Advertisement
Published: October 21st 2008
Edit Blog Post
Spent a few days in Auroville, an International, intentional community founded in 1968.
"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity" runs the first public message of the founder of Auroville, Mirra Alfassa or 'the Mother'
To be honest it didn't eave that much of an impression on me because you can't really get to know a place like that in a few days - especially Auroville - it feels quite hard to penetrate.
From initial glances it's kind of hard to tell how it differs from an Indian village - and indeed there are lots of Tamil villages living along side Aurvillians. In the centre of the town is the 'Matrimandir' which looks like a big golden golf ball and is like a large meditation chamber. Around this there is an 'urban ring' containing many different communities with names like Aspiration and Peace and around this a 'green ring' with farms and gardens.
We stayed in a guest house quite close to the centre and rented a moped most days and just whizzed around (Adam at the front, me, very nervous passenger at the back), checking out different places and chatting to some cool people staying at our sues house too. But very much feeling like tourists. And
I have been thinking a lot recently about the concept of boxes and how we earthlings are so prone to constantly labeling things and putting people in boxes. As soon as you meet someone, you ask the obvious questions, where are you from, what do you do, give me some basic information so I can put you in a box that fits comfortably with the way I interpret the world.
I think for myself I have spent the last few years outgrowing boxes I have put myself in and then trying out different ones and only now starting to think about that idea of living outside of a box altogether. And so recently I have tried to be more conscious of not putting people in boxes and not asking them the obvious questions.
And so on our first day we meet a guy who also happens to be called Adam and find out he is from Florida and is traveling around India on his own for a year and my mind goes "Ha! This is some young, inexperienced American kid who knows nothing of the world and bless his little cotton socks for venturing out of his nest bla bla bla" Completely putting him in this box... and upon further investigation discovering that 'the little American kid' has been studying yoga, Tai Chi and meditation for several years, has experimented intensely with a broad range of hallucinogenics and combining them with yoga and meditation, and turns out to be one of the most ego-less, self-assured, awake humans I have ever met.
That was a good little lesson on boxes.
We had an awesome little adventure sitting in a field, watching the moon rise and smoking some of his hash, talking about crazy inexplicable experiences we have had. He talked about how he has reached 'samadhi' during really deep levels of meditation (with taking e.g mushrooms) where he was able to completely separate himself from his ego and lose his sense of self and merge the universe. Have never met anyone or rather talked to anyone who has achieved this before, let alone a 25 year old from Tallahasi, Florida.
Having conversations like this with him and London Adam and a few other people I have met have been one of my favourite things whilst I have been out here.
It was also really good to get away from traffic and stay in a room in the middle of a forest with the most incredible banyan tree next to us and share our abode with a family of geckos and hear a symphony of insects soothing us to sleep every night.
And speaking of moons, the moon here is amazing! Instead of waxing and waning from left to right (or is it right to left) like it does in Europe it goes from top to bottom! I watched a you tube video on a moon salutation sequence and memorized it so I can now add that to my daily morning yoga ritual - which is happening every morning but usually on my bed as there isn't enough space on the ground.
Getting very excited about going to Rishkesh and living in an ashram and doing yoga every day. Have decided to give Pushka camel fair a miss and head straight there after Diwali.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.026s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.037s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb