Auroville needs to evolve into UOCA if future United Nations HQ to go to India?
A strange little experimental village in India called Auroville may have the potential to become the seat of the United Nations. Neutrality combined with environmental sustainable energy and cultural and social internationalism with a unifying non-sectarian spirituality seems not just a good way for the planet to go, but the only responsible way given the religious war of terror we are currently in and the climate and energy crisis. And this is everything Auroville stands for. Once the balance of industrial power shifts to Sino-India in about 100 years relocation of the UN to this region is highly likely. Furthermore initially space launches will have to be near the equator and delegates from space colonies will require quick and handy access to the UN. Forward planning to consider the viability of eventually moving the UN here as the basis of a successful democratic world government needs to be seriously assessed and negotiated with this community. There is one catch, Auroville itself needs to drastically evolve.
I will have to digress and explain something of the origins of Auroville for you to begin to fully understand the profound implications involved for humanity. Auroville is the brainchild of the Mother, and as I was in the library of the ashram I read some of her books and some of Sri Aurobindo’s. I read part of his biography and this man opposed British rule, was arrested for treason, over a bombing, found to be not guilty after spending a year in jail. He supported use of violence to overthrow the British. George Bush would not be a fan of his and indeed if he existed today he may well have been a perpetual guest of Guantanamo Bay. He was brought up in Calcutta and sent to England by his anglophile father and went to school there. Impoverished he was half starving for lack of money. I suspect he came to hate the imperialistic attitude of the British, racist as it was and this led him down the course he took and to his eventual exile in the French colony of Pondicherry. He never became a true nationalist as he turned to spiritual answers to solve the world’s problems and developed his form of yoga. However he did support Chandra Bose. Contrary to most yogic philosophies he was prepared to advocate violence to achieve a goal. This put me off him. But perhaps I should give some of my history, my father was a Gordan Highlander, his parents were British Raj military in India, I was brought up in Australia, became a lawyer then in my late 20s rebelled against the system, becoming for a short while a dope smoking, peace loving hippie utterly opposed to any violence, which resulted in me eventually formulating UOCA, the Unification Organisation of Collective Ascension.
Aurobindo’s whole philosophy was about creating the superman like Ouspensky. But he went further talking about a new vastly superior species that would modify Earth saying,
“Between humanity and the fully Supramental species there would have to be one or several transitional steps, represented by transitional beings, born in the human way, but able to contact and express the higher consciousness. These transitional beings would prepare the way for the advent of the Supramental Race by establishing suitable conditions.”
One wonders if he was influenced and reacting against British theories of racial superiority or even fascism and so developed his own superior race… and so this leads onto the Mother. In this respect a transition needs to occur in Auroville and an evolution needs to occur in Aurobindo's spiritual system, one that he did not envisage in his life, but that I clearly see is required to complete his vision. His toleration of the use of violence to achieve a national spiritual goal (eg. Indian independence) was faulty and needs altering . UOCA's spiritual system and means for world reform is the method to change and add to his vision. UOCA is based on non-violence. Once this has been adopted then the obstacle to creating his supramental species should be removed. UOCA gives the clear practical steps that are required to evolve the human race using Project Eden. The Worldwide Network of Ascension can then begin influencing the necessary alterations to the planetary governments to phase out capitalism with a new economic system.
Aurobindo adopted a strange French woman of Egyptian and Turkish origin, Mira Alfassa, who became devoted to him and took over on his death. In the 60s with the hippies trying to find enlightenment, the idea of a commune took root. A group of them set up Auroville, an alternative community. Yet the Auroville idea is brilliant. Designed by French architect Roger Anger, no coincidence in the name, the city has galactic goals with a spiritual and ecological base. The Mother gave it her blessing saying in the charter,
“1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the 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.”
It was created as a prototype Utopia for a global community – an evolution of humanity to a higher spiritual consciousness is its goal. Auroville was inaugurated on the 28th February 1968 by one representative from 120 countries and 23 states of India.
The events that lead to the establishment of Auroville and why it took the form it has, begin with Aurobindo’s supramental species developed by ‘integral yoga’ which saw “man as a multilayered being composed of the physical, vital and emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual personalities. Each of these is further sub-divided, and each has a counterpoint on subtle planes surrounding the body. There is within man a spark of the transcendent divine, and the aim of human existence, as seen by Auroville’s founders, is to become conscious of this reality and unite with it. Each human being has his or her unique path to arrive at this union, and this can be done in life, in matter itself, and not by removing oneself from life as advocated by traditional spiritual practices” (Overview, Education, www.Auroville.org).
To test Aurobindo’s theories, as an experiment, the Mother gave the go-ahead for the creation of a city near Pondicherry in India. It was designed in the form of spiralling galactic arms of the Milky Way, each arm representing a different sector of human development, technology-industry, culture-education, international etc. It started from the barest resources with largely disenchanted Westerners seeking an alternative lifestyle with a spiritual basis. One thousand eight hundred people from thirty countries now live in this community, it has schools from kindergarten to year 12 and a super school beyond that. Auroville has been stated as a plan for “a univercity”, literally a universal city of education where we are all students and teachers. In 1997 the Indian government invested heavily in a Centre for Research into Human Unity at Auroville whose focus is advanced educational research, seven faculties were created with 150 staff connected to 30 centres. A Visiting Committee of external experts including the government oversees the development. Even the United Nations appointed Mr. Doudou Dienen (Senegal) as a member of the International Council of Auroville. He was appointed by the Commission on Human Rights as Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in 2002. Mr. Diene is also Vice President of the International Council of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Between 1993 and 2002, Mr. Diene held the post of Director of the Division of intercultural and interreligious dialogue, UNESCO, during which time he worked on various projects on intercultural dialogue, including the Routes of Faith.
However Auroville is stagnating and has not even advanced upon the original Milky Way concept design set 40 years ago. The structure of different sectors covering different areas of development such as technology, culture, trade, housing, etc interconnecting to each other through the spiralling galactic arms remains valid, but not the compacted concrete blocks and dense living of the architecture. It needs to evolve to current innovations in ergonomic, sustainable building design blending with a green environment.
Even the shining light of Auroville, the Matrimandir - we are filed past the space age sphere – gives away its flaws. It is surrounded by beautiful gardens, where one waits interminably to get in. The meditation chamber is lined with white marble and housing a huge crystal where the sun’s rays are beamed in through a tracking mirror. The structure is still being built and the walk up inside is along construction ramps past concrete pouring. Space age, but medieval Indian construction methods. Like Auroville a glorious grand futuristic vision, but penetrate its surface and the gloss falls away to a kind of phoney, fragile, poor quality, tacked together structure. And like India, millions are spent on a grand obolisque while the roads remain unpaved.
It could become the United Nations headquarters if about one billion dollars was injected into it and the Indian government is giving it a lot of support. However, the UN and the World Bank would have to see its potential for this to happen. The Mother and Aurobindo never specifically mentioned that this should be the place for the UN, however they never said it should not and if they intended it to be the centre for the evolution of humanity, it logically follows that the seat of government of humanity would most sensibly reside here. The Mother said, “Human Unity cannot just be imposed on people from an outside body, be it the global market or a new political order. A real and sustainable human unity can only come about through the conscious will of the people, and this implies a change of values and attitude”. This may be used as an argument against hosting a world government as in form it is an outside body, but the Mother is really referring to attitude not the validity of external organizations. Initially changing Aurovillians attitudes may be the first step, as many of them may oppose this idea, especially those caught in slavishly following literally every word of the Mother or those wanting a sleepy backwater escape. This is where UOCA will be vital to regenerate Auroville and put it back on Mission Earth to save the planet.
This would require a mental shift for the current Aurovillians, updating themselves to the highest and latest standards of environmental sustainability, which would require opening their minds up to the current evolution in thinking, based on economic rationalism and efficiency. Aurobindo’s necessary steps in development of the super race, may require in addition “the ultra-capitalistic stage”, to get this thing off the complacent hippie back-to-nature ground it currently rests its laurels in. Indeed as part of the evolutionary process, a new scientific theory superseding Aurobindo’s and formulated by UOCA is being developed that incorporates the latest in Quantum and Superstring physics. UOCA has a political plan that wishes to see the end even of the United Nations, in fact the end of nationalism and nation states. Regional governments will replace the old nations and a new system of world rule will be formed known as UOCA World Government. And UOCA hopes one day when we head out to explore the galaxy, this galactic shaped city meaning ‘town of dawn’, may then change its headquarters from the United Nations to the United Galaxy. Ironically, through the haze of 60s hippie hallucinogenics and a bitter anti-colonialist yogi educated and imprisoned by the British and sheltered by the French, the Galaxy may be governed. And that may well be poetic justice.
