PRISMA is happy to begin this note by sharing with you that we were featured in the recently-published June-July issue of Auroville Today. In the article, which you can read here, you can read about how we have fared through the lockdown, and how we are giving shape to a new publishing platform for Auroville.

Last month PRISMA released Janet’s book, Memories of Auroville, in the web-book format. We are happy to report that we have received very positive feedback. You can also read a review by Alan in the same June-July issue of Auroville Today. Read the review here.

The web-book concept has evoked interest in many and PRISMA is currently working on over ten web-book projects with more under active conceptualisation. PRISMA will release one or two web-books at a time over the course of the next few months.

In this month we are excited to launch our second web-book, A Dream – Aims and Ideals of Auroville. This is a new compilation put together by Franz Fassbender, who is also the creator of PRISMA. Through an anthology of messages, expressions and responses of The Mother, this book puts forth Her conception of the dream which is Auroville.

Franz writes…

Today, information about Auroville is abundant. Many people try to make meaning out of Auroville – about its conception, to what direction should we grow towards, and, what are we doing here?

But what was Mother’s original Dream and what was her Vision for Auroville back then? We now have more materials on hand to go back in time and retrace her steps. This book is a new compilation of texts and quotes that Mother had left for us. It is our choice to contemplate on this, to reflect what we have made out of Auroville, and for what are we here today.

Don’t forget we also have to Dream this New World into Being. Don’t forget who we are and where we come from and that we are here to do something together.

A paper version of this book is ready for print. But because of the second lockdown, printing has been delayed. We feel that this book is important for us in this time and space, and so we would like to make the text easily available. That is the reason we are first offering the book on a “web book” format, available on a gift economy basis. As soon as it is feasible, we will continue production of the paper version for readers keen to hold a copy in their hands.

~ Franz

Read the web-book here – https://dream.books.prisma.haus/en/

Books reborn…

As an active publisher, PRISMA has been creating books for many years now, and we consider it a rare privilege to be able to tell the story of Auroville. The lockdown has forced us to reinvent ourselves, and we have chosen to continue our storytelling tradition at PRISMA by creatively adopting modern and open technologies that empower us to convey the story of Auroville to the world collective.

In the last newsletter we shared with you our surprise at the number of visitors to our web projects. At the time of writing this, PRISMA web projects have been visited over 16,000 times by more than 1,000 individuals from over 30 countries. Our surprise turned into curiosity. As we dig deeper it seems that an unforeseen and indirect consequence of publishing books and stories from Auroville openly through the web-book format has allowed random encounters: people who may not be looking for a particular book may stumble across a chapter or a page from our web-book. For us this is tremendously meaningful. These human stories, and these words of the masters can, perhaps, serve as beacons of a luminous future and become signposts for the next generation of Auroville pioneers.

We at PRISMA will continue to create and offer these books on a gift-economy and pay-what-feels-right basis, and we’re immensely grateful to the readers who have contributed. In the latest update to the web-book platform we have added a feature wherein you can contribute from the web-book itself.

This new form of publishing is sustained by a community of aware and responsive readers rather than by commercial intents. If readers voluntarily pay authors and publishers, we can create a rich future for digital books. If this doesn’t happen—if we accept and settle for the extremely restricted and intensely commercial outlook advanced by contemporary digital publishing monopolies like Apple and Amazon—we will have no one to hold responsible but ourselves for the world we find ourselves in. Through many such small decisions and acts, we, as individuals, have the power to give shape to the world we dream of.

We have made our choices, dear readers, and the rest is up-to you.

In fraternity,
The new Prisma Design team