A group retreat was organised at Chinmaya Vibhooti for the King George English School (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya) 1964-11F graduating class of Ravi Nene from 3rd to 5th March 2015. A group of 16 participated, including alumni, wives and friends, all new to Vedanta and Chinmaya Mission.
With no acharyas present on campus, a programme was designed with presentations of videos that included Poojya Gurudev’s “Logic of Spirituality”, “Ecology – A Modern Day Confusion”, Poojya Guruji’s Hindi discourse on Shrimad Bhagawata – the story of Raja Parikshit, and two episodes of Upanishad Ganga. The talks were introduced with brief commentaries by Ravi and Nandini Nene.
All participants were instantly and completely engrossed. A sampler of the enthusiastic feedback : “… enjoyable and enlightening, and it was the enlightening part that was most enjoyable”, “… the whole experience was out of this world”, “We are totally inspired by the activities and goal of the Mission.” “Two things are most impressive: One, how the whole campus is eco-friendly, and, two, how youngsters from local villages have been trained for jobs in Chinmaya Vani, Chinmaya Jeevan Darshan, and Swagat Team.”
A key learning was that even when Acharyas are not present in person, a video-based retreat for 2 or 3 days can be extremely effective to introduce newcomers to Vedanta and Chinmaya Mission.