12,000 new Aurovilian by 2025?

The Auroville Town Development Council appointed by the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation Office plans for the addition of 12,000 new residents by 2025. Gilles Guigan, author of the two-volume book “Auroville in Mother’s Words”, gives his perspective.

For decades, a section of our community has been arguing that our collective yoga should focus on building a town for 50,000 inhabitants at the earliest, in the shape of Roger Anger’s ‘Galaxy’ model. This argument is based on the words of The Mother who, in the late 1960’s, was talking about building a township of 50,000 people in 20 years or less. Mother also put her signature on the Galaxy model, which, for many people, means that She approved this model in all its details.

Interpretations of Mother’s intentions galore. One is that the Galaxy stands on the same level as Auroville’s Charter; another that the Galaxy is a Yantra, a geometrical symbol that should not be distorted (see Dr. Alok Pandey in https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Some argue that the figure of 50,000 represents some kind of critical mass below which Auroville’s ideals cannot be achieved. This, for them, is the reason why this figure needs to be reached at the earliest.

But there is no record of Mother mentioning or approving any of these assertions.

Governing Board plans

The new Governing Board met in Auroville on November 2nd for the first time. It was subsequently reported in the Indian press that the Governing Board had discussed a time-bound implementation of the Master Plan Perspective 2025, with a focus on creating infrastructure to accommodate at least 15,000 residents who share the Auroville philosophy. The minutes of the 57th meeting of the Governing Board conducted a month later confirm these views. “The Entry Process of Auroville should be more welcoming and the Auroville population should grow to 50,000 as envisaged while ensuring that newcomers understand and subscribe to the ideals of Auroville. A population of 15,000 by 2025 may be achieved.” [see AVToday #389 of December 2021 and # 390 of January 2022]. This amounts to increasing the population by almost 400 persons each month if the full year 2025 is included.

But is such an increase in accordance with Auroville’s ideals?

The aims of Auroville

Auroville’s stated aims are: “an effective human unity” and “peace upon earth”. Mother explained that the latter would come though the former. She spoke extensively about what this means and how it could be achieved, individually as well as collectively.

Individually, each person needs to find his or her inner being, identify with the Divine within and become willing servitors of the divine consciousness. Then, and then only, will they be ONE with others in the Divine and will it be possible to achieve an effective human unity. There is no other way. This individual transformation is the individual yoga which every Aurovilian is expected to do.

As Auroville’s aim of human unity is so high – it has never been achieved anywhere – Mother also wanted Auroville residents to take up, as their collective yoga, the transformation of their environment (social and physical) so that it becomes increasingly favourable to their individual transformation.

This means that developing a more ideal society and a more ideal town are means (and not aims) to achieve Auroville’s aims. This explains why, in two distinct interviews, Roger Anger, the Chief Architect of Auroville, and Satprem, the Mother’s confidant, said almost the same thing: “The point is not building a new town – it is building a new man”.

The main programmes of the transformation of our social environment are: (1) Education, (2) Economy, (3) Organisation and Governance, (4) Membership policy and (5) Communication with non-Aurovilians within Auroville and via the media. As said, the aim of these programmes is to make our individual transformation easier.

The aim of the transformation of Auroville’s physical environment is to enable it to house up to 50,000 people who are sincerely taking part in this individual and collective yoga so that throughout its development (and not just when 50,000 inhabitants will be living there) it will become increasingly favourable to the Aurovilians’ individual transformation and to the transformation of their social environment.

The side by side transformation.

In May 1912 and again in April 1952, speaking of the individual transformation and of the transformation of the social environment, Mother stressed the need for these two transformations to take place side by side:

“Since the environment reacts upon the individual and, on the other hand, the value of the environment depends upon the value of the individual, the two works should proceed side by side.”

And She made it clear that expecting to give birth to a higher consciousness (a more ideal man) simply by developing a would-be more ideal society or a would-be more ideal town would be foolish:

“This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfecting their environment by the machinery of government and society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art within, that outside thee though shalt enjoy; no machinery can rescue thee from the law of thy being.”           

(Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms # 343)

“The conditions in which men live on earth are the result of their state of consciousness.  To seek to change these conditions without changing the consciousness is a vain chimera.”

(Mother, Bulletin, 4.1952)

 Hence, in order to improve the quality of Auroville’s environment, there has to be some progress in our individual and collective consciousness. This explains why, on June 8th, 1951, Pavitra-da, then the Ashram’s General-Secretary, wrote to his friends Antonin and Noémi Raymond about the Sri Aurobindo International University Centre, which Mother was then in the process of launching: “It is a works (sic) which will develop slowly, from within to without, like all works of Sri Aurobindo and Mother.”

The above quote applies even more to Auroville as it is even more ambitious than the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.

Therefore, Auroville’s focus should be on the Aurovilians’ individual transformation and on the transformation of Auroville’s social environment. It is mainly the latter which will create the natural selection (elimination process) Mother spoke about in the quote below (as well as in other quotes):

“In 200 years it [Auroville] will be a fine place. The elimination process must go on because there will be no one in Auroville to say, “Get out!” and those who don’t fit will have to leave in disgust. They will leave voluntarily because they don’t like it.”

Recruiting for Auroville

Given the aims of Auroville, one may ask if advertising and recruiting for Auroville is the right way to go. Five statements here are relevant. One is from Sri Aurobindo, who in 1934 wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy:

“...I don’t believe in advertisement except for books, etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom – and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere – or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the ‘religions’ and it is the reason of their failure.”

[emphasis added]

Mother instructed Satprem to send a copy of this letter to Auroville, saying “That passage should be typed and put up in Auroville. It is indispensable. They all have a false idea about propaganda and publicity. It should be typed in big letters; at the top, “Sri Aurobindo said,” then put the quotation and send it to Auroville. Say I am the one who’s sending it.”

The other four statements are from Mother herself. In June 1970, Roger Anger noted down what She had just told him: “I want people to need Auroville and not Auroville to need people. Working for Auroville has to become a grace.” In June 1971, after meeting with Mother, Shyam Sunder noted her words: “Mother said that in Auroville she did not want numbers but quality. Twelve good men would be better than hundreds of stupid persons.” In October 1972, in reply to a question from the Auroville Association USA about recruiting people for Auroville, Mother replied “We don’t want any recruitment.” And in October 1972, after meeting with Mother, Shyam Sunder noted down Her words: “In Auroville I do not want many men. I want some people, but true people. If you want many people, I can give you a hundred thousand in a moment from South Africa.”

After reading the above, one understands the view of the renowned architect Shri Balakrishna Doshi, who in a discussion in 1990 with a group of Aurovilians argued against the need for Auroville to speedily build infrastructure and accommodations. “In a country in which crores of people have either no accommodation or very poor ones, these accommodations would surely be filled in no time – but most probably not by the kind of people Auroville needs,” he said, and suggested instead to create institutions which would attract the kind of people Auroville needs.

If we study Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s words, we cannot but conclude that the transformation of Auroville’s physical environment by adding so many more beds will not be in the best interests of Auroville. Auroville might draw the wrong people; the serious progress of Aurovilian’s individual transformation may be hindered and the improvement of our social environment, in particular with regard to our economy, our organisation, our governance and our relationships with the people from the surrounding villages, will become even more challenging than it is today.