Itinerary

approach to a necessary plasticity offering the possibility of ulterior changes and improvements. The other approach was founded on Mother‟s explicit recommendations as to the qualities required for the construction of Her temple – solidity, durability, stability, harmony -; in this perspective, the detailed study already done by the engineers who had calculated the entire concrete structure, of a geodesic armature of concrete beams, seemed to us at Matrimandir to be preferable, even though its realization would demand more time and labour; the Matrimandir workers team, of which I was part, had then stood for the latter and settled the matter, just as it had once done regarding the manufacture and installation of the twelve columns in the Chamber (simply because Mother had seen them), and we thus had to harness ourselves to a rather colossal enterprise – the fabrication and fixation of hundreds of beams in rows of triangles. And once again, and with more intensity, the debate had involved the entire community, in 1987; for all these years until then we had all lived day and night with the awareness of the majestic physical presence of this “being” of concrete in the very middle of the Auroville space, growing and gradually assuming and defining its volume and its grace; Matrimandir was for us all a whole being by right, a constant friend central to all our steps; at each stage of its erection, from its early outline as a motionless vessel opening to the skies, to that of its upstretched limbs yearning to join and to its present form of a sphere open to the elements, it was like an essential destiny manifesting itself and it was also the symbol of our inner haven. We all knew, and awaited the moment, that this sphere still unsealed, still relating to the light and the air and the growing trees around it, would one day shut itself like a protective cocoon sheltering the site of silent concentration dedicated and meant for

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