On Auroville 2022 to 2025

British Raj was ordering the partition of Bengal, the families of some of the disciples asked for refuge and were accepted. Thus a number of small children arrived and Sweet Mother began to lay the rudiments of a school; then She created a department of physical education for all the members of the Ashram and, step by step, the Ashram Centre of Education developed to welcome an increasing number of students, according to an innovative principle of “Free Progress”, while the population of the Ashram itself considerably grew and individuals from other lands also joined. The Ashram constituted itself gradually, acquiring one neighbouring house, then another and yet another in its vicinity or further away in the town or its surroundings, and is bound to respect the local rules, customs and traditions. An Ashram is traditionally a community of aspirants gathered around a guide, or Guru, whose spiritual authority is uncontested in all domains of daily existence; its members do not interfere in any way in the collective life outside of the Ashram boundaries except, as instructed by their guide, in some volunteer social work. Sweet Mother had for long wished to be able to establish this Ashram in a more autonomous way, away from any existing town, with Sri Aurobindo at its centre, so as to radiate its action more effectively; but Sri Aurobindo left His body in 1950 and She had to continue the work alone. Nonetheless, She did want to create at last this place which would belong to no nation and no interest, wherein each participant would be citizen of the Earth and obey the Supreme Truth alone. There was, in the known history of mankind, no precedent but for, very briefly, the attempt at creation led by the pharaoh Akhenaton in the Ancient Egypt of a city dedicated to the One, symbolized by the Sun, so as to rise from the domination of the gods and their clergies and religious rulings; this city, later renamed Amarna, lasted onl y a few years, as the young pharaoh‟s early demise was immediately followed by a resumption of the forces he had hoped to neutralize. When Sweet Mother evoked the project of Auroville, the Ashram already numbered more than two thousand permanent residents and thousands more disciples in India and elsewhere, who all had their work and responsibilities. Auroville would be another adventure. Not only did She declared its aim would be the service of the Divine and of a new consciousness upon Earth, but She formally invited representatives of all the countries and nations of the world to join so as to initiate an embryo of real universality in search of a concrete human unity. The human Earth is not as yet ready to welcome such a commitment.

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