Auroville and sustainable development

So what does sustainable development mean in the context of Auroville? And is it even the right term to describe what Auroville is meant to achieve?

A little background

The term ‘sustainable development’ was first popularised in the 1980s. The so called Brundtland Commission was set up to address increasing concerns that the current industrial model of growth would soon encounter limits to further growth due to it exhausting the natural resources upon which it relied. The Commission acknowledged these concerns. However, they asserted that further development would be possible if it was ‘sustainable’, which they encapsulated in a pithy and much-quoted definition:

‘Sustainable development is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

This was an important definition, not only because it indicated that there were certain limits to growth but also because it raised the issue of inter-generational responsibility. However, and crucially, it didn’t define what constitutes ‘needs’ and, given the pace and uncertainties of future development, it was extremely difficult to see how it could be applied in practice.

In fact, dissatisfaction with the Brundtland definition led to many rival definitions of sustainable development. It also led to attempts to define its core principles. These included that the Earth’s resources are limited and humanity must respect those limits; that everybody has a basic right to the necessities of life and self-development; and that we must act with the awareness that we live in a dynamic, interconnected world.

These principles, if adopted, would constitute a blueprint for a more ‘sustainable’ future. Clearly, however, this has not happened, or it has not happened on a scale sufficient to make a difference, and humanity is continuing on a path which many predict will lead to the destruction of the world as we know it.

Why are we continuing on this suicidal path? There are many explanations. They include the spread of disinformation; the power of vested interests; lack of political will or politicians’ obsessions with short-term fixes; dysfunctional systems which do not provide timely or accurate information about what is happening; individual feelings of powerlessness or denial or guilt; and the belief that, given enough time and resources, science will solve all our problems.

The consciousness problem

But perhaps none of these touches the core of the problem, which, as indicated by Sri Aurobindo, is the inability of humanity’s present consciousness to deal with the complexity and interrelated nature of the challenges confronting us in the modern world. Einstein put it like this: “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set which created it.” Or, in the words of the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme, “The need now is not simply to diminish the devastation of the planet but to alter the mode of consciousness that is responsible for such deadly activities.”

What is that mode of consciousness? I believe that buried deep in many of us, and therefore invisibly influencing our outlook and our actions, are certain key assumptions. These assumptions include the belief that the natural world exists for our benefit and its resources are illimitable; that we are separate from nature and from each other and must compete to survive; that continual economic growth is good; and that happiness is the accumulation of more and more material possessions.

Taken together, these are a recipe for global suicide.

The need for a completely new consciousness

Those who, like Brian Swimme, advocate a change in consciousness, tend to come up with ethical alternatives to business as usual, like the statement that Earth is our indispensable support system and we must prioritise her wellbeing above economic advantage.

However, Sri Aurobindo goes much further. Observing that “At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny”, he points out that as present humanity is incapable of dealing with today’s global challenges, there is a need to develop an entirely new consciousness, a spiritual consciousness. The qualities of this are a “greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power” which can “weld all into a greater unity of whole-life”.

Traditionally, the three core criteria of sustainable development have been environmental, social and economic. In other words, any activity which wishes to qualify as being ‘sustainably developed’ would need to demonstrate that it respects the environment, that it is economically viable and that it benefits society in some way. Sri Aurobindo’s insight, however, suggests that it also needs to include another dimension – that it promotes or supports spiritual development.

Auroville and spiritual development

Auroville is often seen as ‘sustainable’, mainly because of its extensive afforestation programme and widespread adoption of renewable technologies. However, as Auroville is intended as a site for the development of a new consciousness one would expect this to be included as a factor – and, perhaps, the major factor – in all of our activities. While we cannot claim that we live in a society where every activity is devoted to the discovery of the soul, a beginning has been made. For example, Mother’s ‘A Dream’ is clearly an inspiration for our efforts to create a cashless economy and her concept of ‘divine anarchy’, although widely misunderstood, continues to inspire many of our experiments in governance.

Town planning is another area where the spiritual dimension has been invoked, although here it has tended to create controversy. For example, the belief held by some Aurovilians that the Crown has to be a perfect circle as it is a ‘yantra’ has clashed with another pillar of sustainable development – the need for development to be sensitive to environmental factors. The same can be said of the present plan, seemingly based upon Mother’s symbol, to create twelve radial roads.

In fact, how people view Roger’s ‘Galaxy’ plan is an example of how Aurovilians have tended to have embraced different development priorities. Those who believe it emanates from a higher spiritual level tend to resist any attempt to change it, arguing that it has pre-eminence over any environmental or social factors. Others view it not so much as divinely ordained but more as a concept, albeit an inspirational one, which needs to be worked out in a conversation with the land and with the people inhabiting it.

The fact that this polarisation has existed for many years suggests not so much that one view is ‘wrong’ and the other ‘right’, but that both represent a ‘truth’ and we have not yet succeeded in integrating the higher dimension with the emerging ‘wisdom of the earth’: that, in terms of Sri Aurobindo’s symbol, we haven’t yet discovered the ‘square of integration’.

Is sustainable development the right term?

However, it is not clear that we can term this ‘integrating square’ as a form of ‘sustainable development’, for it appears to transcend any of the usual meanings of that term. In fact, the concept of ‘sustainable development’ itself is questioned in Auroville by those who believe it is used by some to delay development, or even irrelevant to what they take to be the true purpose of this place.

And there is a truth in the feeling that ‘sustainable’ is not the right term to apply to Auroville. For if Auroville is to become the ‘cradle’ of the new consciousness, which, as Mother pointed out, makes obsolete all the assumptions and ‘truths’ of the past, then it is not so much sustainability that we need to be seeking as an ever-evolving understanding of and receptivity to what that new consciousness is trying to teach us.

Nevertheless, if we did manage to achieve that ‘square of integration’ it could provide a stepping-stone to future discoveries, a platform from which we could take the next leap forward. It could also free up energies which today are locked in a battle to decide how Auroville should develop.

In this context, it is worth remembering what Mother expressed in 1970. All human knowledge has gone bankrupt because it was exclusive. And man has gone bankrupt because he was exclusive. What the New Consciousness wants (it insists on this) is: no more divisions. To be capable of understanding the extreme spiritual, the extreme material, and to find... to find the meeting point where... it becomes a true force.