In Auroville there is the International Zone. An area in the city of the future that wants to give different cultures and nations a place to express themselves and come into contact with one another. People in Auroville should be able to experience these different cultures. The whole concept is fairly vague, broadly organized along continental lines, with a few focal points on selected nation-states. Aurobindo wrote something about a number of ‘national souls’; he tried to characterize them. These characterizations, however, date from the first half of the twentieth century.
I have always found the concept of the soul itself very problematic, and the concept of the nation is problematic too. A national soul—what is that supposed to be? And a German one at that. The whole world knows how badly that went in Nazi Germany.
At the core of Aurobindo’s philosophy is the illumination of consciousness. Not merely one’s own subjective consciousness, which since Descartes’ skepticism has remained caught in a reflex of self-assertion, but consciousness itself, as a phenomenon that can be experienced intersubjectively between different forms of life and spaces of spiritual experience. Aurobindo’s philosophy anchors consciousness in a global spirituality, describes it as divine consciousness. For him, consciousness is the starting point of all existence. This consciousness is real and can be experienced. Through a mental and spiritual evolution, we can expand, enrich, and transcend our own consciousness. That always sounds so esoteric, but it really only describes something we observe every day. A human being is born and learns, develops a personality, and grows intellectually, emotionally, socially, creatively, and so on… At some point in the history of Western cultures, rationality gained dominance and discredited everything foreign to it. Taming this rationality and reintegrating it into a holistic context through the practice of yoga is the project of Sri Aurobindo’s Synthesis of Yoga.
Sri Aurobindo anchors his philosophy on seven planes: matter, life force, rational thinking, intellectual worldview, spiritual sensuousness, pure consciousness, and pure existence. One could say that rational thinking lost itself in matter in the twentieth century. But to connect all seven planes, Aurobindo needs the concept of the soul, whose primal image is Purusha. This cosmic soul manifests in individual souls, whether mine or yours, or those of animals and plants, of planets or nations. Everything is permeated by consciousness, everything has an identity, but the languages are very different.
I still find it very difficult to fathom this in its full implications. In the intersubjective sphere it is plausible; in the opening toward spirituality it is an inviting door. When it comes to the German soul, however, I really have my difficulties. And yet there does seem to be something behind the cultural stereotypes. There are friendships and enmities between cultures, peoples, nations, and there are families of cultures and languages, for example the Indo-European language sphere, the Dravidian languages, or Afroasiatic languages, and many others. There are religious spheres of influence that overlap with language areas, cultural areas, and national borders. Behind the complexity of these overlaps, further intermingled by colonialism, globalization, and socioeconomic dynamics, there may nevertheless be a kind of map of different spheres. Such a map can be drawn up, if at all, only in the spirit of Unity in Diversity. This seems to me to be the project of the International Zone. Perhaps the German Pavilion could house a kind of research center for such a map.
—
“Collections with Maps | Maps | Library of Congress”. n.d. Web page. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://www.loc.gov/maps/collections/.
