Devdip proposes a free-range discussion of the broad outline of Sri Aurobindo’s social and political philosophy especially expressed in his book The Human cycle and the ideal of human unity.
On 15th August 2021, auroville organized an online webinar with distinguished panelists Dr Karan Singh, Sir Mark Tully, Dr Shashi Tharoor, Ameeta Mehra and Dr Aster Patel on the relevance of the independence day message and 5 dreams of Sri Aurobindo in the context of current world.
On 15th August 2021, auroville organized a number of events to initiate a year long commemoration of Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary year
Livestreamed Fundraiser to help realize a Bilingual Exhibition on Sri Aurobindo’s life and his relationship with the South. The exhibition will travel to schools and institutions in Auroville and the bio-region.
Auroville, the Universal Town in the making, is founded on the work and vision of the Indian sage and philosopher, Sri Aurobindo, and his spiritual partner, Mirra Alfassa, from France, known as the Mother. This visionary world experiment was endorsed by UNESCO for the future and unity of humankind through a change of Consciousness.
Auroville was inaugurated on February 28, 1968 with a City plan and a Charter before 5000 guests that included ambassadors, UNESCO directors and people and youth from India and around the world. The City plan and the Charter form the twin basis of Auroville as a unified and unique experiment which combines material development with the spiritual.
Foreseeing the crisis of humanity and the plight of cities worldwide, Auroville was planned as a model of spiritual urbanism for which the Mother commissioned the architect Roger Anger ro make a city plan which came to be known as the Galaxy. This integrates social, cultural, educational, economic and environmental factors needed to create the conditions of change for the world’s future. We aspire to see this unique city experiment realized in the best possible way, without further delay, and hope to have your support in its manifestation.
Once the Auroville Foundation came into being with the Auroville Foundation Act and started functioning with the appointment of a Governing Board, the process of creating a master plan based on the Galaxy plan model, was done, approved and published in the Gazette of the Government of India. This model will be exhibited at the MOMA, New York, from February to July 2022 as a part of an exhibition on Modern Indian Architecture that will feature the work of Charles Correa, B V Doshi, Joseph Stein, Le Corbusier, Laurie Baker and Roger Anger.
On December 4, 2021, after months of sustained discussions, Auroville’s Town Development Council issued a work order to commence work on clearing the path known as the Crown. This circular path which unifies all parts of the city is a largely pedestrian artery that is to form Auroville’s main urban life centre and clearly indicated in the Master plan. Unfortunately, the anti-city and environmental hardliners soon gathered to aggressively stop the work by putting small children in front of JCBs that had been called to do the work of clearing. Police were called at night to protect the area from protestors and to allow the work to continue. However work was again blocked as the protestors returned and refused to back down.
Since then, misleading and destructive reports about Auroville and the events have been circulating in the media, social media, and petitions both via external and internal media. They challenge the master plan and speak in the name of all Aurovilians. This is absolutely incorrect and, a matter of great concern, as even RA decisions are now flouted on change.org with provocative statements against the government at the cost of Auroville. We want to take this opportunity to dispel the misinformation that is being spread and offer some clarity.
The Crown, an essential artery, has been blocked for over two decades by deliberately planting trees and thorns over it, effectively making large sections out of bounds, instead of taking care to keep the passage of this collective zone of Auroville clear. Additionally, ‘temporary’ buildings had been placed deliberately on the Crown, without permission and by defying agreements made. Anywhere else in the world, whether in India, Europe, America or elsewhere, the clearing of essential roads that are to serve everyone cannot be blocked or obstructed in such a manner, for so long.
Clearly, it is not an issue of saving a few hundred trees or sustainability. In the context of three million trees that already exist, serving only 3500 people occupying 3000 acres of land, we cannot proclaim to be sustainable. It is more a case, as it has become clear, of those who refuse the city as consciously planned. JCBs and police have been declared as prime villains in all this but the fact is that the foresters and some architects protesting, remain the most regular users of JCBs in Auroville. With a little goodwill and collaboration all the drama that ensued and continues could have been avoided. There is also the record of a JCB being driven into a community by foresters and youth, without warning, to dig a 2m wide and 2m deep trench to block access. Continued passivity towards such actions has led to a culture of entitlement and impunity that we witness today.
Auroville is planned as a very green and sustainable city with ample areas designated for green corridors and parks in the city area alone plus a greenbelt that will surround it. The fabricated ‘controversy’ around the master plan has been a recurring ploy to delay and obstruct Auroville from growing. Most shocking of all has been the NGT Stay Order to stop the work with a few members taking the rest of Auroville to court. No process was followed, no consultation sought and no respect given to the wishes of the rest of Auroville.
The how of it, now being decried, shows no acknowledgement or respect for the work done and expertise attained over the last 25 years. A master plan agreed upon and approved cannot change into a forest at the whims of some, altering the very direction of Auroville. Nor can it be challenged each time work finally gets ready to start.
Previous Governing Boards of the Auroville Foundation who helped initiate and get the needed approvals for Auroville’s master plan, also urged us to take the work forward several times without success. The current Governing Board has fortunately taken a very proactive stand which is appreciated by a large section of the community.
We must also remember that the people of the surrounding villages, here in Tamil Nadu, offered their land to the Mother to see Her dream realized. There is an open frustration that even after 50 years, their land holds only about 3500 people and not 50,000 as intended. There is a great support amongst the local population who want to contribute towards Auroville’s development with their skills, dedication and goodwill. Many have joined Auroville to see it realized but face the risk of being fired or not accepted, should they openly claim to support the city.
The provocative misinformation and media hype that continues has harmed Auroville’s image in the immediate bio region, and before India which hosts this unique experiment for the rest of the world. It has also confused our associates and well wishers who have collaborated with us and supported our growth and aspirations for decades.
Auroville is not about the personal dreams of the residents. It is a vision and a hope that each Aurovilian holds in trust for humanity. That all this occurs during Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary has also come as a shock for many around the world.
Please be assured that we are neither in danger nor in any enforced situation despite the actions and abusive behaviour of some residents of Auroville and no one has been hurt so far, as it is being falsely insinuated in media reports and via anonymous websites and outreach.
In their meeting of 18th January, 2022, the Governing Board unanimously reaffirmed its stand of continuing with the expeditious implementation of the Auroville township as per the Auroville master plan and invited all to collaborate harmoniously.
India, by carrying the Mother’s invitation to the world to build Auroville based on the vision of Sri Aurobindo, recognizes the aims and objectives of this visionary project, a place of unending learning. This ‘crisis’ is a moment of truth for all who have joined Auroville of their own free-will, to participate in its realization and to live up to their commitment.
Concerned Residents of Auroville
It’s often said that Auroville is like a microcosm of the world. And so it is. Represented within the project are virtually all the major polarities found in global society, plus the inevitable subtle tensions that exist as a result of them.
For example, there are men, women and children here representing the East-West divide, the North-South gap, all sorts of religious and cultural backgrounds, the rich and the poor, the literate and the illiterate, the sophisticated and the unsophisticated, people of different races and colour, from villages, towns and cities, from democracies and socialist societies, from first, second and third world countries, some easy to relate to, some not so easy, some hard workers and some more lazy, all with different preferences and priorities as they go about their daily lives – as smokers/non-smokers, drinkers/teetotalers, vegetarians/non-vegetarians, meditators/non-meditators, office workers/foresters and so on. The one thing that all these people have in common, however, is that they have ALL voluntarily placed themselves in the melting pot which is Auroville, and have accepted to work out their differences in a new and higher way, changing themselves instead of trying to change others as they seek to realise the ideal of human unity in diversity.
We say “changing themselves”, but what does that mean? It doesn’t mean trying to become the same as everyone else around them. That would be a sort of unity in conformity. What Auroville is attempting to achieve is something quite different, accepting and allowing the full, rich and wonderful diversity of mankind to flourish in complete freedom, while yet achieving an inner unity and experiencing a unified and harmonious society. Sometimes the human mix seems too much, too complex, as hidden tensions rise to the surface or old behaviour patterns take over, but actually it is perfect, just as it should be, if Auroville is to be a valid experiment representative of humanity as a whole.
Inspired by The Dream, this is the ideal Auroville aspires to realise.
The city-in-the-making is located on the Coromandel Coast in south India. It draws its inspiration from the vision and work of the renowned Indian seer and spiritual visionary, Sri Aurobindo. His spiritual collaborator, The Mother, founded the township in 1968 and gave its Charter, which you find scrolling on our homepage. The writings of these visionaries, and the specific guidelines for Auroville given by the Mother are crucial for in-depth understanding of what is trying to be achieved in Auroville, a collective experiment dedicated to human unity and international understanding.
“With the present morality of the human race a sound and durable human unity is not yet possible; but there is no reason why a temporary approximation to it should not be the reward of strenuous aspiration and untiring effort. By constant approximations and by partial realisations and temporary successes Nature advances“, writes Sri Aurobindo, and this reality stands central in Auroville and acts as perpetual encouragement for the residents to persevere. During all our meetings, deliberations and plannings, we are acutely aware of how vast and how high our aim is, for “— in it must be found the means of a fundamental, an inner, a complete, a real human unity which would be the one secure base of a unification of human life. A spiritual oneness which would create a psychological oneness not dependent upon any intellectual or outward uniformity.”
Auroville’s location in south India is connected with the fact that the Mother had been living in Puducherry since 1920. It was there, in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1964 that the idea of Auroville was conceived. Both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had expressed in their earliest writings the necessity of starting, at some point, a collective experiment under optimum conditions – ideally in the form of a city – in order to create a bridgehead for a new consciousness which was seeking to manifest in the world. The Ashram itself, formally created in 1926, was a first attempt in that direction. It was only in 1964 that the Mother felt that the time had come for such a bold experiment to be started on the bigger scale of a township.
The name ‘Auroville’ was given in homage to Sri Aurobindo, while also meaning ‘City of Dawn’. The idea was recognised and taken up by the Government of India. A location near to Pondicherry was found. The time was right, the wheel set in motion, and support started coming in. The inauguration took place on February 28th, 1968.
Since the very beginning, Auroville has received the unanimous endorsement of the General Conference of UNESCO in 1966, 1968, 1970, 1983, 2007. Governmental and Non-Governmental Organisations in India and abroad have funded various development programmes, and donations have been received from foundations in Europe and the USA, from Auroville International Centres, and from private donors around the world. The residents themselves have also made, and continue to make, a major contribution of their resources and energy to the project.
Auroville is intended as a city for up to 50,000 inhabitants from around the world. Today its inhabitants number around 2000 people, drawn from some thirty countries. They live in 100 settlements of varying size, separated by village and temple lands and surrounded by Tamil villages with a total population of over 35,000 people. Their activities are multifarious, and include afforestation, organic agriculture, educational research, health care, village development, appropriate technology, and building construction, information technology, small and medium scale businesses, town planning, water table management, cultural activities and community services.
In 1988, the Government of India passed the Auroville Foundation Act to safeguard the development of Auroville according to its Charter. This Act established three constituent bodies: the Governing Board, which would oversee the development of the township in collaboration with its inhabitants, the Residents Assembly and the International Advisory Council, which can provide international support and advice, when required, to the Governing Board.
As the world is rapidly changing and groping for new paradigms to re-model itself, so Auroville stands poised at the start of a new millennium, ready to enter a new phase of its development and growth, and aware of a new flowering of the faith in humanity’s future that it represents.
This was the first public message on Auroville sent into the world in 1965. Three years later, at the inauguration ceremony of Auroville on 28th February 1968, youth representing 121 nations and 23 Indian states placed a handful of earth in a lotus-shaped urn, symbolising the creation of a city dedicated to international understanding and planetary transformation.
Envisaged as a city for 50,000 people, Auroville is an emerging township of presently about 2,500 volunteers from India and from some 50 countries around the world. Located in a rural area of Tamil Nadu, South India, it is surrounded by 13 villages with a population of approximately 40,000 people.
Over the past decades, Auroville has been dedicated to a wide range of development programmes, in many of which it has made impressive achievements. Programmes have been carried out in the following fields of activity:
Auroville received the unanimous endorsement of the General Conference of UNESCO in 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1983. Governmental and non-governmental organisations in India and abroad have funded various development programmes. Donations have also been given by foundations in Europe and the United States, by Auroville International Centres and private donors from all over the world. The Auroville residents themselves have made a major contribution of financial resources and energy to the Auroville project.
In 1988, the Government of India passed the Auroville Foundation Act to safeguard the development of the International Township of Auroville according to its Charter. Under this Act, an autonomous institution, the Auroville Foundation, has been established with a Governing Board presently chaired by Mr Kireet Joshi and an International Advisory Council. In his presentation of the Act before Indian Parliament, Sri P. Shiv Shanker, the then Indian Minister of Human Resource Development, said:
“Auroville is to be looked upon as a vision which has a great potentiality and this can be of tremendous service to our country and the world at large.”
Over the past decade, Auroville has developed a multifarious cultural scene that is quite remarkable for a population of just over 2,000 people.
Many outstanding music performers, both from within India and abroad, perform regularly in Auroville. Eminent musicians such as Zakir Hussain, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Pandit Jasraj and Marcus Stockhausen have been giving concerts. Live performances by Auroville residents of western and eastern classical music, as well as of jazz and popular music, and blends of Indian and western music occur frequently. Music education is given for a variety of western and eastern instruments, such as vocals, violin, piano, flute, guitar, tabla and harmonium. Also, an adult’s and a children’s choir is regularly rehearsing and giving performances.
Resident theatre artists have created several theatre groups who perform in English or Tamil. A wide range of theatre classes, such as acting, improvisation and mime are being offered to adult Aurovilians and children alike. Teachers in the Auroville schools use original theatre, music and dance to explore body expression and induce concentration and imagination.
Auroville has been fortunate to host many visiting dancers of national and international repute, while the background of the dancers residing in Auroville is diverse. Predominant is the influence of western contemporary dance and of Bharat Natyam, the traditional dance form of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Dance education follows naturally the intense dance activities and is part of the curriculum of the Auroville schools. Today classes are offered in improvisation, modern dance, Indian classical dance and African dance.
Besides local productions, international publishing companies such as Amity House, Banyans Books, Writers Workshop and Penguin have published poems from Auroville poets. One of Auroville’s Tamil poets has been officially laureated as one of the great modern poets of India.
Numerous artists resident in Auroville have studied in art institutions all over the world. They are exhibiting their works in Auroville as well as in India and in major galleries in Europe. The preferred media are oil, acrylic and watercolours, pastels, pencil and chalk. For sculpture and bas relief works a variety of materials such as terra-cotta, ceramics, plaster, wood, metal, marble and granite are being used.
Auroville is an affiliate member of RES ARTIS, an international network which promotes residential exchange programmes for artists world-wide to do research, work with other artists, and to strengthen international ties and understanding of the diverse cultural heritages that invigorate the human society.
Auroville’s Charter speaks about Auroville as “a place of unending education”, thus introducing the concept of a life-long process of development towards a person balanced in body, mind and spirit.
Auroville’s educational research endeavours to nurture the child’s potential to its highest possible level, and is based on a child-centred approach. A free choice system, allowing the student to increasingly choose his/her own subjects for study, is gradually being introduced, in particular in the more advanced courses. Also, sports and physical education are strongly emphasized for balanced and healthy growth of the children. Artistic training is an intrinsic part of Auroville’s system of education, which encourages the child to develop his/her artistic faculties and sense of beauty.
At present, there are crèches, kindergartens, primary schools and one high school in Auroville, next to 4 day-schools and over 15 part-time evening schools for the children of the nearby villages. About 1000 children from the neighbouring villages and from Auroville are benefiting from Auroville’s educational programme.
Research papers on Auroville’s educational work are regularly published and two major publications “The Aim of Life” and “The Good Teacher and the Good Pupil” have been produced to help invigorate a new, integral approach to education.
Education in Auroville is administered under the umbrella of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute for Educational Research (SAIIER), an organisation established in 1984 to focus on Auroville’s multi-faceted educational and cultural activities for both children and adults.
Auroville has gained national and international acclaim for its wasteland reclamation and reforestation work. More than 2,500 acres of near barren and visibly dying land have been transformed into a lush green area. Comprehensive contour bunding and the building of small check dams for soil and water conservation have significantly enhanced the life-support potential of the whole area. Over 2 million forest trees, hedge trees, fruit, and fuel wood trees have been planted.
The Auroville Centre for Ecological Land Use and Rural Development, “Palmyra”, has been carrying out soil and water conservation, and reforestation programmes over the last decade on almost 3,000 acres of village land with a total of more than 1.2 million trees having been planted. Palmyra also offers training programmes for farmers, NGOs, and government officers in the field of ecological and sustainable land use.
There are more than 100 commercial units, both large and small, operated by Auroville at present. Their activities are diverse and include handicrafts (such as ready-made garments for adults and children, candle and incense products, embroidery, crochet, quilts, hand painted silk, beadwork, jewellery, postcards, leather work, pottery, paper lampshades, woodwork, etc.), printing and graphic design, food processing, electronics and engineering, computer software, windmill manufacturing, and construction and architectural services.
In terms of its own maintenance, Auroville wishes to become increasingly self-sufficient. Auroville’s commercial units have an important role to play in achieving this objective. Besides generating funds to assist the community in maintaining its basic services and infrastructure, the units provide employment and training for the local villagers, enabling them to improve their standard of living and acquire valuable skills. At present, about 5,000 villagers are employed in Auroville.
Many systems of primary health care are in use in Auroville, including allopathy, homoeopathy, acupuncture, chiropody, podology, massage, chromato-therapy, and others.
The Auroville Health Centre, recognised as a Mini Health Centre by the Tamil Nadu State Government, is equipped with basic medical facilities and staffed by an international team. It serves the Auroville community as well as about 200 patients daily from the villages at its headquarters in Kuilapalayam and its sub-centres. A team of 30 local women trained as village health workers serve in 17 villages, giving first aid, home cures and basic health education. The Auroville Health Centre also runs a dental care unit, a children’s home for pediatric treatment, a medical lab, a pharmacy and a small medicinal plant garden, and offers several preventive health programmes to village women and children.
Under the aegis of The Indian Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Auroville hosts one of the 15 Medicinal Plants Conservation Parks which are being set up in the three South-Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The aim of these centres is to revive the local health traditions and the ancient medical systems of India as described in the Ayurveda and its Tamil equivalent, the Siddha. For this purpose, Auroville has established an ethno-medicinal forest area to conserve medicinal plant diversity, an outreach nursery focusing on medicinal plant propagation and distribution, and a Bio-Resources Centre dedicated to education, training and research in the use of locally available medicinal plants in primary health care.
In 1997, a new healing centre complex, “Quiet”, near the beach was inaugurated to focus on providing alternative healing therapies. An international homoeopathic seminar, led by world-renowned homoeopaths from India and UK, marked the beginning of a new chapter in Auroville’s endeavour to combine new therapies with conventional health care.
Since July 2008 Kailash Clinic is operating, right in the middle of Auroville. It is a pilot project of the Integral health Services (IHS), based on an interdisciplinary approach to medicine.
It is providing doctor’s consultations, first aid and wound dressing in the morning and complementary therapies in the afternoons.
Auroville has gained considerable knowledge and expertise in the field of innovative, appropriate and cost-effective building technologies, especially earth construction and ferro-cement.
Earth construction uses compressed earth blocks, made with a manual press from local earth mixed with 3-5% cement. The blocks are usually produced on the building site, without polluting the environment or depleting the forests, as no kiln firing is required.
Ferro-cement is a thin cement mortar laid over reinforcing wire mesh, thus employing steel and cement in a highly efficient and cost-effective manner. It is cheap, strong, versatile and long lasting, and the basic techniques are easily acquired, making this building technology readily accessible to the neighbouring villagers. Ferro-cement doors, roofing channels, water tanks, biogas systems, latrines and other building components are being manufactured in Auroville.
The Auroville Building Centre, which is part of a national network of more than 500 building centres all over India initiated by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation of India (HUDCO), provides regular training programmes for masons, master masons, site supervisors, contractors, engineers, and architects. It also offers consultancy, designs buildings and supervises construction sites using these appropriate, cost-effective building technologies. In 1995 and in 1996, the Auroville Building Centre received via HUDCO the yearly Outstanding Performance Award from the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation for its activities in this field.
Auroville is located on a low-lying plateau on the south-eastern coast of India, 160 km. south of Madras. At the centre, both physically and spiritually, stands the nearly completed Matrimandir, “the soul of Auroville”. Started on 21st February 1971, construction work on this structure has continued uninterruptedly ever since. The inner chamber of Matrimandir, a place for silence and concentration, has been completed and, at present, the work focuses on finishing the outer structure and creating the surrounding gardens.
Four zones will radiate out from the Matrimandir gardens: International, Cultural, Residential and Industrial. The Green Belt, an area for promoting biodiversity, environmental restoration and organic farming, will eventually surround the entire city area. While much of the land still has to be purchased, Auroville presently manages about three-quarters of the total acreage within the future city area, and about 25% within the Green Belt.
The present community of Auroville consists of some 100 settlements of varying sizes. Auroville has created a basic infrastructure of roads, water and electricity supply, and telecommunications, including an electronic communications network. Accommodation has been constructed for 1,500 people, and municipal services for food production, purchase and distribution, electricity and water supply, waste disposal and recycling, education, health care, financial transactions, and town planning have been established.
The Auroville Township Master Plan 2000 – 2025, which has been recently endorsed by the Government of India, is dedicated to the challenge of creating an environment-friendly, sustainable urban settlement that, at the same time, integrates and cares for the neighbouring rural area.
Auroville’s concept is therefore to build a city that will economise on land needs by introducing development approaches with an optimum mix of densities and appealing urban forms and amenities, while the surrounding Green Belt will be a fertile zone for applied research in the sectors of food production, forestry, soil conservation, water management, waste management and other areas which assist sustainable development. The results of such innovative methods would be available for application in both rural and urban areas in India and the world.
The development of an ecologically sound agriculture, which excludes the use of pesticides and detrimental chemicals, and the application of agro-forestry techniques are being actively pursued in Auroville. Efforts are being made with the surrounding village farmers to reverse the process of growing cash crops using chemical inputs in the form of fertilisers and poisonous pesticides such as DDT. Alternative biodegradable pesticides are being developed and marketed as part of an overall attempt to re-introduce sustainable agricultural practices throughout the bioregion.
Training programmes are regularly organised for farmers from the surrounding area. On the national level, Auroville has participated in many Indian conferences on organic farming, and hosted in April 1995 an All-India seminar on organic farming under the name “ARISE: Agricultural Renewal in India for a Sustainable Environment”.
Concerned with the ecological implications of energy consumption, Aurovilians have been experimenting with the use of renewable energy sources from the beginning. The major forms of renewable energy utilised in Auroville are solar, wind and biomass. At present, more than 1,200 photovoltaic (PV) panels are in use for electricity and water supply. Some 30 windmills of various designs are in operation for pumping water, and specially designed ferro-cement biogas systems process animal and vegetable waste to produce methane gas and organic fertilisers. Today, Auroville has become a major testing ground for renewable energy sources in India.
The Auroville Centre for Scientific Research (CSR), a research institution approved by the Government of India in 1984, is the focal point for many of these activities. It also runs “Awareness Workshops towards a Sustainable Future” for NGO’s, government officials, students and professionals on the sustainable techniques applied in Auroville.
Rural development has been a major activity of Auroville since its inception. There are 13 villages in the immediate neighbourhood, comprising about 40,000 people, and altogether 40 villages in the bioregional area. At present, ten Auroville working groups have dedicated themselves to fostering sustainable programmes in these 40 villages.
With funding from a number of national and international organisations, Auroville’s rural development programme aims at:
Vasudhaiva kudumbakam, said the ancient Indians: the world is one family.
The ideal of human unity, which was already present at the dawn of civilisation, has never appeared so close to realisation, but paradoxically the closer we come to it, the more it seems to elude us. It is as if at the onset of the 21st century the need for human unity has never been so great, and yet quite often this very unity, seen as inevitable, is perceived as somewhat threatening.
We speak of mondialisation, of globalisation, and in the same breath we deplore the dangers of uniformity.. We speak of democracy as a universal ideal and of the progress of all nations towards it as irreversible, and yet at the same time this democratic model is perceived as a system imposed by some nations on others. We are facing environmental problems which threaten the very survival of our planet. We are aware of ‘global warming’ and a decrease in the finite resources of the planet, and we know that in order to tackle these common problems the individual nation-state is not an adequate institution anymore. But the very concept of a supra-national body is perceived as a possible infringement on the sovereignty of the nation-state, won in numerous cases after many decades – or longer – of struggle and pain.
We claim that today’s world is a global village, because technological progress has made our earth very small, and news can instantly reach every inhabitant of the earth through the highroad of information. But there is the fear that this global village culture may erase the diverse cultures of the earth; indeed it is argued that there is already an immense drive towards uniformity of life habits and uniformity of knowledge.
On the economic front, the much-talked-about liberalisation process is seen by many as an attempt to impose everywhere a model only suited to some countries, and to spread everywhere a culture of consumerism. A computer for everyone and bread for only one quarter of the world population; is this the goal towards which we are advancing?
In the 19th century, intellectuals saw the progress of science as the great factor which would lead to the unification of mankind, since science was a thing common to all men in its conclusions and was international in its very nature; but we know now that science can be misused, and is being misused, to discover more and more means of destruction. We have lost faith in science as a panacea for all evils, but what is there to replace it?
We know that egoism is the biggest obstacle to a life of harmony and peace on earth, but after so many centuries of civilisation no amount of religious preaching or moral teaching has been able to convince the ego to forego its claims, as to speak to him of fraternity is to speak to him of something fundamentally contrary to his nature.
Therefore it appears that although we are moving somewhat reluctantly towards a kind of unification, this is not a process likely to solve the many acute problems of the earth, nor will the envisaged unity answer the deeper needs and aspirations of the human being. In fact, we have begun to understand that if we want to preserve the freedom for man to develop and grow in all liberty, this unity cannot be built through mechanical means. It cannot be achieved as long as man does not recognise a real unity between man and man; it cannot be arrived at through social and mechanical devices; and we have even started to realise that if its aim is not to bring about a fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind, this unity is hardly desirable.
It becomes therefore urgent to understand what this unity is towards which we feel pushed in spite of ourselves. Man is a transitional being, said Sri Aurobindo shortly after the first World War, evolution continues and man will be surpassed. Not only did Sri Aurobindo foresee the next step in the evolution of man, but he told us how to participate in it: instead of remaining a passive spectator in a painful and incomprehensible process, we could consciously collaborate in our own evolution and break free of our seemingly inextricable bonds.
But for this, we have to reverse the process, said Sri Aurobindo, and instead of using external means, we have to turn inward, because without a change in man’s nature no real changes in the external circumstances are likely to take place. The only way we can move towards unity is to progressively realise that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality in which we are all one – not only realise it mentally but discover it in ourselves and live this knowledge. The secret of unity is within, said Sri Aurobindo; the secret of brotherhood is within. There is no unity except by the soul, there is no real brotherhood except in the soul and by the soul. Only when we live from the soul and not from the ego will a real unity reign on earth.
This ‘spiritual age of humanity’ then will represent a transformation in the nature of man as momentous as the appearance of the thinking mind on earth. In the same way as for millennia the mind was the centre of our life, so, in the new age opening for humanity, or ‘supra-mental’ age, the soul will become the centre of all life and activities. A new stage in the evolution of man has already begun; a new consciousness, higher than the mind, a truth-consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo said, in which the dualities, hesitations and limitations of the mind and the greed and blindness of the ego will no longer exist, has already started to appear, and all the upheavals and convulsions that are at present so painfully tearing our earth are the outward signs of this evolutionary crisis. This new consciousness is already at work in the atmosphere of the earth: we can connect with it, we can call it in ourselves, we can use it to transform our entire nature and consequently the world in which we live.
It is in this wide and far-reaching sense that Auroville is dedicated to human unity. All are invited.