crucial

Sorry I haven't written for a while, but everything is way too relaxed and pleasant to bother with computers.

I thought I would only be here a couple of days, but like most places, I stay longer. Pondicherry is one of a couple of former French colonial towns in India. The streets (especially close to the sea) are wide and gorgeous, and there's a lot of old french money tucked behind jolie gates, behind pretty walls overflowing with flowers. Like most former french colonies, it retains a lot of the old character. The street signs are blue like in Paris, the gendarmes have little red caps, much of the architechture is very French, and we could easily be in France except for the occasional elephant.

Finally I see elephants ! How can this be India if you don't see elephants ? Any day that you see an elephant romping in joyful slow motion down the street is a good day. The eyes are very weird, the skin is rough and furry. Shopkeepers come out with buckets to feed him. At the Aurobindo temple you can buy some grass and a banana and hand it to him: you bow with hands together and he blesses you, touching your head with the trunk. All the elephants have great elaborate bindis painted on them (but then so do all hindus). Ajna is the chakra in the middle of the brain, its surface point is at the third eye. I finally realized why elephants are holy: the trunk comes straight out of the third eye; all of their actions come from the divine wisdom center.

Sri Aurobindo is one of the primary modern Vedantic/Tantric sages. He updated Yogic thought with modern science (early 1900s)-- he speaks of The Force and how to come gradually into close contact with it through meditation; that the way of the recluse is the old way (as with most religious systems, renouncing the world) and the modern way is to work with the world (as does the equally ancient Tantra); and that the human race is on an inevitable evolution to the Superhuman. Perfectly reasonable if you ask me. The Mother was a french woman with quite an aura of Motherhood; she continued the teachings of Aurobindo after he died and wrote and published extensively. Sri Aurobindo was educated in England (Cambridge I think), and spoke English, French, Latin and Greek fluently before returning to India to learn his native Bengali. He organized towards Indian indepence as early as 1898 and was nearly executed for it.

The ashram originally was a concentrated center to bring about the evolution of the species. I imagine it was pretty heavy. They also taught children, fed people and became (and remain) one of the pillars of the community. These days with Sri Aurobindo(1950) and The Mother(1973) dead, it doesn't have quite the energy. But its still very nice, very clean, and filled with people sitting in silence in the garden. Everywhere you go you see buildings, farms, private cars, trucks and people stamped with the Aurobindo logos. Everybody has great respect for them: everywhere there are images of her eyes and feet and every corner store, xerox and internet spot is named The Mother's Corner or something.

In 1930 The Mother conceived of Auroville, the city of the future, and in 1968 it was built.