Organising from Elsewhere Podcast
Welcome to Organising from Elsewhere — a podcast weaving activists, researchers & facilitators in an emergent exploration of how we listen, move, and decide together in a time of global unraveling.
From somatics to science, Indigenous wisdom to systems thinking, we’re reimagining collective action from the ground up — beyond extractive habits, toward relational ways of being. Follow us to join the exploration!
Organising from Elsewhere Podcast
Cultivating Relationality: Seeding Soil and Soul in Auroville’s Living Ecology
In this episode of "Organizing from Elsewhere", Niki sits down with Anshul Aggarwal, a farmer at AuroOrchard in Auroville, India, to explore the deep interconnectedness between land, food, and human consciousness. Anshul shares insights about the spiritual and ecological experiment that is Auroville, the history and mission of AuroOrchard, and his personal journey into farming. They discuss the importance of service to the land, the evolving nature of human consciousness, and the challenges and aspirations of creating sustainable, conscious communities. The episode offers a rich dialogue on reimagining how we grow food, connect with nature, and organize as a society, emphasizing the need for openness, humility, and constant learning.
00:00 Introduction to Interconnectedness and the Land
00:35 Exploring New Ways of Organizing
02:30 Welcome to the Podcast
03:39 Anshul Aggarwal's Journey and Auroville's Vision
06:24 The Role of Food in Human Culture and Consciousness
08:26 Personal Reflections and the Philosophy of Farming
17:28 Interconnectedness and Human Unity
23:24 Spiritual Experiences and Collective Transformation
25:49 Exploring the Concept of Awe and Overwhelm
26:59 Challenges and Constraints in Auroville
28:56 The Role of Community in Overcoming Mental Logic
29:49 Social Issues and Decision Making in Auroville
31:41 Learning and Experimentation in Communities
38:45 The Interconnectedness of Individual and Collective Growth
44:21 The Future of Human Evolution and Posthumanism
49:25 Embracing Openness and Emergence
50:52 Closing Thoughts and Invitation to Dialogue
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My work on the land is in service to the land, but it's also in service to myself because it's not different. If the land grows, I will grow with the land, and if I grow, I will be able to serve the land in a better way. So this is where interconnectedness comes. Are we able to realize that interconnectedness not only at an intellectual level, but as an experience? When I come onto this land, what does it evoke in me that awe? Is it creating that in me every time that I step onto this land to grow food? And then can I transfer that to the food that I'm growing? And can that be them transferred to the people who are eating that food? And can they transfer that in making this place what it is? And can that then support all of us in growing and progressing better and learn more? What if the ways we organize are part of the crisis that we face, and also a key to what comes next? Welcome to organizing from Elsewhere. We're exploring new ways of organizing, ways of listening, moving, and deciding together that can help us navigate the collapse of so much that we hold dear. And work to overcome the systems of extraction and oppression. We believe that at the heart of this social, ecological spiritual crisis is this paradigm of separation, and we are weaving a collective of activists, researchers, and facilitators who are asking, what would it mean to organize from a different assumption an ever evolving emergent experiment. Bridging the fields of science and consciousness decolonizing our thinking about indigenous knowledge and developing somatic facilitation practices to bring about much needed systemic change. This podcast series works like a game of tag. Each guest is invited to become the host for the next episode and choose for themselves a new voice to enrich this exploration. Join us on a journey of reimagining how we work together in collectives, organizations, and social movements. Listen into exciting and unexpected perspectives that have emerged when organizing differently. And stay tuned until the end of the episode where we're excited to unpack and reflect on what has been shared. So take a deep breath and let's dive in. Enjoy this week's conversation.
Podcast w_ Anshul 2-esv2-100p-bg-35p:Hello my name is Nikki. And today I'm sitting down with Anshul Aggarwal. he's someone that I met quite recently. He's a farmer at the AuroOrchard at Auroville. This is quite an extraordinary place that I have wanted to visit for a long time, for many reasons. I've been volunteering at this farm for about a week and had a really wonderful experience and also had some very interesting conversations briefly with Anshu. So I'm really honored to have an hour of your time to dive a bit deeper into some of the topics that we have covered. And I would love to give the floor to you to introduce yourself. And maybe in that introduction you can also situate a bit. What is Auroville, what is AuroOrchard? Where are we right now? In the present moment, we're sitting under a polo tree at the AuroOrchard, so you will hear some noises of birds and insects and yeah, it's a really beautiful spot. So. Yeah, over to you Anshul. Thanks, Nikki. First of all, thanks for ation The pleasure is mine. Yeah, and I'm looking forward to this conversation about where we are, how do we locate ourselves? So we are on the east coast of India in a And we are just in the neighborhood of pond Cherry. And Auroville started in 1968 founded by Mi Al Fasa, who we also called the mother based on the spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, who was an Indian reading fighter and. Later he moved to Cherri and he was a yogi philosopher, poet. And around him the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was created. Mother joined him after a few years of him coming to Escher and, that's like 1900 twenties, early 1920s. And then, since then the ashen got established in early sixties. Mother was already imagining a new model of spiritual community. And she gave it the form of Auroville in 1968 that we founded here. And the goal of Auroville is basically to experiment with a new consciousness and see how that. Manifests on an individual and collective level.. Right? So this is about pushing the boundaries of what humanity is to look at where the evolution of humanities taking us and see how everything organizes itself around that. Our education, our architecture, farming just day-to-day stuff. How does beauty manifest? How does work manifest? How does social relationships manifest? How is it, how does decision making manifest in a city like that? So that's where we are in Auroville and AuroOrchard is the oldest farm of Auroville. It started even, just before Auroville started, and mother got the land and called Gerard, who is already working with the astro. And I said, look, we are starting this town for a future humanity, and people are going to come from everywhere in the world and we need to grow food for them. So will you help me grow food for our world? That was a message, that was a direction that was a mission given to Gerard for this land. So, our watch is basic, simply just that we are growing food for all oil. Now what does that mean? Is a discovery in itself and it's a process in itself of first of all what does food mean for community dedicated to evolution of consciousness? What does food mean? Or what does growing food mean for a community that is aspiring to grow its own consciousness for its advancement of consciousness? So. These are questions. I cannot say that we have figured all this out. We are working, we are trying to understand ourselves, what is our place in all of this? But more or less that's our aspiration. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I would love to ground it into this topic of food a bit further as, One of the quotes you had that I wrote down, which was really interesting was food has been central in defining and being defined by human cultures. So the way we orient and organize ourselves around food historically has been very important in how we develop as civilizations as collectives, as communities. And at the same time, our cultures now are also heavily in influencing the way our food is being grown. So it's like this mutual feedback between our cultures and producing food for ourselves. And like you said, in a way it can be very simple. That what we're doing here is growing food for Auroville. But I'm sure that there's so much complexity in what that actually means in terms of how we relate to the land and what kind of culture we're trying to cultivate in connection to our food and plants and natural ecosystems that we are actually part of. And it's interesting to talk to you because like I understand there is probably very little answers, and we talked about this before. There is just a lot of questions and this is completely fine and to, and very valuable for us as organizing from elsewhere because we're also in the phase of we need to learn by doing and experimentation is the best form of doing that. And so being this, in this experimental township that's Auroville, but also in Oral Orchard, that is experimenting with bringing the ideas of consciousness and the divine and spirituality. Together with practical things like matter and food and biology and things that nourish us. I'm really interested to be Understanding what have been your questions so far, and maybe placing a bit of how long have you been an or orchard, what brought you personally to this place in your journey? And yeah, what have you learned? What questions have you uncovered for yourself and maybe what were the potentials that you saw in or, orchard specifically with the topics that are interesting and important to you. I, mm. so I've been in or orchard for six years now and uh, I was farming before that. I was in Al for a while. I was in al for a while. My wife and I were farming there. And then we finally decided to move Oli. And I think my entry into this whole thing was, perhaps very selfish. I graduated as an engineer and I was on that track of, the conventional mainstream kind of a thing. And that's when I came into contact with, and I realized that 20 years of education that I've, I've spent my life in education, but I don't know anything. And I, I mean, I don't know even the basics of life, like growing my food, building my house even cooking to some extent. Like what do we know? So. I think that sort of put me on this path of like, I want to build my house. I want to grow my food, and I want to be in the mountains somewhere and not interact with this world which is going to ship. This is, there is no redemption kind of a thing. So starting from there I realized that, it's a, and it's, I think a lot of people dream of that. The world is becoming more and more complex. The solutions are not easy. Even we don't know what the questions are anymore and what the problems are anymore. And the more we feel that we know, the more complicated is becoming right. So I think it's, it makes sense like, yeah, if you can get out and, be peaceful somewhere, you should just do that. The problem with that is that first of all, obviously it doesn't change anything. The world is still the same. And second, there is no growth there. Hmm. so I was feeling like, I'm not engaging in the world but I'm still forced to engage with the world, right? So, I can't completely be cut off also. So I'd rather than participate than being a passive sort of because you can't just be completely passive also, right? So, so that was my sort of dilemma. That was a tension and um, from being this backyard gardener to, okay, I will grow my food and I will just do my thing. I thought that I needed to learn a bit more about agriculture, like what does growing food really mean? And um, I had questions about who's farming and how, what kind of knowledge is there, what kind of knowledge is being shared now. How do farmers know what they know or to know how have they come up with all this stuff? So that took me on a journey of a lot of travel, meeting different farmers, different and indigenous cultures. I think the farming situation in the world is quite dire. First of all, like you said, there is this changing culture uh, that we are all going through and that is changing our food. Food today is not something that is seen as sacred is a commodity, right? So it's something that you just buy. If you have enough money, you can buy food and you can eat it. There's a figure about one out of seven people in this world are suffering from malnutrition or hunger. And the complimentary figure for that is one outta seven people is obese, right? So it's not about lack of food, it's just a problem of distribution. And as long as food is linked with money and stays like a commodity, somebody will always have less access to it. So, it's not just about self-sufficiency, but it's also about a relationship with land, relationship with our bodies, relationship with even our communities, right? So it's now we are getting interested in organic food that because you want to be healthy. But still, food is not just about keeping us healthy. It's a very vital part of our relationship to everything else outside of us. I mean in, in The western religion, we have this story of Christ. Tating his body as bread and his blend as wine. And when the Catholics, they have the communion, when they eat the bread and eat the wine there, it's like an offering BlueCrest. In Eastern traditions, you have this idea of, in the, that is you have the sacrifice of the animals, right? So there is an offering. So the animals are food for the people, right? These are offerings to the God. So I'm not justifying the ritual idea around animal ethics and all of that. But I'm just saying that the consciousness of food has developed over time from this idea of sacrifice of the body as an offering to something much higher than us, right? So when we eat something, it's a sacrifice of whatever we are eating. To the divine, which is in our body to the divine, which is outside of us. So if you look at that, principle of food be completely lost today. Yeah. Yeah. We don't even have enough time to eat now. We have business lunches, which you can do in 15 minutes, 20 minutes. We have all these rapid service providers who bring food very quickly, and then you can eat it quickly and then you can just get on with the world. So definitely there's a huge change in the culture of food. How does it impact our consciousness? how does it redefine what human being is, is a question. Yeah. Right. So when I came to Auroville, I think immediately when I, you know, heard the story about mother asked or Orchard to grow food for Auroville I had this question like, okay, what does it really mean when you say grow food for a community like this? That really. Allowed me to imagine a bit more and say, okay, maybe we can look at food as a vehicle of consciousness as a vehicle of even evolution of consciousness. And not just something material, not say something uh, a hundred kilos of something. Right? What kind of energy am I putting in the food? And even a farmer, what kind of aspiration does the farmer have when they are going to food? Right? They're not just stealing the land and producing something and doing it away their life, their blood, the sweat uh, their energy is embodied in the food. So the farmers are actually not only just giving care to the land, but also giving life to food in a way, and offering this as the sacrifice of their own bodies to the community, right? So I think those are the kind of. Questions on how do we do this with full awareness, mindfulness and what does it mean, what does self-sacrifice mean in today's time for food for community? Those are the kind of questions that I meditate on. I can it. Okay. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. It's interesting to reflect on the vastness that is actually in these basic necessities that we cannot even create systemic structures around to provide to people as a basic need. But even besides the fact that this is something that we need just to nourish ourselves and survive, it's also the energy that we put into our body and like the fact that what we put in is part of who we are is something that I feel is not really visible in how we relate to food or how food is centered around our societies. As like you said, it's a commodity when actually, if you take this idea of the divine consciousness, it means that there is this interconnection between what we are putting inside and our entire being and that there is no separation between this as we are living breathing organisms. And when you spend time in a farm like this, for example, it becomes very apparent that everything around is part of who we are. And I feel that in Auroville or in AuroOrchard in general, there is that uh, relationality with our food systems. Because in the West I have been involved in many agricultural archeological initiatives and there is like this practical dimension in everything still. Even if we are trying to transform how. We are producing food and creating complex systems and trying to work with nature. We still don't see nature as something that we are actively part of and contributing in. And this is where this spiritual felt sense of interconnectedness actually circulates here in ways that I don't necessarily feel that much in my previous experiences or like, this is something that feels quite taboo to bring into a system oriented around providing a need to human beings. So I'm curious how you find that as we describe it as interconnectedness, but I'm sure there's a lot of words that you can use that are different to, how do you bring that into how we produce food and yeah. I guess I'm curious about also how you are organizing yourselves in this farm, specifically around that as an idea. And what can we learn from being in direct contact with the land into how we can organize our human cultures, or what are the next steps in doing that of like reintegrating back to living systems and us being a part of that? Yeah, so I, I have been farming now for 11 years and I have been in touch with the soil. I have learned more about myself then. Funny. I think there is, you know, you talked about interconnectedness. There is this whole sort of new view of ecos psychology, which is talking about of course interconnectedness. We're all the same panpsychism or whatever you wanna call it. I think you can look at it from different perspectives, right? One, you can look at it purely from energetic energetics that we are all energy and energy is transforming from one form to the other. And this tree is energy and energy. The soil is energy and yeah, we are just sort of moving, right? So we are all the same anyway. Um, Or I'm curious if be the same as what it is, not necessarily what I mean by interconnectedness, because of course we're all not the same. And that was also something that was brought up in some of your sharings of like. in Auroville, there is this sense of like, human unity and like this idea, we're all the same, but through farming you realize that yeah, there are hierarchies and there are differences and there's diversity and maybe, tweaking this sense of interconnectedness doesn't necessarily mean we're all the same, but what does that actually mean in your words? Yeah. So I think uh, the, the perspective there is about niches, right? In ecology we talk about niches. Every element in our system has its own niche, right? And it's not about what is up, what is above, what is lower, and what is better or worse or whatever. It is just a different niche for each and every ade. And I think if we look at the natural systems or let's say a tree, as a tree, and say that's it's niche. A tree grows for 50 years, a hundred years. Gives abundant fruit, has deep roots creates shade, creates a different kind of microclimate and can, facilitate making a forest, et cetera. That's its niche. We have to realize what is our niche in the natural system, right? So we have a role in the natural system. I mean, Farming, you know, we talk about natural farming. Farming is not natural, right? Farming itself is not natural. So this whole idea of natural farming is a paradox. If human beings decided to create a kind of system where they can cultivate what they want to eat, rather than just taking from the wild and foraging, then that is part of our revolution. That's part of our consciousness of where we want to go with this relationship, right? And how do you do that? So we have somehow, I also learned to do that in a good way. Um, Amazon is probably a very good example. It's a manmade forest. So how did we do that? And how are we able to then, in the last 60 years, a hundred years, 200 years able to destroy our soils in the way that we had? And how are we reaching a point where our soils are not producing anything where, so farmers are suffering, where the communities are suffering, where the whole culture of food is deteriorating, right? So I think the part of interconnectedness is to realize that we have a role of service in this whole system of course we are serving our communities because we need, as farmers, we are growing food for them. so we need, need to look at what is it that the community needs? What can I grow that will give the maximum nourishment in terms of biology, in terms of even the spiritual food, just to keep our communities together and alive. I have also a relationship of service to through land because this is what is offering this is, like I said about the sacrifice, right? Is the sacrifice of the land to give this as an offering to us as part of the divine. So what am I sacrificing for the land? What is my offering to the land? Right? So I think it's really about shifting from a sense of exploitation and sense of, I can take this from the land to a sense of service that what am I offering as service to the land? Because the connection is there, the ness is there. I think. Now it's fairly, is been talked about in different ways and a lot. So I don't think there's anybody who's questioning the connectedness, interconnectedness of these elements. I think what is the relationship like? So even within an interconnection, there is a relationship what are the attributes of the relationship? I think those are important to define or at least question and explore and nuance them a bit more and add maybe a new kind of vocabulary to that, to understand that better. So. Okay. Also, you brought up, the idea of human unity in ville. And the idea of sameness. Like I said, there are niches. So to say that everybody's equal, I think is again in disservice to the community because everybody's not equal. Some people, some elements in the system need much more care than the others. We all have privilege, to the extent that sometimes we don't even know. So to deny that completely and say everybody's the same is not very helpful. I think the idea of unity is also not that people are always together. Yeah. I think the unity that, the way I understand is, it's a unity of the human with something. Yeah. Much higher than the human. Because if, if you have that unity, then everything else is unified anyway. Right? I, I don't think we can create human unity on a social level. You can't do that. It's impossible that human unity on a social level only come if there is human unity at the spiritual level because things start there. The transformation starts there. And then it trickles down to all these mundane, practical material life. and most of our problems are related to, us feeling that we can somehow create an intervention in the social structures and that will bring about a change, but it doesn't work. I have not seen, maybe for a very short time, but it's not sustainable because we fall back into the same psychological packing. We fall back into the same uh, mindsets, which has not changed. Right. It is not transformed. And for that transformation something else is required completely. Something else. Something else from somewhere else. Somewhere else. Yeah. Can you speak into a bit more into what that is or is does it feel completely like out of reach or out of grasp? I don't think it's out of reach. I think We all have experience of that. I mean, Have you had an experience where you were completely overwhelmed by something? Not in a bad, of course, could be bad one, so, but like just beauty or something that you see and you just has it happened to for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I think for me, you know, I've had some of those experiences and that sort of gives us a glimpse of, something that is completely beyond us and what is happening to us in that moment also is not something that we can articulate, right? It's an experience which is very, very strange. What is happening could be something mundane, could be something extraordinary, but our response to it is something completely inexplicable. So, that's one thing. And I also think that a spiritual experience is not something completely out of bounds. It just needs, I think some kind of, it, it needs a cultivation of, can be a practice, can be an openness can be listening quietening down the mind, the body our thoughts, whatever. Different things work for different people, but I think we have to be open for it because it it's already there, right? It's not like a we have to wait for the thunder to strike or something. It's, It's always al already there. It's about, and it's not about waiting for something to happen. I think, I think the work is on us. Can I prepare myself to experience that as often as possible? As much as possible. And what do I need to do for that? So the practice will be very different for me and it'll be very different for you. Because you have your culture background conditioning biases on all of that, and I have my own stuff going on. So I think it's a kind of a higher intuitive power that we need to cultivate. which we have glimpses of, I think, and now more and more people are getting glimpses of that because I think collectively humanity is sort of ripe for this to happen, or at least we are getting there somehow. So this is a good time for that. But yeah. Are we able to use that opportunity? Is a question. Yeah. How do we somehow enhance the possibilities on a collective level for these opportunities to, to show up? Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You always end with the exact question where I'm like, now can you answer that question please? Because this is our question as well is like, what are the spaces and like the cultures that we're trying to cultivate, understanding that we have very deep constraints in really creating systems that flourish in a way of like what you're, what you've been talking about, of this feeling of awe or overwhelm. It almost sounds like a trance state, and I'm sure many people have that experience in many different forms and have different words to describe that, but I'm like, how do we create such a state in a way that we can also use that not as a separate experience that we then have as, as one off, but how do we bring this. Feeling, and I think a lot of what you're talking about of being in service and understanding that there's forces and balances that you are actively part of can help us feel connected to that feeling more on an individual self, but also how to bring that more to the collective, which was the question that you ended with. And that's why I'm more interested in places like Auroville, which in many ways are offering something around that. But I also understand that there are similarly constraints here and things that don't work and certain limitations. And yeah, maybe instead of answering what how to do this, we can also bring into question what is holding us back, or in specifically in Auroville, what are the things that are also limiting of the idea that the mother in Rio Bindu had then? And many people that I speak to are like, we're not there yet. We're trying our best, but something is still holding us back. So yeah. You being here much longer than I am, I'm curious if you have anything to share around that. yeah it's, it's probably right. Like we are not there yet. and everything that I'm saying, I'm including myself in it. I'm not saying that I'm I've figured it out and I'm completely in sync with everything that is happening. Our ego is still quite strong and we need a strong ego, but, you know, we are a lot is going on in our world back now um, socially, culturally, politically, biologically, there's just so much that to put everything into perspective it's very challenging, especially when you're coming from the paradigm of the mind, right? Which is you know, the legacy of our generation. And like we, we've taken that, right? We grew up in that paradigm of completely just believing everything that we can address through the mind. Our education is completely that.. So there are a lot of things that we cannot understand. There are a lot of things that we cannot imagine if we just bind ourselves to the limitations of the mind. Can we move beyond that? Yes, we can. But again how do we underline this whole thing, right? And we need a lot of help. We need a lot of support. And for that we need a community. So I think where Auroville is. I think that's why also mother created Auroville. It was not like to invite people who have a highest, consciousness. It was to create a setting where people can experiment with. So, when you're in a community, you can support each other with certain things, because how do you unlearn mental logic? You have to just work, right? And you have to show that you can work from a different space that you can create from a space which is beyond the mindd. this is what people have done here in the last 50 years. We all just created, they've created forests, they've created buildings, they've created projects, whatever, right? Soaps and paper and all sorts of creative explorations have happened with something else in mind, not just mental logic. So. I think a community like Auroville is very, very valuable from that perspective. Where it doesn't work is that even though we are experimenting with all that, we are still human beings and we are still confronted with our own challenges and limitations, and we are not completely outside of that. So we still have social issues, we have issues of discrimination. We have issues of not being able to take decisions collectively or even we have this aspiration that we are going to take decisions in consensus, but what does consensus really mean? how can we ensure that consensus is not imposed on the marginal voices? Mm-hmm. So there are a lot of questions there and I think it requires a lot of patience, a lot of Committed and continuous work on these issues. So I think for Auroville also, this is a stage where probably this is happening. Like Auroville went from this sort of ecological, a lot of work in the first 30 years, 40 years was around ecology, right? Just to create an environment so that people could actually just be, there needed to be a material comfort somewhere, right? Because otherwise the basic needs of life are not available. Once that was done, I think Auroville is then moving towards the social, like there was a lot in the last 10 years a lot of work has been done on decision making and how do communities come together and talk about different topics and how we discuss and et cetera, et cetera. The events of the last couple of years in Ville have disrupted the natural flow and something else is happening, which is part of the same movement. But the main. Question right now in Auroville is about how does Auroville organize itself? Whether with the government, without the government, with people, without the people, whatever it is. How does the organization of Auroville work? And I think once that has been figured out a little bit to some extent, you know, this is basic day-to-day stuff, then we can probably focus on something more. So our is a long project, so I don't imagine this will come easy. I think you were saying, like how is this possible on a collective level? I think we need more and more communities of learning not just talking because we also have the need of sharing and we see that now quite a bit on social media that people come together spontaneously and they talk about stuff that they care about. But I think many communities that are based on creating. even if they're not living together. Because in that creation I think there's a different experience than just share reflective, right? So once we do that, I think we can experiment with these new ideas and new forms of knowing we were talking about initially, a different ontology and I think different ontologies is only possible with a different epistemology completely. Right? So what are those epistemologies and how do I know that I have access to these ways of knowing? Different ways of knowing. So that can only come in practice while experimenting and stuff. And I think if we have a community that learns together, these things can be worked on. Which is something that Auroville offers, yeah. Very nice bridge because. Part of what we are really actively exploring there is this whole facilitation framework that we wanna develop and like how to incorporate these different ways knowing, but a whole part of the project is actually how do we listen and learn differently than, how we are socialized and educated to do so in a way that whatever new experiences we have, we don't take them and assimilate them into the same patterns of knowing that we have grown up with. And yeah, this is part of the project that I find my heart is in as well. Where a lot of steps have to be taken back before we start feeling like we are ready to integrate this new knowledge. It's like firstly, how do we make space for challenging every single thing we know and how do we listen from a place without assimilating anymore? And this is where working with communities of different ontologies, of these ontologies, of interconnectedness that are for them. This is not something to teach. This is just a way of existing and living and being so us that we are like starting to understand the value of that, trying that out ourselves, but also creating power structures where we are extracting and exploiting knowledge in different ways of knowing from indigenous communities, how do we do that? Is a question that we have that is really big right now? And I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, I mean, we talked about food being a commodity. Even knowledge has become a commodity, right? So experiences have become commodities. So we have this whole uh, generation which wants to experience everything, wants to travel everywhere. And, we, we can be a hundred and thousand things today, right? So I think the question is what do we really need to know? And yeah. And what do you do with knowledge? What do you do with that? Once you have that knowledge, what do you do with it? Um, Because knowledge in the way that we know of knowledge right now is already there. Everything is there on YouTube on. Internet, you can find each and everything. AI is giving you all sorts of different all sorts of things. I think what AI doesn't have is the creative power, right? So if knowledge is used to create something, I think that has value. And again, creation with this mindset of service, right? So when we come back to the same thing creation for what, not creation again to feed the same commodity consumption cycle, but creation and service to something. So then we can access, we have the world in front of us. We can access indigenous cultures. How does that knowledge. Apply to what I want to create. What is the authenticity that I'm offering to the world, right? And what is the knowledge that I need to be able to do that work in the best possible manner? Then it has some context, then it has some meaning. So I think the biggest sort of question in front of us would be then what is the purpose for each and every one of us, right? Because the kind of knowledge that you will need in your life is different from the kind of knowledge I need in my life. And the way you will acquire that knowledge will depend on the kind of knowledge that you need, right? and we can only do that if we know what we are working towards. And that again, comes from a community of learning where everybody feels safe to express themselves, to explore themselves, to try out different things, to experiment, and so on. Our culture of education is not that at all. We are being asked to become standardized follow rules, follow norms that are said by somebody somewhere for whatever reason, right? So individual expression, even though we are a completely individualistic culture right now, the expression of the individual is not there. We are scared of that also. we are kind of, a very strict collective of individuals where we maintain a certain kind of individualism, but it has to maintain only in that form because otherwise it threatens our capitalist system, right? It is not completely individual, is not completely free. It is bound by the capitalist forces and the, framework that it offers. So. there's this conversation about, oh, our culture is very individualistic and we need to move towards collectivism and all of that. I think there is some truth to that, but I think if you really take individualism to extreme and you talk about individual freedom, we are nowhere close to that. Nowhere close to that. Is everybody in this world able to express themselves in the way they need to express themselves? I don't think so. I don't think so. So, I think we need to re-question this idea of what is individualism and um, how can we create a collective where individualism is possible? Because we need to express ourselves, otherwise we are not going to um, keep quiet just because we're in collective. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of attention being like the individual is a bad thing. This is like underpinning the separation that we are experiencing on many different levels. But it's also like if I look back into natural systems and agriculture farming or like a forest, I'm also thinking there are certain individuals there, but how are they connecting and what relationship do they have? Like the, they are an individual, but that would not exist without the relationships that are there around supporting that individual. But that doesn't mean the individual is not there. Like a plant maybe can be considered an individual, maybe not also subjective question, but yeah. I'm wondering how does that translate? Like how we can again, listen and learn from natural systems and see them as guides on how we can also create social and cultural systems where humans are the center of this. Speaking into this idea of individual, but connected to a collective. But actually what it boils down to is relationality. And also you mentioned earlier like this idea of plurality. So maybe you can speak more into that. Yeah. So, you know, if you look at the natural systems, a tree expresses itself in a very different way from a bird or from a hook or a grass or ave or whatever. And again, this does not make the tree better or worse than anything else, right? It's just in Indian uh, philosophy, there's this word called so herma. It's one's own herma, right? Like herma fires to burn the herma waters to flow. So if you stop this, if you constrain this, if you limit this, there will be some trauma in that system, right? There is, the energy is not going to flow. Harmony is not going to help, right? So even in individual system, social systems, human systems, each person has his or her own. So, and this is also part of, you know, Auroville's goal to allow people to grow here and develop their own. So, and I think this is something that we can learn from nature. We can learn this from also especially Indian philosophy. There's a lot of conversation about this how each and every element that is created is a divine manifestation in that form. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason why the tree becomes a tree, and there's a reason why I become who I am, and you become who you are. And it's our responsibility then to take this manifestation to its highest culmination, right? So by curtailing your freedom, by not allowing you to express yourself fully, what am I actually stopping? I'm stopping my own manifestation. So this is where interconnectedness comes. Are we able to realize that interconnectedness not only at an intellectual level, but as an experience where your growth, your progress, your manifestation is linked to my growth, my progress may manifestation, and the same way the growth of the land, the health of the land is linked to my health, not because it's giving me food that I eat and then I'm okay, but just as a whole, as an integral view, having a land which is healthy in terms of its vegetation, in terms of its soil, whatever that is, right? When I come onto this land, what does it evoke in me that awe right? Is it creating that in me every time that I step onto this land to grow food? And then can I transfer that to the food that I'm going? And can that be them transfer to the people who are eating that food? And can they transfer that in making this place what it is? And can that then support all of us in growing and progressing better and more and learn more? So it's really about first of all, understanding that our evolution is linked to each other. I'm, I'm, I cannot suddenly become enlightened and, be on top of a mountain while everybody else is suffering. We are in a collective evolutionary process and our progress is very deeply linked to the progress of everything else So, my work on the land is. In service to the land, but it's also in service to myself because it's not different. If the land grows, I will grow with the land, and if I grow I will be able to serve the land in a better way. Right? And this is also the game between individual and collective. The individual is growing. What is collective? Collective is just a collection of the individuals. So if the individual grows, the collective grows, and as the collective is growing, it should be able to allow the individual to grow as well. Right. So I feel like this whole conversation about collectivism, individualism I don't think there should be any imposition. I think people are at very different levels of evolution, very different levels of growth and progress, and there should be space for each and every person to explore that. If they want to take 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, then that's how it's, it is, and you can't force this. We can't, we can't change people. We can change ourselves. We can try to change ourselves. That's all that we have in our hands. Right? and perhaps we can create a culture, we can create an organization, we can create a community, we can create a space where other people can come in and feel supported to do the same, right. To explore themselves, to, if they want to change or if they want to learn something, they're able to do that. I think finally that's all that is in our hands in terms of our participation in the world. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And it's also a bit humbling to be. Aware of the fact that evolution happens naturally. And there is this paradigm of like, I need to change something. I need to change this person. And then this person will change this and then the world will change and this direction that we so deeply feel is needed. But yeah, there's also something around the humility of like, we are evolving and there are cultural movements that are happening. And you mentioned this previously that it feels, and a lot of people are feeling, I think that we are in it right now and there is like this hoing what is, what needs to naturally die off and then creating this seeds of renewal of something. Maybe not even completely new, something from before and something new. And all of these things merging together to create a natural progression of where we are going. And I guess my last question would be more looking into the vision of like, how do you see this cultural evolution moving towards, or like this idea of human evolution. what are we evolving into in relationships? Maybe to the land, but also beyond? Yeah. Maybe we can end a bit of like a sea of looking forward as well. Yeah. Yeah. In his. Sort of exploration of human evolution. He believed that human being is not the last rung of the ladder of evolution. And we will be surpassed, right? And we have to be because we are not perfect. We are making all these mistakes and, we are struggling so much, for basic stuff. and nature is not stupid. I mean, look, Look around us, right? So all this has happened over the last 4 billion years apparently. We did not decide that we had to come from chimpanzees. We did not decide that life had to be created. This is not human beings doing it. So nature itself is creating more and more complexity. So it'll happen at some point. Whether human beings are gonna be part of it or not, is a question, right? And there again, I think, we talk about. Self sustenance and we have to maintain humanity. Why? If it is not required in the natural evolution of things, then yeah, maybe human beings are not gonna be part of it. Something else will be. So that is one thing. But even within the paradigm of the human, we are being asked to push our boundaries, right? We are being asked to like, like we talked about this idea of the mind. We are being asked to expand what our mind is. Expand our ontology, expand our epistemology. So there is this idea of the posthuman, what is coming after the human. so there are different ways of looking at posthuman as well. You can think of posthuman as, posthuman, centrism, like where everything is not centered around the human. So a paradigm where. We are in service. We are in relationship to everything part of the system, but not necessarily at the center of it. But also post our definition of what human is like, the fundamental meaning of what it means to be human which is this body, this mind, our social structures. Families are a professional career. Whatever we have developed over the last how many ever million years to understand as what is human right. I don't know what it is going to be. I think we are seeing we are seeing a deep need for that. A deep dissatisfaction with the way things are and a preparedness at least mentally spiritually. To say that this is enough, we need something else completely. We don't have the answers. And also we don't have the answer because, we are still using the mental logic to come up with that answer, which is not going to happen. Like we are creating, going to create the same things again and again. So, and we are doing that also. We are trying, we're failing and then we're trying the same thing and, something else and we are failing. But I think it's a part of the process. We are getting there through all this trial and error. Finally, like I said, I think it's about being open to the possibilities. Because if nature is evolving and if nature is creating all these mutations changes, why do we have to take all the responsibility? If we could just do our thing and keep ourselves available to change member, perhaps change will happen. I think we put in too much investment in having things in a certain way. And sometimes that messes with the grand scheme of things. Yeah. Right. So this is what I also meant, the idea of, like when you were asking why things don't work in auto oil, there is still our ego there because we have, so we have invested so much here. Not me personally, but people that invested so much here, their life, their, yeah, their entire being. Right. So sometimes you're attached to that idea of like what it means when you have given 30, 40, 50 years of your life, or even 10, five years, three years of your life you want it to go in a certain way where you want our world to become this, but how do we know it has to become this only and not something else. So I think this requires a very different mindset where we are constantly just open to anything, all the possibilities. And perhaps this is one of the qualities of the posthuman that you're. Always available for change, always available for something to work through you and create something else which you have not imagined, which you cannot comprehend even. Yeah. And again, that's something that can be in our hands. Everything else is going to be just intellectual work of thinking what it can be, I feel. So knowing that our control, is limiting and it is not creating something good for us. Right. So to give up control and then see what, happens. So this is what we try to do a little bit on the farm as well. Yeah. There is a vision, there is planning, there is we have a plan every day and we know what direction we wanna take. But we try also to be open to things and to life and yeah, we have a big team, so nature is working through all of them. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not good. Again, how do I know what is good and what is not good? But I feel that's a very rewarding process of learning. great. Yeah, part of that openness that you spoken about, it's been quite an invitation really for me and other volunteers to really to see what hap can happen through us being in this place, in this specific time. See what, what can emerge and you. Have offered the opportunity for emergence. And that has been a bit of like, it's a confronting to do that as well because you're like, but what you want to know? What is the value? What am I delivering? What is, what will be done with this? And sometimes it is just sitting with the fact that we don't know, but whatever is happening is happening because of where we are right now. And that has a value. So yeah, I see this conversation as a product of a beautiful space for emergence that you have offered and my opportunity to be here. And I thank you very much for making a time for it. Yeah, if there's anything else you want to share, otherwise I'm happy to close. Thank you. Thank you for being here, for offering your energy and time and yeah. I think one part of this community of learning is dialogue. We need to keep talking, and talking, not just in, in a manner of talking, but also dialoguing and conver conversing with each other, with the environment developing a different kind of language also to understand and to experience some of this. So thank you so much. Thank you.
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