BELOVED MASTER,

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE COMMUNE AS IT IS NOW, REGARDING THERAPY AND MEDITATION AS OFFERED IN THE UNIVERSITY; AND VICE VERSA? AND WHAT IS YOUR VISION OF BOTH THEIR GROWTH PROCESSES?

The function of the commune is to create an atmosphere of encouragement 
- that you are not alone. The path that you have to travel, you have to travel alone; but if you know that so many people are traveling alone on the path, it gives tremendous encouragement. There is no fear: "If these people can manage, I can manage also."
The commune is not a religion, following collectively on a super-highway. The commune belongs to individuals who have joined hands with each other because they are going on an inner journey where they will be alone. But with so many people going on that inner journey alone the fear of being alone is dropped.

You can share your experiences with each other; perhaps sharing your experiences with each other will help immensely. That's why therapies exist where people can open their heart and share their experiences.
But the commune experience is a therapeutic experience - day in, day out.

The Gateless Gate

My vision of a commune is of absolutely individual meditators living together, helping each other: "Don't be afraid, it is tremendously exciting to go in. Although you are going alone, you are not the only one who is going alone. One million sannyasins are going alone."

Sharing in the garden

It is a very strange phenomenon: living together, yet exploring the truth in absolute aloneness. And whatever you find, you can share. It will be respected, it will be accepted. And everybody is to have different kinds of experiences on the way, until the person reaches to the ultimate omega point. That omega point is exactly the same for everyone. But on the way there are so many beauties, so much splendor.
You just need a little courage, and the commune provides you the courage. And I am here to encourage you to take the jump. You have nothing to lose, and you have the whole universe to gain.
from: From Bondage to Freedom

In my vision, marriages in the commune should be dissolved. People can live together their whole life if they want, but that is not a legal necessity. People should be moving, having as many experiences of love as possible. They should not be possessive. Possessiveness destroys love. And they should not be possessed, because that again destroys your love.
All human beings are worthy of being loved. There is no need to be tethered to one person for your whole life. That is one of the reasons why all the people around the world look so bored. Why can't they laugh like you? Why can't they dance like you? They are chained with invisible chains: marriage, family, husband, wife, children. They are burdened with all kinds of duties, responsibilities, sacrifices. And you want them to smile and laugh and dance and rejoice? You are asking the impossible.
Make people's love free, make people non-possessive. But this can happen only if in your meditation you discover your being. It is nothing to practice. I am not saying to you, "Tonight you go to some other woman just as a practice." You will not get anything, and you may lose your wife. And in the morning you will look silly. It is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering your being.

With the discovery of being follows the quality of impersonal lovingness. Then you simply love.
And it goes on spreading. First, it is human beings, then soon animals, birds, trees, mountains, stars.
A day comes when this whole existence is your beloved.
That is our potential. And anybody who is not achieving it is wasting his life.
Yes, you will have to lose a few things, but they are worthless. You will be gaining so much that you will never think again of what you have lost.
A pure impersonal lovingness which can penetrate into anybody's being - that is the outcome of meditativeness, of silence, of diving deep within your own being.
I am simply trying to persuade you. Don't be afraid of losing what you have.
From: From Death to Deathlessness


Life is so short. It is not to be wasted in unnecessary foolishness.
Live and love - and love totally and intensely but never against freedom. Freedom should remain the ultimate value.
The family has destroyed that freedom.
In my vision, the future is not for families. The future is for communes, and the commune is the refined, bigger family; so big that whatever the small family was creating - all kinds of perversions - is no longer created. And children should be taken care of by the commune, by the experts. In the first place, just because you have a wife, it does not mean that you have the right to become a father or the right to become a mother.
The commune should have a training. Anybody who wants to become a father or mother must go through the training. You can remain married, you can remain together - that is between you two - but you don't disturb a third life.

You have no right to produce a child if you don't have the right training to bring him up, to help him to be a blissful human being. The psychologists will discover, the doctors will think about it, the gynecologists will have to ponder over it, and unless you get clearance from these people, you are not to produce a child.
Man can produce children without any difficulty. That does not mean that you become a father and a mother. Those are skills, arts. To help a living being grow needs some expertise.
And the society, the commune, will decide how many children it needs - so that children can be nourished well, educated well; so that overpopulation does not disturb things; so nobody is unemployed, nobody is uneducated, nobody is poor.
From: The Transmission of the Lamp

 

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