Fun in Auroville - Blogabond

After leaving Sadhana Forest we took a few days to settle into our new digs at the Aspiration community guest house.

The huts are a pretty cool design. Two 'bedrooms' connected by a hall, off of which is the bathroom. The huts are squat though inside there is plenty of room to stand and the hall is half sunken in the ground, very well suited to cyclones :P.

Home sweet home take two

Its a wonderful arrangement for friends travelling together. Even the local dogs love the huts.

Theres...something....amongst the shoes

Tuesday we went for the introductory tour and short meditation inside the Matramindir, and all I can say is wow. Setting aside for the moment the whole premise behind the Matramindir, spiritual attunement and furthering human evolution through the development of our consciousness, I have to drool over the sheer architectural genius of this thing. I'm not so in love with the outside of the building, but the inside makes me want to spurn all the rules and screw the peace of the other meditators by taking in my obnoxiously large camera and snapping photos of every graceful spiral and pristine white marble curve in this place.

Since I can't, I'll try to make do with words.

To enter the Matramindir you first walk past the Banyan Tree and through the Gardens of Unity to approach the Mat by passing in between two of the 'petals' (which are also separate meditation chambers each with a theme and fitting colour) to descend a stone walkway to the base of the Mat. Directly under the Mat, which is suspended on the sides by four concrete 'feet', you see the lotus pond; a series of white marble scoops or medallions that descend inward becoming smaller and smaller until they end at a crystal globe directly under the Mat. The water flowing over the marbel scoops provides a musical backdrop to your approach. To actually enter the Mat you have to ascend a staircase leading into the spheres bottom. Once entered there is a circular hall running around in the inside of the base where you sit on white marble benches on white marble floors to put on your white socks. Around the inside of the hall, is a glass floor so you can peer directly into the lotus pond beneath. Once you have your booties on you pass through a door on the interior of the hall, immediately to your left is a small sculpture and to your right is a circular stair leading up, made of guess what....white marble. Ascending the stairs, the room opens up dramatically. The walls are covered with triangular panels which emit a faint golden red glow. The walls are quartered by four golden tiled bands running the vertical length of the room. In the centre of the room are two stairways spiralling down around eachother (the stair you just walked up being one), mirrored by two floating ramps, spiralling along the outer perimeter of the chamber up into the meditation chamber which is in the highest point of the Matrimindir. The ramps are carpeted with plush white carpet and are fairly steep, making the climb to the upper chamber a slight physical exertion. At the top of the ramps is a foyer of sorts leading into the meditation chamber. Thankfully, there are pictures of the inner chamber :P Go google matramindir and look for the big crystal globe.

We've been to the Mat a few times now, and one of the petal rooms, and not being in the practice of meditating regularly its been an interesting experience for sure.

Aside from going to the Mat, we've been mainly tooling about Auroville and visiting nearby Pondicherry.