December 01, 2007

Auroville was meant to be a spiritual commune. Mother abolished private property, personal profit, and inheritance

I think secular leftists in India would be surprised to find Sri Aurobindo being rather sympathetic to communism in principle, as is evident in his work. What he objected to were the mechanical authoritarian schemes conceived of by the Europeans to implement communism. He saw, and history has proven, that communism and anarchism can only come to fruition when human nature itself changes...
There is even a book on the subject, namely, Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: Integral Sociology and Dialectical Sociology. Another reading of Marx in the light of Sri Aurobindo is The Fallacy of Karl Marx: A Critical Appraisal of Marxism in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Social Philosophy. Moreover, as I understand it, Auroville was meant to be a spiritual commune. Mother abolished private property, personal profit, and inheritance. I don’t know to what extent these rules are still followed in Auroville, but I know that this was the approach the Mother took. (See Beyond Capitalism and Socialism? from the Auroville site for more details.)
Freedom, equality and brotherhood are the goals of socialist philosophy. The problem is that neither freedom, nor equality or brotherhood, are to be found in the physical body in its present state. Freedom, equality and brotherhood are characteristics of the soul, and it is in the soul and its flowering alone that true and lasting communism can prevail. And that, I think, was Sri Aurobindo’s message. In any event, the whole right/left political division is another trick of the binary mind to keep the soul hidden from us. I really can’t wait to visit India and feel the pulse and experience it for myself. The year 2009 seems too far away.

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