The City of Dawn

By Vinanti Sarkar Hinduism Today November 1993

On my first afternoon in Pondicherry, I took a ride in a jeep and entered the cosmopolitan nearby village of Auroville, right on the border of Tamil Nadu state. It is situated on high-level land providing a panoramic view with the sea on the east and a number of lakes on the west and north. The "village" is circular in shape with a diameter of about three kilometers and surrounding it, a green belt of natural beauty.

One of the first people I met was an old gardener who had been there since the project began. As we stood in the center and heart of Auroville, I couldn't help noticing the giant still incomplete Matrimandir, nerve plexus of Auroville. The gardener told me, "This is the soul of Auroville," which was supposed to be "the symbol of the Divine's answer to humanity's aspiration for perfection. Union with the Divine manifesting in a progressive humanity, Auroville was to be an example of a new social order, of a model town for the future and an experiment in international living. Auroville is named after Sri Aurobindo and literally means "The City of Dawn." He envisaged a divine life in matter on earth, based upon the advent of an entirely new principle of existence, knowledge and action, the "Supermind"-the next great step in evolution, a step beyond the levels of matter, life, mind and the spirit that human beings have attained so far.

Although Sri Aurobindo and the Mother sought to open a new way for human development, they stressed that the aim, in Sri Aurobindo's words was "not to found a religion or a school of philosophy or a school of yoga, but to create a ground of spiritual growth and experience which will bring down a greater Truth beyond mind but not inaccessible to the human soul and consciousness."

By 1965, the Mother had begun to set in motion the process that would lead to the birth of Auroville: "The next step, more exterior which seeks to widen the base of this attempt to establish harmony between soul and body, spirit and nature, heaven and earth, in the collective life of mankind."

At first, only those were accepted into the project who, in the judgement of the Mother, have an inner call for the Divine. She wanted Auroville "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." "The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity. No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township merges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate. It is the experience of LIFE ITSELF that should slowly work out rules that are as simple and as wide as possible." She promised all it would be a "great adventure."

Close to Matrimandir, where I stood, there is an urn of marble-mosaic, on a raised circular mound with sloping sides. This is the Foundation Stone of Auroville-the dedication ceremony performed on February 28, 1968, by youth of the world. Young people, representing the 19 states of India and 124 nations around the world, gathered, bringing with them a handful of soil which they placed in the lotus-shaped urn. This unique ceremony symbolized the hope of mankind to fulfill its highest aspiration for true unity and universal harmony.

The charter established: "Auroville belongs to nobody in particular and humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness-the place of unending education, of constant progress and a youth that never ages. It stands as a bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within. Auroville will boldly spring toward future realizations and will be a site of material and spiritual research for a living embodiment of an actual humanity."