THE COMMUNE: 

The rise of ‘individual sovereign’ is the hallmark of the present era, particularly in the West, in contrast to the group survival, kin loyalty, and shared resources in the tribal societies.

There are always some rebels, who live as a community, share not just their resources, but love and affection, almost like a kinship. I’m talking about one of the very few communes surviving in Germany, this one, Schelling House, located in Tübingen—a beautiful university town nestled in the hills. This came into being as part of the squatter movement of the late 1970s, where student activists, punks and artists alike, against private ownership, started squatting in abandoned buildings to create shared living spaces. This building housed French soldiers during the World War II.

The ownership is allowed but distributed amongst the inmates, and they act as a collective—Shelling House treated as an artificial person.  A building block, and an annexe, about 200 people live there, all are owners, they contribute their share to the upkeep of the commune, which saves, maintains the property, makes additions, and grows organically. People come and go but the commune has a certain continuity. The oldest member moved in when my friend, Johannes, also a resident, wasn’t even born. People usually move out when they enter into matrimony and plan a family.

Sharing is kinship. And the best example is the kitchen and the bathroom. Bathrooms have showers lined one after the other, there are curtains, but hardly any one pulls it. Personal space merges with the commune, though all have a separate room, and they can host people if they want to in their room, or in common spaces like lofts with ladders along the corridor.  People know what the others are up to—a sort of indifferent curiosity.  With the few I interacted with, it seemed they were open to experiences.

THE EXPERIENCE: 

My experience there was occultly bizarre, a wooden bust in the kitchen, perhaps belonging to a French soldier, who stayed here, was a barrack during the war. The bust seemed to say something to me. I could empathize, was intense, yet can’t be put in words. Let's call it ‘presence’.

I had trouble falling to sleep, I was anxious in anticipation. I woke up with a startle, was dreaming vividly, was sexually charged, a naked woman standing behind the white curtains. In the dream, I got up to pull the curtains. And someone held my neck from behind, grip tightening, I began to choke. I woke up with a startle, was coughing that resonated in the silence, became deafening.

Wet with cold sweat, I looked down from the loft. The long corridor unfolded before me, illuminated by a warm bulb at a distance. I saw a naked young man walking down the corridor, passed underneath the bunk, perhaps drunk, was heading to the bathroom, I presumed, at the far end of the corridor. I waited for him to return, he never did. Was it a phantasm? I wasn’t sure but the place was charged up; its past beckoning me in the present.

I didn’t sleep a wink after that, but held my ground. The first light brought some relief. I shifted to a room, announcing that the corridor is ‘haunted’. No one took me seriously, or, perhaps, they knew. “you’ll be fine,” I was assured.

The experience not just stayed with me in the last ten years or so, and it visits me often as a nightmare. Alternate is good, for it gives us a glimpse of life beyond our conditioning, and opens hidden vistas, a venue of self-discovery.