The Mother on Auroville

C O N C E P T I O N   A N D   B I R T H

A Dream

        There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its sole property, a place where all human beings of good will, sincere in their aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his suffering and misery, to surmount his weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; 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. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their soul. Education would be given, not with a view to passing examinations and getting certificates and posts, but for enriching the existing faculties and bringing forth new ones. In this place titles and positions would be supplanted by opportunities to serve and organise. The needs of the body will be provided for equally in the case of each and everyone. In the general organisation intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority will find expression not in the enhancement of the pleasures and powers of life but in the increase of duties and responsibilities. Artistic beauty in all forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, will be available equally to all, the opportunity to share in the joys they bring being limited solely by each one's capacities and not by social or financial position. For in this ideal place money would be no more the sovereign lord. Individual merit will have a greater importance than the value due to material wealth and social position. Work would not be there as the means of gaining one's livelihood, it would be the means whereby to express oneself, develop one's capacities and possibilities, while doing at the same time service to the whole group, which on its side would provide for each one's subsistence and for the field of his work. In brief, it would be a place where the relations among human beings, usually based almost exclusively upon competition and strife, would be replaced by relations of emulation for doing better, for collaboration, relations of real brotherhood.
        The earth is certainly not ready to realise such an ideal, for mankind does not yet possess the necessary knowledge to understand and accept it or the indispensable conscious force to execute it. That is why I call it a dream.
        Yet, this dream is on the way to becoming a reality. That is exactly what we are seeking to do at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on a small scale, in proportion to our modest means. The achievement is indeed far from being perfect but it is progressive: little by little we advance towards our goal which, we hope, one day we shall be able to hold up 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.
Aug. 1954



You say that Auroville is a dream. Yes, it is a “dream” of the Lord and generally these “dreams” turn out to be true—much more true than the human so-called realities!
20.5.1966*



The Ideal Town

        Is it possible to find a spot where the embryo or seed of the future supramental world could be created? The plan had come in all its details; but it is a plan which, in its spirit and consciousness, does not conform at all to what is possible on earth at the moment; and yet, in its most material manifestation, it was based on earthly conditions. This is the concept of an ideal town which would be the nucleus of an ideal country, and whose only contacts with the outside world would be purely superficial and extremely limited in their effects. Therefore already—but this, however, is possible—one would have to conceive of a power great enough to be a protection against both aggression or bad will—that would not be the most difficult protection to obtain—and against infiltration, mixture. But if need be, one can conceive of that. From the social point of view, from the point of view of organisation, from the point of view of inner life, these are not problems; the problem is the relation with what is not supramentalised, to prevent infiltration, mixture, that is, to prevent this nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation—it is a period of transition.

        All those who have thought about this problem have always imagined something unknown to the rest of humanity, like a gorge in the Himalayas, for example, a place unknown to the rest of the world. But that is not a solution; it is not a solution at all.

        No, the only solution is an occult power, but this implies that a certain number of individuals must have already achieved a great perfection of realisation before anything at all can be done. But one can conceive that if that can be done, one could have, isolated in the midst of the outside world—without any contacts, you see—an area where everything would be exactly in its place, as an example. Each thing, each person, each movement, is exactly in its place—and in its place in an ascending, progressive movement, with no relapse—that is, the very opposite of what happens in ordinary life. Of course, this supposes a kind of perfection, a kind of unity, this supposes that the various aspects of the Supreme can be manifested; and necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total harmony, and a power great enough to command obedience from the forces of Nature; for example, even if this place were surrounded by forces of destruction, they would have no power to act; the protection would be sufficient. All this demands the utmost perfection in the individuals organising such a thing.
+1961

Q:         Is it the Divine Will that Auroville should be born, or else does the Divine look upon the attempt to build Auroville as an experiment?

The conception of Auroville is purely divine and has preceded its execution by many years.
Naturally, in the details of the execution the human consciousness intervenes.
17.4.1969



Synthesis of Cultures

        … the unity of the human race can be achieved neither through uniformity nor through domination and subjection. A synthetic organisation of all nations, each one occupying its own place in accordance with its own genius and the role it has to play in the whole, can alone effect a comprehensive and progressive unification, which may have some chance of enduring. And if the synthesis is to be a living thing, the grouping should be done around a central idea as high and wide as possible, and in which all tendencies, even the most contradictory, would find their respective places. That idea is to give man the conditions of life necessary for preparing him to manifest the new force that will create the race of tomorrow.

        … the cultures of the different regions of the earth will be represented here in such a way as to be accessible to all, not merely intellectually, in ideas, theories, principles and languages, but also vitally, in habits and customs, in art under all forms—painting, sculpture, music, architecture, decoration—and physically too through natural scenery, dress, games, sports, industries and food. A kind of world-exhibition has to be organised in which all the countries will be represented in a concrete and living manner; the ideal would be that every nation with a very definite culture would have a pavilion representing that culture, built on a model that most displays the habits of the country; it will exhibit the nation's most representative products, natural as well as manufactured, products also that best express its intellectual and artistic genius and its spiritual tendencies. Each nation would thus find a practical and concrete interest in the cultural synthesis and collaborate in the work by taking over the charge of the pavilion that represents it. A lodging house also could be attached, large or small according to the need, where students of the same nationality would be accommodated…

1952