Document / publication

Auroville exists in more than one dimension – there is the occult as well as the material dimension – which makes it difficult to assess what really is most important or influential in terms of the community’s development.

This is the charming illustrated story of a young boy who seeks, in the midst of an arid landscape, for a way to restore the monsoon, and who finds the clue while asleep “on the mountain where all journeys end”.

Nishtha (Siegfried) Mueller is a long-term Aurovilian, Sanskrit teacher, Veda researcher, and passionate life-long learner. For more than forty years he has devoted himself to Sri Aurobindo’s The Secret of the Veda and Hymns to the Mystic Fire, to the study and restoration of some of the ancient hymns and to sharing a living approach to Sanskrit with spiritual seekers.

Maël Vidal was born and grew up in Auroville before going to France to pursue higher studies, where he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in social anthropology.

From clunky prototypes to a thriving EV ecosystem, Auroville’s journey mirrors India’s evolving electric vehicle landscape – driven by innovation, resilience, and a vision for sustainable transport.

Chali reflects on the fractures within Auroville and on the possibilities of restoration.

On 13 August, the managers of Annapurna Farm received an email signed by three working groups constituted by the Governing Board – the Funds and Assets Management Committee, L’Avenir d’Auroville (Auroville’s Town Development Council) and the Farm Service – stating: “It has been decided to allocate 100 acres of Auroville land at Annapurna for the IIT [Indian Institute of Technology, eds.]

On 14 August Dr. Karan Singh, who has been Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation for more than 20 years, briefly visited Auroville.

In 2018, Amrit published ‘Children of Change’, a memoir recounting his early life and the difficult years in Auroville when he and others chose not to take sides in the bitter conflict between the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) and the then-dominant Auroville collective.

Heartweaving is quietly bringing together Aurovilians with different perspectives to manifest possible ways forward through sustained inner work.

Consciousness-Based Psychology: Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of Yoga, Health and Transpersonal Growth presents a pioneering framework for psychology and psychiatry rooted in the spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

Bob Zwicker has worked in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives for 52 years, with particular responsibility for the Mother’s works. Recently, three new books have been published containing new material not published in the Centenary edition of The Mother’s Collected Works.

Romulus Whitaker (‘Rom’), the world-renowned herpetologist, has had a long association with Auroville. He first visited around 1970 when ‘Cow John’ showed him around what was then the beginning of what he came to see as a fantastic experiment.

Sri Aurobindo was born on 15 August, 1872. Auroville Today has often published something related to Sri Aurobindo in this, his birth month, and this year we feature an article on his epic poem, Savitri, by Richard Hartz.

Tucked away in a small room at the back of Auroville’s Vanaville unit is Michel’s bookbinding sanctuary — a quiet space where hundreds of worn books have been given a new lease on life.

Once upon a time a very long time ago, deep in the woods at the bottom of a mountain — Mother’s Mountain, mata-giri—a six-page newsletter called Collaboration came into being.

Jyoti Naoki Eri was born in Kyoto, Japan, to accomplished artist parents. He trained as a sculptor in Japan through a traditional apprenticeship process.

The seven volumes of The Mother’s Entretiens (Questions and Answers) are a treasure trove. They cover a wide range of topics in considerable depth, giving us a glimpse not only of Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s vision of life and the future of humanity, but also providing many answers to questions on how to live one’s life and follow the spiritual path.

“Auroville will be a place of unending education”, says its Charter. The entirety of Auroville is envisioned by The Mother as an evolving educational campus encompassing all facets of life.

In the recent ruling of the Supreme Court of India, the learned judge, regarding the need for Auroville’s development vis-à-vis environmental protection, stated that “…while the right to a clean environment is a guaranteed fundamental right under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, the right to development through industrialization equally claims priority under fundamental rights particularly under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India.

A year ago, architect David Nightingale talked about how Spiral Dynamics could provide one way of understanding the present situation in Auroville.

In 2016 a German forester, Peter Wohlleben, published a book which describes how trees exchange resources with each other through fungi on their roots.

In March 2024, an Aurovilian filed two writ petitions at the Madras High Court. The first petition prayed the court to restrain the Auroville Foundation from land exchanges without following the procedures laid down in the Auroville Foundation Rules 1997 and the General Financial Rules 2017.

As I was looking through the minutes of the last Governing Board meeting regarding proposed changes to the Auroville Foundation Act, I recalled that when the Act was originally being prepared, there were already two different tendencies.

A few weeks ago a new biography of The Mother was published. The Mother: A Life of Sri Aurobindo’s Spiritual Collaborator is written by Peter Heehs, a reputed historian who has been a researcher in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives for over 50 years, writing biographies of Sri Aurobindo and publishing papers on related topics.

On 17 March 2025, the Supreme Court of India delivered two judgements. One was on the appeal of the Auroville Foundation against the verdict of the National Green Tribunal passed in April 2022; the other on the appeal of the Auroville Foundation against the judgement of the Madras High Court of March 2024 regarding the Auroville Town Development Council.

Krishna Devanandan has a background as a dancer, cultural event organiser and teacher of Tai Chi. She helped organise the Auroville Film Festivals and managed the Auroville Art Service from its inception in 2012 until 2023, when the Auroville Foundation appointed new executives.

Friederike Mühlhans has a long experience of working for Auroville International (AVI). Since 1997 she has been a board member of AVI Germany and since 2003 she has been Secretary of the AVI Board, with a four-year break when she served as Chairperson.

Claude and Abha have been living in Auroville since 1974 and 1978 respectively. For the last 45 years, Abha has been running the handicraft unit Shradhanjali while Claude has become a scholar who has authored several books and articles on Tibet, China, India and on Indo-French relations.

“In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved.”

Born in Paris, Nathalie grew up surrounded by the evocative scents of her grandfather’s painting studio. At the age of seven, her life took a profound turn when her family moved to India, eventually settling in Auroville.

In early December, six graduate students and their professor from the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Queen’s University, Canada, visited Auroville to explore the social impact of Auroville on the nearby village of Kuilaypalayam.

Prashant Hedao was the Regional Planning Coordinator of L’Avenir d’Auroville, Auroville’s Town Planning Department, from 2007-2010. In those years he worked closely together with then Governing Board member Dr BV Doshi on the Auroville Master Plan.