The Key to World Peace
– by Shrila Bhakti Swarup Tirtha Maharaj
Identifying with a family, community, race, nation or religion is the breeding ground for all hatred and violence. Recognising the oneness of the spirit souls dwelling inside all living beings is the key to world peace.
This was the core message of Swami B S Tirtha during his inspiring talk at the International Conference on ‘Crossing Boundaries: Transforming Identities, Cultures and Human Relations in a Global Village’ at Davis & Elkins College, Elkins, West Virginia, USA, on 12 November 2010.
For a start, we have to know the reason for the existing disturbance, imbalance and disharmony throughout the world. Most ‘Breaking News’ on TV screens is about unpleasant happenings, unfortunate incidents, disasters and disturbing events. Human minds suffer from tension, depression, anxiety, excitement and agitation all the time.
Whether in the professional arena, or in personal life, people all over the world are tense, traumatised and struggle to cope with the demands of modern life. All of us are compelled to live a fast and furious life because it is a dog-eat-dog society everywhere today.
One has to strain to the maximum to get the best bite. It is not any particular aspect that needs rectification, the whole system is defective. Every move we make requires intelligent calculation and skillful manipulation in all our dealings and interactions. Deceit and duplicity have crept into our day-to-day behaviour. In the Darwinian language, it is the survival of the fittest.
Hence, everyone is engaged in tough competition to outclass everyone else in every walk of life. In a godless civilisation, this competition stems from envy.
Whether as an individual or collectively as a nation, we are always envious of the prosperity, possessions and prestige enjoyed by others. We cannot tolerate anybody’s progress. Enviousness is the impetus, the actual driving force, the real inspiration to achieve higher standards of perfection and to break the previous records set by others in every field of operations.
It is a simple matter of gaining an edge. A man haunted by the competitive spirit powered by envy can wreak havoc in the world. He simply wants to go all-out to establish his superiority over others. Violence, terrorism and diabolical destruction are the natural fallouts.
This envy, ably abetted by lust and greed, has robbed the entire society of peace and harmony. The lusty man always dreams of enjoying all pleasures of this world, by legitimate or illegitimate means.
Hence, he becomes greedy in his hunt for the objects of his desires. This always keeps him on tenterhooks. How can he, then, find peace? In fact, the Vedic scripture, Bhagavat Gita, calls lust, greed and envy as the three doors to hell. The source of envy is our misconception of our physical body as our only self.
This is due to the lack of spiritual awareness. It is also due to our disconnection from God, the Supreme Spiritual Being. As long as we live a life based on the idea that we are merely the physical body, nobody can have peace because our thoughts and actions will always be infected by lust, greed and envy.
In animals, there cannot be peace because their goal of life is bodily enjoyment. They know nothing beyond their physical existence. If you lock up ten dogs in a room, do you think there will be any peace? No, they will start barking at one another. But man has the ability to understand that he is actually a spiritual entity and therefore, can rise above his physical, mental and intellectual planes of existences.
Only when he realizes his true identity as a spirit soul and his eternal relationship with God, the Supreme Spirit Soul, can he experience peace and live happily here. It is the physical concept of life, the material body covering the spirit soul, the real self, that triggers the fissiparous tendencies in human beings.
This divisive nature of man is the root cause of quarrel and enmity that disturbs the peace in the society. We see divisions in geographic, economic, political, religious and other spheres of life. Hence, we are unable to forge unity which is a prerequisite for peace.
Bereft of God-consciousness and lacking in spiritual knowledge, our mistaken notion that body is the self instigates us to indulge in sinful enjoyment of our senses.
The Vedic literature informs us that there are four categories of sinful sense enjoyment: gambling, drinking, eating meat and illicit sex. As long as humans increase their appetite for such sinful pursuits, it is impossible to find peace anywhere on this earth.
We may belong to different ethnic groups, nationalities, religions and speak different languages, yet we can find the essential oneness. We can ignore the superficial differences solely on the strength of spiritual knowledge and the knowledge of our eternal relationship with God.
Confusing the physical body to be the actual self is as foolish as thinking that a motor car is the driver or an aircraft is the pilot. Actually, humans, animals, birds, trees and plants are all conscious spirit souls conditioned by physical bodies made of material elements.
Due to the illusion of this material conditioning, we do not understand this fact. So a person identifies nation or religion.
This wrong identification is the basic breeding ground for all antagonism, culminating in violence and brutality. Material advancement that we have made only offers unlimited scope and immense opportunities for gratifying our senses.
Extravagance and a lavish lifestyle arouse greed in a person to possess more and more and yet leave him dissatisfied. A greedy man can never reach a point when he says “No more”. The more one enjoys, the more his senses will demand. Thus, one can never experience peace. We should accept only the basic necessities of life.
We must learn to cater to the need of the spirit soul rather than pandering to our un-reasonable physical demands. It is like polishing the cage but denying food to the bird inside.
When a living person travels by a plane, he or she is considered as a passenger. But when the dead body of the same person is transported, it is treated as cargo by the airlines. The inference is that the spirit soul, the real living person, is the passenger and the body, mere cargo. The airlines may not have had this philosophical understanding as their basis when they formulated this policy but the obvious fact remains for all of us to ponder over.
Electric bulbs may be of different shapes and colours, but we should learn to see the commonality of electricity in them. Similarly, we must see the qualitative oneness of the spirit souls dwelling inside all the living beings.
Abjuring hatred and envy that causes violent behaviour, we must cultivate a sense of camaraderie and cooperation amongst fellow beings. It is love and affection that can bring about peace in the human society.
We are all the children of one and the same God. This understanding alone can pave the way for peaceful coexistence.