=1 "Auroville and human unity"

Auroville and human unity

Auroville, the town dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and devoted to the realisation of human unity, has hardly begun to conceive the society which will some day be able to express that unity. In its present limited form it is and will be for a long time, in the words of its founder, the Mother, “a place where we learn how to live together”.

Aurovillians do not claim to be a human élite, but rather consider themselves representatives of aspiring humanity and terrestrial evolution as a whole. Auroville differs from other communities in the world which are trying to gather around a similar ideal and answer to a similar call in that it is oriented to the psychological discoveries given to humanity by the great sage and realiser, Sri Aurobindo, – a treasury upon which the world at large has not yet begun to draw. It differs also by having at its disposal the tremendous amount of experimentation which the Sri Aurobindo Ashram began in pursuit of the goal of human unity and perpetual education fifty years before our present [1974] modest beginnings.

But human unity, as we know, is not the fruit of goodwill alone. Even a total goodwill in all of us would not be sufficient to realise it. And as Sri Aurobindo explains, even human love has not sufficient power for such a realisation. For unity represents for humanity the next step of evolution and implies a new relationship between being and being, something of a new dimension of consciousness and human possibility. Many people speak about this unity, but hardly anyone knows what it is.

Since the beginning of 1971 a group of Aurovillians, gathering for study and meditation, has been exploring the principal movements of consciousness which could become the basis of this new relation between man and man and lead towards the creation of a new type of society. These basic movements, as such, are not difficult, and can even be made by children. What is more difficult is to sustain them, to establish them as a way of life. This requires the practice of a collective yoga, which not everyone is prepared to do. Therefore a solution must be sought elsewhere.

The first direction in which we began to proceed, even before the foundation stone of Auroville was laid on February 28th, 1968, was that of a new education. What we elders are unable to do, our children, even now, may be able to realise provided they are given the means. However, after ten years of research with revolutionary theories about education, and three years of unremitting experimentation, we have reached the practical conclusion – our most important discovery to date – that a new education cannot exist by itself.

The child is much more a product of the society to which he belongs than he is of his school or university. Even if, for example, we were to change radically the programme or system of education in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the child of that ashram would still remain the child of the special consciousness prevailing there and would always be recognisable as such anywhere in the world. In fact the child does not feed upon programmes or systems, he feeds upon the consciousness which carries him, the society which surrounds and stimulates him, and the viewpoints or perspectives particular to that society. It is that circumconscient that becomes the substance of his growth.

Thus our ambition to create ‘a new education’, and with its help to change the world, remains utopian. There cannot be any really new education without the establishment of a new atmosphere, richer and truer, upon which the child can draw and which he can find only in an entirely new society animated by a new vision of the world. Both society and education need to be elaborated and built together: neither can precede or grow independently of the other.