Original subtitles

The majority of these foreigners come here for one thing only - the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo.

An ashram, strictly speaking, is a gathering of disciples with their guru,

but this Ashram has a 20th-century style that sets it apart.

I came every morning to participate in a popular ashram activity - gossiping

outside the ashram post office and wondering how one became a seeker of the divine harmony.

The aim of the Ashram, as I understood it, can be simply stated as the harmony of the physical being

with the inner spirit in divine unity. Every day people come to the courtyard of the main Ashram

building there to meditate before the tomb of Sri Aurobindo, but today, April the 24th is a

special occasion - at 11 o'clock sharp there is to be a mass meditation for all devotees.

Born in 1872, he was educated in England. When he went back to India, as a young man,

he joined the nationalist movement and soon found himself in trouble with the British.

In 1910 Sri Aurobindo fled from British India to Pondicherry

where the French gave him political asylum.

The Ashram bears witness to his attempts to bring about a synthesis between the East and the West.

There are now thousands of followers, though Sri Aurobindo once said:

"I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples, it will be enough if I can

get a hundred complete men, empty of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God."

Who, I wondered, are these instruments of God today at the Ashram?

Perhaps one of the practical men, like Mr Pinto. Trained as an aeronautical engineer,

he came to the Ashram in the thirties. Sri Aurobindo called him Udar, meaning generous.

I talked to him in the courtyard of one of the Ashram Guest Houses.

Udar has helped build up many of the ashram's successful commercial enterprises.

These shops, factories and restaurants may surprise the visitor to the Ashram,

who may have been expecting the eastern tradition of poverty and austerity.

Tell me would you say that this particular ashram is an exceptionally westernized

institution? Not westernized but it is the first time that an attempt has been made to synthesize

the progress of the West the material progress of the West with the spiritual aspiration of India.

And Sri Aurobindo has tried to synthesize the two because both are necessary for the growth of

the individual. Surprising enough it has also attracted a number of technical people like

engineers and doctors because the yoga of Sri Aurobindo is something which really appeals to the scientific

mind. And here I find something very concrete and something that the really spiritual

life can be put in a form that is practical and can show some practical approach,

not just sitting around meditating the whole day. But you can do some active constructive work

and at the same time progress. The feeling for this progressive spirit is shared by Mr Malik,

one time - an executive with Unilever. What had really attracted me to this place was that Sri

Aurobindo attached more importance to changing and transforming life rather than abandoning it. To me

what had always taken me away from the old yoga was their pleading for running away from life.

Now here Sri Aurobindo offered the answer to that and he said no, you don't withdraw,

you don't run away, - you live here, face the problems,

and bring that Supramental force down into yourself to change your physical nature.

When Aurobindo died in 1950, his place was taken by a French lady known as the Mother who is

regarded by many as being the incarnation of the Divine. Her appearances four times a year draw

large crowds and today's special occasion is the 50th anniversary of Her arrival in Pondicherry.

Now 93 years old She still dominates the ashram with her powerful personality.

93, some people believe She will never die

And She's really Divine, I have no doubt. I didn't believe it, the first time, She was

a funny old lady for me, but She's really Divine, and if you see her you can't avoid feeling it, and

I mean the Divine is beautiful.

And I think without Her understanding and forbearance very few of us would be able to

go on for long. And She constantly bucks us up also because this yoga is a very difficult job,

it is like swimming upstream, and without her help, it would be almost impossible. I think

that everything that we have to do here is for the sake of the Divine and for the sake of the Mother.

She was born in Paris in 1878. When She arrived in Pondicherry in 1920,

She was already a follower of Sri Aurobindo. As a little girl,

spiritual and psychic experiences had revealed to Her the existence of God.

In 1926, when Sri Aurobindo retired into solitude, the ashram first came under her guidance.

Nowhere is the Mother more revered than at Auroville.

Auroville, one of Mother's favourite projects, is now being built on the outskirts of Pondicherry.

It is to be a city where the inhabitants can lead a life of harmony, a kind of spiritual utopia.

But I wondered is it because utopia is a western concept

that there are so few Indians at Auroville. The Auroville pioneers are mainly westerners.

Most of the Indians around here are the local Tamil villagers,

who are more concerned with land values than the spiritual preoccupations of exotic westerners.

Naturally, the people who are applying to stay in Auroville or to work for Auroville

are of different temperaments and represent a large variety of consciousness. Something clearly

in Auroville [offers] an opportunity to perfect their special vocation; some are applying because

they see in Auroville an opportunity to work for human unity, working out a new way of life;

some are applying because Auroville answers to their spirit of adventure

spirit of finding something new a field of expressing something new. Moreover, Auroville is

the next step after the Ashram for trying to put into practice the teachings of Sri Aurobindo.

That's quite a link in the spirit.

I came in contact with this spirit in a bookshop. I saw a picture of Sri Aurobindo

and this was enough, then we decided to come in contact with this spirit. And this contact was very good and then we left Germany and now we are here.

I'm working in the small hospital we have for the villages and we dispense free medicine and

distribute milk to the children, and wheat. After they come here, their vision becomes more clear,

more integrated, and they know what exactly has to be done and how it has to be done.

We are working on an art project. We want to work for

for the formula of a world culture.

We are going to expand this start, this first community by building much more huts , so that

this can grow up to 100-200 persons very fast, and we are going to build a number of workshops

of handicraft centre to work in connection with the Tamil village which is just behind this setup.

Sri Aurobindo said that work was the best prayer that the body could offer. When one does

work in a country where one has to depend upon money for one's living and has to sort

of fight to keep oneself going, one tends to work merely as a means of

surviving and so, therefore, it becomes not a pleasure but an obligation.

And because work is not an obligation here but a pleasure, there are no wages.

All are welcome to come and put their hand to the plough provided they bring enough money with them

to keep themselves for a year after which period the Ashram will ensure a subsistence level.

But from what I gathered, most people seem to have some little nest egg to fall back on, - savings,

pensions, private incomes, money from parents at home.

Gerard from Switzerland has been here for 18 years. He manages the orchard which supplies

the Ashram and Auroville kitchens and sells the surplus. They have made the place productive

despite the shortage of water. No, there is plenty of water here

but there is no money to develop the water resources. There's an average annual rainfall

here of 49 inches, most of which flows into the sea unused. The project I'm working on now is

to build 22 percolation dams to conserve the now wasted monsoon rainwater. And

this project should cost about 66 thousand dollars. Somebody in the United states sent

us three thousand dollars to build one damn, and one dam has just been completed.

Janet Fern came to Auroville from Saint John's, Newfoundland.

I wondered what her friends and relatives would think, seeing Janet in the trim little

house she's built for herself, tending her garden, raising money for her water conservation projects.

She's the first Canadian woman to settle in Auroville. It's a far cry from the Maritimes.

Well, Auroville may have been home to Janet, but it wasn't to Jacques and Maria Buma.

I found them ready to quit after about four months there.

When they'd heard about Auroville in Holland, it had seemed then the realization of all their

ideals. They sold everything and sailed to India, and rapidly disillusioned.

When we woked the first morning at five o'clock and we found ourselves in the

middle of this village with its noises, children crying, women shouting and so on,

which we had not expected at all. And then all of a sudden it struck you this is going to be your

life for the next of your time, which was rather hard. That was the first thing, and then all these

small things - they amounted to really a mountain of deception, so to say, so I won't discourage

anybody to come and try but they should be prepared for some hard

moments especially in the beginning. They returned to cool, clean, predictable, quiet Holland.

Some people at the Ashram were a little nervous about my talking to Freddie Bushnell.

He is a devotee, but I wonder if he could be considered typical of the Ashram,

with his well-to-do proper Bostonian background and his lush little island,

presented to him by the Mother. On this island, developed and beautified by his own hand,

Freddie displays his enthusiasm for ancient Greece. As you can see,

this is Athena, but this is not a return of paganism. This is symbolic of something,

when asked, inner aspiration, otherwise, how could I keep the balance for me personally.

There we are. There are lights. Here it's like a greek icon. It's symbolic

as a stepping stone to the

near future. Mind you this is symbolic, this is not a cult or a religion or trying to bring

back pagan gods, but is for beauty. Until three years ago during the terrible flood, gentlemen, there was no land here whatsoever.

All the land was taken away from my island and was thrown over like this, the whole island was undulated.

That's a damn good shot, really, that's a damn good shot.

Eventually, I'm gonna build a tower here.

My French Canadian friends told me, they said you can't build on this structure.

I will either have to build here or build it up like a fire tower. I want to go way up, 60 feet.

As a result of the fact that we, of not only the study and practice of yoga but of

an intense examination of Jung, I mean I have been fascinated by his development of the two

attitudes - the introverted attitude towards life and the extroverted attitude. For example,

I'm an extrovert, and I have had tremendous difficulties in India, because the yogi has been

identified with introversion. And after years of trying to make force myself to being an introvert,

I realized that there could be a realization in the extroverted sense - organizationally,

administratively, scientifically. Austin Delaney from Vancouver, once a paratroop officer,

a union organizer, an advertising man, a character in a novel. And in my encounter

with McCoon's work, I came to realize that he was, even if he doesn't know it himself,

in the extroverted sense, in seeing what the media are, in seeing their application in terms

of a transformation of man's consciousness, of an extension of his consciousness, in terms of the

whole of the machineries of joy, if you like, as he might well call them, as Bradbury calls them,

that we do have man there who has realized the truth of the universe as it marches towards him,

whereas the traditional Indian yogi sees the truth of the microcosm as it rises within him.

Now when we have an extroverted yogi and an introverted yogi

combined in one person then we have the integral man then we have the new man.

But the conditions for a collective transformation at the level of depth, a soul transformation,

exists where the wholly new, as it were, a central nervous system

of the mass media are being developed so there is an instantaneous communication as it were

of information and accumulation of the requirements for a new collective consciousness.

And in the smaller countries perhaps Switzerland and Canada I feel that we may see the development

of an entirely new way of living. I speak now not necessarily politically but in a way [how] we view

life and look at life, the way we, if you like, love each other and learn to love ourselves.

I actually returned to Canada in 67 to explore, to see my family after

20 years absence, and I moved throughout the whole country from Montreal right through to Vancouver

in a constant state of exhilaration and inspiration. I intuited, against the evidence

indeed of most of my liberal and socialist and critical friends, who themselves were in despair

about the North American way of life, I intuited a movement deep in the psyche, if you like,

of Canada, in the collective consciousness of the northern part of North America indeed,

which promises that that will be the centre, the nest and the matrix

of the spiritual revolution which has here been announced by Sri Aurobindo and the great yogis.

It is this that I saw from expo right through and particularly I might say

an expo which seemed to me in terms of this yoga to be a descent of the divine right into Montreal.

I was enchanted by it, I loved it, it was a spiritual experience after 20 years being away.

Austin's visionary eloquence is very inspiring, it makes us forget

the unchanging mud huts of the nearby Tamil villagers, who've seen empires come and go.

They remain largely unimpressed by the flurry of activity on the site of Auroville.

But beyond the modest beginning lies the grand design.

The chief architect and one of the main promoters of Auroville

is Roger Anger, a Parisian related to the Mother by marriage.

Commuting between Paris and Pondicherry, he's supervising the first tentative steps.

A city of 50 000 inhabitants of all races, Auroville will be the ultimate expression

of urban technology. Doomed to fail, I thought, like all utopian experiments. But no, I was told,

the aspirations of Auroville are not utopian, - they are not social-political or materialistic,

they are spiritual. Each citizen will be motivated by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

It's amazing what happens when that sun goes down, you know. I'm sorry you didn't catch a

real sunset, though. No, no, the sun is under the clouds. It's going to come down name this place as

peace, and to absorb the peace the Mother said if you could be silent you can feel the peace.

The American ambassador to UNESCO. Before all these things, when I used to come here,

I think I've told you about it, that two spirits used to appear every night at 12 o'clock riding

on the horse and carrying on the battle. The clash of the swords at night. This would appear to you. Yes,

so I informed the Mother. After the Mother was informed, the battle has ceased. There is a steady

trickle of VIPs as efforts are made to interest world organizations in the Auroville project.

The ambassador's visit was associated with hopes

that a world university might be built at Auroville.

The world game is already a reality in Austin Delaney's complex of tree forts on the seashore.