The Auroville Charter

1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But, to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the divine consciousness.

2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.

3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.

4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity.

Auroville

On 28th February 1968, some 5,000 people assembled near the banyan tree at the centre of the future township Auroville, for an inauguration ceremony attended by representatives of 124 nations, including all the States of India. The representatives brought with them some soil from their homeland, to be mixed in a white, lotus-shaped urn, now sited at the focal point of the Amphitheatre. At the same time, the Mother gave Auroville its 4-point Charter, which outlines her vision for Auroville.

The concept of Auroville - an ideal township devoted to an experiment in human unity - came to the Mother as early as the 1930s. In the mid 1960s the Sri Aurobindo Society in Pondicherry proposed to her that such a township should be started. The Mother gave her blessings. The concept was then put before the Govt. of India, who gave their backing and took it to the General Assembly of UNESCO. In 1966 UNESCO passed a unanimous resolution ommending it as a project of importance to the future of humanity, thereby giving their full encouragement.

The Mother envisioned Auroville to be a 'City of the Future' or a 'City the Earth needs'. It would be a place where human relationships, which are normally based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood.

To establish and maintain harmony and unity, all different levels of life must be seen as interdependent, and therefore naturally one must also consider the vital well-being of all parts of the body.

From the early days of the existence of Auroville, strong ideas about healthy, balanced and environmentally friendly food have been developed and put into practice, ie. through organic farming, water sanitation, solar cooking, the promotion of vegetarian food, and the development of easily digestible, highly nutritious food products.

Early experiments with spirulina

Already in the 1970s, Aurovilians Bob and Deborah Lawlor started a small scale algae farm in Auroville's Success community. They used a mixture of green algae, mostly Chlorella and Scenedesmus. In their attempts to grow spirulina, they found that after a few weeks indigenous varieties of the chlorella species outgrew and replaced the original strain.

Although their project was very basic and operated with simple means. it was one of the first experimental spirulina farms worldwide, and even now is considered to have been of great value. So much so, that it is mentioned in the books written by Ripley D. Fox (spirulina pioneer and expert since the 80s).

Around 1978, another Aurovilian, Jim de Vries, was experimenting with chlorella farming at La Ferme around 1978. Jim used to pump water with chlorella onto the rooftops of the buildings around the ponds for maximum exposure to the sun, then through different basins where the culture was collected, nutrients were added, then it was pumped back onto the rooftop.

'The cultures of the different regions of the earth will be represented here in such a way as to be accessible to all, not merely intellectually in ideas, theories, principles and languages, but also vitally in habits and customs, in art under all forms... and physically too through natural scenery, dress, games, sports, industries and food.'
The Mother

'If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use.' Sri Aurobindo

'Good health is the exterior expression of an inner harmnoy.'
The Mother