Developing a Sustainable Relationship India
Flowers floating in bowls of water are a common table decoration in India. It is the first thing I notice as I enter Deepti's living room. She explains that the flower decorations are traditionally connected with Hinduism, made as an offering to one of the Hindu gods. Most patterns contain a larger flower in the middle, which is surrounded by smaller flowers. Mira Alfassa, founder of Auroville (commonly known as "The Mother") had special names for the flowers: the surrounding flowers she called "aspiration", and the one in the middle, "progress." "So it's an aspiration for progress," Deepti says. "It's saying things with flowers, creating the atmosphere by using flowers."
Image Credit: Tara Jamali
I got to know Deepti over winter break in India, after signing up for AUP's Sustainable Development Practicum. The aim was to explore the environmental, ecological, social, economic and cultural dimensions of sustainability within a complex development context. Students engaged in multiple dimensions of sustainability by interning at local NGOs and working on communications and media projects. Shortly after our arrival in India, Deepti gave us a talk on Auroville as an international experiment, and was so eloquent, informed, and inspiring that we all were talking about her for days afterward. I knew I could not leave Auroville without seeing her again. As the practicum came to a close, I looked her up and got to know her story when she graciously invited me to her home.
From the time when she was a girl growing up in North India, Deepti was asking questions, a habit that ultimately landed her in Auroville. Her grandfather was in the British Indian army, fighting in the first and second world wars. After India's independence he became the first director general of medical services in the Indian army. A huge believer in independence, he raised his children to become independent-minded, sending them off to boarding school when they were little. His daughter — Deepti's mother — became a doctor.
He also delved into spirituality later in life, spending time at the Sivananda ashram in North India and writing a book on Hindu mysticism. Deepti remembers the many seekers from the ashram who were regular guests in her family home, but she eventually came to question the spirituality they spoke of. While she believes India has a vast, comprehensive, and inclusive spiritual tradition lasting for over two millennia, the solution it offers is outside of life, one that takes you away from the earth. "And that I could not understand," she says. "I loved life, I found this universe beautiful, and the idea that the solution is to abandon all that made no sense to me."
Left: Deepti lectures to AUP students at Mitra Guest House. Right: Deepti at her home, in front of a portrait of the Mother. Image Credit: Tara Jamali
Deepti was sixteen when she came across the writings of Sri Aurobindo, the Indian nationalist-turned-yogi. He argued that this life is not the end, humanity is transitional, and the idea that life divine on earth is not only logical but the intention of the manifest universe. For Deepti, at last, it made sense, especially as Aurobindo made his points by rational arguments. From that time, she felt her life had found its direction. At 19, she traveled to the famous Sri Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, and eventually settled in nearby Auroville. For a young person like her, Auroville was the place to go as it was an adventure into the unknown. At that time in the 1970s, Auroville was just being built and had little to offer, but the conditions were ideal for Deepti. "In an environment that's not hierarchical, no one tells you what to do," she says. "You're free to discover it for yourself. That's why and how I'm here."
Deepti's love of questioning inspired her to become a teacher. For the past 30 years, she has been actively involved in Auroville's educational programs, which are different from the traditional school system. The aim of Aurovilian education, as influenced by the beliefs of the Mother, is to create a growth of consciousness. "It is to always grow higher, wider, deeper, to dive into profundities, reaching higher beyond yourself. It is through recognizing that consciousness is present in every aspect of your nature, even down to your cells, and intentionally working upon that."
The Mother had used the term "free progress" to define this form of education, a process guided by the soul and not subject to habits, conventions, or preconceived ideas. In Auroville, education is not determined by criteria such as syllabi and grades. The aim is not to cultivate success, establish a career or earn money, but to discover the secrets of the universe and one's own nature. "The why, the core questions have to be found within," Deepti says. "Education that includes that would be a comprehensive, integral education, but one guided by something more profound. The mind becomes merely an instrument at the service of."
Auroville has an informal educational setting where children are recognized as complete beings and not empty vessels. The teacher is to evoke what is already within them as an observer, listener, and conscious watcher, indicating a direction which the child then follows. For Deepti, teaching is great fun because nothing is fixed, it is all to be discovered, and every moment is new.
Throughout the practicum, we learned much about sustainability and green living, visiting NGOs and educational centers dedicated to sustainable waste management. Aurovilians work with modern wind and solar technologies to reach their goals of sustainability. While there is an emphasis on simple living in Auroville, there is no denial of cutting edge discoveries of the modern world. But a strongly held belief is that environmental conditions are a result of the state of our consciousness, and true sustainability will never come about without a change of consciousness. Auroville from the beginning has been aimed toward integral change, and environmental sustainability is a core pursuit of that. "In the sixties when we started, Mother said don't repeat the old mistakes of putting poisons into the earth, so we never used insecticides and pesticides and fertilizers," Deepti says. "It doesn't make sense because you damage the earth." To develop a sustainable relationship with the earth, one is to first develop that relationship with oneself, as everything done in Auroville is constructed from the within outwards. Individual self-care expands to the collective, and then to the earth body.
Local village women transform recycled newspaper into art and accessories at Well Paper, a social enterprise committed to women's empowerment. Image Creidt Tara Jamali
We were also exposed to issues surrounding gender equality and women's empowerment in mostly rural contexts. One can argue that Indian society in general is patriarchal. The social environment can be abusive of women, not allowing them many rights. Even so, India is also a place where women can be exalted. There is a living tradition of seeing the earth as the mother, and the mother goddess is an integral part of Indian culture. Therefore it is no accident that the Indian subcontinent has produced the most female leaders in the world. There are also matrilineal societies in India, where property is controlled through the female line. In Deepti's family, girls were celebrated from the time they were born. Her own mother was a working woman, and Deepti was always surrounded by women who were doctors and lawyers. Even in an Indian village, women are tough, and it is they who sustain the family and work hard.
Auroville has been a refuge from the downtrodden since its inception. When women from the villages came to Auroville in search of work, they became empowered and were always able to earn their own money. Women in Auroville were immediately given status, recognition, and worker's rights. There are many units in Auroville that hire only women as they believe women are better workers. Self-help groups for women are common in Auroville, with many villages in the area adopting this trend. Women are able to talk to each other, and as they hear each other's stories and life situations, they empower each other and rise above their hardships. While women and those from lower castes have benefited from being in Auroville, Aurovilians are not into social work per se. They believe in evolving together, not buying so much into the idea of helping the downtrodden, which can stem from egotism.
I believe it impossible to spend a month in Auroville without coming back as a changed person. Gaining hands-on experience in fields of development, sustainability, gender equality and heritage preservation is always beneficial, but there is something in the way it is done in Auroville that inspires you to embrace these values as a lifestyle, becoming something you truly believe in.
I ask Deepti what it was like to have lectured to our group.
"I don't get to see you or know you all enough to be able to evaluate. I just do the best I can in the circumstances, I allow myself to be guided by the moment. I hear not only the question but what's behind the question - what sort of thing people would be interested in. I then try to use that in the moment it creates, in the collective energy it inspires."
She cannot tell what spending time in Auroville does to those who visit, but wishes the experience would be transformative. She has seen people who come back, although not many, as Auroville is not meant for everyone. But she feels that if young people the world over can come to Auroville and take away the idea that life is not what circumstances make it, but what one makes of the circumstances, then anything is possible.
"We're living in a moment of great evolutionary change. The very crisis of the present creates an opportunity. It might be a grace, because we can as a species recreate our future and I'm hoping that is what people take away."
