Man after Man

Chapter Two: Auroville

D: What is Auroville?

S: Auroville...it's a red land, it's nothing at all, you see, it's in the canyons near Pondicherry, these are a few huts and a certain number of people who come from just about every country in the world, looking for something else, without really knowing what it is, but who need another way of living than the one we live uneasily more or less everywhere.

D: In front of all this violence, all this cruelty that one sees in the world, the temptation could be to meet violence with another type of violence, let's say, revolutionary...

S: It's a sad transition, this necessity of evil, you see, of cruelty, of harshness. But it's the problem of evil that you are raising. Why is there all this horror in the world? But the answer...I don't know if there is an answer...I don't know if there is an answer...The answer is always the same: it's that all the horrors, all the most dreadful things - these are facts of course, we don't discuss them - are there to bring us to the point where they can be cancelled, where they can be dissolved and how can they be dissolved, this violence, this cruelty? What is the reaction, the only possible reaction? Is it to take a gun and meet violence with violence? Or don't we feel, suddenly, in front of this horror, the deep pain in man? Of course, if you are caught in violence you must not lie down and say "Hang me, do what you want". If you are caught in the battle you must fight, that's obvious isn't it? It's so obvious that it doesn't need to be said. We're not going to stand like lambs and get our throats cut. This is not at all what I mean. But in the heart how must you be?

I don't know. I can only think that every morning when I open my eyes I tell myself people are being shot in Teheran, I know what it means. I see all these beings which are killed one after the other. So, how do you answer? Shall we enter into this human pain, you see, so deep, and there you touch the only thing which can save.

JIANNI: Indeed, all the political systems of the past have failed, but this doesn't mean that we cannot try, precisely, to change these systems.

S: But that's awful all these systems

J: Yes but.

S: But all the systems are awful!

J: Since they become systems, yes.

S: They are all awful, I don't see that capitalism is better than communism or Gandhism better than Marxism. I find all the systems equally absurd, null, they lead nowhere, and that point. What you said would have been very interesting and very valuable 40 years ago because at that time, through the systems, we could improve humanity, 40 Years ago, but now we are no more at that stage, we are no more at a stage where a better ideology is going to save the world.

We are at a much more crucial, essential stage, where there is no salvation except by what we are. You may deplore violence, you may deplore these people stuffing themselves while others are starving, but all this is in fact part of this evolutionary moment so intensely absurd where something else must emerge and what I am interested in is that something else which is going to break this jail, this cotton jail in America, or this iron jail in Iran, or this other jail in Moscow, this other jail in Beijing, in Paris, it's just one jail everywhere. So there's nothing to deplore because everything is deplorable. But one must find the power in there, that which can break this jail and this is where I say there is no solution, there is no solution. Except by a power of being which is the very power of all species and if we don't reach this lever, this force, this love, because finally it's love, we go nowhere, there is no salvation, there is no salvation. We are not going to improve the world's economical conditions, it's not true.

All these monsters who are there, strangling us with their weapons, with their super-politics either from the west, east, south or north. What's the use of these monsters if not, really, to bring us to that point so intensely absurd where something else must emerge in man's consciousness. But certainly, if I was in Iran today, I would give my life to get rid of this sinister individual with his Muslim hat. If I was in America, certainly, I would fight against these monsters who pile up weapons in their oval chamber, certainly if I was in Moscow, I would fight against these people who spy on us, against this KGB, and against all that. Everywhere I would fight, where I am, but the solution is not the battle is a means, because we are men we can't remain indifferent to situations as they are, but the solution is not there, the solution is in what is born or emerges deep down in ourselves.

Do you understand what I mean?

D: I understand very well.

S: On the plane of action, where you are, you must act and do what you think is noble, or right, or true, but this is not the solution, the solution I've said it, there are not many. But you must fight. It's not about sitting in a corner in prayer.

Where you are, you must fight. There's no doubt. I am fighting, my battle, it's still another story.

D: I know that recently you fought for Auroville, for example.

S: For example, yes.