Hello, my dear friends! This is Mohanji.
Today, I would like to talk about something which is boiling over in America, and it can boil over, all over the world and this has a root in outright discrimination, racism. Racism is something when some people feel they are superior and some people feel they are inferior. This is an aberration.
I have discussed the unity of consciousness, many times. We are all one, not only human beings, we have been experiencing various dimensions of speciesism. One of the examples is hunting; we decide that we can take some life because we are stronger. If it is for a dire necessity of survival, no problem, that’s understandable. But if it is for pleasure, taking life for our pleasure, or just for being trigger-happy, it’s not acceptable.
Today, we are seeing tremendous violence, all over America, and there is a big threat that this will spill over in many countries across the world. It can be a very serious situation, there can be riots; there has been a prediction that there will be riots. And this situation is not controllable. All the armies of the world may not be able to control it because armies are consisting of people. This is about people; this is about a situation which people created; manmade situation. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to solve, once the fire starts. We have seen that in forest fires, somebody lit a matchstick and it became a forest fire. Here, George Floyd was choked to death. He’s been telling, “I can’t breathe.” And that became a slogan today. People can’t breathe when people breathe over their neck. We are free beings, we are born free, we will die free.
I remember one incident, a small incident. But I felt at that time, “Is there discrimination in the world?” The ship I was travelling in was going towards Basra. So, you’ve got to wait at the mouth of Euphrates and Tigris River, waiting for permission from the American Navy. They will come on board, they will inspect the whole ship to ensure there is no contraband in the ship, and they’ll give permission. We were all asked to come to the deck, stand with hands up, while a young marine will point his machine gun on us, and we will all be standing with hands up until they complete the inspection. And this man was a very good looking, young man. And at one point in time, he started talking to us. Everybody, except the captain who was inside the ship; and all the people including the chief engineer and the chief mate were all outside, including me. And this young officer started talking, “So, do you have a family, where are you from?” and we were all from various nationalities. We had Russians, we had Asians, Indians like me, I think there was only one Indian, I was there, then the captain was British, so everybody, representation of the whole world. At one point in time, he had tears in his eyes, he said, “I really want to go home. I don’t like to do this.” And he almost cried. But then again, he suddenly remembered he’s doing a job and he collected himself. I was thinking, do we have to do like this? Do we have to point a gun at somebody at all? Love is a good solution. Love is good medicine, the best medicine rather. And everybody should feel at home, everywhere.
The kindness of the bishop transformed Jean Valjean in the book of Victor Hugo. I hope my pronunciation is right. I can’t pronounce French well. Victor Hugo demonstrated that kindness works much better than violence. A convict whom nobody wanted, was served well, with love by the bishop. Again, a convict when he displayed his insecurity by stealing the silver candle holders and the police caught him and brought him back to the church, the Bishop said, “I gave it to him. He didn’t steal.” That completely shook the convict from deep within; it completely shook him. And then he became kinder, more compassionate, more loving than the bishop ever was.
We can transform the world. We can transform the world with love. With sincere love, with compassion, with kindness, with understanding, with acceptance, and that’s exactly how we must transform the world. We have to transform the world this way. It’s not only people, we should not ever encourage speciesism. Speciesism is terrible. Imagine, all the species on Earth have to live in fear of one species; the human species, it’s unnatural. We have actually been living insensitively.
When you are patted down your whole body at the airports, you feel miserable. Why do we have to do that? Because we don’t trust people. We don’t trust people, we should have fewer policemen and more counsellors. I’ve told this in many, many forums. We should have fewer policemen, fewer prisons, fewer codes of law. We should have more counsellors, and we should prevent crime. If somebody is resorting to crime, it means there is anger, frustration, insecurity or some kind of aberration inside them, which they have picked up from somewhere. First of all, prevention is always better than cure; but if there is a need for a cure, of course, we have got to sort it out. Again, in a very kind way, not with aggression, not by choking and killing people, not by considering that somebody is inferior and somebody is superior. This world belongs to everybody, but everybody cannot have their own way in the world. It doesn’t work that way.
I used to travel a lot. I’d travel many times every month before the COVID situation. I was on flights most of the time. One time, I was travelling to a European country. This was in Europe and I was asked to step aside while I was going towards the flight. And two cops came and they checked me, I was wearing a seemingly strange dress for them. I was wearing my dhoti and kurta. And they checked my body, then they checked my bag. Then I asked them, “What do you want to know? What do you want to see?” They said, “No, random checking.” So, I asked them, “Is it the colour that’s bothering you?” So, they looked at me sternly. They were warning me not to speak. Maybe my hair, my colour bothered them, and they wanted to know.
The same thing happened one time when I was coming out of Munich airport. I picked up my bags, I was coming out, but then I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, two cops came and stood in front of me, I thought it’s by accident. So, I tried to go beyond them. They stopped me again, they said, “Where are you going?” I said, “To the city.” “Why are you coming here?” I said, “To meet some friends” because I had a few programs there; one program there, not few programs. So, they checked my passport, and then they verified that I have a visa, of course without a visa, I can’t come out of the airport. The Emigration has already stamped it. They asked a few more questions, and I told them, “You should come with me. I’ll introduce you to the people who have come to pick me up, they have already texted me that they are outside.” Then they said, “No, it’s not necessary.” And they allowed me to go. So, I was thinking that they pick up people who look strange. There is a lot of insecurity. There is a lot of doubt and non-acceptance, you know, you can’t be natural.
This is one of the things which Bharat (India) has always been proud of that we accepted everybody here. Before the invasions, think about a scenario where all the people who came here were well-accepted, well-loved, considered as our own. And this culture should spread all over the world. I have always believed in ‘One world one family’, and that’s what I always say, ‘One world one family.’ All are One. The unrest, the unhappiness caused by people, towards people should be totally eradicated, removed. We are all One.
And when I started travelling more and more to conduct programs, I realized that all the people are the same. Everybody has similar emotions, similar needs, not only people, people of all species. Everybody needs love. All they need is love. And genuine love, from the heart, not pretentious love for the sake of something. Genuine, sincere love. And we are capable of doing that, giving that. This is the right time to think, to feel, to display humanity. I always maintained humanity is our religion, and I have always maintained Ahimsa is the way. The rule of the law is Ahimsa, no violence. And we can not, and should not look at somebody as inferior to us, nor superior to us. Nobody in the world is superior nor inferior. We are all unique, beautiful flowers of existence, and we should remain fragrant and loving all the time.
So many people have been killed in the name of racism, in the name of religion, and various other factors. Wars are waged because some people decided they need more, even at the cost of other people’s inconvenience, including death, insensitivity, lack of respect. This is what’s bothered the world all these years. All these generations, even now, are suffering because of the suffocation, created by human minds. It’s all in human minds. We decide we are a superior race. We are a superior species. We can do anything we like. We can put animals in the laboratory and without anaesthesia, inflict wounds on them, give them pain, agony, frustration and death. We do the same in prisons. Millions of people were burnt alive, suffocated to death by regimes. Pol Pot decided bullets are expensive and precious, so he asked his soldiers to bang the heads of children on the walls, and on the trees, and kill them. These are human expressions. These are abnormal human expressions. We have seen it all; dictators, political greed, hunger for power, pseudo supremacy, feelings of supremacy, superiority complex.
We need counselling. The world should have lots of counsellors; people who can psychologically cure, and release people from these prisons of complexes, walls. We have created many walls. The mind is the biggest wall. The external expression of the walls that we have created, we can see everywhere; supremacy, caste, creed, country, culture, colour, community, religion, everywhere. We believe we are right, and everybody else is wrong, all of us believe. 7.5 billion people believe that we are the only right people; what we think is the right thing, and everybody else is wrong. And this causes a lot of pain in the world. Separation, suffocation. We can’t breathe, we can’t breathe.
It’s important to understand and this time is very important, very explosive time. People have had enough, they said enough is enough. Now it’s time, but then can violence change anything? No, it leaves more wounds. Violence always leaves wounds, at least in the mind. What is the solution? Harmony is the solution. How? Listening. People should listen. We should understand people, we should help people, appreciate people.
I started the Early Birds Club with this thing in my mind. I wanted to create a world family. One World, one family. This was my aim, and this is still my aim. Where we unite children with children, teenagers with teenagers, women with women; men with men and adults together. So, a global unification of unity through compassion, kindness, unconditional love; the highest of human expressions. When we consistently express non-violence in thoughts, words, action, we become a refined human being. And this is our birthright and this is what we are. Non-violence is our responsibility. Every child is the responsibility of society. It’s not just the parents. Society creates people, not the parents, they bring forth a generation, but society maintains them. When we have discrimination, we think that somebody is better than the other, through intellectual supremacy, emotional supremacy, financial supremacy, or just a superiority complex. This is the way the world has always been.
If you look at the history of mankind, why did we wage all these wars? What did we gain? Millions of people perished in wars. Millions of people died because of religions. Religion is supposed to unite people with God. But we are separating people, and discriminating people and looking at people in terms of religion, and thus dividing more and more. We have enough divisions in the world. And the attitude that if you do not believe what I believe in, I hate you; very wrong attitude. Its degeneracy of human existence, we have experienced that time and again. What we see today is the degeneracy of human consciousness to base levels of ignorance. Any violence, any kind of violence is rooted in ignorance. A compassionate mind cannot be violent. Non-violence is refinement; violence is ignorance, lack of refinement, degeneracy.
George Floyd is just an icon. An example. He is an example of the frustration of generations. He’s not the first one who died this way. There have been many before. But now it has reached a point where people said enough is enough. And authorities, governments, who have come out of people, cannot ignore it anymore. We do not know which way, a mob effect will turn. We don’t know. Like Marc Antony said in Julius Caesar, ‘Mischief, thou art afoot, take what course thou wilt’ means when the mob rises, what it will create, which way it will turn, nobody knows. No control. Nobody can control it.
It’s time to wake up. Wake up to ourselves, look at ourselves, accept ourselves, accept the world. There are no guests in the world. For a guest to happen, there should be a host. There are no hosts nor guests, everybody is at home here. This is everybody’s home; beyond species, beyond caste, creed, country, culture, colour, religions. We are humanity, only one religion, humanity; only one law, nonviolence; only one medicine, unconditional love; only one education, compassion. I urge you to think about it, and spread this message far and wide. We are one world. We are one family. Let us rise together for the sake of humanity and peace. Peace will not happen outside, until and unless peace happens inside. Peace is what we are. Peace is our birthright. But for peace to happen, awareness should happen. For peace to happen, we must understand that every being is important, on the Mother Earth. All are equal. No speciesism, no religion, no racism. We are all one. We just want a peaceful existence. We just want to love. We just want to be cared for. We like to be understood. We like to be appreciated. We just have to live. We want to live.
Having said that, I would like you to contemplate, introspect; how deep is your love? It is important. We all must understand that we are not aliens here. This is our home and we all should live harmoniously.
Thank you very much.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Rekha Murali
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