living of other nations so that they may know
and respect equally the true spirit of all the
countries on the earth.”
Naturally, the Mother’s internationalist ideal,
embedded in the statement, was firmly joined
with her understanding that communal and indi-
vidual progress must proceed simultaneously.
She imagined in this international center that the
individuals would all be in search of their highest
spiritual development, while they worked toward
collective “unification.” When in 1956 the Mother
finally experienced the “Supramental manifesta-
tion on earth,” which Sri Aurobindo and she had
anticipated, she understood that this was the
beginning of a new order on Earth. Her notion
of Auroville then was of a place where this new
order could take concrete form in an international
community with a charter and vision like none
before.
In 1972 the Mother wrote in regard to her
“dream” of Auroville:
There should be somewhere upon earth a
place that no nation could claim as its sole
property, a place where all human beings of
good will, sincere in their aspiration, could
live freely as citizens of the world, obeying
one single authority, that of the supreme
Truth, a place of peace, concord, harmony,
where all fighting instincts of man could
be used exclusively to conquer the sources
of sufferings and miseries, to surmount his
weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his
limitations and incapacities; a place where
the needs of the spirit and the care for prog-
ress would get precedence over the satisfac-
tion of desires and passions, the seeking for
material pleasures and enjoyment.There are four principles in the Auroville
Charter. In summary, they ask that each resident
see himself or herself as a servant of the “Divine
Consciousness,” that Auroville will be a place
of unending education, that Auroville will be a
place where the past and the future meet, and
that Auroville will be a site to realize “Human
Unity.”
The ideals for an Aurovillian emphasize the
INTEGRAL YOGA, the creative development of each
person as a unique point of the Divine, and the
synthesis of the yogas of knowledge, love, and
work. Auroville’s organization and administra-
tion are perhaps the most free and unbounded of
any similar township on Earth (it is a flourishing
community of about 3,000). It is a measure of
the success of this experiment in self-governance
(fully supported by the Indian government) that
Auroville has several citations from the United
Nations for its land use and ecological work. The
world’s largest solar kitchen provides meals. In
support of the Mother’s belief that the age of reli-
gions is past and is to be supplanted by a spiritual
age beyond religion, the Auroville Charter states
pointedly, “No religions.” Except for the stunning
hemispheric Matri Mandir (Mother’s temple), no
sign of any religious symbol or building can be
seen in Auroville.Further reading: Alan and Tim, The Auroville Handbook
(Auroville: Abundance, 2003); Auroville, the First Six
Years: 1968–1974 (Auroville: Auropublication, 1974);
Robert N. Minor, The Religious, the Spiritual, and the
Secular: Auroville and Secular India (Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1999); Satprem, trans. The
Mother’s Agenda. 10 vols. (Paris: Institut de recherches
évolutives, 1979–91).Australia
Mass immigration of Hindus from India to Aus-
tralia occurred later than in most other regions
of the British Commonwealth, largely because of
the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act, a policy
enacted by white Australians to limit the numbers
of nonwhite citizens.
Prior to the enforcement of immigration poli-
cies, small numbers of Indians had entered Aus-
tralia as merchants, indentured laborers, andAustralia 55 J