On Auroville 2022 to 2025

More years went by. This is but a selective dive to illustrate a quest – a quest for integrality and integrity at once, which I am trying here to share; the path of Auroville is complex, at the least, probably unpredictable, now threatened, obstructed and now illumined, and each of us can offer to it one‟s flame of aspiration, one‟s need of truth, one‟s opening to divinity. After many diverse trials – and many failures – in the workshops of the site, we were able to establish for each element of the model the optimal methods and materials: for the interior translucent panels of the shell, for the portholes and for the discs and their holding frames; the waterproofing of the sphere only seemed possible when using a kind of synthetic substance acting like an added skin. The construction of the twelve structures names „petals‟ ar ound the sphere, each of these petals sheltering an ovoid chamber of meditation bathed in one of the twelve colors of the Mother‟s symbol and named after one of Her powers at work in the universe, was nearing its term. The time had come to all agree on the total area, the character and positioning of the twelve inner gardens around the sphere and its petals, and of the outer gardens or Park all around the oval area. Who can understand the intensity, the breadth and the vigor of the implicated forces, when it is actually concerned with a minuscule dot on the world map, who can understand, who has not been exposed to the work of Auroville? Since the beginning and all through the first fifteen years or so, the plan of the entire area, named the „Peace Area‟ by Mother, was articulated in two distinct and complementary parts: the Matrimandir, the Banyan Tree and the Amphitheater with the twelve petals and thirteen inner gardens, more refined and detailed, inhabiting an Oval area (corresponding to the dimensions ten times multiplied of the sphere slightly flattened at its poles); then a water course all around it – like a channel of varying width and a maximal depth of 3.50m – and the Park of Unity, or outer gardens, inhabited by tall trees of many different species and gently contoured; the whole area would then be surrounded or encircled by a road and its main access would probably be situated to the West. Thus, during this period we had worked, under the aegis of Narad to whom had entrusted this responsibility, on the formation of this gentle landscape and the plantation of trees from different parts of the world, which Narad placed according to their coloring and spread. Auroville had not yet been able to acquire all the adjacent lands and consequently we could only establish this base on about two thirds of its future area. When, later on, Roger returned to Auroville, he first confirmed this configuration, elaborating with his new team a more detailed plan of it which respected all existing elements and their relationships. But his own esthetical sense asked for a visual approach of the central architectural object, which must be seen from all directions without obstruction, for its impact on the city, according to him, must be direct and dominant.

37