The Mother on Auroville

S O M E   F U N D A M E N T A L S


Auroville and Religions


        We want the Truth.
        For most men, it is what they want that they label truth.
        The Aurovilians must want the Truth whatever it may be.
        


Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.



It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth.
No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine.
Get experience of the Divine, then alone will you have the right to speak of it.


The objective study of religions will be a part of the historical study of the development of human consciousness.
Religions make up part of the history of mankind and it is in this guise that they will be studied at Auroville—not as beliefs to which one ought or ought not to adhere, but as part of a process in the development of human consciousness which should lead man towards his superior realisation.


PROGRAMME

Research through experience of the
Supreme Truth
A life divine
but
NO RELIGIONS


Our research will not be a search effected by mystic means. It is in life itself that we wish to find the Divine. And it is through this discovery that life can really be transformed.
2.5.1970

*


You gave a small brochure on religion. There have been various reactions to it, especially regarding the sentence: “Our research will not be a search effected by mystic means.”
By mystic means I mean the way of those who withdraw from life, like the monks, the people who withdraw into convents, or the sannyasins here, those who abandon life to find spiritual life, who make a division between the two and say: “It is either one or the other.” We say, “That is not true.” It is in life and by living life entirely that one can live the spiritual life, that one must live the spiritual life. The higher consciousness has to be brought here. From the purely material and physical point of view, man is not the last race. As man came after the animal, so another being must come after man. And as there is only one consciousness, it is the same consciousness which having had the experience of man will have the experience of a superhuman being. And so if we go away, if we leave life, if we reject life, then we will never be ready to do this.
But if you had read Sri Aurobindo you would have understood, you would not have asked this question.

We want to change life — we do not want to run away from it… Until now all those who have tried to know what they call God, to enter into relation with God have abandoned life and declared, “Life is an obstacle for That, we therefore abandon it.” Well, in India it was the sannyasins who renounced everything; in Europe it was the monks and the ascetics. Thus they can escape. But even so, when they are reborn, they will have to begin again. And life remains as it is.

+26.5.1970

*

This is the big dispute at the moment about Auroville. In the Charter, I put “Divine Consciousness”, so they say, “It reminds us of God.” I said (laughing), “It doesn't remind me of God!”
So some translate it as “the highest consciousness”, others put something else. I agreed with the Russians to put “perfect Consciousness”, but it is an approximation… And That — which cannot be named and cannot be defined — is the supreme Power. It is the Power that one finds. And the supreme Power is only an aspect: the aspect that concerns creation.

March 1968

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The notion of religion is most often linked to the search for God. Should religion be understood in this context only? As a matter of fact, are there not nowadays other forms of religion?

We give the name of religion to any concept of the world or the universe which is presented as the exclusive Truth in which one must have an absolute faith, generally because this Truth is declared to be the result of a revelation.

Most religions affirm the existence of a God and the rules to be followed to obey Him, but there are some Godless religions, such as socio-political organisations which, in the name of an Ideal or the State, claim the same right to be obeyed.

To seek Truth freely and to approach it freely along his own lines is a man's right. But each one should know that his discovery is good for him alone and it is not to be imposed on others.
13.5.1970

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Jesus is one of the many forms which the Divine has assumed to enter into relationship with the earth. But there are and there will be many others; and the children of Auroville should replace the exclusiveness of one religion by the wide faith of knowledge.
1972

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One must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress. Spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future; it enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for future realisation.
Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives for a total Truth. It teaches us to enter into direct contact with the Divine.
12.7.1972
*

Here we do not have religion. We replace religion by the spiritual life, which is truer, deeper and higher at the same time, that is to say, closer to the Divine. For the Divine is in everything, but we are not conscious of it. This is the immense progress that man must make.
19.3.1973