Mother’s Words on Auroville
To be an Aurovilian
On ‘Rules of Life’
1. Drugs, Alcohol Tobacco
April 2005
Compiled by Gilles G.
Samasti, Auroville
Rules of life for Sri Aurobindo Ashram
(Some of these rules have evolved along the years:)
1933
13. SMOKING OR ALCOHOLIC DRINK IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
* * *
1953
The rules are very few so that each one can enjoy the freedom needed for his development but a few things are strictly forbidden: they are – (1) politics, (2) smoking, (3) alcoholic drink and (4) sex enjoyment.
* * *
1965
7. One who practises the Yoga is strictly advised to abstain from:
(a) smoking
(b) alcoholic drinks
(c) sex life
The last condition is a must.
* * *
2003
3. Smoking and the intake of alcoholic drinks and non-medicinal, non-prescribed drugs are strictly prohibited.
* * *
‘Rules of life’ for Auroville
On 19th August 1966. The Mother’s answer to a question on Auroville’s political organisation:
There will be no politics.
The town will be directed by a Municipal Council, a committee of technicians, headed (in order to avoid any arbitrariness) by two people in authority who are no longer imprisoned by the mind, who possess true knowledge.
Any regulations will be as liberal as possible and very flexible. Rules should arise according to the requirements. Plasticity and swiftness are needed in order to keep up with world-movements, so as not to fall behind the universal progress.
Truth is a totality, not an exclusion.
Future man will not be an intellectual.
The rules of life within the city should comply with those of the country.
* * *
On 25th October 1967, the Mother told Satprem:
… As the formation descends in order to manifest, all oppositions arise, contradictions arise, complications arise, and within you clearly see that they don’t understand. So I spend my time telling them, "Don’t try to organize, don’t try, you are going to fossilize the whole thing before it’s begun."
For my part, I wanted it to grow like that, spontaneously, with the full play of the unexpected. But then, you are confronted with all the rules and regulations: we are in a country [India] – we should do it on a desert island! But that no longer exists on earth, there isn’t any island left that doesn’t belong to a nation – we are caught, bogged down. Anyway, we’ll muddle along as best we can.
It’s an attempt, that’s all.
* * *
On 30th December 1967, the Mother commented to Satprem the following note:
‘No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate.’
What I mean is that usually (always so far, and more and more so), men establish mental rules according to their conceptions and their ideal, then they apply them [Mother lowers her fist, as if to show the world under the mental grip]. And that’s absolutely false, arbitrary, unreal, so the result is that things revolt, or else waste away and disappear.... It’s the experience of LIFE ITSELF that must slowly work out rules AS SUPPLE AND VAST as possible, in order that they ever remain progressive. Nothing must be fixed. That’s the immense error of governments: they build a framework and say, "Here is what we’ve established, now we must live under it." So naturally, Life is crushed and prevented from progressing. It is Life itself, developing more and more in a progression towards Light, Knowledge, Power, that must little by little establish rules as general as possible, so as to be extremely supple and capable of changing according to need – of changing AS RAPIDLY as habits and needs do.
[silence]
At bottom, the problem almost boils down to this: to replace the mental government of intelligence by the government of a spiritualized consciousness…
It’s mainly all that the Mind has brought in terms of rigidity and absoluteness and near invincibility – that’s what ... is going to disappear. And simply by... handing the supreme power over to the Supreme Consciousness.
* * *
In 1968, the Mother said:
I have been asked what the rules are for life in Auroville.
Thank God, as yet there are none.
As long as there are none, there is hope.
* * *
On 6th April 1968, the Mother spoke of alcohol and drugs with Satprem:
I didn't want to make rules for Auroville, but I'm going to be forced to begin formulating certain things because... it so happens there are difficulties. I don't know how to go about it.
What I wanted to say came: it's very simple [Mother picks up a written note], simply like this (it's for very petty things):
You must choose between getting drunk and living in Auroville,
the two are incompatible.
It's not innocent drunkenness, I mean, it's translated into acts of violence, it borders on madness.
And so naturally, once you've started, you can say this too
[Mother picks up another note:]
You must choose between living in falsehood and living in Auroville,
the two are incompatible.
Provided that it's true!
Satprem: One could say that those who get drunk do it to forget; well, you don't come to Auroville to forget: on the contrary, you come to Auroville to remember.
Yes, we could put it that way.
But the idea was especially to stress the CHOICE: living in Auroville is a CHOICE. It's a choice, an attitude one takes, a decision one makes. To live in Auroville is a choice, you are choosing a certain way of life. But if you choose one thing, there are other things which do not go along with it.... In any case, to live in Auroville is an ACTION, a decision that one takes, an action.
But this [Mother points to her note] is a concession to the present state of humanity because, to tell the truth, for Auroville it should be only some particular cases. What I mean is this: there may be people who drink but who all the same are fit to live in Auroville. So you can't make a general rule. But if you don't make a general rule, on what leg will you stand to tell someone (who has been accepted, that's the difficulty), to tell him, “No, you have to change – either you stop that, or you cannot remain in Auroville...”?
Satprem: What is said about alcohol can also be said about drugs; you can say it about many other things as well.
Yes, many, many. It's only a beginning. I saw, you know, that we're going to be faced with necessities... These are necessities of choice – to say it's either this or that.
It's like drugs, there are people who do not suffer dangerous or harmful effects from drugs.
Basically, the freedom of each one is limited by the fact that it should not infringe upon the freedom of others. That's the limit.
Satprem: It's obviously difficult to make general rules.
It's impossible.
Satprem: As for myself, I remember having taken opium for several years and it did me good, it soothed me, it calmed me down. To take it now would be absurd, but at that time it didn't do me any harm.
Yes, but that I understand very well! I see that so well, in such a universal way... You know, a sentence like this [Mother points to her note] could be said only to an individual, that is, FOR YOU, it's like that – it's a choice between overcoming your weakness or your habit and living in Auroville, the two don't go together. But then it's a purely individual question; to another person you may not even have to mention it.
Satprem: That's why the most general formula, would be to say that all self-forgetfulness is contrary to the life of Auroville. You don't go to Auroville to forget, to forget yourself – all self-forgetfulness, in any form whatsoever.
Ah, but “self-forgetfulness”, if you see it from a moral standpoint!...
[Mother laughs]
Satprem: Forgetting your true self.
[Mother laughs]
As soon as it is formulated... It would be more correct to say:
All seeking for unconsciousness is contrary to the life of Auroville.
That's more general. And then, if you want to be still more general, you could say:
‘Any backward or downward movement is in contradiction to the life of Auroville, which is a life of ascent towards the future.’
But words...
Some articles have appeared in newspapers about the foundation of Auroville, for example, with this theme: “A utopia in the making”. And so there are those who tell you, “You'll never succeed!” Because their argument is, “They are human beings and they'll stay human beings” – that's where they are mistaken. “Human nature cannot be changed,” on that basis they tell you that you won't succeed. Consequently, the only thing necessary is not only to accept and want the future, but to cling to the will for transformation and progress. And that's very good as a general formula.
But you see, with drugs for example, take chloroform, which is used during operations; well, chloroform has a different effect on each individual (they don't accept it in theory, but it's a fact). We have [name] here, who used to be an anaesthetist, and the result of his experience is that it has a different effect on each individual. There are some who are thrown into unconsciousness by it (the great majority, I believe), but in certain cases, on the contrary, it projects them into another consciousness.
And it's the same for everything.
So my note won't do, it will only work individually: in your case it's like that; but in the case of someone else it may not be incompatible at all.
So, we're going to have to see that little by little... It will be interesting!
* * *
In 1968, the Mother answered a letter on LSD:
Q.: At least one lakh Americans have had experiences with LSD and mescaline – experiences called “psychedelic”, which means “consciousness expanding”. These drugs may become legalized in America, and a nation-wide campaign is afoot. Here is a copy of the “Psychedelic Review” (1966, No. 7) with an article claiming the high Yogic state achieved with mescaline.
I have read the passage marked in the magazine. One thing is sure – these experiences are not spiritual and to give them that name is a proof of complete ignorance of what is really a spiritual experience.
The effect of the drug must be either erratic wandering in the vital or the waking up of some subconscient notation asleep in the subconscient part of the being.
No time to say more on such a futile subject.
* * *
On 27th April 1969 the Mother told Roger:
The important thing is that people understand that they have better things to do than producing children. If it is permitted in Auroville, it is because there are no constraining rules. Spiritual life can be lived in whatever circumstances, external conditions shouldn’t hamper it. The freedom is given to people is above all to enable them to reach a higher consciousness.
The essential thing is not to impose rules, but to create an atmosphere that leads towards another way of life. Those who cannot accept it will leave of themselves.
* * *
On 7th February 1970, the Mother told Satprem:
Someone from Auroville wrote me that he thought he had come here to obey only himself (or something like that) and he found there were rules and laws. And he said, “I won't do it! I'm free. I refuse to do it.” Naturally they reported it to me, so I wrote to him (I don't remember), “One is only free when one is conscious of the Divine and it is the Divine who makes the decisions in each one, otherwise one is the slave of one's desires, habits, all the conventions....” And I sent it, and afterwards he kept quiet.
That's what I wanted to add there [in an aphorism]. It should say: one is only free when it is the Divine who makes the decisions in each one of us, otherwise men are the slaves of their desires, their habits, all the conventions, all the laws, all the rules... And the more they think they're free, the more bound they are!
* * *
On 2nd and 3rd June 1970, while drafting Her note To Be a True Aurovilian, The Mother said:
From the point of view of behaviour, of more down-to-earth things, for example: We want to be free from all moral and social conventions. But that is where we have to be very careful! One must not liberate oneself from these things by sinking below them into license and the blind satisfaction of desires; one must liberate oneself from these conventions by rising above them and by eliminating desires, and replace moral rules by obedience to the Divine.
The idea is this: “We come to Auroville to escape from the social and moral rules that are practiced artificially everywhere, but it is not to give license to the satisfaction of all desires: it is to rise above desires into a truer consciousness.” Something like that.... It seems they have great need of it! [Mother laughs] So that should be added.
‘One should organize one's life not according to outer and artificial rules, but according to an organized inner consciousness, for if one lets life go without subjecting it to the control of the higher consciousness, it becomes fickle and inexpressive. It is to waste one's time, in the sense that matter remains without any conscious utilization.’
* * *
On 28th July 1970, during an ‘Aspiration Talks’, the Mother said:
Christophe: There was something else. We would like to know the underlying reason why we of Aspiration may no longer go to the playground. Last Wednesday there was a talk by Udar about Sri Aurobindo's Action and we were not allowed to enter… We wanted to know the reason.