In Order to Handle the World Crisis, We Must Find a Common Ground

Yellow Flowers by Krupa Shah 

“You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell forever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world.” 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

How are we going to face the world crisis? It is clear that we must find a common ground in which we all can agree. That can of course not be in ideology, neither religious, nor political. It must be in philosophy.

We must learn the art of asking philosophical questions in a meditative-existential way. We must stop focusing on the content, and return to the form. When you for example ask the question Who Am I? you turn yourself towards the form of consciousness and not its content. Therefore, you must become silent.

In that way you return to the universal, and eternal, which we all have in common. You stop heading towards the particular and impermanent. And, through all this, you can remember your own eternal, and therefore ancient, nature (this art of universal remembrance is called anamnesis).

For example, all human consciousness is similar. We all, on whatever part of the earth we live, go through a great deal of suffering, pain, anxiety, uncertainty, fear. And we have occasionally, or perhaps often, pleasure. This is the common ground on which all human beings stand - right? This is an irrefutable fact. We may try to dodge it, we may try to say it is not, that I am an individual and so on, but when you look at it objectively, non-personally, you will find that our consciousness is like the consciousness of all human beings, universally speaking.

You may be tall, you may be fair, you may have brown hair; I may be black, or white, or pink, or whatever - but inwardly we are all having a terrible time. We all have a sense of desperate loneliness. You may have children, a husband, family, but when you are alone you have this feeling that you have no relationship with anything. You feel totally isolated. Most of us have had that feeling. This is the common ground of all humanity.

And whatever happens in the field of this consciousness, we are responsible. That is, if I am violent, I am adding violence to that consciousness that is common to all of us. If I am not violent, I am not adding to it; I am bringing a totally new factor to that consciousness. So I am profoundly responsible: either I contribute to that violence, to that confusion, to that terrible division, or, as I recognize deeply in my heart, in my blood, in the depths of my being, that I am the rest of the world, I am mankind, I am the world, the world is not separate from me, then I become totally responsible.

Obviously! This is rational, objective, sane. The other is insanity - to call oneself a Hindu, a Conservative, a Buddhist, a Communist, a Christian, and all the rest of it - these are just labels.

When one has that feeling, that reality, the truth that every human being living on this earth is responsible not only for himself, but for everything that is happening, how will one translate that in daily life?

Do you have that feeling, not as an intellectual conclusion, an ideal, and so on? Then it has no reality. But if the truth is that you are standing on the ground that is common to all mankind, and you feel totally responsible, then what is your action toward society, toward the world in which you are actually living?

The world as it is now is full of violence. Suppose I realize I am totally responsible. What is my action? Shall I join a group of terrorists? Obviously not.

Clearly competitiveness between nations is destroying the world. When I feel responsible for this, naturally I cease to be competitive. 

And the religious world as well as the economic, social world is based on hierarchical principle. Shall I also have this concept of hierarchical outlook? Obviously not, because the one who says, “I know,” is taking a superior position, and has a status. If you want that status, go after it, but you are contributing to the confusion of the world.

So there are actual, objective, sane actions when you perceive, when you realize in your heart of hearts, that you are the rest of mankind, and that we are all standing on the same ground.