December 30, 1967
(Mother extracts from a heap of papers, letters and envelopes
of all kinds, a note on Auroville, which was based on her
words but written from memory.)
(Laughing) All this hangs together in a marvelous balance!
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(Satprem reads out the note)
“Auroville will be a self-supporting township.
"All who live there will participate in its life and develop
ment.
“This participation may be passive or active.
"There will be no taxes as such but each will contribute to
the collective welfare in work, kind or money.
"Sections like Industries which participate actively will
contribute part of their income towards the development
of the township. Or if they produce something (like food
stuff) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind
to the township which is responsible for the feeding of
the citizens.
"No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formu
lated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges
and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate."
Is that all?
I thought I had said more than that. Because inwardly I said a lot, a whole lot about the organization of food and so on…. We are going to try things out.
Some things are really interesting. For instance, I’d like … To begin with, every country will have its pavilion, and in the pavilion, there will be a kitchen from that country, which means that the Japanese will be able to eat Japanese food if they want to (!), and so on, but in the township itself, there will be food for vegetarians, food for nonvegetarians, and also a sort of attempt to find “tomorrow’s food.” The idea is that all this work of assimilation which makes you so heavy (it takes up so much time and energy from the being) should be done BEFORE, that you should be able to immediately assimilate what you are given, as with things they now make; for instance, they have those vitamins that can be directly assimilated, and also (what do they call it?… [Mother tries to remember] I take them every day…. Words and I aren’t on very good terms!) … proteins. Nutritive principles that are found in one thing or another and aren’t voluminous – you need to take a tremendous quantity of food to assimilate very little. So now that they are clever enough on the chemical level, that could be simplified. People don’t like it, simply because … they take an intense pleasure in eating (!), but when you no longer take pleasure in eating, you need to be nourished and not to waste your time with
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that. The amount of time lost is enormous: time for eating, time for digesting, and the rest. So I would like an experimental kitchen to be there, a sort of "culinary laboratory," for a try. And according to their tastes and tendencies, people would go here or there.
And you don’t pay for your food, but you must give work, or ingredients: for example, those who had fields would give the produce of their fields; those who had factories would give their products; or else your own work in exchange for food.
That alone does away with much of the internal circulation of money.
And in every field things of that sort could be found…. Ultimately, it must be a town for studies – studies and research on how to live both in a simplified way and in a way such that the higher qualities have MORE TIME to develop. There.
It’s only a small beginning.
(Then Mother goes over the text
of the note, sentence by sentence)
“Auroville will be a self-supporting township.”
I want to insist on the fact that it will be an experiment: it’s to make experiments – experiments, research, studies.
An experimental city?
Yes… Auroville will be a city that will attempt to be, or strive or want to be, self-supporting, that is …
Autonomous?
“Autonomous” would be understood as a sort of independence that breaks off relations with the outside, and that’s not what I mean.
For instance, those who produce food, a factory such as “Aurofood” (naturally, when we are fifty thousand, it will be difficult to meet the needs, but for the moment we’ll only be a few thousand at the most), well, a factory always produces far too much…. So it will sell outside and receive money. And “Aurofood,” for instance, wants to have a special relationship with workers, not at all the old system – something that would be an improvement on the Communist system, a more balanced organization than Sovietism or
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Communism, that is, which doesn’t too much lean either toward one side or the other.
The idea of Aurofood is good, and they are trying to make propaganda among industrialists.
And there is one thing I wanted to say. One’s participation in the welfare and existence of the whole township isn’t something worked out individually: such and such an individual must give so much. It’s not like that. It’s worked out according to one’s means, activity, possibilities of production; it’s not the democratic idea, which cuts everything into small equal bits – an absurd machinery. It’s worked out according to one’s means: one who has much gives much, one who has little gives little; one who is strong works a lot, one who isn’t does something else. You understand, it’s something truer, deeper. And that’s why I am not trying to explain it right away, because people will start making all kinds of protests. It must come into being AUTOMATICALLY, so to say, with the growth of the township, in the true spirit. That’s why this note is quite succinct.
This sentence, for instance:
"All who live there will participate in its life and develop
ment…"
… according to their capacities and means, not a mechanical “so much per unit.” That’s the point. It must be something living and TRUE, not mechanical. And “according to their capacities,” that is, one who has material means such as those a factory gives will have to provide in proportion to his production – not so much per individual or per head.
“This participation may be passive or active.”
I don’t understand what they mean by “passive” (because I spoke in French, then they put it into English). What can they mean by “passive”? … It would rather be on different planes or levels of consciousness.
You meant that those who basically are sages, who work within,
won’t have to …
Yes, that’s right. Those who have a higher knowledge won’t have to work with their hands, that’s what I mean.
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"There will be no taxes as such but each will contribute
to the collective welfare in work, kind or money."
So that’s clear: there will be no taxes of any kind, but everyone will have to contribute to the collective welfare through his work, in kind or with money. Those who have nothing other than money will give money. But to tell the truth, the “work” may be an inner work (but that can’t be said, because people aren’t honest enough). The work may be an occult work, a completely inner work, but of course, for it to be so, it must be absolutely sincere and true, and with the capacity: no pretense. But it’s not necessarily a material work.
"Sections like Industries which participate actively will
contribute part of their income towards the development
of the township. Or if they produce something (like food
stuff) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind
to the township which is responsible for the feeding of
the citizens."
That’s what we’ve said. The industries will participate actively, they will contribute. If they are industries producing articles that aren’t in constant need – and are therefore in amounts or numbers too great for the township’s own use, so that they will be sold outside – those industries must naturally participate through money. And I take the example of food: those who produce food will give the township what it needs (in proportion to what they produce, of course), and it is the township’s responsibility to feed everyone. That means people won’t have to buy their food with money, but they will have to earn it.
It’s a kind of adaptation of the Communist system, but not in a spirit of leveling: according to everyone’s capacity, his position (not a psychological or intellectual one), his INNER position.
In democracies and with the Communists, there’s a leveling
down: everyone is pulled down to the same level.
Yes, that’s just the point.
The true part is that every human being has the material right … (but it’s not a "right" …). The organization should be such, arranged in such a way, that everyone’s material need should be met, not according to notions of right and equality, but on the basis of the
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most elementary necessities; then, once that is established, everyone must be free to organize his life, not according to his monetary means, but according to his inner capacities.
"No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get
formulated as the underlying Truth of the township
emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anti
cipate."
What I mean is that usually (always so far, and more and more so), men establish mental rules according to their conceptions and their ideal, then they apply them (Mother lowers her fist, as if to show the world under the mental grip). And that’s absolutely false, arbitrary, unreal, so the result is that things revolt, or else waste away and disappear…. It’s the experience of LIFE ITSELF that must slowly work out rules AS SUPPLE AND VAST as possible, in order that they ever remain progressive. Nothing must be fixed. That’s the immense error of governments: they build a framework and say, “Here is what we’ve established, now we must live under it.” So naturally, Life is crushed and prevented from progressing. It is Life itself, developing more and more in a progression towards Light, Knowledge, Power, that must little by little establish rules as general as possible, so as to be extremely supple and capable of changing according to need – of changing AS RAPIDLY as habits and needs do.
(silence)
At bottom, the problem almost boils down to this: to replace the mental government of intelligence by the government of a spiritualized consciousness.
It’s an extremely interesting experience: how the same actions, the same work, the same observations, the same relationship with the people around (near or far), how they take place in the mind, through intelligence, and how they take place in the consciousness, through experience. And that’s what this body is now learning – to replace the mental government of intelligence by the spiritual government of the consciousness. And it makes (it looks like nothing, one may not notice it), it makes a tremendous difference, to the point of multiplying the body’s possibilities a hundredfold…. When the body is subjected to rules, even if they are broad, even if they are comprehensive, it is a slave to those rules and its possibilities are limited by them. But when it’s governed by the Spirit and
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the Consciousness, that gives it incomparable possibility and flexibility! And that’s what will give it the capacity to prolong its life, to last longer: it’s by replacing the mental, intellectual government by the government of the Spirit, the Consciousness – THE Consciousness. Outwardly, it doesn’t seem to make much difference, but … My experience is like this (because now my body no longer obeys the mind or the intelligence at all, no longer at all – it doesn’t even understand how that can be done), and it more and more, better and better follows the direction and impulsion of the Consciousness. But then, it sees, almost every minute, the tremendous difference that makes…. For instance, time has lost its value (its rigid value): you can do the same thing in very little time or in much time. Necessities have lost their authority: you can adapt yourself this way, adapt yourself that way. All the laws – those laws that were laws of Nature – have lost all their despotism, if I may say so: it no longer works that way. All you have to do is constantly and always to be supple, attentive, and … responsive to the influence of the Consciousness – the Consciousness in its all-powerfulness – so as to go through all this with extraordinary suppleness.
That is the discovery being made more and more.
And it’s wonderful, you know! A wonderful discovery.
It’s like a progressive victory over all constraints. So naturally, all the laws of Nature, all the human laws, all habits, all rules, all that grows increasingly supple and finally becomes nonexistent. Yet it is possible to keep a regular rhythm that makes action easier – it’s not contrary to this suppleness. But it’s a suppleness in the execution, in the adaptation, which comes and changes everything. From the point of view of hygiene, health, organization, from the point of view of the relationship with others, all that has not only lost its aggressiveness (because for it to lose its aggressiveness, all you have to do is to be wise – wise and level-headed and calm), but also its absolutism, its imperative rule: that’s entirely gone – gone.
And then, you see: as the process grows more and more perfect – “perfect” means integral, total, leaving nothing behind – it NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death involves stops existing, but that it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.
It’s mainly all that the Mind has brought in terms of rigidity and absoluteness and near invincibility – that’s what … is going to
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disappear. And simply by … handing the supreme power over to the Supreme Consciousness.
That may be what the sages of old meant when they spoke of handing the power of Nature or the power of the Prakriti over to the Purusha – handing it from the Prakriti over to the Purusha. Perhaps it was their way of expressing the same thing.
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