Posts Tagged ‘Satyagraha’
“Gandhi the Man”
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“My life is my message.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“My life is my message.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart,
cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart,
cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist and Confucian.” ….. “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist and Confucian.” ….. “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi ~ October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948
Introduction to “Gandhi the Man”
Dear Friends,
Since my midlife awakening, my life has unfolded in previously imaginable ways, like a spiritual mystery story. Instead of a “who done it?” mystery it has been an ongoing “who am I?” mystery.
The following memoirs chapter is titled “Gandhi the Man” because that is also the title of a wonderful Gandhi biography by Eknath Easwaran which significantly furthered my still unfolding spiritual mystery story.
The importance for me of that Gandhi biography can be best understood in context of my recently posted 9/11 tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and from review of three prior memoirs chapters about my introduction to Hindu teachings and to Mahatma Gandhi.
So for your convenience I’ll summarize those prior chapters in this Introduction, but respectfully suggest that if interested you read them separately.
1) Silva Mind Control
At a Silva Mind Control workshop Mahatma Gandhi became my first known inner spiritual guide, when he appeared telepathically to answer questions and counsel me long after his 1948 assassination. Because he was quite famous, I clearly recognized him wearing a white Indian dhoti. However I then knew very little about Gandhi’s life and story, and he had appeared only after I asked the universe to send my most appropriate inner guide. So I soon wondered why the universe had chosen Gandhi to counsel me.
2) Why Be Here Now?
After Silva Mind Control, I was guided to read an extraordinary book called “Be Here Now” which told how Harvard professor Richard Alpert had become Ram Dass, a Western teacher of Eastern wisdom, after meeting his Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba. The book also included suggestions for Eastern spiritual practices, like repeating (as a mantra) “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama…”, an important Hindu name for God. That suggestion soon manifested in my life, in an amazingly unprecedented, way as my “who am I” spiritual mystery story enfolded.
3) “Be Here Now”, “Rama”, and Rainbow Synchronicity
After taking depositions in Hawaii, I stayed for weekend relaxing on a hotel beach, and hiking nearby. On a Friday afternoon I decided to briefly hike (without a backpack) in a mountainous and jungle-like Hawaiian state park across from my hotel. While hiking I lost sight of all trails and became fearful of being lost, hungry and chilled throughout the night.
Then for the first time in my life, I spontaneously began, calling out loud “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama…” – fearfully invoking a Divine solution to my plight. And soon I experienced an “Aha moment” suddenly revealing that a nearby meandering mountain stream was flowing down and out of the jungle park. So I walked downstream in it, and kept repeating “Rama”, “Rama”, “Rama” until I was safely back in my hotel.
There I felt extraordinarily peaceful, but very “strange”. In this strange state, I gazed into a large dressing room mirror and beheld in amazement my face and head enveloped in a beautiful multi-colored aura, like those depicted on ancient religious icons. Virtually thoughtless, I then sat for hours intently gazing in wonder at my mirrored auric image, before going to bed.
On awakening Saturday morning, as I immediately recalled this wondrous experience, there ensued a confusing inner dialogue between the “voice in my head” and my thought-free intuition. Whenever my heart was uplifted by recalling that beautiful experience, the ‘voice’ told me that I’d been hallucinating. So, that morning I went out to the beach in a state of confusion.
It was a beautiful calm and sunny day with a few white wispy clouds in the sky. But my mind was not calm. As I sat in the sand, I kept wondering whether or not I’d really seen that beautiful multi-colored aura.
Finally I intuitively resolved my inner debate, and thought: “Yes, it definitely was a ‘real’ aura, but I’m not sure I remember all its beautiful colors. What were they?”
Whereupon, I looked up and beheld a lovely rainbow, with the very same colors I’d seen in the aura. While I’d been lost in thought, a couple of dark clouds had appeared with a quickly passing light tropical shower, leaving in its wake the fleeting rainbow. As a lawyer, I took the sudden appearance of the rainbow as Divine “corroboration” of my rainbow aura experience.
The rainbow’s unexpected appearance, was one of innumerable continuing synchronicities which have blessed and guided my inner transformation process as clues for my ever unfolding spiritual mystery story, which I will continue sharing with you in the following “Gandhi the Man” chapter.
“Gandhi the Man”
After my synchronistic “Rama” rainbow experience in Hawaii, I felt an inner affinity with “Rama” as a divine name, but didn’t yet adopt a practice of regularly repeating it as a mantra. However, I became intrigued by the powerful potentiality of that practice by a new spiritual friend.
Soon after discovering the Rama mantra in “Be Here Now” and then spontaneously reciting it in Hawaii, I synchronistically met in California an American woman named “Veda Rama”, originally from Boston. She had become a spiritual devotee of Ram Dass in New England (when he was writing “Be Here Now”), and had followed him to the New Mexico Lama Foundation, where she helped to artistically produce and distribute the first hand-assembled and hand-bound editions of that wonderful book. While in New Mexico, she had received the spiritual name “Veda Rama” (meaning “truth of God”).
After meeting Veda Rama I introduced her to my beloved Guruji, Shri Dhyanyogi. He later initiated her as “Ram Dassi” – the feminine equivalent of Ram Dass (meaning “servant of God”).
She became – and remains – a very dear spiritual friend, with whom I’ve shared countless synchronicity experiences. Those experiences have included my story of how Mahatma Gandhi appeared and counseled me at Silva Mind Control, as my first inner guide – so that I’d become quite curious about Gandhi’s life history. And soon after hearing my Gandhi story, she gave me a beautiful pictorial Gandhi biography titled “Gandhi the Man” by Eknath Easwaran, as a birthday gift.
From reading that biography I learned that Gandhi was a timid and fearful child. So in his early years Gandhi’s beloved nurse Rambha taught him to repeat the name“Rama” whenever he felt afraid. Later throughout his adult life, reciting the Rama mantra became Gandhi’s most important spiritual practice, along with regularly reading the Bhagavad Gita.
Thus, as an adult Gandhi often walked constantly repeating his Rama mantra in rhythm with his steps; and he wrote extensively about the importance of repeating the name “Rama” (the Ramanama).:
“When a child, my nurse taught me to repeat Ramanama whenever I felt afraid or miserable, and it has been second nature with me with growing knowledge and advancing years. I may even say that the Word is in my heart, if not actually on my lips, all the twenty-four hours. It has been my saviour and I am ever stayed on it.” “The mantram becomes one’s staff of life and carries one through every ordeal….” “Each repetition … has a new meaning, each repetition carries you nearer and nearer to God.”
“When a child, my nurse taught me to repeat Ramanama whenever I felt afraid or miserable, and it has been second nature with me with growing knowledge and advancing years. I may even say that the Word is in my heart, if not actually on my lips, all the twenty-four hours. It has been my saviour and I am ever stayed on it.” “The mantram becomes one’s staff of life and carries one through every ordeal….” “Each repetition … has a new meaning, each repetition carries you nearer and nearer to God.”
Even as Gandhi fell to an assassin’s pistol fired point-blank into his heart, in fearless forgiveness he uttered nothing but “Rama, Rama …” his last words from the eternal depths of his heart.
Because he walked his talk authentically, peacefully, and spiritually, his words and life have been exceptionally inspiring and powerful. Gandhi changed the world by being the non-violent change he wanted see, particularly the end of the British Raj in India, followed by Indian independence and democracy.
But few people realize that Gandhi’s legacy includes not just his world renowned campaign for Indian independence, but that he began and named his unprecedented civil rights movement with a brilliantly waged struggle against institutionalized apartheid racism in South Africa.
Gandhi was educated in England as a Common Law barrister, and was not trained in Indian law. So to engage in legal practice he moved from India to South Africa, where for over twenty years he practiced as an idealistic and extraordinarily effective common law civil rights attorney before returning to India, where he became that nation’s most beloved modern hero, and one of the most inspiring and positively influential human beings in all history.
From his deep and extraordinary spiritual aspiration and determination to realize Truth as God or Rama, Gandhi changed himself to change the world. He transformed from beginning life as a timid child, to become a fearlessly determined civil rights advocate relentlessly pursuing nonviolent secular and spiritual Truth.
Gandhi’s history in South Africa is described in my recently posted 9/11 tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. It tells the inspiring story of how on September 11, 1906, a young lawyer named Mohandas K. Gandhi organized and addressed an anti-apartheid meeting of 3,000 people crowded into the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Members of the Indian community – both Moslem and Hindu – had gathered there in opposition to a proposed apartheid law that would require Indians to register, be finger-printed and carry special identity cards at all times, and which would further deprive them of civil liberties for failure to comply with the egregiously immoral law.
Gandhi argued that the law be resisted, but warned that resisters realize that they could be jailed, fined, beaten and even killed. The assembly not only declared its opposition to the legislation; its members raised their right hands and swore, with God as their witness, that they would not submit to such an unjust law. Following their September 11th meeting and pledge, Indians refused to register and began burning their ID cards at mass rallies and protests. Thus began the original 9/11 non-violence movement that would literally change the world as the most powerful positive tool for salutary social change.
The September 11th Johannesburg event began a powerful anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Thereafter, in 1908 Gandhi carefully coined a new word – “satyagraha” – to describe the movement’s ground-breaking inter-religious spiritual mission.
Satyagraha is Sanskrit neologism combining “satya” (Truth) with “agraha” (holding firmly). But because Satyagraha is rooted in Vedic spiritual wisdom it is extremely difficult to translate into English. It roughly means the non-violent and resolute pursuit of “Truth” as equated with “God”.
Thus, Gandhi’s satyagraha movement was fundamentally spiritual, not just political. It encompassed relentless pursuit of spiritual Truth through the political practice of active, faith-based civil disobedience. It was steadfastly dedicated to asserting and living Divine Truth by nonviolently and respectfully resisting institutional immorality and injustice to achieve societal and political justice.
Beyond mere “pacifism” or “passive resistance”, it encompassed an actively militant, yet resolutely non-violent faith-based assertion of one’s moral beliefs, with open defiance of unjust laws or decrees, and with steadfast remembrance that Divinity [viz. “Truth”] is immanent in all creation, including one’s oppressors. In addition to practicing satyagraha and ahimsa, Gandhi, was a vegetarian, who lived a non-materialistic, simple life, and practiced aparigraha, non-attachment to possessions.
The more I learned about Gandhi the more he inspired me. I identified with him as a civil rights advocate and as a spiritual truth-seeker. Also his non-attachment to possessions and vegetarianism, was significant for me since I, too, had become a vegetarian living with increasing non-attachment to worldly possessions. And in 1978 my beloved Guruji initiated me with a “Rama” mantra.
Thus, Gandhi’s inner appearance at Silva Mind Control, to counsel me was absolutely appropriate. Gandhiji became and (after over forty years) remains one the few most important humans who have inspired my still unfolding spiritual mystery story – a transformation and transmutation from “Ron” to “Ram”. Even now, I frequently and tearfully call that Divine name.
So, as inspired by Gandhi, “Rama” remains – enshrined in my heart as a constant impetus to my ever evolving spiritual mystery story.
Once when asked about his teachings, Gandhi aptly replied:
“My life is my message.”
Upon deeply realizing and experiencing the universal wisdom of that statement, I was inspired to compose this sutra/poem:
On the Earth branch
of the great Cosmic University,
We are all students
and we are all teachers.
We are all learning love.
And, as Gandhi observed,
our lives are our teachings.
So, as we live
and as we learn,
we each may teach –
peace, love, and compassion.
And so it shall be!
Invocation
May Mahatma Gandhi’s exemplary life,
ever inspire and morally motivate countless humans
to live life peacefully and compassionately
in eternal harmony with Nature and Divinity –
as LOVE!
Shri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram!
Namasté!
Ron Rattner
Honoring the Relentless Pursuit of Truth:
Gandhi’s Original 9/11 Truth Movement
and Dr. King’s Message of World Peace Thru Nonviolence and Love
“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this
ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”
~ Albert Einstein (after Gandhi’s 1948 assassination)
“Many ancient Indian masters have preached nonviolence as a philosophy. That was a more spiritual understanding of it. Mahatma Gandhi, in this twentieth century, produced a very sophisticated approach because he implemented that very noble philosophy of nonviolence in modern politics, and he succeeded. That is a very great thing. It has represented an evolutionary leap in political consciousness, his experimentation with truth.”
~ H.H. Dalai Lama, from “The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness”
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart,
cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi … the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”
~ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Introduction
Dear Friends,
Today’s posting (on the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC), is dedicated to advancing worldwide social justice by inspiring nonviolent civil disobedience to extraordinarily irrational, immoral, and tyrannical edicts of current world “leaders”. The posting highlights histories of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the most prominent and inspiring 20th century spiritual practitioners of nonviolent resistance to those in power.
And it explains how the Gandhian nonviolent Satyagraha truth movement has brought humankind “an evolutionary leap in political consciousness” beyond centuries of spiritual philosophy preached by Indian mystic masters. (See above Dalai Lama quotation)
Background
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, many people regard September 11 as a day that will live in infamy – a day of treachery, often cited (disingenuously or duplicitously) as pretext for an Orwellian era of endless war, violence and dystopian deprivations of civil liberties.
(See PBS Documentary 9/11-Explosive Evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l-8PFk8j5I)
But, paradoxically, few realize that on a century earlier September 11th Mahatma Gandhi launched his extraordinary “satyagraha” peace and justice movement through which Gandhi, and countless others inspired by him, have accomplished much good in the world by non-violently resisting and transforming widespread social injustice and oppression. As recognized by the Dalai Lama’s above quotation, Gandhi’s nonviolent truth movement represented “an evolutionary leap in political consciousness”.
Of countless humans inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s life and words, most prominent and influential has been Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who honored Gandhi as a spiritual “guiding light …. of nonviolent social change”, and who in 1959 journeyed to India to study Gandhian methods, saying:
“To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim.”
During and since Mahatma Gandhi’s extraordinary lifetime, he has been venerated worldwide as one of the greatest spiritual and political leaders not just of our time, but of all times. Because he walked his talk authentically, peacefully, and spiritually, his words and life have been exceptionally inspiring and powerful.
Mahatma Gandhi changed the world by being the non-violent change he wanted see, particularly the end of the British Raj in India, followed by Indian independence and democracy. But few people realize that Gandhi’s legacy includes not just his campaign for Indian independence, but that it began with his brilliantly waged struggle against institutionalized apartheid racism in South Africa, with ground-breaking inter-religious dialogue and cooperation.
Gandhi’s Original 9/11 Truth Movement
On September 11, 1906, a young lawyer named Mohandas K. Gandhi organized and addressed a meeting of 3,000 people crowded into the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa. Members of the Indian community – both Moslem and Hindu – had gathered there in opposition to a proposed law that would require Indians to register, be finger-printed and carry special identity cards at all times, and which would further deprive them of civil liberties for failure to comply with the egregiously immoral law.
Gandhi argued that the law be resisted, but warned that resisters realize that they could be jailed, fined, beaten and even killed. The assembly not only declared its opposition to the legislation; its members raised their right hands and swore, with God as their witness, that they would not submit to such an unjust law.
Gandhi’s legendary talk at the Empire Theater meeting is dramatically portrayed by academy award winning actor Ben Kingsley in this excerpt from the epic film “Gandhi”:
The next day after the anti-apartheid meeting, the Empire Theater was mysteriously destroyed by fire.
Following their September 11th meeting and pledge, Indians refused to register and began burning their ID cards at mass rallies and protests. Thus began the original 9/11 non-violence movement that would literally change the world as the most powerful positive tool for salutary social change.
Satyagraha
The September 11th Johannesburg event began a powerful anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Thereafter, in 1908 Gandhi carefully coined a new word – “satyagraha” – to describe the movement.
Satyagraha is Sanskrit neologism combining “satya” (Truth) with “agraha” (holding firmly). But because Satyagraha is rooted in Vedic spiritual wisdom it is extremely difficult to translate into English.
Gandhi was a spiritual man in search of God, who equated “Truth” with “God”. He grew up inculcated as a Hindu, and in South Africa called the Bhagavad Gita his “spiritual reference book”. However, he acknowledged that he had been influenced by the teachings of Jesus, the writings of Tolstoy, and Thoreau’s famous essay, “Civil Disobedience.”
Thus, Gandhi’s satyagraha movement was fundamentally spiritual, not just political. It encompassed relentless pursuit of spiritual Truth through the political practice of active, faith-based civil disobedience. It was steadfastly dedicated to asserting and living Divine Truth by nonviolently and respectfully resisting institutional injustice to achieve societal and political justice. Beyond mere “pacifism” or “passive resistance”, it encompassed an actively militant, yet resolutely non-violent faith-based assertion of one’s moral beliefs, with open defiance of unjust laws or decrees.
The movement began with the above recounted defiance of South African apartheid decrees, and burning of racially discriminatory ID cards. Later in India it actively defied unjust British Raj laws, like laws forbidding Indians to make their own salt, and requiring export of all Indian grown cotton to be fabricated in England. Gandhi’s “satyagraha” movement disobeyed those laws with the famous “salt march” and by not purchasing British produced fabrics, while fabricating their cotton with spinning wheels. And Gandhi actively opposed the Indian “untouchable” caste system, condoned by the Bhagavad Gita, as well as by immorally exploitive societal customs.
Gandhi often and broadly spoke about “satyagraha”. Here are a few of his apt quotations:
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves
as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say,
the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase
“passive resistance”, in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing
we often avoided it and used instead the word “satyagraha” itself.
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“The word satya (Truth) is derived from Sat which means ‘being.’ Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. That is why Sat or Truth is perhaps the most important name of God, In fact it is more correct to say that Truth is God than to say God is truth. On deeper thinking, however it will be realized that Sat or Satya is the only correct and fully sign fact name for God.”
“Devotion to this Truth is the sole justification for our existence. All our activities should be centered in Truth. Truth should be the very breath of our life. When once this stage in the pilgrim’s progress is reached, all other rules of correct living will come without effort, and obedience to them will be instinctive. But without Truth it is impossible to observe any principles or rules in life.”
“[W]hat may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person.
But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort,
it will be realized that what appear to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree.
Does not God himself appear to different individuals in different aspects?
Yet we know that He is one. But Truth is the right designation of God.
Hence there is nothing wrong in every man following Truth according to his lights.
Indeed it is his duty to do so.
Then if there is a mistake on the part of any one so following Truth it will be automatically set right.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi – Mohandas Gandhi on the Meaning of Truth 1/1/1927
“Satyagraha means resisting untruth by truthful means”
“It is a religious duty to fight untruth.
If one remains steadfast in it in a spirit
of dedication, it always brings success.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi – 3/30/1911 Cape Town speech
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.” “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
”Non-violence is the greatest force man has been endowed with.
Truth is the only goal he has. For God is none other than Truth.
But Truth cannot be, never will be, reached except through non-violence…
That which distinguishes man from all other animals is his capacity to be non-violent.
And he fulfills his mission only to the extent that he is non-violent and no more.“
~ Mahatma Gandhi
Satyagraha Conclusion
Thus the “satyagraha” movement has been a militant, but resolutely non-violent active assertion of fundamental human morality, which has brought this world an unprecedented “evolutionary leap in political consciousness”.
Thereby Mohandas K. Gandhi has become one of the most inspiring and positively influential human beings in our current history.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr’s, Message of World Peace Through Love and Gandhian Nonviolence
Like Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King, a Christian minister, dedicated his life to nonviolent religious spirituality, not just to political social justice.
In 1964 (at age 35) Dr. King became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his nonviolent social activism in opposing racial segregation, poverty, and war. As a dedicated Christian disciple of Jesus, Dr. King
“found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi … the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”
Dr. King’s life paralleled Gandhi’s life. Each began as an outspoken advocate of inter-racial equality and social justice in racially segregated societies. Gradually their nonviolent missions expanded to encompass universal freedom, peace and social justice for everyone everywhere.
On humbly accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, as ‘trustee’ for countless unknown others, Dr. King cited Gandhi’s success in India as a key precedent encouraging nonviolent civil rights activism in the USA, saying:
“This [nonviolent] approach to the problem of racial injustice …. was used in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire and free his people from the political domination and economic exploitation inflicted upon them for centuries.”
And King described how (because of technological advances which imminently threaten nuclear/ecological catastrophe) the survival of humanity depends upon our nonviolently solving “the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war” by “living in harmony” with “all-embracing and unconditional love for all men”.
Eloquently he explained that
“[Love is] that force which all of the great religions [Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist] have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. . . . the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate Reality.”
Whereupon he recited this wisdom passage from the First Epistle of St John:
“Let us love one another: for love is of God;
and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God.
He that loves not, knows not God; for God is love.
If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His
love is perfected in us.” [1 John 4:7-8; 12 ]”
Like Gandhi and Jesus – who also ‘heretically’ preached nonviolent love and forgiveness – King was martyred at (age 39), when his ‘heretic’ truth telling and expanding prophetic powers became intolerable barriers to the US Empire’s military/industrial war plans for Viet Nam and beyond.
Conclusion and Dedication
Today’s posting is deeply dedicated to inspiring a new era of global social justice through peaceful noncooperation and resistance to pervasive “new normal” era political and institutional social injustice, and its insane desecration of Nature on our precious planet.
May the prophetic seeds of political and spiritual Truth first sewn by Gandhi on September 11, 1906, and nurtured worldwide by Dr. King, at long last soon end needless suffering, and allow an unprecedented new era of global peace and harmony, beyond fear and hostility.
And may humankind now heed Dr. King’s crucial warnings that we must “learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or perish together as fools”; that our survival depends upon “living in harmony” with “all-embracing and unconditional love for all men [and women]”.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (full audio+text)
Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!
“Truth is a pathless land.”
~ J.Krishnamurti
“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life”
~ John 14:6
“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”
~ Buddha
Kandinsky, “Yellow, Red, Blue”
Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!
Truth is pathless.
Truth is mindless.
Truth is wordless.
Truth is timeless.
Truth is everywhere and nowhere –
NOW.
To know truth,
be Truth.
To know life,
be Life.
To know the way,
be the Way.
NOW!
Ron’s audio recitation of “Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!”.
Ron’s 2018 comments about “Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!”.
Dear Friends,
Knowingly or unknowingly, everyone seeks spiritual Truth – realization that we are “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.”
But in this troubled and tumultuous Trump era, rather than seeking eternal Truth, many people are impelled to pursue worldly political activities aimed at addressing current global insanity fomented by psychopathic oligopolist world “leaders”.
Concerned citizens worldwide justifiably perceive urgent need to avert apparently imminent nuclear or ecologic catastrophe, and other insane threats to earth life as we have known it.
But rather than deterring our pursuit of spiritual Truth, our determined nonviolent political actions to avert worldwide disaster can help further spiritual evolution. We need only follow the visionary truth-seeking path of Mahatma Gandhi, whose extraordinary life and nonviolence legacy have immeasurably blessed our world and inspired countless others.
Gandhi was a deeply spiritual man who often equated ”Truth” with “God” and who was influenced by teachings of Jesus, writings of Tolstoy, and Thoreau’s famous essay, “Civil Disobedience”. So he called his nonviolence movement (which began on September 11, 1906) “satyagraha”, a Sanskrit neologism he coined meaning the “relentless pursuit of Truth”.
Thus, Gandhi’s satyagraha movement was not just political, but encompassed relentless pursuit of spiritual Truth through the practice of active, faith-based nonviolence.
To help remind us that the deep meaning of Humankind’s search for Truth, includes political pursuit of peace and justice as well as the spiritual search for God or Self, I have posted the foregoing “Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW! ” poem and quotations from Jesus, Buddha and J. Krishnamurti.
Today’s poem was composed many years ago during an extended post-retirement reclusive period when I could not begin to imagine the extraordinary dystopian insanity of the current Trump era. Yet, I am now sharing it because its perennial Truth message remains especially relevant in these crazy times.
May it help bring us at long last to an era of worldwide peace and goodwill, as we realize that we are the Way and the Truth and the Life – not in the sky, but in the sole Sacred Heart of Humanity.
And may abiding Gandhian political/spiritual “satyagraha” impel current world political “leaders” to join democratically with their peace seeking citizens everywhere in nonviolent relentless pursuit of Truth, ending insane violence, injustice and oppression now rife on our precious planet.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
