NEW AGE COMMUNITIES

[Music] heavy delays Crossing into Manhattan now coming over from Queens also the Third Avenue Bridge very heavy dumping [Music] [Music] [Music] throughout history people have dreamed of Utopia a society where life is free from suffering poverty war and aggression Utopia the good place the place of inner and outer peace America was founded in that Spirit the spirit of a new beginning a new age the promised land the pilgrims came here to establish a spiritually oriented Community free from political interference and the dictates of the king a century and a half later the Constitutional Convention met to form a more perfect union in the 18th and 19th centuries hundreds of utopian communities sprang up all over America Onida the Shakers New Harmony Brook Farm a Mana some formed for economic reasons others for political or religious reasons today there's a new surge of interest in communal living with a spiritual content both here and abroad New Age communities dedicated to demonstrating that love and cooperation are practical and possible they hope that by setting an example they can affect changes on a global level what are their chances for survival from the point of Light Within the mind of God let light stream forth into the minds of men let light descend on Earth [Music] from the center which we call the race of Men Let the of love and light out and may it seal the door where evil dwells let light and love and power restore the plan on [Music] Earth let light and love and Power we saw [Music] the Twin Oaks located near Richmond Virginia has been in existence since 1967 the founders of Twin Oaks felt Society was based largely on aggression competition exploitation and inequality they felt there could be a better way of living a way in keeping with the true meaning of community Fellowship sharing Brotherhood the early days of Twin Oaks are recalled by cat cancade in 1967 when we first came here we were eight people now there are 7even ofs plus five children when we first came here we had one little Farmhouse and a few scattered barns now we have seven major buildings we didn't know how we were going to make a living we just figured we'd work it out somehow and we were right we've worked it out well we've produced most of our food on this Farm we have a print shop a back hole a building industry but the bulk of our money comes from the manufacturer and sale of these hammocks this cottage industry is part of twin Oak's attempt to achieve economic self-sufficiency a goal that most new age communities aim for Twin Oaks is becoming well known for their hammocks which are widely distributed and even copied of course none of this came out of a vacuum we started with an idea that idea came from a novel by BF Skinner and the name of the novel was Walden 2 the dominant theme of that novel has become the dominant theme of our community and that is how to live where equality is the major Norm one of the major ways that we work out the idea of equality is equality and the opportunity to do any kind of work the way we work is we divide all the work that the community has to do into areas such as Farm kitchen hammock making print shop etc etc and each of these areas then has a manager someone in charge that manager doesn't give orders doesn't tell people what to do but instead um uh organizes the work and decides what needs to be done every week each manager turns in what we call a requisition for the number of hours that are needed in that area each week besides each individual looks at all the work there is available and says I would like to do this and this and this and this part of it now in charge of the distribution of work is a person called the labor manager the labor manager takes all this information the requisitions from the managers and the requisitions from the individuals and puts them together taking the better part of two days to do a clerical job which ends up with each member getting a schedule in which as much as possible the things that that person prefers are assigned the whole thing works out so that everyone feels that there's an equal opportunity to do any kind of work there is and there is plenty of work running a community new age or otherwise takes a lot of planning and hard labor to carry out daily routines all the way from growing food to Growing children other communities are working on the assumption that it is necessary to have one dominant forceful idea perhaps even a religion in which everybody in the community believes and to which everyone devotes all of the available energy we are testing the possibility that this isn't necessary what we have formed here is a fundamentally secular society in which people have all a an amazing reign of theoretical practical political and religious beliefs and our idea is that these people can all work together without giving up things that are ideologically or otherwise precious to [Music] them coia near Baltimore Maryland is both a growth Center and a new age community Dortha Bloom and Michael Lawrence tell why I feel that uh a kind of new holistic religious education is the commodity of coinonia that this is one of the Urgent needs of our time is uh both religiously oriented Community UND doctrinaire where others can come and go uh where they can study where they can go into Retreat work with others that's a very important part of it working with others whether it's in the kitchen in the garden breaking leaves uh a full life together of sharing many things whether one is here for a uh day or a week or a month or a year or 5 years so there a lot of people here that have different kind of jobs different kind of uh levels of input into the community and so on it's not uh straight across the board uh everyone doing exactly the same let's say amount of work in different areas and so on [Music] we have a a morning daycare program where the kids are watched in the morning that frees the parents up to work in the office or do the different jobs on the grounds and so on for the morning the people here have a commitment to uh uh the kind of commitment that you probably would get in a in maybe in a primitive tribe or in other kind of small close-nit kind of family groups and always turned on by the community aspect of the place and the most exciting thing to me is the is the people that come around there always interesting people coming through there was a stimulating environment to live in uh meeting different people and different things going on uh there's always somebody that's turning on to something new and so there's always uh always people feeding in new ideas and and the people that come through here and have the perspective of of a kind of a warm sharing Community are able to take that with them and help you know spread what that what that means when they go on the outside some of these are pains and but everyone that lives here shares equally across the board the normal kind of community upkeep there's a work day one afternoon a week uh there's people are involved in cleaning up after the meals and preparing the food on weekends and these different kind of jobs that are the essential running to the community uh everyone whether they're a renter whether they're staff member student one of the interesting things is that we here have the great mass of the population under 30 four or five people between 30 and 40 I think nobody in the 40s and then a half dozen or eight people I guess over 50 so that it would seem as if people could uh afford to to be in this kind of life most easily when they are younger or older Coria has a director David po but he's not a central authority figure the power structure at coia is democratic a committee system involving all community members helps to set goals and make decisions and Community consensus is always necessary before action is taken at coia staff members are paid a few dollars a week but their basic needs are provided free by the community their modest salaries allow staffers to buy small items acquiring personal wealth however is not part of the new age lifestyle at coia or [Music] elsewhere all Lo to short steel G down to burn i' got the eight track FL then the C going got the Tennessee scrap it will not be a long time until I see that Alabama [Applause] land you got me at your BR you got the [Music] [Applause] [Music] Tennessee one of the largest New Age communities is called simply the farm located on 1700 Acres in Summertown Tennessee the farm began when Steven gasin and his counterculture followers left San Francisco in 1969 on a nationwide search for a new home in the country they traveled in a caravan of buses and trailers for nearly a year then they decided that Summertown was the place to return to the land so they took their pooled money and put down Roots Steven gasin explains we've been living on this Farm in Tennessee it was kind of a noble experiment when we went there we didn't really have someplace else to go actually we already knew we' used up San Francisco it just wasn't cool to live in a big city anymore and we knew we had to get out and we knew we wanted to live together and we just got into being Farmers out of the idea that was a clean way to do it it just seems more direct to put your work into the Earth and get your food back out of it like many other new AG farming communities the farm has also developed various cottage industries to broaden its economic base it has a vigorous publishing company and has produced several best-selling books including a childbirth handbook called spiritual midy the farm maintains a strict vegetarian diet with no animal food a kind of milk and cheese are made from soybeans their major crop the farm people feel this is the healthiest way to eat and kind of is to animals vegetable farming they point out provides 10 times more protein per acre in beans and Grains when consumed directly rather than fed to animals for raising meat vegetarianism for them is based on medical economic and moral [Music] reasons some people wonder how come we can keep such a big old complicated thing as this at this level of a thousand people here on 1700 Acres together and I try to tell them that there's three main things that do it for us one of them is that we're spirit spiritual for Real Every Day the other one is that we're Collective for real all you got and the other one is we ain't afraid to make a fuss if things aren't working out right part of the thing of being the kind of householder yogis we are where we're trying to run a a whole seamless life is that the question of our children becomes very heavy anyone who's ever tried to clear away the wreckage and mess inside their own mind really realizes how much of our early life creates attitudes and ways of being that affect us for all the rest of our life we feel if you can give kids a good clean set of attitudes and a good clean set of perceptual and conceptual tools to handle the universe with that they won't have such a hard time cleaning up their mind when they get older and they can maybe grow from the innocence of childhood into kind of an honest adulthood too A lot of the kids we have here are from other places I out in Los Angeles I was called the world's first space Puritan because they thought it was so funny that we should be into Mar marriage and family the way we are but one of the reasons we're into marriage and family is because we're picking up the leftover karma from a generation of the 85 kids in our school 25% have no parents on the farm 50% have one parent on the farm and only 25% have both parents on the farm we think those figures are so significant that we allow them to be a determiner in our ideas of marriage and family because we felt the children were the ones who really had to be covered and taken care of and that's what the farm is is is a bunch of people who have that agreement that what we do can make a difference and it's within our power to do it and to be that way we have to come from a philosophy that we're really all one we are all one e pluris Unum at the local level Farm children learn that in practical ways such as through apprenticeship these children are being taught theosophy and responsibility by training ponies and horses the animals in turn will used by the children in their tasks of delivering food medicine and mail to the sick and the elderly that way the children come in touch with all aspects of the community in a manner that serves the community we like to say if you took all the religions in the world and stacked them up like IBM Punch Cards and look down through them that some of the holes had go clear through the whole stack and some of them just be local it wouldn't go through and we're trying to discover which one of those holes go clear through like Jesus and [Music] Buddha this is the house ja and I built right after we were married we met here at a Nanda Cooperative Village in 1969 and in 1973 we were married by our spiritual leader Swami gananda Swami Kanda is a disciple of paramahansa Yogananda our Guru at Ananda you're either a a householder or a renunciate there are no communal living situations we all have our own homes and the community approves building sites and house plans I prepare dinner while GA gives Shanti a bath I think it's a little hot still okay I got some water here there you go there it better how's that is that just right yes what we have propane gas for cooking and lighting and uh most houses are heated with wood well some have hot water heaters and bathtubs but indoor plumbing is still a luxury so most people use the community shower houses Lord bless this food make it holy let no impurity of greet defile it the food comes from these to maintain th tempo [Music] oh okay now we can would you like some bread okay most of us are vegetarian we have so many marvelous vegetables that we grow ourselves bad B look at Cornelius Shi just loves to have me read to her she's not the only one who goes to bed early I mean we do too we go to bed early because we get up early it's simple country living but we just love it in the morning I take Shanti to a daycare center it's a beautiful walk each day oh well about 15 minutes Shati goes to the community daycare center but the older kids go to the elementary school of the high school they're both accredited they're Also spiritually or oriented hi yeah you having fun I meet my neighbors dropping their kids off on the way to work just like me householders at aanda practice spiritual marriage that means moderation not celibacy in sexual relations we believe that love not sex brings fulfillment and marriage is an opportunity to perfect ourselves through love aand Cooperative Village in Nevada City California was founded in 1967 by Swami Kanda Kanda says a search for inner Enlightenment need not conflict with a concern for social upliftment it is the only valid key to upliftment of any kind and so as in other spiritual communities the necessary routines of daily living are integrated with individual needs for inner development paperwork is no longer a chore and driving a pickup truck to work is fun in other words the work of everyday life becomes sacred aanda also supports Itself by making incense Health Food candy bars jewelry Pottery clothing and by operating a printing shop Master's Market the outlet for produce raised on an Anda Farm isn't just for Community residents people from all over the area come to buy in expensive organic food oh is that milk [Applause] yeah the macra industry is another major source of our community income but our cottage industries aren't the only sour in order to become a member of aanda a person must first be accepted after a 3mon trial period of living here then he must pay a membership fee $11,000 for single persons and $1,500 for married couples one of the nicest things about Ananda is that we can do so much out of doors watching the seasons come and go my [Music] heart Swami Kanda teaches us that in the company of other truth Seekers it's easier to to meditate and to think of God here at Ananda we try to live in tune with nature we try to live uh with the feeling that it is nature that gives us our strength instead of living in competition with nature as is so common in this day and age everything that people do in America today seems to be towards the unnatural towards even the food is unnatural uh we we pollute our food with chemicals and preservatives and so on we live healthfully we eat healthfully and we feel that we are in a sense just sort of expressions of universal currents of energy and love and consciousness [Music] [Music] [Music] for at midday wherever people are on an and's 200 acres and whatever people are doing when the meditation gong sounds outside the temple all activity stops then the community silently joins together in meditation to renew their sense of kinship with each other with nature and with God and here at andand we're trying to claim the value of the individual even to the extent that we uh encourage eccentricity in the sense that we encourage people to be themselves we don't encourage people to just live and think exactly like everyone else we want people to find their own values but there are broader implications too in the sense of uh not just uh personally seeking God but also trying to fulfill the uh functions of a citizen of a broad Society I think that in this society today it's very important for people to decentralize instead of everything going all power is becoming centralized in the federal government to claim the worth the value and the power of the individual uh is nowadays perhaps more than in most ages necessary it's necessary to affirm this this human value we' come statistics in this day and age like here in this community we find that we mix with others who are of like mind this is really in ashram as they'd call it in India an a Hermitage a place where we seek God it's a wonderful opportunity for children to grow up in this kind of a setting and it's a wonderful opportunity for us to find that we're not constantly bucking a negative tide I think love is the most important part of all that we try to be expressions of the Divine love in our lives in our work in our meditations [Music] [Music] [Music] in the northeast corner of Scotland on the shores of the North Sea there is a community called Thorn it actually began in a trailer park and has grown to include what was formerly a luxury hotel the Clooney Hill all because these two Peter and eileene caddy listened to the guidance eileene received during meditation and Peter acted upon the guidance with complete faith that Spirit would manifest all that was needed for their well-being but at finon we''ve never had the money for anything we started on what was no more than a a sandune of rubbish dump no job no money and now we've grown into a flourishing community of over 200 with uh 21 different departments and everything has been manifested now that means that we have gone aead in faith knowing that whatever we've needed to manifest was right was a need and not a want there's the rub deciding which is a need and which is a want knowing that it was part of the divine plan and that our needs would be met perfectly our financial needs with money people and with materials fin horn is a community composed of people of all AG ages from a few days to 87 they've come from many different spiritual paths from different countries about 60 from the United States 11 from Canada all over the world and they they're drawn drawn like a magnet by the vibrations which are there sometimes young people will leave the cities leave the United States pack on their back looking really for they know not what but they know that there must be uh an answer to life a better way of of living to find somewhere where they can give where they can serve where they can live in an atmosphere of Love well that's a spirit of thorn Spirit of thn I suppose finor is known mostly for its beautiful gardens and the cooperation with the nature forces uh but we grow people as well as plants so finor is like a greenhouse where people grow very rapidly and that means change and change is always painful but the growth takes place in an atmosphere of love we see ourselves as a university of light where true education takes place where what is within is drawn out in the atmosphere of of life love of understanding because nearly everybody is going through some change some process of growth each other with everything we do and I'm so thankful God has given me this time to spend with you we're harvesting each other with everything we say like early morning gold and we're growing stronger every day we're Harvest each other with everything we do and I'm so thankful God has given me this time to spend with you because people learn by doing by working in the some of the 21 different departments in construction maintenance in the kitchen performing arts and by working in a group the group acts as a mirror to a person so that they can see where where they need to uh uh to change and develop and work from not from a personality level from their own will or their own desires because each one is really uh working for the good of the whole and and by working for the good of the whole so the individual grows develops and Chang you you know we're going to build a new world and you know we're going to be it through in hand we will grow the sun golden moments we will share we are meant to be together together everywhere all the joy all the tears are don't you see that he's teaching us to Care [Music] la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la [Music] Joy going out to the world Joy to the [Music] World to start a community I believe you need strong leadership somebody that has a vision is prepared to take responsibility and with responsibility of course comes Authority but then when the community or the groups become established then is the time to share responsibility to delegate responsibility and move into a group Consciousness the new age is an age of groups of learning to work together as a synergetic group each person an individual making an individual contribution to the whole all over the world this new Consciousness is emerging in groups in communities and finor the community at finor is a place where this Consciousness is demonstrated where people can live a life of love and service looking upon the planet as as wholeness uh a blend of religion science and art blending the various aspects of life into a [Music] wholeness The Elixir that blends the many aspect together is love eileene caddy has been told this over and over again by the inner voice which she hears as clearly as you and I hear the song of a bird she listens and writes it down and those words filling volumes have been a guiding inspiration since the beginning of finor I'd like to share with you a message that I received from the still Small Voice Within the primary lesson to learn in life is to love love is so strong it is unbreakable and yet intangible is there love in your hearts love for each other it starts in you and works out and out Let Your Love be specific do not talk about loving mankind when you cannot even love your neighbors love starts with Small Beginnings and grows and grows when you truly love one another you have faith and trust in each other keep that love flowing and let nothing stand in its way let my Divine love flow through everything and know that peace which passes all understanding [Music] I [Music]