AUROVILLE: The city of dawn

Auroville is a city founded 50 years ago. It is a project for an international city recognized by the UN with objectives close to utopia.

From: https://auroville.org/

Auroville, sometimes referred to as "The City of Dawn" is conceived for 50,000 inhabitants from around the world. At the centre stands the Matrimandir, the "soul of the city", a place for individual silent concentration, in an oval shaped Peace Area surrounded by a lake. Radiating out beyond the lake are four Zones - the Industrial (north), Cultural (north east), Residential (south/south west) and International (west) - each focusing on an important aspect of the town's life. Surrounding the township will be a Green Belt consisting of forested areas, farms and sanctuaries. 

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. The Mother

...a place where the needs of the spirit and the care for progress would get precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the seeking for pleasures and material enjoyments. The Mother

Vision

The task of giving a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo’s vision was entrusted to the Mother. The creation of a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness is the work she has undertaken. By the very nature of things, it is a collective ideal that calls for a collective effort so that it may be realized in terms of an integral human perfection.

The Auroville Charter

A new vision of power and promise for people choosing another way of life

Auroville was born on 28 February 1968. Its founder, the Mother, created the Auroville Charter consisting of four main ideas which underpinned her vision for Auroville. When Auroville came into being, All India Radio (AIR) broadcast the Charter, live, in 16 languages. Aurovilians apply the ideas of the Auroville Charter in their daily life, in policy development, and in decisions, big and small. The Charter thus forms an omnipresent referent that silently guides the people who choose to live and work for Auroville.

The Auroville Charter

1. 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.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. 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.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity.

During the Auroville inauguration in 1968, youth from 124 different nations and 23 Indian states, deposited a handful of their native soil into the Urn, a marble-clad structure in the form of a symbolic lotus bud, located in the centre of the Amphitheatre (see photo). The Auroville Charter - handwritten in French by the Mother - rests along with this soil, sealed in the Urn, as a powerful message and promise. 

A Dream

Envisioning an Ideal Society

Already in 1954, the Mother had spelt out an alternative formula for a new way to live and to be. She described a new society: balanced, just, harmonious and dynamic. At the time she saw that "the earth is not ready to realise such an ideal" and therefore called it ‘A Dream’. The fact that Auroville steadily grows, and its residents continue to carry this same ideal and vision in their hearts and minds, gives hope. The challenges are enormous and daring. When this dream touches you, don’t hesitate to join us.

A Dream

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.  

To be a True Aurovilian

Embodying a Greater Consciousness

Written by The Mother on 13 June 1970, one of the foundational documents of Auroville, she explains how to live in the world and - for the Divine - at the same time. These ideals are what each Aurovilian keeps in one's heart and strives towards.

1. The first necessity is the inner discovery in order to know what one truly is behind social, moral, cultural, racial and hereditary appearances.  At the centre there is a being free, vast and knowing, who awaits our discovery and who ought to become the active centre of our being and our life in Auroville. 
2. The fulfilment of one’s desires bars the way to the inner discovery which can only be achieved in the peace and transparency of perfect disinterestedness. One lives in Auroville in order to be free from moral and social conventions; but this freedom must not be a new slavery to the ego, to its desires and ambitions. 
3. The Aurovilian should lose the sense of personal possession. For our passage in the material world, what is indispensable to our life and to our action is put at our disposal according to the place we must occupy. The more we are consciously in contact with our inner being, the more are the exact means given to us.
4. Work, even manual work, is something indispensable for the inner discovery. If one does not work, if one does not put his consciousness into matter, the latter will never develop.  To let the consciousness organise a bit of matter by means of one’s body is very good. To establish order around oneself helps to bring order within oneself. One should organise one’s life not according to outer and artificial rules, but according to an organised inner consciousness, for if one lets life go on without subjecting it to the control of the higher consciousness, it becomes fickle and inexpressive. It is to waste one’s time in the sense that matter remains without any conscious utilisation. 
5. The whole earth must prepare itself for the advent of the new species, and Auroville wants to work consciously to hasten this advent. 
6. Little by little it will be revealed to us what this new species must be, and meanwhile, the best course is to consecrate oneself entirely to the Divine.

[When this was to be published at the end of 1971, Mother added:]

The only true freedom is the one obtained by union with the Divine. One can unite with the Divine only by mastering one’s ego.