At the end of the 19th century, 19 million people in Europe were constantly under arms. The rulers of the states spent one third to one half of the state revenues on their standing armies. The people were largely impoverished. In addition, early capitalism mercilessly exploited the workers to the hilt. There was compulsory military service and the only question was whether the rulers would send people to slaughter each other this year or next, and for what trivial reasons they would then be allowed to die cruelly by the tens of thousands. Fear and despair prevailed among the population. There was no escaping the situation. It was considered the law of nature. Tens of thousands committed suicide. Especially among the soldiers. They all no longer saw any sense in their existence. They were terrified of what the next day would bring.
We really have it better now! The physical slaughter on the battlefield no longer exists for us. No one has to starve in front of the factory gates anymore. We have developed further!
But why are so many sick today? Why are so many people desperate, lonely and in severe depression? Why do so many people also take their own lives today?
What has become better? Isn’t there still compulsory military service? As mercenaries in the service of the corporations that now wage their merciless wars on countless battlefields 24 hours a day all over the world? Is man not still being consumed? Only now, in addition to being a will-less instrument of violence, he is also a naïve resource to be conquered by other companies. Things are cunningly forced upon him and he is won. This is called prosperity and the wrong conclusion is drawn that everything is good for him. That the slaughter in the company and in oneself is thereby justified. Man chases the bargain and doesn’t realise that he is the real prey that keeps getting caught in the companies‘ net.
And is man not also at the mercy of an alliance of entrepreneurs and rulers who decide his fate but not in his interest? Can’t he just watch helplessly as laws are made that harm him and promise rich profits to the warring corporations? It is said that this benefits him, in his mercenary existence. As a resource to be conquered, it may no longer benefit him. With the new laws, the act of conquest might become a little more violent.
No one starves to death in front of the factory gates any more because, on the one hand, the fear of the rulers and the entrepreneurs of the masses has been alleviated or, in the meantime, eliminated and replaced by disinterest and, on the other hand, the worker has been discovered as a consumer. As a double resource for production and consumption. He is, as already said above, now soldier and commodity of conquest together. This idea is not entirely new. It already existed in early capitalism. Instead of money, the worker was given vouchers that he could only redeem in the factory’s own shop. Of course, everything there was many times more expensive than on the market. This 150-year-old condition has not disappeared in our modern and so civilised world. It has only been – postponed. Now people are starving in the south and east. And with them, nature is left to die and they are all fed worthless vouchers so that the Western mercenary-trophy hermaphrodite in its important chimerical double role remains eager to buy and ready to fight. And in the morning the trumpet call sounds from all the alarm clocks and mercenaries around the world march to their regiments to fight for power in the market. The world is one barracks. And back home the war continues on the field of opinions. The battles for opinion supremacy are fought just as fiercely there and people once again become the prey with their likes and thumbs up. Everyone there becomes a one-man army and tries to conquer what they can. By any means necessary. The end justifies the means.
The meaning of his existence was just as unknowable to man back then, in the 19th century, as it is to him today. In the inner question of meaning, he had and has only the churches as advisors. But for the churches he is also only a resource for power and profit. The churches are also only warring parties. Anti-Christian and material. They only have their own battlefields. They fight for „souls“. That is a church technical term for the resource taxpayers. Creating meaning that goes beyond the preservation of power and self-interest is not to be expected from them for perhaps about 1700 years. Man recognises the emptiness of the church, shakes his head in disbelief and resignation. „Then there is nothing but the struggle…“ he says to himself. And carries it, the struggle, through space and time. Into future generations.
So the war rages on in every facet of social life. Whereas 150 years ago, however, everyone seemed to be able to see his suffering and its cause clearly, for he felt first and foremost a physical suffering and sought to alleviate the pain there, today’s man is completely blinded as to the causes of his pain, indeed he is usually blinded as to the mere existence of his pain. That is how normal the state of war has become for him. Normality, which can hardly be better and about which he cannot really complain. So he is persuaded. He gets his booty in money and in return he lets himself be conquered and receives one thing in return. He gets and gets. There is nothing better. And he only gives his life for it. He can’t see what could be wrong with it and numbs his strange pain with drugs of all kinds. Play, fun, possession, aggression, opinion, position, etc. And thereby he becomes a conquered resource again – or a mercenary – because everything, really everything, is fought over and conquered or used for conquest.
What then is his pain? The seemingly incurable pain that can only be numbed? It is his soul knowledge. The spiritual knowledge of love. About the love for everything and everyone. The knowledge of unity and security and peace. Every human being has this knowledge within him. It is just that it has been conditioned out of him in the drill on the barracks yards of capitalism. If you go out onto the balcony on holiday – your mobile phone switched off on the table – and let the calm, clear, cool morning air in the face of the mountains flow deep into your lungs, hold on to the railing and close your eyes for a moment, then perhaps you can feel the peace. And it is wonderful. You could stay in this feeling of peace for hours. This feeling did not arise out of nothing. It is a misfeeling in our world of pain. It is a stepping back of the ego, the fearful ego, in favour of the perception of your soulfulness. It is the perception of your inner light. It is the truth veiled from us. And there is no reason why we could not spend most of our lives in this perception of security and meaning, which is so infinitely important for us. Leo Tolstoy said around 1890 about the situation at that time of militarisation, compulsory military service, the threat of war and the absence of soul knowledge in people: There is nothing to discuss about peace. There is only one question. Do I go to war or do I not go to war…?
This statement is just as valid today as it was then. He who regains his inner knowledge can no longer go to war. He who knows of the meaning can no longer take part in this soulless slaughter. Can no longer help to destroy. Can no longer allow himself to be conquered for the pure good of the soulless god of materialism. He knows that humanity is still in the primitive animal state and he knows that the next step will take us from hatred and naked survival instinct to a society of inner knowledge and all-encompassing love. For man can realise both of these. That is what makes him special. He can really create paradise on earth. It took two world wars to end the physical slaughter of masses of people, at least in Europe. That was unthinkable before. War had been established and was regarded as an unalterable and, above all, sensible law of nature for human beings. Many things are still unthinkable for the general public today. Even that today’s perpetual and all-pervasive war is not a law of nature. But we are evolving. From darkness to light. Whether we want it or not. With everyone who experiences its light, the world evolves towards the inner knowledge of unity. Towards peace. To love. And what is unthinkable today becomes reality tomorrow and as natural to us as if it had never been otherwise.