Acres for Auroville

INSPIRING QUOTES FROM SRI AUROBINDO & THE MOTHER THE FLAME OF LOVE & ONENESS   Inspiring Quotes – The Flame of Love & Oneness.pdf   The Mother made the connection between the inner flame, love, unity, and our purpose in the world. Here is a selection of inspiring quotes taken from messages she communicated to […]

Returning Home in Auroville by Anandi Zhang   Returning home in Auroville.pdf   Writing this article is a timely review of my life journey so far, and a turning to a new chapter. I willingly engage and am grateful; the same sentiment goes for my being in Auroville and engaging in its activities. I realised, […]

In this newsletter, we are happy to present details of the Master Plan land added to Auroville since the start of A4A – all thanks to your donations! In addition, we share articles that attest to the ongoing creativity and commitment of Aurovilians and friends: our A4A flier and LFAU letter share the vision that motivates our work; two articles featuring the contributions and life paths of longtime Aurovilians Uma Prajapati and Lalit Kishor Bhati; and the announcement of the new Art For Land exhibition at the Unity Pavilion – creativity in several media on a theme based on Sri Aurobindo’s works: ‘The Inner Awakening & The Outer Expression’. We finish with a text from Sri Aurobindo on the need for and difficulties of personal and collective transformation. Despite the many challenges of our times, A4A continues its commitment to consolidating and protecting Auroville’s land to ensure its viable future and provide the space for the manifestation of the City of Dawn!

The Acres for Auroville land campaign was launched on August 15, 2014 for raising funds to secure, consolidate, and protect the unified land base that The Mother envisaged for the City of Dawn. This collaborative unity action has inspired thousands of donations to address this most essential need – land for manifesting the Auroville dream! As we start Year 12, we are gratified to announce our positive results: thanks to you, 187.14 new consolidating acres have been added to Auroville to date in 21 strategic City areas, and 20 Greenbelt farms, forest zones, and nature preserves. In A4A Year 12, we continue our commitment to raising funds for the land needed to ensure the township’s viability and unified future, and to manifest Auroville’s futuristic and evolutionary goals. Each day, your donations bring us closer to success – click to see photos of some of the new land that your solidarity has enabled!

Uma arrived in Auroville in 1996 for a two-week project at Auromode. Those two weeks never ended and have become three decadesr! She came with the degree and technical skills of a trained fashion designer, but had no idea that fashion would become her yoga. After her work at Auromode, Uma founded Upasana design studio, which led her to the discoveries of business as yoga, ownership without ownership, bringing consciousness into fashion, and social projects such as the renowned Tsunamika. Seeing work as “worship”, Uma is now involved in collective tasks at Town Hall – anti-encroachment work at the Land Service and youth housing and Campus Management at the Housing Service. She says: “I am a joyful workaholic at the feet of the Divine Mother. I only ask, how can I serve?”

“Only a greater wholeness of being, knowledge, and power can unite life into something true and whole.” For Lalit, these words by Sri Aurobindo lit an inner fire, for a life of “wholeness” is his goal. A trained architect with a post-graduate degree in Urban Planning, Lalit did his internship with the legendary architect B.V. Doshi. Then, as part of the team preparing the urban master plan for 50,000 residents at ISKCON’s World Headquarters in West Bengal, he came to Auroville in 1997 as part of a professional study. In 1998, he was invited to join Aurofuture as a planning consultant and then L’Avenir as the urban planning coordinator. With his wife Shailaja and two children, he has built his life in Auroville. Part 1 of a two-part article shares his past 27 years of work in diverse aspects of Auroville’s collective life and development, which have shaped the path of his Integral Yoga quest. In his words, “Auroville is a Living Curriculum”.