Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00176)

Oct 23 2002


Dear Friends:

Re: Are "governments essential?"

On what basis are they established?

Are we "owned" by "government ?"

Who has the right to impose on us anything ?

If we recognize and practice brotherhood the need for "politics"
disappears.

Party politics are always a compromise with verity and truth. If they
cannot he honest and sincere, then what have we to do with them? If
we are not honest and sincere, then we invite rapacious and immoral,
or even amoral, men, with sly and clever minds, to infiltrate
themselves between us and our neighbours and create even wider gaps by
emphasizing misunderstandings.

No on can ever completely, and totally, and truly represent another or
even several.

To think that humanity needs "government" is also a very fallacious
concept. -- if we do not act as selfish mad individualists, we need
not be governed by other mere men. But we do need teachers -- those
who can show us a higher course and better, more reasonable way of
living.

In final fact, everyone has to be their own governor.

But we have to re-learn the universal facts and laws that make for
healthy and sustainable relations. Those we know, but omit using, if
we do not entirely forget them. Who suffers? We do.

What are the virtues to be used? They can be summed up in a single
word: BROTHERHOOD.

Look at the multitude of law cases in every country -- almost all are
for the protection of some selfish or personal right. Most are an
effort to secure immediate redress for injustices that others impose.

If spiritual laws and rules were recognized, and, if Karma and if
Reincarnation of the SPIRITUAL EGO which all humans are at heart, were
recognized, the need for this useless trappings of "authority" would
vanish. If generosity and unselfishness prevailed, that due to each
would be granted immediately. Why is this not so ? How and who have
muddied the waters of clear thinking, so that we cannot any longer
discern immediately the "right" from the evil ?

It is only the "Lower Mind" involved in the transitory "here and now,"
that has instituted this array of dependency. And furthermore, it
DOES NOT WORK well at all.

I recognize that this is hoping for an Utopia. But there is in
Theosophy the root and logic of one. It will only come when a
sufficient number of human beings recognize, it adopt it and then
practice it, each for themselves.

Wishful thinking? Certainly. But nothing prevents us from acting in
our own lives and our own quiet way as though we had it all around us.
We need only to treat everyone else as a "brother" or a sister.

Plato about 2,500 years ago wrote his famous dialog THE REPUBLIC.
There one finds that many excellent practical precepts based on
brotherhood are displayed. When was the last time you read it ?

Best wishes,

Dallas

===============================

-----Original Message-----

From: M N O
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 10:43 PM
To
Subject: Re: Australia's karma


Hi all of you,

Yes, yes.
This old ORTHODOX doctrine of keeping religion and politics apart will
have
to vanish if this planet and its people should survive it self. Well,
I claim that.

Let us just have it one more time, so that none forget it.

The famous quote from (theosophically speaking) the Initiate Martin
Luther
King Jr.:

"A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say
of
war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of
burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with
orphans
and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of
peoples
normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields
physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be
reconciled
with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after
year to
spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift
is
approaching spiritual death.

"America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well
lead
the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic
death
wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit
of
peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing
to keep
us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we
have
fashioned it into a brotherhood."

Excerpted from "Beyond Vietnam", an address delivered on 4 April 1967
to the
Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam at Riverside Church in New
York
City. (full text)


CUT