The spiritual foundation of the Auroville Foundation Act

For me, the raison d’être of Auroville is unquestionably to help hasten the evolutionary goal of humanity. And, as we know, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have described this goal at length.

Auroville, however, as Kireet Bhai points out, is such a bold and far–reaching concept that no nation is currently capable of hosting this unique experiment. To cite one example, all nation–states decree that land must be legally owned by some entity. And yet, our first line of the Auroville Charter (which all Aurovilians adhere to) states that Auroville belongs to no one. To reconcile such contradictions, the genius of Kireet Bhai engineered the Auroville Foundation Act with its three-tier body. Kireet Bhai unequivocally states that the Residents’ Assembly, the Governing Board, and the Interntional Advisory Council have to be co-equal in power to allow for Auroville to fulfill its spiritual mission. This is a profound statement. What Kireet Bhai is saying here goes beyond our mental understanding of creating checks and balances in our governing system. Kireet Bhai designed the Foundation Act, keeping in mind, the evolutionary principle of “unity, mutuality, and harmony.”

This phrase, “Unity, mutuality, and harmony” almost mantric in its expression, is expounded upon by Sri Aurobindo in the very last chapter of The Life Divine. And I feel that unless we comprehend the essence of this phrase and act from the depth of its meaning, we will not live up to what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother expect from us. So please bear with me, while I try to share my understanding based on my reading of The Life Divine.

The concept of unity is easy to grasp – the idea of an underlying spiritual oneness has for some time now been established in the collective mind of humanity. The spiritual evolutionary thought of Sri Aurobindo, however, does not envision an homogenous oneness. For him, the Unity contains all the differentiated variety – the multiplicity–that constitutes this evolving world. Moreover, he clearly proclaims that this play of multiplicity exists even in upward climb of individuals towards the Godhead: Says he, “each realises this unity of purpose and being on its own lines and has its own law of variation by which it enriches the universal existence.” Embracing the multitude, the mind-boggling diversity of humanity, without seeking to reduce it to a pre-ordained mental vision of unity is a herculean task. And yet, this is the task, we have signed up for by joining Auroville.

In reading Sri Aurobindo, I have always been struck by how much agency he gives to the individual, for as he explains, the individual soul and mind is the first base, from which evolution can take a participatory spiritual turn. Says he:

“The group self has no true right to regard the individual as if he were only a cell of its body, a stone of its edifice, a passive instrument of its collective life and growth. Humanity is not so constituted. We miss the divine reality in man and the secret of the human birth if we do not see that each individual man is that Self [the underlying Brahman/Unity] and sums up all human potentiality in his own being. That potentiality he has to find, develop, work out from within. No State or legislator or reformer can cut him rigorously into a perfect pattern; no Church or priest can give him a mechanical salvation”

Once the principle of Individuality is established, Mutuality becomes the obvious principle to achieve the differentiated Unity, which is our goal. Mutuality, also a term used by evolutionary biologists, refers to the fact that evolution actually proceeds on the basis of a mutual “understanding” of interdependence (from what I remember from my studies of evolutionary biology, there is reason to believe that Darwin was misinterpreted and also later studies hold that more than “survival of the fittest”, different species also seek to collaborate and the mutual interdependence of species establishes harmony in an ecosystem). At the level of the mind, as human beings, we have to be open to the secret evolutionary drive of mutuality and find ways to collaborate without negating the truth of any individual.

Coming back to the governance of Auroville, Kireet Bhai envisioned the Residents’ Assembly, the Governing Board and the International Advisory Council to be co-equal bodies and mutual partners in manifesting Auroville. Respecting this mutuality is sine-qua-non condition in developing Auroville.

If we succeed in this, then Harmony will be the sweet result of our endeavor.

Unity (a differentiated unity) is the goal. Mutuality (mutual interdependence) is the process to achieve the goal). Harmony is the experience of both the goal and the process.