The State of the Planet
Results from the State of the Soul
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Many worry about the danger of a third world war. In fact, it has started already and takes place as a battle of minds.
The WW-III now raging is a long-standing, undeclared conflict, different from the previous ones. It is the most intelligent of wars, being largely subtle; it is the most stupid of them, for it is unnecessary. It does not take place on the physical realm: its main battlefield is located in the souls.
There is no need therefore for it to provoke the destruction of present civilization, if love of life duly wins the day on human consciousness.
In any sort of conflict, victory and defeat start in one’s thoughts. According to Sun Tzu, the “Moral Law” or the will to win is of the essence. He wrote that “the Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness”.[1]
The best war is the war one does not have to fight physically, as Sun Tzu explains:
“To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.” [2]
The most effective among Eastern martial arts were developed on the basis of the same principle of “minds first”.
True, the world conflict we are now living includes physical military positions and preparations around the globe. Genocidal actions and intentions are visible on the material plane. Yet in the game of chess, as in strategy, a threat is often worse than its actual fulfilment, and the present world map of nuclear weapons is an insane web of deadly threats and counter-threats. Nuclear proliferation, the greatest danger to mankind, starts in the minds of statesmen, and feeds on the naiveté of millions of citizens of good will.
The war is unfolding fundamentally as a battle of imagination. Ideas precede outward facts, and right now WW-III is a struggle for defining our collective ideas about the course of mankind in the present century. It constitutes an updated, planetary, multilevel version of WW-II.
On one side we can see those who preserve ethics. They keep respect for Life and for the moral principle of self-restraint. On the other side, we observe those who worship destruction. They can’t have deep respect for themselves, and ignore the value of moderation. There are subtle forms of boycott against life. Adoring money and machines, it must be said, is an indirect way of fighting the energy of the soul and paves the way to various kinds of disaster.
The battle between the soul and the not-soul rages in the minds of individuals and in the ethos of local communities. In the Middle East and around the globe, no province or country is outside of it. No one is entirely away from such war. In everyone’s mind, there is a love of life and another feeling that boycotts that love.
The fake religiosity that glorifies hatred feeds on anti-Semitism and on the love of material power. The illusion that money and social position can produce happiness stimulates the causes of violence, physical and psychological. Other socially established forms of falsehood have the same effect.
Each citizen must win his own microcosmic battle and start helping others in their healing process. One who is severe enough with himself can avoid self-delusion and unmask the collective adoration of appearances.
Life has its own ways of disrupting the false description of the world according to which “sincerity is impossible” and “hypocrisy constitutes the law”. The friends of truth do not need to be many, and Maimonides wrote about the importance of independent thinking.
“When I have a difficult subject before me”, he said, “when I find the road narrow and can see no other way of teaching a well-established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools – I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude”. [3]
Facing Facts In Correct Ways
It is wrong to look at Karma, or life-situations, as something unchangeable. Karma is plastic in its interaction with us. Its practical meaning and results depend on the point of view from which it is experienced and looked upon.
WW-III is a war for the dominating viewpoints in our culture. The defeat is inevitable for those who look at life with the lens of selfishness, or believe it is naïve to be sincere.
Soul-less individuals are sadly unintelligent: they must not guide mankind. Honest persons have to battle for the right to be truthful, which the average liars usually attack. Balanced individuals promote in their own inner world that which is wise, and reject the elements that are hostile to wisdom.
This world conflict is a struggle for understanding, a war of principles. The victory of the soul starts everywhere and unfolds in countless places a million times. It occurs whenever one citizen gets rid of “automatic beliefs”, abandons unexamined points of view and rejects the habit of hatred or despondency. It emerges each time someone makes a severe examination of his own opinions and chooses self-responsible thinking, leaving aside ideas transmitted in sub-conscious ways.
It is the spiritual duty of citizens to listen to the sacred peace of their own souls: the small voice of the silence heals human pain. The higher levels of soundlessness speak of the eternal balance uniting all things.
Nothing can be higher than truth and truthfulness.
No human-made weapon can confront the Law of Laws.
Everything is in unity in our planet, and generosity flows on the decisive realms of its life. The degree of honesty in the hearts of human beings is the decisive factor regarding their future. In chapter 18 of Genesis, we see that a few Just men would have been enough to avoid a geological catastrophe. The same fundamental idea is taught in Taoist classics.[4] The tenet is easy to find in the teachings of Christianity, Hinduism and in the classical theosophy of Helena Blavatsky.
Do we have that small, correct number of Just men by now? That is one question to face. It is an issue to work on.
Regarding the life of the planet, there are three silently interconnected factors, whose interaction is taught by different cultural traditions and shown by science and Sociology:
1) The amount of ethics and wisdom in the souls of people;
2) The geological or ecological lifecycles of the planet; and
3) The well-being of mankind; the legitimacy and destiny of its civilizations.
Raja Yoga and modern theosophy are not alone in saying that the state of the world results from the state of the soul. The Jewish Pirke Avoth affirms:
“By three things does the world endure: by truth, justice, and peace.” [5]
For quite some time now, the noiseless presence of good-willing souls among us has been invisibly restraining the third world war and keeping it away from getting undue physical proportions.
Such influence is capable of helping close the door of unnecessary destruction, if the madness of nuclear weapons proliferation is stopped in time.
Preserving mankind is no extraordinary attempt. The effort unfolds age after age and must be intensified on some occasions. Each time success takes place, it occurs first within, then in the outer world. It emerges on the visible scenarios of life through the re-establishment of Ethics and Justice. Firmness and moderation are always welcome to the process.
NOTES:
[1] “The Art of War”, Sun Tzu, edited and with a Foreword by James Clavell, Dell Publishing Group, copyright 1983, 84 pp., see p. 9.
[2] “The Art of War”, edited by James Clavell, Dell Publishing Group, p. 15.
[3] “The Guide for the Perplexed”, Moses Maimonides, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 414 pp., see p. 09.
[4] See for instance chapters 15, 19, 136 and 178, among others, at “Wen-tzu”, translated from the Chinese by Thomas Cleary, Shambhala Editions.
[5] “Ethics from Sinai”, Irving M. Bunim, Philipp Feldheim, Inc., the house of the Jewish book, New York, edition in three volumes, copyright 1964. See volume I, page 106, Perek I, Mishnah 18.
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The above text was first published in February 2017 in our blog at “The Times of Israel”.
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On avoiding the danger of nuclear proliferation, see in our associated websites the article “Old Prophecies and Atomic War”.
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