the who's of whoville?

The Aurovilians of Auroville. Auroville is this crazy '60's utopian community set up by an Indian guru named Sri Aurobindo and his 'partner' a French woman who went by 'The Mother'. They started this project with many of the 'hip' ideas of the '60's, including education, farming, sustainability, environmentalism and community, and it's still growing today, albeit slowly... this is India after all. They have managed to build this huge golden golf ball of a structure called the 'Matrimandir' which is the soul of Auroville. It's a community meditation chamber without any idols, rituals, or requirements, and the only object occupying the space besides people is a large crystal that is lit by a sunbeam using tracking mirrors on the top (during the day of course, at night it's lit electrically). I couldn't get in to see inside of the Matrimandir chamber because it's not a tourist attraction, but I love the idea of this place.

Their 'charter' states:
1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

You can check out more if you have any interest at http://www.auroville.org/

I have to say that I really found much of what 'The Mother' said and wrote inspiring and much of it felt true to me as a person and felt right in what I would like to see the world strive for. "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 realise human unity." - The Mother. I love that someone out there is at least trying this experiment, and I hope more are joining each day, but there's something about it that just isn't quite right for me.

I think what I just can't swallow is the fact that it's a group. I can't get past the group 'think' and the group 'speak' that goes along with belonging to a group, any group. I know, I know, we all belong to some group and that culture determines what we think and how we say things to a large degree, and the group think and speak of my born-into culture is perhaps more insidious, and at least the people who live in Auroville are making a conscious choice to determine their own values and morality and act in accordance with those, and I know that it takes a group of people to accomplish much of anything, but I just wouldn't be able to shake the feeling of buying into something or being coerced and manipulated by the group will.

For me, what they ask of you is too great a price. You are required to serve the Divine Consciousness and I don't believe this is a 'group' activity. True, the whole point of a universal oneness is that it's a 'group' connection with the irreducible oneness of everything, but I think as soon as a name is given to this underlying abstraction, and language used to describe the concept, it becomes limited by and manipulated by those who determine the language. I prefer my devotion and connection to the 'divine consciousness' indefinable and individual, experiential not linguistic. I wish there was a place like this that didn't require me to sign any agreements for conformity... although obviously in order to function a society requires a contract for actions, and whether we physically sign a piece of paper or not we consent (for the most part) to this system, but I just can't agree to any contract that requires not simply a certain way of 'acting' but also a certain way of 'thinking'. I wish they would have just let me come and go as I pleased. Now I feel left out of the group and I want in... but on my own terms and not theirs. Of course that's not how it works is it.