War on Iraq -- GREEN EVENTS

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Date Posted: 03:52:17 10/06/02 Sun
Author: Graham John
Subject: War on Iraq

I received the following short articles from Timothy Freke, author of "The Jesus Mysteries". I hope that it will stimulate some thought and response to the Green Events web site:

Saddam And The Man
Who Poked Out His Own Eyes

Imagine a man so angry with himself that he poked out his right eye with his own left hand. How would it feel to watch such a disturbing display? Now imagine the man berating his left-hand as evil, pronouncing it unfit to be part of his body, and threatening to take revenge by poking out his left eye with his right-hand. Wouldn�t you be moved with horror and compassion were you to witness such grotesque madness? I ask you to imagine this bizarre scenario because it may help you picture how I feel when I watch the West preparing to make war on Iraq.
I write books on mystical spirituality and would (for want of a better word) call myself a �mystic�. Mysticism is sometimes known as the �perennial philosophy� because it is so old, and because, despite huge changes in human culture, it refuses to go away. Yet the mystical perspective on life rarely gets an airing in the media, perhaps because it tends to whisper rather than shout. In this article I want to make some small redress by considering the mystical perspective on the unfolding hostilities between the West and the Islamic world.
How we make moral choices depends how we view ourselves and the world we inhabit. The �common sense� view is that we are separate individuals living in a physical world, who have gathered together over time in larger and larger tribes to serve our self interest. Conflicts are between �us� and �them�. We do whatever is best for �us�. We are the goodies. They are the baddies. (Except, of course, for them it�s the other way around.) That�s not how things look to me. From the mystical perspective everything is One. The universe is the expression of one Big Mind, which is coming to know itself through every conscious being. The evolution of human culture is a journey towards greater consciousness and unity, because essentially we are all One Consciousness. Mystics throughout history testify that once you have experienced the reality of this fundamental Oneness for yourself, things never seem the same again.
To know we are essentially One is to be moved with an unconditional and universal love which unites everybody and everything in its warm embrace. The division of �us and them� suddenly seems utter foolishness and the unnecessary cause of untold suffering. From the common sense perspective what matters in a war is that we win and they lose. From the mystical perspective, we can only lose a war, because we are also the enemy. War is a terrible psychosis in our collective consciousness. A sort of communal schizophrenia or split personality leading to the abhorrent self-mutilation imagined earlier. To repress a �rogue state� such as Iraq with military violence is the equivalent of repressing a troublesome neurosis. And if psychology has taught us anything, it is that repression doesn�t work. As with an individual neurosis, the way to sort the situation out is not through anger and repression, but through uncompromising honesty, loving forgiveness and genuine understanding.
From the mystical perspective, the first step to healing the present crisis would be to truthfully acknowledge how we got ourselves into this crazy situation. We in the West need to be big enough to understand our so-called enemy�s point of view. We need to seek out and humbly acknowledge everything we have done to divide them from us. We have then to make amends for our own failings, whilst forgiving our adversaries. We have to trust, even where trust has been betrayed. And love even where love has been rejected. We need to refuse to play the game of winners and losers, and make it clear that we can only win together.
Mystics have been saying outrageous things like this for millennia. Some, such as the great Mahatma Gandhi, have made a real impact on the world. But most have been dismissed as na�ve and sentimental. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. To believe you can overcome a neurosis through force rather than understanding is na�ve. Repression may work in the short-term, but in the long term it leads to greater illness. War, likewise, may work in the short-term, but in the long-term there is the very real danger that it simply pushes the problem deeper, so that new conflicts erupt later down the road for our children to deal with. War is not a resolution. It is passing the buck.

Religion is the Devil�s greatest achievement

It is no accident that the Christian West finds itself in conflict once again with its old rival Islam. It set out centuries ago to settle this problem in the crusades. Now President Bush wants a new crusade. Another war to end all war. In Jesus and the Lost Goddess, (a book I co-authored with Peter Gandy ), we wrote: �Religion is the Devil�s greatest achievement�. This is deliberately provocative, of course, but the point needs to be strongly made. In our book we reject fundamentalist religion as the antithesis of mysticism, because it divides �us� against �them�, �ins� against �outs�, �the saved� against �the damned�. And in so doing it is the cause of untold suffering. Look around the world and where there is division the diabolical power of religion is usually at work. With a fundamentalist Christian US president fighting fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, who are also at war with fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Hindus, I feel that this is becoming obvious to more and more people.
Despite the frightening power of US Christian fundamentalism, the West can be proud of taking great strides beyond divisive forms of religion in the last few hundred years. This revolution in consciousness has made western secular culture, despite its many problems, the leading edge of the evolution of consciousness at the present time. A few hundred years ago, before the Renaissance, it was the Islamic world which was carrying the torch for greater consciousness, whilst the West languished in the appropriately named Dark Age, dominated by narrow-minded, small-hearted Christian authoritarianism.
What we hate in Islamic culture - for example the brutal way Islamic law treats women - reflects back to us our own past, which we would prefer to forget. It was not long ago that we burned thousands of women as witches. It is pointless to deny that fundamentalist Islamic culture is more primitive than modern secular western culture. But if we are to point out the backwardness of Islamic fundamentalism we must also acknowledge how recently we have ourselves grown out of such barbarism. And how much farther we have yet to go to build a truly compassionate society. If we do this, rather than lording our military strength over weaker countries, we can use this conflict as an opportunity to become more civilised and less barbaric ourselves. We don�t stone adulterous women any more and neither should we beat our enemies into submission.
Last autumn I was touring the USA promoting Jesus and the Goddess. Everywhere I went people wanted to know what I thought about Islam and what we should do after 9/11. Jesus and the Goddess is a study of the mystical spirituality of the original Christians, so my response to these questions was to fantasise about what would happen if George Bush addressed the world in the true spirit of Christianity. What if he had said something like this:

�The American people are hurt and shocked by these terrible events. But as a culture rooted in the Christian tradition, it is in such dark times that we must draw on our deepest wisdom, which teaches us to have faith in the power of forgiveness. In The New Testament Jesus declares "You have heard it said �an eye for an eye� but I say �love your enemies�". Only love can heal hate. We will, therefore, be doing all we can to acknowledge and make amends for anything we have done to create this situation. In this way we hope to prove beyond doubt that we are not the enemy of anyone.�

What would happen, I wonder, if a US president were to respond in this way? The world would changed forever. That�s what. We would have turned a monumental corner in the evolution of consciousness.
And so here we are a year later facing more war and suffering. What should we do? Is Saddam the problem and war the answer? Or is division the problem and love the answer? Not waging war to remove such a malevolent dictator as Saddam will most likely lead to more suffering for the Iraqi people and probably others. That can not be ignored. But invading Iraq will definitely lead to suffering for the Iraqi people and most likely others. It will fan the fires of Islamic hatred of the West. It will add yet more bricks to the wall of misunderstanding that divides us. Whether we go to war or not we are taking a risk that could lead to disaster. So let�s take a risk for something really worth while. Let�s take the risk of peace and friendship rather than the risk of war and division. Let�s dare to love our enemies. The alternative is to blind ourselves with the barbaric old logic of �an eye for an eye�.

Timothy Freke is the author of over 20 other books on world mysticism, including the international bestseller The Jesus Mysteries: Was The Original Jesus a Pagan God? ( co-author Peter Gandy/ USA pub Harmony / UK Pub. Thorsons) which was a Daily Telegraph �Book of the Year�. His latest book Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians ( co-author Peter Gandy / USA Pub. Harmony / UK Pub. Thorsons titled Jesus and the Goddess) is out in paperback this October. For more information see his website: www.jesusmysteries.demon.co.uk

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