Auroville’s role in manifesting the New Creation

The manifestation of the new world is a global phenomenon and it is open for each human being to participate in its creation. Nevertheless, Mother did call Auroville the “cradle of overmen” (intermediate, transitional beings between man and the supramental being). And, as such, Auroville seems to have a crucial role to play in manifesting the new creation. To have a glimpse and inner feel of this role, one has to dive into the history of Auroville’s manifestation.

Already in 1912, two years before she met Sri Aurobindo for the first time in the physical, the Mother wrote in a powerful mission statement, which she called “An Ideal Society”: The most useful work to be done [is] to establish an ideal society in a propitious spot for the flowering of the new race, the race of the Sons of God.

Sri Aurobindo would speak later about a divine commune or Deva Sangha. He called it also the 

temple-city of God.

In another text, ‘The Supramental Realisation”, the Mother wrote in 1930-1931: Once the connection [between the supramental and the material plane] is made, it must have its effect in the outward world in the form of a new creation, beginning with a model town and ending with a perfect world. So, it is not surprising that already in 1937-38 the Mother envisaged the creation of an ‘ideal city’ with Sri Aurobindo living at its centre. She even asked Antonin Raymond, a French architect who built Golconde, to prepare a plan based on her symbol. But after Sri Aurobindo’s passing, she was ‘no longer interested’, as she said herself. 

In fact, the Mother had not been interested for quite a long time. The ‘old formation’ of building an ideal city came back only 15 years later in 1965, after the descent of the Supramental into the earth consciousness, after the agreement from mother earth to collaborate in the new creation, after Mother’s experience of a new world being built as an intermediate zone between the physical and the supramental world, and after the realization of ‘overmanhood’ in the cells of her body. Suddenly I had my plan of Auroville, she said. As if the world had become finally ready for a new attempt! 

From then onwards, things unfolded in Mother’s typically quick fashion. In March 1965, a big plot of farm land was bought. And on 8th September 1965 the Mother sent her first message on Auroville into the world. In March 1966, a first exhibition on Auroville was held in Pondicherry with Roger’s nebula plan of the city based on Mother’s symbol. At the same time, the first brochure on Auroville was printed for UNESCO, in which the Mother writes directly about Auroville’s true mission: The creation of a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness (…) is a collective ideal calling for a collective effort for its realization in terms of an integral perfection of man. The Ashram founded and built up by the Mother has been the first step towards the fulfilment of that purpose. The project of Auroville is the next seeking to extend the base of this attempt to establish harmony between the soul and the body, spirit and matter, heaven and earth, in the collective life of humanity.

In 1966 the Mother said ...I know that Auroville will be. It may be in a hundred years, it may be in a thousand years, I don’t know, but Auroville will be, because it has been decreed. And in the same revealing conversation, the Mother describes to Satprem how it was suddenly shown to her that Auroville had been created to avoid the catastrophe of a nuclear war: It became clear like that, she says, This is almost the sole and last hope of avoiding the catastrophe._ This is the importance of Auroville’s crucial role in manifesting the New Creation. _

Auroville (…) If nations consent to understand that it is a means of avoiding war, Auroville will have the power to prevent war. (…) That’s why Auroville has been created. 

In another landmark conversation with Satprem in October 1967, the Mother gave 

another revelation of Auroville’s importance: I tell people, she says, that the creation of a city like Auroville has more weight in the earth’s history than all the groupings of the world. 

Finally, the Mother launched Auroville, the City the Earth needs and the Cradle of Overmen to use her descriptions, on 28th February 1968. And, already in January 1969, she had a distinct experience of the Overman Consciousness searching for and permeating into the bodies of those who were ready to receive it. In other words, Mother’s earlier realisation of ‘overmanhood’ 10 years ago had now become a living possibility for other human beings on the planet. Two years later, on 21st February 1971, the foundation stone was laid at the Matrimandir, a House for the Universal Mother, a spiritual vessel in matter for receiving and directing Her light, force and presence to support the development of Auroville and the manifestation of the new creation on earth. 

The crucial importance that Mother gave to the realisation of Auroville is captured in what Sri Aurobindo revealed to her only 25 days before Auroville’s inauguration. ...Sri Aurobindo gave me a revelation... [He] said...’India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of present-day humanity. India will be the site of its resurrection, the resurrection of a higher and truer life.’ And [I had] the clear vision: the same thing which in the history of the universe has made the earth the symbolic representation of the universe so as to be able to concentrate the work at one point, the same phenomenon is occurring now: India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that there will be the... cure. And it is for that – it is FOR THAT that I had to create Auroville. It came, it was so clear and tremendously powerful! 

Whatever Auroville’s reality today, it is essential to remind ourselves of the deeper significance behind the creation of Auroville. And to remain deeply aware of the responsibility the global family of devotees and friends of Auroville and Aurovilians themselves carry towards the realisation of Auroville’s highest purpose and mission in manifesting the new creation. 

[Extract from a talk given on 22nd July 2001 at the AUM Conference in Redwood City, California, USA.]