provide Her with an exact rendition
of Her detailed vision.
In this matter She did not want anyone to tamper with Her direct “inspiration”, of
which She guaranteed the source.
For many years, as we were building the structure of the Matrimandir and then of
its Inner Room, there was constantly, and despite all the difficulties, a sense of
evidence and timelessness.
To my experience, this sense is the expression of a sanction, of the highest
sanction.
This sense has gradually got covered, obscured, as we moved in to the completion
phase and, in the absence of clear plans and technical solutions, our many little
minds and preferences entered into the fray.
This became acute in 1987, when the triangular beam-structure got completed, and
no one really knew how to go about the outer completion of the sphere. This was
when the “chief architect” returned to Auroville, after about 10 years of absence;
this was also when his concept, modified here and there, of the gilded discs on the
sphere and the petals around it, was voted with a count of raised hands in a large
and long community meeting – without the slightest idea of how to execute it.
I have worked closely with the “chief architect” after his return to Auroville in the
late 80’s, during his twice-yearly stays, mostly over the Petals – where to locate the
rooms, which shape to give them, how to provide practical access, how to structure
the main volumes – and later over a number of details in and around the sphere. I
have never found him to be particularly inspired, not any more than any one of us.
Rather, I found him easily influenced, to the extent that he would change his
designs innumerable times as long as the inspiration came through “his people”.
And I came to the conclusion that what was and still is most important to him is the
matter of authority: he demands to have the final say, with the proviso that he, and
only he, can change it.
Thus, like a small king who welcomes bad advice from his courtiers and refuses or
ignores good advice from those over whom he holds no sway, we have a “chief
architect” who is addicted to authority for its own sake. A psychological context that
is far from conducive to an effective collaboration of the energies available,
wherein, if you are not “for”, you must be “against”.