Spiritual Views On War

Spiritual people are not of one mind in their responses to war.

A close female friend and spiritually-oriented therapist wrote me in an e-mail: “I could go on forever about what is right politically. Eventually the choice is a spiritual one. I do not have the right to kill. Even if they want to kill me first. I am just spirit in body form. What I do to keep this body should not go against spirit. Too much Karma to pay. So they can kill me. I will go on to something better ... THEY WON’T.”

A male friend said, “The right to defend yourself is one of the basic human rights. If Iraq were allowed to continue to develop weapons and became a terrorist haven, within the next few years they would use those weapons on Americans on American soil. We are defending ourselves and liberating oppressed people. I see no spiritual conflict.”

Osho argues that those who are against war create another war. “... if you have observed a pacifist protest, you can see how war-like they are -- shouting, screaming, protesting ... You can see in their faces they are dangerous people. They may call themselves pacifist, but they don’t know what peace means. They are very argumentative, arrogant, ready to fight. It almost always happens that a peace protest becomes a battlefield between the police and the pacifists. The pacifist is not really the man of peace. He is against war. He is so much against war that he will be ready to go to war if that is needed. The cause changes, the war continues.”

We need men of peace, not those who are “against” war, according to Osho, because the moment you are against something there is a war going on within you. The man of peace is not a pacifist, he is simply a pool of inner silence -- he pulsates a new kind of energy into the world in a new way. “His very way of life is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches he creates more love energy.”

A majority of New Age ideas and practices in vogue today have been handed down directly from Helena Blavatsky’s “Theosophy,” which is a melding of Classical Paganism with Buddhist and Hindu thought. The result is an eclectic spiritual synthesis, which includes reincarnation and karma, astrology, divination and meditation.

Alice A. Bailey was a Theosophy teacher who left us a large library of spiritual wisdom. In her book, “The Externalization of the Hierarchy,” she claimed “right and potent action” was required to support a peaceful position. The following excerpts were written during World War II:

“All true and good people are pacifically minded and all hate war. This is a fact which the academic idealist and pacifist often forgets. Such people tell us that two wrongs do not make a right; and to meet murder with murder (which is their definition of war) is sinful; that war is evil (which no one denies) and that one must not take part in it. They contend that thinking thoughts of peace and of love can put the world straight and end the war. Such people fighting the existent fact of war, usually do little or nothing concrete to right the wrongs which are responsible for the war, and permit their defense -- personal, municipal, national and international -- to be undertake by others.”

Baily continues, “I would say to those who preach a passive attitude in the face of evil and human suffering and who endorse a pacifism which involves no risks: With what do you propose to fight the forces of aggression, of treachery, evil and destruction which are today stalking over our planet? What weapons do you bring to this combat? How will you begin to stem the onslaught and arrest the whirlwind? Will you use prayers for peace, and then patiently wait for the forces of good to fight your battle and God to do the work? I tell you that your prayers and your wishes are unavailing when divorced from right and potent action. Your prayers and petitions may reach the throne of God, symbolically speaking, but then the reply comes forth: The forces of Light will strengthen your arms and turn the tide in your favor if you stand up and fight for what you desire. Who will arrest the progress of aggressive selfishness if the men and women of goodwill rest back upon their idealism and do naught that is practical to justify their hope or aid in the materialization of the desired idea. “

After spending a day studying spiritual writings on war, I turned to Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.

The First Truth says that life is suffering. We live with continual neediness accompanied by measures of pain, sadness, sickness and inevitable old age and death. That’s just what is. It’s the price of receiving a human body.

The Second Truth says we suffer because we live in a constant state of desire. We desire to exist so we develop ways to survive. We also desire pleasure and nonexistence which manifests as losing ourselves in sex, food, entertainment and adventure.

The Third Truth says we have the ability to train our mind to generate levels of satisfaction and freedom. I read this as self-actualized awareness and meditation/self-hypnosis. The ability to be within the calm center of the cyclone, thus rising above the first and second truths.

The Fourth Truth says we must live a life in which we do not mentally or physically cause harm to others. This is the only way to keep your mind undisturbed by remorse, guilt and anger. Through application of the third and fourth truths we can rise above suffering.

Without worrying about being spiritual correct, what is your response to these different ideas? What does your heart say?

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