by Dieter Duhm
No solutions can arise in this way. Only those who are autonomous, free from the occupation of their emotional body, can find the higher level of order where the solutions lie.
Do not surrender to your emotional body; keep a clear mind; do not act from reactive emotion! This is basic advice for modern peace workers. The emotional body is part of our psychological anatomy; we cannot and we should not seek to remove it. Deep feelings such as love, compassion, and grief originate here. We must not suppress these feelings, on the contrary – we should open our hearts again. The pressing emotions such as anger, envy, or fear, also reside in the emotional body and will of course take over unless we have learned to stop them. Learning to control the tyranny of such reactivity, becoming the master in one’s own house – this is what is meant by liberation from the emotional body.
It is a matter of developing “power.” The teaching in all authentic spiritual traditions, from Jesus Christ to Prentice Mulford, Jacques Lusseyran to Peace Pilgrim, is about developing power. In order to cope with the challenges of our time, in order to be able to live a free life, we need the power to step out of emotional reflexes and follow new thoughts. He who faces a difficult task recognizes the imperative of establishing this power within him. People that want to take on a leading position in our turbulent times must be able to liberate themselves from their own emotional body and to make their decisions on the basis of higher wisdom – the wisdom of that universal intelligence which always guides us when we open ourselves for it.
This is a fundamental thought in the revolutionary healing theory: liberate yourself from the preoccupation with emotions and neediness, so you can become inwardly free for the spiritual powers of the universe to work through you. This is the source of happiness for the artist, the lover, and those who work for transformation. It is the joyful spirit that will unite the new communities.
Emotion and Mind
Translator's Note: Mind in this context refers to the German "Geist," which is more comprehensive than "mind" in English. It encompasses the mental and intellectual faculties as well as those of spirit and soul. Mind in that sense is the interface between intellect, spirit and soul and that which connects all of them. Mind is similarly used in Buddhist teachings.
Human autonomy begins with independent thinking. To be able to think independently we need to detach from our emotional body. So long as we are entangled with our emotions we cannot stand outside of events, and are therefore unable to think clearly. In this identified state we are part of the problem, not the solution. It is the mind that frees us from this prison. As soon as we mentally break through the state of identification, the process of insight and liberation begins. In order to be able to solve a problem we need a mental and spiritual point of view outside of the problem. We are in fact mentally and spiritually configured to take a standpoint outside of the problem. The mind is an “organ of insight.” The less the forces of the emotional body besiege us, the more freely this organ can operate. It is the organ of the universal spirit or, as Teilhard de Chardin termed it, the “inner base station of God” in the human being.2 As soon as we leave the fog of identification, we become the thinking organ and eye of evolution. We can recognize what evolution is doing and what it needs. We ourselves are agents of evolution. Humanity however has undertaken many things to eliminate this capacity. Independent thinking has long been punishable by death. In former times those who deviated from the doctrine of the church were executed, like Giordano Bruno, the sixteenth century Dominican monk who was a pioneering philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, and who was burned at the stake. The fight against mind and spirit continues to this day. Many people in the alternative movement believed they should not follow the head, but the belly. In reality the opposite is the case. The emotional body sits in the belly; it follows the mind; the mind regulates the belly. We often have belly pain because the head is thinking wrongly. When we think in the right way, the belly calms. It is always mind and spirit that steer our organism including our emotions, both our well-being and depression. Mind and spirit therefore play a crucial role in the healing of the individual, as in the healing of the entire human race. Conscious or subconscious thoughts are the ones that steer our emotions. Thinking and theorizing holds a key function in the emancipation of society. The young revolutionaries of our time need a mental and spiritual education through which they become familiar with the faculties of thinking. The crucial mechanism of healing is put into motion when we start to think “properly” – a congruence of thinking and reality. Thinking resides on a high, emotion-free level on which mind and spirit calm because they harmonize with life. This allows the belly to rejoice as well as the heart. If we think this to the end we come to the commitment to “think in a way that love arises in our hearts.”
Dealing with Supposed Enemies
Another criterion of successful peace work is stepping away from any kind of hostile thinking. A community that requires enemy stereotypes in order to maintain its inner cohesion still contains remnants of fascism. When a person is able to state sincerely and clearly, “I have no more enemies,” then he is in a good state for peace work. It is a goal of modern character work to reach the psychological, mental, and spiritual maturity where all enemy stereotypes dissolve. Peace workers following the objective ethics do not fit into the structures of conventional society; they sometimes live in a hostile world where they are denounced and persecuted. This is why it is especially important for them to find a firm inner basis from which they can freely act without getting entangled in blind reactions.
In order to take a clear position toward opponents, all inner stirrings of fear and hostility need to disappear, for all “opponents” once lay in diapers, all have cried for their mothers, all have wept in heartache, all are afraid of condemnation, and enjoy friendliness. “There are no enemies; there are only potential friends,” writes Sabine Lichtenfels.3 Friendliness is a high virtue in dealing with opponents. We should also consider that each of today’s opponents could have been a friend yesterday. Each of our friends today could have been an opponent yesterday. And each of today’s opponents can be a friend tomorrow. Moreover, could it not be that you yourself have once been someone you would consider an enemy today? It is a high standard to see enemies as potential friends. Maintaining solidarity and authority in the tension of antagonism is part of the mental training for the new revolutionaries.
The distinction between friend and enemy is often rooted in our emotional body and is therefore not subject to serious discernment. To be free of fear of any opponent, one must be sure where one stands and have no skeletons in the closet. When we are sure of what we do and have neither fear nor bad conscience then the hostile world from which we needed to flee transforms into a world full of potential friends or colleagues.
We often judge a person simply because we are afraid of him or because we feel “seen through” by him. Most of what we criticize in others is that which we unconsciously reject or hate in ourselves. This is why “stop judging yourself” is an important guideline in dealing with alleged enemies. The more self-acceptance we are able to develop, the less we will judge others and the less we will think within this friend-enemy schema. There is no such distinct schema in the world; there is only a continuum of varying roles between the two. Tat tvam asi. People who redeem themselves from judgment will no longer judge others either, and thereby a human bridge forms that can allow miracles to happen. Jesus said, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.”4 “Do not judge!” is the key phrase that will eventually also free us from our own fear. Where there is no more fear, there also exists no more enmity.
We all come from an endless series of perpetration and victimhood. The perpetrators became victims and vice versa; this is how it has gone on for thousands of years. We can only end this fatal chain by unconditionally stepping out of the system of revenge. This is of course difficult when we think of the mass murderers of our time, of the crimes in Chechnya, Syria, or Gaz
a – or when we, like our friends in San José de Apartadó (Colombia), stand face to face with the killers of our relatives. It does, however, become easier to step out of revenge when we look into the killers’ biographies. Alice Miller has provided moving examples of the childhoods of people that committed horrific crimes later in life. My intention is not to therapeutically justify or excuse their actions, but to lead to a radical insight. If we could see how Hitler’s father, Alois, beat his mother in front of his young eyes and continued by beating him, we would probably pause for a moment and briefly allow another feeling to rise, toward even one of the most horrible human beings of the last century.
We know how it is to be publically slandered and consequently to be thrown into powerless rage, which no longer allows for sensible action. At that time we did not yet know that there are mental and spiritual guidelines for such situations. Never act out of reactive emotions, for you only weaken yourself!
Behind all things there exists a higher guidance. Transform anger into power. Act in a way that peace arises within you! Hold your reaction until you have a peaceful attitude, thus the power to guide your next action will be with you. If the power is with you, hatred is extinguished. Maybe there is even a streak of love toward those that have afflicted you. Do not force yourself into any love however; do not violate your heart; simply renounce hatred!
Some years ago Sabine Lichtenfels led a peace pilgrimage in Israel-Palestine during which she visited an Israeli settlement in the occupied territories. The participants thereby were given an opportunity to transform their fear and hatred into compassion and reconciliation. She has described the astonishing events of this pilgrimage in her book, Grace: Pilgrimage for a Future without War. She writes…
I practiced and learned to see the Christ in every human being wherever I was and throughout the pilgrimage... I look for the core of the human being behind all the roles and masks of alienation. It is often difficult to be in this kind of presence... GRACE demands self-knowledge. And self-knowledge is not always easy. To discover flaws in others is much more pleasant and easy than to unmask oneself. Everything within me wants to cry out in anger and outrage when I sit opposite a young officer and listen to his excited explanations about the ideological values of his country. All of a sudden it occurs to me that he could just as well be my son and immediately I begin to see the human being behind his role.5
WORKS CITED
1. Jacques Lusseyran, Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writings of Jacques Lusseyran (New York: Parabola Books, 1999). Back to reading
2. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959). Back to reading
3. Sabine Lichtenfels, Sources of Love and Peace (Belzig: Verlag Meiga, 2004). Back to reading
4. Matthew 7:1, Holy Bible (New American Standard Bible). Back to reading
5. Sabine Lichtenfels, Grace: Pilgrimage for a Future without War (Wiesenburg: Verlag Meiga, 2007). Back to reading
Chapter 22: What is Peace?
Back to the Table of Contents
War is a serious disease of Homo sapiens – a real mental illness. When governments promote things that are designated for killing people, we can see that society is suffering from an inconceivable illness of consciousness. It has lost its moral competence. To the aphorism “it has always been this way,” we ask, “is it wrong to correct a mistake because it has ‘always’ been this way?” War definitely has no place in the image of the future world.
We are living in a morphogenetic field of war. The power that lies in weaponry is tremendous. Many young men are fascinated by it. The peace society needs to develop a mighty alternative to counter the insanity of weaponry. What is this alternative? It is a new movement that spreads a potent morphogenetic field of an unconditional stand for all of life on Earth.
Peace is the power of life free from fear, connected to human solidarity. Peace is more than the opposite of war; peace is a quality of life that, during the past few thousand years, could not be manifested in a lasting way because the intra-human conditions were lacking. People fought for peace while filled with the war that had been carved into their hearts through a harsh history. Sabine Licthenfels writes…
Human beings have been praying for peace for millennia and they have fought for peace, but in their inner consciousness they have forgotten what peace is. They no longer know its inner laws. Human beings lack an encompassing inner vision of peace. A vision is an objective reality that can be seen and felt from within. It is inherent as a possibility in evolution and is waiting to be seen and accessed by human beings again.1
This means that the vision for peace needs to be “recalled” from the cosmic database. It already exists there and it is our honorable task to cooperate with the universe and manifest this vision. It exists as an entelechy in the plan of creation and in the genetic information at the core of our cells. We can physically feel whether a vision is right or wrong. If we act in accordance with true peace a healing power instantaneously arises in our organism. Peace Pilgrim, who walked with an unshakable commitment to ending war said, “There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you are doing are right for you. That criterion is: have they brought you inner peace? If they have not, there is something wrong with them – so keep trying.”2
It is easy to read this sentence if one does not take it seriously. It contains probably the deepest answer to the question of how we ourselves can generate peace – by acting in a way that it arises within us! If we try to follow this advice for only one day we will soon recognize that we are constantly making mistakes. This discovery can change one’s life. We ourselves generate turbulence through the thoughts we are thinking, through speaking inconsiderate words, and through our unrestrained reactions to inconvenient situations. However we are “normally” not sufficiently awake to recognize this inner war. We do not live in a state of witnessing ourselves. But this is exactly what we need to do in order to understand the dimension of Peace Pilgrim’s words. What is peace? Peace is the life of human beings that have entered into this witnessing state. They will no longer hate anyone. Peace is the unconditional, mutual acceptance of people that trust one another because they have perceived one another.
In this context, we gain a new understanding of the notion that we can only generate as much peace on the outside as we have reached within ourselves. Of course there are external economic and political factors that are beyond our reach and which continue to generate collective war. I have already discussed how global peace cannot be established so long as the economic and political conditions, which constantly produce war, persist. However, in order to be able to effectively counter the external conflicts, we need the inner power of peace as described by Peace Pilgrim. Only if we are equipped with this power will we be able, step-by-step, to pierce the outer structures and change the entire system. The way is from inside out.
Whether we are able and willing to flip our inner switch toward peace is of crucial therapeutic and social significance. The power of our vision depends on the extent to which peace has already manifested within us. We can only believe in outer peace if we have established a firm peace power within. One needs to be very strong in order to act in ways that generate internal peace within conflict situations. This requires complete mastery over our reactive emotions. In order to fulfill Peace Pilgrim’s criterion we need to shift from ego-centeredness to service for a higher purpose. If I work only for myself I permit myself small inner imprecisions. If I work for a greater purpose, a professionalism develops within me; I become focused and precise because my purpose demands it. This psychological system change protects us from the attacks of our own emotional body. Aside from this, it is advisable to prevent avoidable mistakes and to be guided by truth, for inner war is often connected to untruth and to the fear of being found out. Only freedom from a bad conscience enables us to be liberated from the latent fear of being found out and judged. Those who are f
ree of a bad conscience do not fear external judgment. It is often very simple details on the smallest scale that determine the large-scale situation.
Lasting peace can only arise in a community of people that have completely overcome the old concept of attack and defense through no longer being anchored in their ego, but on a higher level of order. This change is key to the current transformation. If a group succeeds in building a coherent morphogenetic field of peace then a strong psychological power grows, for true peace is connected with the powers of the Sacred Matrix. From such a connection, we can send healing powers to endangered projects in the crisis areas of our planet. When peace projects are connected to the Sacred Matrix, peace workers are under great protection; they can “no longer be hurt psychologically.”3
In summer 2014, we experienced how a new war was created in Israel-Palestine. What happened there was like a last unconscious rise of the old field of war. The spirit of revenge dominated the field there. It was the archetype of the devil, which heated up the same psychological structures of hatred and murderousness on both sides – in the Israeli Knesset and in Hamas. Left unchecked these structures operated all the way to the (secretly desired) genocide. Bombing Gaza was an act of human cruelty that could only cause tears, pain, and despair in all open hearts. We see the same in Syria and in the “Islamic State.” They do everything to stir up the emotional body; they are extremists that carry their will for evil, for destruction, and revenge to the very end.
What can we do? What can the new peace groups do? It is difficult to give a definitive answer. As a first action in the name of peace, people simply call out to each other to no longer participate, to no longer abide war service, to no longer follow the slogans of the warring parties, but to use their communication systems to wake as many people as possible from the war hypnosis. This first step requires courage and determination. It is easier to take it when the next step can already be seen – building new centers on behalf of Terra Nova. The groups that come together in the Middle East should know that they are not alone if they decide for a path of radical peace work. They are part of the newly developing planetary community. They should get in touch with Tamera and the other Terra Nova School groups.