Theos-Talk Archives (February 2003 Message tt00296)

WAR AND THE NEW HUMANITY

Meher Baba


As in all great critical periods of human history, humanity is 
now going through the agonizing travail of spiritual rebirth. 
Great forces of destruction are afoot and seem to be dominant 
at the moment, but constructive and creative forces that will 
redeem humanity are also being released through several 
channels. 

Although the working of these forces of light is chiefly silent, 
they are eventually bound to bring about those transformations 
that will make the further spiritual advance of humanity safe and 
steady. It is all a part of the divine plan, which is to give to the 
hungry and weary world a fresh dispensation of the eternal and 
only Truth.

At present the urgent problem facing humanity is to devise 
ways and means of eliminating competition, conflict, and rivalry 
in all the subtle and gross forms that they assume in the 
various spheres of life. 

Military wars are, of course, the most obvious sources of chaos 
and destruction. However, wars in themselves do not constitute 
the central problem for humanity but are rather the external 
symptoms of something graver at their root. 

Wars and the suffering they bring cannot be completely avoided 
by mere propaganda against war; if they are to disappear from 
human history, it will be necessary to tackle their root cause. 

Even when military wars are not being waged, individuals or 
groups of individuals are constantly engaged in economic or 
some other subtle form of warfare. Military wars, with all the 
cruelty they involve, arise only when these underlying causes 
are aggravated.

The cause of the chaos that precipitates itself in wars is that 
most persons are in the grip of egoism and selfish 
considerations, and they express their egoism and self-interest 
individually as well as collectively. This is the life of illusory 
values in which man is caught. 

To face the truth is to realize that life is one, in and through its 
manifold manifestations. To have this understanding is to forget 
the limiting self in the realization of the unity of life.

With the dawn of true understanding, the problem of wars would 
immediately disappear. Wars have to be so clearly seen as 
both unnecessary and unreasonable that the immediate problem 
would not be how to stop wars but to wage them spiritually 
against the attitude of mind responsible for such a cruel and 
painful state of things.

In the light of the truth of the unity of all life, cooperative and 
harmonious action becomes natural and inevitable. Hence, the 
chief task before those who are deeply concerned with the 
rebuilding of humanity is to do their utmost to dispel the 
spiritual ignorance that envelops humanity.

Wars do not arise merely to secure material adjustment. They 
are often the product of uncritical identification with narrow 
interests, which through association come to be included in 
that part of the world regarded as "mine." 


DISCOURSES, pp. 3-4, copyright 2000 Avatar Meher Baba
Perpetual Public Charitable Trust