I have hesitated to begin this post. The dimensions of Auroville, the height and depth and breadth of the place in physical, spiritual, and social terms is so large, and each day filled with so many insights and meetings, that it is difficult to know where to start. Or better, there is so much new information pouring in every moment, it feels like trying to talk under a waterfall: refreshing, but not particularly audible.

This is the first time we have really been out of an urban area. With the exception of fields and trees and open skies seen through the window of a bus, our lodging has been in town, our destinations in towns or cities… all human, all urbane, and polished to the degree which things in India (or in tropical climates, I should say) are polished. So the falling water and the green of trees and movement of animals (!) has come as a pleasant and restorative change to our trajectory.

Manny Muros:

We find ourselves in this land inside of India but not of it…  Not unlike the Vatican in Rome. It is the home of highly spiritual and idealistic humans from over 30 countries working to create a society based on higher consciousness.

We arrived with monsoon rains making our entrance to this land of high vibrations feel quite unreal….  The energy that night was so intense and uncomfortable that I debated heading back to Pondicherry and waiting for Mark there…. After lots of meditation and centering I have softened into this magical place. I can feel my mind, body and soul opening and shifting but  don’t really understand what it is doing…. We are definitely on a major energy grid of mother earth that is being intentionally nourished and tapped by this community. Soon we will be able to enter and meditate in the Matrimandir , which is the main temple of the community and actually feels like it has the power of a futuristic pyramid except that it is a dome.

I knew the word, but not the meaning of it, not really. Living in Brazil for years, I knew hard, heavy rains, and long rainy spells. But monsoon -- ! Not until now. We had rain on and off all day Friday, and scurried with our newly-bought umbrellas from one spot to another, and in between rain spells around the well-maintained streets of Pondicherry, east of the covered wastewater canal. We got into our taxi in rain and drove the 12 km to Auroville in Rain. We settled into our little bunkhouse in RAIN… and then all watery hell broke loose, and it came on and on and on in sheets and in buckets, in waves and in tides, until all you saw or heard was falling water. The land here was desertified 40 years ago, and has been reforested (remarkably successfully)… with major earthworks to catch and contain moisture. Still, the sheer volume of water per minute flooded everything, and had us walking ankle-deep from the dining hall to our room.

The french doors which open onto the veranda have been open all night, and the sound of the breakers on the blackstone promenade where alternately lulling us to sleep and calling us out of it. Either the waves or the rain, which greeted us on our arrival in Pondicherry and has come in sheets and drizzles since then – last night at least two good downpours swept west off the ocean and past us toward Tiru and Bangalore.

I feel a real sadness welling up inside of me as we leave Sri Ramanasramam. It was quite short, just a few days, but the spirit of the place and of the people was remarkable. And as is often the case when you are travelling (as opposed to tourism, where one often carries the bubble of home around them), we met a number of fascinating people, local Indians and visitors from abroad, who made the space and time here incredibly rich and amazingly warm. You never know if these instant connections will grow, should grow, or if they will simply fade into nice memories; still I hope to have the opportunity some day to visit Rama and Adelaida in their Costa Rican retreat, of host them, should they pass through New York and fancy a short side-trip to the north…

Rama, an Italian friend we have made, lived at the ashram for five years. He now lives in and runs a retreat center in Costa Rica, Montana Azul, the blue mountain, with his wife and partner Adelaida.

Rama related this story of the Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi: the young man came to the mountain in 1900, at the age of sixteen, after a near-death experience. The near-death was not a physical death, but the sudden and complete realization that his body would perish – a complete understanding which left him immobilized for some time. He understood the central question of his existence – perhaps of all of our existence – and left home to study it deeply, left the noise and intrusions of the mundane life to dedicate himself to meditation, to insight into this life. 

Manny Muros:

Today we climbed the mountain located behind the ashram. In 1900 a 16 year old local seeker climbed that mountain and stayed for 17 years in a cave. Then moved to a second cave for 6 more years. When he came down his followers created what is now the ashram where we are staying…. Ramana Maharshi had found out that he was not “this body” and achieved freedom from life as he had know it.

Every night at the ashram, after an evening chant and before dinner, there are fifteen minutes of music. And every night, after dinner, one or two hours. The musicians play as a devotion, an offering to the sanctuary and to those who come here as their church.

The sanctuary is rather large; the floor is granite, the walls stone, and the ceiling vaulted; there are no chairs, those who come to worship or participate or attend sit on the floor or against the walls. Everyone is silent, but you feel them there – imagine the full emptiness of orchestra hall – and then the single instrument begins to play. The sound of a sitar was made for this type of hall; the musician is a master, and we follow his movements, both physical and musical, from a distance of 10 feet. A sitar has resonance strings and body, and sometimes a gourd attached to carry the vibrations further or longer. In this room they were not needed, and the voice sounded and resounded around the hall. An echoing silence followed each pause and each break. Astounding fortune, yet another call for gratitude, to be witness to both the grace and simplicity of this spiritual community, and the arts which are inspired by their master, Ramana Maharshi. 

My body is adjusting to the time shift and my mind to the reality shift…. We are in the middle of a “village” where the ashram is located. The senses are maxed out interpreting this new/old world.

Meals are served on the floor and the plates are made of sewn leaves, monkeys and peacocks roam the ashram, we walk around barefoot on the dirt compound and there are constant activities of prayer and devotion…. It all has a natural flow and we are becoming included in that flow.