Spirituality in Politics — Can We Create a Unified World Society?
This is the fourth and final article in my current series. In March I participated in a Zoom talk/conversation on the theme of creating a spiritually oriented political system for the West. The articles are transcripts of my four contributions to the conversation. Part 1 was the introduction, outlining what I think is necessary at this time in the West. Part 2 suggested some ideas for an education system based on spiritual ideas. In part 3 I discussed how to revive the ancient Mystery traditions by instituting a state-controlled programme of psychedelics for psychotherapeutic use.
The conversation was with Tim Wyatt of the Leeds branch of the Theosophical Society in England. In part 4 I outlined the difficulties in trying to achieve the first of the society’s founding principles, which is to seek to form a universal brotherhood among all people, regardless of race, creed, or nationality. The transcript follows here.
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How do we achieve a universal brotherhood and sisterhood? How do we make people feel more like a citizen of the planet, rather than a citizen of just one nation?
Before I discuss that, I’m going to indulge in a little pessimism, and suggest that what we are proposing would be very difficult, if not impossible. The obstacles are enormous. Let’s have a look at what we are battling against.
Politics in modern times is not supposed to incorporate any form of religion. Alistair Campbell during the Tony Blair government famously said “We don’t do God”. In the USA the constitution separates politics from religion, but it’s said that you cannot become President unless you declare belief in God. However, religion as practised in the USA is on the whole not something we would want to copy. France is becoming increasingly secular, and bans Muslim women from wearing the hijab and burquas.
It is clear therefore that in modern times spiritual or religious beliefs are meant to be private and have no role in politics.
Would the financial markets be willing to contemplate such a possibility? They are famously interested in stability, and tend to panic. They may well have a complete lack of confidence and, given the already vast national debt, they would have the possibility of bankrupting the country.
We would probably have to battle against globalist organisations, much of academia, physicalist science, and possibly the press and media, which seem to have a great hold over the popular consciousness.
Then there is the Civil Service who are charged with the task of implementing government policy.
From a religious point of view we would undoubtedly be opposed by the Church of England and the Catholic Church. There would also be resistance from atheists and humanists.
It would therefore be a massive struggle to achieve a spiritual society. Any manifesto for such a society might merely be a fantasy.
We also have to take into account current and historical realities in politics.
In modern times many people feel threatened by immigration, which they perceive as a move towards the loss of national identity, and may be simply pure racism. Also, when voters become dissatisfied and disillusioned with traditional politics, for unclear reasons they tend to turn towards the right wing — nationalist, populist parties and figures; they don’t on the whole seek to overthrow the established status quo and start afresh. The leaders of such parties usually deny being racist, but they probably have racist members and voters.
All this goes against the Theosophical Society’s ideal goal.
We see examples of this drift to the right currently in Italy, Germany, France, the USA, even in England with the growing popularity of the Reform Party. All these examples are taking place in democratic countries and, as far as I’m aware, none of these parties are advocating violence. That has not always been the case, of course, for historically we have had the even more unpleasant examples of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and more recently Argentina and Chile. There was also a military dictatorship for a period in Greece, and an attempted military coup in Spain, and there is currently a military government in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).
Communist governments are also extremely authoritarian and, of course, atheistic. Examples would be Stalin, Mao, and the former East Germany. Movements which promise to ‘liberate the proletariat’ end up persecuting and murdering their own people, just like the fascist and military coups. It seems that the thing governments and establishments are most afraid of is their own people, since they are obviously the biggest threat to their power. That is one of the reasons why we are subjected to mass surveillance.
If all this accurately describes the current state of politics and recent history, how are we going to achieve the realisation of the TS’s first founding principle. What are the spiritual challenges to these trends?
We obviously have a great need for spiritual activists, spiritual warriors. In particular, we have to get the young on our side. To be optimistic, we can assume that, if such a new world is meant to be created, then souls are currently incarnating who are ready for and would welcome participating in such a development.
As an aside, it seems that Tim and I are increasingly singing from the same hymn sheet. I had already made my notes for the talk today. Then only last week he published an article entitled Weapons of the Spiritual Warrior. Here’s a quote: “Determination, energy and courage are also the warrior’s key tools. Equally important are open-mindedness and free-thinking… Innovation, exploration and non-conformity also form a crucial part of the battle plan to preserve and expand each individual’s spiritual independence and interconnectedness”. This is exactly the type of person my manifesto for education is trying to produce.
Do we need to create a mass movement, create a single worldview to which everyone can subscribe? In that case the Perennial Philosophy would be a suitable candidate. One major thing that needs to happen is that everyone has to stop thinking that their particular religion is better than everyone else’s.
On the immigration question, perhaps we need to strengthen each person’s sense of their own identity, so that they feel more comfortable in their own skin, and therefore less threatened by different others. That is the goal of my suggestions for psychological health and a new education system.
Very important in this debate is the concept of the holon, as formulated by Arthur Koestler, a highly significant writer from the 20th century.
By holon he meant something that is a whole in and of itself, as well as simultaneously being a part of a larger whole. Thus a holon can be considered a subsystem within a larger hierarchical system.
Consider a human being. We are made up of various organs: heart, liver, kidney, brain, and so on. Each of these exists in its own right and is complete in itself, yet would be pointless if it existed in isolation. They become meaningful only as part of a greater whole, a functioning human being.
Each of these organs is itself composed of smaller holons, many cells. These exist independently as separate entities, yet again are meaningless unless understood as part of a greater whole. Does a liver cell, doing its job perfectly, know that it is part of a liver? Is the liver aware that it is part of a human being? Probably not.
All this is relevant to my political question because the majority of humans, so it seems, are completely unaware that they are holons, and therefore part of a greater organism, whatever we want to call that. Our everyday consciousness is completely unaware of the activity of all the cells in the various organs of our body. Our brains are doing extraordinary things without our being aware of any of it. We are therefore unaware that we are made up of many billions of holons. Also, as I said, we are on the whole unaware that we are part of a greater whole, and that every other human is another holon within the same system or organism, which we might call the planetary organism, Gaia if you will.
With all this in mind, we can find a compromise solution to the issue mentioned above. Each nation can and should maintain its sovereignty and therefore its unique identity, and resist the trend towards globalisation and One World Government, unless of course that is a spiritual One World Government. It can perceive itself as one holon within the greater system of the planet, in Tim’s words “a living, breathing, conscious entity of which we’re all vibrant, active components”. That should hopefully resolve some peoples’ concerns about loss of national identity.
In this context, we have found a necessary balance between the individual and the collective. Also, these individual nations can live in peace with and cooperate with each other.
I’ve always assumed that what is required is a bottom-up mass movement of the general population of the world. However, I’ll finish by quoting Tim from an article of his called Imagining a New World, which he says is “a call to action”:
“We need new ideas, new thoughts and new intentions for this new world… For any of this to succeed we have to achieve a critical mass so that these new ideas can explode into the world with the power of a split atom. Doesn’t this mean that the majority of humanity have to first embrace these ideas themselves?
“Thankfully, this isn’t the case. Had it been so, then the ideas of a few brave (usually persecuted) individuals down the ages would never have taken hold. Initially, at least, change emerges from individuals and small groups. It takes only a surprisingly small proportion of any population to effect real and immediate change either locally or globally. It’s always been that way. This is the power of occult focus. This is the way a vanguard of humanity imagines a new world”.
That’s all that I’m going to say today. Hopefully I’ve done a bit more than just scratch the surface. I’ll now leave it to Tim to elaborate on what I’ve just quoted, and offer his own thoughts and plans, if he so chooses.
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