Oh, how much we wish there was a panacea, a cure-it-all kind of solution for all the challenges being faced in the present times.. And lo! Here it is….
Guruji Rishi Prabhakar has long been contemplating over the affairs of the world & the way out of the ills plaguing mankind. As a solution, he strongly advocated the need for families to live happily together in a spiritual commune, eating out of the same kitchen & living a fairly comfortable life with shared resources.
A commune by definition is an entity where the lifestyles of all members have very low disparity & there is a strong culture of sharing resources. The members follow a certain code of conduct & operate with minimal hierarchy & consensus-based decision-making.
Community living as a way of life has existed in many pockets of the world. A variety of communes having social, philanthropic or religious purposes have existed for many years. Of late, certain new communities called the ‘Gated communities’ are springing all across the world. Such gated communes are nearly isolated colonies of people living in prison-tight security. This new brand of communes are simply the reflections of our present-day exclusivist & fear-centric society. They are exactly opposite of the kind of communes we envision to create in this world.
Amongst the saints of India, Sri Aurobindo was the pioneer in envisioning a commune way of life – Auroville at Pondicherry. Gandhiji himself was a strong votary of community living & he lived with 150 other families at his Ashram in Sevagram, Wardha. Osho too had created a 60,000 acre commune with schools & hospitals in Oregon, USA though it never fully saw the light of the dawn. The Baba Amte foundation also runs a string of philanthropic communes with the name ‘Anandwan’ only for the underprivileged & diseased classes of the society.
However, the communes being envisaged by my master having Gurukulams & Industries as the fulcrums were unique experiments in themselves. Let us have a look at few benefits of living this way:
We human beings, being of the gregarious, company-seeking type, are at our happiest when we live together in groups. Everyday is a festival in the commune.
The elderlies of the present-day nuclear family setup have the company of others of their age group and that of so many children. They would also be most fulfilled in contributing to the education of children.
The child who lives in a matchbox-style apartment suddenly has open fields and vast playgrounds at his disposal, savoring the company of many, many friends to play with.
The wife of the family is freed up of so many onerous tasks & can creatively occupy herself in pursuing her hobbies, learning, teaching or being a professional.
The man of the family is much better off emotionally with happy parents, a happy spouse & happy children.
Owing to sharing resources, individual disposable incomes go tremendously up even though living standards are far better than before.
With sustainable environment-friendly technologies at work, such communities affect global cooling in the world rather than global warming thus doing a great service to all humanity.
The members of the community get to eat home-grown natural organic foods, get to live amidst nature and breathe fresh unpolluted air leading to a very long & healthy life.
The Sadhana of every meditator would get tremendously enhanced in such calm surroundings, a multitude of spiritual programmes and group dynamics at work.
Owing to group energy, the villages around the commune can be highly uplifted and made self-sufficient along the lines of Ralegaon Siddhi & similar villages.
Children get to be educated in Gurukulams which are affiliated with the industries of the commune which give hands-on training and jobs to them.
Owing to immense networking potential through each other, the businessmen, professionals & industries within the commune would do no less than thrive all the time.
All in all, a commune led by a wise guide or Guru, can be the very enabler of bringing Heaven down on Earth.
