Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.
8 September 1965
The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.
What was Auroville supposed to be, according to the vision of the Mother? Where do we, one day, hope to reach? And where are we clearly still falling short of her aims? To understand a bit more about Mother’s aspiration for Auroville, it can be helpful to have a look at some of the statements she prepared for ‘the City of Dawn.’ If you want to dive deeper, a large selection of Mother’s statements on Auroville have been beautifully compiled in these books by Gilles Guigan. Here, we want to give a very short version that highlights some of the main ‘vision documents’ as well as some of the quotes of Mother on Auroville.
Selecting these quotes is not easy, as Mother was responsive to the need of the moment, and we have to be careful to understand that all she said was in a specific context, to a specific person. On another day, to another visitor, she might have said what appears to be the opposite. But, she noted: “You must rise high enough in your consciousness to be above contradictions.” The picture that emerges on Auroville is one of a great Dream, meeting the complicated reality of human nature, a picture that can only be understood in the light of Mother’s spiritual vision, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. The focus here is on Mother’s vision for Auroville in a very broad sense.
The Vision Documents
The three most important documents at the core of the Auroville experiment are the Auroville Charter, A Dream, and To Be a True Aurovilian. While these are equally important for all who want to live and work in Auroville, we put here only the text of the Charter, which was read out in 16 languages at the inauguration of Auroville:
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 Charter remains the core aspiration for Auroville, and is often referred to in our community discussions; it is the guiding star for the individual and the collective, used as a measure by which we decide on our next steps to bring Mother’s vision to life.
If you are interested, please also have a look at A Dream, which is Mother’s dream for Auroville, and To Be a True Aurovilian, which gives some sense of the inner work that Mother asks of anyone wanting to live in Auroville.
So What is This Auroville?
We cannot say what Auroville ‘is’ these days – as you might hear when you come to visit, “there are as many Aurovilles as there are Aurovilians.” As we will discuss more below, Auroville is somewhere between dream and reality, as any visitor will immediately notice. Yet from what the Mother has said over the years, we can see what Auroville could be, the potential that is alive here, a guiding star for the collective. To give you a taste of this, we have put some relevant quotations of the Mother here by theme.
A Place for Collective Yoga
What is the difference between the Ashram and Auroville?
The Ashram will retain its true role of pioneer, inspirer and guide.
Auroville is the attempt towards collective realisation.
– June 1968
Earth needs…
…a place where men can live away from all national rivalries, social conventions, self-contradictory moralities and contending religions;
…a place where human beings, freed from all slavery to the past, can devote themselves wholly to the discovery and practice of the Divine Consciousness that is seeking to manifest.
Auroville wants to be this place and offers itself to all who aspire to live the Truth of tomorrow.
– 20 September 1969
Auroville is created to realize the ideal of Sri Aurobindo who taught us the Karma Yoga. Auroville is for those who want to do the Yoga of work.
To live in Auroville means to do the Yoga of work. So all Aurovilians must take up a work and do it as Yoga.
– 27 March 1973
An Experiment in Human Unity
Peace through human unity:
Unity through uniformity is an absurdity.
Unity must be realised through the union of the many.
Each one is part of the unity; each one is indispensable to the whole.
– October 1969
How can people having different values live and work together in harmony? The solution is to go deep within oneself and find the place where all the differences combine to constitute the essential and eternal Unity.
– 4 May 1969
Auroville wants to be the first realisation of human unity based on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo, where men of all countries would be at home.
– January 1972
A Place for Peace and Truth
Auroville should be at the service of Truth, beyond all social, political and religious convictions. Auroville is the effort towards peace, in sincerity and Truth.
– 20 September 1966
At last a place where one will be able to think only of progressing and transcending oneself. At last a place where one will be able to live in peace, without conflicts and without rivalries of nations, religions and ambitions. At last a place where nothing will have the right to impose itself as the exclusive truth.
– February 1968
A Bridge
“So, Auroville is meant more for the outside [than the ashram]. Oh, yes! It’s a town, so it is the whole contact with the outside. And an attempt to achieve on earth a slightly more ideal life.”
– 23 June 1965
“The Ashram is the central consciousness, Auroville is one of the outward expressions. In both places equally the work is done for the Divine.”
– 1970, precise date unknown
“What is the fundamental difference between the ideal of the Ashram and the ideal of Auroville? There is no fundamental difference in the attitude towards the future and the service of the Divine. But the people in the Ashram are considered to have consecrated their lives to Yoga […]. Whereas in Auroville simply the good will to make a collective experiment for the progress of humanity is sufficient to gain admittance.”
– 10 November 1969
A Choice for Progress
“Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each one to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of the new species. For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no raison d’être.”
– 21 September 1966
“… But the idea was mostly to insist on the CHOICE. Living in Auroville is a CHOICE. It’s a choice, an attitude you adopt, a decision you make. Living in Auroville is a choice, you choose a certain life. But once you choose one thing, some others become incompatible…. At any rate, living in Auroville is an ACTION, a decision you make, an action.
6 April 1968
“I know it’s not easy, but we are not here to do easy things; the whole world is there for those who like an easy life. I would like people to feel that coming to Auroville does not mean coming to an easy life—it means coming to a gigantic effort for progress. And those who don’t want to keep up with it should leave. That’s how things stand. I wish It were so strong—the need for progress, for the divinization of the being, so intense—that those who are unable (unable or unwilling) to adjust to it would leave by themselves. […] People should know that coming to Auroville means an almost superhuman effort for progress.”
– 4 April 1972
“Auroville is meant not for the satisfaction of desires but for the growth of the true consciousness.”
– 16 June 1968
Dream and Reality
As a community, we are the first to admit that we are far from realising her Dream. When you visit Auroville, you will be confronted with successes and ongoing challenges, some of which can be painful to reconcile. Aurovilians are not all enlightened and self-realized beings, and in the daily challenges of living in community, there is friction, contradiction, and ego. In many areas, the solutions put in place are not always functioning properly, or seem far from the vision of the Mother.
As you can read in our ‘People’ section, these changes have been challenging, especially for some of our early pioneers. The simplicity of the ‘early days’, the connection to Mother and her Dream, is a beautiful source of nostalgia. At the same time, Auroville wants to reach for the Future; in whatever way we can, keeping Mother’s dream as a guiding star, we are here to experiment on ourselves, on our collective, to see if we can attain even a shard of that “ slightly more ideal life” that Auroville was created to attain. At the end of the day, what binds Aurovilians together is a common aspiration to grow, to change, and to do the inner work for the benefit of the community. The results may be patchy, complex, and subject to scrutiny; yet, the Goodwill that is the driving force of this community can come out and delight you in unexpected ways.
Remember that a short visit to Auroville will simply lead you past the infrastructure that was made to help the many tourists that come to Auroville every day. If you really want to get to know Auroville and its inhabitants, consider coming here to volunteer for a while. Interested? Please see all the necessary information for volunteering in Auroville here.
“[…] this birth of Auroville wasn’t preceded by any thought; as always, it was simply a Force acting, like a sort of absolute manifesting, and it was so strong that I could have told people, “Even if you don’t believe in it, even if all circumstances appear to be quite unfavorable, I KNOW THAT AUROVILLE WILL BE. It may be in a hundred years, it may be in a thousand years, I don’t know, but Auroville will be, because it has been decreed.”
– 21 September 1966
Want to know more?
This is just small selection of what Mother has said on Auroville. There are several printed resources that are interesting for whoever wants to read more:
- The New Being and the New Society, a compilation by Paulette Hadnagy of Mother’s statements and archival material.
- Auroville in Mother’s Words, a comprehensive compilation by Gilles Guigan.
