sanctuary, a haven of peace, a propitious place for the meditation and for the introspection. We were able to meditate widely on our own situation and the one of the beings that we were going to meet and sometimes have a more formal contact, originating from the Âshram or beside. The Âshram, it is not Auroville, it is really something else, it is really an other vibration and form of life. The Samâdhi reminded us as a hive with the sweetened and secured beauty that this creation gesture can bring with it in its regularities rhythms. Yet the Queen is no more there, maybe only in the sacred secret of the beings who come there to look for a contact or a presence. The devotional rite and the living of the Bhakti are act and commitment which appeared so essentially sacred and consequent in the spirit of this Yoga; we did not always catch the accuracy of this approach so formalized sometimes in its rite as it happened and happens sometimes at the Samâdhi, approach sometimes pretty conventional (but it is true, why not?), and this particularly, in the spreading infatuation of the ‘spiritual tourism’ and those crowds floods*(3. See Notes page 32) at the last Darshan (21st of February, where we went), which, in their proportions, appear more and more consequent to come and prostrate at the Samâdhi; we can be tempted to ask the question in front of such an integral and rigorous commitment asked from this Yoga at an individual level : –“Would not this kind of Bhakti be the premises of a religious layer of Bhakti which would have no more to do with this so incisive, demanding and original aspect of the Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ?” There, maybe, the germ of a tacit acceptation of diversion and adrift, at the benefit of who and of what ?…The question, as it seems for us, stays open. Meanwhile, we would like so deeply that every genuflexion, every offering of His own presence in the present of the Moment would be the only essential gesture of the sacrifice of the Works, same Works which took the bodies of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and of the ones who aspire to this so deeply and divinely necessary Truth to Become and be at last.
As in each place, even — and especially — the most centred towards the divine quest, we have there encountered what we discover usually in humanity — and our Lord knows how much imagination and humour — namely some good and not so good, sometimes a certain kind of beauty, of presence, a simplicity indeed even a natural kindness or in any case an amiability emanating from certain beings (from what I know, they are no particular qualities of this Yoga, in any case not essential, but it helps !), as also from others certain types of arrogance more or less virtuous sufficiently exaggerated and prohibited, indeed even some self-importance, at the best (?) condescension, but never with this pretension, this rudeness and this vulgarity that we can meet in Occident or in the places where this majority population