Planet Earth
Magnificent blue and silver orb
Coursing through space
Not aimlessly, but on a mission
Guided by cosmic design and purpose
Each subtle movement of the dance
A perfect response to tones of universe
Government. It’s so beautifully operative in the cosmos: the Earth and the other planets steadily orbit the sun; the sun revolves around its point of centring in the galaxy; and the galaxy around its centre point in the larger universe… all part of a magnificently coordinated Whole. Astronomers describe galaxies passing through one another with no collisions or disruptions.
Not so in the world human beings have made, where collisions and conflicts of all sorts are the order of the day. Why? Why in the midst of a majestic heavenly symphony are discordant notes being sounded on Earth? Is Earth the victim of some sort of cosmic discrimination? Has it been given a bad score to play? Or no score at all? Of course not. There is only one explanation: the being created to conduct the orchestra on Earth has elected to rewrite the music—in the interest of improving it, of course—but the result has been dissonance and disintegration.
The human intellect, with its “brilliant” ideas about how things should be run on the planet, has rejected universal government in favour of self-government. But this “freedom” comes at a high price and some people are now beginning to sense just how steep this price may be—the very survival of the planet. Yet few so far have been willing to address the underlying issue and abandon the illusion that human beings can govern themselves, either individually or collectively, apart from the laws and purposes of the Whole.
Historic efforts at collective government have included democracy, plutocracy, theocracy, monarchy, autocracy and many other “ocracies” and “isms.” Each has been a failure. While some praise Western-style democracy as the ultimate form of government, I would hardly describe the Western democracies as dynamic models of peace and prosperity. Indeed what is evident there and in the whole of the communist and socialist worlds as well is a dull and debilitating bureaucracy. As one person put it: “Most are deluded to think the world is polarized between conflicting political systems. This merely takes the emphasis away from where the control is. Political systems are mere figureheads for bureaucracies and bureaucracies are the same the world around. Human beings are governed by bureaucracy. It is their substitute for the creative process.”
The creative process, Life, Spirit, whatever you wish to call it. This is what should govern human affairs on Earth. But human beings have interposed the conditioned and belief-saturated human mind between themselves and the creative process. The mind, whose natural function is to be an instrument of cosmic government on Earth, has instead attempted to run the show.
This would include so-called “spiritual” approaches to government. Concepts about “the divine right of kings” and “the government of God” are just that—concepts, human interpretations. As are the “heavenly hierarchies” proposed by some present-day metaphysical groups. All are just inventions by the human intellect, which imagines it can somehow grasp Spirit and subject God to human likes and dislikes. Clearly, in view of this, it has been wise to maintain a strict separation between church and state. And yet there’s a sense in which Spirit and state are rightly one. Ultimately, only a spiritually based government will work. Not the concepts of Spirit or God concocted by organized (or unorganized) religion but Spirit untouched by conditioned consciousness.
How does authentic spiritual government become operative on Earth? The answer is obvious. The arrogant intellect will need to relax its death-grip and get out of the way so Life can come through unobstructed by mental concepts. Of course, the human mind dreads letting go, knowing that the world it has built based on fear and greed will fall apart. Well, it’s rapidly falling apart anyways, so why not let go while there’s still a chance that something can be saved?
Surely this is not a difficult prescription: relax, let go, be still; look up at the splendour of the night sky and observe the beauty, harmony, stability, tranquility and creative intensity there. These qualities have their counterparts in human beings, and their consistent expression in living is what brings spiritual government into form on Earth. The politician appropriately plays a key role in this process; instead of functioning as a problem-solving technician, he is concerned to wisely administer the creative process. Instead of passing mentally determined laws designed to shore up a fatally flawed state, his actions demonstrate to all how to harmonize with the already existing laws of life.
And so bureaucracy—humankind’s struggle to organize life—gives way to true government—Life’s effortless organization of human and other affairs on Earth. The Earth aligns again with cosmic purpose, “giving perfect response to tones of universe.”
Read more from Jerry Kvasnicka on this topic in SPIRITUAL GOVERNMENT: Human consciousness and the true politician>>
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Jerry Kvasnicka, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, has had a varied career as a youth minister, a radio news reporter, a writer and editor for several magazines and journals and a custodian with the Loveland, Colorado school district. Jerry currently edits and writes for the mind-spirit section of the online magazine The Mindful Word. He has lived at the Sunrise Ranch spiritual community in Loveland for twenty-five years. He can be reached at jerry@themindfulword.org.
