By Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.

“Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.”
(The Mother, 1965)

“This class was the single most healing experience of my entire life,” said Erica, and I thought to myself that if even one student felt this way it was worth all the efforts involved in the creation of the course. It was the closing circle of our class: Auroville: Spirituality, Community and Multiculturalism, and we were sitting in a circle on cushions in Verite Hall—the Hall of Truth—the adobe floor beneath us, the rounded ceiling above us, and in the center a candle and small flower arrangement often found in Auroville’s buildings. Just thirteen months earlier I had sat, by candlelight due to power cuts, in the library just across the same compound with CIIS President Joe Subbiondo, envisioning two pioneering classes that would be the first steps to reconnect CIIS with its Indian roots and, more specifically, to the approach of integral yoga and integral spirituality set forth by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Now, just over a year later, we sat in a circle of radiant students representing five programs at CIIS and four countries, collectively acknowledging and celebrating the tacit success of our endeavor.

The first day of class, in our circle of intention, I had stated my own intentions for the course: (1) to share the India that I love, (2) to learn from and with the students and our environment, (3) to participate in an experimental model of integral education, (4) to support CIIS in its mission to offer an education at the cutting edge of radical spiritual transformation. I had been dialoguing with my colleague and co-instructor, Jorge Ferrer, core faculty in the East-West Psychology department, for years about a shared dream to offer an education that not only studies the integral vision and integral spirituality but in which the pedagogy itself is a communication of this perspective. An education not only of the mind, but also of the heart and emotions, of the body and spirit. An education that includes not only spiritual study, but spiritual practice. An education that elicits knowledge from within each person as well as the collective knowledge of the group, supports students in sharing that knowledge, and offers a fluid class structure that allows space for innovation in accordance with the emergence of new knowledge, the specific needs of individuals, and student input.

The first three days of class we spent orienting ourselves in Auroville and Pondicherry, the South Indian city in which the urban ashram of Sri Aurobindo is located. In Auroville we often set out in a fleet of bicycles and motor scooters to visit healing centers, attend presentations by local Indian and European scholars, meditate together in the Matrimandir—the golden-domed sanctuary that marks the center of Auroville—and visit the Indian and Tibetan cultural centers, where several of those who originally “settled” Auroville over thirty-five years ago educated us in Auroville’s mission, growth, and challenges. In Pondicherry we visited the Sri Aurobindo ashram and the samadhi shrines which house the tombs of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. We were given special permission to meditate in the room where Sri Aurobindo wrote his vast body of literature and taught his disciples. We attended classes at SACAR, an academic institution collaborating with CIIS to offer graduate level education in Sri Aurobindo’s integral perspective.

The next three days were dedicated to a pilgrimage to the city of Tiruvannamalai so that students could experience the deep heart of sacred India. One of the great spiritual centers in Southern India, Tiruvannamalai is a place where sadhus, sages, and seers have come for thousands of years to meditate in the caves that pocket the holy mountain Arunachala—a mountain believed by many to be the embodiment of Lord Shiva himself. It is the city formed around the Arunachala Temple—one of the largest temples in Southern India. It covers an area over three square acres and contains over one hundred independent shrines. Tiruvannamalai is perhaps best known in contemporary times as the home of the late sage Sri Ramana Maharshi, who, along with Sri Aurobindo, was one of the most influential spiritual leaders of India in the 20th century.

After a brief stop on the road for a traditional Indian breakfast of masala dosa and idly sambar, we arrived in Tiruvannamalai and went immediately to the Arunachala Temple, where we entered the ancient inner sanctum, a cavernous building in which the energy is so thick it is like treading through hot molasses. Escorted by bare-chested brahmin priests, we witnessed a great puja, or offering of fire and worship, to the main temple deities, and emerged with foreheads smeared with sacred ash, red kumkum powder, and sandal paste.

We spent the late afternoon and evening circumambulating the great mountain, a pilgrimage undertaken by tens of thousands of spiritual aspirants each month and believed to accrue great spiritual merit. At the very least it offers a chance to witness the heart of Indian culture, as over two hundred individual shrines and temples spot the base of the mountain. Accompanied by an oxcart (the ox itself adorned with pink carnelians for the occasion) privately contracted to carry our water bottles, as well as students who might tire during the five-hour walk, we stopped frequently at shrines and participated in their rituals. We whispered our desires into the ear of a ten-foot-long Nandi bull who is said to fulfill them; sat in a tiny and radiant temple dedicated to Devi, the great goddess; visited a temple dedicated to women’s fertility and another to Lord Shiva; and crawled through the one-person wish-fulfilling temple. We engaged, each in his or her own way, beggars, pilgrims, poverty, nature, beauty, garbage, aromas, constantly fluctuating sounds and colors and smells...that great blend of beauty, chaos, and sorrow that has attracted and repelled travelers and pilgrims for centuries.

The following morning we climbed the mountain to the caves where Ramana Maharshi himself had lived and practiced for many years, and meditated in the very caves where the Maharshi had meditated. We took in the mountain and its extraordinary vistas and visited the buildings and shrines at Ramanasram, the ashram of Ramana Maharshi. Some students used the free afternoon for a rare chance to rest or visit the library or further explore the temples, shrines, and markets of Tiruvannamalai. In the afternoon the women were taught how to wear traditional Indian sarees. Indian feasts were served nightly.

The third day of our visit to Tiruvannamalai was the birthday of Hanuman, the great Indian Monkey God, and the ashram where we were staying happened to be inaugurating a Hanuman statue that morning. At 5 a.m. we sat in our shawls, drinking hot Indian coffee, our faces illuminated by the light of the fire of the traditional homa, or fire ceremony, in which offerings were being made to Hanuman to invoke his blessings. The sun slowly rose behind the mountain as the statue was bathed in water, ghee, milk, and sandal paste, and students participated in waving the sacred flame to the deity. We did not understand what was happening as much as we felt it, together, and I never felt so much intimacy with a group of students as I did that morning. We were there because there was a longing in our hearts to learn from experience, and we patiently sat together, in the unknown, bringing our minds, bodies, and hearts to participate in this exotic ritual in this foreign land, allowing ourselves to be grown, stretched, and opened from the inside.

The rest of the morning continued in new forms of prayer as, still in our sarees, we visited the local ashram of the late Yogi Ramsuratkumar, known as the “Godchild of Tiruvannamalai,” where we sat in a small group with Ma Devaki, his spiritual successor, and listened to her stories of what it was like to live in the immediate company of a great master. Meredith, one of the students, was invited to perform the closing arati, or ritual of praise, for the assembled crowd of over two hundred devotees, and I watched, my professor’s heart swooning with the ecstasy of sharing authentically new learning, as she received instruction and radiantly engaged her task. Lunch was on the floor of the ashram dining hall, on banana leaf “plates,” and was eaten with our hands (right hand only, as the left is used as “toilet paper”).

Following the pilgrimage to Tiruvannamalai, we returned to Auroville for the second week of our program. This week was devoted to deepening our study of integral spirituality and was an opportunity for students to pursue their individual interests and conduct fieldwork studies. Mornings were spent in group study, often accompanied by panels comprised of Auroville residents and educators. Topics included the East-West encounter; the relationship between spirituality and religion; spiritual authority; community; and integral spiritual practice. During the afternoons, students visited healers, schools, hospitals, alternative healing centers, medicinal plant projects, and cultural and artistic programs, as well as, on occasion, Auroville’s beautiful beach. Jorge and I gave public talks to the Auroville community about our current areas of study and research and participated in a panel for the Integral Psychology Conference which was coordinated by CIIS professor Brant Cortright and Auroville psychologist Aster Patel.

The final morning was dedicated to tsunami relief work. At 9 a.m. our group joined about one hundred individuals from around the world at Auroville’s tsunami relief office, where we were bussed to a local beach to do tsunami cleanup work. Most of the volunteers had not done this type of relief work before, and it was remarkable to see how over one hundred strangers accompanied by local villagers can be given gloves and rakes and hoes and a road wrecked with debris and together, with minimal supervision, separate burnable debris from that which can be reused from that which must be buried. We learned how to cut fish net and how to cooperate with others who do not speak the same language in carting five-foot-high piles of debris on tarps out to the beaches to be burned. There, under the hot Indian sun, covered with dirt and sweat, all were equal. True global peacemaking was occurring, and I became aware that any program such as ours should rightfully include reciprocation to the local community through service.

The course was radiant and dynamic, but not easy. Adjusting to the circumstances, environment, and foreign ways of India was demanding, and we quickly learned that we needed to engage individual and group processing time on a daily basis. Tears of overwhelm were shed, the routine minor Indian illnesses were tended to, and individual and group breakdown and breakthrough were addressed as a matter of course, an inevitable aspect of living in an innovative learning community. The committed work of the professors in both programs redefined overtime, and students applied themselves to coursework in a way that defied the limits of what can be conceptualized for a 3-unit course. The task was clear to all of us: there was potent learning to be done, and significant efforts were required to provide the space for that learning. Everyone overextended themselves willingly in our shared labor of love. As one student said, “I think we transcended the idea of coursework by the second day.” Another way of phrasing it is that under this new framework of true integral education we redefined the limits of what can be contained within the concept of coursework.

As I sit here on the airplane from Chennai to San Francisco, committed to documenting this experience in spite of an exhaustion that penetrates to my core, my heart is broken open and made tender by how much was exchanged. Together, with the help of so many people at CIIS and Auroville—from the administration to the students to the wonderful cooks and Auroville residents—we launched an experiment in integral learning that far exceeded any conceivable expectations. It was a class that defied the traditional meaning of the term “class” and is perhaps better described as a true integral education of body, mind, heart, and spirit—not as a conceptual ideal but as a living reality—where professors and students gather in a community of equals, differentiated only by function in order to support optimal learning. It was an experience that Brant Cortright, who led the other CIIS course in Auroville, described as being the single richest teaching experience of his twenty-year career in education.

The implications for these types of programs are greater than we can imagine. As CIIS literally and physically begins to return to its roots for the first time in over forty years, there are many opportunities: (1) CIIS can reconnect to the radiant energy of its original lineage; (2) In the evolutionary spirit, it can offer the fruits of its own growth back to its source, creating a cycle of mutual growth; (3) This type of program can branch its way into other parts of India and offer an authentic contribution to the ever-present East-West encounter, supporting global peacemaking through human interchange and learning; (4) It can offer a model of integral education in action both to its own students and to other academic institutions; (5) Finally, and perhaps most important, CIIS embodies the modern archetype of the true intellectual revolutionary institution, reaching into the unknown to sow seeds of possibility. Much as Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri, two humble disciples with a great vision, did when they came to the United States over four decades ago and opened themselves to a dream that has become a thriving university, the seeds that CIIS is now planting will produce fruits that will inevitably exceed the possibilities that our minds alone can conceive of.

Sri Aurobindo’s model is an evolutionary one. It does not propose to place new ideas into old structures of learning but to transform the structures on all levels—from the human mind and body to all aspects of culture, education and religion. It seeks to create heaven on earth, even if we die without seeing the fruits of our actions, knowing only that we made a conscious and sincere contribution to that process. To be true to an evolutionary model is to bravely but intelligently voyage into the realm of unknown possibility.

Teaching this class demonstrates that it is indeed possible to revolutionize learning and assures me there are places in the world in which the true development of the whole human being can be supported as a valid form of accredited learning at the graduate school level. It says to me that CIIS is willing to stand in its original mission to participate in cutting-edge integral education and integral pedagogy. That recognition makes my heart both sigh in relief and sing in praise, for I believe without reservation that there is no greater study than the furthest reaches of our individual and collective human potential.

The Auroville Charter:
1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

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