J.R.D. Tata and Auroville....
Towarnicki: And
how do you explain J.R.D. Tata's helping Auroville?
Ah, that is something else.
Towarnicki: Can
one talk about it?
Of course, one can.
Towarnicki: Do
you know exactly what he did?
He helped Auroville a great deal.
Auroville was besieged by a corrupt police,
paid by the "owners of Auroville" (in quotation marks).
Towarnicki: The
owners of the land?
Yes....
They weren't the "owners." Mother had put a few
people in charge (you've got to have funds to start building a city);
she had asked one or two of her disciples to concentrate particularly on
raising funds wherever they could to help in the birth or creation of
Auroville.
And the people she had entrusted with raising
funds to help in the development of Auroville are the very ones who
declared themselves the "owners of Auroville"! It's quite simple and
straightforward: "Mother is gone, so we are the owners."
And so those "owners" (who were unscrupulous
people – really crooks, in fact) used every means in the book to try to 
keep their authority over Auroville. And
unfortunately, with corruption pervading everything in India, they paid
EVERYBODY – the police, the villagers, various officials – in order to
have the government expel, or to choke the lifeline of, those residents
of Auroville who refused to participate in the swindle and the big
spiritual business. They used absolutely everything. They had some of
them put in jail, they... Oh, there were all sorts of awful things!
keep their authority over Auroville. And
unfortunately, with corruption pervading everything in India, they paid
EVERYBODY – the police, the villagers, various officials – in order to
have the government expel, or to choke the lifeline of, those residents
of Auroville who refused to participate in the swindle and the big
spiritual business. They used absolutely everything. They had some of
them put in jail, they... Oh, there were all sorts of awful things!
Towarnicki: Including
aggression?
Yes, absolutely, including aggression!
This is where Mr. Tata was very helpful.... You
see, in fact, Auroville needed to be protected against those
mercenaries. And he agreed to –
Towarnicki: That's
really something...
He agreed that his name be used, and he said,
"I guarantee Auroville's integrity." Well, the moment somebody like Mr.
Tata guarantees something, it puts an end to a lot of intrigues; it kept
a lot of little hyenas from perpetrating their mischief.
He was very helpful in that way.
And not only did he give his personal
guarantee, but several of us joined together to found... not an
institute, but a sort of society, called Auromitra, meaning "The
Friends of Auroville," to protect Auroville from these crooks.
Towarnicki: And
why did he do it?
Out of love, of course! Simply because he
believed; he believed in those young people.... The group of a few
hundred young people living there: Germans,
Italians, Canadians, Americans, French. He had seen them. He had seen
their vitality and sincerity. And even if it looked eccentric or
uncustomary, there was something healthy about it, something genuine,
authentic.
So he said to himself, "I am going to guarantee
the integrity of these people."
And he had seen, on the other side, the people
who called themselves "the owners" – he clearly saw that they were
crooks.
So, in his way, as the generous and very simple
man that he is (he is indeed a very simple and straightforward man;
Tata is a man who has a heart, a big heart), he said to himself, "I am
going to protect these young people from the intrigues and corruption of
those people" – who brought false charges against them to the police,
who had them arrested...
He gave his personal guarantee. He had the guts
to say, "No, no, no, this is not how things are."
Towarnicki: You
have seen J.R.D. Tata several times, haven't you?
Yes.
Towarnicki: Have
you talked to him?
Yes.
Towarnicki: He
knows what you have tried to do, what Mother has done. He even went
there....
Yes.
Yes, but he doesn't really understand how
Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's undertaking can help present humanity in a
practical and concrete way. He doesn't understand that.
Because, for him, the problem is mainly an
economic one.
Yet, as he himself admits, what is needed is a
change in human nature.
In truth, it is not so much a change in India's
pocketbook that is needed as a change in human nature. If you don't
change human nature, you always end up with failure.
In other words, it is not an economic problem.
Towarnicki: Or
perhaps it's both. He thinks that, short of an economic solution, all
attempts to ameliorate human nature – the "quality of mankind," as the
founder of the Club of Rome put it – are bound to fail, because they
will be thwarted by other forces we failed to take into account. If we
let the fire in a nearby forest go unchecked, without fighting it, what
is the sense of an experience aimed at opening the way to a future
species? Will the force of such an experience be able to control the
fire? Or will the fire inexorably and inevitably spread and end up
destroying...
What you are saying is very true, but we keep
talking of the future species as if... as if it were a thing of the
future! But we are RIGHT IN IT – the process is taking place now.
We clothe the phenomenon in wrong explanations.
But the real phenomenon is of an evolutionary order.
Towarnicki: Exactly.
The truth is, the old species is being broken
apart so another possibility can emerge from it.
And that's the real key to everything.
Towarnicki: So...
The new species isn't in the next decade; it's
right here and now.
We are living it. We are in the process of
living it.
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