Opinion

Lakshay Dharan shifted to Auroville in 2015 and became an Auroville resident in Feb 2018. Since then, he has been active in art, communication, strategy, and organisational work.

François Gautier came to India in 1969 at the age of 19, with the first Auroville caravan. Deeply impressed by Sri Aurobindo's writings, he chose to reside in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for about seven years, after which he joined Auroville, where he has been living since.

Mandakini Gupta, a former student of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Ashram school) in Puducherry, was a member of the Working Committee from December 2014 to December 2019 and has been active in the areas of Auroville’s internal conflict resolution and governance.

In Future School, students can choose to follow an elective course in which the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as well as the ideology of Auroville are discussed in an informal manner.

Narratives are very powerful in both positive and negative ways. They can make us resolute, like “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”, or they can be destructive when misapplied, like the Biblical narrative that tells us God gave mankind ‘dominion’ over the Earth.

Valentina Beatriz is a 29 year old Chilean filmmaker who joined Auroville two years ago. She is progressively discovering the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, after having studied and experiencing the teachings of other masters.

Understanding Auroville with the mind is like grasping a handful of ash that wafts away in the breeze. You say something about it, then realize that the opposite also is true.

The way we present Auroville through films and exhibitions is overwhelmingly positive. Little or no attention is paid to the challenges, dissonances, even contradictions that we encounter every day here.

Bindu reflects upon Auroville as a social experiment.

The result of the U.S. election generated some interesting responses. One of these was a perceptive essay written by the economist, Charles Eisenstein, called “The election of hate, grief and a new story”.

When I first arrived three months ago, I imagined I was going to learn about new governance and economic structures, a new way of making decisions and managing money.