During the long, rainy Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, the Ananda Marga Ecological Village in Shatien Village, Yuching Township, is crowded with people. About 200 people, including margii ("followers of the path") from all over Taiwan, as well as overseas Dada and Didi (men and women who have taken vows to practice Ananda Marga) have come together for a global conference on Progressive Utilization Theory.

Amid scattered tents on a five-hectare stretch of land covered with woods, flowers, and grass, you cannot help but be dazzled by the red-orange robes and headwraps of the Dada and Didi as they stroll among the greenery. They all have kind, compassionate expressions in their eyes, and seem tolerant and generous in the way they hold themselves. When they meet visiting strangers, they hold their hands together in front of their chest and say "Namaskar," meaning, "I humbly offer my respects to your internal divinity."

In the three days of activities, besides courses and workshops on Progressive Utility Theory and the final nine-hour all-night spiritual dance, there are also two collective meditation sessions per day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

Through meditation all the random and disturbing thoughts in one's mind can be transformed into colorful flowers to be given to the spiritual teacher, leaving one's soul spiritually cleansed.

Self-realization

"The purpose of meditation is to comprehend who you really are," says veteran margii Chung Yu-jung. The philosophy of yoga holds that there are two identities in each person: the "me" of the mind and emotions, and the spiritual "me." The former is linked to the finite biological structure, while the latter exists in the central core and is a pure, infinite consciousness. Meditation can help one discover the boundlessness of this inner consciousness.

For the evening meditation session, participants enter the main hall. Amid low chanting, they raise their arms and sway rhythmically in a "spiritual dance." Eyes closed, they intone words meaning "all things possess Supreme Consciousness." For half an hour the soft chanting and pure, heartfelt feelings of the dancers blend together, filling the hall. Then follows half an hour of meditation; the hall filled with over 200 persons remains completely quiet.

Chung Yu-jung says the purpose of collective meditation is to use group strength to help each individual focus on his or her personal meditation. It can also help one comprehend the joy of immersing the self within the community and the Supreme Consciousness. The all-night spiritual dancing, meanwhile, allows one to advance more deeply into the spiritual flow of the Supreme Consciousness, forget oneself, and eliminate anxieties and confusion. The longer one dances, the more one will feel how each step taken, each syllable chanted, and each thought in the mind can resonate with the Supreme Consciousness.

Ananda Marga traces its roots to the ancient Indian spiritual practice of yoga. It includes the belief that all things in the universe are part of a greater whole, and that through spiritual cultivation and discipline one can find spiritual fulfillment and unite with the Supreme Consciousness, thus finding release and supreme joy. Margii means those who have been schooled in meditation and follow the belief system.

Through meditation all the random and disturbing thoughts in one's mind can be transformed into colorful flowers to be given to the spiritual teacher, leaving one's soul spiritually cleansed.

Service to humanity

Amanda Marga, founded in 1955, is one of the many New Age religious sects to appear since the end of World War II. But unlike Osho, one of the biggest of such groups, it has a strict moral code, and comes with a deeply ingrained sense of mission to improve the world. Besides "self-realization," then, its other guiding purpose is "service to society."

The founder, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti (Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, 1921-1990), was not only a spiritual teacher, but also a social reformer. He argued that modern people are weighed down and stressed out spiritually. Global hunger, nuclear weapons, unemployment, and environmental degradation have all been caused by a narrowing of human consciousness to regionalism, nationalism, or "humanism" that makes humans the center of, and master of, everything. These are the factors leading to the disintegration of the universe. Therefore, people must open their hearts and spread love to plants, animals, all living things on earth, and even to the entire universe. Only then will we be on the right path. This he called "Neo-Humanism."

Anandamurti, called Baba ("Father") by his followers, also taught that the resources of the universe and human potential should be maximized and reasonably distributed. He proposed a number of concepts, such as trans-materialist economic development, a dispersed economy, and cooperative production, under the overall rubric of "Progressive Utilization Theory" (or "PROUT"). He also began to establish "model communities" as the basic units for realizing his ideals, hoping they would in turn influence surrounding areas and even society as a whole.

Over the past 30 years, model communities have successfully taken root in India, Brazil, Venezuela, and other developing countries. Examples include the "City of Joy" in Bihar State, India, and the "Children's Ecological Village" in Sao Paulo, Brazil. These have overcome material exploitation and enhanced the dignity and confidence of local people both psychologically and spiritually. The community in Venezuela has proven to be so outstanding that in recent years it has even received government subsidies, and has grown rapidly.

Through meditation all the random and disturbing thoughts in one's mind can be transformed into colorful flowers to be given to the spiritual teacher, leaving one's soul spiritually cleansed.

Past success

In 1992 an Indian Dada and many Taiwanese margii set up the model community in Yuching to demonstrate PROUT in embryonic form. For example, in terms of "material resources," they raised fruit and vegetables without using any pesticides or chemical fertilizers. They used crop rotation to keep the land fertile, and natural rock to stabilize river banks, so as to protect and efficiently use the soil and water resources.

In terms of "psychological development," they built up friendly relations with neighboring communities by opening the "New Sun" kindergarten. In fresh, open surroundings, teachers taught students to love others and the environment. On summer nights they would go exploring in the fields and woods and observe insects; when the lotus seeds ripened adults and children would pick them together; and they followed the various crops' changes through the seasons. "Children are very intuitive about people and nature," says Wang Shu-mei, who lived in the community for seven years.

Unlike many spiritual communities, Ananda Marga's model communities are not places for practitioners to escape from the world. Anywhere well-intentioned margii live, they can set good examples in such things as farming and education. Unfortunately, although the experiment at Yuching can be considered highly significant for Taiwan, where the environment has been badly scarred, things did not go well. "We learned many lessons the hard way," says Chiu Yie-ru, a lecturer at Jing Wen University of Science and Technology, who teaches PROUT. They were unable to put into practice many of their early ideals-like using biogas to generate electricity-because the community was too small. Also, the kindergarten was forced to close after competitors reported it to the authorities for operating on land not zoned for the purpose. The community thus lost its main source of revenue and it became impossible to carry on. Followers drifted away, and the community fell into disrepair.

Two years ago Chung Yu-jung and her husband Shen Feng-tsai moved back to Yuching and set the community off in a new direction. The fasting and meditation camps, which have gotten good reviews in recent years, will carry on. Adjustments have also been made to the environmental ideals that could not be realized the first time around, such as using the natural shape and materials of the land to create a water catchment and filtering system, the ultimate goal being not to use any piped-in water. And houses will be renovated to improve air circulation and let in sunshine.

"But this is only a small part, and that's just in the material domain," says Shen. The model community aims for progress on the three levels of the material, psychological, and spiritual. How will they move in the future toward self-sufficiency and from there to influence society as a whole? They are still figuring things out as they go along, and they need even more local people who share their ideals to join in.

"Baba's ideas transcend our era," says veteran margii Chiu Yi-chia, an assistant professor at National Chung Hsing University. In economic terms, PROUT's consideration of the distribution of benefits from a humanitarian perspective, plus its unique concepts about education and the environment, are admired and respected by everyone involved in the project. So no one expects to give up on the objective of making their model community a reality.

Participants at the Progressive Utilization Theory conference stayed in tents, but the steady drizzle over the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday did not dampen the enthusiasm for rebuilding a "model community" in Taiwan.