On World Crisis and Responsibility

Art by Susan Seddon Boulet

You and I are walking in the forest. We are taking a journey, together, walking along a quiet path, as if it is a long endless road all over the world where one sees appalling terrorism, the killing of people for no purpose, threatening people, kidnapping them, hijacking, murdering, wars.

We don’t seem to care very much. It is only when it happens very close to us that we become concerned, worried, fearful. When it is far away from us, we are more indifferent.

This is what is happening in the world—economic division, religious division, political division and all the religious, sectarian divisions. There is a great deal of danger, hazard. One doesn’t know what is going to happen in the future, not only in our own lifetime but in our children’s and grandchildren’s. The whole world is in a great state of crisis and the crisis is not only out there but also in each one of us. If you are at all aware of all this, what is the responsibility for it on the part of each one of us?

So, if one may ask: what shall we do together? Or what shall we do as a single human being? Are we at all concerned, or are we seeking some peculiar satisfaction, gratification for ourselves? Are we committed to a certain symbol, religious or otherwise, and clinging to that, hoping that what lies behind that symbol will help us? This is a very serious question. It is becoming much more serious now, for there is the threat of war and then total uncertainty.

So, as we walk along the path, I say: “Let’s talk things over together like two friends, you and I—like two friends who have lived together in the world, been through every kind of travail. What is it all about? Why is man born like this? Why has he become after many, many, many millennia what he is now—suffering, anxious, lonely, despairing, with disease, death and always the gods somewhere about? Let’s forget all about those gods and talk together as two human beings, living in this world, walking in this marvellous forest, on the earth which is so beautiful, which is the mother of all things.”

We are sitting on a bench on a beautiful day overlooking Gravlev Valley with the great wooded hills round us, blue and lovely azure skies, and the sun glittering on the leaves, the dappled earth. We are sitting in one of the many power places where the Otherworld can be sensed. Everything seems so marvellously alive, pulsating, full of energy. The birds in the old beech trees are singing, and the millpond below listens quietly. There we are, you and me, watching this great beauty. And we ask ourselves: “Why are we never being with the beauty, always watching it, never feeling the beauty with one’s heart and mind, never being utterly sensitive to all the glory of the earth?”

You are asking if psychotherapy is the answer. I say: “I am not accepting what the professionals, Freud and Jung, or the latest American psychologists, say about psychotherapy. I am not accepting any of those. I question it; I question not only the activity of psychotherapy but also the psychotherapist. If you can understand the psychotherapist first then what need is there for psychotherapy?”

Everyone talks about peace. Every government, every religion, and every preacher, including you and me, talks about peace. And to live peacefully demands tremendous honesty and intelligence.

So, is it possible, living in the 21st century, to live inwardly first, meditatively-existentially, and not have in oneself any kind of conflict?

Please do enquire, search, ask with love of wisdom. Love of wisdom doesn’t include fanaticism, love of wisdom doesn’t demand martyrdom. At the end of it you stand alone, but there is the comprehension, the inward awareness, insight, into all that which is really nonsensical.

The Song of the Birds, by Pablo Casals: