An interesting eco-lodge with interesting stories: Auroville

One of the most successful and well-known eco-villages, Auroville is located near the city of Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu province on the eastern shore of South India. A vision of Mira Alfassa, the spiritual partner of the Indian wise Sri Aurobindo, who is known as the "mother" in the eco-village, has been formed.

This eco-village describes itself as "an ideal town experiment dedicated to the unity of people". At present, the population of the settlement is 2,400 and the ultimate goal is to become a city of 50 thousand people. One third of the population is made up of Indians, and the rest is made up of people from 35 different countries.

Mira Alfassa (1878 - 1973) is a researcher who has written 20 books throughout his lifetime and has tried to develop himself constantly on the spiritual aspect of his personality. The land in which the Auroville Eco-village is located has remained for a long time as a colony of France. At that time, Alfassa, who went to India several times and led the establishment of Auroville, has become a respectable person in India. In fact, a postage stamp of India was addressed in the form of "mother" as it is known throughout India, and its photograph was used.

Mira Alfassa is a person who has been worn out of various diseases and has found peace and healing in meditations. During his meditations he noted that he saw an aged banyan tree (Indian fig) in a huge empty space in his diary. After a while it was constantly focused on the coming vision and felt the need to find this tree. Having felt that the tree was in India, he traveled from France to the southern part of India - that region was at that time a decolonization of France - and found that tree in one of his journeys and searches for that tree. At last the great banyan he had met continued to meditate under his tree. Later, he decided to establish a sustainable, ecologically, peaceful and peaceful settlement with nature in the place where this banyan tree was, and returned to France. They brought together 20 architects to draw Auroville's first plans together. It is designed in the center of Ekoköy, in line with the visions it has seen during Mira Alfassa's meditations. Later, EkoKöy took the Matrimandir to the center and developed in a galaxy model.

On February 28, 1968, 5 thousand people gathered for the opening ceremony in the center of the future town, including 124 from them and representatives from all the provinces of India. All the representatives brought a piece of land for symbolic purposes to blend into the land of Auroville from their own country. Thus the opening was realized in a great festive atmosphere. It is also endorsed by UNESCO as a cross-cultural co-operation and development surveillance.

The area in which Auroville was founded was a piece of barren land that had no vegetation on its head. The weak surface land is now eroded by the frequent recurring storms and monsoon rains, and the platodon is poured into the sea, leaving deep cavities behind the rain waters. In order to stop the monsooner from taking away the land on the surface, the inhabitants of Auroville first planted dams and hardwoods and planted the land. In the early days of the establishment, electricity was not available in the region. The first settlers set up windmills for water pumping and energy generation. The members of the community worked hard to improve biomass and solar energy technologies, and at the end of all their efforts, Auroville became the largest alternative energy systems center in India. One of the most remarkable of these alternative technologies is the solar collector, which measures 15 meters in diameter, which can produce energy to cook a thousand meals a day from the kitchenette where it is mounted.

Auroville is an important resource for communities both in their own region and in the Indian Peninsula. The residents of Auroville have partnered with various institutions and exported many of their own technologies to communities in North India, including 8,700 household lighting sets and 550 water pumps powered by solar energy. Almost half of the consumed vegetables produce themselves. There are large seed banks made up of a wide variety of tree and vegetable seeds. As a result of the success achieved in reforestation and renewable energy work, Auroville won the Ashden Sustainable Energy Award, also known as Green Oscar in 2003. The Center for Scientific Research, established in Auroville, is regarded as a success for the entire Indian Peninsula.

This success of Auroville can be based on three influences. These are the strong spirituality that holds the community together strongly and is at the heart of the initiative. Sri Aurobindo and the "mother" in spiritual guidance have combined to create a strong sense of common value within the community, combined with the service ethic that comes from being one of the poorest communities in the world. This seems to be the clearest manifestation of the great financial and humanitarian investment in the gigantic Matrimantine Temple in the center of Auroville, but this support and power has spread to all other activities of the community.

Another factor in success is the stance that has become a solid symbol of Auroville's hope and unity. On this page, EkoKoye provides generous donations and funds as well as many friendly and regular volunteer flows from India and other countries.

Finally, Auroville has developed a strong solidarity economy, which provides distribution of financial resources and special gains within the community. All members of the community have the right to a minimum income. It is requested that those who can relinquish interest payments and transfer their gains to the common pool. The pool system, which has been operating since 1999, is generally a collection of 20 people in a common pool to balance the financial disparities within the community.

Many such mechanisms have contributed to the development of the economy of the community. Today, there are 125 commercial establishments in Auroville that produce construction, energy, waste treatment technologies, as well as produce handcrafts, food and technology, and retail these products.
Looking at all this, it can be safely said that the enthusiasm of the new entrepreneurs and the local people's knowledge combined together make it profitable for everyone. In the first 30 years following its establishment, Auroville is a place where two million trees stretch out into the sky, where water management programs are put into effect and the local ecosystem is restored to its former health.

Towards the end of 1965, it was decided to set up a settlement around the lonely and old banyan (Indian fig tree - Ficusbenghalensis) tree, standing in the middle of barren land by the "mother" of Auroville's founder. Twelve gardens have been built around the Matrimandir Temple built here and the garden has been constructed by the founder as "Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, Light, Life, Power, Progress, Youth, Harmony, Perfection, and so on. In February 1972, the first part of concrete construction was completed. There are twelve petals that remind us of a flower in the plan view, and there are one meditation room in these twelve petals. These twelve meditation rooms symbolize twelve virtues: sincerity, humility, gratitude, perseverance, aspiration, receptivitiy, progress, courage, goodness, generosity, equality, peace. In November 1973, on the day when the construction of the four pillars of the Temple of the Matrimandi was over, the "mother" lost his life. The ruler is dedicated to the roles of "mother" in international beliefs: Isis in Ancient Egypt, Pachamama in Inca, Kwannon in Japan, Hinduarda Aditi, Virgin Mary in Catholics, and so on.

According to the plan, the gardens that look like petal leaves of a lotus flower surround the temple in the center. During the debate about how gardens should be in 1969, the "mother" emphasized that each garden must represent a virtue and that people visiting the gardens must have distinct and different designs to make that virtue feel crisp. Each of the gardens customized by "Mother" has a special flower, color and purpose in the direction of meditation. Generally, Hibiscus sp. (Hatmi) and Nymphaea sp. (Nilüfer) is preferred.

In some blogs and travel site reviews, I read about 70 percent of the eco-location in Auroville in a flood disaster in Auroville that became unrecognizable, but no such information was available on the official website of Auroville.

Auroville has been declared a "universal city of the future" by UNESCO with its multicultural structure. There are programs with a very large fan base and they are constantly visiting visitors, researchers, university students and international volunteers. Among the most popular are low-cost building technology, sustainable living, food security and organic agriculture, architectural practices and campus planning. In addition to these, environmental education, seed banks, medical plants, traditional botanical science, experimental methods of education, philosophy, alternative medicine and healing methods are especially emphasized.

For those who like India, one of the oldest cultures in the world, I am attracted to one more reason ... I am a person who has been very excited since 2012 with eco-pic because of my master's thesis. I have studied the world's leading eco-clubs one by one, but among all of them I was most excited about Auroville.

SOURCE: gaiadergi.com