On Auroville 2022 to 2025

But this did not happen of our own clear will: this thorny and discouraging spreading bush has two sources: one is our loss of trust amongst us and the other originates in the imposition by the Government of India of very restrictive conditions regarding all „foreigners‟. And most probably we have failed to really seek their respective resolutions. Now I shall broach the subject of the Matrimandir, as representative or example of the questions that rise on our collective path of conscious progress and transformation, demanding our liberation from all inferior determinisms and all exclusivisms dictate d by the ego‟s agency. And I thus shall suggest that the voice of majority is not necessarily and is not always that of the highest and widest truth; that, from the viewpoint of the One Truth, living and whole, all approaches have their value and none is sufficient by itself and that the corrective inputs of the opposition remain indispensable if one does not wish to fall under the yoke of a deleterious Unique Single Thought; that it is our duty, each and all of us, to tirelessly cultivate a discernment that is more and more receptive and offered and an exigency ever more aware of the right use of our goodwill. Moreover, I would further suggest that any material choice implies a vision or understanding of reality, of the goal to be served and of the conditions to be respected in the process; no material choice is ever indifferent since, contrarily to what we are conditioned to think, matter is NOT separate. For instance, the choice of an object amongst others will tell much of the attitude of the person who chooses it as regards to the others and to the world. Here then is another scene and another arrangement of the forces in the atmosphere of Auroville, a decade later: we – well, not all of us, this was no longer physically possible given the numbers, but a fairly representative array of extant views and opinions – had gathered in a hall of a new building located in the „industrial zone‟, elected for its dimensions and acoustics. The topic is inflamed: it is the issue of the final choice of covering for the shell of the Matrimandir. It is a battle that continues raging since long. To situate it, one must first recall that Roger A., “the chief architect of Auroville”, had distanced himself of Auroville for about ten years, ever since the outburst of the conflict with the SAS and the entire construction of the Matrimandir structure had rested on the diligence, precision and managing and leading capacities of Piero C.; but once the entire concrete structure was achieved, the matter of the erection of its shell, its covering and its final appearance had risen before all of us. The winds of polemics – which had already blown several times, as in the matter of the building of the dodecagonal chamber (what must be the exact measurements, must they be taken between the walls, form their outer surface, or the middle of their thickness, or else of which material the central translucent globe must be made, or still, must these twelve columns be erected at all, were they at all necessary…), had regained much vigor. In actual fact, this issue had already presented itself several years earlier: how to construct the armature of the shell between the four vertical concrete arcs: the partisans and faithful of Roger, who had perhaps worked with him in the

33