SM: 'Without the human value system, the society will self-destruct'

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

In the concluding paragraph of the chapter on 'Democracy' in Her book 'Meta

Modern Era', Shri Mataji says: " Perhaps at first reading, some of the Western

fundamentalists may get a shock. Some may get a shock but most will understand

the concern of the Divine force which is anxious to preserve creation by the

all-pervading power of Divine love. " These words of Shri Mataji is as serious as

it gets. In this chapter on 'Democracy', Shri Mataji gives us a mirror to our

societies, to show how this so-called 'democracy' which She says is more like a

'demon-ocracy' is actually destroying itself. Shri Mataji has been able to write

about the human conditions in our society, as an objective, yet very concerned,

Observer. She basically gives us a mirror, to ourselves and our societies. We

have to accept it as a Gift from the Divine Mother, and change our societies

from self-destructiveness to renewed Human moral values.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Democracy - By Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

It was the great advent of Abraham Lincoln which brought the uniquely true idea

of democracy into reality in America. He specifically said that the government

should be " of the people " , yet today we find that most countries who call

themselves democracies have been " demon-ocracies " . They are ruled by people who

are either money-oriented or power-oriented. Concern for the benevolence of the

people, which should be the main aim of a democracy, has become completely lost

in modern times. It is simply no longer a matter of concern for those people who

are said to be at the helm of affairs. Many people have claimed, and perhaps

they are not entirely wrong, that America is nowadays no longer ruled by the

people, but by the rich only, by big businesses, or by cinema actors and

actresses. The rest of the developed countries nowadays, are also ruled by the

banks, the entrepreneurs, the media and the underworld.

 

Thus, the idea of Abraham Lincoln, like the ideas of all great saints and

prophets, has become completely perverted, as democracy has degenerated in our

money crazy, modern society. Whatever generous principles were announced at the

beginning have vanished into the mist of violent, argumentative discussions at

various conferences called throughout the world to solve the problems of

democracies. The establishment of higher ethical values, which was originally

meant to be the top priority in any democratic country, is now completely

missing from the agenda.

 

For example, America, that great country of the free, will support, without any

compunction or hesitation, any country that happens to suit the current policy

of the current President. This is done regardless of the fact that that country

may be ruled by a despotic person, who may not have the slightest respect for

democracy. For example, it was America and most of the European countries that

professed to be democratic, who manufactured and sold arms to Iraq which is

ruled by Saddam Hussein. Thus, many democratic countries joined hands to make

him very powerful and war-oriented, just because it happened to suit their

policies.

 

Real democracy is only possible when people truly imbibe democratic principles

and respect ethical values above everything else. People who are power crazy and

who want to make money by any means, cannot be said to have the right democratic

ideology. Democracy cannot be managed by people who are greedy, of loose

character and self-centred. Those who are womanisers, or who drink while they

are working on solving the national problems, are in fact the true source of

their nation's problems and of the whole world at large.

 

Politicians should be dedicated to the welfare of the people, but sometimes

politics becomes like a game of chess, in which the sole aim is to stay on the

board as long as possible. The politicians do not want to leave their seats, to

which they are glued, until they are forced to admit defeat. Until the last

moment of their lives they want to be in a state of political intoxication. They

only resign when one foot is definitely placed in the grave. Such low level

people cannot work for a real democracy. For democracy you need very noble,

learned and compassionate visionaries, who have a benevolent attitude towards

the people and total dedication to the ideals of democracy.

 

Where is the so-called democratic country whose people have the character that

can sustain a clean and a righteous democracy as envisaged by Abraham Lincoln?

In the Third World, where politicians religiously imitate the example of these

great developed countries, they degrade the democratic value system even more.

In India, for example, the people in power may not want to eradicate poverty,

because they can buy the votes of the poor by giving them a little money. Or

else, they may support a minority and pamper it to use as a vote bank. Thus we

find in these underdeveloped countries, poverty actually helps to maintain this

type of " demon-ocracy " .

 

Nowhere in the world is there a democratic government truly " of the people, for

the people, by the people " . What one sees in reality is, people in power who

have no sense of ethical values and no concern for the people whom they should

serve. Political power is treated like an investment which is intended to

generate much more money, as it does in business. Abraham Lincoln, like any

other saint, had his eye on 'absolute values' and he did not know that people

were not yet ready for as great an ideal as that of democracy, and that most of

them would develop a tendency to stray off the straight and narrow path of

dedication to the collective well-being and follow the broader road of

self-interest. Those people who are elected to power basically need to have

concern for the well-being of the whole and the wisdom to function in a spirit

of service.

 

A benevolent ruler, in the form of a philosopher king (as put forward by

Socrates), is the ideal person to be the head of government. Such a person must

be an extremely wise, detached personality, without any desires for lust, power

and money. There have been such persons in the recent past, people like Mahatma

Gandhi, Ataturk Kemal Pasha, Anwar al Sadat, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Ho Chi Minh,

Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Dag Hammerskjold, and Mujibur Rahman. [1]

 

But to talk of wisdom in these modern times seems quaint. Wisdom, it seems, is

out of the question, because rationality has long since taken its place. Relying

on the limited linear logic of mere rationality, purely egocentric solutions are

put forward to justify the actions of those in power (which of course have a

global mutual appeal to all the other egocentric people in power). In this way,

there is a fraternity of negative thinking and they support each other in their

parliaments, assemblies or senates. This is why nothing truly useful for the

ascent of the people ever gets done. On the contrary, the politicians of these

democratic countries use whatever means they can muster, for their own selfish

purposes or to enforce their arbitrary ideas.

 

As this licence, which is what freedom has become in a democracy, gives them the

right to enjoy their powers to the point of misuse, they have carried their

freedom unchecked beyond all bounds and natural limitations. So that, not only

have such politicians made money, and so distanced themselves from the ordinary

people they are meant to serve, but they have been publicly and admiringly

described as extraordinarily rich personalities in the money market. One feels

ashamed to hear such a thing about people whom one elects with such great hope.

 

However, the time of reckoning has come, and their criminality is now being

exposed. These democracies and their politicians have perhaps already reached a

polarity state in some countries, while others are as yet slowly moving towards

it. The politicians may come and go, but there is always somebody queuing up to

replace them. There is no way to cut short this process of people arriving at

the helm of affairs every few years, who might well be infinitely worse than the

ones who were there before. Thus, most democratic countries have become, with

mutual consent, absolutely authoritarian, racist and materialistic. Those who

have not yet managed, are aspiring to become so. Money makes the whole concept

of real democracy absolutely secondary. Those who have money power can rule

without any feeling for benevolence and the value system of true democracy. It

can be easily seen that when money becomes God, all moral values have to be put

aside.

 

In a democracy, of course, people's votes become important. For example, if

women happen to be in a majority, their votes in particular become significant

and the policies of the politicians, who are concerned only to get into power,

will be adjusted to suit the egoistical ideas of that section of the electorate.

Thus women have a legal right to walk around half nude in the cold climate of

Switzerland where common sense and decency would suggest that they should cover

themselves up. And in other countries, like France, women have the glorious

right to carry on with immoral behaviour, such as running their own prostitution

business, with all the allowance and favour of the law. If they represent a

large enough electorate, no one can influence or control them. It is they who

make the laws. As soon as someone has a vote, he or she becomes a very important

person to be flattered and wooed by the politicians.

 

The Socratic ideal of serving the benevolence of the people, does not exist any

more. On the contrary, they criticise it by insisting that Socrates was not a

practical man. All the great saints and prophets were, of course, idealists and

not practical people. Most of the democracies of today's world are under the

thumb of people who have no honourable or moral ideas whatsoever. They discover

very fast that power can give them prosperity and that this money power can

whitewash and obliterate all their misdeeds and conceal the dubious business

they are up to. Unfortunately for them, this false licence has now gone into

their heads, like a fixed idea, and they go on behaving immorally, without any

fear of the Divine, ruthlessly destroying the entire value system of democracy.

They may carry on for years, as they did in Italy, until, by the Law of Polarity

or by Divine retribution, they are exposed. But before this happens, such rulers

unfortunately become models for the people whom they govern and gradually moral

degradation in day-to-day life begins to create a decadent or dying democratic

society.

 

As I have said, those who are elected to serve the people's welfare should be

evolved souls whose ideas should be like Abraham Lincoln or whose ethical values

should be like Mahatma Gandhi's. Perhaps the cynical political strategy of

modernist leaders is to let people ruin themselves in their private lives. Why

would the government disturb people in their private life? This is because

anyone who raises a question about private lives of the people will not get a

vote. The modern politician says that if the people want to destroy themselves,

they have the right and the freedom to do so. So why disturb such political

thinking? The strategy is common in democracy and communism. As long as voters

do not try to dislodge those in power from the comfortable seats (to which they

are glued in order to serve their own self-interest) the politicians feel very

re-assured.

 

As a result of this demonic money grabbing activity, many other dangerous

activities also start. For example, the French law referred to earlier allows a

housewife to be a part-time prostitute. It can be rationalised that a woman has

every right to make money in whatever way she can.

 

It is also said that France is the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church. How

can we explain this strange tolerance of immorality even to the point of

justifying it through rationalisation? Perhaps the answer is that the Law Courts

know nothing of dharma, but blindly follow Freudian theories and obediently

accept the opinions of psychoanalysts when it comes to interpreting the law.

Even though Freud's theory has been completely exposed and discredited, it is

still used in most democratic countries in judging the crimes of patients with

mental problems. But Freud's subtle influence on the attitudes of ordinary

people in the developed countries is vast and always destructive. It is

impossible to tell how much damage Freud's theories have done to Western

societies as a whole, but the worst thing of all is the way people have lost all

sense of self-esteem, because of their acceptance of Freud's revelations as if

they were gospel truths. Now, under the constant influence of the media,

particularly of films and television videos, they either casually neglect, or

actively try to destroy, all those natural feelings of modesty and chastity

that, in traditional societies, provided the basis of morality and personal and

family happiness and well-being.

 

For example, I recently read in a newspaper report about a girl, hardly an

adult, who was constantly going out to cabarets and discos. Suddenly, the

parents found out that she had become like a prostitute. What a shock to

discover that they could have no objection, as long as it was legal, and she was

earning well and paying her parents for her keep. Later the girl died of some

secret (that is sexually transmitted) disease at the age of twenty one. Such

behaviour might theoretically be justified in a poor country, but in actual

fact, parents in a poor country have much more control over their children.

Their societies cling to traditional, ethical values, perhaps because they have

real faith in the power of the Divine. Maybe they have not yet fallen into the

illusion of money.

 

But in affluent countries, as we can read every day in the newspapers, parents

themselves are planning the destruction of their own children, by allowing them

to drink and smoke, and encouraging them towards promiscuity by fuelling their

interest in sex with advice on contraception at a very young age and allowing

them to watch films and videos, whose sole aim is to destroy the natural respect

that all human beings have for sacred things. In such societies, there is no

growth of maturity and no respect for maturity.

 

In affluent families it is even worse. The young people want to enjoy their

freedom solely in order to ruin themselves. There is no effective control by the

parents or the state to stop adolescent girls becoming pregnant or contracting

diseases through promiscuity. They start off as golden girls with no brake on

their freedom, and they end up as squatters, handed from one partner to another

or in the hell of a brothel.

 

If we dare to analyse clearly the real implications of what is going on around

us, it is very evident that the deepest trends in these democratic societies are

aimed at self-destruction. It is not only that in Switzerland, Norway and

Denmark people are competing with each other to commit suicide, but in every

developed country young people are taking to self-destructive habits en masse.

One cannot understand why, in the highly developed democracies, young people

take so easily to what are really false cults, fads or addictions, (but which

are treated as if they were a divinely implanted right) like alcohol abuse or

homosexuality, and which actually ensure their self-destruction. Alcoholism and

drug addiction are known to be a sure passport to hell. And yet more and more

people are queuing up for them. All kinds of indescribable sexual perversions

are leading to AIDS and other serious diseases. But how is it that when people

arrogantly cling to and even boast of their homosexuality or promiscuity, they

are treated like some sort of heroes in the face of the threat of AIDS? Death

from this disease is now being presented as a glorious martyrdom for those great

people who are marching like courageous soldiers to their graves. Why is it that

such intelligent people are not questioning the rightness of these destructive

habits? All human beings know what simple and natural decency is and they

actually need it and crave for it in their deepest selves. Is it only because

people from the developed countries are so consistently frustrated of this basic

need that they are so anxious to kill themselves?

 

Even when it comes to enjoying themselves, it can be seen very clearly, for

example, in modern pop music, that people in these self-destructive times are

expressing their insecurities and frustration through disrespectful behaviour

towards themselves, as if they actually hated and despised themselves. Pop music

is generated by entrepreneurs in order to make money for themselves. By

skilfully flattering human weaknesses, they are constantly pushing young people

to get into moods which cannot create peace, harmony and joy, but which lead to

very great turmoil within and a great sense of dissatisfaction and frustration

that they try to alleviate with the next batch of pop music, which the

money-making brigades conveniently churn out. Such an immature, younger

generation, whose inner balance is constantly being disturbed by off-centred

emotions, can on the one hand only become depressed recluses, who cannot form

any real relationships, or on the other hand, wayward and violent hoodlums who

are intent only on destroying the tranquility of others. Is this what we really

expect from the great ideal of democracy?

 

Modern democracies began to emerge in the eighteenth century, but at around the

same time, with the advancement of science, the industrial revolution began to

manifest itself. What we call industrial and commercial values were also

generated by the advent of the industrial or technological society. As it is,

science is absolutely amoral. It does not conform to the rules and regulations

laid down for the human value system. Science is the knowledge of matter and

matter has its own internal regulations. Unlike human beings, matter does not

have free will with which to establish any ethical value system for itself. In

pure science, which is amoral, this quality has been carried over, almost

without anyone noticing, into the practical and applied field through

technology. Thus, industry and (in close association with it) commerce have

become absolutely amoral.

 

When work is done by human beings applying their own skills in a fully human

environment, work and morality go hand in hand. But technology and what we now

call industry (which used to mean dedicated and productive work for the

benevolence of human beings) have no built-in ethical value system and so are

not subject to any inner moral binding. But the Law of Polarity acts here also

and industries of the developed nations have now swung to the other side of the

pendulum. It is because of the unrestrained development of industry, beyond the

humanising influence of the ethical value system or dharma, that we see all over

the world, but especially in the highly developed democratic countries, that

there is a deep and growing economic recession. It is as if the machinery in all

these industries has gone out of gear, because no one bothered to make sure that

it was running within its proper bounds.

 

Governments are now trying to revive their flagging industries by artificial

methods, such as manipulating interest rates, but also by cajoling

underdeveloped countries or Eastern bloc people, especially Russia and China,

with the full persuasive force of Western advertising propaganda, to purchase

all the unsold surpluses from the industries of those countries which are

suffering from recession. So the poor underdeveloped countries, once again risk

being exploited by these so-called highly developed democracies. It is a sad

sight to see all the so-called great leaders, the Prime Ministers and Presidents

of the developed nations, scuffling around the world trying to sell their goods

to those countries which are still under the spell of imported goods. This is

gross moral and economic exploitation. In Russia, many unnecessary, American or

German goods are being sold to a people who have very little foreign currency.

All the junk which has not been sold in these industrialised countries which are

undergoing recession, is now being dumped and is finding its way even as far as

India. There are pompous visitations of political leaders, as well as great

captains of industry, to try to involve underdeveloped countries in their own

recession crises. But how far are they going to get? They are all chasing after

the same illusory thing. Looking at this from the outside, one wonders how this

recession is ever going to be overcome, because it has deep historic roots and

the Law of Polarity cannot be avoided. The best example is Turkey, which has the

best foods, the best clothes, the best ornaments and the best carpets, and

despite this, imports all these items from Germany. Somehow, the German

entrepreneurs have made the Turkish people blind to their own hand made

products. As a result, the Turkish have become very poor and are wearing jeans

in that hot climate. This has to be suffered.

 

Firstly, with the growth of imperialistic ideas, most countries went about

shamelessly spreading their regimes all over the world. They initially became

wealthy by plundering, cheating and massacring the countries they colonised and

they enjoyed this ill-gotten money for many years. Later, with industrial

development, they used their colonies as a cheap source of raw materials and

labour and as a ready-made and captive market for their goods. But now

industrialism has run its appointed course and the industries of the developed

countries have started overproducing goods. This surplus production cannot be

consumed either by their own population or by their former colonies because, as

an offshoot of the colonialist era, the newly independent countries (where local

industries were originally developed in order to exploit their raw materials and

cheap labour) are now equipped with machinery which can produce all these goods

at a fraction of the price compared to those of their former colonialist

masters. So who are the developed countries now going to exploit to get over

their recession? There are simply not sufficient markets for the products of

this fake and amoral industry.

 

But much more has been lost than mere markets for surplus goods. The casual

surplus dresses have entered every market because they need not be washed and

pressed. In very hot countries like Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Malaysia and many others,

these clothes are worn with great pride. Though all of them smell, stink and

give rashes, they are very impressive and fashionable, according to the

marketing people from the West.

 

How long can they fool the developing countries with their marketing? With the

development of industries, in both the Capitalist and Communist systems,

gradually human beings have become the slaves of matter which has started now to

dominate them. The most serious effect is that the value system of the human

level has also been reduced to a gross materialistic state. Although the human

being is in fact the epitome of evolution and potentially the master of all the

non human world, it is nevertheless apparent that modern man presents a picture

of a new kind of human being, who is dominated by matter, by his body or by his

animal instincts. Things have become so bad that anyone who even talks of human

values, or of higher human values, is regarded, and sometimes treated, as if he

is a freak or a lunatic. It seems that it is simply not possible for people to

understand to what extent they have fallen into the clutches of matter and their

animal instincts. To add to the slow domination of human beings by matter, we

have had great thinkers and scholars like Freud who have reduced human-beings to

a mere sex point.

 

Why is it that matter rules human beings? In the process of evolution we have

passed through various stages and the truth is that our basic and first nature

is matter. We came out of inert matter into the state of living beings and then

slowly progressed through and out of the animal state. Many thousands of years

ago, in India, human beings produced highly evolved and sophisticated works of

spiritual philosophy such as the Vedas and Upanishads, and for thousands of

years, people lived according to their noble vision of mankind. What we see in

the modern world is quite clearly therefore a serious regression, a falling back

of human beings from the higher state they had already achieved through their

ascent. There is a film called " Planet of the Apes " which clearly shows what

would happen if evolution goes into reverse, that is devolution.

 

Moreover, in most recent times, the two world wars killed enormous numbers of

very good and decent ordinary people. This gave a setback to people's faith in

the natural goodness of life and the existence of eternal values. With the

horror of modern warfare, millions of women became widows and children became

orphans and all these warring nations were completely paralysed, not just in

their industries, but in their moral lives as well. In the aftermath of these

destructive wars, their future lives became a barren land without any hope of

recovery. For ordinary people it was thus very easy to give up all ethical

values and to take to a cheap and superficial life, of the kind that we saw very

much in the decades following the wars, the sixties, seventies and even today.

In cultural life, these years were particularly marked by the increasingly

destructive attack of the so-called modernist trend on all traditional forms and

values. Slowly, over the last seventy years or so, the general level of people's

awareness has fallen below its ordinary potential. For anyone who looks calmly

and objectively at the situation that human beings have got themselves into, it

will be obvious that unless we have achieved a breakthrough into a higher form

of awareness, a higher value system, we cannot come out of this mess we have

created by subjugating ourselves to matter and to animal instincts, and

therefore, to our self-destruction.

 

And yet the democracies, these countries where human freedom is meant to be in

its full flower and glory, are full of terrible inner contradictions which make

this evolutionary breakthrough appear to be very difficult. Apart from this, in

democracies, the freedom to criticise and mislead others is a matter of

fundamental right. The real meaning of freedom, however, includes a built in or

innate sense of responsibility, based on wisdom and sanity, which gives no

license for immorality, competitiveness and hatred. Real freedom exists to

enable us to recognise our highest ethical nature and to serve it and develop it

for our own well-being and the benevolence of the whole world.

 

But on the contrary, modern democracies do not even wish to talk about morality

and compassion, because, as they say, these concern the supposed private lives

of individuals. It is by distorting the noble idea of the rights of individual

conscience that governments in the democracies have shirked their responsibility

for generating a sense of self-respect and righteousness, both in their own

populations and in the relations between nations. Whatever their theoretical

ideas may be, they clearly cannot believe that there is really one world and a

single community of all human beings or they would not have abandoned any

pretence to serve man's higher nature, as they so obviously have.

 

Added to all this there is a great deal of hypocrisy when it comes to the notion

of public morality. If a top Minister or Prime Minister of a democratic country

has an affair with another woman, it is castigated as a grave misdeed on the

part of a man in the public eye. But men in the rest of the country can have any

amount of illegal relations with any number of women of any character. The

common assumption nowadays is simple: that there is no way of correcting or even

criticising it. Since Freud revealed his " gospel truth " , it is taken to be

self-evident that the majority of human beings are at the mercy of their lowest

nature. But even so, a Prime Minister or a President must be different. He has

to be a morally perfect person. This expectation at least, we might think, is

something valuable. But this last vestige of a truly moral viewpoint is really

just paying lip service to a defunct ideal. All it shows is that the perfection

demanded of this single person does not penetrate, nor is it really expected to

penetrate, into the whole of society. Out of a false sort of respect for

individual freedom, which may of course cover their own desire to do what they

feel like doing without unwanted advice, those in power do not want to interfere

with the private lives of the people. Now, with the loss of all sense of shame

or impropriety, all these private lives have become social and public lives and

all those societies, which are under the guidance of democratic structures, are

suffering from the pangs of polarity.

 

They behave as if all the morality in a democracy is only for those in the

public eye and the rest of the people are free to go whichever way they choose,

so that it does not matter how they destroy themselves. In the democracies then,

by the operation of the Law of Polarity, personal or individual freedom is going

to ruin society by en masse mutation and no one seems to actually want to do

anything about this by striking at the root causes. Compassion is something to

be talked about only, by the money or power-oriented religions. There is nothing

they can or even really want to do, to stop the rapid decline of their societies

into moral degradation and economic ruin.

 

Now the elected rulers in the West pretend to be democratic, but having become

racists or fundamentalists, all they will do is not allow any person to enter

their country or any goods from the developing countries to come in, as they

sell better, cheaper goods, even though they have exploited these poor countries

for years together as imperialists. They are simply not interested in

legislating to curb the downward spiral of their people's lives.

 

Moreover, they are anxious not to provoke social agitation or demonstrations by

the people, who have been flattered and spoilt in their so-called individualism

to the point that all they want is to lead a universal life - a life of the mass

media and the false models they offer to the people. Such people popularise

themselves with verbosity and could be silenced by many modern tricks, but as

long as their seats are secure, the politicians are not bothered about what the

common man is doing to himself. On the contrary, by giving this kind of absolute

freedom to look after one's own private life, they pamper the ego and weaknesses

of the voters because they never legislate to preserve and encourage morality.

They are sure they will never have to face the anger and frustration of immoral

people.

 

Another product of this license of abandonment is brutal, mad violence, because

people have no sense of what is wrong and no fear in their minds, even for a

moment, of the possibility of retribution. In Los Angeles, the City of the

Angels, I was travelling in a car once and the driver advised me to close the

window and lower my head. Only a week before, he explained, eleven people had

been shot down on this street. I asked him what the reason was. He answered in

American English " just for the heck of it " . Violence which is " just for the heck

of it " can only be explained with reference to what those people who perpetrate

it have imbibed from the attitudes of their families, friends or the media,

especially from television, videos and cinema films, and from concealed hatred

or covert racialism in the media.

 

The democracies allow all kinds of horrible films and videos in the name of

freedom. As long as those films do not criticise anyone in power, they can

perpetrate whatever vulgar, demoralising and violent ideas they like. The

problem is that such films become models for people's behaviour, so that all

these imaginary violent and cruel actions have become actual and contemporary in

our societies. The nightmare and the horror scenes have become realities in our

cities and private homes. Those who can reproduce most luridly the full horror

of contemporary themes, are given the highest awards by the judges. For example,

recently there was a film that really became a hit about a man who was psychotic

and a cannibal. The film was meant to entertain people by showing how he killed

human beings and ate them. In any decent society, this film could never have

been made, or if by some aberration it was, it would have been banned. But

instead of that it has been applauded and acclaimed by the critics. They may say

it is an 'uncommon theme', but what a rare depiction of a person out of the

brain of some one who may know people who desire to eat the body of a human

being, even when they are not starving as in Bosnia. It has become a very

popular and influential film because it won an award as the best film of the

year. This is not to say that the negative and destructive aspects of life

cannot be treated by art. Producing something contemporary, showing up the

modern problems of decadence and disintegration, is a good idea, but the creator

should also give solutions to those key problems of the contemporary world. If

they are good artists, they can show everything in relation to the world of true

values which are conducive to the well-being and happiness of human beings at

every time and in every country.

 

There is a further problem with this idea that art can reflect even the lowest

and most degraded aspects of contemporary society. If you show an extreme case

of perversion in your society, human beings, especially in the West, will only

note the filth, the aggressive cruelty of the villain and, far from drawing the

obvious and wholesome moral conclusions, will actually try to copy what they

have seen. This has simply become a conditioned response and, worst of all, no

one is shocked any more.

 

There is a tendency, built up in the West since the time of Enlightenment and

the democratic revolutions of the 18th century, that we should be free to absorb

all the unrighteous, unholy, inauspicious and destructive ideas that we can find

in every film, every book, and every newspaper, whatever the source. Somehow

people want to take up the challenge to become the evil force themselves. People

have now to decide if they want to stop this democratic derailment by

understanding what must be done. The progress that the West is proud of is

towards complete destruction, as human beings have the freedom to achieve heaven

or go to hell and also they have the tremendous power of rationality to justify

their doom.

 

Perhaps at first reading, some of the Western fundamentalists may get a shock.

Some may get a shock but most will understand the concern of the Divine force

which is anxious to preserve creation by the all-pervading power of Divine love.

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Chapter 3, 'Democracy'

book / Meta Modern Era

29/09/95

 

Note:

 

[1] Appended are URLs for each person that Shri Mataji mentions in Paragraph 8,

in reference to them being ideal persons to have been the head of government, in

the recent past:

 

" A benevolent ruler, in the form of a philosopher king (as put forward by

Socrates), is the ideal person to be the head of government. Such a person must

be an extremely wise, detached personality, without any desires for lust, power

and money. There have been such persons in the recent past, people like Mahatma

Gandhi, Ataturk Kemal Pasha, Anwar al Sadat, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Ho Chi Minh,

Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Dag Hammerskjold, and Mujibur Rahman. " (Shri

Mataji Nirmala Devi)

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Sadat

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bahadur_Shastri

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskj%C3%B6ld

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Mujibur_Rahman