“Matrimandir” is a Sanskrit word which means ‘house, or temple, of the Mother.’ From outside, it will resemble a golden, slightly flattened globe breaking out of the Earth - the golden world of Supermind breaking out of Matter. The globe, with a diameter of about thirty meters, rests on four gigantic supports representing the four active powers of the Mother in the universe: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. The most important feature inside the globe is a ‘chamber’ with a diameter of about twenty metres and near the wall twelve round columns seemingly supporting the ceiling but not touching it. The chamber is completely white and its marble floor is covered with a white carpet. In the middle of the chamber a crystal ball of seventy centimeters (specially made for Auroville by the Carl Zeiss Werke in Oberkochen, near Stuttgart, Germany) rests on a pedestal consisting of four gold symbols of Sri Aurobindo, which in turn is placed in the center of the symbol of the Mother on the floor. Night and day a ray of light falls through a central opening in the ceiling of the chamber straight on to the crystal. During the day, the ray consists of sunlight deflected by a mechanism that follows the movement of the sun; at night, the ray is produced by conserved solar energy. There is nothing else in the chamber and all noise is avoided.
A crystal that projects a ray of light directly into the core of your being, in a harmonious room of material purity - one can give all kinds of interpretations to it or simply undergo the unworldly beauty of the place. The Matrimandir cannot be explained. The Mother has ‘seen’ it and wanted it to be erected in the center of Auroville as soon as possible. It represents ‘the consciousness of the Divine’, it is ‘the soul of Auroville’ she said, and ‘the sooner it will be finished the better’ for the young city.
The Matrimandir only makes sense when it represents something on the level of the forces which have to contribute towards the coming of the New World. It must be a kind of power plant effecting a field with a transforming power which acts upon all who enter into it, upon those who live in its vicinity, and upon the Earth out of whose body it seems to emerge. The transformation of the Earth was the object of the Mother’s Work. Auroville is another step in that direction which had become possible in the general process of transformation, a step’ outwards’ in the divulgence of the new Force. If the Mother had wanted the occult power source which is Matrimandir to be built, then it can only have been, in a vision without religion, with the intention of speeding up the transformation of the Earth.
The Mother has said several times that Auroville exerts an occult influence in the world. That what vibrates in the cell, vibrates in the universe. That what has a life in one place of goodwill spreads in the whole body of the Earth. At first she said that the attempt at world unity which is Auroville contributed in preventing a third world war. Later on, in the beginning of February 1968, Sri Aurobindo gave her the complete rationale for the existence of the city and she had noted down his words; ‘India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of present-day humanity. India will be the site of its resurrection, the resurrection of a higher and truer life’ And she explained that: “The same thing which in the history of the universe has made the Earth the symbolic representation of the universe so as to be able to concentrate the work at one point, that same phenomenon is occurring now: India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that there will be the cure. And it is THEREFORE that one has made me create Auroville”.
The sea port she had envisioned, the airport, the hotels, the yachting club, the hydroplanes, the film studio, the press and publishing house for publication in all world languages, the grand organ in the auditorium – all that is not here yet. As we have seen Auroville’s material growth can only be the outcome of its spiritual growth, and at the moment it is not yet ripe for a material development of such dimensions. But the real Auroville exists- in the heart of the Aurovillians; it is there that it has to develop fully before a complete outward shape makes any sense. At present, there is little more than the embryo of a city. But the fact that Auroville still exists after twenty-five year is by itself, considering its purpose and the circumstances of its beginnings, a miracle.
‘Auroville is a great adventure,’ the Mother said. She had seen the city in that world where is being prepared what has to be realized on the Earth; she also knew that the city already exists in the hankering hearts of so many, not only on that spot on the Coromandel Coast but in the whole world- in all places where women and men can no longer stand the deadening meaninglessness of existence and long with all the intensity of their heart for Meaning, Beauty, Truth, Authenticity, for a totally satisfying, twenty-four carat fulfiment of life, at last.
‘The city will be built by what is invisible to you,’ said the Mother. ‘Those who have to act as instruments will do so despite themselves. They are nothing but puppets in the hands of larger Forces. Nothing depends on human beings, neither the planning nor the execution; nothing! That is why one can laugh.’
(An extract from the book “Beyond the Human Species – The Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother”, under the title of “The New Utopia: Auroville” by Georges Van Vrekhem Paragon House- St. Paul, Minnesota, 1998)
