Matrimandir Gardens

On the Matrimandir Peace area - 2003

Page 59

-Satprem: "As he was speaking, one could feel he had touched the true thing. While the rest of them are only thinking of how to bring in millions and make propaganda - they're going about it completely the wrong way" "…I'm afraid they don't even have the land. That's the difficulty. Because the centre of the city has been fixed and there's still a large part of this centre, which belongs, I think, to the government, and they're in the process of negotiating to get it. (After a silence) Roger's idea is to have an island in the centre surrounded by water, running water, which will be used for the city's whole water supply; and when it has gone through the city, it will be routed to a mill and will be used to irrigate all the environing agriculture. So, this centre is like an islet, and in this centre there is what we had at first called the Matrimandir - which I always see as a very big, absolutely empty room, you see, and it gets light from above, and that is arranged in such a way that the light which comes from above is focused on a place where there would be ... that which we want to put at the centre of the city... ...And to look after this islet, it was understood that there would be a small house for Huta, who would like to be there simply as the guardian … So Roger had arranged a whole system of bridges to link it to the other bank. And the other bank would be composed entirely of gardens all around. These gardens … we had thought of twelve gardens - of dividing the distance by twelve -, of making twelve gardens, each concentrated on one thing: a particular state of consciousness and the flowers that represent it.