journal d'une transition

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