{"id":3446,"date":"2021-06-04T11:15:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T06:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/?p=3446"},"modified":"2022-05-06T12:59:59","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T08:29:59","slug":"activist-sadhu-joker-wazo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/04\/activist-sadhu-joker-wazo\/","title":{"rendered":"Activist, Sadhu, Joker: Wazo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI arrived in India in 1981 with a group of 7 people, all the way from France. After being with this group for a few months, I suddenly decided that I wanted to be away from the world and follow the path of a sadhu<\/em> [holy man]. I destroyed my passport, I gave all my money away and traveled with nothing, alone. I became kind of a crazy guy \u2013 when I look back at my past, I don\u2019t think I would ever do it again [laughs<\/em>]. During this time I discovered the Bhagavad Gita, and it resonated with me. I also visited Pondicherry and heard about this community called Auroville, but because I had already been part of intentional communities in France, it didn\u2019t draw me in at first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually I ended up back in France. It\u2019s there that I realized I wanted to live in India, and specifically in Auroville, because I discovered \u201cThe Life Divine\u201d by Sri Aurobindo \u2013 I understood that I have a Karma, and why, for me, it was easy to reject the world. When I discovered Sri Aurobindo, all my cultural references dissipated. I felt like an investigator, and I found that for all the questions I had, there was a way of finding the answer. I had a past in France which involved activism, and that\u2019s why there was a moment of \u201cAha!\u201d with Sri Aurobindo because he was also a revolutionary, but he understood its limits, and started his own Yoga. This spoke to me a lot. I moved to Auroville in June 1982, so that I could be part of the project of Auroville while doing my education on Integral Yoga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Auroville was a completely new world to discover \u2013 new insects, trees, fruits and animals. It was really not close to my culture at all. I come from the north of France where there are mines, and it\u2019s dark and cold, so you can imagine what it was like to move to the south of India.\u00a0And when I just arrived the pioneer spirit was still very much alive \u2013 it was a lot of fun. It was interesting to study the history, the dream and the philosophy of Auroville. At the same time, we were here on the spot so we could see the gaps between the dream and the reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n