To be a True Aurovilian

Embodying a Greater Consciousness

Written by The Mother on 13 June 1970, one of the foundational documents of Auroville, she explains how to live in the world and - for the Divine - at the same time. These ideals are what each Aurovilian keeps in one's heart and strives towards.

To be a True Aurovilian

  1. The first necessity is the inner discovery in order to know what one truly is behind social, moral, cultural, racial and hereditary appearances.  At the centre there is a being free, vast and knowing, who awaits our discovery and who ought to become the active centre of our being and our life in Auroville. 
  2. The fulfilment of one’s desires bars the way to the inner discovery which can only be achieved in the peace and transparency of perfect disinterestedness. One lives in Auroville in order to be free from moral and social conventions; but this freedom must not be a new slavery to the ego, to its desires and ambitions. 
  3. The Aurovilian should lose the sense of personal possession. For our passage in the material world, what is indispensable to our life and to our action is put at our disposal according to the place we must occupy. The more we are consciously in contact with our inner being, the more are the exact means given to us.
  4. Work, even manual work, is something indispensable for the inner discovery. If one does not work, if one does not put his consciousness into matter, the latter will never develop.  To let the consciousness organise a bit of matter by means of one’s body is very good. To establish order around oneself helps to bring order within oneself. One should organise one’s life not according to outer and artificial rules, but according to an organised inner consciousness, for if one lets life go on without subjecting it to the control of the higher consciousness, it becomes fickle and inexpressive. It is to waste one’s time in the sense that matter remains without any conscious utilisation. 
  5. The whole earth must prepare itself for the advent of the new species, and Auroville wants to work consciously to hasten this advent. 
  6. Little by little it will be revealed to us what this new species must be, and meanwhile, the best course is to consecrate oneself entirely to the Divine.

[When this was to be published at the end of 1971, Mother added:]

The only true freedom is the one obtained by union with the Divine. One can unite with the Divine only by mastering one’s ego.