The Aurovilian Must Not Be A Slave To His Desires

   

(I do not know who told you that ‒ but there is a misunderstanding somewhere because to hand over the management of Auroville to any country or any group however big it may be is an absolute impossibility. Blessings, The Mother)

We should teach them to free themselves from the idea of personal possession.... You see, everything belongs to the Divine, and the Divine gives you not only a center (the center of your individuality), but also the possibility of the personal use of a number of things; but you must take them all like that, as things LENT to you by the Divine. The Divine is eternal, of course, he is everlasting, as they say in English, and at the same time as he creates this individual center, a number of things are there to be used for his work, so those things are LENT. That's exactly the point: you hold them in your possession for a time.

It's to uproot the sense of personal possession.-THE MOTHER

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June 3, 1970

Yesterday we started a work for Auroville, that is to say, we're basically trying to give people from “Aspiration” an idea, simply, of what Aurovilians want: why they are here and what they want. Because it appears that... in fact they've no idea about it. Each one of them came expecting something, but all that isn't coordinated, it's not clear. So R. asked me to clearly express important points. I thought it would be better to do it with the people so as to know what they themselves want, and to have them make an effort to find out. Otherwise... So we started yesterday (Mother takes out a piece of paper).

Yesterday I asked C.¹, “But why does one live in Auroville?” So he gave me the first paragraph:

To be a True Aurovilian

1. The will to consecrate oneself entirely to the Divine.

That's what HE said. I found it fine.

After listening inwardly, I added this:

2. The Aurovilian must not be a slave to his desires.

The idea is this: “We come to Auroville to escape social and moral rules that are artificially practiced everywhere, but it is not to live in the licentiousness of the satisfaction of every desire: it is to rise above desires in a truer consciousness.” Something like that.... It appears they quite need this! (Mother laughs) So we should add it.

We could draw up a whole program, that would be interesting enough.

Yes, but in the practical order, until people go a little behind appearances and stop living on the surface of themselves, nothing will mean anything!

But all that is precisely what they need to be told!

So the first necessity is to go deep down into themselves, a little. Because even if you tell them “the Divine,” what does it mean to their surface consciousness?

Yes.... For him, this boy, it has a meaning, but for most others...

Yes. it doesn't mean anything.

So we should put: “The first condition is the inner discovery....”

In the ideal order, the first condition is to need something other than the present world and human conditions.

That goes without saying.

Then, to reach there, the first condition is to descend deep down in oneself to find out what one IS behind all these hereditary, social, cultural appearances – what one truly is. Then, at that stage, things take on a meaning, but before that they don't mean anything. Before that, they have the meaning given in morality, religion, philosophy – they mean nothing.

So we'll put (Mother writes): First essential condition...

It's more than a condition, it's a necessity.

1. The first necessity is the inner discovery so as to find out what one truly is behind all social, moral, cultural...

Racial?

Oh, yes.

... racial, hereditary appearances.

But then, we should tell them that there IS a discovery to be made, because many don't know it at all! (Mother laughs)

In the center, there is a free being, vast and knowing, which awaits our discovery and must become the acting center of our being and our life in Auroville.

Then, after that, shall we put this (Mother points to the former first point on the consecration to the Divine), or something else?... It seems to me that this is more an accomplishment, something that comes at the end.

(long silence)

We should teach them to free themselves from the idea of personal possession.... You see, everything belongs to the Divine, and the Divine gives you not only a center (the center of your individuality), but also the possibility of the personal use of a number of things; but you must take them all like that, as things LENT to you by the Divine. The Divine is eternal, of course, he is everlasting, as they say in English, and at the same time as he creates this individual center, a number of things are there to be used for his work, so those things are LENT. That's exactly the point: you hold them in your possession for a time.

It's to uproot the sense of personal possession.

(silence)

That would be interesting: “The description of the citizen of tomorrow's city.”

There's the second paragraph on desires, and the third would be on personal possession.

The only true way to cure desires is to give oneself to the Divine and accept what He gives you as the only things you need. But that's already very advanced.

At the beginning, you said that Aurovilians have come “to escape moral conventions, etc., but not to give free rein to licentiousness....”

Yes, that's right (Mother writes):

2. One lives in Auroville to be free from moral and social conventions; but that freedom must not be a new slavery to the ego, its desires and ambitions.

Is that all? It's enough for today!

If you want to connect this to the other paragraph, might we say something like, “Desire is the most powerful distorter of the inner discovery”?

Ah, yes. (Mother writes)

The fulfillment of desire bars the road to the inner discovery, which can only take place in the peace of perfect disinterestedness.

One word comes to me, Mother: not only peace, but transparency.

Yes (Mother writes):

... in the peace and transparency of perfect disinterestedness.

It'll become something interesting!

That's the basis. Then there's the third paragraph. You said, “The Aurovilian must free himself from the idea of personal possession.”

But it's not the “idea,” it's the “sense”! (Mother writes)

3. The Aurovilian must free himself from the sense of personal possession. For our transition in the material world, what is indispensable to our life and action is put at our disposal....

You don't say by whom?

(Mother laughs) No!... By the All-Possessing!

... according to the place we are to occupy.

Mother, I'd like to add: The more we are in contact with our inner being, the more the exact means are given to us.

Oh, that's fine (Mother writes):

The more we are CONSCIOUSLY in contact with our inner being, the more the exact means are given to us.

It'll become interesting!

It gives them the basis.

Oh, but we'll be able to do something interesting!

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(Soon afterwards, Mother starts looking for her old Savitri notebooks in the middle of an incredible heap of boxes, pieces of paper, objects....)

When I was a child (about twelve years old) I knew nothing of spiritual things, my family lived in a completely materialistic atmosphere; but once, I saw something in a dream: a being came to me, a woman, and she told me, “What you need you will always have in abundance.” That was Nature, material Nature, the same being I always saw later on. And it's true, absolutely true! (Mother, laughing, shows the jumble around her) Later, when I saw Théon, he explained to me; but at that time, I knew nothing at all, it wasn't made up by my thought, it came without my knowing anything: “What you need you will always have in abundance.” (Mother laughs) It's true!