Lands for Auroville Unified

Auroville Centre for Urban Research, Administrative Area, Auroville – 605 101, Tamil Nadu, India

LFAU Letter – 24 November 2019.pdf

A YOUTH THAT NEVER AGES

The delight of the Spirit is ever new, the forms of beauty it takes innumerable, its godhead ever young and the taste of delight, ‘rasa’, of the Infinite eternal and inexhaustible. The gnostic manifestation of life would be more full and fruitful and its interest more vivid than the creative interest of the Ignorance; it would be a greater and happier constant miracle.

Sri Aurobindo -The Life Divine, CWSA, V.21-22, p.1106

The Auroville Charter speaks of a “youth that never ages” and the above quote of Sri Aurobindo makes it clear that perpetual youth is one of the characteristics of the Spirit – what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind. It follows that Supermind, as explained by Sri Aurobindo, is the highest ideal of Auroville – because only then the “youth that never ages” could become a reality. How can we be true to this ideal in our day-to-day lives?

The Mother: The best way of not becoming old is to make progress the goal of our life. She further advises: Consecrate your life to the realization of something higher and broader than yourself and you will never feel the weight of the passing years.

Similarly, on a collective level, what will ensure “youth that never ages” and “constant progress” – the ideals stated in Auroville Charter? It is here that the crucial importance of the will in the being enters into picture. We quote the illuminating words of Sri Aurobindo:

For after all it is the will in the being that gives to circumstances their value, and often an unexpected value; the hue of apparent actuality is a misleading indicator. If the will in a race or civilisation is towards death, if it clings to the lassitude of decay and the laissez-faire of the moribund or even in strength insists blindly upon the propensities that lead to destruction or if it cherishes only the powers of dead Time and puts away from it the powers of the future, if it prefers life that was to life that will be, nothing, not even abundant strength and resources and intelligence … will save it from an inevitable disintegration or collapse. But if there comes to it a strong faith in itself and a robust will to live, if it is open to the things that shall come, willing to seize on the future and what it offers and strong to compel it where it seems adverse, it can draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible victory and rise … in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of a more splendid life. (The Renaissance in India, SWSA V.20, p. 85)

The “Acres for Auroville” campaign represents the collective will for Auroville’s bright, harmonious, and unified future by contributing to build the needed land base. This action stands diametrically opposed to “the lassitude of decay and the laissez-faire of the moribund.” Rather, all individual collaboration adds to “a mighty flame of renovation” adding “to the light of a more splendid life.”

Thank you for joining hands with us for this goal. Let us cultivate the “strong faith” and “a robust will” that Sri Aurobindo invites us to have and build a place for constant progress, worthy to be called the City of Dawn.