Celebrating the International Day of Non-Violence

Today we celebrate Gandhi’s birthday, and the reintroduction to the modern world of the virtue of “Non-Violence”, #virtue No. 10. And to mark that day, the UN dubbed it the International Day of Non-Violence A/RES/61/271 on 15 June 2007. On this day, especially, we should inspect every single thought, every single impulse and every single ensuing reaction or emotion throughout the day to see if, and to what extent, we are tainted with the vice of violence.

I am sorry to say I disagree somewhat with the World Health Organization (WHO) which defines ‘violence’ as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation". On this blog promoting “Self-Awareness” it is not enough to define violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power…” The intentional use as described is bad, but what about unintentional violence? If we look at our minds and their accretions of old habits, customs, opinions and thought patterns, it is not only our conscious intent that does harm, but a great deal of our unconscious activity, which is probably much greater. We are born and bred in mental strife, we imbibe violence, anger and fear at every turn – it’s our collective psychic state at present. How can we escape this?

The threat of discovery and punishment deters some from actually carrying out violence, but all the unintentional violence being accepted within the mind by the human mind is willy-nilly producing horrific results across the planet. And this is why all the “talk” about stopping war, eliminating nuclear weapons, promoting peace and so on, as commented on the article on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, doesn’t make that much difference to the world. Talking is not doing. Nor is it investigating what violence is and why we are violent.

Violence is not “out there somewhere”. It isn’t lurking around in some military headquarters, presidential office, government bureau, militant group or organisation, ready to strike. It's more like an alien in your stomach, but located a little higher. Yes, the problem of violence is inside the human mind – the mind that intentionally or unintentionally accepts it and acts on it. And to remedy that, it’s going to take more than a UN International Day, but at least this is a first official step towards making people more aware of the problem. And the problem is in each one of us – not in someone else. We cannot slip into some else’s mind and fix it. We can only fix our own mind, and then allow its influence to touch others.

And so, on this day, we look within, at our own minds, and we inspect our baggage, our goods, our supplies, our mental merchandise, our mindset, to see if the taint of violence can be detected, and by applying a degree of “Self-Awareness” we inspect, cognise and detain any violent thought in our present moment by nipping it in the bud and not reacting to it or acting upon it. As in our actions, so in our thought process. That is the only way to make any difference to a world laced with violence, a world where murders occur, people are shot, bombs fall; where lives are destroyed, where people are left homeless and children are orphaned. What Gurdjieff called the “process of reciprocal destruction” and “the periodic urgent need to destroy everything outside of themselves” arising in human beings on this strange planet is due to volitional violence in cunning minds, but far more than that it is a product of non-volitional bad and violent and angry thoughts in foggy minds that see only one aspect of the world: what they so preciously think is “their idea of right” above all other people’s ideas of right and wrong.

To argue that violence is somehow “natural” is missing the point. We are not saying Nature is wrong. But we have to say that for women and men to survive on this crowded planet, we have to rise above the “natural” and especially what “education and society have ingrained into our minds”. We have to overcome this and become truly human in our full potentiality. Are you with me on this?