beloved husband, father, grandfather, and friend to so many around the world
On July 3, 2022, one of Auroville’s early pathfinders, Daniel Gibson Brewer, who held a lifelong love of India, passed from this plane. Daniel was born in Southern California in 1938. He was a fun-loving and spirited child. There are many tales of mischief, mayhem, and mishaps that have been passed down through the generations. It seems from the beginning he had an understated and yet memorable sense of humor.
His parents found it fit to enroll him in an all boys boarding school where students lived in log cabins, cut their own firewood to heat water for their showers, and rode horses through the Santa Barbara hills. Midland was a good fit for young Daniel and may well have been the early inspiration for his later adventures.
Daniel met his first wife, Iris, while studying linguistics at UCLA. After graduation, they married and moved to Berkeley, where Daniel entered a master’s degree program in architecture at UC Berkeley. As the story goes, Daniel opted to drop out of the program just months before graduation with the dream of discovering what lay off the beaten path. He and Iris decided it was time to see what the rest of the world had in store for them.
India Travels
They traveled by ship to Europe, spent some time in Morocco, and then proceeded to travel overland from Europe to India in 1968. They made it to Nepal and then India in 1969, attempted to set up an export business of Indian goods in Europe, and ultimately found themselves in the south Indian state of Goa where they had Mitra. When deciding their next move, they found themselves at a crossroads in South India, one road led to Nepal, the other to Tamil Nadu. Daniel claims that the van decided for them, turning south and ultimately landing them in Auroville, which would be their home for the next 10 years. Forever after, Auroville held a special place in Daniel’s heart. It may be where he felt most at home, though he had a way of finding and creating home wherever he was in the world.
Auroville
In 1970, Daniel Iris and their young son Mitra, joined the early residents living in the ‘Silence’ community, located at the site of the then still in the future, Bharat Nivas. Understanding that they would have to vacate when construction began, and armed with Auroville property maps, the small team went on the look-out for a place to start a new living space. When they found a suitable location just outside Kottakarai village, and Mother gave her blessing for the same, the beginning of Kottakarai community started in close collaboration with the villagers nearby.
Daniel was instrumental in the development of the early Auroville community and participated in the creation of Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s vision. He planted thousands of trees, which to this day offer shade, erosion control, and beauty to the once parched and eroded land. It was in Auroville that Daniel met Andrea, or Angela at the time, and Iris met Constance. Though they parted ways, Daniel and Iris and, in fact, all four of them would remain friends throughout the remainder of his life.
Daniel and Andrea soon had two daughters, Hiranya and Antara. They lived in a hut in Kottakarai, built by Daniel, and contributed to the community, sharing in the vision of what Auroville could become and by crafts like sandal making, tree planting, and working in the clinic.
Andrea once reminisced in an AVI USA newsletter:
“Daniel [had such] gracious relations with the villagers! Tamil is one of the oldest living languages on the planet and exceedingly complicated. Daniel spoke Tamil with surprising fluency, even able to make jokes. Besides being involved with planting trees and care of the land, he had become the local cobbler. He was making handsome leather sandals for any and all who needed them, including the villagers who were quite amazed that this vele karan (white man) would stoop to a work that was normally only done by Harijans, the outcasts. Small wonder that the villagers adored Daniel. We couldn’t have had a better ambassador for Auroville in the village of Kottakarai.”
California
Daniel’s parents bought them tickets to visit South Pasadena, California, when the girls were 1 and 3 years old. A month or so into their visit they decided to stay. They settled in Santa Cruz, California, where they raised their children on a small farm outside of town. It was there that Daniel, Andrea, Constance, and Iris, who had also returned to California by then, established a business washing and repairing oriental carpets and textiles. With the help of long time friends Arky and Ginger, Talisman Oriental Carpet Cleaning was born and would go on to support both families for years to come.
After an amicable separation from Andrea, Daniel met his third wife, Lisa. They would go on to be married to her for 38 years. Daniel and Lisa’s son Jonas was born in Santa Cruz. When Jonas was nine, they bought an old motorhome, fixed it up, and the three of them ended up in Mexico where they lived for the last 24 years. Everywhere he lived, Daniel continued to forge deep and lasting friendships with the locals, planted trees throughout the community, and built unique, sustainable, and beautiful homes for his family.
Loving Presence
One of Daniel’s most enduring and beloved qualities was the special attention that he offered all of us. This love that he communicated through his eyes, through his hands, through his simple acts of generosity and gentleness was deeply appreciated by all who knew him. His legacy reaches out almost unseen, like the roots of a tree, spreading out in all directions, providing nutrients and stability to his family, his friends and all those whose lives he touched.
There was something about his eyes that so many people have remarked on since his passing. The windows to his soul were open, soft, and sparkling. It was like looking back through the ages. He had a look of sages. His eyes drew you in without pulling, they spoke to you without saying a word, they reflected back to you your own beauty and specialness. He taught us all through his example, that when you appreciate beauty, when you make time for connection and when you give the gift of your attention, you come to know yourself more fully and therefore become a more clear and loving mirror in which others can find their own truest selves reflected.
Vision Loss
When Daniel lost his vision due to a rare, postoperative bacterial infection following a routine cataract surgery, his experience, as he described it, was both one of great loss as well as considerable intrigue. For someone who had such an appreciation of light and color, the absence of these was almost intolerable. His brain could not stand the loss and began to create images with the stored memory of light and color. He spent the remainder of his days looking into himself, contending with his internal visions and trying to parse reality from illusion. He wrote:
“it’s like you look at yourself and after this event you ask yourself who am I? Since you reflect on how you pieced your life together before, through all your experiences, and now with this experience a different sense of clarity, even the concept of clarity, changes.”
It always amazed us how he took this tragic event and made the best of it. This was made possible, in no small part, to the endless hours, days, weeks and years of loving, devoted and meticulous care from Lisa. He once said: “the sadness of the whole event invites you to see through your tears and create a certain wholeness.” He never stopped trying to understand his place in the universe. He never stopped appreciating what he had and he never stopped touching the lives of his loved ones and beyond.
Throughout his life, Daniel studied various spiritual traditions including the teachings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, Tibetan Buddhism, and Taoism. For all who knew him, he seemed to naturally and effortlessly embody the core truths he discovered. Daniel was a real renaissance man. He was well read, spoke four languages fluently, and bits and pieces of many others, and appreciated and created art in the areas of photography, music, painting, poetry, gardening, woodwork and home building.
He was truly one of a kind – described by so many as one of the kindest, gentlest, most generous people they have ever met. While we know he was ready to let go in the end and his peaceful transition was an inspiration to all who knew him, he is deeply missed and will live in our hearts and in all our acts of love, generosity, and creativity forever.
Daniel Brewer Legacy Fund
In honor of Daniel and the incredible life he led, his family wishes to invite you to join us in creating a legacy fund for the Aurokiya Eye Care Center in Auroville, Tamil Nadu. This revolutionary eye care program serves people within Auroville and in the surrounding areas. The work of the Aurokiya Eye Care Center was inspired by the groundbreaking efforts of Dr. Venkataswamy and the Aravind Eye Hospitals. It is our sincere hope that this fund could serve to support the work of the Auokiya Eye Care Center in providing preventative eye care to many Aurovillians and residents of the surrounding villages. It would have made Daniel so very happy to know that the suffering he endured and the love he inspired in all those around him would culminate in such a beautiful opportunity to bring such a crucial form of health care, quality eye care, to so many and right in the place he always thought of as his true home town.