When, despite the gales and throes of the day, there is a spark of beauty…

There is a kind of strength which cannot be culled, when you are able to lift your voice in a song. Tonight there were a few old standards of mine, which I revisited in a few free minutes; the heart softened more than ever by life found new corners to fill and dark spaces to illuminate. And as a chord progression changed, and the dynamics of a certain passage smoothed out – the voice, in a line made more poignant by recent events, filled with more humanity, and the fingers on the strings followed that lead – so that the song once rich was somehow richer, the melody somehow deeper.

For those of you who have been following Manny and my trajectory from Massachusetts to India and back again, and are not rooted somewhere half-way ‘round the world, I’d like to invite you to join us for an evening of pictures and stories.

This Saturday, January 20th, at 7:15pm at the Yoga Center of Newburyport, we will offer a warm cup of Masala chai accompanied by some good travel, laughter and stillness and smells and sights and sounds of another land… and perhaps a whiff of another way of being.

The trail which brought Manny and me to Auroville had continued west from Pondy to Mysore, to the Tibetan Settlements near Kushalnagar, over Karnataka’s Western Ghats, to fall (rather heavily) to earth on Goa’s southern beaches. Good relaxation, if a little empty after the heights of spiritual and community travel we had engaged in to that point. Palolem beach was beautiful, and completely built out for the tourist season, about to break on the beach like a tidal wave.

I expect that, having passed my bedtime by several hours now, I am exempt from morning yoga. There are some things you really must not allow to be pushed, though – the least effort is spent maintaining a ritual, then the ritual helps maintain everything else (such as reasonable sleeping hours and subsequent mental and physical health…).

However, having played one of the songs written in Auroville for Aurelio and Charles, and having unfortunately missed doing the same for Bhavana, who really deserved to be in on the farewell recital, I promised to record it and send it along. So, in retrospect… what amounted to a fairly quick recording session, rocky start to weary finish, using Garage Band on the Mac, several takes, several tweaks and some technical wiggling got it all up on the web and mailed off to friends abroad.

Mrs. Rat

Mrs. Rat was a good business woman. She ran a successful vegetable stall by the roadside. It was called “Cosmic Vegetables”. Sometimes she would take the day off, and then hang up a somewhat curious sign which read:

Closed.

We have no mistakes today. This is due to the absence of mismanagement. If you must have mistakes, please go elsewhere. Here no mistakes or mishaps.

For the Cosmos – Amrita Rat.

Arrival follows departure and, unless you work tirelessly to avoid them, solitary travel invariably collects companions. One week at Verité Community in Auroville was in depth and breadth closer to a month, or months; so, since departure follows arrival, this leave-taking was sweeter and more heart-tugging than I would have expected from a visit of days. Imagine the hidden places our love lives, when we say goodbye to affections we nurtured for years?

I can’t leave Auroville without making mention of its spiritual and physical heart, the Matrimandir… though at the same time I feel there is almost nothing I can say that does any justice to the vision behind it, the experience of the area around it, or the power of insight and meditation it brings one.

So. How to talk about it and not talk about it at the same time?

Most of the communities that exist in Auroville – as semi-autonomous communities, that is, with their own social structure and goals, texture and color – were founded by a few energetic people who wished to manifest the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother in a particular and personal way. Some are recent, some have existed since the beginning (in 1968). Some are small (Sadhana Forest is run by a family of three from Israel – with a lot of interns running about), and others larger (Aspiration currently has upwards of 50 participating members, and a number of other long-term “guests”). They all share a common goal, and that is unity of human spirit and human endeavor in a single, intentional city.

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.