Discovering that Auroville is a Lifelong Living Curriculum
– by Lalit Kishor Bhati –
(Part 1)
Discovering that Auroville is a Lifelong Living Curriculum by Lalit Kishor Bhati.pdf
To me, Auroville is not just a city – it’s a Living Curriculum, always becoming. Like a child learning to walk on a Sunlit Path, each step is a life lesson, each moment, awakening.
In 1997, I read these words by Sri Aurobindo, and they lit a fire within:
“Man has built a civilisation too vast for his mind, too perilous for his ego to control…
Only a greater wholeness of being, knowledge, and power can unite life
into something true and whole.”
I didn’t just understand it – I felt it. Because I, too, was seeking that wholeness –
a life not divided, but fully lived
My Childhood
I was raised in Roorkee, a quiet town in the foothills of Himalayas, what is now Uttarakhand, though it was part of Uttar Pradesh back then. Roorkee was defined by the steady flow of the Ganga Canal and the legacy of one of Asia’s oldest technical institutes – what we now know as IIT Roorkee.
That canal, those waters, and the spirit of engineering that built them were part of my daily landscape, both literal and emotional.
My father, Shri G.P.S. Bhati, was an executive engineer in the UP Irrigation Department – a man of quiet determination, deep spirituality, and simple village roots. He lived his life as a Karmayogi – committed, ethical, and guided by purpose. His passion for his work often spilled into our family life. He took us, all four siblings, along on site visits to dams and canals across the country, and in doing so, planted early seeds of curiosity, adventure, and belonging.
Our home was one of stories and spirit. Sundays began with yoga. Satsangs were regular. Tales from the Ramayana and Mahabharata echoed through our evenings, creating a rhythm that gently nudged us toward a deeper awareness of life. Even as a child, I could sense that something larger was at play — that spiritual life wasn’t separate, but integral.
Of all the things that stirred me growing up, sports held the strongest pull. I loved to play – anything and everything – and found myself doing quite well, especially in Swimming & Cricket. I competed at the state level in Swimming and dreamed, briefly, of a future in sports. Had the ecosystem been more supportive, perhaps that path would have unfolded.
But life had other plans, and sports, while not a profession, became a lifelong teacher of ‘approach, exploration, resilience, team and collectivity and joy’.
I remember how we used to swim across the canal, not as a dare, but as a shared ritual, encouraged by our parents. That sense of freedom, risk, and exploration shaped me early on. We lived in the Officers’ Colony, a place with a strong sense of community and mutual care, reflective of the times we grew up in.
Looking back, those early years were full of movement, meaning, and quiet preparation. They laid the foundation for a life where I continue to seek wholeness, purpose, and a deeper integration of the inner and outer worlds.
A Connection from Another Time — A Pre-Birth Memory
There’s a story my father once shared that still gives me pause, as if it opened a window to something deeper, something timeless.
In the early 1970s, he was posted in Dakpathar, a small, remote settlement nestled in the hills where he worked on a barrage and tunnel on the Yamuna River. Even in such a rugged setting, he created space for satsangs, inviting spiritual speakers to share their wisdom with those willing to listen.
One of them, he recalled much later, spoke often of Sri Aurobindo and the vision of Integral Yoga.
What made the story extraordinary was this: during that time, my mother was pregnant with me. As he recounted it, we both wondered – could it be that I was already listening? That something within was being awakened even then, in the quiet sanctuary of my mother’s womb?
That a seed was being sown, pointing to a path I would walk decades later in Auroville? Perhaps it was not memory, but recognition — the soul whispering its intent before it even had a name.
Education and Beyond
My early education was rooted in Roorkee, shaped by a nurturing home and the quiet rhythm of a small town.
My father had hoped at least one of us would follow in his engineering footsteps, but destiny, with its usual playfulness, charted a different course.
In 1990, I chose architecture and joined the School of Architecture in Lucknow. It felt less like a decision and more like a doorway opening.
Architecture was not just about buildings – it was about life, space, time, culture, and imagination all intersecting. It taught me to see.
That path led me to CEPT in Ahmedabad, where I pursued post-graduate studies in urban planning in 1997. Those years broadened my horizons — academically, creatively, and personally.
In 1993, I joined the studio of the legendary architect B.V. Doshi for my internship — a turning point not just in my education, but in life.
That’s where I met Shailaja, who had come from MSU Baroda for her own internship. We were both 22, curious and wide-eyed, unknowing yet trusting. We married in 1997, just months after I completed my post-graduate studies and began my first (and last) job in Bangalore.
Interests and Quests
From early on, I’ve been drawn to the idea of wholeness — to systems that evolve integrally, where different parts relate harmoniously rather than remain fragmented. This pull naturally led me to explore cities and human settlements — the living laboratories of human aspiration.
I was always struck by how disconnected people often seem — from themselves, from each other, from the spaces they inhabit. And I began to wonder: what if we created environments where experiential learning and meaningful communication were at the center?
What if our cities could support not just livelihoods, but living — in the fullest, most conscious sense?
To me, cities are like living organisms. Their physical form is the hardware; the society and culture within are the software. Together, they form an evolving operating system – constantly upgrading itself, ideally, towards greater awareness and harmony.
Cities are natural magnets. They draw diversity, invite relationships, and expose us to the joys and frictions of coexistence. In that way, they are more than infrastructure – they are integral platforms where individual and collective consciousness intersect.
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother offered profound insights into this civilisational journey – this ongoing experiment of integrating self with society, spirit with structure. Seen through their lens, cities are the starting point for human unity, not the end.
And in that view, Auroville becomes something even more tender — a kindergarten for that unity, where playful conditions help us rehearse the next stage of our collective becoming.
First and Last Job – Designing a Temple Township for ISKCON
After completing my post-graduation in Urban and Regional Planning from CEPT, Ahmedabad in 1997, I stepped into my first job, which, as it turned out, would also be my last – in the conventional sense.
A few of us were hired by a planning office associated with ISKCON in Bangalore. The assignment was extraordinary – we were tasked with preparing the master plan and urban design for ISKCON’s proposed World Headquarters in Mayapur, West Bengal. It was to be a Temple Township rooted in the ethos of Vedic living, spirituality, and sustainability. Here is the township plan we created:
This wasn’t just another township – it was envisioned as a living embodiment of a sacred lifestyle, meant to accommodate around 50,000 residents and, during peak festivals, welcome over a lakh visitor in a single day. It was a city designed not just for function, but for devotion. In every sense, it was Krishna’s work.
What stood out to me right from the beginning was the clarity and depth of the client’s vision. The ISKCON planning team shared with us a comprehensive and holistic brief – one that didn’t just cover land use and infrastructure, but spoke of values, community, aesthetics, and ecological wisdom rooted in Vedic traditions.
Equally inspiring was their deep respect for the land and the people surrounding it. We were encouraged to step beyond the drawing boards – to walk the villages, engage with local artisans, study the soil, the crafts, the culture. We surveyed skills and resources available within a wide radius, with the intention of integrating local economies and traditions into the emerging township fabric.
It was not about imposing a new city, but about weaving one in – harmoniously, thoughtfully, with sensitivity to both spirit and soil.
Looking back, I realize this job shaped more than just my professional foundation – it aligned deeply with my evolving sense of integral living.
It brought together the spiritual, the ecological, the social, and the structural. It was planning not just with the mind, but with the heart and the soul. And perhaps that’s why, even though it was my first professional role, it also became my last in the conventional sense.
Because after that, I could no longer separate work from meaning, design from purpose, or planning from consciousness.
Introduction to Auroville – A Turning Point
It was in March 1997 that I first came to Auroville.
At the time, I was working with two colleagues from the ISKCON project, and we had planned a visit to study the economic landscape of Auroville. Our task was to understand how the township sustained itself – the businesses, services, and commercial activities that supported its community.
Over the course of a week, we met and interviewed many Aurovilians, each engaged in remarkably diverse fields — from handicrafts and food production to education and alternative healing.
What struck me wasn’t just the creativity or the entrepreneurial spirit – it was the quality of intention behind it all. There was something deeper at work. Every effort, every initiative, however small, seemed to be a conscious offering – a way of aligning work with inner growth, of contributing not just to a system, but to a shared dream.
Our findings were compiled into a detailed report, which, for many years, was available on Auroville’s main website. But for me, the true outcome of that visit wasn’t the report – it was the revelation.
In just one week, something shifted inside. I had been searching, in ideas and in places, for the possibility of integral living – where one’s work, relationships, aspirations, and spiritual life could exist in harmony, not isolation. And here it was – not as theory or utopia, but as lived reality. Imperfect, evolving, yes – but alive and earnest.
That short visit left a lasting imprint. I could see people here weren’t just dreaming about a better world; they were living into it, day by day, breath by breath.
It felt like the answer to a silent question I had carried for years. And though I didn’t know it yet –
that week would quietly shape the rest of my life
When Things Began to Turn
By the end of 1998, the ISKCON project had come to a close. After nearly two years immersed in sacred geometry, temple township planning, and regional studies, the professional chapter I had begun so enthusiastically was now winding down. At the same time, something else was quietly opening.
It came as a call – quite literally – from Auroville.
The message was from Aurofuture, Auroville’s town planning office. The team had been looking for an urban planner, and my name had come up. It was Luigi who reached out, but the connection likely flowed through Dominic Dube – an architect I had known from my internship days at Mr B.V. Doshi’s studio in 1993. Our paths, it seemed, were circling back with purpose.
I was at a crossroads, like many of my close friends from CEPT and ISKCON days. After nearly a decade of moving together – through education, projects, shared dreams – we were all contemplating our next steps. Most were heading back to big cities, into jobs with consulting firms, design studios, and planning offices.
But I felt none of that pull. The idea of returning to an urban grind, no matter how prestigious or wellpaid, felt out of sync with something deep inside me. I wasn’t looking for a job – I was looking for alignment.
And when the opportunity from Aurofuture came, it felt less like a job offer and more like a signal. A quiet affirmation from the universe.
With the wholehearted support of my partner, Shailaja – newly married, equally open to exploring new paths – I accepted. In December 1998, I joined Aurofuture as a planning consultant.
We arrived in Auroville young, idealistic, and open-hearted. We brought with us not just professional skills, but a shared willingness to participate in something larger than ourselves – a dream of living, working, and growing within a collective experiment in consciousness.
It wasn’t just the start of a new project – it was the beginning of a new life.
Getting to know the ways
It was indeed a very supportive and welcoming feeling when we got Joan’s house at Recueillement in the Certitude area as a house-sitting option for over a year and a half. It was beautiful living experience there. Then, we had our share of a ‘moving around period’ for a housing solution. We had a 3-month stay at Marc & Matilde’s in Madhuca but when we had no other option after that, this Spanish couple kindly shared their house and hosted us for a full year. Our first child, Sagarika was born there in that house on 01-01-01.
Hilde was the midwife and we had to go to the hospital around midnight but there were no taxis as it was New Year’s night! Mike from Madhuca who had a van, came forward to take us to Pondicherry. While all this was happening, Shailaja’s parents (whose her father was a sitting High Court Judge in Punjab & Haryana at that time) were there and praying,wondering why this child must be born in these circumstances while they had access to all the good facilities in the Chandigarh.
The thought dawned again that ‘Each Soul has its own journey’ and The Mother’s words became alive:
‘Children born in Auroville are the ones whose Soul have decided
and perhaps waited for thousands of years for the right moment’
We had to move out of the house when Sagarika was 3 days old. Anandi and Joseba, seeing our situation, very open-heartedly and lovingly offered us their house in Samridhi and they themselves moved to a less comfortable place for this transition period.
Then, we realised that Auroville is our home and in 2001, we started our Newcomer process.
First we moved to a just-completed newcomer apartment in the Courage community, with a very open layout by architect Dominic Dube. But like many young people coming to Auroville, we had no funds to invest in any housing – we were 26 years old, newly-married and with no savings since the ISKON ‘first and last job’ lasted only 1.5 years. What carried us all along was Faith – and a door did open when Eugen, sensing our aspirations and material needs, supported us by personally advancing a loan amount so we could take a unit.
While there have been very many challenging steps, we always felt supported by Their Grace, time and again and all along.
We are very grateful indeed!
Courage – another of those ‘mini living labs’ in Auroville’s evolutionary context
Courage was one of the largest communities in terms of numbers – number of apartments and total residents and a large share of growing children. It was very alive and collective in its way of life, with frequent community meetings and potlucks. It was always full of intense challenges but with the willingness to apply our energy in collective ways to find ways forward.
There we witnessed the birth of our second child – Parth Neelabh. A couple of months before his birth, I had a dream where I heard a very clear ‘voice message’ – and I am one of those who don’t either get dreams or don’t manage to remember! But this one was a ‘very clear, crisp sound message’.
It said: ‘This boy should be named Neelabh’. We had, of course, no idea about the gender of the child, plus this name was so different and unheard of. Anyway, this made our life easy since we had a ‘soul with a name’ joining us.
Being with these pure souls and beings gave me a profound experience of soaking in the abundant joy of Divine Grace. I felt very joyous Godly energy around.
‘Family yoga’ was very much intertwined & intrinsic part of unfolding of our personal and collective journey here. Family is first a collective unit and is a real-life living lab in this context.A family of 4, we stayed there for 15 years in an 84-square meter apartment, doing our work and projects from that same space too. Not able to have a separate office space, this lack of adequate room to live and work posed quite a lot of challenges, especially when our kids got older!
Shailaja, my partner, has been a central force all along, providing ‘a complementing life perspective and grounding experience’, with her unwavering quest to live life truthfully and integrally, in a rather intense and holistically creative way. She is a ‘Force’, full of life – personally and professionally. Both our humorous temperaments also seemed to play some vital role in our ‘co-creation’ flow.
Shailaja prefers to align with ‘works as an offering’ and maintains a humble profile, in spite of leading a design practice at PATH Studio which received an International award (for Nandanam Kindergarden). She is now working on the design for the new Matrimandir Reception Pavilion Building and the connecting bridge across the Matrimandir Lake.
‘The Soul looks for Delight’ and along the way, I also found this in photography. I see beauty at multiple levels in many things around and to capture them with a camera is pure joy and a meditation-type engagement for me.
Early Years in Aurofuture — Entering the Churning
When I joined Aurofuture in December 1998, I was young, enthusiastic, and full of ideas – but also, admittedly, an outsider. I had come in as a planning consultant with no prior experience of Auroville’s unique ways of working, speaking, or being. And though the work was fascinating, it took me a while to understand its deeper dynamics.
Around that time, a significant event shook the community. A large piece of land within the proposed Master Plan area had been purchased by a private developer – a move that raised serious concerns about Auroville’s future land security and planning integrity. The incident became a catalyst. It stirred something vital.
In response, a Land Use Team was formed, and a Land Use Seminar was organized in early 1999. This was my first real immersion into the collective process of Auroville – my first encounter with what I later came to recognize as “the churning.”
The seminar was intense. People from various walks of life came together – with passion, with concern, and with wildly differing perspectives. Yet, underneath all the disagreement, there was a shared aspiration: to protect the land, to uphold the ideal. The Master Plan began to be seen not just as a design document but as a possible legal and ethical tool – a framework to preserve the experiment.
What surprised me, even unsettled me at first, was the complexity – the sheer depth of discussion, divergence of views, and the slowness of action. Coming from a structured professional background, where planners and architects usually led the process, it was disorienting to see such a collective, participatory, and often contested, field of decision-making.
There was a group of about twenty people, from different disciplines and life experiences, who met weekly for over a year. Together, they explored the many layers of the Master Plan – its meaning, its implications, and its challenges. Through this, I began to see just how multi-dimensional the concept of planning becomes in a place like Auroville.
I used to wonder: how could a community founded on such spiritual ideals – with The Mother’s guiding vision, with Roger Anger as Chief Architect, and with an approved Master Plan – have such intense disagreements about planning and development?
I was young. And I was naïve. And perhaps was missing out to notice and read the dynamics of the ‘human nature factor’ phenomenon, operating around and under all this.
But Auroville doesn’t just teach through projects.
It teaches through process too.
And this process – this constant churning – became the crucible of my unlearning.
What I thought were noble and well-meaning ideas began to feel insufficient. My views, however wellintentioned, were challenged – not always gently. My assumptions cracked. My idealism was tested. And slowly, painfully, something began to shed – an old self, shaped by linear thinking, by clarity and control. What emerged in its place was still uncertain, still forming. But it was more grounded, more open, and more real.
Looking back now, I see those early years as a necessary initiation, a disorientation that forced me to question not only how we plan, but why we plan. And for whom, especially in the context of the Auroville Charter.
It was not easy. It was not always kind. But it was profoundly reflective. And I remain deeply grateful to the Auroville Charter and all those people and events that held up the mirror and played their part in that inner and outer transformation –
an important part of that Living Curriculum!
Planning as Yoga — The Churning of City and Self
It took time and many humbling moments — to understand what planning truly meant in the context of Auroville. One day, a realisation came quietly but deeply:
Planning is the work of synthesis, and thus it is an act of yoga
Not merely a technical exercise, nor just a facilitation of land use and infrastructure.
It is the shaping of conditions for a conscious collective to unfold – and that, by its nature, is complex, layered, and often just beyond our current capacities.
What looked clear on the mental plane – the grand vision of Human Unity – often struggled to take root in the physical reality. I saw this gap play out repeatedly.
The mind could understand and even agree with the idea, but the material plane had its own language, resistance, and evolutionary pace.
Through this, I began to truly understand the role of churning – a word I had intuitively resonated with since childhood, drawn to the story of Samudra Manthan, the great cosmic churning of the ocean. Even as a child, I didn’t fully grasp why it captivated me – only that it felt significant. And now, here I was, finding myself within that churning – over and over again.
Perhaps the soul had chosen this – a living theatre of real-world challenges through which inner and outer growth could unfold.
These churnings brought clarity: that while we were tasked with building a city – the hardware of collective transformation – the real work was subtler and more elusive: the transformation of human nature, the software of society. And that is no small task.
For this, I came to realise that we need everyone. It’s a yagna – a collective offering, where each person brings their energy, sincerity, and aspiration to the fire.
So how does one or collective envision or plan (or enables the creation and sustenance of) systems and ways of life that allow both the city and the society to evolve together? Greatly dynamic challenge. The only answer I’ve come close to:
By being a truthful instrument, and by staying open to Grace.
During this time (1999-2000), I had the good fortune to work under the guidance of Mr. G. Dattatrai, former Chief Town Planner of CMDA, Chennai – a wise and seasoned planner who had both the temperament and the technical acumen to navigate Auroville’s complexity. He brought with him calmness, clarity, and an ability to synthesize diverse perspectives – an instrument, I felt, sent by The Mother at just the right time.
Together with the Land Use team and many resource persons from the community, we went through countless discussions and iterations. Mr. Dattatrai ultimately drafted what would become the Perspective Master Plan Document — a deeply collaborative outcome that still bore the imprint of one guiding hand.
For the first time, I witnessed the community engaging closely with the planning process. We printed the full draft – over 80 pages – and displayed it in the Aurofuture area at Bharat Nivas.
People came, read, reflected, and responded. There was a seriousness, a sincerity in their engagement that touched me. Eventually, the document was formally approved in a community meeting. It felt like a collective step forward. But the journey wasn’t over.
The Governing Board, chaired then by Dr. Kireet Joshi, advised us to seek inputs from a national-level technical body to give the plan legal standing. This brought the Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) – the technical arm of the Ministry of Urban Development – into the process. A few of their senior planners visited Auroville and worked with us, offering invaluable guidance.
They recommended that we align our work with the UDPFI Guidelines – a national framework for urban planning. Using this, we revised the draft and prepared the Perspective Master Plan 2000- 2025. In 2001, the plan was approved by the Governing Board. In 2010, it was officially gazetted.
Looking back, that decade-long journey taught me more than any academic course or formal training ever could. It revealed the sacred and the struggle in equal measure. It asked for patience, detachment, perseverance – and above all, a willingness to be reshaped.
Because in Auroville, to build the city is simulations and Integral process
to build ourselves too.
ISP and the Attempt at Collective Efforts towards Integral Planning
During my first tenure in L’Avenir d’Auroville from 2007 to 2010, I had the opportunity to engage with a truly remarkable process – the Integrated Settlement Planning (ISP) initiative. This was an effort co-developed with Alon and Batel, whose approach I found deeply relevant and fitting for Auroville’s spirit – especially as a place seeking collaborative, collective models of decision-making.
From the beginning of my involvement in Auroville, I had noticed a growing need to bridge the fragmented efforts of individuals and groups into a more cohesive, participatory planning model. The ISP study, I felt, was an attempt in that direction.
As the urban planning coordinator at the time, I helped initiate the ISP study, drawing on the insights from earlier processes and the aspiration to move beyond planning as a top-down exercise.
The ISP was not a report made in isolation – it was a community-wide collaborative effort, with dozens of Aurovilians involved.
These teams met regularly, identified key issues, brainstormed proposals, and drafted ideas for their respective areas. There were also larger synthesis meetings, where inputs from different teams were shared, cross-connected, debated, and refined, across multiple domains – housing, mobility, economy, education, land use, environment – teams of 7 to 10 members (and sometimes more) were formed. Here is the Auroville Planning Exhibition poster (L’Avenir d’Auroville 2010)
I remember the daily rhythm of ISP exchanges, full of energy and aspiration, with people sincerely trying to understand each other and the larger picture – though sometimes from very different vantage points.
It was a microcosm of Auroville itself: diverse, complex, often challenging, but also deeply creative.
The final ISP report was not just a technical or bureaucratic document. It was a mirror of our collective intention at that point in time – an attempt to align multiple perspectives into a shared framework for action.
The final report was shared with the entire community, and in it, we could sense the potential of what Auroville could achieve if it could find a way to work together in sincerity, openness, and trust
The report was a quiet but important testimony to that collaborative aspiration.- and is available via the link at the end of this article .
Yet, even as I felt the value of the process, something within me remained restless. A question kept growing louder:
Why, in spite of such sincere and wide-ranging collaboration, do our efforts not
translate into long-term collective action?
It became increasingly clear to me that having a framework like ISP is essential but not sufficient. We can create excellent documents, visionary maps, and inclusive processes – but unless there is a parallel transformation in the collective inner space, these tools remain underutilized and ideas unmanifested.
Something within the culture – perhaps trust, alignment, clarity of purpose, or the capacity to hold conflict & transform this energy into some progressive action on the ground – still needed work.
This was a humbling realisation:
Planning alone – no matter how participatory – cannot substitute for inner work!
I came across many people and professionals here who would ‘help create perceptions and hence situations’, but without ‘internalising and embodying the same principles in their own life, while they advocate the same for outer and collective context’.
I am also likely to be one of these.
This in-built duality seems to be very much at the core of ever-evolving play of our existential reality.
ISP was a step forward – a valuable seed. But like any seed, it requires a fertile field to grow. That field is the collective atmosphere, the readiness of consciousness, the capacity to embody collaboration, not just speak about it.
And so, while I cherish the ISP process and remain grateful for the insights it brought, it also marked a new turning point in my journey:
A deeper inquiry into the inner pre-conditions for true collective action
A Pause, a Shift — and the Joy of Learning
After my term as Urban Planning Coordinator at L’Avenir d’Auroville ended in 2010, I felt it was time to pause.
I stepped back from the intense, often consuming realm of planning and development – not because it was any less important, but because another thread, equally close to my heart, was calling: Learning
Auroville had always nurtured experimental efforts in education, and there were sporadic conversations around shaping a meaningful framework for higher education in the community.
Around 2012 – or perhaps a little before – Min, Mike, and I came together with a shared impulse, and from this was born the Auroville Campus Initiative (ACI).
One of ACI’s very first offerings was the ‘Joy of Learning’ series.
Inspired in spirit by TED Talks, these sessions were designed as community learning forums – not decision-making meetings, but purely spaces to share, listen, understand, and grow.
Too often, I had observed decisions being made – or contested – without sufficient collective exposure to the nuances of the subject. The ‘Joy of Learning’ was conceived as a quiet but radical intervention – a way to bridge this gap, to prepare the soil before sowing the seeds of action.
The underlying belief was simple, yet essential:
If we aspire for collective, consensus-based decision-making,
then we must first build a culture of shared understanding
The Mother’s words in the Charter – ‘a site of material and spiritual research” – echoed in the background. For Auroville to truly evolve as a learning society, we needed to cultivate
Curiosity, listening, and the humility to not know
Over time, we hosted around ten sessions, each focusing on key aspects of community life: Economy, Planning, Water, Mobility, Outreach, and more.
Each session was thoughtfully prepared and well-presented, with the intent to foster clarity, not argument.
These sessions were received with warmth and interest, and many were documented in audio and transcript form.
Though modest in format, the Joy of Learning series remains one of the most meaningful experiments I’ve had the chance to be part of – a gentle but vital reminder that:
A culture of learning is the foundation for any conscious collective evolution
ACI played an instrumental role in organizing larger community wide Retreat (2015) which was requested by the Vision Task Force created by the Governing Board. ACI also came out with a 5 weeklong Swadharma Programme (Find your inner call) and hosted 9 batches of the same before Corona times. The Auroville Gap Year Programme was also organized for one batch of Auroville youth. Some of the participants of Swadharma programme later joined Auroville.
Parallelly, being always inspired by the ‘integral living and sustainability practices experiments’ and with the collaboration of many persons and places in Auroville, during the last 20 years or so, I’ve had an opportunity to directly interact and provide guided educational visits and explanations to some 25,000 students from India and rest of the world. The next two photos show a visit to Auroville from ITT Rourkee students in 2014 …. Class 6 students from Mumbai exploring ‘Auroville as a Civilzation:
Auroville has a lot to offer. There is a massive youth energy waiting and wanting to connect with Auroville. This ‘field of engagement’ can be better organised via appropriate ‘learning and engaging model’. This could help us create suitable programmes and also infrastructure which are in alignment with Auroville Charter and also pave the way towards a learning society.
I envision myself keeping on putting my energies on ‘keeping Auroville on a learning map of the world’. It would be a great joy to do it together in collective setting and more organized ways integrating Auroville’s present and future needs.
Imagine if all sorts of the issues, challenges, projects and tasks are transformed into an active and applied ‘material and spiritual research’ and Auroville further dives deeper into a ‘living laboratory mode of Integral Yoga’.
Sounds challenging! … but we are here to attempt all such and many more challenges! !We have also entered into an era where some kind of suitable institutional system enabling and strengthening is the need of the hour. Auroville needs substantial capacity enhancement if it envisions to play a leading role being, and remaining, ‘The City the Earth Needs’.
Auroville is in its Kindergarten stage and version of Human Unity, so it seems we will keep on being part of – and witnessing- ‘enhanced enabling conditions and experiences’ that seem like crises and conflict outwardly, but perhaps are part of larger unfolding of the ‘evolutionary crisis’.
Each one is playing a role in this unfolding, and helping to shape up the next stages.
In my Part 2, I will share more on our evolutionary crisis as I see it, more on the Auroville ‘Learning Curriculum’ as I live it, and an album with my photographic record of Auroville and the Matrimandir (A4A’s November 24. issue)
Lalit, Auroville August 2025
RESOURCES – Links to photos, talks, reports and films:
Lalit’s Profile on Main Auroville Website – https://auroville.org/page/lalit-kishor-bhati
Lalit Kishor Bhati Photos – Facebook https://www.facebook.com/LalitKishorBhatiPhotos
Matrimandir & I :‘We were building Matrimandir, and it was building us.’ – by Lalit
Auroras Eye Films
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev3cK4EQGt8
PATH Architects-Planners, Auroville – https://www.pathstudio.auroville.org/
Auroville Planning Exhibition Panels (2010): Roger Anger’s Works, Galaxy Plan & more – https://photos.app.goo.gl/953H1Nqwk7aTuhBw9
International Planning Studios Organised in Auroville:
As a part of the Study Abroad Programme, between 2012 & 2024, 7 International Planning Studios
were organised in Auroville in association with Post-graduate Planning Students from Queens University,
Canada. These were full one-term projects. 3 of these are shared below:
2024 (Final Presentation Video from Auroville Radio) – Pathway to Unity – Auroville & Kuilapalyam Co-evolution’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFZwbxNQ8Yo
*Final Report (2024) – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5DBSbYIViNKPckVf-6vozt_UQkIjEZO/view?usp=sharing
*2023 – Auroville Access Road Planning (Tourism Driven Development Impact &
Trend)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nLnY6t-4mpUy0f1vah0ySySicZ_wcOBn/view?usp=drive_link
*2018 – Tourism Impact Management Framework for Auroville
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15QB7G4HcMkWvJPPK8I-LnQr4SCXV0uUt/view?usp=sharing
*ECI – Engaging Cities Initiative – Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/EngagingCitiesInitiative
ISP – Integral Sustainability Platform (2010-11)
*ISP – Concept & Framework – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eGtk56mJNBQHlwiR_is2NDbDq21DqlwI/view?usp=sharing
*ISP – Final Report – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GB2THWuQN4KRhbzolbPwnfpRDs8QsRDO/view?usp=sharing
Published Paper – Enabling Transformative Urban Development for Integral Sustainability: A Case for Tapping the Potential of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy in Planning Practice and Theory
Paper jointly published (2018) by *Dr Christoph Woiwode and Lalit Kishor Bhati
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a1RgxGkPrpn2dIXCUUPXcNwsAFCANf5w/view?usp=sharing
Auroville Conversations beyond Well-being and the Good Life on Practices of Integral Transformation (2020-21)
Co-produced with Dr Christoph Woiwode, for the online workshop 4th Indo-German Dialogue on
Green Urban Practices on ”Wellbeing and the Good Life – The Human Being in Sustainability
Transformations” –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=wNX7oTVRnSo&list=PLGLCU5VJQNQK_Mdu7qN_445bszC5sqkPz&t=770s
