Here's another question that triggered a reply. Fitting, as this whole series started from replies to the comments that were posted on the infamous petition when it was widely shared.
«So did the 65% who didn't vote do so mostly because to vote would legitimize the power of the RA, which they are certain has no legal power?
Even if that is the case (I am inclined to believe you about the legality, even though I didn't read the legal act), it would have been wise to vote, because it would have shown us how many of the Aurovilians support the Master Plan and its current implementation, reducing future propaganda about oppressed eco-villagers. So your side may have made a tactical error by not voting if you are a majority. Or could it be that you ARE a minority and would have exposed that fact by everyone voting?
Regardless of whether you are a majority or a minority, and the legal aspect of the RA having no power, why do you want to treat the other side as if their desires don't matter? Especially if you claim that you feel brotherly/sisterly love towards them? Is it because you feel that they have done the same to you and your side by blocking what you see as progress towards the Mother's vision for so many years?
Also, in human matters, facts are tangled up with feelings, needs, interpretations and desires. Many of your so-called facts are but different ways of interpreting reality from different perspectives. In order to disentangle the actual facts, it helps to talk about your interpretation with those who disagree and have a different perspective, with humility. Maybe Facebook is not the best place for this kind of fact-disentangling. If I were on the other side and I lived there, I would invite you for a conversation about every one of your facts and go through them one by one until we can come to a mutual understanding. Interspersed with tea and meditation and hugs. »
First of all, I am advocating for exactly thàt: let's put all the facts on the table and look at them and see what picture we get. As I've said before, even THAT is not possible: there is not a single fact that is agreed upon. Everything is interpreted in such a way that the actual happenings are immediately labelled as something, and obviously, that interpretation of the situation will already make any discussion impossible. When you cannot agree on a single fact or even the definition of what a “fact” is, there is no possibility of a meaningful discussion. I don't claim that the 65% would have voted "no". We clearly don't know that. There is no compulsory voting, so we just don't know. What I claim is that the campaign was SO emotional and large, that we can with very high confidence say that almost everyone that sides with the cult, has voted. Give them another 50 votes if you want. I don't think there's much more than that. Because it's also a very radical position. Most people probably would have voted “I don't know”, as most people would not have the information needed to have a real opinion about it. “What is my friends' or my family's stance on this” would probably be the deciding factor. Because many people here understand that this thing is a political game, and they might want to be cautious in such matters. But the real matter is much bigger and deeper. Auroville is not meant to have "democracy", and anyway these RADs that pass for "democracy" are everything BUT democracy. You have to understand that Auroville so far has created a sort of feudal situation: you have to fall in line with the mob mentality and the generally accepted behaviour, otherwise you are an outcast. There ARE quite a number of outcasts, but without financial independence, it's hard to survive as an outcast, so most of them will leave in time. In order to acquire financial independence within the Auroville structure, you have to first and for a long time toe the line, otherwise you won't be given the opportunity to set up the unit that will give you financial independence in the long run. So generally it is the people who are getting money from abroad who will be financially independent. These people are almost always older and western. And therefore will automatically be attracted to the cult narrative: Mother spoke about this wish of people to come and retire nicely and quietly in Auroville, and was totally against the idea: it was the opposite of what she had created Auroville for. Still, that's a huge part of our reality today. I don't know if I make myself clear here, but it's really a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy or a vicious circle: it creates automatically more of itself. Like our global capitalist system can only create more inequality: it's the consequence of the basics of the system itself. To get back to the feudal situation: it means that you have some loud voices who naturally will create a hierarchy where the "working groups" form the different classes. They hide the feudalism by making these groups on the surface "democratic", by having "selection processes" etc. But it doesn't change the fact that if you don't belong to the feudal factions (the cult), you won't get anywhere in their structure. Because it is meant to serve THEM. Feudal Europe was not intended to have the serfs become rulers. I had started a post already more than a month ago about the whole RA voting business. You see, the core of the matter is: that whole RA, the form it has gotten, the claims they make about it: it's all just BS to pretend that it is anything else but a tool to get and hold power. I have been disgusted with how it 'dysfunctions' since very early on, as these meetings are too insane and low in behaviour to be acceptable for a place like Auroville. When the overhaul of the Entry Policy was voted but not implemented, and then implemented but within three months "frozen" and the people who were doing a great job kicked out, I was too disgusted to ever participate in such a voting again. Because the whole core of the overhaul had been that a few people in a “working group” should not have the power to decide who joins Auroville and who doesn't. And that core issue was completely overturned immediately, because that's how this feudal cult works: pretend that “working groups” with a handful of members are “democratic”, and then control who is in the groups and takes the actual daily decisions. The voting thing has anyway always been a tool for the cult only, the vast majority never participates in it. You really wonder why... The processes and the whole set-up is so filled with falsehood, with lies, with manipulation and misrepresentation, that I will not participate in any of it again. It simply is the total opposite of what Auroville is meant to be: it pulls everyone down as low as possible, and brings out the worst in us all. It is a festival of baseness. The reason why it is still claimed to be a great thing is the very simple fact that many, MANY people are incapable of imagining societal structures that go against our lifelong indoctrination: either a “democratic” hierarchy (by claiming that a few people “represent” the whole), OR sitting in a group and having "equality" by letting everyone just scream whatever they feel. As if there is nothing else possible in the universe. So unbelievably many of these older and younger hippies are really not capable of seeing how sitting in a group and letting everyone say what they want can NEVER lead to any real form of government. You create mob rule, that's all. Because we are not equal. Some people speak better. Some people have physically louder voices. Some people are naturally more convincing, no matter what they say. Some people love speaking in public, and other people are terrified. Some people are charismatic and some people stutter or make a spectacle of themselves. All of these things are completely unrelated to whether or not someone has good, rational and useful ideas. But they will enormously influence how well these ideas are heard and understood by the group. All of that is totally ignored under the guise of "democratic equality: one man one voice/vote". Such a setting creates automatically a feudal hierarchy, because it does not understand anything about human nature and societal pressures. It fully ignores that nothing ever happens in a vacuum, and that setting and context are crucial. The most basic point to understand, and which is completely ignored and even denied to exist, is that all of us have a very deep conditioning that comes with our upbringing. The core of the matter is that by coming to Auroville, we are invited and supposed to grow in consciousness. What does that mean? It means that we start examining every single aspect of our behaviour. Why do we behave like we do? Because of what we think. Why do we think what we think? Because of our convictions. Why do we hold the convictions that we have? Because of our understanding of reality. Why do we believe reality to be what we think it is? Because of the experiences we have had and how we interpreted them. Why do we experience something the way we do? Because of the patterns of interpretation we hold. Where do these patterns come from? From the way we make sense of the information we are given. Who gives us the information? Why are we given that information? Is is true? Are we able to look at past experiences with a different understanding? What feelings influence our experiences of situations? Why do we notice this or that and simply do not even register that such and such are also part of the situation? Is is possible to put everything in a larger perspective? Is it possible to reinvent ourselves based on a different perspective? To let our old self go and start reacting differently, based on a new understanding and an different reaction to the same events? Can we change the conditioning that past patterns have created? In short: are we able to become so focused on WHAT WE DO, at every second, that we can put it in as vast a perspective as we possibly can hold, so that we can change our automatic personality – that what we mistakenly think we ARE – into a different reality? In my opinion, this is what Auroville is meant for: a place where we can live together in a societal structure that INVITES us, ENCOURAGES us, HELPS us to do this work. An environment, a material set-up that gives the ideal circumstances to undertake this journey of inner growth. That is totally contrary to what the RA and all the other structures that are built here do. They are totally pulling everyone down into the – for most – emotionally comfortable situation where people are claiming to be growing in consciousness, while the reality is the exact opposite. THAT is the core of the matter here: a narrative that covers up the fact that people are sucked into structures that prevent them from even WANTING to focus on any real form of spiritual growth. And that give them all the fake facades they ever could want to pretend that they ARE doing it. So that in the end, they start believing it. And fully ignore what happens in reality. Ignore what reality actually IS. Reject reality as a falsehood. Cling to their illusion bubble, and religiously preach to other people that they need to join the delusion. For me, I clearly was not going to participate in that mud pool of an RAD. Urged by a friend, I considered voting, for a few days, as indeed, I thought it might be very good if we could win the vote. But then I felt again that repulsion: the whole idea that such a vote has any value at all stinks. It really stinks, that whole RA gang behaviour here. It's old, dead and gone. I want to stay away from it as far as I can. They are planning to abuse these structures again to lay a renewed claim to power over Auroville by replacing the members of the Working Committee and the Auroville Town Development Council that are not aligned with them. It's absurd. It's really like hamsters who are not able to see that their wheel is not a path that leads somewhere. That there is a world beyond their little power game. I'm not part of their little box. Not anymore. It's falling apart anyway. It's over. I'm already looking at how the new Auroville will function, how we can move forward towards a city that lifts us up into our higher selves.
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