The Matrimandir: Mauroville (City of Dawn) Is An Experimental Township in
The Matrimandir: Mauroville (City of Dawn) Is An Experimental Township in
India. It was founded in 1968 byMirra Alfassa (also known as "The [1][2][3] Mother") and designed by architect Roger Anger. As stated in Alfassa's first public message about the township, "Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity."
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In the inauguration ceremony attended by delegates of 124 nations on 28 February 1968, Mother gave Auroville its 4-point Charter setting forth her vision of Integral living: 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.
The Matrimandir[edit]
In the middle of the town is the Matrimandir, which has been acclaimed as "an outstanding and original [citation needed] architectural achievement" . It was conceived by "The Mother" as "a symbol of the Divine's answer to man's inspiration for perfection". Silence is maintained inside the Matrimandir to ensure the tranquility of the space and entire area surrounding the Matrimandir is called Peace area. According to Mother, this represents "a symbol of future realisation."
Auroville is composed of a cluster of properties some 12 km north of Pondicherry. It can be easily reached via the East Coast Road (ECR) which connects Chennai and Pondicherry. The visitor centre and Matrimandir can be reached by travelling 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) westwards from the signposted turnoff at the ECR. Turning east leads directly to Auroville's private beach called Repos, several hundred metres away.
PTDC
General Information and Background Opened in March 2006 the scheme is a step towards the economy Mother wished for Auroville. The ideal Auroville economic model, they said, is not to turn Auroville into a market economy and make a business of everything but one in which the material needs of all would be provided for without money circulation. Aims and ObjectivesFood and sundry items are obtained from the Pour TousDistribution Centre. Products available have been selected based on criteria such as demand, quality, costs and environmental impact. PTDC purchases whatever Auroville's farms supply, which includes jams and nut butters and also buys the reasonably priced products from Auroville's food-processing units. The income and expenditure of the scheme is in balance
SOLAR KITCHEN
The Solar Kitchen building has been designed as a major collective kitchen for the Auroville community and was finalized in December 1997. Since then it has served lunches in its Dining Hall and in the same time sent lunches to different outlets like schools or individuals. Since September 2006 also on Sundays lunch is served in the Dining Hall. Since October 2006 every evening, except Sundays, dinner is served. It derives its name from the big Solar-Bowl on its roof, which provides part of the steam for cooking on all the sunny days of the year. The other part of the steam needed, is provided by a diesel fired boiler. Besides the 180 or so who come to eat in it, the Kitchen also feeds around 60 people in outlying communities. These remote diners supply the Kitchen with a 'tiffin', a collection of interlocking cylindrical stainless steel containers designed to carry many different dishes simultaneously, which they collect and take home filled with food. The kitchen delivers a further 400 meals to Auroville's various schools and service centres, including an internal distribution centre called Pour Tous. After 45 Solar Kitchen staff have also eaten, the average number of meals served daily by the Kitchen rises to roughly 700.
AURVOLLIE LIBRARY
General Information and Background
The Auroville Library, currently located on the Crown Road, has been in operation for over 25 years now, housing and lending out a wide selection of books. Today it contains over 27,000 books, with about 2,500 additions every year, in eight languages - English, French, Tamil, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch and Russian. The Library also maintains a number of subscriptions to weekly and monthly Indian and international journals. Today the Auroville Library which is free for Aurovilians, guests and workers, has bar-coded books, an electronic check-out, the modern OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) and books classified according to international standards using the Dewey Decimal system. The most recent development is a fullyfunctional web-based search engine that allows the database to be searched from anywhere in the world. Today the Auroville Library is online - registered patrons can renew books electronically, place reservations, or even download e-books from this site.
KINDERGARTEN