Self interests divide people. National interests divide nations. Both self and nation are fictions. Fictions have become realities we desperately cling to. Clinging breeds violence. Violence creates suffering. Suffering perpetuates suffering, even as violence begets violence. Why? Self interests. National interests.
When such self and national interests predominate, divisions into native and foreign ensue. Nativism abhors the foreigner. Tragically, the truth is that there is no foreigner here on this planet. Earth is our common home. Every part of this earth is our dwelling place.
This reminds me of something I just read from a biography of my tantric guru Shrii Shrii Anandamurti (1921-1990) whom we endearingly call Baba. The book “Anandamurti: The Jamalpur Years” just arrived yesterday. I quote a salient passage which is a conversation between Baba and a newly minted senior acharya (avadhuta) who was about to be sent out to promulgate Ananda Marga spirituality (prachar):
“Where do you want to be sent for prachar?” Baba asked.
“Do you mean foreign countries, Baba?” Ramasvarath asked, aware of Baba’s desire to see Ananda Marga spread throughout the world.
“What do you mean by ‘foreign’? Tell me what the word ‘foreign’ means.” Ramasvarath kept silent. “It means ‘what is not your own.’ If you have a wound filled with pus, then the doctor calls the pus ‘foreign matter,’ a substance that should not remain inside the body. Not a single person in this world is foreign. For an avadhuta, the entire creation is your own. There is no country that is not your country. Now tell me, which country is not your country?”
Baba was evincing a non-divided mind, a universal consciousness not contorted by the limiting sentiments and divisive swirls of a dualistic mind. The cosmicity of Baba’s mind and consciousness is quite unmatched by any other human guru in the relative dimension. He not only expounds but walks the talk in concrete long-term initiatives continuing to this day.
From my doctoral study and personal experience, I’ve come to see Baba as an integral visionary, spiritual genius, social theorist and reformer, profound poet and songwriter, polymath, and all-round Renaissance man stemming from the majority world (India). He is light-years ahead of facsimiles from the minority world (America) who largely copy ideas first propounded in Asia but which the world knew little about. This shows the power of western hegemony in our neo-colonialist world.
In any case, Baba’s vision is a far cry from the current rigmarole of tit-for-tat violence between American-led NATO and resurgent Russia, squashing Ukraine in the oppressed middle with backlash spiralling of living costs for the rest of the world. EU nations are already feeling the heat of inflation, without the gas they desperately need. This sort of violence will continue so long as human consciousness remains developmentally stunted in the divisive conflict of infantile narcissism.
