We can build the Matrimandir, but we cannot build a tree

A meditative poem exploring the Power within Nature.

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Written July 2025

Consider for a moment this
question I place before you: can
you build a tree?

You may indeed take the seed and
confide it to the soil;
you may water it, watch over it,
even prune and guide its outer
form.
But the secret that makes it live,
the Power that compels it to
unfold leaf and bough and
shadow,
that is not yours to command.
You do not build it;
you witness its becoming.

A tree is not a monument, not a
diagram imposed by the human
will.
It is a profound rhythm of Nature
herself,
a truth of the universal Spirit
expressing in stem and sap and
leaf.

It grows beyond the survey of our
maps;
and yet within itself it writes the
history of its being—
circle within circle, memory within
memory,
a scripture of time carried in
silence.

We have raised here a golden
sphere;
we have set a crystal to capture
and concentrate the light.
Such things are noble symbols,
needed steps.
But we cannot command a seed to
grow to our design,
to flower according to our plan.

Therefore, if we would indeed
serve this great experiment that
calls itself Auroville,
let us join hands in the deeper
labour.
Let us uplift the truths we have
seen,
and live them until they strike
roots in our consciousness,
until they become living powers
shaping our acts and our relations.

For the Matrimandir can be built
by our outer skill;
but the tree belongs to another
order—
it is shaped by the Eternal Worker,
and only in union with That can we
hope to plant rightly,
to nurture rightly,
to see this land blossom into the
unity it was born to embody.

Let us then walk humbly, yet with
a steadfast will,
knowing that our highest
architecture is not in stone,
but in the slow, secret growth of
the Spirit—
as inevitable, as miraculous,
as the life of a tree.

Anonymous