December 28, 2023

Dear Friends,

The turning of the year offers us a time to pause and reflect. It’s a signpost on the course of life, a marker in the passage of time. We can let it remind us that we are alive in a fluid, evolving world, and that our individual lives are constantly contributing to the collective life around us.

I spent the past week with my family celebrating Christmas. One of the precious aspects was spending time with my 5 year old niece and 2 year old nephew. These kids are full of life, every breath pulsing with exploration and experimentation. They laugh and cry with their whole bodies, drawing us all into their intense confrontation with life. Their eyes dance and their hands touch and their hearts hope, full of innocence and aspiration to learn and discover.

These children will inherit the Earth. Sitting with them on Christmas morning while they opened their presents, I imagined them tearing off the paper to reveal the troubled Earth, sick with climate fever and a fearful, polarized humanity. 

My niece and nephew are two individual, unique souls. They are part of a wave of beings that have chosen to incarnate into this troubled world now. Some are born into lives that shield them from the immediate effects of climate change and war, and others are confronted with these harsh realities. All of them are here to help. They carry the spark of innocence and beauty that reflects the eternity they left to join us here. And they carry the seeds of tomorrow in their dancing eyes.

As we transit from 2023 to 2024, I offer a prayer for the youth who have chosen to take on embodiment at this time in the Earth’s history. I pray that their innocence pervades the planet and penetrates the hearts of all who hold positions of authority. I pray that the light of their dreams and aspirations nourish the movement of awakening that presses ever forward, despite resistance. And I pray that their bright spirits fulfill the promise that brought them here, the promise that dances in their eyes.

Each of our lives is interwoven, and every action, thought, and breath influences the whole of which we are a part. In this coming year, may we realize the truth-power that lies hidden within each of us and allow it to lead us through whatever challenges may come.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

November 21, 2023

Dear Friends,

This week in the USA, people everywhere are celebrating Thanksgiving. It’s a national holiday, a time of family gatherings, and a harvest celebration all rolled into one.

For me, Thanksgiving is a mix of things. When I was a kid, we would all gather at my grandfather’s house. I have 18 first cousins, and everyone would be there – all the kids playing and the parents connecting and all of us surrounded by a mountain of food and the warmth of family. I was taught that we were commemorating a feast of friendship between the European settlers who had come to this land and the indigenous peoples who they met when they arrived. 

As I grew up, I learned that friendship was not the overarching reality between the European settlers and the indigenous people of this land. The Europeans progressively and systematically attacked, displaced, and killed entire communities of indigenous people, took over their lands, herded those who survived into shrinking reservations, and then turned their backs. They wrote up unfair treaties and then violated them. The scale of the catastrophe is unfathomable.

As I came to understand this reality, I had a hard time feeling connected to Thanksgiving as a celebration of gratitude. It felt hollow. The feelings of nostalgia and family connectedness remain with me, part of me. They mix with feelings of shame and wanting to distance myself from the actions and patterns of terrorism and theft.

But I also realize that shame and distance do not heal. Knowing the truth and keeping my heart open heal. Every month, I send a donation to a program called Feed The Hungry that distributes funds to organizations on several native American reservations. Last year we gathered boxes of winter clothing and sent them to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. These are small acts, but they keep my heart connected to the ongoing reality faced by native peoples in this country.

European settlers enacted and justified crimes against humanity all over the globe. They separated themselves from the truth of human unity and aligned with the lie of racial and cultural hierarchy. The consequences of this lie are not gone. Decolonization is not an event – it’s a process. It takes time.

It’s important that we allow this reality in, let it touch our hearts. We are one humanity, but the legacy of the lie of separation persists. We are growing toward truth, but we are not there yet. Knowing that doesn’t need to paralyze us or lead us to destructive actions. It can fuel compassion, care, and love, which are the key ingredients of healing.

It turns out that the annual Thanksgiving holiday didn’t actually arise from a pretend dinner between early European settlers and the people whose lands they appropriated. Days of thanksgiving were proclaimed from time to time during the country’s history, but the first annual Thanksgiving holiday was a celebration of the end of the Civil War – a war that threatened to end the experiment of the United States.

In October of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln reminded America that in the midst of much pain, there was also much to be grateful for. And he acknowledged that all the gifts of the moment were not created by human plans or human hands. “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God…[and i]t has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.” (read the full text here)

We are growing toward the realization that we are one heart and one voice, not just the American people but all of humanity. Auroville stands bravely in the predawn hour, a testament to the sun that is soon to rise above the horizon. All the entanglements and difficulties of decolonization play themselves out there as well, steps along the path of awakening. In the midst of the pain and falsehood that surround our becoming, we can be grateful for the light of dawn that shines in our hearts. 

Every day the infinite radiant Divine One gives us breath and purpose and the pulse of life in our veins. The sun shines and the rain falls and we have endless opportunities to share love with others. Thanksgiving gathers up this daily bounty into a single holiday and wraps us up in it. We are encouraged and reminded to be grateful, humble, and sincere. Whatever the circumstances of our lives, we are all part of a great experiment called the evolution of consciousness, and we are in it together. Day by day we wake up and know ourselves a bit more, see reality more clearly. The sun rises and the truth dawns and our underlying unity is revealed in the midst of pain and turmoil and all the forces that oppose the revelation. 

This week my big extended family is scattered around the country, most of my 18 cousins with kids of their own, honoring Thanksgiving in their own way. I’m with my family – my children, my wife and her parents. We laugh and play and are surrounded by a mountain of food and embraced by the warmth of family. We go around the table and share our gratitude with each other, offering each other the reminder that life itself is a gift that bears infinite gifts within itself. And we open our hearts to those who continue to suffer because humanity has not yet realized that we are one heart.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

October 25, 2023

Dear Friends,

I’ve recently been reading Sri Aurobindo’s essays about Indian culture and spirituality. They’re compiled in a book called The Renaissance in India and Other Essays on Indian Culture. The part that I’m finding most fascinating is essentially a response to western criticisms of Indian culture. Sri Aurobindo breaks down what contemporary western writers were saying about India and why – their basic biases and assumptions about reality that colored their perspectives and interpretations. 

Sri Aurobindo spent his formative years in some of the west’s most elite educational institutions. And he was born in India with Indian blood in his veins. So he had a unique perspective on India. He felt himself a part of her, and yet he had also seen her from outside, and could understand the filters of perception common to western people of his time.

I am a western person who has loved India since I first set foot on her soil on my 21st birthday. On a visceral level, I have felt at home in her embrace, breathing her air and nourished by her spiritual atmosphere. I can try to put words to this embodied, emotional experience, but the words all approximate. It’s hard to explain why I would feel at home in a place where I was not born, surrounded by a foreign spiritual tradition. I had essentially no contact with India before I traveled there for the first time – no obsession with Indian music or food or texts for example. But the experience of belonging was immediate and intense.

Reading Sri Aurobindo, I have come to understand that my own feeling of belonging in India is more than cultural appreciation. It comes from feeling at home in a place where realization has generally been more important than dogma or ideas about God, where there’s a temple on every corner honoring a different aspect of the One woven into the fabric of everyday life, commerce, and society. I love that God is welcomed as One and many and beyond counting, embodied as a mountain or a stone or a river and beyond comprehension. 

And I have also felt overwhelmed by India’s inexhaustible creativity and fluidity of movement. I have felt out of control in a car weaving through traffic, and confused by the countless rituals and stories about the devas and asuras and their interactions with people throughout time. I have looked into the eyes of a persistent and aggressive child begging for money, unsure of how to respond, not wanting to harden my heart but also not wanting to encourage that kind of behavior.

Over the years I’ve heard many Aurovilians acknowledge that the unique experiment that is Auroville could not have happened anywhere other than India. I think that’s true. Auroville was created to engage people from all parts of the Earth and all backgrounds in building a bridge between spirit and matter, soul and life. India’s spiritual culture has been conducive to that endeavor for thousands of years. And by accepting to host Auroville, India has invited the world to come and partake of the fruits of its spiritual culture. There are inherent challenges that come from Auroville being linked to the geopolitical nation-state called India. And that would be the case with any country on Earth. But India is much more than a nation-state. It is a nation-soul. And this soul’s unique qualities offer Auroville a space to grow and develop that serves its purpose beautifully.

As I read Sri Aurobindo, the defining feeling is reverence. He reveres this beautiful Mother India who embodied herself on Earth for a specific purpose and has been working toward that purpose consistently for thousands of years, amid countless obstacles. Millions of streams of teaching have flowed from guru to student, from parent to child, absorbing and responding to the specific circumstances of different times and places, passing through unique personalities and languages along the way. These streams have been the container for India’s embodiment of her soul purpose through time. 

I share Sri Aurobindo’s reverence. And I honor all those who have served as vehicles for the transmission of India’s soul into human life. India’s past has created a foundation on which a Divine Life on Earth can be manifested, opening the way for human unity and care for the Earth rooted in the principle of interbeing.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

September 27, 2023

Dear Friends,

In November 1971, the Mother made a push for Matrimandir to be built more quickly. Aurovilians had been working themselves on digging the massive crater that would support the foundation of the golden orb. Now she suggested bringing in local contractors to manage teams of paid laborers. Some Aurovilians, including the main architect, argued that using paid labor would desecrate the endeavor. As Ruud Lohman put it, “you can’t let others, however professional, play around with your soul. The ‘soul of Auroville’ grows without us leaving us untouched.”

The architect asked Mother for permission to step away from his work on Matrimandir in response to the shift. She answered:
“Each one has good reasons to defend his own opinion and I am no expert to judge between them. But from a spiritual point of view, I know that with true good will, all opinions can be harmonised in a more comprehensive and truer solution. This is what I expect from the workers of Auroville. Not that some give way to others, but on the contrary that all should combine their efforts to achieve a more comprehensive and perfect result. The ideal of Auroville demands this progress; don’t you want to make it?”

Three months earlier, she had said to another Aurovilian about another topic: “For each problem there is a solution that can satisfy everybody, but in order to find that ideal solution each one must want it. Instead of meeting the others with a will to enforce one’s own preference, enlarge your consciousness and aspire for the satisfaction of all”. 

Auroville is inherently a place where different ideas, perspectives, and opinions meet each other. What happens at the point of interface is not inevitable. There can be a clash, or there can be an integration. There can be a tug of war, or there can be an aspiration for the satisfaction of all. 

The Mother’s statement implies that in order for different perspectives to be harmonized into a more comprehensive solution, a solution more in alignment with the truth of human unity, we have to enlarge our consciousness. We have to override the ordinary tendency to meet the opposition with a will to enforce our own preferences, and instead of closing down we need to open. This means listening, absorbing, trying to understand. In order to find the ideal solution we have to want it.

Many who are connected to Auroville today know that the community is navigating through a major ordeal. A basic conflict that has run through Auroville’s heart for 50 years has again risen to the surface to be faced. This conflict compels us to traverse the space between clash and integration, invitation and rejection, enmity and collaboration. 

When I read information about what’s going on in Auroville today, whether they are letters or magazines or reports, I try to dip beneath the arguments and feel for the heart. Where is the message coming from? Is it open or closed? Does it contain a will to enforce a preference or does it aspire for the satisfaction of all? These vibrations are sometimes very evident, and sometimes subtle, but they are there and we each have the capacity to sense them.

As I take in the words, I feel my emotions pushed and pulled. I feel angry, righteous, afraid, and frustrated. I feel outraged, horrified, hopeless, and cynical. I feel these emotional currents pass through me as I read an article by one person, and then again as I read the rebuttal. I recognize that these emotional currents are embedded in the writing itself. I let them arise and pass, and then I sit quietly and look within for a sense of quiet and stillness.

In this place of stillness, there are not many words. Maybe one day there will be, but for now I hold the various voices and offer them to the Divine Wisdom that lives within and above and around me. I ask to be shown what is real and I wait. Sometimes I have insights, and sometimes I don’t.

In the meantime, life goes on. Dozens of projects in Auroville are working to make the world a better place. They are protecting animals and teaching children about plastic pollution in the ocean. They are helping women in rural villages throughout India understand and value their bodies and building solar panels. They are inviting young people to discover deeper purpose in their lives and researching ways to sustainably increase biodiversity in different localities.

We at AVI USA have chosen to focus on supporting this work. We connect donors to projects that align with their hearts, we provide capacity building to people in Auroville doing good work, and we share the beauty and richness of this work with our global audience. That’s where we have decided to put our efforts at this time, rather than being a megaphone or an arbiter in the current manifestation of a decades-long conflict.

And beyond all this, we are seeking ways to help Auroville become the city the Earth needs. The Earth is certainly in need of innovative solutions to major crises. We believe that Auroville can help by developing and sharing solutions in areas like fresh water cultivation and management, production of alternative high protein food sources like spirulina, alternative energy development and storage through wind and solar technology, alternatives to concrete as a  building material and to cotton and synthetics in clothing like hemp and bamboo, and innovative management of sewage and food waste. 

Aurovilians have been experimenting in these areas for years, and by forming partnerships with those around the world doing similar work, the impact of the innovations can be amplified. And there are markets for these kinds of solutions, which means that Auroville could develop funding streams that would support sustainable growth toward the city of the future that the Mother foresaw.

These are the practical areas that we focus on. In the midst of conflict, Auroville is surrounded by opportunity. And the big solutions to the big global problems can’t wait. If you’d like to help us support capacity development for the city the Earth needs, please be in touch.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

August 23, 2023

Dear Friends

The purpose of AVI USA is to support Auroville. We also support the ideals for which Auroville stands. We support the dream, the possibility of a society governed not by selfishness and competition but by the natural harmony that manifests when each individual is aligned with their soul. The great experiment of Auroville is the attempt to embody this society in a particular geographical place in Tamil Nadu. The purpose of the experiment is not to create an isolated spiritual island in South India. In 1970, the Mother said that the aims of Auroville are “an effective human unity” and “peace on Earth”.

So for those of us who don’t live in Auroville, what does that mean? It can mean that we help our friends in Auroville, offer moral support, mentoring, connections to experts and thought leaders. It can mean that we send funds, or go visit and volunteer. It can mean that we tell our friends about Auroville or share literature, films, blog posts, photos, and other content.Supporting the dream of Auroville can also be quite intimate. It can involve looking at our own lives and the ways in which they are aligned or not with our deeper sense of purpose. Am I contributing to human unity and peace on Earth? When do I put my needs above the needs of others? When do I contribute to enmity and othering? When do I justify departing from integrity? When do I lose faith in humanity and give in to despair and cynicism?


Last weekend, AVI USA hosted a screening of Olivier Barot’s new film on Sri Aurobindo. It’s an amazing film about his first 30 or so years, and the images bring alive the depth and breadth of an incredible life that impacted the world in countless ways. One of the things that struck me as I watched was that, before the creation of his ashram, Sri Aurobindo did not live in a conscious Divine society. He grew up in England, separated from his parents and his homeland, increasingly stretched for money to the point that he regularly experienced food insecurity. Then he returned to an India that was firmly under the thumb of British colonialism and had been for hundreds of years. He came to experience India as his Mother, Bharat Mata, who was made up of millions of individual cells longing to be free and pursue whole, dignified lives. 

In a speech given in 1970, Nirodbaran, one of Sri Aurobindo’s closest disciples, recalled that “Sri Aurobindo said to us, quoting C.R. Das’s opinion that ‘the political field is a rendezvous of the worst kind of criminals’; and that field, when Sri Aurobindo worked in it, he raised to a level of sincerity and integrity, at least in his own example, even if others didn’t always follow. He shunned crookedness, duplicity, lust for power and all the other vices of political life.”Sri Aurobindo lived in the messy, complicated, manipulative world of spin and bluster, greed and threat. And yet he wedded himself to higher ideals.

People around him sought to elevate themselves through politics and justified lies. He lived as if sincerity, honesty, generosity, and aspiration matter all the time and in all circumstances. He reached toward the truth and tried to bring it down into a world governed by untruth. He reached toward love and offered it to all around him, even if they didn’t understand the gift. His entire political career, rather than being about personal elevation or winning a contest, was an embodiment of love for Bharat Mata and Her children.

Right now, today, the Earth is calling to all of us to reach toward love and truth. The Earth is calling us to awaken to how we’ve compartmentalized our lives and appreciated principles without embodying them. It seems that the best way to express gratitude for all the good that Sri Aurobindo offered the world is to seek to internalize and embody the light that he was. This light shines in the Auroville charter and in the aspirational ideals of Auroville. Let us be inspired by this light and seek to establish it in our own hearts and minds and lives. 

If you have inspirations about how AVI-USA can support us all in this endeavor, please be in touch with me. I would love to hear from you. 

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

July 26, 2023

Dear Friends,

On September 9, 1965, The Mother, who founded Auroville, said:

“Auroville wants to be a universal township 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.”

And on September 20, 1969 she said:

“Earth needs a place where [people] can live away from all national rivalries, social conventions, self-contradictory moralities and contending religions…Auroville wants to be this place and offers itself to all who aspire to live the Truth of  tomorrow…Auroville is an attempt towards world peace, friendship, fraternity, unity.”

When I sit with these words today, I feel that Auroville was given as a gift to humanity and to the Earth. The Mother had the vision and the capacity to materialize this container, to bring people from around the world together who were willing to step out of their lives and try this new thing. And she gathered that potential and directed it into Auroville so that humanity could see a possibility of peace, friendship, fraternity, and unity on a significant scale.

Her vision was a city of 50,000, which would have the critical mass to demonstrate a collective embodying these principles at scale. It would defy the human tendency to look backward at the past and shape our hopes based on what has been, rather than what could be but has not yet been. This kind of radical, inspiring vision inherently appears impossible, because it points to something new, unrealized.

This was the gift: the gift of possibility. We need this gift more than ever today, as we face existential questions that demand solutions that seem impossible. We need hope to counter the inclination to slide into apathy and despair. We need to be reminded that our natural state is unity, and the potential to materialize that unity lives within us. The fact that Auroville exists today, 55 years after its founding, is an embodiment of this reminder that the Mother planted in the Earth as a gift.

And she offered more than this. In 1968, she said:

“The first thing that should be accepted and recognised by everyone is that the invisible and higher power—that is, the power which belongs to a plane of consciousness that is mostly veiled, but which is within each; a consciousness which can be called anything, by any name, it does not matter, but which is integral and pure in the sense that it is not false, it is in the Truth—that this power is capable of ordering material things in a way that is truer, happier and better for everyone than any material power.”

This is a totally radical statement, implying that the spiritual power aligned with pure truth can act in the material world. We humans have had an inclination to split life into spiritual and material, and to put the spiritual up in the sky or in the afterlife where it can’t touch and directly influence material life. But the Mother is rejecting this and saying a new way is possible, not just for a few select mystics or prophets, but for a collective civilization. In fact, she is suggesting that a civilization can be built by and with this “invisible and higher power.”

We can come up with a million reasons why it’s not possible for “the power which belongs to a plane of consciousness that is mostly veiled, but which is within each” to build a city of 50,000. The Mother was not naïve. She was not blind to humanity’s history of limitations, selfishness, conflict, and ignorance. She acknowledged them all and then offered a radical gift, something new, never seen before on Earth. She offered Auroville “to all who aspire to live the Truth of  tomorrow.”

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

June 27, 2023

Dear Friends,

I don’t live in Auroville. I am not an Aurovilian. But somehow Auroville is part of my daily life. My consciousness is invested there. I speak to Aurovilians and donors and well wishers around the world, I read and write and think and pray about Auroville, and Auroville is part of the inner landscape of my heart. I am in touch with the essential spirit of Auroville, its unique purpose and offering to the world, and I’m in touch with the pulse of life happening there.

Auroville International USA exists to support Auroville. It’s amazing to be working for an organization with a purpose that aligns so deeply with my own heart and soul. And it’s a challenge too, especially as Auroville finds itself grappling with a polarized struggle for control over its future. The struggle energizes emotions like anger, fear, and resentment, and blaming fingers point in every direction. 

As an organization, we at AVI-USA have made a decision to focus where we can make a tangible difference at this time. We have decided to focus on supporting good work, projects that are making a positive impact in Auroville and in the world. In most cases, this means capacity building – helping projects hone their internal systems and processes, tell their stories, and connect with people around the world who support their work. 

We have also decided to stay connected to hope, trusting that this current conflict is a passage, part of Auroville’s evolution towards a fuller embodiment of its sacred purpose. In Essays Divine and Human, Sri Aurobindo wrote that “evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature.” And in 1966, The Mother (founder of Auroville) said, “For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no reason to exist.” 

Auroville was created to be a container for the energy of evolution. It was envisioned as a spiritual city, different from any other city, where big and small priorities are determined not by the mind or emotions, but by the soul in collaboration with the Divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother taught that this integration of spirit and matter in every aspect of life is what we are all evolving toward. Eventually, all humanity will live in this way, where truth is known through a direct soul perception that senses the essence of things, and the structures of societies are built on a foundation of unity in diversity.

The Mother seeded Auroville with the energy of evolution. It is meant to blaze a trail for the collective evolutionary journey, and in this way to serve the Earth and humanity. Harmony and unity in the world and in Auroville will require an integration, a weaving of perspectives. One group cannot defeat another and actually win. Our current crises tie us all together. The needs of one cannot be separated from the needs of all. And so our problems require new solutions.

The energy of evolution will inevitably reveal new solutions that are rooted in harmony and unity. These new solutions may look ridiculous, because our world has not yet been ready for them. They may seem impossible and unrealistic. And yet they hold the key to unlock the infinite potential held by the energy of evolution. Can we create space for them? Can we honor the perspectives of those we disagree with and seek openings for collaboration and cocreation? 

The Mother once said about the power of love that “no other movement could, better and more surely than this, throw a bridge across the abyss dug by the sense of separation that comes from the formation of the individual. It was necessary to bring back to itself what had been projected into space without destroying for this purpose the universe created thus. That is why love sprang up, the irresistible power of union.”

Auroville’s uniqueness has called thousands from around the world to come and join the endeavor as Aurovilians, and millions more have been inspired by it. This uniqueness is rooted in the power of love. Love lives in the space between factions. Love will reconcile all differences and “throw a bridge across the abyss dug by the sense of separation” that causes us to hate and fear each other. And a new world will be born from this bridging, a world that is hard to imagine from our current vantage.

Let us stand in hope that, against all appearances, this bridge of love will be built, that it is being built even now, even as we see more separation than ever among nations and factions. Let us defy the voices of despair and cynicism that cry doom and urge self protection and embattlement. May the energy of evolution flower in Auroville and in the world, and may we nourish it with our prayers, our actions, and our words.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

April 23, 2023

Dear Friends,

I’m just back home after a few months in Auroville. And I’m deeply appreciating the beauty and unique energy of that place. There are of course many inspiring outward things happening in Auroville. There are great projects grappling with some of the world’s most challenging issues, and people from various backgrounds trying to find ways to live together harmoniously.

But beneath and beyond all the outward action, there is an energy in Auroville that I have not found anywhere else. It’s in the air and the water, in the trees and the soil. When I ride down the forest paths or walk near the Matrimandir at sunset, I feel the energy embracing me and whispering in my ear. It whispers hope and possibility, honor and reverence, love and harmony. Whatever interpersonal conflicts or organizational challenges may be taking place there, Auroville continues to radiate something special. 

I’m grateful to be working to support that special energy. In 2014 I was part of the senior leadership team for an international NGO called Best Buddies, and I quit to pursue a livelihood that was more aligned with my spiritual life. Now I find myself digging back into the kind of work I was doing with Best Buddies, but for a project that has both a practical and an overt spiritual purpose. 

I spent a lot of time during my most recent trip to Auroville training a group of Aurovilians in fundraising best practices, things that I learned working for Best Buddies. BEAM Auroville is a team who will support service projects in developing their fundraising capacity, opening opportunities for growth for projects working in biodiversity research, women’s health, education, and youth empowerment. They will support individual projects, and in doing so they will support the dream and the energy that is at the heart of Auroville – the aspiration to transcend enmity and discover human unity.

It’s amazing to have the opportunity to share practical skills and support practical work that nourishes a spiritual aspiration. This dynamic interface between spirit and matter is part of what makes Auroville special, and it flows through all aspects of its manifestation, even if sometimes it’s hiding and hard to see.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

March 22, 2023

Dear Friends,

This morning, I rode my ecycle through the early morning red dirt roads of Auroville. The sun just visible above the eastern horizon, glowing burnt orange through a foggy haze. Birds sang and the conscious breeze caressed my face and arms. 

I rode in through the Matrimandir gate and parked my cycle, and walked toward the giant golden globe. I was flooded with awe at the beauty of the scene – the dawn light illuminating grass and gardens and flowers, the Banyan tree rests its branches on tree-sized root structures, a silent witness to all of Auroville’s aspirations, achievements, falterings, and difficulties.

From a materialist perspective, it’s easy to question Matrimandir’s existence. Why this opulent waste of money to build a golden building when people around the world don’t have enough? Why this waste of open space in the most crowded country in the world? 

But materiality is just the surface aspect of Matrimandir. To understand its purpose, you have to feel its presence, the light that it brings to the world, the interface with energies of truth and harmony that it facilitates. These are not things that can be touched with the mind or understood conceptually. But they are real, and the Matrimandir’s presence underlies everything that Auroville is and strives to be. 

It’s amazing really, that 50 years after the Mother passed away, this remarkable structure somehow carries the energy of Her intention, the gift of Her hope for Auroville. She spoke Auroville into the world, breathed life into it, set it in motion, and the vibration of those words and that breath and that hand resonate from the center of Matrimandir. Ascending the spiral ramp to the inner chamber, I entered a different world, a place where the fundamental energies of creation that drive the evolution of consciousness are tangibly present. 

I settled into my seat for meditation, and felt my body adjusting to the new vibration. I opened my eyes and looked at the crystal, pure and clear, receiving the light of the sun. I felt myself receiving the light of creation, taking it in and allowing it to change me, clearing out the confusion and delusion that define ordinary human existence. 

Auroville is a cauldron of difficulties. The entangled problems of the world present themselves in this community of a hundred languages and cultures and preconceptions and desires. It’s easy to become fixated on Auroville’s impossibility, bogged down by its limitations and dysfunctions. In the silent radiance of Matrimandir, something else is present. A different lens is offered, one which sees Auroville not as a bundle of shortcomings, but as a mystical miracle of human aspiration. 

This shift, from pessimism to optimism, from despair and cynicism to hope and innocent openness, is a gift to our churning Earth. Without the spark of possibility, we are sure to drown in our infinite insoluble problems. We are sure to give up and slide back into the seas that we so valiantly climbed out of millions of years ago. 

We need the light of hope and possibility, the light the uplifts and upholds, carries us forward toward harmony and wholeness. And the Mother knew this, that Auroville and the world would need this light. So She kindled it and asked the early Aurovilians to tend to the flame. Somehow, in the midst of all the challenges of that time, they did. They protected it and built a home for it, a place where it could live and breath and uphold the possibility of Auroville. 

In April we offer you a glimpse into the evolution and influence of Matrimandir through the eyes of Aurovilians who have lived with its presence. Serena has curated a series of interviews, presented with beautiful cinematography and intimate interviews, that share the way Matrimandir has touched the lives of individual Aurovilians of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. On April 8th, we’ll introduce the series to you and premiere a few of the videos. I recommend that you go back and watch them all. Every one of them is beautiful.

After an hour or so inside, I left the Matrimandir’s inner chamber and walked back down the spiral ramp, out the door, and into the sun, which had risen above the haze. I walked beneath the branches of the banyan tree and along the path back to my waiting cycle. And then I pushed off into the stream of my day, refreshed and rejuvenated. I carried the light of Matrimandir inside me, secret and silent. No one may notice or care, but it will flow through every conversation and interaction, blessing this pulsing swirl of activity that is a day in Auroville.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

February 23, 2023

Dear Friends,

I’m in Auroville again, and I met yesterday with Paul Blanchflower from Auroville Botanical Gardens. This is a great example of a project that has taken learnings from inside Auroville and begun to share them outside. Decades of extensive experimentation in creating biodiversity have informed their approach to rehabilitating old mine sites, re-introducing indigenous species throughout Tamil nadu, and re-invigorating sacred groves. In fact, they are now contracted to plant local species that would normally grow in sacred groves within police stations throughout Tamil Nadu. 

The police are the modern embodiment of the ancient Iyannar, the guardian of the village who is worshiped at the sacred grove on the village boundary. Auroville Botanical Gardens’ practical know-how has joined with ancient traditions and modern governance to create beauty and honor civil servants. 

This is just one example of a scalable, replicable, sustainable project developed within Auroville that has the potential to make a positive impact on the Earth and support the Auroville economy. And there are many other projects like Wasteless, EcoFemme, and MG Ecoduties that have arisen in Auroville’s spiritual, cultural and economic ecosystem with a similar potential. 

But Auroville is also more than just a hub of innovation. It is more than just a community that has developed serious capacity in the area of Earth stewardship and ecological restoration. Auroville was envisioned as a spiritual city, not a religious enclave like the Vatican or an ashram, but a city whose purpose and intention is explicitly to awaken consciousness and join spirit and matter, human and Divine, the ideal and the real. 

It has been said many times by many people that we cannot solve today’s problems with yesterday’s consciousness. The consciousness that created the problem will not find the solution. We need a new consciousness, an emergent and evolutionary movement that steps from the solid ground of yesterday into the unknown territory of tomorrow. Auroville’s purpose is to cultivate and nurture this new consciousness, to awaken it and give it space to develop. And to the extent that this has happened so far, it has influenced the quality and capacity of the projects and innovations that have arisen.

Auroville’s purpose was seeded with its birth on February 28th, 1968. That birth will be celebrated next week on the same day with a morning bonfire, which you can view on our website. And this week Auroville celebrated the birth of its founding visionary, The Mother, who planted the seed of purpose in the soil of Tamil Nadu and watered it, giving it what it needed to grow and become. The Mother’s birthday carries the significance of the Divine’s love and care for the Earth, a love and care that joins the Divine Heart with the Heart of the Earth and the heart of every human being that takes birth here. She came to help us remember who we are, and Auroville was initiated to further that intention. It is a material manifestation of The Mother’s love for humanity.

We at AVI-USA join Auroville and all those around the world who have been inspired by its vision in celebrating the birth of the dream and the birth of the Mother, and we invite you to join us with a prayer for Auroville’s becoming, by tuning in to the bonfire livestream, and by making a contribution to help Auroville continue to grow toward its full potential.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

Board President

AVI-USA

December 18, 2023

Dear Friends,

This holiday season, we tried something new. We reached out to a few friends and asked if they would chip in to create a matching fund for Auroville projects. We got a great response, and ended up raising a total of $26,000! 

Starting December 1, we’ve been matching all incoming donations for projects in Auroville, up to a max of $2,500 per project. As of today, over $20,000 in eligible funds has come in from 125 donors for 36 different projects. That means that each of those projects will have their fundraising efforts doubled, and each of those donors will make double the impact with their contributions.

We are grateful and awed by the outpouring of support for Auroville from around the world. I recently asked one of our donors why they support Auroville, and I’d like to share their response with you. They said:

“Everywhere we turn we see conflict in the world. No one has found a solution yet. Unsolved problems breed consequences including mass migrations, attempts to control resources at the expense of others, and wars. We see disputes between religions, between economic systems and viewpoints, and between governance philosophies. No solutions have solved the issue of human conflict. Meanwhile, the problems compound rather than get solved, thus increasing the overall complexity and issues to be resolved.

“Aurovillians have their share of issues to work out and many of the traditional means of trying to resolve conflict have of course come up. The real exciting direction however is that with a basic interest in and goodwill for finding real and practical solutions, Auroville has pioneered various initiatives like the Dream Weaving and Heart Weaving processes. Auroville’s approach is a start on what needs to be a world-wide process of mutual understanding, reconciliation and creating a new synthesis that resolves the opposing views from a wider perspective.

“Auroville is attempting to develop solutions that are essentially feasible for the developing world to implement and sustain, which are relatively low cost, low tech solutions and which begin to address the major concerns in a new way. As a laboratory, Auroville has dozens of units and projects each one focusing on one or more of the aspects that need to be addressed, and together, representing a world-view that starts with the human need for meaning, survival and ecological balance in order to meet the existential threat we are all facing. As we solve these underlying problems, we reduce the follow on effects of mass migration, world-spanning pandemics, and constant warfare and suffering.  This is where the hope for humanity lies, and that is why Auroville can and should be a magnet for those seeking to be part of the solution.”

Why do you support Auroville? Send us an email and let us know what inspires you about this unique experiment.

In Friendship,

Matthew Andrews

President AVI-USA

Dear Friends,

We’ve just sent out our semi-annual print newsletter, Connect. It should be arriving in the mail within the next two weeks. This issue is a deep dive into the art scene in Auroville, with lots of images and reflections from artists. We hope you enjoy it, and as always we welcome your feedback. Once the hard copies have arrived, we’ll post the pdf at aviusa.org/connect.

Creating this issue of Connect gave us the opportunity to consider the role of art in a community like Auroville. We have a general understanding of art as something that connects people and gives life to the public sphere. We come together to see and appreciate paintings, music, theater, and sculpture. And yet offers more than just social ties.

Art can be an expression of the inner life. It can manifest the intangible, that which is beyond articulation. It can bring us into direct contact with feelings, ideas, and realizations that words cannot capture. What we see or hear can be like a bridge to the soul of the creator and performer. And when we touch the soul of another, we touch our own soul and the common soul that we share. We enter into the space of spirit, the dynamic, vibrant world that lies beneath and beyond the material and seeks to express itself in human life.

In Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri, we have a work of high art that plumbs the depths of spiritual reality and links the deepest truths of existence to the daily grind of human life. It crystalizes mystic wisdom into words and enlightens through expression. Matrimandir can also be considered a work of art in this way, or the Mother’s organ music. Art becomes a clear transmission from the heart of the One to our hearts, a blessing and a gift of reassurance and hope that kindles aspiration toward self-realization.

Art can be representative, mirroring life, but there is always a symbolic quality, always an overlay as we see life through the eyes and heart of the artist. And so with art from Auroville, we gain both insight into one individual’s perspective and a lens through which the spirit of Auroville can flow. Through Auroville’s art, we encounter deeper insight than any news report could provide, a transmission of energy and life that summarizes and synthesizes, blooming like a flower whose only intention is to unfurl.

Part of Auroville’s purpose is to create bridges between the ethereal, inner, spiritual dimensions and the earthy, outer, the material realm, between our collective past and our collective future. Human history has drawn lines between spirit and matter, but Auroville seeks to overcome those divisions and begin to build a life divine in the material world. All of its ups and downs and difficulties and realizations can be seen in the context of this seeking. Art in Auroville inherently participates in the exploration of our collective future, and as such becomes a vehicle for bringing it into being.

With Love,

Matthew Andrews

October 2022

Dear Friends,

As I sit to write this letter, it’s Diwali in Auroville. Firecrackers explode everywhere, some of them lighting up the sky and others just blasting an earth-shaking boom. Across India, people are wearing new clothes, enjoying time with their families, and celebrating the victory of light over darkness.

Diwali is an invitation to remember that light always wins. Truth always finds a way to upset our machinations and manipulations. As humans living in a competitive world, it’s natural to want to hedge our bets, take a little off the top and hope no one notices. After all, who will look out for us and if we don’t look out for ourselves?

The audacity of the dream of Auroville is that it defies this logic. It asserts that we can live together in harmony without the fear that propagates greed and the ethos of domination. People from different cultural backgrounds, speaking different languages and with different basic assumptions about reality can come together a create a life rooted in goodwill and sincerity. By working together, we can create much more beauty and richness than by working separately.

The AVI-USA team has been together in Auroville for the past week. We’ve been developing new relationships, meeting old friends, and planning new collaborations. We’re connecting donors to projects, sharing amazing and innovative work on our social media channels, and strategizing with a wide variety of people how to increase abundance in Auroville. We’re working in a spirit of collaboration and seeking creative harmonies. 

We hosted a fundraising training for service projects and over 50 people attended. We have been supporting a new partnership between Yuvabe and Solitude Farm to share the beauty and richness of local food and permaculture with a wide audience – check out the live online launch event this Saturday! We are helping Aurokiya Eye Care and Wasteless with specific targeted fundraising campaigns. And we’re always networking and brainstorming to increase capacity and create shared services.

Diwali reminds us that hope is a food and a balm. As we pass through a period of darkness, it nourishes us and soothes our fear. And every interface with darkness is a passage. It’s temporary, even though it can feel eternal. The light is always waiting on the other side of the tunnel, waiting to embrace us and offer a new vision of what’s possible. The truth is that we are one. We are made of the same stuff, breathing the same air, sharing the same Earth. Our ideas and beliefs may separate us temporarily, but they are just shadows that will clear with the dawn. And the dawn can’t be stopped. 

It’s in that spirit that I wish you a happy Diwali. May we realize and embody the truth that we are all made of the same radiance and together we can solve any problem that the cosmos delivers.

September 2022

Dear Friends,

We often hear the words ‘human unity’ in relation to Auroville. They appear in the Auroville charter, one of Auroville’s foundational statements: 

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

What do these words mean? What does a “living embodiment of an actual human unity” look like? Does it mean a loss of individuality and personal agency? Does it mean that everyone agrees with each other or thinks the same thoughts? Can we imagine a state of unity that retains the inherent diversity of life on Earth?

To be holistic and complete, a living embodiment of an actual human unity would have to manifest in governance, in commerce, in physical labor, in art, in play, and in spiritual life. But how? How would it affect each of these areas of life? What would it look like, feel like? A “living embodiment” has to have form and dynamism; it has to breathe and speak. 

Can we imagine shifting from our current collective state of near-constant strife and disharmony to a state of unity? Think of the friction and inefficiency caused by conflict. Think of what we could create if we worked together instead of tearing each other apart.

These are challenging contemplations from the perspective of modern life as we know it. We take for granted that ideas define reality. Societies and microcultures are divided according to beliefs. Do you agree with me or not? If we agree, then we can stand together against those who disagree. If we don’t agree, then I may treat you with disdain, or just avoid you altogether. Strong emotions flow through me when I think of you or hear your ideas. I feel anger, repulsion, perhaps even hatred.

But Auroville has been created to manifest something else. It has been created to manifest a living embodiment of an actual human unity. It has been created to remind us of what could be if we aligned our hearts and intentions to nurture an environment where all can thrive and offer their unique gifts to the world. Every insoluble problem that we face, all the overlapping crises of our modern world, would be resolved if we could embody an actual human unity. 

Of course we can’t just jump from here to there. It will require deep, prolonged, sincere researches, both material and spiritual. It will require hypotheses and experiments, trials, tabulations, and reflections. And these trials can’t be abstract. They need to be real, with real stakes and consequences. The results have to be tested by fire and flood, otherwise we can’t know for sure that they are scalable, replicable, or sustainable.

Humanity invests in experiments every day. We experiment to develop new weapons, explore the galaxy, and manufacture wealth. We experiment with food, with art and music, and with illusions and emotions as we create movies and virtual reality games. We experiment with democracy, autocracy, humanitarian programs, policing, and rehabilitation. Compared to what we collectively invest in these kinds of experiments, Auroville is small. The funding needed to keep it going is inconsequential. But the potential benefits to all humankind are immense. 

The experiment of Auroville is beyond value. It offers itself to the world, a unique jewel with infinite possibility. Nowhere else is such an experiment conducted on the scale of Auroville, with thousands of people having given themselves to it. It is worthy of investment, and it is worthy of patience. We invest in Auroville when we talk to people about it, share its inspiring potential, send funds, offer words of encouragement and care to Aurovilians, and hold hope in our hearts for its becoming. And when we choose to value this audacious dream, we value ourselves and our entire human family.