The author asks whether it is possible to express what is being lost, if the dream of Auroville can withstand the diktats of the current masters.
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Originally published December 2024
Death of a dream
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
WB Yeats
Death has been haunting me of late. I have dreamt of local funerals where I awoke as I stepped forward to be a pallbearer, and of ornate dark-wood juggernaut hearses. I volunteer at Farewell, so corpses and the reality of our final passing are oh so close. In my family, illnesses and aging are around and I’ve had an outburst of skin cancer since I moved here. So, I’ve been trying to understand more of this archetypal and ultimate phase of life.
When I can step back enough, something deeply personal emerges − though I would guess it is shared with others − a grief at the loss of an ideal, namely the dream and aspirations of a utopian community.
When I finally was able to join Auroville in 2019, I felt a deep happiness and that I had caught some of the ‘adventure of consciousness’. I was alive in the purpose of Auroville and it elicited the best of me. I was particularly inspired by two aspects of the Auroville experiment: its pioneering environmental work and that it was a place where ‘money was not the sovereign Lord’. I’d tasted the opposite of both and knew the value of what Auroville offered.
However, it feels like both of these important aspects are in the process of being destroyed in recent years. Materialism seems far more sovereign now than it did a few years ago, corruption and greed, never far from humanity’s orbit, feel stronger. I mourn the loss of the dream of living in harmony not just with each other as humans but also with nature herself. I found Auroville’s story of re-greening the eroded plateau so compelling. Now trees are slaughtered, often it seems for no purpose…
At the very moment the world appears to be comprehending this, it feels as if here in Auroville we are being strong armed back to the 1950s. Divine anarchy is being replaced by top-down power. There is no indication that diversity, both botanically and with people, is the source of wealth, that the projects which enriched Auroville came from the play and experiment of unplanned but organically growing life.
All of this has led to a kind of deadening of possibility, generosity and inspiration. There is no ‘treading softly’ (to revert to the Yeats quote at the top) and our dreams are consequently dying under the weight of the heavy JCB [backhoe] tread. It’s hard to stay emotionally stable with all the constant destruction.
Unexpectedly, what upsets me most is the tone of our new masters. Now we live in a world of diktats. Communiqués are issued from the Foundation Office or from the FO FAMC [Funds and Assets Management Committee] in a cold didactic tone. I can recall no inspiration, just a constant putting down of the residents and their voice, often in an aggressive and mean-spirited way. Remarkably and contrastingly, the Residents’ Assembly Working Committee correspondence with its inclusive tone does remind us of higher purposes for being here.
Something has died, at least for me. New life will come, or not. Auroville could end up being a soulless cipher built over what was once a vibrant, anarchistic, organic experiment where many jewels emerged. Or something unknown could emerge through this painful labour of a new birth. A new Auroville. Wiser, more discerning and communal, able to value the wordless spiritual path it always offered.
Whichever it is, I’ve found acknowledging the grief of an ending helps. It’s important to mark rites of passage − funerals are painful but also emotionally cathartic − as we come to terms with the present reality.
By Peter
Originally published in Auroville Today, No 426 (Dec 2024)
https://auroville.today/articles/4233/death-of-a-dream