Dena speaks of her history with Yogananda, the Vedas, her coming to Auroville, and attempts to encourage communication.
Interview 26 February 2026
Dena, what has been your past experience of Auroville?
Actually, I first went to the ashram before I went to Auroville. I was organizing a big conference in India on the Divine Mother, and I was looking for a teacher from the Sri Aurobindo lineage, and so I went to the ashram. And then a year or so later, a friend of mine who was on the International Advisory Council, Doudou Diene, invited me to come with him to Auroville. He was very enthusiastic. So that was 2008 or 2009.
I had heard about Auroville first from Hannah Strong in the 1990s. Hannah Strong is a good friend, and she told me about Auroville, and I was interested then because my own guru, Yogananda, in the 1930s spoke of what he called fellowship communities, spiritual communities, and he said that was the social organization of the future. He tried to set one up in the 1930s and 40s, and then said humanity wasn’t ready.
And then in the 1970s, I went to Ananda Meditation Retreat, which was set up to fulfill that mission of Yogananda’s. So I’ve long had an interest in this concept of spiritual communities. After going to the ashram and then going back to Ananda, I was very taken, because Auroville had been around for a long time – one of the few of such communities that has grown or that has really developed over time, and I just am in love with the whole concept. So that was my first impression. Then, of course, when I went with Doudou Diene, he took me to the Matrimandir, and we were able to spend a long time meditating there. That was a very, very powerful experience for me. And then I began visiting. I go to India every year, sometimes twice a year. My connection was more with the ashram because I developed friendships there, but I would always go to the Matrimandir. That was the destination for me: always go spend a few hours in Auroville at the Matrimandir and under the banyan tree, which was the other part of it.
How is your spirituality connected with Auroville?
Some years ago, when I was in graduate school, I took a course in the Vedas. I’ve always been interested in a deep dive in the Vedas, but it was at Columbia, and it was a huge disappointment. They taught it like they teach Greek religion. So when I started going to Pondicherry, I started reading Sri Aurobindo’s teachings on the Vedas. He became my teacher of the Vedas – he opened that door to me. Now, my own guru, Yogananda, didn’t talk about the Vedas so much. His thing was practices of meditation to help you go inside and explore your own divinity. But I’ve always been drawn to them, because I’m very interested in the time in which the Vedas came through, a higher yuga. And, you know, Yogananda talks a lot about the yugas, and one of the keys to understanding the yugas is to go back into the understanding of the Vedas, which came to us in a higher age. So Sri Aurobindo pulled aside that veil for me, and I, through the book, really began a deep study. And so my connection was, is, with Sri Aurobindo through his teachings of the Vedas.
What are your feelings about the present situation in Auroville?
Painful, very painful. I didn’t realize the situation when I was invited to be part of the International Advisory Council. By that time, I knew people who were on the governing board and a few people recommended me. It just seemed like such an honor for me to be able to have a voice in what was happening in Auroville, but I had no idea what was going on. And so, as soon as I came into this position, I attended a Residents’ Assembly meeting virtually, and I saw the division and the anger, and it was really painful.
So I decided to try to be a bridge, to open up communication, to try to get everybody to talk together in a spiritual community. Communicate, talk — I’m sure that we can come to some reasonable compromise here. And for two years I tried to do that. I kept saying to the secretary, every time she would come up with a new program or a new decree: you’ve got to explain it. Why are you taking this step? You can’t just announce it. You have to engage people in a discussion about it. I really made an effort for the first two years. And the IAC was also divided about an approach, because there were people really upset about the sidelining of some old timers. It really was hard to make a break-through in communication.
So I brought in somebody I’d been working with, a dear friend, Raghu, who started this process called Heartweaving. And again, it was another attempt to get people to come together and talk, just to sit together in the room, and to listen to each other. But when the land exchanges started happening with no explanation, with no transparency – to me, it was the final straw. It’s like you can’t do that to people who devoted 50 years of their life to building something, and suddenly you come in and say, you have no voice. And so it got to be very painful. I have to say that when the term ended, I had very mixed feelings. I was very sorry, on one level, not to be able to help in any way. But on the other hand, it took such a burden off of me, because I lived with this angst every time we were going to have an IAC meeting.
And I tried commuting. I met several times with the chair of the Governing Board. I wrote to him and said that the IAC wants to meet with the Governing Board. No response. We finally got no response – and we became irrelevant, really. We couldn’t do anything and that was very painful. And I have confidence that Auroville will find its way through this. That’s not to say there won’t be a toll to be paid. But if the internal core remains, if people continue with their sadhana and just continue in their own hearts to realize the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, at some point, things will shift. And just so you know, we are preparing a report that will go to the government.
I’m very much looking forward to reading it – thank you, Dena.
Dena Merriam’s gentle voice seems to weave the energy of her guru Paramahansa Yogananda together with the harmonies of the goddess Sita and her story throughout the ages. Dena’s strong dedication to interfaith peace led her to serve as Vice Chair of the Millenium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations in 2000 and to found the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW) two years later. A founding member of the Contemplative Alliance in 2008, she received the Niwano Peace Prize for her interfaith peace efforts in 2014. She is the author of books on art and sculpture, and several volumes exploring reincarnation, karmic cycles, and patterns of cause and effect. Her most recent work is Sita’s Yoga: The Yoga of Awakening. Born in the US, she received her Master’s Degree from Columbia University. From 2021 to 2025, she was a member of the International Advisory Council of the Auroville Foundation.