Introduction

In 1965 Mirra Alfassa (the Mother) wrote from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: "Auroville wants 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 realise human unity." This experimental place was then founded on the 28th of February 1968  beginning with the following words: "Greatings from Auroville to all men of good will. Are invited to Auroville all those who thirst for progress and aspire to a higher and truer life.

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram was the original spiritual center of integral yoga where the work for the Divine was started, inspiring the creation of Auroville. The Ashram served as the original foundation for the Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother aimed to manifest, and Auroville was created as a broader, international project to embody this consciousness in a unified, communal society, representing the next step in collective realization.

Nowadays, Auroville is an emerging town organized in a Foundation supported by UNESCO as a project of importance for humanity that at its peak in 2020 counted about 3300 resident members from India and some other 50 countries around the world. It is located in a rural area of Tamil Nadu (South India), it is immersed in the tropical dry ever green forest, and it is surrounded by 13 villages (about 6000 villagers directly worked in Auroville and many thousands more indirectly).

Over the past decades, Auroville has been dedicated to a wide range of development programs in the following fields (in many of which it has made impressive achievements): art & culture, educational research, environmental regeneration, handicrafts & small-scale industries, health & healing, innovative building technologies, integrated urban planning, organic farming, renewable energy, and rural development. For further info, visit www.auroville.org.

At the same time the spirit of Auroville has been spread around the world by countless people visiting, volounteering and living in Auroville who moved on in other parts of the world to carry on the pioneering principles, research, and sustainable practices that are being shared and influencing other people, projects and communities globally. With this purpose, Auroville International was founded in 1983 as a worldwide network (currently with a representation in 34 countries) aiming at supporting Auroville and spreading the knowledge about its ideals, activities and aims outside India. To get to know more and connect, you can visit www.auroville-international.org.

Unfortunately at the moment Auroville is experiencing a terrible setback due to the interference by the current Indian government, which is pursuing the extremist Hindutva direction in the whole country and in our case trying to directly manage the Foundation and divert the spirit of Auroville towards ecological disasters & real estate developments, disciplined obedience & propaganda to the current ruling party. For that, a number of court cases are being held to save the ideals of Auroville and many Aurovilians are holding the space undergoing miserable and violent harassment with an amazing resilience. For further information on this topic and to help out, you can visit the website www.standforauroville.org.

Nevertheless, in Auroville we believe that the only way we can move towards unity is to progressively realize that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality in which we are all one; not only realize it mentally but discover it in ourselves and live this knowledge. Sri Aurobindo said: “The secret of unity is within, the secret of brotherhood is within. There is no unity except by the soul, there is no real brotherhood except in the soul and by the soul. Only when we live from the soul and not from the ego, will a real unity reign on earth.”