I live in the international town of Auroville, Tamil Nadu, close to Pondicherry (Puducherry), India. My memory of Matrimandor goes way back to 30 to 35 years, when we were visiting our grandparent’s village 5km away from Auroville. We five or six cousins would find rickety bicycles to travel this distance to Auroville. We didn’t know what it was or what it meant. The only thing I remember from our trips is white-skinned Westerners, the cake at the visitor centre and the cement shell of Matrimandir. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would move to live in Auroville.
What is Auroville?
Auroville is a manifestation of a dream by Mira Alfassa, whom we address as The Mother, Disciple of Sri Aurobindo of Pondicherry. To quote Mother, her dream about Auroville is:
“There should be somewhere on earth, a place which no nation could claim as its own, where all human beings of goodwill who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the supreme truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weaknesses and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasure and material enjoyment.
“In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their souls; education would be given not for passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts but to enrich existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organise; the bodily needs of each one would be equally provided for, and intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed in the general organisation not by an increase in the pleasures and powers of life but by increased duties and responsibilities.
“Beauty in all its artistic forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, would be equally accessible to all; the ability to share in the joy it brings would be limited only by the capacities of each one and not by social or financial position.
“For in this ideal place money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social standing. There, work would not be a way to earn one’s living but a way to express oneself and to develop one’s capacities and possibilities while being of service to the community as a whole, which, for its own part, would provide for each individual’s subsistence and sphere of action.”
“In short, it would be a place where human relationships, which are normally based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood.
“The earth is certainly not ready to realize such an ideal, for mankind does not yet possess the necessary knowledge to understand and accept it nor the indispensable conscious force to execute it. That is why I call it a dream. Yet, this dream is on the way of becoming a reality. That is exactly what we are doing on a small scale, in proportion to our modest means. The achievement is indeed far from being perfect, it is progressive; little by little we advance towards our goal, which, we hope, one day we shall be able to hold before the world as a practical and effective means of coming out of the present chaos in order to be born into a more true, more harmonious new life.
So she created the Auroville charter:
- Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But, to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
- Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
- Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
- Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity.
The inauguration happened on February 28, 1968. My mother was 8 years old then, and she attended the inauguration, as all the kids from the schools of near by villages had been invited to join. She only remembers big painted pots and the apple they gave for every child. In those days, an apple was considered such an exotic fruit that the children were still talking about it for many years. Life took her to the big city of Chennai, where my father already was working.
Years after those initial visits to Auroville as a child, I am here now contributing to making this dream a reality. I am proud to be called an Aurovillian, and we intend to make this utopian town available and accessible to every being on this planet. Our Yoga happens by our living and making our lives an inspiration for others to have a blissful life.
Learn more about Auroville here: www.auroville.org
