The Quest City¬ – a widely spread-out campus
Motto: Exploring and Experiencing the Incredible World of Religions!
Purpose
To materialise one of the ideas and vision of the Mother for human advance and maturity
Explanation
In one of her talks after the descent of the supramental consciousness in the earth atmosphere in February 1956, the Mother gave the analogy of gold and silver to explain the difference the supramental world and the world of religions, including the highest spiritual aspirations and achievements of religions.
However, this does not mean that silver is to be shunned. Rather it can be one of the wonderful educative mediums for the humanity to broaden, deepen and heighten the human horizons and maturity. In one of her conversations in February 1967, that is, nine years after the descent of the supramental, the Mother put forth her idea of the City of Religions in course of an informal conversations with a close disciple. Here, she envisioned on a widely spread-out plateau a lively, objective and educative recreation of the atmosphere in which every distinct religion was born, grew, and thrived since ancient times to the modern.
Following is an extract in this context from the Mother’s Agenda Vol. 8, Conversation dt. February 15, 1967:
“…it might be funny if we put together one specimen of every religion from every country and every epoch. A city of religions, can you see that?… The totem pole next to the cathedral! Oh, that would be very funny! All the ancient religions – the Egyptian, the Tyrian, the Scandinavian gods … – and then the new religions.
Disciple: They’d all quarrel with each other!
It’s a pity, men have too little sense of humor! Otherwise we could have great fun. It’s a wonderful remedy. We could arrange guided tours, just like Cook’s tours (!) We would have a tour of religions, with all the statues and monuments. The explanations could be read out by some guide or other, but they would be prepared by someone with a slightly higher vision (oh, not a supramental vision, just a slightly higher one), and they would show human creeds and how men have shed blood in the name of “God.” The most bloodthirsty god is the most popular, I think. All the slaughters, all the horrors, all the tortures that have been committed in the name of God … It’s a subject I found very interesting, in the beginning I even wanted to give a class on it, when the School only had thirty children or so: a class on religions showing the whole course from the gods with the heads of birds or jackals to cathedrals.
Oh, when I was just five, I was revolted by that “God” who really was a wicked character and caused bloodshed. So we could have a “city of religions.” But we would have to re-create the atmosphere.
Disciple: A museum of religions?
No, a museum is too intellectual – a city of religions. We would have to recreate the atmosphere and have a temple, churches, a cathedral, a totem pole.”
(Ref. Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 8, Conversation dt. February 15, 1967)
Taking cue from the above idea and vision of the Mother, Aryadeep envisions a wide and beautiful campus called The Quest City with the motto ‘In the Wonderland of Religions’. The central inspiration of The Quest City is what the Mother envisioned for the Matrimandir gardens which she termed “as important as the building”.
“These gardens (…..) each one centred on something, a state of consciousness, and the flowers which represent it.”
“It [the gardens] must be a thing of great beauty, of such beauty that when people come they will say “Ah, this is it.” It must be an expression of that consciousness which we are trying to bring down’. She added: ‘One must know how to move from consciousness to consciousness’.
The Quest City will strive to create a lively atmosphere of the spirit and aspiration behind the religions since time immemorial.
Care will be taken not to promote any religions or allow the promoters of religions to take advantage of the campus. At the same time, maximum care will be taken not to hurt or provoke religions sentiments of the followers of the religions.
There will be disclaimer in this respect.
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For further light on the analogy of gold and silver to explain the difference between the new world and the world of religion, please continue to read:
On 9th July 1957, along with the inmates of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the Mother saw a film called Rani Rasmani, which described the lives of Sri Ramakrishna and Rani Rasmani, a rich, very intelligent and religious Bengali widow, who in 1847 built the temple of Kali at Dakshineshwar, in modern West Bengal where Sri Ramakrishna lived and worshipped Kali. Next day, while commenting on a text written by Sri Aurobindo about the future of human body, the Mother spoke at length about an experience she had while watching the film a day earlier. Following is a small extract from her talk (only 300 words out of total 2250 words she spoke on the occasion).
“It seems strange that something so new, so special and I might say so unexpected should happen during a film-show. For people who believe that some things are important and other things are not, that there are activities which are helpful to yoga and others which are not, well, this is one more opportunity to show that they are wrong. I have always noticed that it is unexpected things which give you the most interesting experiences.
Yesterday evening, suddenly something happened (…….) it was truly quite new and altogether unexpected. We were shown, comparatively clumsily, a picture of the temple on the banks of the Ganges, and the statue of Kali — for I suppose it was a photograph of that statue, I could not manage to get any precise information about it — and while I was seeing that, which was a completely superficial appearance and, as I said, rather clumsy, I saw the reality it was trying to represent, what was behind, and this put me in touch with all that world of religion and worship, of aspiration, man’s whole relationship with the gods, which was — I am already speaking in the past tense — which was the flower of the human spiritual effort towards something more divine than man, something which was the highest and almost the purest expression of his effort towards what is higher than he. And suddenly I had concretely, materially, the impression that it was another world, a world that had ceased to be real, living, an outdated world which had lost its reality, its truth, which had been transcended, surpassed by something which had taken birth and was only beginning to express itself, but whose life was so intense, so true, so sublime, that all this became false, unreal, worthless.” (Ref. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 9, p. 147 -148)
For complete text of 10th July 1957 talk, please click here.
In the above passage, when the Mother speaks of “something which had taken birth and was only beginning to express itself, but whose life was so intense, so true, so sublime”, she was obviously referring to the supramental descent which she had experienced a year and four months ago, on 29th February 1956. Compared to the quality of life and consciousness in the Supramental, even the sublimest religious and spiritual life and consciousness appeared to her “false, unreal, worthless”.
She kept on alluding to this from time to time. On 15th November 1958, explaining herself further, she said:
“… it’s as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, while the supramental life is made of gold. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness, which appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness – well, all this splendour seems poor in comparison to the splendour of the new world.”
Present status
Just an idea and a cherished dream