My Heart is still Burning and Pulsing Right Now.

Some people take LSD. Some people read Sri Aurobindo.

This is my outlook about 20 minutes after having a significant experience.

My group and I went to talk with Shradavan, a woman who runs Savitri Bhavan. It is a center built from a poem by Sri Aurobindo, “Savitrti.”

I had no idea who the woman was. But when we all gathered into a basement room in a circle and she asked us to tell her our names and what we hope to find in Auroville, I instantly thought, “Oh, great; this is what- the tenth time we have to do this, and I don’t feel like it. Can’t she just tak with us and be happy?” So I automatically held a minor, superficial annoyance with her.

However, when she began talking, I unfortunately- and fortunately- couldn’t help but pay more attention.

She has been in Auroville since 1970. Auroville was founded in 68, and the Mother died in 73. She is the oldest Aurovillian I have met. It wasn’t this that got me, though. It was how she began to explain the philosophies of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Again, when she began speaking, this weird feeling came over me; before today, I have held a perception that some of the older Aurovillians I have talked to seem already dead. They seem so disattached from many human desires perhaps, that they seem perpetually out-of-body. It freaks me out; I get an eerie, dry-wrinkled-carboard-skin-lifeless feeling from it. I really don’t know how to describe it better…. Like time has already gone, they are no longer here, they are so “higher consciousness”.

However, this time, while I noticed this feeling coming on, I decided to try to keep an open mind, and see if I could figure out where this feeling was coming from, and WHY.

This woman’s energy was SO calm. The things she talked about – that evolution is not finished yet, and that Auroville is a place to look toward to future, are pinpoints of what makes me feel weird. I directly related this to my readings of Echkart Tolle, which I hold very important in my own spirituality. While this woman was saying that our spirits and centers exist inside of us, there is this focus on the future. I thought, if we have spirit inside of us, why do we have to look toward the future? Why can’t we focus on accessing this higher consciousness right here, right now? Why not move from where we are? This focus on the future seems to be a really disconcerting and disconnecting ideal to me, and I think it is part of what creates this feeling inside of me that is SO strange and squiggly-yucky-removed.

Then I dove in- I went straight into an Alex Grey painting. I began realizing, these things she are saying are’t invading me. They are more like slithering snakes on the outside of my being, which is a vibrant, colorful DNA strand constantly spiraling. These snakes are on the borders of Me, but they are not trying to invade. They are just eerie, reminding me that they are there. And what are they made of that makes me feel so weird? Mystery. It is precisely that the philosophies of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are so non-existent in a sense that I feel so uncomfortable; it is because I don’t know.

They say no religion in Auroville. So it is easy to mistake their philosophies for a new kind of religion. This is not what they want. So I realized, maybe I am used to people tryng to get me to see a certain perspective when they talk about spirituality and religion and philosophy; maybe I am used to putting up this defense, very subconsciously, because this is what people are ater- to relate through a common understanding. Yet, this is different…. Maybe this is the freedom to choose.

There. From then on, I stopped feeling like I was being threatened by these ideas to come away from myself, but rather I was being invited to not listen to the words, and find my own connection. It was this super weird, twisted way of making me come about to realizing that I have my own connections to make. I have to fight to keep my center. These words, you have to read in between them. Maybe some people don’t, but as soon as this thought crossed my mind, I began to break the social code of being still while listening to this woman talk, and I began the simple movement of rolling my head.

Wow. This was a physically noticeable change in a super crazy state of awarenss already; I felt instantly connected with myself, and instantly, this weird, eery, heady feeling of looming disconnection and impending specific, different spirituality morphed into a warm, tingly buzz in my stomach and feet. Instantly, I dropped into my center. Then I felt like I was going to cry.

YES. I had found myself.

I went back into the Alex Grey painting, and this time I really just felt that my being at this moment was the huge, colorful, spiraling DNA sequence. It was my energy. I remember actually thinking, “Wow, I have just made a significant leap in consciousness.” I felt like I was witness to a whole huge deep shift of awareness that happened right before my eyes.

Then I started to warm up to the lady, and to the ideas of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. “Maybe this is precisely what this is,” I thought. “the opportunity, the invitation, to get out of yourself in order to hold stronger to your values, to your core, and in doing so, in being reminded of the great mystery, shed what isn’t important, and cling with your life to your very being.”

This was very intense. So after this movement though, I began to listen with a more open mind to the words, and some of them made more sense to me.

What a strange, subtle, thing energy is…. And I thought, after so long in this Intense pace of Auroville, I am sure that this woman has mastered some of her own understanding! So yes, it is good that she is having such an effect on me.

So after I got out of the room, I was on a mission. To do what? TO write some of these thoughts down….. and then, I really honestly truly realized I was having a significant psychadelic experience, and I didn’t even take drugs….

So then I realized, “Hey. If the Mother is saying that you have the freedom, and you can take your own power, then what is it you want to do”?” So I put my bag and shoes down, and began to dance. I think that was a significant choice.

So anyway, this whole account is really stream-of-consciousness, because it just happened. So I understand if some of you DON’T understand!!

HOWEVER, I guess that’s it.