A Spiritual Need
     The Experience of Community. A conversation with Ananda Community co-director Asha Praver on how living in a spiritual community helps people grow.
     Why Create Communities? Why bother? Can anyone start a community, even if they aren't following a spiritual path?
     The Need for an Alternative. Paramhansa Yogananda predicted that "world-brotherhood communities" would one day "spread like wildfire" and become the basic sociological pattern for the future.

A Simple Idea
     Blissful in the City. The Ananda community in Mountain View is America's largest experiment in cohousing.

Practical Spirituality
     The Experience of Religion. Blind belief is the religion of the past. The religion of the future will emphasize methods that lead to direct, personal inner communion with God.

Daily Life
     A Place of Peace Amid Growing Things. A conversation with Barbara Fiesterman, volunteer gardener.
     A Mother Talks About Life in a Spiritual Community. Tina Madison, mother of three, moved to the Ananda Community at the very beginning.
     Ananda Community Members in Their Own Words. Personal experiences of spirit and community.

     WELCOME to our home--a sanctuary of peace in Silicon Valley. Here in the Ananda Community, we enjoy a life of our own design, where our neighbors are our friends, and our children are exposed to wholesome role models and high ideals.

The first Ananda community was started  near Nevada City, California in 1967 by Swami Kriyananda, a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi (click to view the free online edition). Six Ananda communities now are thriving in Nevada City, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Rhode Island, and Italy. (Photo caption: Ananda members [all of them!] in 1970. Click photo for larger view.)

Yogananda urged people of all faiths to create small intentional communities where they could be free to practice "simple living and high thinking." We have created this website to share our experiences of this inspiring way of life. Here, you will find pictures of the community, stories of the members, and general information about community living. (Click photo for larger view.)

Resources
     Learn More. The AnandaLink site offers a complete web directory, including links to free talks, videos, books, and articles. Be sure to visit AnandaLog, where you'll meet the people of Ananda.
     Directions to the Ananda community in Mountain View. For information about living in the community, visit our sister website.