Aurovillle as Living Experiment | Devdip Ganguli | Auroville Convivial LIVE 2026-Day 8

Описание: Abstract: In this brief talk, I look at Auroville as a place where ideas about the future are actually being lived, and not only debated. I begin with Sri Aurobindo’s reflections on human unity and diversity, and his account of how societies move through distinct stages of development. Now, at the outer edge of what he called the rational age, the imbalance that emerges from a reorganisation of the outer forms of collective life without a corresponding transformation of consciousness becomes unsustainable. Sri Aurobindo’s notion of “spiritual anarchy” points toward another principle, a way of living together founded upon inner freedom rather than institutional control.

From there, I turn to a decisive shift within Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo had initially stressed that a transformed nucleus of individuals must precede any wider realisation. The Mother later felt it was essential to inaugurate Auroville and embrace the risk of collective experimentation even while the work of individual transformation remained incomplete. This gives Auroville its distinctive tension: it stands between what is ready and what is still in formation.

I close by asking how a living tradition should relate to its own past and to the broader inheritance of Indian spirituality and culture in the context of Auroville. Drawing on the Mother’s reflections on India’s spiritual evolution, I argue that tradition can serve as a foundation, but not as authority or blueprint. The future she envisaged was radical and unprecedented. To approach Auroville through a top-down or past-derived interpretive lens risks collapsing what was meant to remain an open field of inner and outer experimentation. The Auroville experiment can endure only if it remains open to the Truth that is still seeking to emerge, rather than treating the past as a fixed truth for the future.

Bio: Devdip Ganguli is a faculty member at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry, where he has taught courses on Sri Aurobindo’s philosophical works for over two decades. He also serves as Adjunct Faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.

He is the co-editor of Reading Sri Aurobindo (Penguin Random House, 2022), a volume introducing the Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo through contemporary scholarly perspectives. His research explores questions of consciousness, emerging technologies, and spiritual practice, with particular attention to Integral Yoga in both its historical development and contemporary expressions.
Devdip Ganguli is a faculty member at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry, where he has taught courses on Sri Aurobindo’s philosophical works for over two decades. He also serves as Adjunct Faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.
He is the co-editor of Reading Sri Aurobindo (Penguin Random House, 2022), a volume introducing the Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo through contemporary scholarly perspectives. His research explores questions of consciousness, emerging technologies, and spiritual practice, with particular attention to Integral Yoga in both its historical development and contemporary expressions.


Auroville Convivial: Live Talks is a week-long international gathering during Auroville Week (21–28 February 2026). It is conceived as an invitation to step into a shared, live space to speak about and around Auroville. Together, we seek to reopen dialogue on how this ongoing experiment engages with the wounds of the world, as well as its own lived successes, setbacks, and unfolding possibilities to reflect the prismatic nature of Auroville.