Finding Auroville

In the previous post I wrote about the purpose of Auroville, and mentioned that there are narratives prevalent here that present other purposes for the township. One of the most powerful of these narratives de-emphasizes Auroville as a laboratory for Integral Yoga, and instead presents it as an experiment in Human Unity. According to this narrative, Auroville is (simply) a place where people from different parts of the world come to learn to live together. There may or may not be a “spiritual” component to one’s activities here, but the focus is on “human unity” and “community”.

Seemingly giving credibility to this line of thinking is the Auroville Charter, written by The Mother in early 1968 for the inauguration of the township. This Charter lays out the purpose of Auroville:

There is no mention of Integral Yoga in the Charter, but there is mention of Human Unity. Therefore, the narrative goes, The Mother did not intend Auroville to be a site for Integral Yoga, but instead for Human Unity. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo might have expounded the spiritual philosophy of Intergal Yoga, but Auroville is Yoga-lite (ultra-lite). Its purpose is just for people to try to live together in peace and harmony.

To answer these assumptions, we have to step back and look at the bigger picture. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother were not just proponents of Integral Yoga. Their entire lives and philosophy revolved around Integral Yoga. Everything they wrote and said has to be seen in the context of Integral Yoga. It was not something they spoke about just sometimes. It was their entire life and purpose. And to suggest that Auroville, which is such an important project of The Mother, is not centered around Integral Yoga is, frankly, ludicrous.

While writing the Auroville Charter, The Mother said that she did not want to put in any “solemnities”. She probably wanted to keep the Charter open and rhetorically broad. She kept in the line “But, to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.” This line subtly indicates the centrality of Integral Yoga to the project of Auroville.

Furthermore, in January 1969, less than a year after writing the Charter, and after assessing the situation in nascent Auroville, The Mother felt the need to write another text for Aurovilians to follow, titled “To Be a True Aurovilian”:

To be a True Aurovilian

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. 

The fulfillment 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.

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.

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.

The whole earth must prepare itself for the advent of the new species, and Auroville wants to work consciously to hasten this advent.

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.

This second text doesn’t mention Integral Yoga either, but it is steeped in its philosophy. She wrote this to try and make Aurovilians understand the true purpose of Auroville.

Usually, when Human Unity is mentioned in the present day as the purpose of Auroville, no further elaboration is given. What exactly does Human Unity mean? What are the parameters and methods to be used in Auroville to “achieve” Human Unity? What we are told is that Auroville is an “international community” where people come from all over the world to live in a peaceful and collaborative way, seeking human unity. How that happens will be seen as we go along. However, Auroville was founded for a much more focussed movement towards Human Unity, based on the philosophy of Intergal Yoga. It might, just might, be useful to remember that Sri Aurobindo has written a book titled “The Ideal of Human Unity”. In it, he writes:

A spiritual religion of humanity is the hope of the future. By this is not meant what is ordinarily called a universal religion, a system, a thing of creed and intellectual belief and dogma and outward rite. Mankind has tried unity by that means; it has failed and deserved to fail, because there can be no universal religious system, one in mental creed and vital form. The inner spirit is indeed one, but more than any other the spiritual life insists on freedom and variation in its self-expression and means of development. A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which we are all one, that humanity is its highest present vehicle on earth, that the human race and the human being are the means by which it will progressively reveal itself here. It implies a growing attempt to live out this knowledge and bring about a kingdom of this divine Spirit upon earth. By its growth within us oneness with our fellow-men will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of cooperation but a deeper brotherhood, a real and an inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. There must be the realisation by the individual that only in the life of his fellow-men is his own life complete. There must be the realisation by the race that only on the free and full life of the individual can its own perfection and permanent happiness be founded. There must be too a discipline and a way of salvation in accordance with this religion, that is to say, a means by which it can be developed by each man within himself, so that it may be developed in the life of the race.

Sri Aurobindo, Summary and Conclusion, The Ideal of Human Unity

The way to achieve Human Unity, in Auroville and elsewhere, is through the practice of Integral Yoga, “By [the growth of the divine Spirit] within us oneness with our fellow-men will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of cooperation but a deeper brotherhood, a real and an inner sense of unity and equality and a common life.”

Human Unity is indeed the purpose of Auroville, but as a part of the overall purpose of the pursuit of Integral Yoga. We are not here just to try and live together in harmony and unity by attempting the same mental strategies that have been tried infinitum throughout the history of human civilization. We are here to attempt something new, to achieve Human Unity by going within ourselves, shedding our outward attachments and becoming one with the Divine. In this movement we will realize the fundamental oneness of humanity and indeed the universe. However, we have to have the sincere aspiration towards the Divine and towards Intergal Yoga, we have to sincerely consecrate our lives to the Divine, and we have to make the sincere effort to pursue this path. We are here is Auroville to do work, and no matter what work we are doing materially, at a fundamental level the work we have to do, to move towards unity, is to move as individuals towards the Divine, so that the collective may move in the same direction. The message of Auroville is that it is only through Integral Yoga that we can truly move towards Human Unity.