Connecting the Dots
by Toby

DOT 1 – Discovering Sri Aurobindo and Auroville early in my Life

I was born at the end of 1955 in the small city of Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands, and I had a happy childhood with my loving parents. I was in my teens when we moved to Utrecht, and it was there that I came into contact with Sri Aurobindo’s yoga through a member of the volleyball club I played with. And from that point on, my life path was made up of a series of significant points whose dots all got connected and found their meaning when I came to live in Auroville.

One evening my volleyball friend was standing in front of my door and invited me to accompany him to a lecture by Willy Perizonius about Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, and Auroville. I still remember the moment clearly. I was just sixteen.

A few days later, we were in Amsterdam attending the lecture. It was an important starting point that would shape the connection between me, the Sri Aurobindo Auroville Society (SAAS) in the Netherlands/Belgium, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville.

Willy Perizonius’s presentation was the announcement of the start of a group which would study the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Willy, a regular visitor to the Sri Aurobindo Asham, had specifically asked, and received, The Mother’s permission to start a Yoga Group in the Netherlands. Weekly the group came together in Rijswijk (near Den Hague) for readings, lectures, and meditations. Sometimes Ashramites and Aurovilians visited the SAAS, like Ruud Lohman, Will van Vliet, Sri Navajata, George van Vrekhem and others. We often had retreats for a couple of days in Belgium or elsewhere.

This all happened in the Seventies. Now 50 years later, I meet the same people here in Auroville – and step by step we all have grown. The importance of the many years of going to Rijswijk cannot be underestimated. The discipline developed, the practice done, and the mental and spiritual understanding all added up to finding the connection to the inner Guru which lasts till this very day.

In those years I met my future wife, clearly remembering the first time we met. Later we married and had one daughter and two sons. Here we are, with me all the way on the right next to my father – our youngest son was not born yet.

Many things came out of the SAAS years, but there is one thing that I need to mention especially: it is the Eternity Game.

The SAAS in Rijswijk had an apartment and everyone who went to India brought all kinds of things back with them – books, shirts, cards, chains, Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s symbols -which were displayed on a big table for sale. And there it was, a copy of the Eternity Game published by the Ashram’s Equals One team led by Medhananda, a disciple of the Mother. It was a small booklet with 64 cards. I took it home, started reading and playing.

The Eternity Game is a deeply spiritual game. Being very familiar with the I Ching and Runes, I recognized in it many elements of those legacies but here they were transformed into a vast spiritual realm, an entrance into the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

The Eternity Game gives advice and directions, sometimes subtle, sometimes straightforward. Every card, force, symbol and number stands on a crossroad of Cause-and-Effect (horizontal) on one side and Realization-Manifestation (vertical) on the other side. Questions like ‘Why are things blocked?’, ‘What is the next step?’, ‘Do I have to act or wait?’ and many more can be addressed with the Eternity Game. After a few years, I was able to write articles, give presentations and classes on it, and use it for individual counseling and path-finding.

One of the beauties of the Eternity Game is that it gives in every position and combination a reference to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. It is a playful way to start reading on different subjects. Unfortunately, despite Prisma’s efforts, The Eternity Game is not widely known.

But for me, one of the cards, N° 35: ‘To expect something long wished for’ held the key to my future as I was to later learn, and was a significant dot in the chain!

DOT 2 – going to Auroville

After passing my High School exams, my parents gifted me with a flight ticket to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Luckily Ruud Lohman was in the Netherlands at that time, and he invited me to travel with him. I was 17 years-old and for me it was one of the most unforgettable experiences in my life.

The Darshan of 15 August 1975 was literally a Golden Rain, and this Golden Rain has never stopped.

This first visit, which lasted more than a month, was Ashram-oriented: reading, meeting people, doing small jobs in the Ashram, arranging things for the SAAS, etc. Sometimes I cycled up and down on the sandy roads to Auroville, one hour away. The Matrimandir had just came out of the ground, and there was sand everywhere. My mind was set on settling in Auroville.

A first look at the Matrimandir

Back in the Netherlands, I was admitted to the Free University of Amsterdam to study Economics which took 5 years. It was the end of the Seventies in Amsterdam, a political period where years of conservative governments transformed into a more social democratic signature, and the Economics section – my specialty – adapted to this transition. In this time of great changes in my country, I completed my studies, and started a family and my career, both successfully, while also going back and forth to the Ashram and Auroville.

My marriage was a happy one, we had three beautiful children, lived in beautiful houses, changed locations perhaps a bit too often due to my work, but we finally landed in Sneek, Friesland, close to where my parents were born, lived at that moment, and would later die.

I worked first in financial institutions, and later in water companies, ending up in boardrooms and as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). My work environment changed every 5 years as I jumped up the corporate ladder from one senior position to another.

One of my specializations was Mergers and Acquisitions. Once, when a water company got into trouble during a three-party merger attempt, by a strange coincidence I was informed of the problem and offered to help. Even as CEO it took me 3 years to complete the merger. And for the first time in my work life I fell ‘in love’ with the object I was dealing with: water.

Yes, I had studied environmental economics. OK, I had financed water projects, but I had never been responsible for the issues which come with water. The Netherlands had an advanced way of approaching all water subjects, and there I was stepping into a strong professional tradition of water management. The learning curve was very steep. Day and night I needed to study a wide variety of topics, especially because I was a finance person, not trained as an engineer.

Hydron Flevoland, where I was CEO

And here was another “dot” in the chain because this prepared me for later on when the water situation in Auroville got my attention. Thanks to my earlier work, I was able to relate with knowledgeable people, and understand the many studies and projects concerning rainfall, aquifers, drainage, borewells, and waste water, to mention just a few issues.

On the Yoga side, for personal reasons I ended my relation with the SAAS in the Netherlands. Later I found out that my departure was part of a general change in the entire group. Some people left, and some moved to Belgium.

Years later, at the funeral of Willy Perizonius (he was 100 years of age) I met a few of the initial group members. We all, visibly, shared the same Light which kept on growing over the years. It was very special.

Working in top management can be stressful, and to reduce my tension level, my wife-partner gave me the telephone number of a lady who taught Tai Chi. Sitting in that lady’s room, with her husband serving coffee to me and the others who were there, she explained Tai-Chi. Although what she said was interesting, I didn’t like her, her husband, the coffee, and the other people – so I left.

When I came home, the lady had already called my wife, and asked if I could call back. When I did and told her my experience, she laughed and said that all stressed managers say the same thing. Then she said: ‘You come tomorrow and I’ll start teaching you everything I know – but come!’. Before I could say anything, she hung up, leaving me in complete confusion.

Her name was Avina (Aaf) and she was a Jewish occultist. In the end, I worked with her for 12 years. At exactly the end of the 12th year, we went out for dinner, and when I dropped her off at her home, she looked at me and said: ‘You know everything now and there is nothing to add anymore. I cannot teach you anything anymore. There is no need to see each other anymore. Goodbye.’ One day later I was called by her neighbors to tell me she had passed away.

In these 12 years, there were two relevant events. One of Aaf’s teachers was the sister of a prominent Dutch government minister. One day, Aaf gave me a book that had belonged to her which she esteemed to be important for me: it was ‘Essays on the Gita’ by Sri Aurobindo. Secondly, Aaf had made a prediction concerning my life: ‘After your 50th birthday you will move to India and never come back’. This became true 20 years ago in 2006. She knew my heart was in India, so this was not really a prediction but a formation.

DOT 3 – The predictions start manifesting, and the decision to move to Auroville

When you are the CEO of a water company, and everything is organized for you, you have spare time. So this time is used by most CEOs to fulfill secondary functions around water and building goodwill, both nationally and internationally. One day, I got a call from Marianne, the director of the Amsterdam Auroville shop: ‘Namaste’ who kept contact with the Auroville International Board. She said that the AVI Netherlands board was looking for new board members, and invited me to join. I agreed and along with the other new members, we worked to increase our activities: exhibitions, newsletters, meetings, and guest visits from Ashramites and Aurovilians.

With this new outreach, donations for Auroville projects and the Matrimandir increased.

To my big surprise, while traveling for work around the Netherlands, I discovered that at least a half a dozen Sri Aurobindo groups and activities existed without knowing about each other. In the north there was a Savitri reading group, in the South, a Sri Aurobindo commune, in Den Hague, a Sri Aurobindo Info Center and many more like that.

They were surprised in a positive way to see me as a representative of AVI NL – but that was it. They never got together and possibilities for wide contact were lost.

On the other hand, the AVI International meetings were fantastic. From all around the world, AVI people came together to discuss, to exchange, to meditate together There was always one specific AVI which hosted the gathering or it was organized in Auroville around Mother’s and/or Auroville’s birthday. Becoming a board member of AVI Netherlands brought me to Auroville more often, and in direct contact with AVI Auroville, headed at that time by an Aurovilian named Tine.

Because I was also financing water projects in Auroville, my Water Board and Supervisory Committee members got interested and wanted to see for themselves what projects I was funding, so I organized trips to Auroville for them.

One day, invited by Tine to Aurogreen with my wife and children, I was sitting on a chair –the chair that I regularly sit on now – and I got a deep shock. Card 35 of the Eternity Game was coming into action and I knew that its prediction, and Aaf’s prediction, would come true – that my life would be in Auroville. I could not speak or eat for hours. It is like what Sartre, the French novelist wrote: ‘Les dés sont faits’ (The Die are Cast).

My moving to Auroville would take another few years, but it had started.

Then, in December 2005, on a subsequent 2-week visit to Auroville to organize AVI activities, I walked from Matrimandir to the guest house where I was staying – and the decision to come to Auroville was made. The decision was the easy part, but then followed the harder parts: the divorce from wife and children, selling the partnership in my company, resigning from my water job and from AVI. This all took place in 2006 when I finally arrived in Auroville – at Aurogreen, with Tine – and started regularly sitting on that chair!

DOT 4 – putting my professional skills to work in Auroville

The final dot in the chain was to put all my past experience to work to help the building of Auroville. From the beginning of my work, the combination of Town Development and Water were intertwined. Sometimes one got more of an accent than the other, but they were always together, including now.

But even with my long contact with Auroville and knowing quite well many Aurovilians and having been involved in several projects, I soon realized that I didn’t really know too much!All experience and learning in the past had almost no value in the Auroville context, and a re-start was necessary.

Important support for me were the regular Darshans I attended at the Ashram, the lectures of Dr. Ananda Reddy, and most special were the Savitri classes given by Deshpande. He took up Savitri line by line, book after book, in the 8 years it took to go through Savitri from start to finish.

So the Future that Sri Aurobindo described became my home.

Savitri Lectures by Deshpande

I began my work with the just constituted ‘L’avenir d’Auroville’. People were needed and I, though still a newcomer, was asked to join. It was in this process that I met Roger Anger for the first time, and he made an indelible impression on me. He knew the deep occult/spiritual meaning of Auroville, a creation not only for the Earth but for the whole Universe. Unfortunately, we did not meet often, and he passed away too early. It is incalculable what Auroville owes to him – he was the bearer of the Crown.

Now in 2026, I look back at almost 14 years of serving in Town Hall at L’avenir d’Auroville, whose entry is marked by the above message from The Mother. I have served there as well as on different council teams with different Governing Boards, Secretaries, Foundation officers, FAMCs, Working Committees, Services, Contractors, Architects – and above all, with Aurovilians.

‘L’avenir d’Auroville’ – now called ‘Auroville Town Development Council’ (ATDC) – was the name given by The Mother to this body which is responsible for the future development of Auroville. It holds an intermediary position between the Governing Board and Auroville.

Its main task is to execute the Master Plan, which was approved by the Residents Assembly (RA), later also by the Governing Board (GB) in 2001, and was gazetted (legally approved) in 2010. Its basis is the Auroville Master Plan which was signed by The Mother in 1968, meaning it is the original Master Plan.

All the main elements for the township are already included in this Master Plan, plus some surprising details: the square meters of living space per person, the Lines of Force, the Matrimandir etc. It is the urban Galaxy form, which Mother approved after a few different attempts by Roger. She clearly said: ‘This is my vision.’

Below is the first Galaxy concept. It gets its shape from the Matrimandir oval; the curved Lines of Force (the 17 high-rise Galaxy-curved residential and industrial buildings); the roads (mainly the curved radials); and the buildings inside the sectors which (should) follow the curved radials towards the Ring Road; and the Crown – the all-sectors-interconnecting urban texture that holds the city together and separates the Silence area from the busy parts.

As Auroville is a spiritual creation, most places and buildings have an occult/spiritual place and meaning. Every Auroville element is an expression of spirituality and when it becomes concretized it has a global effect.

When manifesting, all will bring the Realization closer and closer, especially the main elements of the Master Plan namely: the Matrimandir and its gardens, Matrimandir Lake, the Crown Road, the Lines of Force, the Four Sectors, CIRHU, and the New Town Hall.

To be in L’avenir d’Auroville/ATDC for building the City is complex and pure hard work. Among the many challenges are the manpower question and arriving at a workable consensus for each major issue. For the members, who serve on a rotating basis, it takes time to get acquainted with the planning files, some of which are very complicated and touch many departments inside and outside Auroville. On the professional level, experienced administrators, engineers and planners are necessary, and those with the needed criteria have been few so far.

So much remains to be done to facilitate Auroville’s development for the existing population and for the one to come. Mother’s dream of building the city in just a few years – she even agreed with 10 years – has not come true after more than 50 years. It is clear that we must go forward to do what needs to be done for Auroville’s full and evolving manifestation!

Auroville Water Service’s ‘Elephant Tower’

Not surprisingly, my other area of concentration has simultaneously been with the Auroville Water Harvest (AWH) from 2008 onwards. Here a huge body of knowledge has been collected regarding rain, percolation, aquifers, extraction, water usage both agricultural and domestic. In a relatively short period, the former executives of AWH managed to research and implement huge projects in the bio-region for better water management. These were ongoing projects, and had often been financed by European donors for specific activities and locations.

Despite the loss of much of the funding, most of the implemented projects of AWH are still alive and even expanded with the explicit objective to make it a ‘continue without help’ project. AWH’s research is available and used not only in Auroville but also by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB).

Together with Auroville’s Center for Scientific Research (CSR) AWH developed the famous Dewatt waste water systems, many of which are still operational. In 2008, AWH took over the water supply system of the Residential Zone (Elephant Tower). Under the name Auroville Water Service (AWS), we then started to build an overall Auroville water system.

An important positive was the acquisition of a major plot for waste water treatment in the Residential Zone, made possible through donations to Acres for Auroville.

The need for a planned integrated system that meets long-term sustainability and compliance requirements is obvious. Previously, Auroville’s organic growth/’divine-anarchy’ served specific needs for specific residents at precise moments, but for overall water management, that way is too fragmented and without a globally structured city perspective.

Another need concerns the waste water situation where a recent survey reveals that 70% of the waste-water effluent doesn’t match standards. But on the storm-water ‘front’ it looks actually quite good. The sloping situation of Auroville generates a lot of run-off but here the farmers and especially the foresters have done very good work in bunding and percolation, which was done on a local basis. Other good news: upcoming is the development of a new water station (near Dana) and a waste water station in the East (near Pitchandikulam). These stations will develop the waste-water and return-grey-water treatment and the water supply for Auroville as a whole.

The water organization needs to continue to develop from a merely operational to a fully engineered organization … and we are in the middle of doing this!

In the Eternity Game, card 58 is the ‘Joy-Miracle’ card and this week Auroville is 58 years-old! All the many ‘dots’ have led and brought me here – and for this I am eternally grateful!