A Spiritual Journey to the East Experimentation in Alternative Living Among Western Travelers in a Spiritual Community in India Camilla Gjerde Department of Social Anthropology NTNU Spring, 2013 1 A Spiritual Journey to the East Experimentation in Alternative Living Among Western Travelers in a Spiritual Community in India Camilla Gjerde Department of Social Anthropology NTNU Spring, 2013 2 Abstract What makes people from the West pursue happiness and inner self-fulfillment in a spiritual community in India? What triggers people to embark on a spiritual quest, and more importantly, what do they find? This thesis is based on my field trip carried out in a spiritual, intentional and international community called Auroville that is based in Tamil Nadu, south in India. Auroville’s philosophy is founded on the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo (1872- 1959) who assert that man should work towards realizing one’s inner real potentials. Auroville became the place this practice should be realized, and were constructed by Mira Alfassa (1878-1973), Sri Aurobindo’s closest collaborator. Auroville became an experimental city and is dominated by this spiritual discourse that requires its citizens to seek and realize one’s inner self, which is associated with one’s origin and authenticity. I assert that the thought about authentic living and an authentic self found a great resonance amongst my informants, and created a change in their notions about the world. This I argue to be a result of the individual’s ability and will to change – which correspond with the self’s reflexive project in modern contemporary society. There is a need to become who one truly is (Bauman 2000; Giddens 1991; Helaas 2005). In this thesis I highlight how Western visitors – most of them working as volunteers – work with the self by articulating their inner journey in conversations with other visitors. I also investigate how the adoption of new worldviews became significant, where one picked and mixed from different spiritual discourses. One of these worldviews I have chosen to highlight is how nature became understood as being a big part of how one perceived life and authenticity. It became what was ‘real’, without being manipulated or transformed into something it was not. By volunteer work on the land and by practicing gardening new ways of experiencing reality seemed to appear, something that was shared and made explicit amongst the volunteers by incorporating Auroville’s spiritual vision about self-transformation. This fits well with the idea of modern (and Western) man, or the spiritual seeker; as one who chooses, mixes or exchanges different religious, spiritual and secular perspectives, philosophies and different activities, as a kind of spiritual bricoleur who shops from an eclectic spiritual supermarket (Helaas 2005; Kraft 2011). 3 Acknowledgements I want to give a great thanks to all the great people I met on my field trip to Auroville, especially the volunteers that came to live in Buddha Garden Community Farm. Thanks for letting me become part of your inner journey and personal growth. A big thanks to Ganesh for invigorating discussions about Auroville, life, and for helping me through difficult times. Thanks to Gerard for teaching me about karmayoga and giving me an insight into his spiritual life. Thanks to Priya for giving me great advice in the process of my fieldwork, and thanks to Sabine and Maria, who took care of me through my difficult time after the traffic accident I was involved in. Especially I want to thank Daniel for helping me to finish off this thesis. You have helped me in a time when I really needed some inspiration and motivation, and you helped me to clean my text from bad formulations and Norweglish. Also I want to thank my boyfriend, Roger, for supporting me and being patient through this time of writing. You have given me time and affection and focused on my well-being in a way I could only dream of. Thanks also to my friends and family for support and for being patient and believing in me. Also a thanks to my professor, Tord Larsen, for guiding me through the writing process. 4 Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 8 Introduction and Context ............................................................................................................ 9 The Thesis Structure ......................................................................................................... 12 Representing the Field .............................................................................................................. 13 Who Comes to Auroville? ................................................................................................ 22 New Age and Community Living in Auroville ................................................................ 23 New Age and Nature ........................................................................................................ 27 New Age and Work .......................................................................................................... 29 Spirituality and Religion .................................................................................................. 31 Theoretical Perspectives ........................................................................................................... 32 Autobiography and Narrative in Anthropology ............................................................... 33 Metaphors as World-Making ........................................................................................... 35 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 36 The Fieldwork’s Development ......................................................................................... 38 Activities and Arenas ....................................................................................................... 39 The Informants ................................................................................................................. 40 Positioning and Interaction with my Informants .............................................................. 41 Conversations as Social Data ........................................................................................... 42 Chapter 2: Aspiration and Inspiration ................................................................................. 43 Five Stories about Transformation ........................................................................................... 44 This Mirror I get ............................................................................................................... 45 5 Do I Dare to go Native? ................................................................................................... 47 The Need for a Fresh Start ............................................................................................... 48 The Escape from Western Culture ................................................................................... 50 The Desire to Become the Ideal Self ................................................................................ 51 Analyzing the Narratives .......................................................................................................... 53 Escaping the West and Embracing the East ..................................................................... 54 The New World Created New Stories .............................................................................. 55 How the Visitors Inspired Each Other ..................................................................................... 57 Social Impression ............................................................................................................. 61 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 64 Chapter 3: A Re-Connection to Mother Nature .................................................................. 66 The Healing Land in Buddha Garden ...................................................................................... 67 The Mythology of the Land ............................................................................................. 69 The Feminine Creative Force ........................................................................................... 74 A Holistic Approach to Nature ................................................................................................. 77 The Moral behind Nature’s Processes .............................................................................. 78 Making the Plant Come Alive .......................................................................................... 80 The Plants Also Have Feelings ........................................................................................ 80 Man’s Relation to Nature ................................................................................................. 84 The New Concept of Man and Nature...................................................................................... 86