Utopias

Some time ago, Suryamayi Clarence-Smith wrote a doctoral thesis entitled Towards a Spiritualised Society: Auroville, An Experiment in Prefigurative Utopianism.

Bryan Walton, one of Auroville’s early pioneers, left his body on March 8 in Wisconsin, USA at the age of 80. Bryan left the USA in the mid-sixties for India in search for a better life, and eventually came to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in June 1971.

Recently, Suryamayi Clarence-Smith, who was born and brought up in Auroville, completed a Ph.D in International Development in the University of Sussex, the world-ranking institution in the field.

Auroville can be seen as the latest in a chain of ideal city experiments stretching back thousands of years.

In the late 1970s a young American, Peter Callaway, had a vision. He saw a globe of the world with three points of light radiating from it. He had no idea what it meant.