SAIIER Common Programme

Begins with Tat Tvam Asi

The
SAIIER Common Programme

begins

Tat Tvam Asi

Introduction

For decades, young people from India and around the world have come to Auroville to learn, to work, to volunteer and to contribute in many ways to collective initiatives.

While these experiences often provide rich professional and practical learning, there has rarely been a shared space in which participants from different fields can come together to explore the deeper questions from which Auroville itself emerged.

The SAIIER Common Programme – Tat Tvam Asi has been created to offer that common ground.

It complements the practical work already taking place across Auroville by inviting participants into a collective journey of inquiry, reflection, physical education, dialogue, and self-development.

The programme is open to interns, apprentices, volunteers, young professionals, newcomers, and Auroville youth.

Areas of Exploration

The SAIIER Common Programme aspires to brings together several complementary strands.

Why Auroville

Reading and discussion around the founding texts of Auroville, its history, and its raison d’être.

Beginning with:

A Dream
The Charter
To Be a True Aurovilian
Early conversations with the Mother
The aspiration that gave birth to Auroville

Sri Aurobindo
& The Mother

A gradual introduction to the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Current and future explorations include:

Essays on the Gita
The Human Cycle
The Synthesis of Yoga
The Life Divine
The Science of Living

These texts are approached through conversation rather than academic study, allowing participants to relate them to daily life and work.

Reflection & Dialogue

Weekly conversations provide space to explore together questions arising from work, community life, relationships, responsibility, individuality, progress, and conscious living.

The emphasis is not on arriving at fixed conclusions but on learning to think, observe, listen, and inquire together.

Physical Education

In collaboration with the Auroville Physical Education Body (AVPEB), participants are encouraged to establish or deepen a regular physical education practice during their stay in Auroville.

The body is not treated as secondary to education but as an essential dimension of an integral development.

Peer Learning

One of the programme’s greatest strengths is the diversity of its participants.

Young people from different countries, professions, schools, farms, research initiatives, enterprises, healing spaces, and community projects meet each week to learn from one another.

“To be young is to live in the future.

To be young is to be always ready

to give up what we are

in order to become what we must be.

To be young is never to accept

the irreparable.”

— The Mother