I pray that Mother’s daring venture does not come to a halt this way

An account from a long-time resident of Dutch origin that balances inner and outer events.

Written May 2023

My name is Mauna A.I. van der Vlugt, I am a Dutch female of 81 years old, and reach out to the Indian Government with the hope for understanding why I live here and have been, and am, wholeheartedly and gratefully dedicating my life to that which Sri Aurobindo’s eye-opening teaching stands for.

In 1968, my newspaper (De Telegraaf, then the largest Dutch newspaper, where I had been working as assistant editor for several years) offered me my own magazine with all the perks that come with it. In those years I had been reading Satprem’s Sri Aurobindo, or The Adventure of Consciousness and realised the time had come to change gears and search in India for truer values than what life in Holland had to offer to me. I worked for a few more years so as not to come with empty hands.

In 1971 I arrived and stayed the first years in the Ashram where Mother took me under her wing, made me study with senior sadhaks, and steadied me when the wideness of new visions and experiences became difficult to comprehend. My awe, respect and indebtedness for that period is immense.

In 1977 I joined Auroville with my partner and our India-born son, and since then worked respectively in education, afforestation, Matrimandir construction, fund raising, village schooling, administration, teaching, writing, communication, and innumerable activities and services in between. In Auroville one never does not work, the more so as Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga aims for an all life-pervading awareness into which one learns to grow while working and living. This is seen as the real work, as adhered to by many of us. 

As presently our work and stay appears to have come to rest on shaky grounds with a new rule having “taken over” the exploratory workings of the Aurovilians in our continual plight to co-create a new society – which is what Auroville is about – , our faith and inner maturity is brought to an acute test, and we endure. While wholeheartedly realising and accepting that basic features and elements of our Auroville life-as-it-had-become need to drastically change, I even so pray that top-down conditions don’t have to become too crude, and that the true experimental nature of Mother’s daring venture does not come to a halt this way. 

With deepest appreciation for India’s hosting this extraordinary city-in-the-making, and with intense concern for Auroville’s present predicament, I sincerely trust that these our collective appeals are read and received with goodwill, understanding and wisdom. JAY MA~

By Mauna