AVI 2001 in St. Petersburg

Sunday afternoon, 24 June

- Report by Friederike -

Dear friends,

How strange it feels to be back in my office in Hamburg some hours ago, we, that is our AVI Germany group of 8 people, left the beautiful Znamenka Palace Hotel in the outskirts of St. Petersburg after very few hours of sleep only. As always on our annual AVI meetings, the last evening stretched longer and longer.. Saying goodbye to all dear friends after a week of experiencing the warmest 'family-feeling' is an intense and sometimes not so easy business.

Some of the participants in this week's meeting

Luckily the sun was already shining brightly when we stumbled out of our beds around 5 am. When we met an hour later at the entrance to hop on the bus, we had a last good laugh seeing our good friend Aurovilian Bobby and four sweet Russian graces orbiting the park.

..we had a last good laugh seeing our good friend Aurovilian Bobby and four sweet Russian graces orbiting the park..

Now I would like to take up the thread of Tine´s first glimpses on what happened on Saturday, June 23, our last official meeting day.

Saturday, June 23

Theme of National Pavilions

First Aurovilian Sergej, member of the International Zone team, stressed the importance of clearly defining the aims for the work on the national pavilion theme. The first and all embracing theme involves the inner work of those connected: in this case the searching for and contacting of the soul of Russia, as we are not striving for a superficial unity but, as the Mother put it, for the essential spirit of the soul of a nation which is to be expressed by the national pavilion of the country concerned. Sergej also stressed that contacts with the Russian government should be established as, for the country as a whole, after so many years of materialism (first in the form of communism and for the last decade in its westernised capitalistic form), it is a question of life and death to return to the level of the Soul..

Sri Aurobindo highly esteemed by Russian intelligentsia

In the subsequent discussion about Russian church orthodoxy, a research carried out by the Ministry of Education was quoted which said that only 5% of the Russian intelligentsia can be called orthodox. The church has its stronghold in the rural people and, generally speaking, still acts in the same way as in tsarist and also in communist times, i.e. as a power instrument of the government, for example by blacklisting spiritual movements outside the church.
On the other hand the writings of Sri Aurobindo are highly esteemed inside the intelligentsia and are regarded by many as the basis for a new educational movement.

Spiritual vacuum

Wolfgang Schmidt-Reinecke, chairperson of the Auroville International Association and key person of AVI Germany, pointed towards a parallel situation we face in Germany: there was a similar spiritual vacuum after World War II because the spiritual aims deeply rooted in the German soul were so bluntly perverted by the Nazis.

After the war, only one official mainstream 'spirituality' was supported, which was Christianity. And, in more recent years, we, in Germany, too experience a fairly large movement of people looking for alternatives. And our Christian churches also try to denounce every movement outside their fields of activity as being a sect. Wolfgang quoted a research carried out in the U.S., saying that about one-third of the overall population in the Western world is prepared for an integral vision. Sri Aurobindo´s Integral Yoga was even mentioned in that particular research report.

The ideal of human unity

Michael Bonke, of the Aditi publishing house in Russia and co-organiser of this meeting, reminded us of the inauguration ceremony of Auroville in 1968, when somebody approached the Mother and expressed his concern that the Soviet Union might not participate because of the sentence in the Charter: ".. to live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness." The Mother responded that for the Russians it should be translated by "Widest Consciousness" as words didn´t really matter and the participation of the SU was crucial. So, if we now want to win the cooperation of governments for Auroville, we should, perhaps, also be flexible, and refer to UN and UNESCO, by highlighting Auroville`s work for the ideal of human unity first.

Observations from participants

In the following sharing of impressions of the different Russian groups -the St. Petersburg Aditi group, the friends from Moscow, from Byelorussia, from the Ukraine, from Kazakhstan- wonderful thoughts and impressions were expressed, like:

"The new Russia has to be built along the ideal of brotherhood,"
"Attending this meeting was like visiting Auroville again",
"I read a lot about human unity, but here I experienced it,"
"It is more than symbolical that in the first year of the new millennium the meeting is taking place in Russia," [and I would add: in its second year in the USA!]
"Mother´s force became more and more tangible in the high spirit of oneness we experienced here," and
"I would like to thank all participants that they came to bring energies from their home countries for our budding Russian centres."

Then the other AVI centres were asked, by our sweet chairing Aurovilian Bindu, to give their impressions. Bindu expressed for all of us how grateful we are for the immense efforts our hosts spent on making this meeting become a great success.

Sharing session

First Tineke spoke on behalf of the Aurovilians saying that in her everyday work in Auroville she more or less stops thinking about the spiritual background of her being there, but coming to the meeting brought her back to the reason why she is there. For this experience she feels very thankful.
For AVI Germany, Wolfgang shared with us his experience when he discovered the exhibition room in our hotel, showing pictures of the 900 days siege of St. Petersburg by the Nazis when more than a million people were killed or starved. Feeling this as a burden, his first impressions of St. Petersburg were gray and heavy, he felt a strong tension and still a lot of suffering. But when, during the White Night, we went on our boat tour and he saw the sun rising so early and beautifully, this finally opened his heart for the beauty of the city.
Friederike of AVI Germany added that she wants to thank Auroville for sending a great lot of female energy to this gathering (the active people representing Auroville were mostly women!) which was beautifully reflected in the meeting: in its quality of open-heartedly listening to each other, of patience, of healing, closing rifts etc.
Bill and Julian spoke for AVI USA saying that it was especially touching for them to see the Russian reality, to feel the connectedness. They warmly invited their Russian friends to next year´s meeting and added that America undergoes also a lot of changes nowadays..
Harrie of AVI Netherlands pointed towards the long-standing connection between Holland and St. Petersburg, mirrored by the recent visit of the Dutch queen who came to strengthen the cultural links between the two countries. He promised that AVI Holland now will do everything possible to strengthen their spiritual links.
Caroline and Martin of AVI UK expressed that it had been a significant and very important meeting for them, that they felt humble in coming and that they learnt as much from our Russian friends as they may have learnt from the other, more established centres.

Dimitry ended our sharing session by reading a passage from Savitri in English and Russian.

Afternoon sightseeing tour & walk

As Tine already mentioned, a larger group went in the afternoon for another sightseeing tour to two beautiful palaces in the St. Petersburg suburbs, others walked to nearby palace Peterhof.

Enlivening the International Zone

The International Zone/Pavilion Group meeting in the evening made it very evident that a lot of exchange is still needed between all those interested and concerned. There was an overall consensus that the International Zone should be livened up with fresh energy. But there were also a lot of reflections expressed on whether we should steer the moulding of this energy into concrete forms/concrete pavilions straightaway or whether we should first concentrate more on what the inner contents of these forms could be.

I finish this report with the resolution passed at our general assembly and say SPASIBA (thanks a lot) to our Russian host who made this week an extraordinary experience on many levels. See you again on the West Coast!

With love,
Friederike

AVI Resolution on Support of Pavilions

As a facilitator of interaction between Auroville and the people and nations of the world, AVI can assist in the development of the International Zone by working with individual AVI centres and the International Zone Group to support the development of more pavilions. We can help and encourage pavilion groups in various ways:

to get started
to co-ordinate between each other
to co-operate in developing common infrastructure and projects that affect multiple pavilion sites and centres
We encourage individual pavilion development projects to document their processes so that those who start later can learn from them
new groups to consider adopting leadership teams that include Aurovilians and members from their national centres and other helpful individuals (e.g. architects, funders). The U.S. pavilion team with 3 Aurovilians and 4 AVI-USA board members may be a model for this.

June 2001

In the coming year our thoughts will often return to this beautiful place where we had our meeting. See you next year in USA!