SAIIER 2016:Orientation to Auroville workshop

Mira Cultural Group		Research in Education for Sustainable Waste Management
Orientation to Auroville workshop

Introduction

The aim of this workshop is for participants to learn about the values and aim of Auroville. This knowledge is not only for joining Auroville - it is to get to know Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and to study how karma yoga can be used in our daily life of participation in Auroville's development. Each one here in Auroville is called to learn and do service collectively and not only to develop individually.

Description of project

Aurovilian and Newcomer women attend this orientation to Auroville workshop, given once monthly on Saturdays at SAWCHU or Mitra. The classes are conducted in Tamil only; participants can easily understand and keep it in their memory because it is our mother tongue.

The workshop starts with a concentration for a few minutes. Then we go through the different kinds of books of The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and on Auroville. Our teacher Ramalingam tells us many small stories of The Mother when She was at the Ashram. Then we go for some time through peoples’ experiences after studying The Mother’s works. This year we took “Sri Aurobindo in Alipur Jail” and “Quality of Generosity”. Our teacher refers to the books and shares with us a lot of stories of The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and Her vision of Auroville. Especially we read “White Roses” by Huta and “The Mother”, “Prison Tales” and “Light on the Path” by Sri Aurobindo (see Footnote 1).

We also go through the explanation of the twelve psychological perfections as given by The Mother. This time we specially concentrated on ‘Generosity’ (see Footnote 2).

Outcomes

We are conducting these kind of classes once a month and it gives us quite some experiences and knowledge of Auroville. Many of us are benefiting from these classes.

The participants acquire a working and loving knowledge of the lives and teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, including the aims and meaning of Auroville. This love will transfer into a better appreciation and identification with their being, learning and working in Auroville.

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Footnote 1: Sri Aurobindo's experience in Alipur Jail

In 1908 and 1909, while Sri Aurobindo was an under trial prisoner in the Alipur Jail, he had the constant vision of the omnipresent Godhead: “I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell, but it was not a tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover.... I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.”

In the jail Sri Aurobindo spent much of his time reading the Gita and Upanishads, meditating and practising yoga. Even in the courtroom he remained absorbed in meditation, attending little to the trial and hardly listening to the evidence. During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had originally taken up yoga with the idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his political work. But now his inner spiritual life and realisation, which was continually increasing in magnitude and universality, assumed a larger place and took him up entirely, His work became a part and result of it, far exceeding in its scope the service and liberation of the country; it fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned with the whole future of humanity.

Sri Aurobindo's yoga and spiritual philosophy are founded on four great realisations. Two of these he had realised in full before his coming to Pondicherry in 1910. The first, the realisation of the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman, he had gained under the guidance of the Maharashtrian Yogi Lele in 1908. The feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world which at first attended this realisation disappeared after the second realisation, which was gained in the Alipur Jail in 1908 or 1909, the realisation of the cosmic consciousness and the vision of the Divine, as all beings and as all that is. In his meditations in the jail Sri Aurobindo was already on his way to the other two realisations — that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind.

Footnote 2: Generosity

Green is the colour connected with Generosity. Green expresses vital strength; energy, generosity, self-giving; the emotional life-force; the emotional vital; the emotions. A vital energy of work and action, green is very usually associated with Life and a generous emanation or action of forces – often of the emotional life-force. Green light can signify various things according to the context — in the emotional vital it is the colour of a certain form of emotional generosity, in the vital proper an activity with vital abundance or vital generosity behind it; in the vital physical it signifies a force of health. Green is the colour of the emotional vital and of the emotions.

Quotes from The Mother:

“Generosity is to find one's own satisfaction in the satisfaction of others.”

“I shall not speak here of material generosity which naturally consists in giving others what one has. But even this virtue is not very widespread, for as soon as one becomes rich one thinks more often of keeping one's wealth than by giving it away. The more men possess, the less are they generous.

I want to speak of moral generosity. To feel happy, for example, when a comrade is successful. An act of courage, of unselfishness, a fine sacrifice have a beauty in them which gives you joy. It may be said that moral generosity consists in being able to recognise the true worth and superiority of others.”

“There is not one of you who will dare to tell me that it makes no difference when the psychic is there, when one feels better within oneself, when one is full of light, hope, goodwill, generosity, compassion for the world, and sees life as a field of action, progress, realisation. Doesn't it make a difference from the days when one is upset, grumbling, when everything seems ugly, unpleasant, wicked, when one loves nobody, wants to break everything, gets angry, feels quite uneasy, without strength, without energy, without any joy? That makes a difference, doesn't it?”

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