12: Auroville and Matrimandir, India (Ruth)

The next day (09.07.07) we move to Auroville, the global village created by "the Mother" after Sri Aurobindas vision. The village was founded 40 years ago. They bought a dried up wasteland some kilomtres outside Pondicherry and started to cultivate the soil and plant trees. Now there's a tropical rainforest here and a city with around 1600 people from all over the world living there. Interested people must go through certain rituals to be accepted. Once you are inside you have no more private economy, and live in a system without money.

MATRIMANDIR is the holy symbol of Mother Earth, a huge golden globe temple placed in the Matrimandir Gardens, a place that made a strong impression on me. Matrimandir is the centre of the village, what binds the village people together, a place where they go to meditate, focus and concentrate. To be able to visit MATRIMANDIR, we had to do some initial steps the first day (Visitor exhibition and information video) and then we were admitted to walk over and watch the globe from a distance. We were supposed to think carefully if we REALLY wanted to see the place. As you will know I am not a very religious person, but the idea of a place for meditation and concentration was very nice indeed, so we diceded to go there. On the second day we went to the entrance for visitors who had passed the first initiations. Our guide had a little lecture for us. And then we walked inside in silence and awe.

The globe has an entrance where you have to go down before you come up ( like the development in yoga etc.). All shoes (and bags) were left outside. The inside is all white marble. Everyone had to put on stockings not to tread on the floor. Some stairs led to level two where you could see the four basic pillars (east, west, south and north). From there two grand paths led to the upper level, the circular room with 12 white, thin pillars around. In the middle is placed a large crystal globe. Light falls from a hole in the roof exactly through the middle of the crystal and down to the bottom of the building where it reaches water in a basin, symbolizing the connection between heaven and earth. As members of the visitors group we were allowed to meditate in this very special room, everyone was seated on a white cushion facing the crystal globe in dimmed, white light. We had been told to be absolutely quiet in the room, and not to approch the middle of the room with the crystal, but one older, Indian woman did not get this information and started to make sounds and move to touch it. This was both a bit funny and somewhat disturbing.

During the last few years I have become dedicated to meditation, yoga and Qi Gong. On the background of daily experiences with these practices this visit was indeed a very powerful and beautiful experience. Matrimandir does not remind me of any kind of church or specific religion, you are welcome to be there whatever kind of belief or nonbelief you may have. There is no dogma except for the idea of unity in manifold and a wish to find concentration and some kind of truth or quality in life. In my life I have so many activities and directions in my work. The idea of concentration and focus is very strongly present in the Matrimandir and this appealed to me and gave me something to take back home. For 2 days we lived in the Central guesthouse of Auroville. Here we met many nice people, among them Thomas, a nice person trying to create a new way of running economy without money and without interests. He is now implying this system in parts of South India, and has a lot of customers. Last year he went to a conference on alternative economy in Auroville and met a lot of people whith whom he now interacts. Thomas was an important person to talk to also on the personal level. We had a long talk on "inner travel" that may go parallell to a real travel around the world.

Auroville is huge is extension. Everyone is using a bicycle or motorbike. There is no ATM (minibank) in the village. The houses for official revices are scattered around, and there is no center. This was we really experienced how much time it took us to arrange practical travelling matters. I hope Aurovillians have a way to organise themselves that is easier than the impression we had. Mari met some of the Aurovillians and tried as usual to make contact. She experienced more than once not being as friendly welcomed as we had both expected in this place. We do not know the reason for this, but one possible explantion could be a strong in-group and out-group separation. We were told that if you live there it is very different.

Auroville has a solar energy driven kithcen. The village is in the forefront on ecological growing and schools are created to help each child to unfold in a natural way after its own recources. It sounds very nice and in the visitors exhibition we saw a lot of happy faces in photos. There are lots of different biological production and all kinds of work is found there.

On our way back from Pondicherry we travelled by another overcrowded bus for 4 hours. The rain was pouring down most of the time. The bus driver used the horn all the time to say "Here I come". There is a lot of noise from Indian traffic because of this. On the bus was two TV screens showing 2. range Bollywood films. I have never seen so much fighting in my whole life. All the beating was reinforced by additional beating sounds on a very high volume. Now and then there were mass dancing scenes accompanied by Indian pop music. There were fires, explotions and car crashes, now and then there was some romance, but always the actor are decently dressed, showing no naked parts of the body. It seems that violence is widely accepted, but not sexuality. This is for us rather weird, but not unexpected. Mari gave away her seat to a mother with a baby and chose to stand for three hours.
Goodbye India! Now we leave for Fiji!