Auroville: The City of Dawn

Auroville: The City of Dawn

The year 2003 marks the 35th anniversary of the founding of Auroville, a unique 'model city' near Pondicherry, India. Inspired by the great Indian spiritual master Sri Aurobindo, Auroville has developed into a full-fledged city with an expanding community of nearly 2000 people from 40 countries.

Auroville, ‘the City of Dawn,’ is a manifestation of human unity in diversity inspired by the work and prescience of Sri Aurobindo (1872 - 1950) and his French spiritual collaborator, known as the Mother (1878 - 1973).

Auroville is built on the pedestal of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching at the behest of the Mother and epitomizes solidarity and unity, where people of all countries would be at home.

The General Assembly of UNESCO unanimously passed in 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1983 resolutions of support to Auroville, inviting "member states and international non-governmental organisations to participate in the development of Auroville as an international cultural township designed to bring together the values of different cultures and civilizations in a harmonious environment with integrated living standards which correspond to man's physical and spiritual needs."

Auroville is located on a low-lying plateau on the south east coast of India in Pondicherry and is planned for 50,000 inhabitants. This unique project was inaugurated on 28th February 1968 when young people representing 124 countries and all Indian states placed handfuls of earth on an urn as a symbol of human unity irrespective of nationality, caste or creed near the site of Matrimandir at the center of Auroville.

The Matrimandir

The Matrimandir, the Soul of Auroville with its central sphere of meditation is a place for silence and concentration and radiating out of Matimandir are four zones – the industrial (north), cultural (north east), residential (south/south west) and international (west) each depicting an important aspect of community’s activities. Silence, Cleanliness and Discipline cannot be dispensed with at Matrimandir.

Activities

The activities of the inhabitants are diverse and encompass cultural activities, educational research, health care, village development, technology and construction, small and medium scale business, afforestation, organic agriculture, town planning and community services. Auroville in an attempt to be self-sufficient in its energy needs has a policy of experimenting with and implementing renewable and non-polluting energy like solar, wind and biogas.

Organisation of Auroville

A flexible internal structure is set up by the community members keeping in mind the Mother’s advice that the experiment should not be hampered by too many rules and regulations. The day-to-day affairs are managed by various working groups covering areas like finance, health, community coordination and operate with a certain degree of autonomy. Major community decisions are taken in open meetings and the mode of decision-making is by consensus.

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 the 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 realizations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.
Auroville is meant to hasten the advent of the supramental reality upon earth. The help of all those who find that the world is not what it ought to be is welcome. Each one must know if they want to associate with an old world ready for death, or to work for a new and better world preparing to be born.

Sri Aurobindo (1872 - 1950)

Sri Aurobindo (1872 - 1950)

Every year on the 15th of August, which coincides with India's Independence Day, Hindus celebrate the birth anniversary of Rishi Aurobindo — the great Indian scholar, litterateur, philosopher, patriot, social reformer and visionary.

Sri Aurobindo was born in a Bengali family in Calcutta in 1872. His anglophile father Dr K D Ghose christened him Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose at birth. When he was five years old, Aurobindo was admitted to the Loreto Convent School in Darjeeling.

At the age of seven, he was sent to St. Paul's School in London and then to King's College, Cambridge with a senior classical scholarship. Academically brilliant, he soon became proficient in English, Greek, Latin and French and became well acquainted with German, Italian and Spanish. He also qualified for the Indian Civil Service but was dismissed from the Service for not presenting himself at the riding examination upon completion of his two years of probation.

In 1893, at the age of 21, Aurobindo Ghose began working under the Maharaja of Baroda. He went on to become a part-time lecturer in French at Baroda College, and then a regular professor in English, and afterwards the Vice-Principal of the college. Here he studied Sanskrit, Indian history and several Indian languages.

The Patriot

In 1906, Aurobindo abandoned the position of the Principal of India's first National University in Calcutta, and plunged into active politics. He participated in India's struggle for freedom against the British, and soon became a prominent name with his patriotic editorials in Bande Mataram.

For the Indians, he became, as said C R Das, "the poet of patriotism, the prophet of nationalism and a lover of humanity", and in the words of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, "a name to conjure with". But to the Viceroy of India Lord Minto, he was "the most dangerous man we…have to reckon with".

Aurobindo championed the Leftists' idealism and was a dauntless promoter of independence. He opened the purblind Indians' eyes towards the dawn of freedom and instigated them to rise from their slavish stupor. The British soon took him under detention and imprisoned him from 1908 to 1909. However, this one year of seclusion turned out to be a blessing in disguise not only for Sri Aurobindo but for mankind as well. It was in prison that he first realized man should aspire and emerge into a completely New Being and try and create a divine life upon earth.

A Divine Life

This vision led Aurobindo to undergo a profound spiritual transformation, and it is believed that after one such meditative trance in jail, he rose up to proclaim that India would gain her freedom at midnight on 15th August, 1947 — Aurobindo's birthday. Indeed, it rang true!

In 1910, obeying an inner call, he arrived at Pondichery, which was then in French India, and established what is now known as the Auroville Ashram. He left politics entirely and dedicated himself wholly to an inner awakening, which would spiritually elevate mankind forever.

He spent tireless years on the path of "Internal Yoga", i.e. to acquire spiritual upliftment of the mind, will, heart, life, body, the conscious as well as the subconscious and the superconscious parts of ourselves, to gain what he called the "Supramental Consciousness".

Henceforth, Sri Aurobindo tussled inwardly with the dark forces within man and raised secret spiritual battles to establish truth, peace and perennial joy. He believed that only this would enable man to approach the divine.

Aurobindo's Aim

His object was not to develop any religion or establish a new faith or an order but to attempt an inner self-development by which each human being can perceive the oneness in all and procure an elevated consciousness that will externalize the god-like attributes in man.

A Great Litterateur

Rishi Aurobindo left behind a substantial body of enlightening literature. His major works include The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, Commentaries on the Isha Upanishad, Powers Within — all dealing with the intense knowledge that he had gained in the practice of Yoga. Many these appeared in his monthly philosophical publication, the Arya, which appeared regularly for 6 years until 1921.

His other books are The Foundations of Indian Culture, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Future Poetry, The Secret of the Veda, The Human Cycle. Among students of English literature, Aurobindo is mainly known for Savitri, a great epical work of 23,837 lines directing man towards the Supreme Being.

This great sage left his mortal body in 1950 at the age of 72. He left to the world a priceless heritage of spiritual glory that alone can free man from the troubles that beset it. His ultimate message to humanity, he summed up in these words:

"A divine life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage."

Sri Aurobindo: Top 10 Quotations

Sri Aurobindo: Top 10 Quotations

 

 

Sri Aurobindo - the great Indian scholar, litterateur, philosopher, patriot, social reformer and visionary - was also a prominent religious guru, who left behind a substantial body of enlightening literature.

Although he was a Hindu scholar, Aurobindo's aim was not to develop any religion but to attempt an inner self-development by which each human being can perceive the oneness in all and procure an elevated consciousness that will externalize the god-like attributes in man.

His major works include The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, Commentaries on the Isha Upanishad, Powers Within - all dealing with the intense knowledge that he had gained in the practice of Yoga.

Here is a selection of quotations from Sri Aurobindo's teachings:

On Indian Culture: "More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures." ( A Defense of Indian Culture)

On Hinduism: "Hinduism ... gave itself no name, because it set itself no sectarian limits; it claimed no universal adhesion, asserted no sole infallible dogma, set up no single narrow path or gate of salvation; it was less a creed or cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit.

An immense many-sided and many staged provision for a spiritual self-building and self-finding, it had some right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the eternal religion, Santana Dharma..." (India's Rebirth)

On India's Religions: "India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration." ( The Renaissance in India)

On Hinduism as a Law of Life: "Hinduism, which is the most skeptical and the most believing of all, the most skeptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced, turning in to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism, we find the basis of future world religion. This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras … but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling." (Karmayogin)

On Ancient India's Scientific Quest: "... the seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo, even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous..." ( The Upanishads - By Sri Aurobindo)

On India's Spiritual Mind: "Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects." ( A Defense of Indian Culture)

On the Hindu Religion: "The Hindu religion appears ... as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance - crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit ... That which we call the Hindu religion is really the Eternal religion because it embraces all others." (Aurobindo's Letters, Vol. II)

On Inner Strength: "The great are strongest when they stand alone, A God-given might of being is their force." ( Savitri )

On The Gita: "The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization." (The Message of the Bhagavad Gita)

On the Vedas: "When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be a mighty truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the Vedanta."