TRAVELING
FROM PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEWto
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TRAVELING
FROM PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEW
INDIA,
AUROVILLE
Its
always interesting to perceive the atmosphere of another country, another
cultural and mental space. You are leaving the frames of usual life, which is
obvious, and that make you existentially more opened. You feel awaken and must
be more attentive, because surrounding is unknown. It gives the opportunity to
feel better your own being, your presence in culture and in nature, and so to
understand the gist of yourself.
I
was lucky to have such an experience from my childhood, when I was with my
mother in India. It was many years ago, but I well remembered Auroville an
international settlement on the South of India, near the Indian ocean, where
people are going for the spiritual experience. They try to build a new model of
life.
India
today attracts many people. It is charming like as cultural and in the same time
very natural country, keeping her ecology, developers very actively, but still
not becoming technocratic civilization ("dead civilization", as
O.Schpengler said in his book "Sunset of Europe"). In spite of
globalization processes, when many countries copies American way of life and
thinking, India develops its own mode of life, keeping alive thousand-years
spiritual traditions. Western people often can't understand, how can this
agricultural country, with still manual technologies and a milliard population,
take foremost world positions (for example, in computering). Economical science
acquainted to measure level of life of a country by production of material
things for a citizen. But another measure is possible: the feeling of human
happiness. In India it's very high, and of course it's highest in spiritual
centres, in ashrams, for which mother India is the ground.
I'll
tell some words about Auroville. It was built in a spiral form of Milky Way
reminding, that human life should reflects cosmic life. With such idea towns
were constructed in ancient times: for example, Babylon, intended to copy the
organization of the Universe by gods. But it's a very modern idea - to perceive
human being as a part of Cosmos, in which the whole Universe is reflected. The
Universe is infinite, so the human life must ever overcome the death. That's the
main idea of Shri Aurobindo, by the name of which Auroville is named. The centre
of Auroville is Matri Mandir a temple in the form of golden dodecahedron, as
it appeared in dream to his close helper Mother Mira. She was a French, but had
taken her name from an Indian devotee and consecrated her life to spiritual
transformational process.
According
her project, the temple is in the park with the word: "Silence", as
transformational process should take place in a calm. The hall of meditation has
a form of a white globe like an egg, where the future life must
be
born. The excellent acoustics creates an impression of vacuum, where the new
Universe is creating.
Near
the entrance a security was, they didn't wanted to let me to go inside, as it
wasn't permitted to children to go into the meditation hall. But my mother said
that I had an experience of meditation, and they at last allowed. I perceived
there some dual feeling: from the one side, peace and plentitude, giving by the
energy, on the other inner disturbance of moving, like a sense of unknown or
a question, which is born from an answer. It was like an opening eyes for a
moment m own opening of my own
eyes, but the accent was not on myself, but on this answer, from which the
question had been born. I think, my consciousness was awaken for the moment,
that's why I remembered it.
Now,
by philosophical language, I can say, that philosophical task of travels is to
throw us to the other conceptual fields, from reality which is obvious for us --
to another reality, which is obvious for the place that we are visiting. So we
can check our philosophical ideas and compare our world view to another one, and
to find new answers to the fundamental philosophical questions.
As
well as practical: everybody knows the Indian conception of policy
non-violence. Or from the spiritual point of view, that we can understand in
Indian ashrams, another relation to the question of the health arises
dont concentrate on the illnesses, which are the obstacles of energy, but on
the spiritual development that gives the moving of energy and helps to overcome
them.
In
India there are many alternative models of spiritual settlements. In any part of
India you can meet ashrams of different spiritual directions. The ashram
Aurovalley in foothills of Himalayas, that I also visited, develops teaching of
Shri Aurobindo's and Mother Mira. It's important, that different teaching in
India don't compete. They looked to one direction: they are forming models of
the future life and relationships. And I would want to go to India in more
conscious age, with some our students who are interested in India like me, to
see way to the future through them.
Siyana
Shchepanovskaya,
a
student of Philosophical faculty of St.-Petersburg State University, 2013