The Politics of Oppression: A Meditative Moment

I don’t quote Republicans much; but I heard Ron Paul the other day describing what is happening in our country as “soft fascism.” It seems to hit the nail on the head. The media, as usual, are distracting the American public- now with the primaries. But Paul’s definition goes to the reality: A government dominated by corporate interests whose “for-profit-only” mentality has plummeted the American middle-class into chronic indebtedness and is gradually but very methodically chipping away the constitutional rights of the American people. The greed and power-mania of this mercantile-governmental oligarchy has cost almost five-thousand Americans and as many as six-hundred thousand Iraqis their lives in this senseless war. You know the situation all too well. I won’t elaborate further.

And what’s the cost of all this to us as a people? Not the monetary cost. We know that’s staggering and will burden our children for decades. No, I mean the spiritual cost, if I can use that term- the cost to our national integrity and well-being. And what is the cost to the political perpetrators of these anomalies and to those who aid and abet them or tacitly condone their destructive policies?

I happened to come across the following comments, written about twenty years ago by a contemporary spiritual teacher. You can make what you want of the remarks; but I submit them for your perusal:

< Someone recently asked me who a “non-person” might be. They would be an evil intentioned cultist, dictator or politician. If a person who has one positive element within oppresses another, his or her stature in a positive sense diminishes by one. If they do the same to two people, each of whom has one positive element, their stature or positive quotient will be diminished by two. The more people they do it to, the more their stature or possibility diminishes because there’s a minus factor that also applies: i.e. the lower you are, the lower you’ll go. Thus their relationship with direct harmony, order and their own being is in a minus relationship to the positive. Do they have to work harder to make up for that? The answer is no, because when they lose it, they lose it. They are what is known as honor losers.

The reason for this is that if you disturb something within an ordered cosmological system, the order and balance doesn’t like being dis-equilibrated, so it reacts very strongly, quickly and directly, not at the so-called system which is being set up, sniping off the outposts, cutting it down, no. It hits the root, and this root is nearly always the political, money and other social structures which support and encourage the system. If you cut those off, the plant falls down, because it has no validity within the galactic balance. It’s a fungus: if you cut off the nourishment of a fungus which depends on a negative artificial fuel like fear, it will topple. Such people do get wiped out, but you see, they don’t carry the entire responsibility as beings for having done a particular thing: so you can say “They are in hell and damnation and fire and brimstone” etc., but this is not true, it’s too simplistic. They become examples: people hopefully learn from them.

The bigger they are the harder they fall, because they construct a pyramid based on an artificial power-structure. This means that not only do they fall at the apex, but the pyramid which has supported them, i.e. whatever portion of society or humanity supporting them, also suffers. Maybe they will suffer to a lesser extent because the degree of shock is attenuated, but it still is there in the form of example, and people should learn from very simple things, which are the examples of history.

A negative force or system consumes itself; it must. This is categorical. It’s not a question of “I hope it must,” because it is only made up of the negative: it is based on contempt for the human being. For all its weaknesses, aberrations, stupidities, laziness, implausibilities and so on, the human being yet has a place. To not only ignore its place but to debase it is the thing which cannot be done. You can kill millions, people have done and do so, but it is not possible to go on doing so in the long run. It threatens a dis-equilibrium; and imbalance is contrary to galactic law to any significant extent, so it’s just a question of time. If you build contempt for a human being, it produces contempt of human conditions, contempt for life, death and suffering: these things are then imposed by fear, harassment, torture and whatever; arrogance and manipulation and so forth come in and what you are doing is building on an un-solid foundation.>

(See: Shah, O.A. Sufism for Today. New York: Alif Publishing, 1992.)