Flyers and Letters

Every year, we derive much joy in creating a meaningful New Year’s greeting card with striking photos and quotes. This year’s beautiful card is available free of charge in Auroville’s Town Hall lobby and at the Visitors Centre Information Service. If you would like to receive the printed version of this card by post, please write to us at  lfau@auroville.org.in  We would be happy if you could share it widely with friends and supporters. We thank all the photographers – present and past – whose images adorn our card. May 2026 prove to be a year of further progress on the sunlit path, for us all, for Auroville and for its completed and unified material land base!

On this auspicious occasion of 24th November, which represents a special place in the evolutionary yoga of Sri Aurobindo & the Mother, we are happy to present to you yet another issue of our quarterly newsletter. It represents our hope for and commitment to the building and protecting of an integral, unified physical base for Auroville. In the 12 years of the ‘Acres for Auroville’ campaign, together with you, we have made significant progress towards this goal, and your goodwill and collaboration are at the root of this ongoing growth. Our newsletter is one of the means through which we respond to your encouraging support!

Anandi Zhang was born in China. A traveler at heart, she first discovered Auroville in 2014 and chose to belong to it even before setting foot here. Her love of Nature, encounters with human nature, and her aspiration to align with the Divine find expression through her poetry, stories, design, healing work, education, theatre, and more. Reconciling the dichotomies that shape human life, her process of integral growth is moulding an inner home within her. Auroville, she feels, is a home for wandering souls. This article shares the depth and creative expressions of Anandi’s path.

In Lalit’s over 25 years in Auroville, the township became both his teacher and mirror – a lifelong living curriculum through experience, churning, silence, service, and collective aspiration. Through his work in planning, youth engagement, bioregional collaboration, and institutional evolution, he now sees work as yoga, planning as consciousness, and community life as ongoing inner education. In this second and concluding article, Lalit shares his vision for personal and collective growth, and inner and outer sustainability for the next phase of Auroville’s manifestation,

The photo of John on the in-construction Matrimandir, ‘captures’ part of John’s life – using a word he privileged, for he viewed photography as ‘capturing life’. Recently, a part of his immense work was honored at the exhibition ‘Capturing Life’ organised by Auroville’s Prisma Unit and held at Citadines’s Centre d’Art this past August. We are happy to share some glimpses of this photo commemoration for those who could not attend, along with the videos made of his work by Arnab Chowdhury of ‘Know Your Rhythm’. John Mandeen left for his onward journey on 7th July 2024.

The Mother stated that Unity is a fact of the new consciousness and it is there whether we feel it or not. So how do we build, manifest and live this underlying unity? To help us, Auroville has a unique tool – the energy of the Matrimandir, and its symbols. The Twelve Meditation Petals are based on the Twelve Powers of The Mother as incarnated in The Mother’s Symbol. In 1927, Sri Aurobindo assigned colors with their corresponding energies to each quality in her symbol – qualities which should be understood as powers, which can help us in this vital inner and outer work.