An Aplogetic Tractate on Violence
Always has popular spirituality (note 1) been at odds with violence. God is seen as good and non violent. Thus violence must be the result of an evil outside force. That life is not always that simple has also been noticed since humans start to think. In the Bible it is Job who tries to explain the goodness of God in relation to his unfortunate circumstance. In the Baghavatgita It is the God Krishna and the human Arjuna who discuss the morality of a coming war in which a lot of decent people will die. And mind you it is the good God that promotes the war! Now that we have a far reaching scope as well as in time as in depth of nature, we have come to see that violence is fact of life and actually is one of the driving forces of life and the ‘good’ creation.
On Holons and Devas
The best way to come at it, is first to explain the idea of a holon (note 2) or system. Every creature can be seen as a system of internal organs (other systems) that are in exchange with each other, say through the blood and nervous systems. The creature is in turn in exchange with its environment, say through the senses and through the mouth (eating) and through the anus (secreting). On a larger scale than the creature we start with, there is an organic ecology, in which our creature is just a part. If it was a deer we are looking at, than it forms together with grass, trees, wolfs and everything else in the forest, a more or less closed ecological system that in turn is in exchange with other ecological systems. Each ecological system can be defined by its subsystems (creatures) and its exchange with other ecological systems. The largest scale on the planet is the planet itself, of which we won’t have a problem, that the planet herself is a creature of a larger solar system. I have limited myself here to a description of physical bodies and physical exchange, but this is without any problem extended to entities of the unseen world. Actually that is where everything starts. Entities within entities within entities. Angels, fairies, gnomes, cats, dogs, everything is integrated forming ecologies in ecologies. From the Hindu world the term deva (note 3) is generally accepted. I have learned and experienced that every organ is governed by a deva, the deva of the human complex could be called the soul. But a town or a company has a deva as well. A group of people with a certain cohesion like a family or tribe or nation can be seen as part of a singular ‘deva’ (note 4). An ecological system like a forest or valley is governed by large devas which govern that area.
Towards a definition of violence
Let us considder some examples of violence:
- violence of war; one nation penetrates another nation to destroy or to make it subject.
- An infection is the violent occupation of tissue and resources by a bacteria in a host-organic tissue.
- Healing is the violent destruction of bacteria or viruses that do not belong in a certain organism.
- A rape is a penetration by a man of a women without consent.
- Killing a fly is making a violent end to a creature.
- A tsunami is a watersystem that violently penetrates a land system, destroying large parts of a local ecology.
- The attack and eating of a zebra by a lion is violent.
- The destruction of tropical forest by humans is violent, unless humans have permission from the local forest deva to destroy.
From the examples we can see that violence is not something to be rejected. It is part of life on earth. We can’t even say that it is undesirable. It is a necessity. A definition of violence could be:
Definition: to penetrate or conquer without consent a system by another system, in which one or more functions of the first system is made subject, or destroyed or hindered.
This doesn’t make violence less awful if it happens to you as an individual. And through the ability of empathy, we can feel the pain of violence happening to other creatures. But the more a system is unfamiliar with oneself, the lesser is the ability to feel the pain of another creature. The pain of a tropical forest under destruction hardly any human will feel. A man will have more difficulty in understanding rape than a woman will. Until the 18th century white people hardly considered negro’s to be human beings, so it was not to difficult to keep them like cattle. The local Spanish in South America were not to keen on Christianising the local Indians and slaves, because that would make them more like them, which would mean that their economic oppression would become inhumane (note 5).
A Spiritual Significance of Violence
We have to accept that violence is a natural feature and one of the ways of creation.
Violence is one of the ways through which evolution takes place. Why is it that generally spirituality is associated with non-violence?
Every creature will strive to its own paradise. This counts for the frog, the bacteria and a forest.
Each has its own interest and will compete in this.
We as humans have the extraordinary ability to have empathy with all and everything and potentially we could see the state of salvation of every creature.
This might be a daring statement, but isn’t it true that there are people who care for the ‘rain-forest’ the ‘seals’,
the toads, when they want to mate in spring and start to migrate. There must be something in us that can be in resonance with many devas.
Let’s call it the God-like spirit, which encompasses all and could be in resonance with all. It is here where compassion is entering the argument.
The loss of one is an advantage for the other. But compassion will see the possibility of salvation of both.
Compassion makes one rise above a certain system to become aware of ever greater systems.
Both Jesus and Buddha mentioned compassion as the key to spiritual salvation.
Through empathy and compassion one can rise above personal and local affairs to universal affairs.
A local act of violence between two systems might be an act of grace seen from a greater system. Isn’t struggle the way of development and learning?
I have come to see that spirituality is to be in peace with the divine origin of oneself,
in other words not to be in war with the inner-self. And as, as we have to believe, the human spirit is God like,
technically same same with the largest all encompassing system in the universe, all local inter-system violence is solved in the peace of God.
I personally have had some religious experiences. They are difficult to describe in words, but the melt down of local struggle into a consciousness of a larger or the largest? domain is maybe a description that fits.
In understanding violence and accepting its inevitability, I don’t want to approve violence just like that. Violence is a result of conflicting interests of different systems; each has its own place somewhere in this creation and each will find a destiny somewhere. Violence has its reasons, but mine reasons are mine responsibility. That is where morality comes in and assembling one’s spiritual being.
Greater Nature
With greater Nature I mean the living essence of Nature as a whole. The total natural ecology of organic life on this planet, being first of all an unseen world entity. Within nature a mystical fluid dynamic process is happening: evolution. From almost nothing nature has emerged with all its complexity and diversity and with the appearance of human beings with consciousness and arts and skills beyond what ever happened before. I believe that evolution is progressing towards a divine purpose. This is tied up with the believe that there is a divine beginning, which encompasses everything that is emerging within that divine domain. Also a tree leaf knows the purpose of God (note 6) The Greater Nature can be understood as an Opal domain (note 7), in which Topaz constitutes the urge to move on, to improve, to be better equipped and better fulfilling the promise that is imbedded in everything that is going on. In which Agate presents the god given government of the laws to which everything must surrender.
Smaller Nature
Nature is beautiful, but cruel. Rape, murder, conflict, competition, name it and it is part of nature. A tsunami is cruel and kills everyone and everything whether a criminal or saint. Our own body is a battlefield of bacteria and viruses and white blood corpuscles and immunity systems and what ever. Violence is a natural mechanism that keeps everything going. On a local scale everything seems to be governed by chaos and random happenings. I call this for the sake of argument the smaller nature. It operates by the stations of Peridot, Amber and Amethyst. Peridot represents the total stock of genetic codings of all sorts (note 8), Amethyst the ability to maintain patterns (the working of the soul) and is the whole stock of deva’s and Amber in this constitutes the ability to adapt, to evolve.
A Ruby
In the above descriptions of nature, the station Ruby is missing. Ruby is a strange thing (note 9). It is where the fire of creation hits life. Call it love, or universal love, they are words. It is for me in moments of peace in nature (where at many levels violence is going on), or the moments in spring when life explodes. Young birds in a nest and the parents caring. A moment with a dear friend or being witness of a heron catching a fish on a quite evening at a canal. Violence, yet a token of life.