Manakula Vinayagar Temple

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Come expecting a working community rather than a retreat. Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa, the Mother, founded it in 1926, and it grew into the institutional centre of a spiritual movement built on Integral Yoga. Its roughly 1,200 members lead an active life of work, study and exercise rather than withdrawing into contemplation, and its school, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, has more than 400 students. The still point is the samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, which the ashram houses. Set in a city of nearly a million people, this is not a quiet place, and arriving in search of silence is to misread it.