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An Offering
For a new beginning
திய த ொட
க
தி
கன
ஒ
காண
கை
Une offrande
Pour un nouveau commencement
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2024-2025
Greetings.
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Here is a first document conceived for a
collaborative work of scrutiny and research so as to
reach, now itself, in 2024, a new threshold of
common commitment at the service of Auroville.
The document which will result of this shared
research can then serve as a basis for a unified
collective action.
Notes for a new beginning.
Introduction:
There has been a break, a fracture, a disruption in
our collective experience and in the temporal history
of Auroville: in 2021, the central Government of
India took over the control of all assets, lands and
services of Auroville and massively invested public
funds, through its Ministry of Education, so as to
hasten what it deems to be a priority in the outer
development of the “project”.
This orientation has been made possible by the
conviction a number of Aurovilians held of the
imperative necessity to win back all the time lost in
the meanders of a collective experiment too
nebulous and vitiated by egoism.
According to them, the general plan of the
city-to-be as prepared by the team of Roger Anger
in the 70s, constituted an indefectible program of
action decreed by the Mother and neglected,
ignored or contested for far too long. This particular
approach has provided a laudable argument for the
Government to actually engage in its own principal
objective of reclaiming this whole enterprise of
international repute as its own on the world-scene,
determining its actions on the ground through its
chosen representatives.
This intervention has had many consequences,
materially as well as psychologically.
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Everything has been questioned.
Our various comprehensions of the “Spirit of
Auroville” have certainly suffered.
However, if one refers oneself to the Mother, this
episode too must serve the progress of our
consciousness, for Auroville cannot fail, since its
conception and its birth, as its goal and action, do
not ultimately depend on our humanity alone, but
on the Consciousness-Force at work upon earth.
This document is offered as a tool of work and
reflection, so as to assist us in elaborating the terms
of a renewed commitment, individual and collective.
We have at our disposal to sustain this task more
than 50 years of experience and, if one may well be
proud of the quality of the realizations and
achievements, it is time for us to look at, with the
acquired discernment and with sobriety, all of the
weaknesses, betrayals, all the small failures and
imitations and poor approximations that have
weighed on and slowed our progress; for, had we
acted and developed according to the true
Consciousness alone, we would be stronger and
would not have been thus divided, impuissant and
exposed.
Therefore, this document is presented as a tool of
perception and collaborative search.
Whether in small groups or individually, one can
contribute to it, alter, complete, simplify and clarify
it and thus we shall eventually find in it a ground of
agreement and common action.
How to, all together, find again the sense of the
Auroville Way, now, today, in 2024?
How to re-learn together, learn anew to serve the
spirit of Auroville, so that it incarnates progressively
upon earth in a collective body?
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What can we, must we retain of the past experience
since the foundation of Auroville in 1968?
Here are some notes and propositions to be shared,
contemplated, developed so as to commit, each and
all, to a more conscious and more humble process
of evolution, offered to the task before us all, at the
service of Truth.
Resolutions:
1. Never to lie.
Never to lie to oneself but maintain a constant
vigilance, lucidity, honesty, sincerity, integrity in
every movement of our being (mental, emotional,
vital, physical, material).
Never to lie to anyone under any pretext: one may
abstain and keep silent, if one perceives a possible
danger resulting from saying what one knows to be
true, but in no circumstance must one ever allow
oneself to knowingly and voluntarily distort the
actual truth.
Truth is the only durable and solid foundation for
the evolution of Auroville.
Any lie, as inconsequent at it may appear, acts like
an invisible corrosion which eventually will corrupt
the entire collective edifice.
2. Creation of a Forum.
Approach every difficulty and every contradiction as
an occasion to develop a better understanding and
as an indication of the needed progress.
Open and maintain an organ of reflection and
offering – a Forum – constantly accessible, both
physically and virtually, wherein each and everyone
may present an observation, a question, so as to
place it in relation to the spirit of Auroville.
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Every subject, every issue, can be presented there,
for there is nothing that cannot or must not be
offered to the Force of change, to the force of Truth,
beyond all judgment, opinion, prejudice, in an
aspiration towards an ever more inclusive,
comprehensive, integral harmony.
And in practicing this approach, we may thus be
more able to evolve in our organization as in our
relation to the world.
3. Individual receptivity.
Aspire, in every domain of existence, to receive the
right inspiration and to become capable of
responding to it without distorting it; develop,
through every circumstance, a capacity of calm,
impersonal intuition so as to serve a collective
evolution more and more conscious of what is “the
True, the Right and the Vast” – “Satyam, Ritam,
Brihat”.
4. Harmony through the living truth.
Learn together, through everything, to integrate the
complementary aspects of the Truth, beyond all
dogma, doctrine and reductionist morals, so as to
become able to practice and to live a real freedom,
which respects and includes all of the present
diversity, at every moment.
Just as no aspect of the divine Consciousness
(Light, Knowledge, Truth, Joy, Love, Harmony,
Existence...) excludes the others, no expression of
the Truth excludes its other expressions; but, in
order to really comprehend this, one must grasp
each aspect within the breast of Unity/Oneness,
where there is no division, nor any contradiction,
but a living and creative complementarity.
5. Develop discernment.
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Learn together, each individual contributing one’s
experience, to discern the source and origin of
every movement and expression, so as to establish
progressively an environment ever more conscious
of the true harmony.
6. A universal culture.
Discover together a living culture that will be
universal enough to integrate the profound
realizations of our inherited respective cultures, no
longer insisting on past forms and traditions, but
opening to new forms of creative mutuality.
7. Human relationships within the new
consciousness.
Discover together the inter-relational practices that
express and manifest the aspiration to a truer life
upon earth: how to approach procreation, how to
accompany the gestation and birth of the child, how
to approach any relationship of proximity and
contribute to its progress.
Each one must have found one’s true inner being,
independent of the circumstances of this present
birth, and be free to choose and to celebrate every
relationship, without ever trying to impose upon it
any past custom, habit or tradition, nor to
reproduce in Auroville past conventions and
practices that still obtain in contemporary societies.
Each and every moment of physical existence is the
occasion of a discovery and a progress and we must
therefore become more and more free of any
identification with any role and any status or
position and learn to continuously evolve.
8. Respect of all that is.
Learn ceaselessly to better respect all that lives, all
that is, every material object as every expression of
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Nature, as manifestations of the same One Presence
and Consciousness.
9. Every activity is service.
It is the spirit of service that makes it possible for
every activity to find its right place within the
collective existence, the life of the group and its
harmonious development; whatever may be the
individual capacities, the spirit of service makes it
possible for them to be integrated in a common
movement of evolution which is sustained by a
more and more concrete perception of Unity and
better and better honors its manifestation in the
physical world.
10. Stewards in the Divine’s name.
As willing servitors of the Truth-Consciousness that
is at once the origin and the guide of Auroville, we
are the stewards of the land and assets of Auroville,
not their owners; no individual, nor any institution
can claim any right of ownership on Auroville.
Thus, Auroville is a first outline of a terrestrial
realization, when all is the habitation of the
Supreme.
In the measure that Auroville requires more land for
its wholesome development, we must rely upon the
Grace that has guided and protected Auroville ever
since its conception and, meanwhile, we must be
actively aware of each smallest parcel of land that
has been offered for its work upon earth and tend it
to the best of our capacities.
Likewise, every building, all equipment and every
structure must be tended and maintained with
respect and care, remaining free of any financial
consideration, in the sense that all that is offered to
the Divine becomes priceless, beyond any valuing
appreciation, and must be utilized with utmost care
at the service of Truth.
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11. Collaborative creation.
All that we earn or acquire through our work helps
us to establish the environment of harmonious
prosperity which must reign in Auroville; the right
management of our resources demands a
perception that is wide and impersonal enough of all
needs and priorities, as well as a meticulous
attention, avoiding and preventing any waste,
squandering or neglect.
However, if one occupies a strategic position in the
circulation of energies, one must be not only
accessible to others’ contributions and observations,
but to actually invite them, for no one can be aware
of all details at the same time.
The responsibility for the maintenance and harmony
of the whole lies with everyone equally, at every
moment.
Money has value only in our relation with the world
as it still is, so as to convert it into those goods and
elements which the collectivity is not yet able to
produce or generate.
12. Our privilege and our task.
Aurovilians, inhabitants or residents of Auroville, we
know a privilege that is unique upon earth and it is
only insofar as we really are servitors of the divine
consciousness, of the force of Truth, that we are
worthy of this privilege and may practice a right
relationship with the world at large.
Whatever be our activity in the service of Auroville,
it is through our self-giving and consecration that
we can let flow and directly communicate something
of the true consciousness and of the raison d’être of
Auroville, which “belongs to humanity as a whole”.
Of this humanity, we are the representatives placed
inside the cauldron and crucible at the service of a
change of condition for all.
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What we learn on the ground, in our
consciousnesses, and become capable of
embodying, transmits itself without artefact or
explanation.
Let us aspire to ever more truth in all of our actions
and movements: this aspiration is itself our
message and our sharing.
***
Necessary questioning of our practices
A major objection to the character of such a
document and of such a research or quest is that it
seems too distant from the practical “reality”, the
reality that we experience daily, the “normal”
reality, the reality which is still, in fact, sovereign.
Why then do we not approach those questions that
rise every single day for most of us in Auroville?
Let us then look at two most glaring questions.
. The first one, the most nagging question, which
preoccupies the most, is this:
How to illumine, simplify, “equalize” the economic
situation of every Aurovilian?
How to guard from the tendency to re-form and
re-create classes and castes?
. The second one demands a broadened and
extended reflexion: it is the question of tourism in
Auroville and, particularly, the considerable touristic
attraction that the Matrimandir exerts, such as its
gilded sphere and its decorative surroundings have
been conceived and realized so far.
For it is very necessary that we ask ourselves in full
clarity: what is the message which is actually
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expressed and transmitted to the public by the
present Matrimandir?
Millions of people have already come to it as visitors
or tourists: what have they kept of it in their
consciousness, what is their understanding or its
role, its utility, its function – and of the experience
the Aurovilians may have of it?
Does the present image of the Matrimandir convey
the terrestrial sense of the Mother and Sri
Aurobindo’s Yoga, of the attempt at a change of
consciousness that Auroville represents?
Mother had wanted the construction of the
Matrimandir at the very centre so as to establish
there a site of silent concentration dedicated to the
Consciousness-Force, a haven of calm surrounded
by the living beauty of Nature, at the very heart of
the multiplicity of Auroville: does the organization
that has developed around the Matrimandir over the
decades manifest the living and conscious
relationship of those individuals constituting the
community of Auroville with the source of their
inspiration, the force of their evolving towards the
new species?
Auroville must find a more fecund and conscious
rapport with the world at large – and the role of the
Matrimandir needs to be clarified.
Its building, which has taken many years, and the
elaboration of its “gardens” and its “lake”, just as its
constant and daily maintenance and upkeep, have
always been and continue to be funded by
donations exclusively and required and continue to
require the physical input of hundreds of hired
workers.
These two issues, or fields of questioning, bring us
back to the initial aspiration: to learn to live
together beyond all the divisions, chasms of
differences and identifications which render the
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human societies unable to constantly evolve and
compel the individuals who begin to awaken to free
themselves first of their weight.
Why indeed, after more than fifty years, have we
not yet found the way for each and all of us to
participate in actual solidarity to whatever is to be
done, to each and every “work” – by which we
would gain an entirely new perspective on all
activity and all development?
Happy search!!!
***
(Send your suggestions and proposals to this
address: offeringinprogress@proton.me
and we shall proceed further in the formulation of a
clear document of renewal and commitment)