Allahu Akbar! By magic I remembered the name of Ascona, a town in the Canton Ticino of Switzerland, in connection with a striking beautiful documentary I watched years ago on tv. It was showing old black and white photos of people, mostly intellectuals from different countries, who lived or had retreats, in a sort of "ashram", a commune where they practised naturism and vegetarianism at the beginning of the 20th century. I was talking about the New Age movement with a friend last night and remembered the film, but no name, no clue was coming to mind!
I thought adding this info would be valuable and intriguing, because the New Age, unlike what skeptical people may think nowadays, is not a recent fashion that "will pass", or something just commercial, although we can see that distortion or abuse of it. It is something with deep roots in paganism, and with long tentacles. I think that many of us would have befriended those eccentric people who gathered on the Mount Verità 100 years ago, fixed a nice veg meal together and basked in the sun naked!
So, here's a link, maybe not the best or most comprehensive, but to start with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verit%C3%A0
when you google you can find out more, and see some pictures too.
The one below, defines Ascona as "the cradle of European Counterculture".
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/index.html?cid=15024
http://www.csf.ethz.ch/about/history
It makes sense, spiritually speaking, that the rigid, Calvinistic, perfectly organized , wealthy, flawless Swiss nation, became the womb for an anarchist creature! Yin and Yang, the white seed of reaction growing in the black background of a stern,strict, conservative colorless society!!
Years ago, I was lucky enough to find an antique book, titled "vers l'Australie", written by a french autor, Doctor JC Demarquette, who was the leader in the 20ties of a movement promoting and practising vegetarianism and health consciousness. The book is a journal, written during a cruise from Europe to Australia. Throughout the journey, salutists never failed to follow their preferred routine and lifestyle. I was very moved by comments he made, and predictions about how very soon mass tourism and capitalism would ruin unspoilt places!
INTERNATIONAL VEGETARIAN CONGRESS 1929
enjoy the link and don't smoke, please!
http://www.ivu.org/congress/wvc29/pre-con.html
Salaam Alaykoum, gold incense and myrrh to all!
re:Utopians and Monte Verità, the mountain of Truth
on 06 Jan 2010 at 10:12
very interesting 
I had no idea such things were happening in Switzerland more than a century ago, and this is inspirational. The idea of setting up
This post made me think of something I would like to explore further: the flower power era in the late 1960's did a lot of harm to such new age concepts ("a commune where they practised naturism and vegetarianism"), as many people now associate such things with the drug addled and unwashed hippies of that era. Through mind bending drugs, principally LSD, these hippies achieved flashes of enlightenment, and responded accordingly - however, the "summer of love" in 1967 was very short lived and the movement descended into an abyss of selfish hedonism and disillusionment, as the happy drugs stopped working, and harsh reality took over - these people were not truly enlightened, as they had not done the necessary work on themselves. The very short hippy era opened many minds around the world, but most of them closed again over the ensuing decades - the problem was that true enlightenment cannot be achieved by drug-taking - the best that drugs can do is to offer distorted glimpses of transcendental states, and the experience cannot be repeated for long before the "doors of perception" slam shut again.
To achieve enlightenment we have to work hard on our spiritual development over many years, whilst living a pure clean lifestyle - there is no easy shortcut.
The artificially induced "peace and love" era of the late '60's induced a counter reaction over the following decades, and nowadays it is almost as if it never happened, except that the manifest failures of the hippie movement have set the minds of the reactionary masses even more strongly against being opened in any way. Now if we mention "peace and love" or "back to nature", for example, most people think we are selfish druggy hedonists.... even when the truth is very different.
A similar problem besets The New Age Movement: in this case the issue is not drugs, but capitalist commercialism. Most modern new agers, just like the fundamentalist Christian TV evangelists, offer "salvation by donation". Their websites are cluttered with advertising. Their teachings are available only through commercial purchase. It seems that everything they do is focussed on making money for themselves. However, such a materialistic focus is incompatible with achieving enlightenment. Just like the '60's hippies before them, most modern new agers remain bound up in the old paradigm thought processes - they remain fixated on money and possessions, trapped in their own egos - they may fly high and burn bright for a few moments in time, but they soon sink back to a more earthly focus, and resume conventional lifestyles.
The human race, and planet Earth, desperately needs a new wave of enlightenment, which can only be based on spirituality and purity, and not on hedonism or materialism. We need to break out of the bonds of narrow conventional thought. We need to live differently. What is wrong with being naked? Why do we detach ourselves from nature? Why do we insist on cruelly slaughtering billions of our fellow beings (in animal form) every year to feed ourselves? Why are we separating ourselves more and more from each other? Why can't we live together in peace and harmony? Why can't we share the abundant resources of Mother Earth with all of our fellow beings? The old ways are very sick, and they are unsustainable, and so will destroy us all very soon. We have to break the mold now.
We need many new examples like Monte Verità, and we need them now.
I had no idea such things were happening in Switzerland more than a century ago, and this is inspirational. The idea of setting up a commune seeking an outdoor way of life, a vegetarian diet, simplicity, nature and free love, is as valid today, as it was then, if not more so..
This post made me think of something I would like to explore further: the flower power era in the late 1960's did a lot of harm to such new age concepts ("a commune where they practised naturism and vegetarianism"), as many people now associate such things with the drug addled and unwashed hippies of that era. Through mind bending drugs, principally LSD, these hippies achieved flashes of enlightenment, and responded accordingly - however, the "summer of love" in 1967 was very short lived and the movement descended into an abyss of selfish hedonism and disillusionment, as the happy drugs stopped working, and harsh reality took over - these people were not truly enlightened, as they had not done the necessary work on themselves. The very short hippy era opened many minds around the world, but most of them closed again over the ensuing decades - the problem was that true enlightenment cannot be achieved by drug-taking - the best that drugs can do is to offer distorted glimpses of transcendental states, and the experience cannot be repeated for long before the "doors of perception" slam shut again.
To achieve enlightenment we have to work hard on our spiritual development over many years, whilst living a pure clean lifestyle - there is no easy shortcut.
The artificially induced "peace and love" era of the late '60's induced a counter reaction over the following decades, and nowadays it is almost as if it never happened, except that the manifest failures of the hippie movement have set the minds of the reactionary masses even more strongly against being opened in any way. Now if we mention "peace and love" or "back to nature", for example, most people think we are selfish druggy hedonists.... even when the truth is very different.
A similar problem besets The New Age Movement: in this case the issue is not drugs, but capitalist commercialism. Most modern new agers, just like the fundamentalist Christian TV evangelists, offer "salvation by donation". Their websites are cluttered with advertising. Their teachings are available only through commercial purchase. It seems that everything they do is focussed on making money for themselves. However, such a materialistic focus is incompatible with achieving enlightenment. Just like the '60's hippies before them, most modern new agers remain bound up in the old paradigm thought processes - they remain fixated on money and possessions, trapped in their own egos - they may fly high and burn bright for a few moments in time, but they soon sink back to a more earthly focus, and resume conventional lifestyles.
The human race, and planet Earth, desperately needs a new wave of enlightenment, which can only be based on spirituality and purity, and not on hedonism or materialism. We need to break out of the bonds of narrow conventional thought. We need to live differently. What is wrong with being naked? Why do we detach ourselves from nature? Why do we insist on cruelly slaughtering billions of our fellow beings (in animal form) every year to feed ourselves? Why are we separating ourselves more and more from each other? Why can't we live together in peace and harmony? Why can't we share the abundant resources of Mother Earth with all of our fellow beings? The old ways are very sick, and they are unsustainable, and so will destroy us all very soon. We have to break the mold now.
We need many new examples like Monte Verità, and we need them now.