11/11/Peace

There is civilisation, and then there is barbarism, and the thing which separates them is violence. Under barbarism, violence has free reign, and might is always right. In a civilisation, violence, though never completely abolished, is restricted, with sanctions and limits placed upon its use. This is an imperfect arrangement, but it keeps most people from getting killed, as well as preventing a slide into barbarism. Civilisations prosper when the urge to kill is outweighed by the desire for life, and civilisations collapse when their more violent elements gain the upper hand.

The events in the Middle East are not just another local war. It’s not just another struggle against colonialism. It’s not even simply a disagreement over land rights. There is no comparison between the situation there and the war in Ukraine. This is a battle which has the potential to end civilisation.

Sadly, none of what is happening is surprising to me. Way back in 2011 I had a series of arguments with people who believed that the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 would herald our entrance into a new age of love and light. I said that it was more likely that, in our lifetime, there would be a nuclear war, starting in the Middle East, through which large parts of the planet would be thrown back into the Stone Age. The smug ignorance of New Agers amazed me then and continues to amaze me now.

“From the river to the sea”, whether those chanting know it or not, is a call to violence, because it implies a forced removal of Israelis from their home and the eradication of a country.

Israel’s “right to defend itself” is also a call for a violence, implying that it’s ok to have tremendous civilian casualties, so longer as they are Palestinian, not Israeli.

There can be no justification for the actions of Hamas on 7th October, and if you think there is then you should give up any pretence to spirituality. Murder is murder and murder is wrong. But nor can there be any justification for the Israeli actions which precipitated it, or the one’s which now follow it. An eye for an eye can, literally in this case, make the whole world blind. What both sides seems to have forgotten, is that as soon as you kill for your so-called noble cause then that cause is irrecoverably lost, stained by the blood of those you have slaughtered.

This is, therefore, not about good versus evil. It is evil versus evil, trying to drag good down with it.

Violence is a failure of perspective. Over lifetimes every oppressor becomes oppressed, and every oppressed then becomes an oppressor, God sees to that. Even if you win today, you will lose tomorrow, until you realise that there is no such thing as victory or defeat, at least not in this realm. God is in no hurry with this and if we really are intent on destroying the civilisation that has taken thousands of years to build then so be it, we will just have to go round again until we get the message. If you hate and kill in this life you will simply meet those you hated and killed again in the next. Oppressor now? Oppressed next time round. And so on, and so on, forever. Until you break the cycle of violence.

The way out of this trap is to not fight, because the moment you do you have lost. Every dictator and tyrant began life as a freedom fighter and every tyrant eventually falls to the same, and that will not stop until there is a change in people’s hearts. This means resisting the temptation for revenge and instead casting a plague on the house of all those who kill, and all those who support them. Shun the sign of the clenched fist, the sign of violence, wherever it appears, wherever you see it.

This is why Christ was a spiritual teacher and not a freedom fighter. If he had been an agitator for reparations from Rome, or for a Judean State then Christianity would have never got off the ground. Instead his message was to ally with God and to say no to all forms of violence.

If you don’t like the lesson of Jesus, then take the lesson of Gandhi, who through non-violent protest snatched the jewel from the crown of the most powerful force on the planet, the British Empire. No violence. No revenge. No reparations. No redistribution. Simply non-compliance. If you want to keep your soul intact then this is the only way.

Civilisational collapse happens slowly, steadily, then all at once. The slowly, steadily phase is coming to an end, we are now on the brink of it happening all at once. Evil forces have been unleashed and are trying to goad good people into violence by appealing to raw emotion. Here we have the great unlearned lesson of our times – when it comes to the capacity for destruction, the cold, calculating mind has got nothing on the power of untethered emotion. We don’t have strong feelings, strong feelings have us, and many feelings can be profoundly destructive. There is no such thing as righteous anger, for as the great spiritual teacher Yoda tells us, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. We have rational minds for a reason, and if we don’t use them we will not only lose them, but we will lose everything else in the process.

The most naïve man in the world, the Californian podcaster Lex Fridman, reckons that all the religions of the world are essentially about love, so if we focus on love then we will automatically come together. This is not an example of religious tolerance but religious ignorance, because it is simply not true that love sits at the heart of all the world’s religions. But what does sit at the heart of Christ Consciousness (which, interestingly, has been sidelined by both Islam and Judaism) is forgiveness. Christ knew this was a demon-haunted world and it was the saving of souls which mattered. So if you wish your soul to be clean then, in the end, you have to forgive your oppressor, whoever they may be, for they know not what they do.

Circumstances in the world are now such that escalation of the conflict in Gaza will, probably, possibly, bring the end of civilisation. I am not talking about the end of this kind or that kind of society, I am talking about whether there will be such a thing as society at all. And please don’t make the foolish mistake of thinking that if there’s a nuclear war it won’t matter because we will all be dead anyway. In fact large numbers of people probably will survive a nuclear war, it only to be faced with life in a hellscape beyond anything which is currently happening in Gaza.

Denunciation of violence should not be seen as a lily-livered or weak and feeble response to events. I am talking about a clear, decisive and fierce no to all killers, as well as their fellow travellers and enablers.

No to Hamas.

No to Hezbollah.

No to Zionism.

No to Iranian mullahs.

And also no to the Great Satan himself, international finance. Oil and gas fields off the Gazan coast anyone? (Incidentally, Hitler, one of the architects of the current mess, was right and wrong about this. He correctly identified international finance as the source of many of the world’s problems, but his Original Sin was to racialise this and call it Jewish. International finance, which has long existed but has been put on stilts by globalisation, was always cross-cultural and trans-national. It is not, and never was, racial because greed is a weakness common to all humans).

I said last time about the power of the Prayer of the Heart, and the need to speak its words from, and with, the Heart. Deep engagement with this acts as an inner purification as well as a powerful defence against the demonic forces which are now off the leash and running. To add to this, on 11/11 at 11am (or before), you might want to turn on and turn up the teachings of the almost forgotten spiritual teacher Sabrina Johnston, and pray for peace in the valley, peace in the city and above all peace in the soul, for your friends as well as your enemies. Because without it we are all headed into oblivion.

Last thing, even though Britain is now pretty much a failed state, it was, not too long ago, effectively ruler of the world, and a lot of today’s problems, in the Middle East and elsewhere, can be pinned at the door of Number 10 Downing Street. So here is a suggestion for all who would aspire to lead this once great but now visibly reduced nation: Be the voice of peace. There is a massive opportunity here for Britain to resolve its karma, to preserve civilisation and to lead the world into a new era. We should break with America once and for all and be the nation who calls for, and works for, peace, not just in Gaza, but everywhere. No more imperial entanglements around the globe. The first party leader that can assemble and lead a comprehensive global strategy where the nation’s interests aren’t in hoc to the City of London, Wall Street or Silicon Valley will be swept into office in a landslide. Of course, there is no chance of this happening, and perhaps this means that Lex Fridman’s crown passes to me. All I can say to that is what a pity.