This is literally the last thing I expected on the front page!<p>My family are all based in Pondicherry and have very strong historical links with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Mother. And are also involved in the Auroville administration and management. I've been there a lot, I've stayed there, met many people who live there and work there.<p>And it's an unusual place. Some of the folks in Pondy call it "Horrorvile" because of the reputation of seediness that some residents are alleged to have (sex abuse of local children, if you want to know). There is also a unusual "un-Indian" feeling about the place because of the nationality of its residents (global).<p>However, I have met only nice people there, doing wonderful projects (solar bike sheds, environmentally-suitable architecture) and it is well worth a few visits.<p>On the other hand, there is quite a difference between the mission statement and the practice of its values. Money isn't really supposed to change hands for work and housing. This is bullshit; many people have commercial sidelines and housing does get bought and sold. Rules are there to be bent and of course, they are.<p>Some of the security staff can be real jobsworths and exceedingly officious, which can irritate people. And it feels a bit lawless in some regards, hovering uneasily between spirituality, cultishness and the Indian democracy.<p>It's a peculiar place. But you probably got that already.
><i>"Auroville was born on 28 February 1968. Its founder, the Mother, created the Auroville Charter consisting of four main ideas which underpinned her vision for Auroville. When Auroville came into being, All India Radio (AIR) broadcast the Charter, live, in 16 languages. Aurovilians apply the ideas of the Auroville Charter in their daily life, in policy-development, and decisions, big and small. The Charter thus forms an omnipresent referent that silently guides the people who choose to live and work for Auroville.<p>The Auroville Charter
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.
Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
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.
Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity."</i><p>Well that sounds completely normal /s<p>I've seen Midsommar, no thanks
I stayed at the compound in Pondicherry.<p>I remember there being some slightly strange rules you had to agree to in order to stay there (e.g. no sex) but the "staff" (don't know if they were employees or devotees?) were welcoming and the accommodations were great. The compound is right on the Bay of Bengal and sleeping in that room with the windows open and the waves crashing was an experience I'll never forget.
You'd think there was some seedy truth to the place but an ex of mine had family involved in the administration of the place and I've been there (both before I knew her and after). Quite a charming place in reality.<p>Though I'm told everything almost fell apart after a founder or big leader died and the government had to step in. It's the Indian government so usually that's a disaster but this one seems to have turned out okay.<p>Anyway, it's unlikely the website can handle an average company let alone HN so mirrors:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200427170816/https://www.auroville.org/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20200427170816/https://www.aurov...</a><p><a href="http://archive.is/BjdIk" rel="nofollow">http://archive.is/BjdIk</a>
I have met many people from Auroville (or maybe Aurovillians as some would say).<p>I have a mixed feeling about Auroville too like some other comments here. I have visited couple times. But never actually got what they are trying to do. This is another part.<p>But I want to mention, TBH: It is like ANY OTHER ASHRAMS or communal living, I would say. Even to the one I visit often. People are different, sometimes they are nice and sometimes they behave downright silly and rude.<p>That said, it could be a practice if you take it that way :)<p>They are much more precious for you in the long run if you are into spiritual practice.<p>It's like Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo puts it
"Instead of seeing other people as an obstacle to our path, we recognize that they are the path. That learning on how to deal skillfully especially with unskilfuled people is how we learn, how we grow and how to begin to mature."
I grew up in Pondicherry, went to Pondicherry Engineering College (class of 99). I used to bike up from college to Matrimandir a lot of weekends for meditation. There are several communities within Auroville and they each operate kind of independently. Some of them welcome guests to stay with them, and I have stayed with a number of communities. So, what accusation may be true for one community may not be true for other communities.<p>In the middle of all of that, I found Sadhana forest to be a wonderful community in Auroville that is far away from the madness of Matrimandir both physically and spiritually. Aviram and his family, along with volunteers, are doing a fantastic job of reforesting the area west of the Tindivanam highway. If you are going, once we are past this global Covid19 pandemic that is, I would highly recommend a volunteering stay at Sadhana forest.
I went there, it’s pretty weird if I’m honest. I felt as if I was living in an Indian Hitchcock film. It felt as though there were people who were tourists and people who lived there and they were very separate. I have this feeling the whole place is a riddle, I’d like to go back and try to understand it again...
Is it just me or does their icon look like the Death Star?<p>BTW, their course offering looks very good: <a href="https://edu.auroville.org/courses" rel="nofollow">https://edu.auroville.org/courses</a><p>- Construction & application of Ferrocement<p>- Production of & construction using CSEB<p>- Arches, Vaults & Domes - Masonry<p>I kind of would have expected Yoga and spiritual things, but it appears they are genuinely interested in the technical skills required for hands-on self-sufficiency.
In a case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (or frequency illusion), I've been learning Elixir/Phoenix and started off with <a href="https://github.com/shankardevy/mango" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/shankardevy/mango</a> which explicitly mentions Auroville and is the first I had heard of it.
It gave me a strange vibe.
Looks like the page is down, here’s the Wikipedia page. Apparently it’s an experimental city created in the 1960s in India.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auroville" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auroville</a>
Tbh this may sound cultist to others, but it's really not. You'll need to understand the philosophies of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo first for it to make sense. It's sets the example of a Utopian society. One shouldnt simply look at it from that angle and discard it without understanding the history and vision behind it.
So it seems that they do handle the Visa situation for you (it appears that you enter India on an Entry Visa; which I understand you don't have the right to stay in India just the right of passage). There are still two other things: Taxes and Healthcare. Are you supposed to be paying taxes on your activities (if you are doing Online/Offshore work since there are no private companies in Auroville). How is healthcare handled since it can get very expensive for old people.
As I was staying in Pondicherry for a month so I a visited Auroville a few times in 2018. It's hard to describe. On the one hand it seems like a cause for good, on the other you occasionally discover some out-of-place clearly expensive and wealthy buildings for residents dotted around the jungle which forms the site. Seems to have some strange contradictions.
I lived at Auroville for 3 months for a college study aborad. Wild experience. The Matramandir (the big gold dome) was a very remarkable and weird building. Definitely cult-ish, but also so truly different and innovative.
Was reading about the "galaxy" concept
<a href="https://www.auroville.org/contents/691" rel="nofollow">https://www.auroville.org/contents/691</a><p>> Radiating out beyond the Matrimandir Gardens are four Zones, each focusing on an important aspect of the township’s life:<p>> Industrial (north).
Cultural (north east),
Residential (south/south west) and.
International (west).<p>Feels so weird and dystopian when places try to enforce some sort of segregation
<a href="https://auroville.com" rel="nofollow">https://auroville.com</a> works if .org is down. I've come across it in the past because they build and sell pretty nice (just intonation) musical instruments. The instruments are cool but the place comes across a bit cultish<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG9QfEMd_GU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG9QfEMd_GU</a>
<a href="https://i.imgur.com/BPioTnL.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/BPioTnL.png</a><p>this picture is bit aspirational compared to satellite pictures of the area: <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/4xqCoBVwbbqy51Z29" rel="nofollow">https://goo.gl/maps/4xqCoBVwbbqy51Z29</a>
Auroville is mentioned in the Apple TV+ series “Home”, episode 6 “India”. Anupama Kundoo's Wall House is just outside the Auroville city limits, in an area designated for experimentation. I saw the episode recently so was surprised to see Auroville pop up here.
Somewhat related: Sri Aurobindo studied in England and also contributed to India's freedom struggle.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo</a>
So wild. I was there with some friends back in 2006. We didn’t go into the big orb because they were charging and we were cheap.<p>What a random memory to relive. Lovely :)
I visited Auroville in 2008, stayed two weeks, and found it an odd place indeed. Tourists could read about the huge expansion plans for the site which were set down back in the 1960s and 1970s, but all that growth seems to have stalled many years ago already. There was definitely a feeling of decay around the place, like an old socialist-era concrete monument that was supposed to represent the future but is now a sad cracked and stained relic.<p>Many of the younger people I met were only living in Auroville because they were born there, and they had little to no interest in spirituality, the Mother, Sri Aurobindo, etc.