Background and Inspiration

The international township of Auroville was founded in 1968 in southern India, near Pondicherry, – in the words of the Charter of Auroville: “to be the site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.”

As stated in the 4^th UNESCO Resolution on Auroville, in 1983, the aims of Auroville are “to ensure international understanding, peace, innovative education, a learning society, and an all round material and spiritual development of harmonious individual and collective growth, and… such aims contribute to the advancement of the objectives of UNESCO”.

In the course of Auroville’s first four decades, its research and development, especially in the fields of environmental restoration, reforestation, alternative energy design and technology, alternative healing practices, and integral education have been widely recognized: it has already become a community for men, women, and children of many different nationalities, and it has hosted numerous international conferences, workshops, seminars, and research projects in a wide variety of fields.  Today, Auroville aspires to become the learning community of tomorrow: a global adventure to discover the knowledge, understanding, creativity and consciousness that humanity searches for and needs everywhere, as it leaps into the 21^st Century.

40^th Auroville Anniversary and Inauguration

As early as 1969, The Mother, Auroville’s founder and guide, addressed  her intention to UNESCO to create a “Université de l’Unité Humaine”, a University of Human Unity, as a means to realise the spiritual and material goals of Auroville. “The permanent university will be the key to the reason for Auroville’s existence (la clef de la raison d’être d’Auroville)” she said. “It has to be a leap forward, to hasten the advent of the future – a world of harmony and beauty and union.”

Since the beginning, researchers, scholars, seekers, graduate and post-graduate students, professionals at all stages of their growth and development have been coming to Auroville for specific research and study in various Auroville-related topics – in the fields of integral yoga, architecture, town planning, ecology, sustainable development and society, philosophy and psychology.*  For the past three years, the University of Human Unity has hosted conferences, workshops and seminars featuring presentations by leaders from Auroville and around the world in the fields of integral education, the psychology of social development, environmental sustainability, sustainable technology and design, linguistics and philosophy.  Now, with the growing aspiration and intention of our  affiliates from within Auroville and around the globe, a coordinated effort is at last underway to develop a more coordinated structure that will enable the evolution of a next level of organisation in Auroville’s education: the manifestation of a true university of integral learning.

A New Integral Learning Paradigm

The University of Human Unity is being conceived of as an innovative alternative genre of university, expressive of the explorations of a new consciousness in the universe-city that is Auroville, free from many of the conventional restraints that characterize higher educational institutions in the world today. The specific mission of the University of Human Unity will be to provide an environment for higher learning where the discovery of an integral self-knowledge and world-knowledge will be the aim, and where integral self-development and the realization of the full human potential will be the primary object of research and discovery in all fields of study.

The University of Human Unity will be a platform for exploration and discovery in all areas of knowledge and activity where students may design, develop and implement programs of study in a supportive and contemplative atmosphere, with the participation and cooperation of other students and facilitators in their respective fields of interest. To do this, new approaches to knowledge and new learning modalities are to be discovered, and a new perception, a deeper understanding, a truer force of consciousness manifested, in Auroville and in the world.  In the words of Sri Aurobindo, the spiritual visionary, poet and philosopher whose Ideal of Human Unity provides the philosophical framework for Auroville:

“A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life. …A life of unity, mutuality and harmony born of a deeper and wider truth of our being is the only truth of life that can successfully replace the imperfect mental constructions of the past” (p.577).

Beginning in the Fall of 2007 and continuing in 2010

The University of Human Unity in Auroville offers:

-  opportunities for long or short term residential accommodations,

-  programs of discovery in many fields of the humanities and natural sciences,

- individual or small group explorations,

- informal experiential learning,

- internships,

- graduate and post-graduate seminars,

- applied research,

- distance learning in association with our many affiliates in India and abroad.

Schedule of Regular Activities

1st Semester September- December 2010

2^nd Semester January- April 2011

Affiliates in Auroville

Centre for Indian Studies

Centre for International Research in Human Unity

Centre for Scientific Research

Savitri Bhavan

Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Education and Research

Pitchandikulam Biological Research Centre

The Auroville Earth Institute

The Unity Pavilion/International Zone Group

Verite Integral Learning Centre

World-wide Affiliates

Indian Psychology Institute, Pondicherry

Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research, Pondicherry

The California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center, Crestone Colorado

The WorldShift University and The Club of Budapest