The ego wants only and exclusively itself. Everything that is not itself, that is, so to speak, “not me,” is foreign to it and is – unconsciously – denied by it.
Denial is the essence of the ego. For to affirm would mean to understand a loss, an accident, etc. as a sign of fate and possibly to search for the cause. Affirming everything, even the negative, would mean the wholeness and unity of all being and all events and would show the recognition that “everything comes from God.” However, not understanding this leads the ego program to fundamentally cause people to reject and resist things that are unpleasant for them. This is because it threatens self-preservation—not that of the person, but that of their ego. When they, in their concrete behavior:
– complains, nags, criticizes, condemns,
– makes accusations, blames others,
– constantly reassures themselves that, fortunately, they are “not like them,”
– is impatient,
– hates adversity, seeks good and means “good only for themselves,”
– overlooks good for others,
– constantly compares themselves to others,
– and above all, he puts up bitter resistance to everything he doesn’t like,
then this is a misunderstanding of earthly evil, which exists in a planned and painful way on the material level, but is nothing more than a package of incessant attempts at redemption. It is:
“Part of that force
that always wants evil and always creates good.”
(Faust I, Study)
Systemic denial can already be seen at the beginning of a conversation when it comes to denying the weather, no matter what it is. Resistance is offered against illness instead of understanding it as an indication of inner physical and psychological disorder.
Resistance is offered to leaders, even though they are merely the products and bearers of the Maya attitudes of separation, competition, discord, division, fear of the unknown, and their aggressive projection into the collective consciousness of the masses. Hitler would have been impossible without the raging anti-Semitism that had been present in Eastern and then Central Europe since the end of the 19th century and without the murderous economic crises. The economic crises are also a reflection of the insatiable greed, protectionism, speculation, hostility, and war programs in the consciousness of all (!) everyday people.
Resistance is offered against competitors, spouses in the battle for children, intrusive neighbors, or doctors in cases of malpractice. In such situations, the ego immediately assumes the role of victim instead of asking why it was affected. It refuses to acknowledge that in a world of good and evil, it is fundamentally the object of both good and evil. It imagines that it is entitled to always have the best of both worlds and does not know that this only happens to spiritual seekers, those “under the umbrella.” It cannot know that it is only fundamental and comprehensive affirmation that creates peace. Above all, it does not know that denial and resistance cause suffering in life.
Since the ego does not know the principle of apparent opposites and believes that there are coins with only one side, it always tries to pick the raisins out of the cake and avoid unpleasantness instead of accepting everything that comes, because this is part of the course of “salvation” from the good-bad world.
This is the human drama whose origin is described in the story of creation. Adam and Eve are not satisfied with their perfect state or are provoked into dissatisfaction. After all, they have free will and use it: they no longer affirm their previous state.
Through spiritual living, however, there is an increasing degree of the abolition of “opposites” through the recognition of their unity. This results in a life in which evil – through union with the perfect – increasingly disappears because it is identified in consciousness as an attempt at seduction and only seemingly evil or as not evil in a spiritual sense. Negative experiences such as bereavements are perceived quite differently and thus lose their effect. This is described in the philosophy of Stoicism in ancient Greece with the term ataraxia (serenity).
Negation is the cause of all human evil.
“I am the spirit that always negates.” The constructive opposite can be found in the Odyssey, in which the Greek poet Homer repeatedly describes the development of his hero as “from wrathful to enduring.” We also find victory over denial in Jesus of Nazareth, who develops from “brood of vipers” through inner struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane to consciously allowing and enduring torture and death.
The opposite of denial, the acceptance or affirmation of everything that comes one’s way, contributes to the death of the ego, as a Japanese Zen master shows:
Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as someone who led a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a grocery store lived near him. Suddenly, her parents discovered that she was pregnant and became very angry. The young woman did not want to confess who the man was, but after much insistence, she finally named Hakuin.
In great anger, the parents went to the master. “Aha!” was all he had to say. After the child was born, it was brought to Hakuin. He had lost his good reputation, but that did not worry him, and he took excellent care of the child. His neighbors gave him milk and everything else the little one needed. A year later, the young mother could no longer bear it. She told her parents the truth, that the real father was a young man who worked at the fish market. The girl’s mother and father went back to Hakuin and begged his forgiveness; they apologized profusely and wanted to take the child back. Hakuin agreed. As he handed over the child, all he said was, “So, so!”
Zen Master Hakuin-Ekaku. 1767.png (b/w) commons.wikimedia.org
Hakuin understood that this adversity was in fact an arrangement of fate to advance his spiritual development, that is, his consciousness. He offers no external resistance to all the influences that oppress him, he does not want to improve anything that did not come as an impulse from his soul, and he is dissatisfied with nothing. He knows that success in life depends on affirmation and is destroyed by negation. Hakuin does what everyday people do not do: he affirms the problem, the threat, the predicament. Dissatisfaction, negation, and resistance are essential characteristics of the human ego DNA. This characteristic is already inherent in the story of creation (see above). While Hakuin was neither dissatisfied nor did he resist, Eve did not even react to a real problem, but only to one that the serpent had persuaded her to believe in.
Hakuin does not want to solve anything himself. He did not see himself as a victim, he trusted his soul and entered into endurance. In reality, non-resistance is the surrendering of the problem to the spiritual power within him and waiting for its solution, whatever that may be. This leads him out of the problem. To use a phrase from Christian wisdom, he lets the weeds and the wheat grow together, i.e., he does not try to pull out the weeds immediately, he allows it and waits for the power of the soul, which in turn ensures that the weeds disappear. But in marriage or business life, in all areas of life in general, especially in the case of illness, resistance and the desire to remove are fundamental components of human behavior. At the international level, this is reflected in the superpowers’ policy of “regime change.”
Hakuin’s behavior exemplifies the principle of tolerance, but it is incomplete for the everyday life of the spiritual person. First of all, it is of no use to grit my teeth and clench my fists in my pockets, appearing to be tolerant and not reacting when I am subjected to a serious attack. After all, I do react with inner turmoil. It is important not to react internally, to remain calm in the truest sense of the word, and to recognize everything as coming from God. This can only work on the basis of understanding that I understand that a spiritual test is currently taking place for me. Then I can calmly decide how to proceed externally. And secondly, this is also occasionally a struggle (Gita, II. Canto). It happens that the spiritual seeker should intervene when others transgress – regardless of whether it affects us or colleagues, partners, strangers, children, etc. However, this has nothing to do with retaliation, nothing to do with “an eye for an eye,” and nothing to do with the animalistic stimulus-response pattern, because in the case of the decision to go into battle, consultation with the soul and ultimately its call to action has preceded it. So whether one allows oneself to be pushed around (often) or not (rarely) is a decision made by your inner guidance. In this respect, the solution lies neither in giving in nor in fighting back, but in leaving the material level of consciousness.
One of the world’s most important examples of this attitude is Gandhi’s life, which he placed, as a matter of principle and in practice, without exception, under the guidance of his spiritual soul:
“My whole life is imbued with the spirit of religion. I could not live a single moment without religion. Some of my political friends despair of me because they find that even my politics stem from my religion. And they are right about that. My politics and my other activities stem from my religion. I go even further and say that all the activities of a religious person must stem from his religion; for religion means union with God, that is to say, God rules every breath. For those who recognize this truth, God regulates all their actions.”
(Chandrashanker Shukla: Gandhi’s View of Life. In: Fritz Kraus: Vom Geist des Mahatma. Baden-Baden 1957, p. 187)
In this respect, the cinematic masterpiece “Gandhi” is a complete distortion of his motives for action, because with the exception of one subordinate clause, no references are made to the basis of all his actions; in fact, they are virtually suppressed. This is not a criticism of the script and direction: for this is where the effect of the universal Maya (Hindi: goddess of veiling), the hidden principle of self-preservation.
As far as the battle is concerned, Lord Krishna admonishes Arjuna:
“Why do you flee from the sacred (!) battle,
and cowardly avoid the encounter, …”
(Bhagavad Gita II, 33)
What we fundamentally do not tolerate are the constant attacks of negative thoughts. However, we do not fight against them, but immediately leave this green worldly plane and move on to the perspective of the soul, so as not to give space to negativity. As an immediate response, we become aware of our divine nature; this puts a stop to the intrusion of negative thoughts.
No matter what comes at you from the outside, the point is not to react in the sense of retaliation. This is the exact opposite of the Jewish Tanach teaching of the “eye for an eye” principle, which is nothing more than the archaic behavior pattern of mammals. It is precisely about turning away from the reactive behavior of animals, which consists of stimulus and response, but humans still react in exactly the same way: they go from A to B by remaining on the green world level and believing that they will only survive if they take revenge and strike back. Those who strike back do not have God. With foresight, Shakespeare has Hamlet ask and then answer rhetorically:
“Which is nobler: … to brave the sea of troubles? Or to suffer the raging fate in spirit (!)?
”… like one who, suffering everything, suffers nothing: a man who accepts fortune’s favors and misfortunes with equal (!) gratitude.” (Hamlet: III,1; III,2)
What does the conductor do when a passenger who is going to miss his connecting train due to a significant delay loses his temper and spits in his face? The reactions based on material consciousness will vary, but spiritually speaking, it will boil down to not slapping the angry man, but recognizing what software drove him to behave this way, continuing to recognize what it is that provokes him to strike back, and finally, becoming aware of why he, of all people, encountered me in this particular situation, in order to replace the absurd talk of “chance” with karmic understanding. (This does not necessarily mean tolerating the misdeed, but everything else does not come from me, but through me from the soul.)
A course participant’s eardrum was so severely damaged by medical treatment that she became deaf in that ear. Beside herself with horror and anger, she wanted to sue the attending physician because she was convinced that it was medical malpractice. I strongly advised her against it, because disregarding the principle of non-resistance all too often leads to negative consequences. Two years later, I met her again. She complained that she had no chance against the combined forces of the lawyers and that the lawsuit had ruined her financially.
Now she had no connection to her inner guidance and so only theoretically had a real choice, because renouncing resistance would have required her to be able to trust her soul. So she followed the path of all those who always fight and seek revenge because their sense of victimhood obscures all their own faults (especially karmic ones, see chapter 10). Even more disastrous are the everyday battles for custody, because not only do the two opponents poison each other’s lives, but also those of their children.
Hakuin is a fictional counterexample to real-life role models of properly understood non-resistance to evil (Mt. 5:39) with unrestricted nonviolence, such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Mandela. They took to heart this principle, which Meister Eckhart consistently expresses, quoting Seneca:
“What is the best consolation in suffering …: It is this, that man should accept all things as if he had wished and asked for them; for you would have wished them too, if you had known that all things happen from God, with God, and in God’s will.”
(The Book of Divine Consolation, Chapter 1)
Those who sit under the “shield of the Most High,” i.e., who have attained awareness of their divine identity and the toothlessness of evil, have experienced and continue to experience every day that their conflicts are taken over and resolved by their soul. Their role in this is “merely” that of an instrument that carries out the impulses of the guiding authority. If there is a fight, it has a completely different character than a blind reaction to an attack. It is particularly important to note that for the ego, a fight is practically always synonymous with violence. The struggles of the spiritual person always consist of the exact opposite, nonviolence. The classic example of this is Gandhi (see below): “Violence is a sin against God. “ But you don’t have to be Gandhi to fight against attacks from churches, such as the Quaker George Fox, or the rape of the climate, or hunger, without violence and with the knowledge of the spark of God even in your opponent, who, in a spiritual sense, also ”does not know what he is doing.“
Inner processing and, if necessary, external action follow the principle of ”Thy will be done!” If the X-ray of the tumor frightens me, or I have been robbed or attacked and thoughts of panic or revenge fill me: turn away from the green world matrix, go within, and before the second part of the meditation, the silence that is characterized by listening, ask for guidance: What is YOUR will, what should I do or not do? Then wait and, after receiving the answer, act courageously if necessary. Courageously because it often happens that we have to take paths that fall outside the normal framework and are often the exact opposite of what “common sense” tells us to do.
Non-reactivity means that we block our negative barrage of thoughts internally and do not retaliate externally. As I said, this does not mean not acting. Non-reactivity has nothing to do with passivity. But there is a big difference between reacting and acting. Reacting means retaliating on a human level, while acting means taking action inspired from within, from the soul: “THY will be done!” or “Wu Wei.” Spiritual progress can be measured by the mastery of tolerance and steadfastness in conflict.
Gandhi (see below) exemplified this by tolerating all violent attacks by the British (Salt March) on the one hand, while on the other hand fighting consistently and unyieldingly against their colonial occupation on a spiritual basis (see below), in a completely nonviolent manner.
By Susant Purohit – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53566194.
Gandhi’s Labana Satyagraha was a remarkable chapter in the struggle for freedom from the British.
Although our coasts produced abundant salt, the British prohibited its use so that they could sell salt imported from their country. Gandhi launched a massive movement to protest against this British law and to violate the law, so he marched to Dandi to start Labana Satyagraha.
This is a 2D/3D sculpture at the Gandhi Memorial.
It is difficult to maintain tolerance against the bitter urge of the animal element of self-preservation within us, because we are all raised with the principle: “You do unto me, I do unto you!”
Our biological heritage tells us to get even with those who have hurt us. And that is how people behave. That is why there are so many revenge films. Films with the theme of non-resistance and non-retaliation are categorically non-existent – except, of course, at Easter.
Those who seek revenge or resist any threat or injustice are confusing the causes: Our karmic heritage tells us that we ourselves were the cause of all the disharmony in our present life from previous existences because—even if we haven’t done anything wrong in the present—we not only have a lot to work through from our past lives, but above all, we still haven’t done anything to get out of the realm of good and evil under which we suffer. And we got into this situation because of our ignorance about how our consciousness works. This ignorance leads to a mixture of good and evil befalling us according to the composition of our consciousness with its thoughts.
Those who seek a way out of this vale of tears will examine the motives behind Hakuin’s behavior and stop trying to improve the world around them. For there is nothing in creation that needs improving!
How can one make such a claim when scarcity, deficit, danger, threat, misery, and hardship prevail everywhere? Since everything we see before us, except for nature, has been created by our consciousness, we can only make changes by transforming our own (!) consciousness. Those who want to improve the world without even touching their consciousness—which is the source of all these conditions—may achieve selective successes, but they cannot change the overall principle of the valley of tears. Environmental activists do not want to admit this with their actions. On the contrary, their approach is based on a consciousness of scarcity and only reinforces it; if they were to perceive the climate catastrophe as a well-meaning impulse from the universe, i.e., as the best possible of the critical conditions at present, and allow themselves to be guided by this very universe through intuition, they would actually improve the world. Just as Gandhi led 300 million Indians to freedom.
Like the environmental activists, conventional medicine, among others, also focuses largely on suppressing the symptoms of disease rather than addressing its causes and their root causes. (This does not mean, however, that their medicine is inappropriate, because what would people, who are now more than 90% purely materialistic, be without it? After all, medicine provides an enormous amount of relief, even if it does not contribute to spiritual transformation and lasting healing.)
Evil is not to be fought, but understood. Jesus never fought anything—except in his early days with the money changers—he only ever forgave. And in the case of illness, he said, “Get up, take your bed and walk!” After all, he knew that illness no longer exists “under the umbrella of the Most High,” even if symptoms, i.e., temptations, are not in short supply.
Those who retain their own mammalian self-preservation software—fighting, hating, striking back, defending their territory, eliminating competitors, taking revenge, retaliating, etc., remains in the mode of the material world and must continue to live under the sword of Damocles of injustice, violence, misfortune, disappointment, unhappiness, misery, and hardship. The more people blindly allow themselves to be guided by the “eye for an eye” principle, the fewer eyes there are to see through the “bloody stage.”
In doing so, people not only constantly fight each other, but also fight even more bitterly against all spiritual ideals, because these would destroy the ego. An enemy is an enemy to the ego, but everything divine is, in the truest sense of the word, a mortal enemy.
All wisdom throughout the world has only one goal, namely that this ego dies and true love prevails. Its defining characteristic is indifference. Gandhi, for example, fought against the British rulers, but did not hate them. On the contrary, he knew only too well that they – like people in general – “do not know what they are doing.” Almost all of them have only one goal, to ensure their own self-preservation, even though they can only survive if they abandon this pattern and care primarily for others instead of primarily for themselves – and in most cases exclusively for others. The life of the Nazarene served to represent the liquidation of the survival instinct – through love itself. His physical death on the cross signifies the death of self-preservation, the death of the transient part of human existence. For consciousness, as the bearer of the permanent parts – mostly as the subconscious – reappears in post-existences (karma principle of continuity) and is precisely the object of the individual’s growth and maturation processes.
It is important to recognize that evil is a manifestation created by human consciousness, which by its very nature does not have the power to harm us. In principle, it is powerless, like the giant who can be defeated by the dwarf with a pebble. (The pebble is a symbol of a weapon with a long-range effect, i.e., not a test of strength in a physical comparison, but the use of software. In the case of Odysseus, it is the arrows with which he shoots the “suitors.”) So we do not engage in a clinch in the confrontation. The inner response consists of the awareness of the powerlessness of the threatening giant. If “Mister God” – as little Anna would say – is also on the other side, what or whom should one resist?
Evil only disappears when we stop wanting to get back at someone. Our zero reaction involves refraining from “an eye for an eye” and, on the basis of meditation, leaving the leadership of a confrontation to the leadership of one’s spirit soul. That is why Jesus teaches the monstrosity: “You shall not resist evil!”
Our part in not reacting is considerable on the inside: we counter the constant attacks of thought that want to suggest to us the necessity of the (survival) struggle. The counterattacks take the form of charging ourselves with spiritual principles, such as the powerlessness of images of terror or the unity of all being, in this case that of souls, above all with “Gnothi se auton,” for which Jesus chose the term “love your enemies” in the Sermon on the Mount, i.e., the realization that God is also in the enemy. We wait for inner impulses before or if we take action. This upward-inward journey signifies a decisive change of dimension: we tolerate or fight bravely if necessary, but only as an instrument of the soul and never as an instrument of the ego. It doesn’t matter if I have a raging headache, if my rent is increased, or if my neighbor is always too loud. We accept. We leave the sword in its sheath because we know—and this is the crucial point—that on the opposite side of evil, God is also present, waiting for the turning point in our consciousness. More precisely, God is not only waiting, but is calling us to this turning point through the appearance of this very “enemy.” This is leaving the material plane and ascending to the spiritual. Then, through spiritual dialogue or gut feeling, the solution comes. In Jewish wisdom, it reads as follows:
“The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” (Ex. 14:14)
“I will go before you and remove all difficulties.” (Isa. 45:2).
In practice, there are different ways in which the soul resolves this, whether it be an unfair grade, a marital war, being caught speeding with the risk of losing one’s driver’s license, cancer, or economic collapse:
1. The expected consequences do not materialize.
2. They do occur, but are surprisingly mild, so that one can cope with them well.
3. The expected consequences are indeed disastrous, but in a short time, everything can be rebuilt through fortunate circumstances and coincidences (phoenix).
What might this look like in concrete terms? Suppose I have accumulated a huge mountain of debt amounting to several years’ income. I lose my job, my relationship breaks down, and I have to vacate my apartment. My economic and social existence is thus destroyed. However, since I am aware that I have been led into this disastrous situation and will be led out of it—these are learning arrangements on the path to liberation from the conditions of the green world—I do not react like the everyday person who panics and reacts catastrophically, from apathy to alcohol, escape, theft, and robbery. Instead, I turn inward and wait confidently for my soul to rescue me. The waiting involves many external challenges and internal torments of fear. But if I don’t give in, perspectives suddenly emerge. Helpers appear who first provide temporary accommodation, stable transitional solutions, and finally new sources of income. They are not the ones who bring about the rescue, but rather they are tools of the soul’s power, through which they are brought into play. (Compare this to the movie “Groundhog Day.”) The progress of worldly developments—superficially regarded by the outside world as a series of favorable “coincidences” – leads to all liabilities being worked off and completely balanced, the legal consequences being mild, and the restoration being such that no one (!) has been harmed. Furthermore, the new way of life leads to the initial standard of living being significantly exceeded and harmonized to an unprecedented degree. A completely new kind of life for the phoenix has begun within the circumstances of the stage world and continues to grow internally and externally in the sense of more than adequate livelihood, freedom from fear, confident self-esteem, rejuvenation, and joie de vivre.
There is one important exception to the principle of non-reaction: child rearing. Adolescents depend on feedback from their educators in order to be able to classify their behavior and their position in the world. The first person to describe an appropriate response to misbehavior by children and adolescents was Rousseau in his educational work “Emile.” This is not about considering the entire work, but rather a specific point of his teaching: using the example of a difficult child, he describes the educator’s response to the child’s “destructive rage.” On the one hand, the punishment should, if possible, be presented as not a decision of the educator, but as a “natural consequence (!) of the evil deed.” Secondly—and this is the crucial point—he combines the punishment, i.e., his reaction, with a “joyful embrace” of the child. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Emil, or On Education. Book 2: The Broken Window) Anyone who, in educational practice, experiences punishing children or students for wrongdoing on the one hand, but combines this with an embrace or the suggestion of wanting to take the child in question into their arms after they have served their punishment and telling them that they are not angry with them despite everything, will experience wonders upon wonders of the power that love unfolds.
“Satyagraha”
In all trials, the decisive factor in finding a solution is guidance from the “Father within me.” He is the only authority who always shows us the appropriate course of action in different situations. This can be consistent passivity, but also courageous nonviolent action. In this respect, non-resistance does not mean passivity, but behavior based on non-reaction and consultation with the soul’s guidance. The Nazarene’s way of life is exemplary in this respect. The feeding of the five thousand and his behavior in the Garden of Gethsemane can be cited as ideal examples. We are humble, but we do not always and not necessarily allow people to walk all over us. We are also willing to fight if our opponent refuses to back down. Only silence can reveal when this is the case. Then the attacks melt away like morning fog under the sun’s rays.
The concrete meaning of non-resistance can be seen in Gandhi’s approach. His credo was the so-called “Satyagraha”:
“I coined the term ‘Satyagraha’ in South Africa to give a name to the force with which the Indians there fought for a full eight years (1906-1914). I spoke of Satyagraha to distinguish this force from the movement that was then known in Great Britain and South Africa as passive resistance. The basic idea of satyagraha is ‘holding fast to the truth’, which is why … I also called it ‘the power of the soul’.”
(Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha. From the Congress Party’s report on the unrest in Punjab.)
Gandhi understood Jesus. Not resisting means abandoning the principle of retaliation. How could Jesus have taught such a thing if he had not recognized the powerlessness of evil? However, for those who do not know this background, non-resistance is irrational, absurd, and allows only one conclusion: allow your own destruction! Or: Should I let myself be cheated?
Gandhi practiced seeing through, he also recognized God in the enemy. He knew that “everything (!) comes from God” (Jakob Böhme). He did everything to realize this insight: During his Satyagraha campaign in South Africa, the British railway workers there went on strike at the same time. This caused enormous difficulties for the British colonial government, which prompted Gandhi to suspend his movement for this period so as not to weaken the government, which would have made it easy for him to achieve his political and social goals. This impressed the government so much that it ultimately gave in to his demands. (according to fboits-blogs)
The reaction of his opponents from the apartheid leadership is expressed as follows:
“I don’t love your people, and I have no desire to do anything for them. But what can I do? You help us in our time of need. How can we lay a hand on you? I often wish you would resort to violence like the English strikers, then we would know immediately how to get rid of you. But you don’t even want to do anything bad to your enemies. You want to win simply by taking suffering upon yourselves, and you never transgress the limits of politeness and chivalry that you have set for yourselves. And that is what condemns us to complete helplessness.”
(M. K. Gandhi: My Experiments with Truth. My Life.)
Gandhi was guided by the power of the soul, as impressively demonstrated by other testimonies:
“Man’s highest duty is to realize God, and all his political, social, and religious actions must be determined by the one goal of recognizing God; but I am part of the whole, and cannot find Him apart from the rest of humanity. My compatriots are my closest neighbors. They are so helpless, lacking in resources and initiative, that I must strive to help them. However, if I were convinced that I could find ‘Him’ in a cave in the Himalayas, I would set out for it immediately. But I know that I cannot find ‘Him’ apart from other people.”
(According to: DIE ZEIT, 40/1987)
In his own way, Gandhi described the sole task of humans on the learning planet Earth: Gnothi se auton! In doing so, he realized that he could not wait for the many millions of Indians to open themselves up to spiritual truth. He did everything “only for himself” so that this truth could have an effect on others through him as a suitable channel.
His version of improving the world has nothing to do with that of the countless idealists of this world, because his actions come from his soul and not from worldly understanding. He freed the Indians from the brutal bloodsucking regime of the British Empire. His approach was not based on resistance through negation, but on soul-driven action. Gandhi’s nonviolent struggles (e.g., his hunger strikes) were indeed risky external actions, but as tools of the soul and therefore nonviolent, they always served the greater good and did not harm the person of the enemy—as opposed to their ego.
Martin Luther King’s struggles were also spiritually inspired, for nonviolence is a characteristic of conflict that is foreign to the ego. The Gita’s second canto should also be understood in this context: there, the inner god Krishna encourages the hero, who does not want to kill his neighbors on the opposing side in the impending battle, to take up the fight (even if, in this two-layered situation with the opponents, it primarily refers to battles of ideas).
Did Gandhi take the path to C only to use it as a means to an end and thus skillfully reach B? Did he want to use his inner guidance to do so? No, he saw the situation of his people, first went to C, and was then led to B. Taoist wisdom symbolically illustrates this by showing Lao Tzu riding the bull without using the reins. Riding means that he has tamed the animalistic forces and has dominion over them. In addition, the absence of reins shows that he is not leading, but allowing himself to be led.
Laozi.jpg Commons public domain
The churches have tried in various ways to circumvent or undermine the Sermon on the Mount’s message of non-resistance. They mostly take the position that it is unachievable and derive various “theories of limited validity” from this.
In his doctrine of the two kingdoms, Luther divided the life of the Christian into two realms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world: the Christian now lives in both at the same time. He should practice non-resistance towards everyone for himself. However, if they find themselves as representatives of the authorities in the fight against evil, they should wield the sword (In: On Secular Authority).
Catholics prefer to limit this to certain groups of people and want these elements to be restricted to the clergy. (See Hilpert, K.: Between Harmlessness and Radicalism. On the Ethical Reception of the Sermon on the Mount.)
Anyone who observes the bitter struggles of the churches against literally everything that does not fit into their doctrine must inevitably ask how they can reconcile this with the principle of “resisting evil.” There are the constant divisions and demarcations between the denominations, the interference in people’s lives, even their intimate lives, the demonization of sexuality, the “disposal” of hundreds of baby corpses in a waste pit in the horror house of Catholic nuns in Tuam, Ireland, the cover-up of countless cases of abuse within their own ranks, placing the protection of the organization and the perpetrators above the protection of the thousands upon thousands of raped children (Catholic dignitaries in Pennsylvania; Black Book of the Protestant Church), the slide from spiritual orientation into social fields with denominational thumb screws, and much more. In any case, they will want nothing to do with the tolerant Hakuin.
As far as the characteristic of “putting the protection of perpetrators above the protection of victims” is concerned, the obvious parallel to the Dieselgate producers shows that this is not a specific characteristic of one group or the other, but rather the universal ego in one guise or another. At all levels of the church hierarchy, one can see what the self-preservation program does to the dignitaries.
Leave the sword in its sheath
The following quote—attributed to either Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara, or Bertolt Brecht—is widely known and serves as a credo for denial, subsequent struggle, and fundamental discord among people: “Those who fight may lose. Those who do not fight have already lost.”
This is one of the creeds of the ego and is a slap in the face to such sufferers as Johanna, Jesus, Father Kolbe, and Mandela, and a great mistake in terms of the goal of harmonious coexistence, because it is based on the principle of retaliation.
Not fighting does not mean doing nothing. On the contrary, it is a tremendous effort to refrain from the reactive “eye for an eye” response in a conflict and to endure or, if necessary, to take up the ensuing fight under the guidance of one’s soul. One does not rush to solve the problem, but to solve the problem solver. Therefore, the above quote can be rephrased as follows: Those who fight by striking back have completely lost all spiritual references or never had them in the first place and know nothing else but to resist evil.
Evil is dependent on my consciousness, a superficial phenomenon and therefore only apparent. That is why I will not reach for the sword like Peter (in Gethsemane), because I know that God is also on the other side. When I “put the sword in its place” (symbol of nonviolence), I show that what stands in my way is theatrical thunder, a temptation and/or a test.
Not resisting is not primarily a question of action, but of inner attitude: if one does not perceive evil as evil and affirms it as a stimulus for growth and at the same time as a challenge to demonstrate its powerlessness, then one can – through active action – stand up for others and show them the way to salvation. This is what Buddha did for the people around him and Jesus did for the Jews and the Romans. These were the initial sparks for the further spread of their teachings.
Gandhi did the same as a tool of the soul for the Indians. He recognized what the practical implementation of love for one’s enemies, acceptance, and active action—but nonviolent—could look like. This is not resistance in the sense of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” There is a difference between trying to respond to the attacks of an evil neighbor with countermeasures and seeing him as the son of God and finding a harmonious solution on this basis of consciousness – then it doesn’t matter whether it’s with him or against him. In the first case, it is ego-driven retaliation, which always leads to escalation, suffering, and war, and ultimately also falls back on me through stress and disharmony. Those who rely on retaliation only increase the suffering.
“Do not hesitate,
to fight in a just war
is every warrior’s first duty.”
(Bhagavad Gita II, 31)
What is “just” is not decided by my ego, but by my soul: “Thy will be done.” Because, as I said, everything is from God, my lung cancer, my bankruptcy, my loneliness are, on the one hand, products of my previous state of consciousness and resistance to these phenomena and, on the other hand, surface phenomena that are substantially powerless and only require my own countermeasures if necessary. One of the first to teach non-resistance—using water as an example, incidentally—was Lao Tzu:
“Because he [the accomplished] fits in without resistance,
he lives without hostility and resistance.”
“Because he does not resist, nothing resists him.”
(Tao Te Ching 8:22)
In Islamic mysticism, it is expressed as follows:
“Do not fight fate, or it will fight you!”
(Rumi: Mesnevi I, 915)
In the three-dimensional world, my behavior is reactive, i.e., I react on the same level. I go from A to B, to the doctor, to the insolvency administrator, or to the lawyer when it comes to divorce, custody, or alimony issues. Since I remain in the material matrix of good and evil, the struggle ends either well or badly, more likely the latter, because I operate with a deficiency-oriented consciousness.
The state of our world is the result of intolerance, rebellion, denial, and thus remaining on the material level. This psychogram of the ego is the sole cause of anger, discord, misunderstanding, aggression, and all suffering in this world. That is why the Buddha admonishes the “Brahmins,” that is, people on the spiritual path:
“Do not strike! Do not defend yourself! Woe to him who strikes! Woe to him who defends himself!”
“Bear insults and shame innocently! Use tolerance as a sharp weapon!”
(Dhammapada 389, 399)
Fighting against something means that we exclude our own spiritual identity and remain in the realm of good and evil. Fights can turn out just as well as badly, which applies to brawls as well as civil or criminal proceedings, wars of the roses, warning strikes, neighborhood disputes, etc. In any case, fights have winners and, above all, losers, and they do not change the state of the world because they remain on the earthly ego level. This has been unchanged for thousands of years. But those who, like Luther King, wage the “just” fight against evil, have an awareness of the fullness of a spiritual ideal that must be realized here and now through them. Those who fight on the ego level have an awareness of deficiency. They focus on symptoms and thus remain slaves to their instinct for self-preservation, which they follow blindly. The most common strategy is the pattern of “attack is the best form of defense.” This is the exact opposite of “daily ego death.”
We are born into this world of revenge and retaliation and know no other way. Religions and churches play a significant role in this. They suppress the teaching of non-violence, of laying down one’s sword. They turn the teaching of the Gospel into its opposite. Have you ever heard of a military chaplain offering to pray for the Taliban to his soldiers in Afghanistan, for example? How then do they understand the commandment “Do good to those who hate you”? A clear example of the role of the church is shown in the sermon given by the Wehrmacht priest at the beginning of the film “Stalingrad,” in which he incites the soldiers against the enemy. It feels like 99% of thrillers, crime films, and dramas are characterized by revenge and retribution. Are there no films about non-retribution, in which the sword is left sheathed and forgiveness is demonstrated? Where is the counter-enlightenment of the churches here?
When action is required, it is important not to do so for the sake of a result, but simply to be active. For since I have surrendered the goal to my soul, “I” as a person do not need to worry about the result; it is the soul’s anyway. If I am advised to bring a civil suit, I go to court without paying attention to victory or defeat. Applied to sports or business, this means unintentional “renunciation of the fruits of one’s actions” (Gita IV,20), i.e., acting without paying attention to the outcome. After all, it is the soul’s action and not “mine.” The tennis player then plays not to win, but to play or to leave the game to the soul. Hermann Hesse describes the motivation for serving action instead of fixating on the result or winning using the example of Siddhartha in his story of the same name in the chapter “Bei den Kindermenschen” (Among the Child-People).
When I am ill, I do not fight against it, because omnipotence is already within me and because evil, like every phenomenon, is powerless. I do not become healthy by fighting, but by surrendering to the soul. Then I find the appropriate ways, measures, and people who serve as tools to solve the problem if it does not resolve itself, i.e., through a change in consciousness, as is clear from the example of Hakuin. He knows the principle that Islamic mystics describe as follows:
“God also afflicted Job and others, but they did not (!) ask for this divine affliction to be taken away from them.”
(Ibn Arabi: The Wisdom of the Prophets, Seth.)
“Endure the pain … so that you may be saved from the pains of your lower nature.”
(Rumi: Mesnevi I, 3014