Beyond a Mythical Watershed:
The First Evolutionary Yoga
By Wolfgang Aurose
When I first discovered the marble hall of the Matrimandir, I had an astonishing, previously unknown sensation. I saw—and still see—this central room of Auroville as an open window to the future. Mysticism and technology seem to have become one in this building. The Matrimandir is a majestic spherical structure, inside which a spiral walkway leads to a high-ceilinged hall. During daytime, a single ray of sunlight is directed onto a transparent, oversized quartz sphere, which illuminates this otherwise almost empty hall. It is a unique model of innovative architecture and sacredness. In a sense, the building embodies both a temple and a research center. Mathematical understanding and spiritual perception have found a new, material-spiritual unity.
For me, this synthesis of the two major worldviews represents one of the distinguishing features of the global evolutionary step which is now underway.
The Matrimandir is an example of an experiential vision of this future. Visions, in the best sense, are anticipated glimpses of coming formations. They are images and objects projecting from the future into the present. They show inner or outer scenes of tomorrow in real, present experience. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, pioneers of the new beginning phase of humanity, wanted to demonstrate with Auroville and the Matrimandir a first manifestation of this fundamentally new consciousness.
A New Source of Truth
With Integral Yoga, the evolution of human consciousness has trespassed a kind of mythical watershed. Truth in the form of immutable myth no longer flows to us from the past. Instead, an increasing and broadening stream of new realizations and perspectives are coming from the future and reach us. However, for religious and traditionally minded people, which are still a large portion of the world’s inhabitants, mythical revelation remains the unchangeable source of the deepest truth. This is true in Christianity as in Islam, in Hinduism and Zionism as well as in Buddhism.
We Need Visions
Nevertheless, the search for visions, especially among the non-spiritual minded contemporaries, has become a worldwide trend. However, without much encouraging response. Science fiction films, for example, are a booming genre that claim to present us with scenes from the future. But an estimated 90% of all Sci-fi narratives are dystopian; they don’t depict a worthwhile future. Science and technology promised tremendous progress in the post-war years. Today, however, we are confronted with the discouraging downside of modernity: climate change, environmental pollution, and many more plagues.
Window to the Soul
We need a positive vision of the future like what Integral Yoga presents. It helps us to discover fundamental trust for the new age. We need the trust because we are called to manifest this future. Not through naive wishing, but through trained co-creation. It requires the interplay of our best inner tools. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother identify spiritual surrender and spiritual aspiration as essential for this.
With these qualities, Integral Yoga becomes a path of training. It is the first path that not only awakens the mystical revelations of the past, but above all makes a new evolutionary truth tangible.
The Matrimandir and Auroville are exemplars. Presently they are subject to changes and even to hostility from traditional forces, but their strong core reveals the certainty of the Integral Age that has begun.
Wolfgang Aurose met The Mother in early 1973. Later he worked for Aurovillle as Chairman of Auroville International (AVI). He has written several books in the spirit of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother including: The Soul of Nations. Healing and Evolution, 2023, Lulu. For more information see his website: www.soulofnations.com
