Mark Whitwell on The Root Cause of Violence and War
By Mark Whitwell, Yoga Teacher at Heart of Yoga
“It is not love that will bring us together, it is fear” — U.G. Krishnamurti.
Everywhere humanity is heart breaking as the bombs come down on Ukraine; as men, women and children die in the streets of Bucha, Mariupol, Irpin, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Luhansk and Kherson. Reports are coming in daily of bodies found in mass graves as the Russian army withdraws from the north, of predatory soldiers committing unconsciousable acts of sexual abuse, rape and murder. Once normal towns have been turned into literal hell. How can we talk about anything else other than what is happening? What can we do about this horror?
It is obvious now that we need a completely different framework to understand the human situation and to live well our Reality, our Life and our place in the Cosmos. What we are witnessing in Ukraine are the last gasps of patriarchal civilization. It no longer serves the human or any other species. There is a universal call for revolution that will restore us all and our Mother Earth to the natural state — the universal recognition that Life is a Unity condition of no separation, no division.
Tragically, civilization has been built upon a mind that does not see its own Reality, that does not recognise the real Unity that is the Cosmos — the inherent oneness of everything that is appearing, the profound, prior and complete integration of the body with the totality. Rather, the world-mind is a reflexive pattern that is presuming separation. And herein lies the root cause of conflict, violence, and war.
When we believe ourselves to be separate—separate from the body, from one another, from Nature, from Truth — every thing and every one else becomes ‘other’ to us, and “where there is an other there is fear.” Where there is an ‘other’ the mind digs this thought-structure in with all kinds of further, imaginary divisions and identifications. Everywhere we look we see humanity dividing itself up along complex lines of nationalism, race, sex, religious tribalism, belief systems and spiritual ideals.
Even in ‘peacetime,’ the reflexive presumption of separation in each person causes war-like conditions: families, communities, workplaces, and even intimate partnerships are full of conflict. The idea of separate body struggling in a separate world is not working. Actual war, the extreme vulgarity that is the actual killing of others, is the ultimate expression this dysfunction, of minds that are dissociated from the radiant Unity that is Reality Itself.
The elite group of womanless men who have created war in Ukraine know nothing about what Reality is, though they associate themselves as men of “God.” This is the insanity of the “God Idea.” They do not recognise Real God as the present-time intelligence, power, harmony, beauty, and unity that is our Reality. And they know nothing of the nurturing force of existence that brought us here and presently sustains us. They know nothing of participation in the male-female polarity in their own embodiment via sexual intimacy — the embrace of another, in same-sex or opposite sex intimacy, as God-realizing activity. Anybody who is participant in a life of intimate connection to their body, breath, and to an intimate partner will not go to war for another person’s anachronistic idea. “Man’s heaven has created a hell out of this abundant paradise” — U.G.
For humanity to save itself from self-destruction, we must disinvest en masse from the mind of separation, othering, and fear, and turn to what is really going on. We are being forced to make a decision now like never before: a violent world of thought, or Reality: the radiance of the Cosmos. Our very survival depends upon it.
“Men for years now have been talking about war and peace. But now they can no longer talk about. It is no longer the choice between non-violence and violence in this world, it is non-violence or non-existence” — Martin Luther King.
The observation that the Cosmos is a Unity that every thing and every person is utterly integrated within this Unity is not a spiritual idea. It is not a religious idea. It is not a poetic ideal that we can organise a future hopefulness around. It is a simple, ordinary fact, like two plus two equals four, or the sky is blue. This recognition is for every person, no matter what their cultural background or faith is. It must become the first assumption of the human mind. The basis for a new non-patriarchal civilization.
If we choose Reality then our religious and secular insitutions — our science, art and commerce — will be designed on and in the radiant forms of Reality: its unspeakable beauty, pure intelligence, and profound intrinsic harmonies. The secular must serve the sacred. And the sacred is each person’s beautiful life as a unique expression of the One Life that is all. Political institutions and leaders are there only to serve the blooming of every person. No person or power has the right to kill another.
How can we make this transition?
Real Yoga is the practical technology that allows for each individual to breakthrough from the presumption that thought-patterns are Reality. It is an easily learnt, yet little known about, practice of yielding the body and mind to what is Truth — Truth simply being the Reality of our condition: the one Reality that is All, that power, that beauty and that harmony.
When people discover their breath they quickly fall into the whole-body disposition of non-separation — that which is already the case. People finish with all forms of future God, future attainment, with all forms of future becoming that deny the present-time paradise we live in. They finish with socialized thought-patterns. They naturally then create, in their own unique ways, present-time human culture based upon intelligent, compassionate, spontaneous action in the world based on love.
There was a great sadness from Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) that his scholarship in the tradition of Yoga was never received by the public. He was dismayed that some of his key students turned this human treasure that he brought forth into a commodity — the vulgar world of instagram backbends, mediocre gymnastics, and teachers playing games of physical and spiritual hierarchy that have all put the public off investigating what Yoga actually is.
No matter. Yoga Teachers — capital “Y,” capital “T,” — around the world are holding this cultural treasure for every One. It is spreading like wildfire. For each person who practices and feels the profound effects of actual asana, is inevitably moved to share this technology of love with their community. Out of their sharing comes sangha, a community of real friends who are feeling the natural state, their intimacy with life and therefore their intimacy with each other. May this flow through Europe and Russia and China and the U.S. and everywhere else. Om Saha Na Vavatu — may we get the job done together. This dharma is now universally accessible to all the people.
