The story of a 22-year-old who bicycled across India, arrived in Auroville intending to stay for a few days, and has stayed for more than forty years.
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Written May 2023
My name is Ruth Elisabeth Hauser, born in Switzerland in a middle-class family. I graduated as a primary school teacher and studied psychology at Geneva University.
I came to Auroville for the first time in 1978 after having travelled across India by bicycle, visiting many spiritual places and staying in ashrams. I was 22 years old, on an inner discovery and looking for something meaningful to live for. In this way I came to Pondicherry. After a few days in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, I went to Auroville in a van with some people that I had met earlier on my travels across India. I had taken my belongings with me intending to stay for a few days. The van drove up to the Matrimandir, right to the edge of the amphitheater with the urn containing the soil of 123 countries and many Indian states.
It was midday; the place was deserted. All of us got out of the car and walked around. The four pillars of Matrimandir were standing, and the crude concrete body of the Chamber was completed. As there was nothing more to see nor people to talk with, they decided to drive on.
This was not so for me. I felt some special, sacred energy and I was intrigued and wanted to find out more. I remember well, how I stood next to the urn in my colorful dress with my backpack and my musical instrument and the van drove off. For me to go into the unknown was no longer scary after my trip across India, where I had learned to trust my intuition.
Shortly after, a young woman passed by. To my surprise it was someone I had met months ago on my travels. She then invited me to her hut where I spent the first night in Auroville.
I only spent 2 weeks on my first stay. My visa was expiring and I absolutely wanted to go to Indonesia to study with a batik master. In 1979, after having been in Yogyakarta and Bali, I returned to Auroville, this time to get involved in the work and development of this monumental utopian undertaking that fascinated me.
I stayed in Auroville until I had no more money to support myself and after I went back to Switzerland to work. I returned in 1980 with enough money to build a little house and cover living costs for at least a year. Life in Auroville was very basic…Whatever we could spare went into simple infrastructure, drilling wells, building huts and houses, establishing farms, into erosion control measures (contour bunding, water catchment ponds) and tree planting (nurseries with seedlings, protecting the trees from cattle, watering manually etc.) People from the nearby villages would ask us for employment. Together the work went on much faster. They also shared with us the knowledge they carried from living here over generations. In the early years we often worked shoulder to shoulder with them in mutual respect and appreciation.
The originally intended 1 year of stay became 2 and then 3 years. Thanks to an inheritance I was able to sponsor the building up of Newlands community, a settlement in the Greenbelt. All money was considered “Mother’s money” to be used to the maximum for Auroville’s development and growth. Twice a week we would receive a basket from Auroville with vegetables and groceries. There was also a collective kitchen in the Center for lunch.
The birth of two children (1984 / 86) brought me back into working in the field of education, first simply organizing playgroups for the small ones and later teaching at Transition School that had just been built (first phase).
Like with the work related to the land, we learned by doing. Constant experimentation and improvement were part of all we did. In this way education and schooling was discovery and learning by doing, taking Mother’s indications on education (Free Progress) as the base.
We were all in some way or the other connected to Integral Yoga but this was not much talked about. Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s books were widely read. But in the forefront of our lives was Karma Yoga.
Serving in the Working Committee in 1995 brought my attention to many of the collective challenges, in particular the Development of the City, and the urgency to purchase the missing land in the master plan area. And for the next few years I was busy with Fundraising for Auroville Land and development issues.
With two friends I started to offer introductory tours/sessions in Auroville to guests. Student exchange programs and coordinating volunteering opportunities are other initiatives that were started.
In 2003 I joined Jaya, a Swedish lady, who was involved with the International Zone. Together we built up the Unity Pavilion and the Hall of Peace.
Since then I have given energy and time to many collective efforts, including working in Auroville’s internal governance system.
I have lived here through incredible hardships and experienced wonderful blessed moments. During the last 6 years, directly involved in collective decision making, I have grappled with the gaps and shortcomings of our internal organization and our hesitation to assume positions of leadership with strength and determination. And at the same time, there were clear signs of us collectively maturing.
I have been struggling with my nature and character, and witnessed over time how all our experiences slowly mold and change us. The same is true for our collective, the slowly emerging Auroville society.
The Auroville Charter and the “Dream” are the blueprints for life in the city. “To be a true Aurovilian” gives me and all of us clear directives on how to lead our lives, how to work together and interact in order to inwardly grow and one day truly be able to manifest a spiritualized or gnostic society.
Matrimandir is our sacred Center, a place far above my comprehension, where I go when I am deeply troubled, or simply to clear my mind and emotions.
Auroville is a special and blessed place and I am deeply grateful to be here, even though we are right now going through a very difficult time when core values of our fragile society are being trampled and carefully built up collective structures are forcefully broken down.
I hope and pray that ways will be found to overcome the present crisis.
Ruth Elisabeth Hauser.