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At present one can measure it by its reverse effect. But when one remembers what
it means, in life, to try alone in the midst of an anonymous mass determined by the
ordinary mechanisms of any large society on earth, when one remembers how
hopeless it is to try and reach the point when one’s efforts could begin to bear
creative results in one’s surrounding condition, environment and relationships, then
one knows what a grace Auroville offers, if all those who willingly choose to
participate do try and keep trying.
We are no heroes. But we must at least be adventurers.
Only then, to reside in Auroville would cease to be a dubious and mixed privilege,
open to numerous questions and interpretations, and would be a real participation
and contribution to a worthwhile experiment.
And only then could we say, with simplicity, that whether Auroville fails or succeeds
is not our concern, because we would be giving what is demanded of us, and no
less.
So, possibly, one step we could take now would be to formulate some of these
inner laws as our internal guidelines, and hold them before us in our lives, as
supports for our striving, and discover as we go their living practice.
Even if we are capable of nothing else at the moment, we, who presently inhabit
Auroville, still have the responsibility to see that the very conditions Auroville offers
are preserved intact and virtually whole.
This necessity was our only real justification in refusing the narrow and limited
imposition that was previously laid upon the entire experiment by a group of people
who had in their hands some ruling power, and in fighting for their withdrawal or
abdication from this power they were intent on misusing.
In the process we were led to solicit support and practical help from the
Government of India, and it has responded. In its positive response is the unique
grace of India – the one country in the world which, despite its many failures,
remains spiritually based.
But any Government today rests on and is liable to all the human arrangement of
laws and safeguards that apply to the whole range of social situations of an
ordinary nature.
Auroville cannot enter there and must not try; Auroville is an extraordinary
situation of an extraordinary nature; it can only serve its purpose and function by
remaining out, basically, of that mesh of relationships.
This does not make us, who live in Auroville, exceptional beings, but il takes it
possible for anybody who has truly the need to participate to do so.
And one important factor of progress inherent to the very existence of Auroville is
that it inevitably pushes against the barriers of all and any mentally-based system
and organisation, and must be accepted as such.
We are asked to share in that push, not out of revolt but by growth.
To accept the formulations, however ameliorated, improved, touched-up or
adapted, arisen from current mental conceptions of viability and solution-finding, as
guidelines for the internal evolution and development of such an experiment as
Auroville offers can only be a grave mistake and lead to a great confusion of values
which would veil more and more the actual possibility Auroville stands for.
To ask the Government of India to take up the ownership of the land and assets of
Auroville, even from a distance and with guarantees, is inevitably to bind the whole
material base of Auroville to a set of determinisms that are naturally incompatible