Inside the Living Curriculum of Auroville (Part 2) By Lalit Kishor Bhati

A Personal Journey through Churning, Collective Life, Consciousness and the Road Ahead

 

Inside the Living Curriculum of Auroville (Part 2) By Lalit Kishor Bhati.pdf

 

This is the second and concluding part of Lalit’s article which coveys his life’s journey in Auroville, and here he also shares his hope and vision for next phase of manifestation of Auroville.

Introduction – From Living Experiment to Living Laboratory

When I arrived in Auroville over a quarter-century ago, I did not know that I was stepping into a long, deep churning. I thought I was joining an intentional community, a new town with a spiritual vision and great ideal. Only slowly did I realise that Auroville is not just a place; it is a curriculum — and that each of us who lives here is both student and experiment.

The first fifty-plus years of Auroville have been a remarkable experiment in aspiration, freedom, individual discovery and collective living. The land has been reforested, communities have emerged, schools, diverse activities and services have grown, and thousands of people have touched something different in themselves by being here while contributing immensely by being active part of it. A very inspiring and impactful foundation for a new field of experimentation & experience got co-created. An inspiration of a vision prepared the ‘conducive soil’ for other life forms to take birth, grow and blossom. Pioneering generation did an incredibly extraordinary task of preparing the ground under very challenging circumstance. I always have very high gratitude for all those who came before me.

But the world around us has changed dramatically. Urbanisation is accelerating, ecological systems are under strain, social fabrics are fraying, and technology is reshaping how we live, work and relate. The earlier modes of “alternative living” are no longer enough. The world is now asking a deeper question:

Can we evolve new forms of city, society and consciousness that are not just less harmful, but truly transformative?

In a recent paper written with my colleague Prof Dr Christoph Woiwode (IOER, Dresden, Germany) , “Enabling Transformative Urban Development for Integral Sustainability: A Case for Tapping the Potential of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy in Planning Practice and Theory”, we proposed that cities must move beyond technological fixes and incremental improvements to an integral transformation: where inner sustainability of consciousness and values is inseparable from outer systems of planning, governance, ecology and economy. Auroville, I feel, is being pushed exactly in this direction.

We are being asked to grow from a township of inspiring experiments to a living laboratory for humanity’s next step — a place where inner work and outer systems are consciously designed to evolve together.

1. The Churning Deepens: Standing at the Threshold of the Next Step

Auroville has a way of bringing you to edges — edges of understanding, edges of aspiration, edges of your own evolving nature.

Looking back now, as I explained in the part 1 of this article, my life in Auroville was preparation: an inner orientation, a clearing of ground. It was learning to walk the Sunlit Path like a child learning to walk — uncertain yet trusting, stumbling yet somehow held in the embrace of a larger intention.

Part 2 feels different. It is the phase where the child begins to sense the purpose of those steps…where walking nurtures our seeking,Where life in Auroville slowly shifts into conscious participation in a laboratory of evolution.

Over the last decade, and especially in recent years, Auroville has entered a deeper and more consequential churning. In 1970, in her new year message, The Mother wrote:

“The world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?”

That sentence has echoed through Auroville in many waves. Today it vibrates with a renewed intensity. Auroville is not in difficulty because it has failed; it is in difficulty because it is evolving. But we should never forget that difficulties come to increase our aspiration, to make us stronger.

If that is true for an individual, how much truer it is for a collective organism like Auroville: a living soul trying to express through thousands of diverse human instruments.

This is how I now read the present turbulence. Not as a deviation from Auroville’s path, but as the next step of that path. The question for me has changed. It is no longer, “How do we avoid conflict?” but rather:

How do we turn this churning into growth of consciousness?

How do we let the storm clear space, so that something new and truer can be born?

2. Inner Sustainability: The Foundations You Cannot See

Outside Auroville, “sustainability” is usually measured in carbon counts, green ratings, renewable energy percentages, ecological footprints. All of this is necessary. But in Auroville, I have learned that it is not sufficient.

Here, sustainability begins in an invisible place: in the atmosphere we create, in the quality of our motives, in the state from which we act. If the inner software is not aligned, the outer hardware will not work for long.

The Mother’s symbol signifies: Sincerity, Humility, Gratitude, Perseverance, Aspiration, Receptivity, Progress, Courage, Goodness, Generosity, Equality and Peace.

These are not policies. They are attributes of the true consciousness. When they weaken, no outer design can save us; when they strengthen in us even imperfect structures can grow in the right direction.

Looking back over 27 years of work in planning, governance, education, youth engagement, I can see a clear pattern. Whenever there was clarity and sincerity inwardly, the outer work flowed. Whenever there was confusion, fear, ego or hidden agendas, the outer processes became foggy, delayed, entangled.

Inner fragmentation expresses as outer fragmentation.

Inner restlessness becomes outer turbulence.

Inner alignment generates outer harmony.

 

In other words, Best way to build Auroville is to be in alignment with true consciousness, with our inner being or, at least, to be in alignment with our aspiration to serve the Divine (or the Truth). Also, we should remember that the first principle of good governance is self-overnance, in other words, victory over ourselves.

If we take this seriously, then our “next leap” as a society is not only about infrastructure or institutions; it is about strengthening our inner foundations.

For Auroville to be truly sustainable, four movements must become more natural in us:

• Sincerity – the courage to see ourselves without masks.
• Vigilance – the alertness that notices subtle ego movements, even in noble causes.
• Humility – not self-negation, but openness to learn, unlearn, and be corrected.
• Alignment – the effort to bring our will, work and action into tune with a deeper purpose, not just personal preference.

Auroville is not merely a planned town. It is a field of consciousness. And like a garden, this field needs daily care: light, space, patience, and grace. Part 1 of my journey was discovering Auroville as a living curriculum. Part 2 is discovering myself again and again within that curriculum, through every cycle of churning and quiet blessing.

3. From Freedom to Form: Building a Conscious Collective

If inner sustainability is the software of Auroville, then outer action is its operating system — the structures, processes and shared norms that allow a community to move together.

For the first 50 years, the evolutionary strategy was simple and appropriate: create a space for freedom-based individual experiment. Let people explore, innovate, struggle, fail, rise, and learn. Let the land heal. Let people find their place and rhythm. Let the atmosphere form in an organic way.

Without this phase, Auroville would not have the rich tapestry of initiatives it has today: forests and farms, schools and units, healing spaces, architecture and arts, youth programmes, research, community life, the laboratory of inner work.

But a society cannot evolve indefinitely on individual initiative alone. Freedom is essential, but without collective organisation it remains fragile.

As Auroville crosses 50+ years, a new evolutionary requirement is emerging:

• From individual experiments to collective systems
• From personal excellence to institutional coherence

The Mother expected that Auroville will be the place of research and experiments for embodying the visions and vibrations of the future. In the Auroville charter, she wrote: “Auroville is to be a site of material and spiritual research.”

Elsewhere she wrote: “I am very fond of proper organisation—if those who organise want sincerely to do it—I require only clear and precise information. When this is given and there is sufficient trust in the Organising Power it is sufficient. The rest will be done.”

“A clear and precise vision of what is to be done and a steady, calm and firm will to have it done are the essential conditions for an organisation to be run properly. And as a general rule, never ask from others the virtues you do not possess yourself.” (Ref. CWTM, Vol. 13, Chapter 24)

These are very relevant words. The complexity around us has grown: the city is larger; the pressures from outside stronger; land more contested; water more precious; youth searching for pathways; the bioregion rapidly transforming; climate change accelerating.

Inside, we still rely heavily on informal, ad-hoc structures. A mature collective requires structures that can hold aspiration, enable alignment and outlast individuals. This does not mean rigid bureaucracy. It means yogic organisation — “order that is plastic, harmonious, progressive and guided by the soul.”

I often feel that the first fifty years were like the soft sapling stage. Now the trunk must grow, so that the tree can withstand storms and bear fruits for the world.

 

 

4. Sri Aurobindo’s Five Dreams: A Compass for the Next Phase

On the eve of India’s independence, Sri Aurobindo wrote in his message about five “dreams” — not as poetic metaphors, but as a profound civilisational roadmap:

1. A free and united India
2. The resurgence of Asia
3. A world union
4. India’s spiritual gift to the world
5. A new step in human evolution

Auroville was conceived as one of the fields where these forces could be lived and tested, not merely admired in books.

• A United India: Auroville brings together people from across Indian states, languages and cultures — not through party politics, but through shared work, shared learning, shared aspiration. Our relationship with India is now entering a new phase of co-governance and collaboration, where national institutions and Auroville must learn to walk together.
• The Resurgence of Asia: Over the years, youth and researchers from Iran, China, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Indonesia and other Asian countries have come to Auroville. As Asia rises, Auroville can serve as a meeting place of Asian civilisations — a cultural, spiritual and research-based confluence for new forms of living.
• World Union: This is woven into Auroville’s Charter: unity in diversity, unity without uniformity, unity through inner psychological oneness. The world today is more polarised than ever. Auroville must keep reinventing ways for the world to participate meaningfully here — not as tourists, not as consumers of an “experience”, but as co-explorers in the evolution of consciousness.
• India’s Spiritual Mission: Sri Aurobindo and The Mother saw India as a spiritual leader of the world — not in a religious sense, but as a civilisation that has preserved deep knowledge of consciousness, yoga and inner science. Auroville can demonstrate how this knowledge can shape the future of living, learning, healing, governance and urban development.
• A New Evolutionary Step for Humanity: At its core, Auroville is an evolutionary Step. It is trying to prototype a new relationship with nature, a new collective psychology, a new organisation of society, a new education, a new economy, a new way of being human. It is, in many ways, a civilisation in prototype.

For me, these Five Dreams are not just background philosophy. They are a compass we can use every time we ask: “Where should Auroville put its energy next? How do inner sustainability and outer action align here?”

5. The Present Conflict: A Crisis of Evolution, Not Failure

From the outside, it is easy to say “Auroville is in conflict.” Disagreements, oppositions, breakdowns in trust, institutional friction — all of this is visible.

But beneath the surface, something subtler is happening.

If we look back, every major evolutionary transition in Auroville has begun with disturbance: the community crises of the 1970s, land dilemmas in the 1980s, Master Plan debates in the 1990s, governance restructurings in the 2000s, planning gridlocks in the 2010s, and now the widening rifts of the 2020s around identity and direction.

Auroville’s current crisis reflects, in my view:

• A mismatch of scale — complexity has grown, systems have not.
• Multiple interpretations of The Mother’s intention — each sincere, but not always aligned in practice.
• Insufficient collective capacity in planning, governance, mediation, communication.
• The challenge of integrating India’s role — necessary, inevitable, still evolving.
• The need for clearer institutional frameworks that support growth without losing soul.

The present crisis is not a sign that Auroville’s dream is fading; it is a sign that the dream is asking us to keep the unfolding of larger long-term perspective in mind & consciousness.

6. Auroville as Living Lab: Ten Problems, One Field of Experiment

If I had to capture Auroville’s relevance to the world in one phrase, it would be: a living laboratory for the future of humanity. Not a lab of machines and chemicals, but of consciousness, relationships and systems.

In the last twenty years, I interacted over 30,000 students who passed through learning programmes, worked in the design and planning studios, attended workshops and retreats in Auroville. Many of them carried a quiet but intense hunger:

• for meaning and purpose
• for connection and community
• for ecology and regeneration
• for models of living that feel sane and soulful
• for holistic education
• for inner grounding in a time of fragmentation

Auroville touches this quest because it is, in its own imperfect way, experimenting with some of the critical problems of our time. Among them:

1. Fragmented human consciousness → need for inner integration and psychological unity.
2. Climate crisis → regenerative ecology, afforestation, water work, the Green Belt.
3. Urbanisation without soul → conscious city planning, mobility, common spaces.
4. Youth alienation → purpose-based learning systems and experiential education.
5. Loneliness and hyper-individualism → prototypes of collective living and shared work.
6. Unstable and extractive economies → experiments in gift economy, service economy, shared prosperity.
7. Rising polarisation → practices of inner work, listening, conflict transformation.
8. Decline of meaning → integral education, inner discovery, yoga in daily life.
9. Ecological collapse → afforestation, soil regeneration, watershed work, bioregional thinking.
10. Loss of the Sacred → the Matrimandir as an inner sun, a centre of silence and aspiration.

When students come, they do not just see different buildings or schools. Many feel something — a different vibration, a hint that life does not have to be organised the way it is in most cities.

We are entering a time of civilisational leapfrogging — in consciousness, social systems, ecological intelligence, governance, education, and the experience of human unity. Auroville is one of the few places attempting to work on all these fronts together & at the same time. That is why the world needs Auroville — and why Auroville now needs to become more grounded, coherent and aligned with its deeper purpose.

 

7. Youth, Students & Universities: The Next Wave of Participation

Of all the forces I have encountered in Auroville, the energy of youth has perhaps moved me the most.

Year after year, young people from India and all over the world have come here with a sincerity that is both humbling and inspiring. They were not looking for spiritual tourism. They wanted to learn, immerse, serve, question, prototype, and understand themselves in relation to a larger story.

Many of them are tired of classrooms and grades. They are searching for ecosystems of learning, not just institutions; for transformation, not just degrees.

Auroville can become one of the world’s most meaningful learning ecosystems — but only if we build clear pathways and programmes, not rely on chance visits.

Over the years, different activities/units and services in Auroville have seeded this field through learning initiatives. I was also part of a team (Auroville Campus Initiative, ACI) which co-created Swadharma, the Joy of Learning, youth retreats, gap-year experiments, the International Planning Studios (2012–2024) and study visits for thousands of students. These are encouraging beginnings.

The next step, as I see it, is to develop a more complete architecture of programmes:

• Integral Sustainability Fellowships (1–6 months) that combine green belt ecology, water systems, community governance, regenerative architecture, conscious mobility, land stewardship and social innovation.
• A Conscious City Studio — a living urban lab where Indian and international universities co-create projects in planning, mobility, socio-ecological research and bioregional design.
• An Auroville–India Youth Confluence that brings youth from all Indian states into one-month intensives aligned with Sri Aurobindo’s dream of a united India.
• An Integral Education Gap Year that offers a full-year immersion in yoga, sustainability, ecology, inner work, service, design, writing and community living.
• Green Belt & Bioregional Fellowships that place young people in real projects with villages, farmers, water bodies and forest systems.
• Visiting Scholar & Research Chairs in sustainability, regenerative development, integral psychology, spiritual urbanism, human unity studies and ecotechnologies.

Young people do not need to be convinced about the urgency of change. They already feel it. What they need are pathways and mentors. If Auroville can organise this field, we can become a national and international hub for transformative education — rooted in consciousness and lived experimentation.

8. Bioregion & Green Belt: A Crucial Future Alliance

If Auroville is a seed of the future, the bioregion is the soil in which that seed must grow.

From the beginning, The Mother envisioned the Green Belt not as a decorative buffer, but as a living field of collaboration, an educational landscape and testbed of local socio-economic integration. The vision of Green Belt’s role and functions are well listed in the Perspective Master Plan. But it is more than ecology. It is also the interface between Auroville and the world.

In the last decade and a half, urbanisation around Auroville has exploded: land prices have shot up, construction has spread into villages, farmlands have shrunk, traditional water bodies are under stress, youth aspirations are shifting, and new political and economic dynamics shape the region.

This has made one thing very clear: Auroville can no longer behave like an island. Our future is inseparable from the future of our neighbours.

Being aware of these evolving dynamics, I put my energies in these studies conducted in collaboration with the post graduate planning students (2012-24) via many related International Planning Studios with Queen’s University, Canada, on ‘Auroville Tourism Management Framework’, Planning guidelines for Settlements in Greenbelt & Mapping the Transformation of Auroville’s Access road into a commercial spine, powered by the rising tourism related traffic. Students explored shared mobility, public spaces, livelihood paths, ecological corridors and cultural interfaces. The lesson was simple and deep: sustainable planning here must integrate village livelihoods, youth aspirations, mobility flows and water systems. Co-creation is not just possible — it is necessary.

In the next 10-20 years, I feel we need to work towards:

• An Auroville–Bioregion Green Pact for water recharge, afforestation, regenerative agriculture, waste management, shared mobility, eco-tourism, skill development and pond restoration.
• Ecological corridors and Green Belt protection zones designed scientifically for climate resilience and biodiversity.
• Joint youth programmes where Auroville and village youth learn together through hands-on projects.
• Shared economic ecosystems: craft clusters, women’s enterprises, organic markets, training hubs.
• Auroville as a regional skill centre for regenerative practices, carpentry, masonry, green building and water harvesting.
• Villages treated as partners, not beneficiaries, with mutual respect, shared decision-making and long-term relationships.

The dream is not Auroville surrounded by walls, but Auroville surrounded by a collaboration of consciousness — a bioregional alliance that shows how rural and urban futures in India can uplift one another.

If Auroville wants to be meaningful to the world, it must first be meaningfully related to its immediate bioregion.

9. New Systems, New Capacities: From Pioneering Spirit to Conscious Institutions

Auroville has always been pioneering. But pioneering does not mean being permanently unstructured.

For many decades, we thrived on individual initiative, founder energy, organic processes, intuitive systems, informal networks and personal trust. That phase was necessary. Yet today, the scale and complexity of our reality are too great to be held only by intuition and goodwill.

We are now a community of few thousands of residents, tens of thousands of visitors, hundreds of units, schools and services. We face land challenges, planning pressures, deeper engagement with local, state and national authorities, bioregional interdependence and global expectations.

Auroville now needs to develop new capacities, new outreach undertakings, new collaborations, new resources and new strengths…to build the foundation of next phase of its evolution.

Some of the areas that call for strengthening include:

• Planning & Development: an updated Master Plan; a professionalised planning office; strong data, GIS and monitoring systems; clearer land-stewardship frameworks.
• Community Governance: clearer roles and mandates; rotating leadership; spaces for mediated consensus; training in facilitation and conflict transformation.
• Economy & Resource Management: more transparent systems; clearer contribution and prosperity mechanisms; a conscious economy policy that reflects our values while engaging with the Indian and global context.
• Human Resources & Capacity Building: structured training in planning, ecology, pedagogy, governance, mediation; youth leadership pipelines; 5–8 fellows attached to each key working group, mixing Aurovilians and external collaborators.
• Education & Research: an Auroville Institute or Centre for Integral Vision and Action as a dedicated hub that holds fellowships, research chairs, youth programmes, prototype labs and partnerships with universities.
• Infrastructure & Living Conditions: water security, mobility, renewable energy, housing, telecommunications, health and sports facilities — not as consumer products, but as a shared living support system that allows Aurovilians to put more of their energy into community work.

Alongside this, I see the need for:

Auroville Database Services — an open, carefully curated knowledge base of Auroville’s initiatives, experiments, land, ecology and social processes, open for research and learning.

Treating each Aurovilian’s life story as a research project: harvesting the essence of their journey, work and inner discoveries so that learning is not lost when people move on. Even contributions should not be limited to financial values and numbers also. Our assessment system should take up research projects to ‘make integrated assessment framework’ for tangible and intangible contributions – both ways (how an individual/unit/service is contributing to collective and vice versa). We would have a rich harvest.

A Bioregional Collaboration Platform that holds policies and initiatives linking Auroville and neighbouring villages.

Experts’ Teams to help frame policies in key areas: responsible tourism, visitor and outreach policy, outlying land use (25–50 years perspective), local-circular economy, youth engagement, full Master Plan Detailed development, with equal and urgent focus on Green Belt and emerging surrounding urbanisation pattern & dynamics.

Frameworks and formats for community participation: exhibitions, design charrettes, citizen research, an Auroville Design Festival that documents our practices and takes them into schools and classrooms in India and abroad.

Robust learning programmes that translate Auroville’s body of work into accessible courses and materials.

To support all this, it may be appropriate to shape a Resource Centre as a dedicated institute-level body that can hold long-term collaborations, manage intellectual property, coordinate research and learning, and work full-time on building these systems and provide support to working groups for their research and input needs.

We also live in an urbanising, tech-driven world. Auroville is envisioned to become an urban society of a new kind. To prepare, we cannot ignore the tools of this age. Collective licences for key software and platforms — from design tools like AutoCAD, GIS, Adobe Suite, like of ChatGPT etc could be organised as common licences for all, reducing individual cost and ensuring everyone can work with up-to-date tools in service of the collective.

For me, all of this is not separate from yoga. In the early years in Auroville, yoga was lived through simplicity, fluidity, experiment and intuition. Now it must also be lived through clarity, coherence, shared stewardship and maturity in collective organisation. Conscious institutions are not the opposite of spiritual life; they are its next frontier.

10. Integral Planning for an Evolving City-Society

My years in Aurofuture slowly taught me that planning in Auroville is not merely a technical job. It is a form of sadhana.

In most cities, planning is about land use, infrastructure and regulation. In Auroville, it is also about designing the conditions in which a collective consciousness can grow. Sri Aurobindo’s statement that “All life is Yoga” becomes very concrete here: roads, water pipes, public spaces, housing clusters, farms, institutions — all become part of a larger inner experiment.

Over time, I began to see Auroville’s planning in three intertwined layers and we are (& would remain) in the context of “Building the Ship while Sailing” where other side of the coin is “Adventure of Unknown”. Township as a tool and township building for an integral yoga living practices is and would remain major key activity for people here many years to come. It would keep moving ahead through multiple evolutionary cycles & phases. A never-ending phenomenon…only the nature and scale of engagement would keep transforming.

A.  Physical Evolution — the “Hardware”

Roads, mobility systems, water and energy networks, public spaces, housing clusters, green corridors, farms, cultural and educational campuses — these form the physical body of the collective being. The Mother’s insistence on the Galaxy Plan was not merely aesthetic; she was responding to an energetic truth with a blue print.

In the next 20 years, our physical planning must ensure water security, renewable energy transition, mobility that favours walking, cycling and shared electric transport, high-quality public spaces, an integrated green-urban fabric, bioregional ecological links and climate-adaptive architecture. These are not just projects; they are evolutionary responsibilities.

 

B. Social Evolution — the “Software”

Governance, conflict transformation, material and spiritual researches & learning, youth participation, economic transparency, collaborative systems, trust-building and a culture of collective learning.

Unity cannot be decreed. It arises when people listen deeply, understand each other beyond labels, and offer their uniqueness without ego-claim. This requires a new education in empathy, facilitation, teamwork and collective intelligence. These are not “soft skills”; they are evolutionary skills.

C. Conscious Evolution — the “Spiritware”

This is what makes Auroville’s planning truly different: inner aspiration, alignment with The Mother, collective yoga, an atmosphere of sincerity, soul-guided decision-making, governance that listens to intuition, the practice of being an instrument.

Auroville cannot be built by mental plans alone. It must be built by a consciousness that is open, receptive, plastic and surrendered to a higher guidance. This “spiritware” is the hardest part to stabilise — and the most important.

If we manage to hold these three layers together, I can imagine an Auroville 20 years from now that is:

• surrounded by a fully reforested Green Belt and water-secure villages,
• moving on quiet paths and shared electric mobility rather than private cars,
• dotted with learning hubs, youth creativity studios and research centres,
• fed in part by regenerative agriculture in the region,
• alive with public spaces where people meet, create, meditate and celebrate,
• supported by a planning office that operates as a conscious research organism,
• guided by community processes that are intuitive, clear and aligned,
• centred around a Matrimandir that shines not only in form but in a collective atmosphere of peace,
• recognised as a “University of the Future” in practice,
• and known as one of India’s living gifts to the world, fulfilling Sri Aurobindo’s dreams in a concrete way.

This is not fantasy. It is a possibility — if we allow our hardware, software and spiritware to evolve together.

11. My Continuing Journey and Role Ahead

When I look back at the last 27 years, I realise that I did not plan this journey. Auroville unfolded it.

Auroville has been my teacher, my mirror, my laboratory, my churning, my inner yoga, my family school and my field of work. Everything I learned — in planning, governance, education, youth engagement, facilitation, bioregional collaboration and inner work — came through the living curriculum of this place.

Through this journey, some inner threads have become clear in me:

• Seeing systems as wholes — integrating psychology, ecology, planning and governance.
• Connecting inner and outer — treating planning and design as forms of yoga.
• Designing, enabling & facilitating learning ecosystems —
• Working with youth as carriers of the next step.
• Facilitating collaborations — in planning, studios, community processes, bioregional projects.
• Translating The Mother’s vision into practical frameworks, guidelines and prototypes.
• Using photography, especially around the Matrimandir, as a form of inner exploration.
• Building bridges between India and the world through programmes and research.

These are not just “skills” on a CV; they are part of my inner callings.

Looking ahead, I see my energies flowing into:

• Strengthening Auroville as a learning society — creating fellowships, residencies, research pathways, visiting scholar programmes, youth initiatives, digital archives and campus infrastructure.
• Supporting institutional capacity — helping shape systems in planning, governance, bioregional alliances, youth engagement and inner–outer training.
• Bringing alive the Conscious City Studio — as a living lab where universities, practitioners and Aurovilians co-create experiments in urban design, ecology, mobility and community collaboration.
• Deepening bioregional partnerships — where ecology, livelihood, mobility, water, youth and culture are woven together in co-designed projects.
• Offering experiential learning pathways to India and the world, so that thousands more can benefit from Auroville’s successes, failures and spiritual vision.
• Continuing my photographic sadhana at the Matrimandir, which keeps me inwardly aligned and reminds me why all this outer work matters.

Auroville has given me an inner home, a field of mistakes, a field of learning, a field of surrender and a field of Grace. My aspiration for the next phase is simple: to serve Auroville’s becoming through alignment of consciousness, clarity of systems and joy of learning.

12. Matrimandir: The Inner Sun

If Auroville is a city in becoming, the Matrimandir is its inner Sun — the still point around which the whole experiment revolves.

My relationship with the Matrimandir did not begin with architecture or planning. It began with a quiet pull: a call to come, sit, observe, feel, and return again.

Over the years, the Matrimandir has become my silent teacher.Not by instruction, but by its significance. Photography entered almost accidentally there and became slowly a sadhana. Each photograph became a moment of attention, revelation of light, a small alignment between inner and outer space.

Returning again and again — at dawn, at dusk, in monsoon light when gold meets grey, in the sharp brightness of clear skies — I began to see how light moves across the landscape, how silence shapes perception, how beauty reveals inner states, how space is not empty but alive.

The Mother called the Matrimandir the “soul of Auroville”, the cradle of the new consciousness. For me, it is also a reminder that whatever systems we build, whatever programmes we design, whatever collaborations we undertake, must remain anchored in this inner Sun. Without that, the city loses its centre.

Auroville is not just a place.

It is a possibility. At times at may look fragile and chaotic but beneath there is something powerful, evolving — for a new way of being human.

And the work continues, inside us, around us and through us.

The next step has already begun.

May we learn to walk it consciously, together.

 

Lalit Kishor Bhati

Auroville, 24 November 2025

 

 

RESOURCES – Links to photos, talks, reports and films:

Link for Lalit’s article Part 1:  https://land.auroville.org/discovering-that-auroville-is-a-lifelong-living-curriculum-by-lalit-kishor-bhati/

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