AUROVILLE PIONEER ARYAMANI - A SOUL’S JOURNEY - Lands for Auroville Unified

AUROVILLE PIONEER, ARYAMANI
– A SOUL’S JOURNEY –

Auroville Pioneer Aryamani – A Soul’s Journey.pdf

Aryamani was born in Bahia state, Brazil, in 1946 … more exactly, in the region where cacao plantations occupied vast extensions of land and merged with a native, beautiful forest, in which wild flowers grew and streams of clear water run under the trees. The forest was the dwelling place of a large variety of creatures, and their voices were always present as a background. A forest is never silent… This unique environment was in harmony with her inner spaces and unbeknownst to her, the soul was nurtured by it.

“The presence” of cacao fruit was everywhere and dominated the economy of the entire region. Seeing cacao fruit that had been harvested, dried under the sun and put in big sacks to go to the market was part of her world. Sometimes, the smell of home-made chocolate filled the whole house.

Elementary schooling was mainly done at home and stories, fairy tales, and comics awakened Aryamani’s love for reading and paved the way to the discovery later on, of the Indian tradition of story-telling and of its great epics. In one of those fairy tales one particular word called her attention: “longínquo” (its English meaning is “faraway”) and between ages 7 and 8, she used to look at the distance, asking herself where it could be some “faraway” place…

At age of nine, moving from the cacao farm to a town – where she had to face a conventional school and an urban environment – was a cultural, emotional and psychological shock and quite distressing. Looking back in retrospect, this total bewilderment at the sudden change provoked undefined questions: how to look at life in this new circumstances? How to behave in a society where she felt as a foreigner? Such questions her young mind was not able to elaborate and much less to answer.

Almost everything was alien and created in her being a struggle between her inner world and the outer world. A longing for something unknown was always present, a silent and soft pain, that could almost be translated as a feeling of emptiness, was part of her. That uncomfortable thing she unconsciously tried to suppress, without success. It remained with her till her early Twenties. Looking for a meaning for her life, she would dive into reading: literature, philosophy, poetry. She even tried politics and for a short time joined a communist party … to no avail. Looking in retrospect at this period of her life, including the apparently restless teenager years, she would say later on that it was as if a dark cloud shadowed her existence…

That dark cloud started fading away only later, when Sri Aurobindo appeared in her life. This happened when she was a student at the dance school of the Bahia University in Brazil, where she met the dance teacher Rolf Geleswky.

This meeting was a turning point in her life, marking the moment in which her soul started a more conscious journey towards its true destiny.

Rolf Gelewsky had spent some time at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the mid-sixties, when he met the Mother. Since then, he carried with him a deep connection with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Back in Bahia, he started a new way of teaching dance, and even created a new discipline, called “Philosophy of Dance”, through which he would bring very basic elements of the Integral Yoga.

Aryamani was immediately attracted to it, finding in those teachings many answers to her unspoken questions: What was her destiny? How she could fill this emptiness, this longing, that have been with her for so long? How to find this “faraway” place? The feeling that she had something to do during her life time was pressing within.

She was not alone in this search. A small number of young students from other schools were also attracted to those classes and, as if bound to happen, a community started, in tune with the spirit of the Sixties, a spirit of search, disquiet and new discoveries. As many of the residents of this small community had studied at the dance school, and its main person, Rolf Gelewski, was himself a dancer, bodywork was part of the daily activities of the residents, and classes in creative movement were offered to outsiders.

Another activity was the translation of texts of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and a magazine was created to publish this material. Some of its members started travelling to different places in Brazil, giving workshops as well as presenting the translations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s works. Aryamani joined this experience and considered this period as one of the most cherished and uplifting in her life.

Was she coming close to that “faraway” place she had been looking for since childhood?

As time passed, some of the early members left the community and new ones joined the experiment: slowly this small group of people turned more and more towards Sri Aurobindo. An official body was then created, the Casa Sri Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo’s House), known as CASA. Through the travels and workshops, published texts and the expansion of the activities of the CASA, Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s name started slowly to become known in Brazil.

But, in despite of all this movement, for Aryamani the time was ripe to go forward. She left Brazil in 1978 with a one-way ticket and after several months in Europe, India called her.

That “faraway” place was coming close …

In India, she first stayed in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry for a few months. There, she gave dance classes and helped in the Kindergarten, and then she met Luigi, who became her partner for 20 years and together they went to Auroville. The decision to go to Auroville came after a deep spiritual experience for both of them and it was decisive. The year was 1979.

In Auroville they started a community they called Transformation, and it was both – the beginning of the cultural zone of the City and the confirmation of their commitment to Mother’s vision: the galaxy-shaped City of the future. For the first couple of years there was no running water, nor cooking gaz or electricity. Aryamani proceeded with her work with dance, giving classes for adults and children, at the same time taking care of the development of this new place.

The outward circumstances were challenging, but her inner being was growing …

… and by that time she started to notice subtle changes in her being: it was the inner opening to the Indian spirituality. To discover and read the entire set of books of the Mahabharata, was like diving in India’s spirituality and culture, opening her being to its depth and vastness. In silence, Sri Aurobindo’s presence was growing within.

Dance in Auroville expanded with the arrival of Paulo Baeta (a Brazilian dancer from the same community in Bahia) with whom, together with Joy and others, she collaborated, contributing to and participating in various performances.

In 1999 she was invited to put on stage a selection from the Book One of Savitri – this was her first stage exploration on Savitri, and the beginning of the collaboration with Aurelio, a musician from Auroville, in a partnership that lasts till today.

In 2002 Auroville held a seminar called “The Mother and the Yoga of Evolution”. On that occasion she put on stage “Ascent To Truth”, a short play by the Mother. It was a joyful and beautiful experience and the opening of the door to the great challenge: to bring on stage Sri Aurobindo’s plays.

Not everybody knows that Sri Aurobindo wrote five complete plays and left many unfinished – and since coming to Auroville, Aryamani had been fascinated by those plays and wondered why they have never been staged in Auroville. Encouraged by some friends and by the previous works she had done, she took the challenge and plunged into “Perseus The Deliverer”, Sri Aurobindo’s longest play and the only one that was revised by him. It took nine months of preparation, and it was a “first” in Auroville, with a variety of costumes, props and many performers.

This first play was followed by three more: “Eric”, “Rodogune” and “The Viziers of Bassora”, all staged at the Sri Aurobindo auditorium at Bharat Nivas.

Those productions brought a deep joy to all involved and were very well received by the public. The audience reaction only confirmed what Aryamani knew all along: the incredible power of Sri Aurobindo’s words.

The spirit of collaboration, enhanced by the uplifting joy of working with Sri Aurobindo’s text, of listening to it, was discovered on this occasion, by herself, the participants and the audience. That spirit persisted and became tangible with every new production. (above, with Joy).

After the experience with the plays and the big stage at the Auditorium, something else started moving silently within. What could be there that could be staged? This question brought memories of her first experience with Savitri’s lines, in 1999, and memories also of Roger Anger’s concept for the Matrimandir Garden of Unity: a Fountain, that once covered would become a small stage. It had never been used till then.

Those recollections were at the origin of “Scenes from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri”, the first program to be held at the Fountain of the Matrimandir Garden, in 2015. A platform was specially created to cover the Fountain, and this small stage surrounded by water and with Matrimandir at the background formed a perfect scenery for staging Savitri.

From that experience onwards, lines from Savitri, texts from the Vedas, Upanishads and the Gita became a source of inspiration and research in staging, and this place the ideal space, where the result of the research was presented to Auroville’s residents, friends and guests. From 2015 to 2024, six performances have been held in that space – with the March 2024 production of “To Her” (Anandi is shown above).

“Her” is the Mother, Mirra Alfassa, the Founder of Auroville, and before that, Founder of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, and spiritual partner of Sri Aurobindo himself. This recital is a collection of quotes about the Mother, taken from Sri Aurobindo poems, Mother’s Agenda, the Vedas and other high sources, offered by: Aryamani, Joy, Srimoyi, Anandamayi, Khushmita, Anandi, Deven, Vivekan, Nidhish, Aurelio, Varun, Rahul, Shaily, Surya, Vaishnavi, Namita, Dwarika, Silky, Shilpi, Jacques, Janaka, Nadaprem, Prabha, Surbhi, Vinay, Timun, and Valeria accompanied by music by Aurelio in collaboration with Nadaprem and Varun (The team is shown below).

Video recordings were taken by Manohar on two different evenings, on the 23rd and 25th of March 2024 (please see the links listed at the end of this article).

In 2004 she started translating the “Life Divine” – the first complete work of Sri Aurobindo to be translated into the Portuguese language. The book was published in Brazil in 2018 and she travelled to many places in the country to present it, with presentations at at university faculties, Yoga schools, Cultural Centers and enthusiastic group gatherings as well as at the Indian Consulate in São Paulo and the Embassy in Brasília (shown below).

The publication of “The Life Divine” in Brazil was then followed by two more books: “The Synthesis of Yoga” and most recently, “Essays on the Gita”, all published by one of the best publishers in Brazil. In addition, between 2002 and 2024, Aryamani travelled to Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Finland, Colombia, Chile, presenting the project of Auroville, workshops on the Integral Yoga and bodywork, and Sri Aurobindo’s major works in several cities (below in Belo Horizonte, Brazil with Paolo Baeta at Aryamani’s right, and in Florianopolis, Brazil).

And here, from one of her workshops in Colombia:

This month of November, Aryamani is receiving Aurelio who will present a week-long seminar, bringing the instruments and sounds of Svaram and of Auroville to Brazil.

She is also working on a thorough revision of “The Life Divine”, in preparation for a second Portuguese edition to be published in the near future.

Below, we are pleased to share a compilation of the links for most of Aryamani’s videos and translations to date – in her “soul’s journey”: