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Matrimandir
The Matrimandir (Sanskrit for ''Temple of The Mother'') is an edifice of spiritual significance for practitioners of Integral yoga, in the centre of Auroville established by The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It is called ''soul of the city'' and is situated in a large open space called ''Peace''. Matrimandir does not belong to any particular religion or sect. Structure and surroundings The Matrimandir took 37 years to build, from the laying of the foundation stone at sunrise on 21 February 1971 - the Mother's 93rd birthday - to its completion in May 2008. It is in the form of a huge sphere surrounded by twelve petals. The Geodesic dome is covered by golden discs and reflects sunlight, which gives the structure its characteristic radiance. Inside the central dome is a meditation hall known as the ''inner chamber'' - this contains the largest optically-perfect glass globe in the world. The Matrimandir, and its surrounding gardens in the central Peace Area, is open to the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auroville
Auroville (; City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district, mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, with some parts in the Union Territory of Pondicherry in India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as "the Mother") and designed by architect Roger Anger. Etymology Auroville has its origins in the French language, "Aurore" meaning dawn and "Ville" meaning village/city. Additionally, it is named after Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950).Auroville, the Fulfillment of a Dream by Lotfallah Soliman. UNESCO Courier. January 1993 Retrieved 28 May 2016. History [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mirra Alfassa
Mirra Alfassa (21 February 1878 – 17 November 1973), known to her followers as The Mother, was a spiritual guru, occultist and yoga teacher, and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him and called her by the name "The Mother". She founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and established the town of Auroville; she was influential on the subject of Integral Yoga. Mirra Alfassa (Mother) was born in Paris in 1878 to a Sephardi Jewish bourgeois family. In her youth, she traveled to Algeria to practice occultism along with Max Théon. After returning, while living in Paris, she guided a group of spiritual seekers. In 1914, she traveled to Pondicherry, India and met Sri Aurobindo and found in him "the dark Asiatic figure" of whom she had had visions and called him Krishna. During this first visit, she helped publish a French version of the periodical ''Arya'', which serialized most of Sri Aurobindo's post-political prose writings. During th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India by population, sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language—one of the longest surviving Classical languages of India, classical languages in the world—is widely spoken in the state and serves as its official language. The state lies in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and is bordered by the Indian union territory of Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, as well as an international maritime border with Sri Lanka. It is bounded by the Western Ghats in the west, the Eastern Ghats in the north, the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait to the south-eas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Anger
Roger Anger (24 March 1923 – 15 January 2008) was a French architect who worked on the Auroville project, designed by Mirra Alfassa and endorsed by UNESCO and the Government of India. He also collaborated many times with Pierre Puccinelli, notably on the Île Verte in Grenoble. References Bibliography * Anupama Kundoo Anupama Kundoo (born in Pune in 1967) is an Indian architect. Biography Anupama Kundoo studied architecture at the Sir J. J. College of Architecture, the University of Mumbai, University of Bombay and received her degree in 1989. She was awarde ...: ''Roger Anger, Research on Beauty, Architecture 1953-2008'', JOVIS Verlag Berlin 2009, 20th-century French architects 21st-century French architects 1923 births 2008 deaths Architects from Paris {{France-architect-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integral Yoga
Integral yoga, sometimes also called supramental yoga, is the yoga-based philosophy and practice of Sri Aurobindo and ''The Mother'' (Mirra Alfassa). Central to ''Integral yoga'' is the idea that Spirit manifests itself in a process of involution, meanwhile forgetting its origins. The reverse process of evolution is driven toward a complete manifestation of spirit. According to Sri Aurobindo, the current status of human evolution is an intermediate stage in the evolution of being, which is on its way to the unfolding of the spirit, and the self-revelation of divinity in all things. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated evolution of being, which can take effect in one life-time, while unassisted natural evolution would take many centuries or many births. Aurobindo suggests a grand program called sapta chatushtaya (seven quadrates) to aid this evolution. Worldview Spirit - Satchitananda Spirit or satchitananda is the Absolute, the source of all that exists. It is the One, having ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a spiritual community (ashram) located in Pondicherry, in the Indian territory of Puducherry. The ashram grew out of a small community of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910. On 24 November 1926, after a major spiritual realization, Sri Aurobindo withdrew from public view in order to continue his spiritual work. At this time he handed over the full responsibility for the inner and outer lives of the ''sadhaks'' (spiritual aspirants) and the ashram to his spiritual collaborator, "The Mother", earlier known as Mirra Alfassa. This date is therefore generally known as the founding-day of the ashram, though, as Sri Aurobindo himself wrote, it had "less been created than grown around him as its centre." History Life in the community that preceded the ashram was informal. Sri Aurobindo spent most of his time in writing and meditation. The three or four young men who had f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geodesic Dome
A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic domes able to withstand very heavy loads for their size. History The first geodesic dome was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of the Carl Zeiss optical company, for a planetarium to house his planetarium projector. An initial, small dome was patented and constructed by the firm of Dykerhoff and Wydmann on the roof of the Zeiss plant in Jena, Germany. A larger dome, called "The Wonder of Jena", opened to the public in July 1926. Twenty years later, Buckminster Fuller coined the term "geodesic" from field experiments with artist Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain College in 1948 and 1949. Although Fuller was not the original inventor, he is credited with the U.S. popularization of the idea for which he rece ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. He was also a journalist, editing newspapers such as ''Vande Mataram''. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British colonial rule, until 1910 was one of its influential leaders, and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution. Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, Cambridge, England. After returning to India he took up various civil service works under the Maharaja of the Princely state of Baroda and became increasingly involved in nationalist politics in the Indian National Congress and the nascent revolutionary movement in Bengal with the Anushilan Samiti. He was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bombings linked to his organization in a public trial where he faced charges of treason for Alipore Conspiracy. However, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishwari
Ishvari (Sanskrit: ईश्वरी, IAST: Īśvarī) is a Hindu epithet of Sanskrit origin, referring to the Goddess, the divine female counterpart of Ishvara. It is also a term that refers to the shakti, or the feminine energy of the Trimurti, which refer to Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvati. Etymology The root of the word is the Sanskrit syllable īś, "to be valid or powerful ; to be master of", joined with vara, "select, choicest, valuable, precious, best, most excellent or eminent among" When referring to divine as female, particularly in Shaktism Shaktism ( sa, शाक्त, , ) is one of several major Hindu denominations, wherein the metaphysical reality is considered metaphorically a woman and Shakti ( Mahadevi) is regarded as the supreme godhead. It includes many goddesses, al ..., the feminine ' is sometimes used.{{cite book , author=Roshen Dalal , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DH0vmD8ghdMC , title=Hinduism: An Alphabetical Guide , publisher=Pen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mahakali
Mahakali () is the Hindu goddess of time and death in the goddess-centric tradition of Shaktism. Similar to Kali, Mahakali is a fierce goddess associated with universal power, time, life, death, and both rebirth and liberation. She is the consort of Bhairava, the god of consciousness, the basis of reality and existence. Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is etymologically the feminised variant of Mahakala, or ''Great Time'' (which is interpreted also as ''Death''), an epithet of the deities Narasimha and Shiva in Hinduism. Meaning Mahakali's origin is contained in various Puranic and Tantric Hindu Scriptures (Shastras). In the texts of Shaktism, she is variously portrayed as the Adi-Shakti, the Primeval Force of the Universe, identical with the Ultimate Reality, or Brahman. She is also known as the (female) Prakriti or World as opposed to the (male) Purusha or Consciousness, or as one of three manifestations of Mahadevi (The Great Goddess) that represent the three Gunas or attributes in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mahalakshmi
Lakshmi (; , sometimes spelled Laxmi, ), also known as Shri (, ), is one of the principal goddesses in Hinduism. She is the goddess of wealth, fortune, power, beauty, fertility and prosperity, and associated with '' Maya'' ("Illusion"). Along with Parvati and Saraswati, she forms the Tridevi of Hindu goddesses. Within the goddess-oriented Shaktism, Lakshmi is venerated as the prosperity aspect of the Mother goddess. Lakshmi is both the consort and the divine energy (''shakti'') of the Hindu god Vishnu, the Supreme Being of Vaishnavism; she is also the Supreme Goddess in the sect and assists Vishnu to create, protect, and transform the universe. She is an especially prominent figure in Sri Vaishnavism, in which devotion to Lakshmi is deemed to be crucial to reach Vishnu. Whenever Vishnu descended on the earth as an avatar, Lakshmi accompanied him as consort, for example, as Sita and Radha or Rukmini as consorts of Vishnu's avatars Rama and Krishna, respectively. The eight pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mahasaraswati
Saraswati ( sa, सरस्वती, ) is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, speech, wisdom, and learning. She is one of the Tridevi, along with the goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati. The earliest known mention of Saraswati as a goddess is in the Rigveda. She has remained significant as a goddess from the Vedic period through the modern period of Hindu traditions. She is generally shown to have four arms, holding a book, a rosary, a water pot, and a musical instrument called the veena. Each of these items have a symbolic meaning in Hinduism. Some Hindus celebrate the festival of Vasant Panchami (the fifth day of spring, and also known as Saraswati Puja and Saraswati Jayanti in many regions of India) in her honour, and mark the day by helping young children learn how to write the letters of the alphabet on that day. The goddess is also revered by believers of the Jain religion of west and central India, as well as some Buddhist sects. Etymology Saraswati, is a Sansk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
