School of Life Educational Society
"The School of Life Educational Society located in Bethesda, Maryland was created to foster ethical and healthy lifestyles to prepare us physically, mentally, and spiritually to realize the Spirit that is alive within us and in the world. We believe that limitation and over-abundance are both artificial and unnatural states producing the vicious cycles of fear and revolt in society with the rich and poor alike suffering the consequences. The school's aim is to offer a God-centered, practical social system based on natural and cosmic law demonstrating that all of man's material needs can be acquired without struggle and with right knowledge and right living. Learning in the School of LIfe is experiential through study, conscious living, and Karma Yoga (service work). It has established as its focal effort, through various projects, to support the healing of planet earth and to bring peace through the practice of non-violence.
"Spiritual Food for the New Millennium: SFNM, a project of the School of Life, aims at addressing pressing issues of everyday living in relationship to the basic needs of humankind within a different frame of social interaction. As the name indicates its focus is on food as perceived both in its material form and in its subtle form as ideas and concepts born of the spirit.
"Community Supported Agriculture and a Mail Order Service are the venues to implement the objectives of a new equitable society where market forces are replaced by human understanding, solidarity and cooperation, and they on their turn operate under the same principles in their relationship with Mother Nature to ensure the sustainability of the planet and good living conditions for the human race and the rest of creation. These objectives are pursued by community building, ongoing education and linking producers and consumers.
"SFNM promotes, sustains and defends the quality of true food necessary for good physical and spiritual health by ensuring a supply of top quality Biodynamic and organic fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes and dairy products thereby establishing a close and direct relationship with carefully selected and very unique farmers and providers. To find out more about CSA’s and ours in particular, click here.
"Shanti Yoga Ashram: The word ashram, common in India, refers to a usually secluded residence of a spiritual community with a leader, similar to a monastery or convent. Shanti Yoga is, by contrast, a busy urban ashram where people live and many guests come to help integrate health and peace into daily life. Led by Victor Landa (Vyasadev), it began in1983 as the Shanti Yoga Center for Harmony offering classes and programs, and has since grown into the School of Life which is a larger community with a core group of 10 residents who work internally on self-development and externally in service projects.
"Offshoots of the School of Life are the non-profit organizations:
"Global Coalition for Peace: Begun in 2001 after September 11th, GCFP recognizes the many forms of violence that exist in our society - domestic, interpersonal, school, workplace, road, city, national, international - and has established as its goal to replace violence with love and respect through individual inner work and through activism for true peace in the world. Many of its programs interconnect with the CSA such as monthly peacemeals where all are welcome to share a meal and hear an inspirational speaker, teaching people to grow their own food with Sattwic Peace Gardens, developing a Spiritual Economic system called Aparigraha: A New Economic Paradigm For A Culture of Peace of which the CSA model is a part, and promoting cooperative games.
"The Essene Church of Peace: The fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ recorded in the Essene Gospel of Peace are the source and inspiration for the incorporation of the Progressive Ecological And Alternative Church Of The Essenes (PEACE), begun in 2006, also known as The Essene Church of Peace. In the Essene Gospel, a pure diet is recognized as paramount therefore we aim to provide sattwic (pure) food as a very important project of the church. These teachings are but a confirmation of the Perennial Philosophy, or the Perennial Truths as they are also known, reflected in Yoga, Sufism, Taoism, the major religions and most other systems of spiritual development." [1]
