[deutscher Text hier...]
In the current world situation it is necessary to give the positive, spiritual forces access to the people and to our planet without directly attacking the negative forces - and thus getting into a direct confrontation with them.
Strategically in the foreground is the establishment of a strong, worldwide network of people and institutions, which place themselves without reservation on the side of spirituality and the divine impulse and work to open access to the positive, spiritual energies and to connect with them permanently. At the same time, it is a matter of raising one's own spiritual vibration in order to increasingly become a resonance vessel for the positive mental-spiritual energies.
Nowadays, one can encounter above all two fundamentally different approaches to politics:
- the Machiavellian understanding of politics, oriented towards power and the preservation of power, and
- the rebellious, change-oriented understanding of politics.
The first form of political understanding - Machiavellian politics - defines itself as exclusively solution-oriented, efficient and cost-conscious - but often forgets the elementary concerns and imperatives of humanity. Often violence is used as the last and logical consequence of such politics, if it serves to achieve the political goal. The second form of political understanding - rebellious politics - feels and acts out of a sense of solidarity with the disadvantaged - and does not exclude violent change. For example, Catholic Bishop Dom Helder Câmara declared over 50 years ago that violence in the sense of self-defense of the poor could be legitimate under certain conditions.
Both types of politics overlook two central aspects:
- Their actions are primarily oriented toward external, material structures; the physical-material world is to be changed by material methods.
- In their actions, the love of the divine is at least not in the center, indeed - from the dynamics of action, love and the commandment of love are increasingly marginalized and seen as "naive rapture". The strategy pursued is usually conflictual, i.e. does not correspond to a spiritual attitude of love and empathy towards the opponent.
Gandhi ingeniously combined vertical spirituality (e.g. meditation, prayer) with social action, i.e. horizontal spirituality. The result is Satyagraha, the politics of non-violent action in truth.
Satya means truth. In Sanskrit, sat also means being and God; from this Gandhi concludes that truth is God. From this religious concept of truth, Gandhi derived the following principles of his politics:
- First, truth is imperishable and indestructible. Whatever happens, truth will prevail, and falsehood will always be temporary.
- Second, those who act according to truth will prevail, even if their efforts seem unsuccessful at first. Even if only one person follows the truth and acts in the truth, he will be able to disempower an entire government, because it is God who acts through him.
- Third, from the truth come only deeds that are politically effective, that is, capable of establishing human community. Gandhi says, "Truth unites man with man into community. Without truth there can be no social order".
To this is added a second, central concept: ahimsa, or nonviolence. For Gandhi, the voice of conscience was not a mere opinion, but it pronounces an unconditional commitment with absolute authority. The question posed was, "Should I tolerate those who cause me difficulty, or should I destroy them?" Wise politicians recognized that those who destroyed others never progressed, but always stopped where they were, while those who were lenient with their adversaries went forward and dragged others along with them. While fundamentalist or defensive attitudes use violence in various forms to achieve religious or political goals, this is by definition unthinkable for a loving spiritual person: Love never hurts - it heals. In contrast, violence specifically uses the injury of people or living beings to achieve goals.
For Gandhi, non-violence was a means as well as an end: "Without ahimsa, it is not possible to seek and find the truth. Non-violence (ahimsa) and truth (satya) are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to keep them apart and separate them. Ahimsa is the means, truth the end. The means must always be within our reach, so ahimsa is our highest duty. If we strive for the means, we will certainly reach the end sooner or later. Once we have understood this, we can be sure of victory."
To this is added a third term, tapas or self-suffering.
Non-violence becomes a tool of community building when people replace the power of weapons with the power of the mind or spirituality. This spiritual power or "soul power" as Gandhi called it, is attained only through tapas. Gandhi saw conflict among people and between states as inevitable. History is inevitably connected with suffering. This is because suffering is created by every conflict. The task of man is to take on this suffering voluntarily so that the process of community building becomes creative and free.
Satya - truth, ahimsa - non-violence and tapas - self-suffering are, according to Gandhi's conviction, the three pillars of a spiritual politics.
You can download a detailed text on this as a pdf file here.