Review of Jocelyn Shupak's book 'Antithesis of Yoga'

Jocelyn Shupack, an American woman from Pennsylvania and one of the early settlers in Auroville since 1969, has written a 450 page non-fiction novel (photos included) about Auroville’s first 25 years. She chronicles the stories and events of some of the pioneers in that adventure from 1969 to 1993 in a most compelling, humorous and often raw and raucous manner.

A quintessential "hippie" and "flower child" of the 1960’s, Jocelyn left a commune in the Western United States in the late 60’s, traveled through Europe, gave birth to her child in Berlin then proceeded on her journey through Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and eventually made her way into India. Broke and weary she stopped in Pondicherry for a rest on her way to Ceylon where she was to buy gems to sell, as the money her father was sending from the states was running out. Then she was to travel back to America with her baby daughter. As destiny would have it, while in Pondicherry, she discovered the Mother which led her away from her original plan towards a totally new and unexpected direction and what would later become for her an unprecedented adventure — living in Auroville. Soon after arriving in the ashram she met The Mother and here she gives a description of her first balcony darshan of the Mother in November, 1969.

"In the late afternoon the Mother came out of Her room onto the balcony. The Mother, standing at the railing of the balcony half a block away seemed to be looking at me and I felt and could see Her smile. Mother looked around at all the people who had assembled from all over the world to receive Her blessings that evening. Just as the sky turned pink and gold with the setting sun, She turned and walked back into Her room. I was amazed that I felt so aglow with happiness from Her benediction"

The title of Jocelyn's book is ANTITHESIS OF YOGA. The title should be somewhat of an indicator as to the tone of the contents of the book. It could perhaps even be seen as a tongue in cheek play on words in contrast to Sri Aurobindo’s great tome THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA.

The story in ANTITHESIS OF YOGA , as told by Jocelyn, seems to be a recipe of one part fiction, one part non-fiction and perhaps a dash or two of fantasy thrown into the mixture to embellish, intensify and enhance the dramatic impact. At least this appears to be so from this reviewer’s perspective, having also been one of the original pioneers myself and knowing most of the players and details of the events that took place. But the essence of those events are fully captured and preserved in her book.

Jocelyn proves herself to be a first rate story teller and her colorful and vivid descriptions of the characters from those days, some of whom were quite exotic, will leave you aghast. lf anyone is shocked by four—letter words and expletives, then better beware, for she uses them generously to describe the conditions in Auroville and the experiences of people who lived the struggle. She holds nothing back and tells it like it was at that time, almost exclusively dealing with the seamier side of people’s lives and personalities rather than giving us more of a glimpse into their mystical and yogic personas.

lf anything, this is the book’s most serious shortcoming. One is likely to come away from reading the book with the impression that most of the characters she describes had no spiritual life and had no reason to be in the ashram or Auroville. But this, of course, is a distortion. It is only because the Mother saw much more than what met the eye in all these people, just as in Jocelyn herself and were all part of Her experiment. The struggle of the spirit to emerge and dominate the ignorance and falsehood of the outer nature was just as present in all of them. Here is a description from the book where she gives an account of Ananta (the American disciple from Boston to whom Mother had given an entire island) in one of his escapades. He had taken too many sleeping pills the night before and ended up in the ashram nursing home where he was in a rather pitiful state. He was all disheveled only to turn up the next day, totally revived, at a puja held by Panditji, the Tantric yogi.

" .... Just as Panditji finished his puja and was sharing the theertham among his disciples, the gate to the garden burst open and Ananta entered, absolutely shining, his peroxide hair nearly platinum, clean shaven, wearing a silk yellow shirt and white trousers, followed by all nine of his servants in their white shirts and yellow pants. He ignored everyone else sitting there, just short of stepping on them, and threw himself on the floor in front of Panditji, as Panditji was walking among the quiet sober disciples with the little cup of sweet scented water. Panditji took the little spoon and eloquently dropped a drop of the theertham on the back of Ananta’s head. Ananta’s nose was on the floor just next to Panditji’s big toe".

Jocelyn tells the story in third person and centers it round the character ‘RosIyn’ and her daughter ‘Bliss’ and how they lived in the ashram for a time until the Mother approved their stay in Auroville. It is a story of ‘Roslyn’s’ search for truth, love, survival, and the discovery of her own creativity, (she learned to make hand made crocheted slippers and beaded handbags and created an export market for them). She experienced tragedy and death. She chose to live in and help build the City of Dawn where everyone would live in a new consciousness of truth and light. But she leads us through one personal crisis after another (in fact it appears that Murphy’s Law was invented just for ‘Roslyn’).

The period that she describes was one of great physical and psychological difficulty at the ashram and Auroville. During the Mother’s last years and after Her physical departure, the discords and turbulences of the human ego pushed the whirlwind action of the hostile forces and left the collective atmosphere in a state of tremendous agitation. The traumatic and intense conflict between the Sri Aurobindo Society and a leading faction in Auroville was one of the most powerful disturbances of this period and tended to draw everyone into its orbit and became a veritable Kurukshetra.

‘Roslyn’ refused to take sides during the SAS and Auroville crisis. All residents heretofore had been receiving baskets of food from Pour Tous (For All) but ‘Roslyn’, who had been cooking in one of the common kitchens for 50 or 60 people had her food supply cut off. They wanted her and others out of Auroville. From her book: "The Kottakarai community cut off her food basket. They wanted her to leave. She had nowhere to go, and four dependants, ‘Bliss’, the two Tamil boys and the old Dosama who no longer had a job because the rich people had gone back to America. Suddenly the Pour Tous basket had become a political weapon. The collective ego could not bear something so pure. First the baskets were cut, then one day some men living near Matrimandir came back from Pondicherry and found all their possessions sitting on the dusty road near their houses and 50 Aurovilians sitting in their houses. She could not believe or understand what was happening in Auroville. Some had begun to refer to it as "Horrorville"! Despite all, however, she never lost faith and trust in the Divine Mother. Most of the names in the story have been changed. Is it to protect the innocent or perhaps to cloak the identities of the guilty? Whatever the case may be the names of some people remain the same such as John Kelly, Ananta (Frederick Bushnell III), Constance, Rod and others.

Descriptions of gatherings on Ananta’s island abound that sound like auditions for a Fellini movie. There were dinners at Pondicherry’s Grand Hotel d’Europe with Countesses from France who were heroines in the French Resistance. John Kelly holds court with his war stories while entertaining Dr.Bernie Shupack from Pennsylvania. There are reminiscences of Panditji, the tantric yogi from Rameshwaram (who had occultly helped the Mother in alleviating paralysis in 1958 and whom she often invited to Pondicherry and kept a flat there for him) and of course her shared remembrances of her glorious darshans with the Mother.

The book has no chapter headings. Each chapter segues gracefully one into the other separated only by an appropriate passage from Savitri on the left side of the page and on the right side a significant paragraph from THE SYNTHESIS OFYOGA (always applicable to the next experience to be faced). These passages, of course, deepen the reading experience and soften the shocks of and give meaning to the very harsh conditions about which she writes concerning Auroville’s struggle at that time...the seeming lack of compassion one for the other that raged for so long. There were also power struggles and thirst for control, inadequate food supplies, no schools, insufficient funds, divisive elements of the opposing factions, the supreme court case between Auroville and the SAS that ultimately led to government intervention and the Auroville Foundation Act in the Indian Parliament.

By all accounts ‘Roslyn’ (as well as many others) suffered great hardship and was ostracized by the community. Many were seen as ‘outcasts’ due to being ‘neutrals’ during this time and not taking sides. Throughout all the vicissitudes she remained steadfast in her trust in the Mother and her belief that Auroville was the city where she belonged.

Here she describes a severe beating in the middle of the night from a break—in and robbery in her capsule—hut. The intruders sped off in a car and were never apprehended. She spent 3 weeks in the ashram nursing home in recovery. From the Book: "POW! SMASH! Someone had knocked her teeth out! She did not open her eyes to see who it was, but put her hands over them to protect them from the rain of ringing blows with a blunt instrument that followed. WHACK, WHACK, WHACK! The blows fell on her hands, arms, head, in a seemingly never—ending horror of torment, beyond her wildest dreams. She let go all resistance and lay there unmoving. She felt hands, not too gently, remove the thick gold chain she wore around her neck that had been blest by the Mother. She waited then opened her eyes. lt was 3am. in the distance she could hear a car starting. There were never any cars on the road next to the forest in the night. She was lying in a pool of blood. Her face was a mess. She put her fingers in her mouth and pulled out a molar. The teeth she still had were loose in her gums, the others were gone. lt was unimaginable that this could happen in Auroville. She made her way to her neighbors who managed to get her into Pondicherry and to the Nursing Home."

It seemed that she and others were destined to experience such hardships despite Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s urging to disciples to: "Take the Psychic attitude; follow the straight and narrow sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly up bearing you —— if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey".

It has often been said that Auroville is a microcosm of the macrocosm and that the ills of the world are being played out there for the transformation. However, in these past years Auroville has been gradually moving into greater harmony. The evolving Auroville of yesteryear that Jocelyn writes about, that has slowly formed itself out of the dense, crude, harsh matter of that barren land, (almost in a similar way in which the earth has evolved from the inconscient) is now experiencing a more settled and refined process. It is devoted to good schools and education, ecological projects, healing arts, music, dance, theatre, libraries, team work, village action, readings and talks at Savitri Bhavan.

However, the bizarre ghosts of Auroville past, described here and in the book, have not entirely been exorcised and manage to continue finding instruments and phenomena through which to express themselves as in some of the recent very traumatic events in Auroville. Certainly one lesson to learn from the book is that then, as now, the Mother’s consciousness is powerfully active and pushing individuals and community towards the Divine Life, just as the state of the human consciousness is constantly shown its inadequacy and its need for greater aspiration, surrender and self—transcendence.

In spite of the narrative appearing to successfully live up to the title of the book i.e. being the antithesis of yoga — under the surface of circumstances and events there is a deeper meaning and effort at work. Indeed, as the author says in a number of places, "All Life is Yoga." Only in Jocelyn’s telling we see little of the evidence of the yoga and readers are liable to receive only a vital impression of the colorful and Lurid life of the ashram/Auroville and its characters at that time and miss the point. As stated earlier, and as if to counter this possibility, she begins each chapter with a quote from the Synthesis of Yoga which relates in some way to the events For those who are interested in all the myriad aspects of the Mother’s work this book should be read. Jocelyn has chronicled a very difficult time in Auroville’s history and though some may find the manner in which it is written to be somewhat jarring in its earthy and bare telling of the reality, it is nevertheless honest and straightforward.

Jocelyn continues to live in Auroville in a section called Ravena. She lives in a lovely artistic house where she has a workshop of Tamil villagers and trains them in the late 19th century South Indian Thanjavur art form of painting on glass. She has found peace there and contributes to the Auroville community for her upkeep and that of her workers through sales of her art.

Reviewed by Anie Nunnally aka Scarlett Finkleberger (in the book) February 2004