Savitra (Alan Lithman): Panelist

Cultured in the activist milieu of the 1960s, Savitra hitchhiked from London to India to meet the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He received his name from her and eventually shifted from the Ashram to Auroville where he spent the next 21 years (1969-1990) apprenticing "applied spirituality," community-building, and environmental restoration in the interface of first-world/third-world realities.

Actively involved with Auroville's pioneering experiments in self-organization, he helped jump-start the community's internal communication systems as well as liaison with America, getting the first grants to establish the afforestation program, developing exchange programs such as "Peacetrees," planting the seeds for future relations with Russia and other former Soviet bloc States. He relocated in 1990 to America where he currently lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Since the early 1970s, his work and writings have bridged him into a broad network of collaborative relations including Margaret Mead, Michael Murphy, David Brower, Amory Lovins, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston and Matthew Fox; as well as organizationally with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), where he is an extended research associate under their donor-advised program.

He has been a guest on Michael Toms' New Dimensions Radio as well as a presenter at numerous conferences, universities, and institutes including Esalen, Matthew Fox's University of Creation Spiritualiy, the IONS 30th Anniversary Conference, and What is Enlightenment journal's community retreat center.

In 1999, his first American book, The Savitri Legend, was published by Sigo Press. His latest book, An Evolutionary Agenda for the Third Millennium, was published by White Cloud Press with support from IONS.

His recent trip to Auroville has reignited his earlier liaison role to build collaborative birdges and exchange between Auroville and the states. He may be reached via savitra@earthlink.net.