The ego only and exclusively wants itself. Everything that is not itself, that is “not me”, so to speak, is alien to it and is – unconsciously – denied by it.
Denial is the essence of the ego. Because affirming would mean understanding a loss, an accident, etc. as an indication of fate and possibly going in search of the cause. Affirming everything, including the negative, would mean the wholeness and unity of all being and all events and recognising that “everything comes from God”. However, not understanding leads to the ego programme fundamentally leading people to non-acceptance and resistance to things that are unpleasant for them. This is because it jeopardises self-preservation – not that of man, but that of his ego. If, in his specific behaviour:
– grumbles, nags, criticises, condemns,
– reproaches, blames others,
– constantly confirms to himself that he is fortunately “not like them”,
– is impatient,
– hating adversity, looking for good things and meaning “good things only for yourself”,
– overlooking good things for others,
– constantly comparing himself with others,
– and above all puts up fierce resistance to everything that does not suit him,
then this is a misunderstanding of earthly evil, which exists on the material level full of plans and suffering, but is nothing other than a package of non-stop attempts at redemption. It is:
“A part of that power,
that always wants evil and always creates good.”
(Faust I, study)
The systemic denial can already be seen at the beginning of the conversation when it comes to denying the weather, no matter what it is. Resistance is put up against illness instead of understanding it as an indication of inner physical and psychological disorder.
Resistance is offered to leaders, even though they are the products and purveyors of the Mayan attitudes of separateness, competition, discord, division, fear of the other and their aggressive projection in the collective consciousness of the masses. Hitler would have been impossible without the raging anti-Semitism in Eastern and then Central Europe since the end of the 19th century and without the murderous economic crises. Whereby the economic crises are also a reflection of the insatiable greed, protectionism, speculation, enmity and war programmes in the consciousness of all (!) everyday people.
Resistance is put up against the competitor, the spouse in the fight for the children, the abusive neighbour or the doctors in the event of malpractice. The ego always immediately assumes the role of victim instead of asking itself why it has been hit. It does not want to recognise that in the good-evil world it is fundamentally the object of both good and evil. It imagines that it can only ever claim to have the sultanas and does not realise that this only happens to spiritual seekers, to those “under the umbrella”. It cannot know that it is only the 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 sultanas out of the cake and avoid the unpleasant instead of accepting everything that comes, because this is part of the course of “redemption” from the good-bad world.
This is the human drama whose origins are described in the story of creation. Adam and Eve are not satisfied with their perfect state or are provoked to 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 abolition of the “opposites” through the recognition of their unity. This results in a life in which evil – through unification with perfection – is increasingly eliminated because it is identified in the consciousness as an attempt to seduce and only seemingly evil or not evil in the spiritual sense. Negative experiences such as bereavement are perceived in a completely different way and thus lose their impact. The philosophy of the Stoa in ancient Greece describes this with the term ataraxia (peace of mind).
Denial is the cause of all human evil.
“I am the mind that always denies.” The constructive opposite can be found in the Odyssey, in which the Greek poet Homer describes the development of his hero again and again as “from the Zürner to the Dulder” (!). We also find the victory over denial in Jesus of Nazareth, who develops from the “breeding of vipers” through the inner struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane to the conscious acceptance and toleration of torture and death.
The opposite of denial contributes to ego death, the toleration or affirmation of everything that comes your way, as shown by a Japanese Zen master:
Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one who led a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl, whose parents owned a grocery shop, lived in his neighbourhood. Her parents suddenly 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 taken to Hakuin. He had lost his good reputation, but this did not worry him, and he looked after the child in the best possible way. He received milk and everything else the baby needed from his neighbours. A year later, the young mother couldn’t take it any longer. 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 apologised profusely and wanted to take the child back with them. Hakuin agreed. As he handed over the child, all he said was: “There, there!”
Zen master Hakuin-Ekaku. 1767.png (b-w) commons.wikimedia.org
Hakuin has understood that this adversity is actually an arrangement of fate to further his spiritual development, that is, the development of 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 not dissatisfied with anything. He knows that success in life depends on affirmation and is shattered by denial. Hakuin manages to do exactly what the everyday person does not: affirm the problem, the threat, the emergency. Dissatisfaction, denial and resistance are essential characteristics of the human ego DNA. This characteristic is – see above – already present in the creation story. While Hakuin was neither dissatisfied nor resisted, Eve did not even react to a real problem, but only to one that the serpent talked her into.
Hakuin doesn’t want to solve anything himself. He did not see himself as a victim, he trusted his soul and went into acquiescence. The lack of resistance is in reality handing over the problem to the spiritual power within him and waiting for whatever solution it provides. This leads him out of the problem. To use a phrase from Christian wisdom, he allows the weeds and wheat to grow together, so he does not try to pull out the weeds immediately, he allows them to grow 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 a fundamental part of human behaviour. On an international level, the superpowers’ policy of “regime change” sends its regards.
Hakuin’s behaviour exemplifies the principle of acquiescence, but is incomplete for the everyday life of a spiritual person. Firstly, it is no use gritting my teeth, clenching my fists in my trouser pockets and seemingly tolerating a bad attack on me and not reacting. After all, you react with an inner turmoil. It is important not to react inwardly, to remain calm in the truest sense of the word and to recognise everything as coming from God. This can only work on the basis of understanding that I realise that a spiritual test is currently taking place for me. Then I can calmly decide how to proceed outwardly. And secondly, this is also occasionally a struggle (Gita, second canto). It happens that the spiritual seeker should intervene in the case of offences committed by others – regardless of whether it concerns us or colleagues, partners, strangers, children, etc.. However, this has nothing to do with tit-for-tat, nothing to do with “an eye for an eye” and also nothing to do with the animalistic stimulus-response scheme, because in the case of the decision to go into battle, the agreement with the soul and ultimately its order to act has preceded it. So whether you allow yourself to be fooled (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.
As far as the fight is concerned, God Krishna admonishes the person Ardjuna:
“Why do you flee from the sacred (!) battle,
and cowardly evade the encounter, …
(Bhagavad Gita II, 33)
What we generally do not tolerate, however, are the constant attacks of thought. However, we do not fight against them, but leave this green worldly level immediately and go over to the perspective of the soul in order to give the negativities no room. As an immediate response, we realise that we are children of God; this puts a stop to the intrusion of negative thoughts.
No matter what comes at us from the outside: the point is not to react in the sense of a tit-for-tat response. This is the exact opposite of the Jewish Tanakh teaching of the “eye for an eye” principle, which is nothing other than the archaic behavioural pattern of the mammal. It is precisely about turning away from the reactive behaviour of the animal, which consists of stimulus and response, but this is exactly how people still react: they go from A to B by staying on the green world level and believe that they will only survive if they take revenge and strike back. He who strikes back does not have God. Far-sightedly, Shakespeare has Hamlet ask and then rhetorically answer the question himself:
“Which is the nobler: … to brave the sea of plagues? Or to endure in spirit (!) the raging fate?
“… as he who – suffering everything – suffers nothing: a man who accepts the favours and blows of fate with equal (!) gratitude.” (Hamlet: III,1; III,2)
What does the conductor do when he is spat in the face by a passenger who is going to miss his connecting train due to a considerable delay and is therefore freaking out? The reactions with material consciousness will be different, but spiritually speaking, it will come down to not slapping the angry person, but recognising what software has driven him to his behaviour, continuing to recognise what it is that attracts you to hit back and finally, why especially he was the subject of the attack. (This does not necessarily mean condoning the wrongdoing, but everything else does not come from me, but through me from the soul).
One course participant’s eardrum was so badly damaged by medical treatment that she became deaf in that ear. She was beside herself with horror and anger and wanted to sue the doctor treating her because she was certain that the doctor had made a mistake. I strongly advised her not to do so, 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 not stood a chance against the concentrated power of the lawyers and that the process had driven her to financial ruin.
Now she had no connection to her inner guidance and therefore only had a real choice in theory, because renouncing resistance would have meant being able to rely on her soul. So she went the way of all those who only ever fight and seek revenge because their victim consciousness covers up all their own beams (especially karmic, see chapter 10). Even more disastrous are the everyday custody battles, because not only do the two opponents poison each other’s lives, but also those of their children.
Hakuin is a fictitious counter-example; modern and concrete role models for correctly understood non-resistance include Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela. They have taken this principle to heart, which Meister Eckhart consistently expresses in this way, quoting Seneca:
“What is the best consolation in suffering …: It is this, that a man accepts all things as if he had so wished and asked for them; for you would have wished it 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)
Anyone who sits under the “umbrella of the Most High”, i.e. who has attained the awareness of his divine identity and the toothlessness of evil, has experienced and experiences on a daily basis that his conflicts are taken over and resolved by his soul. His role in this is “merely” that of an instrument that carries out the impulses of the guiding authority. If it goes into battle, this 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, non-violence. The classic example of this is Gandhi (see below): “Violence is a sin against God.” But you don’t have to be Gandhi to wage your battles against the attacks of the churches such as the Quaker George Fox or the rape of the climate or against hunger without violence and with the realisation of God’s spark even in the opponent, who in a spiritual sense “doesn’t know what he is doing.”
Inward processing and, if necessary, outward action follow the principle “Thy will be done!” When the x-ray of the tumour scares 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 ask for guidance before the second part of the meditation, the silence, which is characterised by listening: What is YOUR will for me to do or not to do? Then wait and, if necessary, act courageously after receiving the answer. Courageous because it often happens that we take paths that are out of the ordinary and are often the exact opposite of what “common sense” tells us.
Reactionlessness means that we block our negative mental barrage on the inside and do not retaliate on the outside. 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 paying back on the human level, while acting means the action inspired from within, emanating from the soul: “YOUR will be done!” or “Wu Wei.” Spiritual progress can be seen in the mastery of forbearance and steadfastness in confrontation.
Gandhi (see below) exemplified this by tolerating all violent attacks by the British on the one hand (salt march), and on the other hand by fighting consistently and relentlessly against their colonial occupation on a spiritual basis (see below), in a completely non-violent manner.
By Susant purohit – Own work, CC BY-SA
4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53566194.
Labana Satyagraha by Gandhi was a remarkable chapter in the freedom struggle with the British. Although our coasts produced abundant salt, the British prohibited its use, so that they could sell salt imported from their country. Gandhi started a massive movement to protest against this British law and violate the law, so much so that he marched to Dandi to start Labana Satyagraha. This is a 2D / 3D sculpture at the Gandhi Memorial.
It is difficult to maintain acquiescence against the fierce insistence of the animal element of self-preservation in us because we are all brought up with the principle: “Tit for tat!”
Our biological heritage tells us that we will get back at the person who hurt us. And this is how people behave. That’s why there are so many revenge films. There are categorically no films about non-resistance and non-retaliation – except at Easter, of course.
Those who seek revenge or resist any threat or injustice reverse the causes: Our karmic inheritance says that we ourselves were the cause of all the disharmony in our present life from pre-existences because – even if we haven’t currently done anything wrong – we not only have a lot to work off from previous lives, but above all we still hadn’t done anything to get out of the realm of good and evil from which we are suffering. And we got into it because of our ignorance about how our consciousness works. This ignorance leads to us experiencing a mixture of good and evil according to the composition of our consciousness and its thoughts.
Those who seek the way out of the vale of tears will look into the reason for Hakuin’s behaviour and stop trying to improve the world around them. Because there is nothing to improve in creation!
How can one claim such a thing when lack, deficit, danger, threat, misery and hardship prevail at every turn? Since everything we see before us, apart from nature, has been created by our consciousness, we can only make changes by changing our own (!) consciousness. Those who want to improve the world without even touching their own consciousness – which is the source of all these conditions – can achieve selective successes, but cannot change the overall principle of the valley of tears. The environmental activists do not want to recognise this with their sticky campaigns. On the contrary, their approach is based on a lack of awareness and only reinforces it; if they were to see the climate catastrophe as a well-meaning impulse from the universe, i.e. as the best possible of the critical states at present, and were to be guided by this very universe by means of intuition, they would actually improve the world. Just as Gandhi led 300 million Indians to freedom.
Like the environmental activists, conventional medicine, among others, is largely focused on suppressing the symptoms of disease rather than addressing its causes and their root causes. (This does not mean, however, that their medicine is wrong, because what would people, i.e. far more than 90 % of those who act purely materially, be without it. After all, medicine provides an enormous amount of relief, even if it does not contribute to spiritual change and lasting healing).
Evil is not to be fought, but to be understood. Jesus never fought anything – except in his early phase with the money changers – he only ever forgave. And in the case of illness, he said: “Get up, take up your bed and walk!” After all, he knew that illness no longer existed “under the umbrella of the Most High”, although symptoms, i.e. temptations, were not in short supply.
Those who retain their own mammalian self-preservation software: fighting, hating, striking back, defending territory, eliminating competitors, taking revenge, retaliating, etc., remain in the mode of the material world and must continue to live under the sword of Damocles of injustice, violence, fate, disappointment, misfortune, misery and hardship. The more people allow themselves to be blindly controlled by the “eye for an eye” principle, the fewer eyes there are to see through the “bloody stage”.
Not only do people constantly fight each other, they also fight all spiritual ideals much more fiercely because they would destroy the ego. An enemy is indeed an enemy for the ego, but everything divine is a mortal enemy in the truest sense of the word.
All wisdom in the whole world has only one goal, namely that this ego dies and true love prevails. Its decisive characteristic is indiscriminateness. Gandhi, for example, fought the British tyrant but did not hate him. 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 secure their self-preservation, although they can only survive if they abandon this pattern and primarily look after others instead of primarily looking after themselves – and this mostly exclusively. The Nazarene’s life served to represent the liquidation of the survival instinct – through love. His physical death on the cross refers to the death of self-preservation, the death of the transient part of human existence. For the consciousness as the carrier of the permanent parts – usually as the subconscious – reappears in the postexistences (karma principle of continuity) and is precisely the subject of the growth and maturation processes of the individual.
The point is to recognise 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 without power, like the giant who can be killed by a pebble. (The pebble symbolises that it is a weapon with a long-range effect, i.e. not a test of strength in a physical comparison, but the use of software. In Odysseus’ case, it is the arrows with which he shoots the “suitors”). So we do not enter into a clinch in the confrontation. The inner response consists of the awareness of the powerlessness of the threatening giant. If “Mr God” – as Little Anna would say – is also on the other side, what or whom should we resist?
Evil only disappears when we stop trying to get back at someone. Our zero reaction (not from A to B) includes renouncing the response “an eye for an eye” and leaving the confrontation to his soul on the basis of meditation (A to C). This is why Jesus teaches the monstrosity: “Do not resist evil!”
Our part in not reacting is considerable on the inside: we counter the constant thought attacks that want to suggest to us the necessity of (survival) struggle. The counterattacks then look like this: we charge ourselves with spiritual principles such as the powerlessness of horror images or the unity of all being, in this case that of souls, especially with “Gnothi se auton”, for which Jesus chose the term “love of enemies” in the Sermon on the Mount, i.e. the realisation that God is also in the enemy. We wait for inner impulses before or if we become active. This upward and inward movement signifies the decisive change of dimension: we tolerate or fight bravely if necessary, but then only as an instrument of the soul and never as an instrument of the ego. It doesn’t matter whether I have a raging headache, whether my rent is being increased or whether the neighbour is always too loud. We accept. We leave the sword behind because we know – and this is the decisive factor – that on the opposite side of the evil there is also God, who is waiting for our consciousness to change, or more precisely: not only waiting, but inviting us to change through the appearance of this very “enemy”. This is the leaving of the plane of matter und the ascent into the spiritual plane. The solution then comes through spiritual dialogue or gut feeling. Jewish wisdom tells us this:
“The Lord will fight for you, and you will be quiet.” (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, regardless of whether it is in the case of an unfair mark, a marital war of the roses, being caught speeding with the risk of losing your driving licence, cancer or an economic collapse:
1. the expected consequences do not materialise.
2. they occur, but are surprisingly mild, so that you can cope well with them.
3. the expected consequences are indeed disastrous, but in a short time everything can be rebuilt through fortunate circumstances and coincidences (phoenix).
What can this look like in concrete terms? Suppose I have amassed a huge mountain of debt that amounts to several years’ income. I lose my job, my relationship breaks up, I have to vacate my flat. My economic and social existence is destroyed. However, as I am aware that I was led into this disastrous situation and am being led out of it – these are learning arrangements on the way to liberation from the green world conditions – I do not react like the everyday person who panics and reacts catastrophically, from apathy to alcohol, flight, theft and robbery. Instead, I go inwards and wait trustingly for my soul to save me. Waiting involves many external temptations and inner torments of fear. But if I don’t give in, prospects suddenly open up. Helpers appear who first provide temporary accommodation, then stable transitional solutions and finally new sources of income. They are not the people who bring about the rescue, but rather the tools of the soul through which they are brought into play. (The progress of the worldly development – superficially seen by the outside world as a series of favourable coincidences – leads to all debts being settled and completely balanced out, the legal consequences being mild and the recovery being such that no one (!) is harmed. Furthermore, the new lifestyle means that the initial standard of living is significantly exceeded and harmonised to an unprecedented degree. A completely new kind of life of the phoenix has begun within the circumstances of the stage world and continues to increase internally and externally in the sense of more than sufficient livelihood, freedom from fear, sovereign self-esteem, rejuvenation and joie de vivre.
There is one major exception to the principle of non-reaction: raising children. Adolescents are dependent on feedback from their educators in order to be able to classify their behaviour and their position in the world. The first person to describe an approach to an appropriate response to the misbehaviour of children and young people was Rousseau in his pedagogical work “Emil”. This is not an examination of his entire work, but of a specific point in his teaching: using the example of a child who is difficult to educate, he describes the educator’s response to the child’s “destructiveness”. On the one hand, he should, if possible, make the punishment look like a “natural consequence (!) of the evil act” rather than a decision by the educator. Secondly – and this is the decisive factor – 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 Windowpane) Anyone who has the experience in pedagogical practice of punishing children’s or pupils’ misbehaviour on the one hand and combining this with a hug or the hint that they want to embrace the child in question after they have served their punishment and tell them that they are not angry with them despite everything, will experience miracle after miracle about the power of love.
“Satyagraha”
In all temptations, the decisive solving factor is the guidance of the “Father in me”. He is the only instance that always shows us the appropriate action in different situations. This can be consistent passivity, but also courageous, non-violent action. In this respect, non-resistance does not mean passivity, but behaviour based on non-reaction and agreement with the guidance of the soul. The life of the Nazarene is exemplary of this. The feeding of the five thousand and his behaviour in the Garden of Gethsemane are ideal examples of this. Although we are humble, we do not always and not necessarily allow people to dance around our noses. We also allow ourselves to be led into battle if our opponent does not want to let up. Only when this is the case can only be revealed out of silence. Then the attacks melt away like the morning mist under the sun’s rays.
What non-resistance means in concrete terms 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 that force with which the Indians fought there for a full eight years (1906-1914). I spoke of Satyagraha to distinguish this force from the movement that was then going on in Britain and South Africa under the name of passive resistance. The basic idea of Satyagraha is ‘adherence to truth’, that is why … I have also called it ‘the power of the soul’.”
(Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha. From the Congress Party’s report on the riots in Punjab).
Gandhi understood Jesus. Not to resist means to give up the principle of retaliation. How could Jesus have taught such a thing if he had not recognised the powerlessness of evil. However, for those who do not know this background, non-resistance is irrational, absurd and only allows the conclusion: Allow your own destruction! Or: Should I allow myself to be cheated?
Gandhi practised looking through, he also recognised God in the enemy. He knew that “everything (!) comes from God” (Jakob Böhme). He did everything to realise this insight: During his Satyagraha campaign in South Africa, the British railway workers there went on strike at the same time. This caused tremendous difficulties for the British colonial government, which led Gandhi to interrupt his movement for this period in order not to weaken the government, which would have allowed him to easily realise his political and social goals. This impressed the government so much that it finally gave in to his demands. (according to fboits-blogs)
The reaction of his opponents from the top leadership of apartheid is expressed as follows:
“I don’t love your people and I have absolutely no desire to do anything in favour of them. But what can I do? You help us in times 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 harm your enemy. You only want to win by accepting suffering, and you never overstep your self-imposed boundaries of politeness and chivalry. And that is what condemns us to utter helplessness.”
(M. K. Gandhi: My Experiments with Truth. My Life.)
Gandhi orientated himself towards the power of the soul and allowed himself to be guided by it, which is also impressively proven by other testimonies:
“I am here to serve no one but myself; to find my own self-realisation in service to this village. Man’s highest task is to visualise God, and all his political, social and religious actions must be determined by the one aim of recognising God; but I am a part of the whole, and cannot find Him apart from the rest of mankind. My countrymen are my nearest neighbours. They are so helpless, without any means or initiative, that I must endeavour to help them. However, if I were convinced that I would find “Him” in a cave in the Himalayas, I would set off there immediately. But I know that I can’t find “Him” separately from other people.”
(After: DIE ZEIT, 40/1987)
In his own way, Gandhi described the only task of man on the learning planet Earth: Gnothi se auton! He realised that he could not wait for the many millions of Indians to open up to spiritual truth. He did everything “just for himself” so that this truth could work through him as a suitable channel for the others.
His version of world improvement 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 liberated the Indians from the brutal bloodsucking regime of the British Empire. In principle, his actions were not resistance based on denial, but rather soul-driven action. Gandhi’s non-violent struggles (e.g. his fasting protests) were indeed risky external actions, but as tools of the soul and therefore non-violent, always serving the greater good and not harming the person of the enemy.
Martin Luther King’s battles were also spiritually inspired, because non-violence is a characteristic of conflict that is alien to the ego. The Gita in the second canto should also be understood in this context: There, the inner god Krishna encourages the hero, who does not want to kill his neighbours on the opposite side in the impending battle, to take up the fight (even if in this double-layered situation, the opponents primarily refer to battles of the mind).
Did Gandhi only take the path to C in order to use it as a means to an end and thus skilfully reach B? Did he want to use his inner guidance? No, he saw the situation of his people, first went to C and was then led to B. Taoist wisdom symbolises this by showing Lao Tse riding the bull without using the reins. Riding the bull means that he has tamed the animal forces and has mastery over them. In addition, not using the reins shows that he is not leading, but that he allows himself to be led.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zpzt8A9gTog/Wdzk95ShNpI/AAAAAAAAAKY/5apgfio3NqM-jUMLsPvV4-wuj0-WNAKzACLcBGAs/s1600/laotse2.png
Laozi.jpg Commons public domain
The churches have tried in various ways to circumvent or undermine the Sermon on the Mount’s content of non-resistance. For the most part, they take the position that it cannot be fulfilled and derive various “theories of limited validity” from this.
In his two-regime doctrine, Luther divided the life of the Christian into two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world: the Christian now lives in both at the same time. He should practise non-resistance towards everyone for himself. However, if he finds himself as a representative of the authorities in the fight against evil, he should nevertheless wield the sword (In: Von weltlicher Obrigkeit).
Catholics favoured the restriction to certain groups of people and wanted these elements to be limited to the clergy. (see Hilpert, K.: Zwischen Harmlosigkeit und Radikalität. On the ethical reception of the Sermon on the Mount).
Anyone who looks at the bitter battles of the churches, against literally everything that does not fit in with their doctrine, would have to ask how they can be reconciled with the principle of “do not resist evil”. For example, the constant exclusion and demarcation of denominations from one another, the interference in people’s lives right down to their intimate lives, the demonisation of sexuality, the “disposal” of hundreds of baby corpses in a rubbish pit in the horror house of the Catholic nuns in Tuam, Ireland, the cover-up of the countless cases of abuse within their own ranks, putting the protection of the organisation and the perpetrators above the protection of the thousands and thousands of raped children (Catholic dignitaries in Pennsylvania; Black Book Protestant Church), slipping from spiritual orientation into social fields with denominational thumbscrews and much more. In any case, they will not want to have anything to do with the sufferer Hakuin.
As for the characteristic of “putting perpetrator protection above victim protection”, the obvious parallel with the Dieselgate producers shows that this is not a specific characteristic of one group or another, but rather the universal ego in one guise or another. At all levels of church hierarchies, you can see what the self-preservation programme does to dignitaries.
Keep the sword sheathed
The following quote – attributed to either Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara or Bertolt Brecht – is widespread and the credo for denial, subsequent fighting and the fundamental discord among people: “He who fights may lose. He who does not fight has already lost.”
This is one of the creeds of the ego and is a slap in the face to such tolerators as Joan of Arc, Jesus, Father Kolbe and Mandela and a great error with regard to the goal of harmonious coexistence, because it is based on the principle of fighting back.
Not fighting does not mean doing nothing. On the contrary, it is a tremendous effort to refrain from and endure the “eye for an eye” reaction in the event of conflict or, if necessary, to take up the subsequent battles under the guidance of one’s soul. You don’t throw yourself at the problem solution, but at the problem solver. This is why the above quote can be put into the following form: He who fights has completely lost all spiritual references or never had them in the first place and knows nothing other than to resist evil very well.
Evil is dependent on my consciousness, a surface 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 non-violence), I am showing that what is opposing me is theatrical thunder, a temptation and/or also a check.
Not offering resistance is not first and foremost a question of action, but of inner attitude: if you do not perceive evil as evil and affirm it as a stimulus for growth and at the same time as an invitation to demonstrate your powerlessness, then you can – through active action – stand up for others and show them the path to redemption. This is what Buddha did for the people around him and Jesus did for the Jews and the Romans. These were the initial spark for the further spread of their teachings.
Gandhi did the same for the Indians as an instrument of the soul. He recognised what the practical implementation of love of enemies, acceptance and active action – but non-violent – can look like. This is not resistance in the sense of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. It makes a difference whether I try to respond to the evil neighbour’s attacks with countermeasures or whether I see the son of God in him and find a harmonious solution based on this awareness – then it doesn’t matter whether it is with him or against him. In the first case, it is ego-driven retaliation, which always leads to escalation, suffering and war and basically also backfires on me through stress and disharmony. Those who focus on retaliation only increase the suffering.
“Do not hesitate,
to fight in a just war
is the first duty of every warrior.”
(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 and 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, by the way – was Lao Tse:
“Because he [the perfected one] blends in without resistance,
he lives without enmity and resistance.”
“Because he does not resist, nothing resists him.”
(Tao Te King 8;22)
In Islamic mysticism it reads like this:
“Do not fight fate, otherwise it will fight you!”
(Rumi: Mesnevi I, 915)
In the three-dimensional world, my behaviour 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 maintenance problems. Since I remain in the material matrix of good and evil, the battle ends up either good or evil, more likely the second, because I operate with a lack-orientated consciousness.
The state of our world is the result of not tolerating, rebelling, denying and thus remaining on the material level. This psychogram of the ego is the sole cause of anger, discord, lack of understanding, aggression and all suffering in this world. This is why the Buddha admonishes the “Brahmin”, i.e. the person on the spiritual path:
“Do not strike! Do not defend yourself! Woe to him who strikes! Woe to him who defends himself!”
“Innocently bear insult and dishonour! Use forbearance 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 end just as well as badly, which applies to fights as well as to civil or criminal proceedings, rose wars, warning strikes, neighbourhood disputes, etc. In any case, fights have winners and, above all, losers and do not change the state of the world because they remain on the earthly ego level. This has remained unchanged for thousands of years. However, those who, like Luther King, lead the “just” fight against evil have an awareness of the fullness of a spiritual ideal that must be realised here and now through them. Those who fight on the ego level have an awareness of the deficit. He throws himself at symptoms and thus remains a slave to his instinct for self-preservation, which he blindly follows. The most common strategy is the pattern “attack is the best defence”. This is the exact opposite of “daily ego death.”
We are born into this world of revenge and fighting back and know no other option. Religions and churches play a significant part in this. They misappropriate the teaching of non-violence, of putting away the sword. They turn the teaching of the Gospel into its opposite. Have you ever heard of a military pastor offering his soldiers in Afghanistan, for example, to pray for the Taliban? How do they then understand the commandment “Do good to those who hate you?” A clear example of the role of the church is shown by the sermon of the Wehrmacht priest at the beginning of the film “Stalingrad”, in which he incites the soldiers against the enemy. It feels like 99% of thriller, crime and drama films are characterised by revenge and retribution. There are no non-retaliation films in which the sword is left unsheathed and forgiveness is demonstrated? Where is the counter-enlightenment of the churches here?
When action is called for, it is important not to do so because of a result, but simply to be active. Because since I have given the objective to my soul, “I” as a person do not need to worry about the result, it is that of the soul anyway. If I am advised to take a civil case to court, I go to court without worrying about winning or losing. Applied to sporting or business behaviour, it means intentionless “renunciation of work” (Gita IV, 20), i.e. acting without paying attention to the result. After all, it is the soul’s action and not “mine”. The tennis player does not play to win, but to play or to leave the game to the soul. Hermann Hesse uses the example of Siddhartha in his story of the same name in the chapter “Bei den Kindermenschen” to describe the motive of serving action instead of fixating on the result or winning.
When I am ill, I do not fight against it, because the omnipotence is already in me and because the evil, like every phenomenon, is powerless. I do not become healthy by fighting it, but by handing it over to the soul. Then I find the appropriate ways, measures and people who serve as tools to solve the problem if it does not dissolve “by itself”, i.e. through a change of consciousness, as the example of Hakuin makes clear. He knows the principle that Islamic mystics describe as follows:
“So also God afflicted Job and others, but they did not (!) ask that this divine affliction be removed from them.”
(Ibn Arabi: The Wisdom of the Prophets, Seth.)
“Bear the pain … so that you may be saved from the pains of your lower nature.”
(Rumi: Mesnevi I, 3014)