In memoriam - Robert (Bob) Lawlor

Robert (Bob) Lawlor passed away peacefully on 29 November in the hospital on King Island, Tasmania at the age of 84. After studying Art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., Bob discovered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram during his world travel in the 60s. He and his then wife, Deborah, became the first pioneers in Auroville, founding in 1967 the community that Mother named ‘Forecomers’. “Mother wanted someone to be there because there were lots of great plans but nobody was actually living there at that time. This is because it was beautiful but very challenging. There were snakes and huge scorpions; every step you took you had to be careful. There was no road, no water or electricity... and here we were, two people from New York City!”

There they experimented with building methods, planting trees, cultivating and consuming algae and experimenting with dance and other forms of art. They built a theatre out of palm leaves and put on amazing dance dramas for the small Auroville community and friends from Pondicherry. As another pioneer put it, “They were bright and beautiful and created in that barren nowhere land a life for themselves and others”.

After their first handmade dam in Forecomers’ canyon got washed out in a cyclone, they returned in 1971 to the US to recover their health, and further study Sri Aurobindo and sacred geometry. They returned in 1973 for two more years, during which they translated The Temple of Man by French Egyptologist, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz . After leaving Auroville, Bob continued to work on The Temple of Man in the US and France and published Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice.

In his later years, Robert lived on Flinders Island and King Island in Tasmania with his third wife, Joanna, and continued to study and write, including a book about Australian aboriginals called Voices of the First Day, while regularly visiting the US, giving lectures on his findings.

In 2018 he revisited Auroville where he met many of his old friends and gave a talk at Pitchandikulam on his final book, A Geometry for the End of Time. In an interview with Auroville Today [issue # 344] he said, “Overall, I’m very positive about the Auroville of today. It has not yet realised the dream, but it is certainly something that is not erasable any more. Now the concept of a society based on these principles must happen in a more dispersed way.”