→ Notes
Community · · 6 min read

My aspiration towards A Dream

When I joined Auroville in 2014, I got inspired by A Dream by the Mother and by the book Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. Over the years, I have spoken to various people at different times about how I would like to engage myself (and Talam) with the work that I do for the community. I want to share now, through this post, with people whom I have never met.

I feel that we, as a community, haven’t created a practice for encouraging work in the spirit of A Dream. When I’m approached with work from a unit, service, or individual, my spontaneous reaction is to think about how I can provide a solution to the one who has approached me, and what delight it can bring to people. I seldom think of how much I can earn through this work. That was never a motivation. If the motivation were to earn money, the better place would be the world outside Auroville, which I have intentionally left out.

On the other hand, the people who approach me for work have a different expectation, which completely doesn’t align with the values I bring in. Most of them, for instance, want to see how much I would bill them to provide the solution, or want to get a quotation from me so that they can compare it with offers from other people providing a solution. While it’s no harm to understand the costs involved, I have serious concerns with money being the primary motivation or deciding factor of a work in the land where “work would not be a way to earn one’s living but a way to express oneself and to develop one’s capacities and possibilities while being of service to the community as a whole”.

There were situations where I was not offered work because my proposal didn’t carry a price tag, and several years later the same work was offered when I put in a price tag in my proposal. Maybe we equate price with commitment, or something else. It’s difficult to understand, because a lot of other factors changed during the same period. On the other end of the spectrum, I have also met people who want it “free” but don’t value it as a gift that carries an inherent obligation to appreciate and pass it on.

Though the Dream talks of “collaboration and real brotherhood” in our society, we have difficulties implementing it on a practical level, and often resort to the old world’s patterns for lack of alternatives. While I point out deeper problems above, I, at the same time, fully sympathise with the people I engage with, and am able to see why they do what they do.

Some of my friends and others have commented that I’m too idealistic, or not practical, or that I have utopian dreams, and have advised me in a well-meaning way that I should put a fee on my services and not offer them as pay-as-you-want. Some who have received my service would ask me to quote a reasonable price, or would ask me what the market rate would be for such a service, so that they can make a “right” payment in the context of Auroville.

All these responses imply several deeper problems, such as:

  • Lack of trust: comparing prices to check that the service provider is not cheating.
  • Fear: tendering allows decision makers to insulate themselves from public reproach.
  • Greed: the intention to maximise benefit with as little investment as possible.
  • Lack of collective ownership: a customer–service-provider relationship exists, rather than a collaborator relationship.
  • “Known devil is better than unknown angel”: why deal with an unknown gift when the existing transaction model just works?

To engage in the mindset of gifting (or heartset, better), it demands that everyone involved with a work comes together in the same spirit. Since this is not always possible, I have engaged with various people across this wide spectrum:

  • Gift
  • Pro bono
  • At cost
  • Auroville Maintenance
  • High / Medium / Low subsidised rate compared to market rates

However, gifting is my deepest aspiration. I want to offer all my work as a gift, from the space of giving, in the delight of improving the life conditions of my neighbours, friends, and the community as a whole. As a larger family, where every member is part of my family, our family: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.

Talam’s recent work on enabling digital payments within Auroville is done in the spirit of gift and care for the community. I will write about Talam Pay itself in another post. The service is rendered for any unit, service, or activity in Auroville to accept digital payments with ease, without going through a complex setup or spending money to set up a payment infrastructure. I’m happy if the entities that benefit through Talam Pay make a contribution back to Talam voluntarily, and equally happy if they pay it forward to other entities in Auroville, or to the community in general, in some way or another. This is the spirit I want to work with. I want to move beyond the transactional mental model and into a collaborative, caring heart model.

The purpose of this post is to find who else shares a similar vision in the community, and how they are doing it. I’m sure there are a lot of people here doing this, but in a limited way, overshadowed by the majority of activity which is transactional. I want to connect with people who are still inspired by “A Dream” and want to take steps to bring it into reality in small ways today. I want to know what they do and how they do it.

I understand the road to the society outlined in A Dream is not straight. There are various pitfalls and dangers, but can we talk about it, and most importantly experiment with various models of engagement, with an understanding that we are still navigating an unknown space where the error rate is high, and make progress towards A Dream? What are your thoughts?