| When people in the world are at peace within, the world will be at peace |
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'When people in the world are at peace within, the world will be at peace'
This is Rawat's key contention. On this basis, he gets to speak to 'partner' with the United Nations for the International Day of Peace. (I know the feeling - whenever I'm not invited to an event, I partner it instead...??).
Anyway, aside from the weasely wording about the status of Rawat's involvement in the big day, doesn't anyone question the validity of his big concept?
Sure, if everyone was meditating at the same moment, it would be hard to get into a fight, but in the real world there is competition between people for land, food, water, wealth. No-one knows the exact nature of the world and everyone has a different opinion, and some of those opinions are miles apart and sometimes diametrically opposed. 1% of the population is a beguiling lying scheming psychopath (or something) and 1% own 50% of the global wealth (or something). Some people fly around in private jets all at peace with themselves (haha) while others scrabble to get the bus fare to find work. Some countries are green and lush and have coal and oil and seashores and we've built great cities in them, and in some countries, all is built on sand, because that's all there is.
Isn't fighting and war inevitable, built in? I'd suggest all of history as evidence, but Steven Pinker has a new book, 'The Better Angels of our Nature' apparently documenting the decline of violence worldwide. I haven't read it yet - 1000 pages of small type - but my wife has read chapter one and I'm awaiting the summary.
I guess if we were all really sensible, limited the number of kids we had, limited our consumption of resources, and totally accepted some over-arching benevolent world government, life might be lovelier than it sounds. But what are the chances of that? I know several people I judge to be not very sensible (most days, I'd include myself in this group) - what's to be done with them?
Steven Pinker might be worth a read, or at least, a read of the reviews on Amazon, but I'm pretty confident there isn't going to be a chapter on Rawat's influence on world peace.
Isn't what Rawat says these days as nuts as when he was the Lord of the Universe?
(Just checked Amazon reviews, and the book isn't new. 2012. Admitting to this error proves I do fact checking occasionally though, or something).
Related link: Prem Rawat Foundation to Participate in U.N. International Day of Peace
Modified by 13 at Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 00:47:25
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I think this is a good time to say f... That!
I agree with you. Really, it boils down to if we were all happy clapper zombies the world would be at peace. And what Rawat wanted in the seventies is for us all to be not just zombies but HIS zombies so he could rule the world of golden toilets and jet planes. Yeah f that.
I can't believe anyone still falls for the peace within bs either. Take it to Syria Prem.
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where you exploit the ambiguity of language by changing the meaning of a word in the course of your argument. Which brings us to a second logical fallacy which is appeal to irrelevant authority, since clearly Rawat is no authority on peace in the political sense. Of course many of us doubt his credentials in the other definition of peace as well. I guess he might be an authority in high-end stereo systems, expensive cars and how to manipulate people through logical fallacies though.
I heard about that book by Steven Pinker. I heard it from a talk by the famous designer Stefan Sagmeister, who created a kind of art exhibit called "The Happy Show." Pinker was part of his research for the show. In his talk he said the author, who is a Harvard professor, had done research and attempted to show that in every century for the last some thousands of years human society has become more peaceful on average. I think this was measured by the percent of people who died violently. I haven't read the book though and have to wonder how you could gather such statistics. It would be amazing if true. Shows that we do have hope.
Here is a link to a TEDTalk by Sagmeister about happiness. Not sure if he talks about Pinker though. I haven't actually listened to it  . But I have heard him speak many times and he is worth listening to.
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If you think about, the reality is exactly opposite of Rawat's claim. Political peace, while not the total answer, is key to personal happiness, not the other way. People can make themselves miserable in any circumstance, my father being proof of that, but the misery of war makes the ability to be happy so much more elusive.
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so well said. Thank you for that!
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There always was something infuriatingly self centered not just about Rawat but the philosophies he preached as well. If you read the cult history especially how things evolved philosophically from the early 70s to the early 80s that was something I know ate away at me before I left. When I joined it was the tail end of premies being allowed to be other centered. We actually made feeble attempts to do "service" for others. Then, as that "heavy devotional" period happened, it became not ok for you to really care about anything but Maharaj Ji. And caring about others unless that caring was helping the others to build the cult or benefit Rawat; was a sign of a lack of surrender.
I love what you wrote because it respects reality and respects others. I have frankly as I get older come to believe one's personal happiness should come second to doing what is right and ethical. The whole peace within first is inherently self centered. Honoring the reality of the cruel living conditions others face and taking tangible steps to try to improve them is so much more authentic.
The whole inner peace in the face of loss, bereavement etc was always a form of gaslighting and blaming the suffering individual. How many times would some poor premie pour their heart out about some personal tragedy and be met with scorn by Rawat or a mahatma/initiator/Pam? To use a word I hate .... It was toxic.
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Rawat's peace? Look at it. All the 30/40 year long followers aren't even allowed to speak about it, cause they wolud mess it up. After 40 years or more practicing.
That's the quality of what Rawat is as a teacher.
Complete bullshit.
Today those followers are in a state of mind that they cannot even recognize this fact.
So poor. I am really sorry for them.
Toby
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You're right. I've done a hard and pleasing day's work and am sitting peacefully with a glass of wine. This does not equate to 1/6 billionth of a world peace.
I can relate to Sagmeister's view of happiness far more than Rawat's. I too spend much of my time designing stuff, and get a great deal of pleasure from that. I think even our concept of happiness changes through time, so the idea of achieving it through repeating the same procedure makes no sense to me. As Susan said, probably pursuit of our own happiness ought to come second to trying to act ethically. Happiness becomes something to indulge in along the way rather than as an end in itself.
I'll get round to Pinker I expect.
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To a certain extent, yeah. The video of the "Change Begins Within" concert for TM supports this idea. Guess I'm still a sucker for all that 60s hippie crap. Angry people live in an angry world and an angry world teeming with nuclear weapons -- not a good idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJg5mKuCh7A
The alternative would be Machiavellian crap like the ideas put forward in the book "The 48 Laws of Power," the most requested book in American prisons. Imagine a world with people living these ideas.
https://www.tke.org/files/file/The_48_Laws_of_Power.pdf
Modified by Steve at Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 10:42:37
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I can't imagine what kind of world would have nothing in it that makes me angry.
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I think you would have to have had a lobotomy to never get angry. Anger is a normal human emotion. I'm talking about being stuck in anger. Ever watch The Sopranos?
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No, I haven't watched the Sopranos. I don't have a TV. It makes me either bored or angry. I'll sign up for a lobotomy. Should be interesting. It'll kill the boredom, and I won't get angry any more. win win.
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have you ever heard the saying that your feelings are often a better indicator of what is going on than your thoughts?
I was quite intrigued when I first heard it. I'd tended to think of it being the other way round because of the way I control my emotional responses with thought.
so yes. I find it an accurate saying. my feelings inform me like an extension of my sense of touch.
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In defence of my teenage self - I still accept the premise - if people were at peace within the world would be too. of course we would still be battling with mosquitoes and fights between people would still occur. but not the hell on wheels we get now.
I don't mean meditating tho which seems to be more about calming the mind than anything else. I mean real peace, the real feeling.
It really was a bait and switch - .."I will give you such a peace as will never die" turned out to be 4 hindu yoga meditation techniques delivered by one of his guilt-tripping eye-poking mahatmas.
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I'm still negotiating this landscape. I actually feel more at peace with myself now. And I do believe, like you Lesley that inner peace has got to make a difference to the behaviours and havoc wreaked upon the world. I think by extension living by a moral code, some form of ethics also brings it's own form of inner peace. However I have also let myself be subjugated through this idea that all I had to do was be a light in the darkness. That inner peace was maybe enough on it's own.Or the most important thing. Sometimes the most important thing I needed to do was say NO and walk away, with or without inner peace. Turns out some darkness's you have to turn your back on. Among them Guru's and all manner of people spinning half truths, living divided within themselves. One face for the world and a different story behind the scenes. Inner tranquility has to come about by a sense of wholeness surely. Not lying and cheating to uphold some idea (no matter how long held) an image or a lifestyle, usually all three. What sort of peace can a person divided within themselves offer? He might be powerful but he is not strong. The Ji was powerful in the way that he was a magician. 'The Greatest Magician' he once claimed. All very well being a Maji, he learned a few Rishi tricks no doubt. He had me hypnotised more than a few times. Brainwashed even. But that is not "inner peace." By the end of it you find you can't ask questions of either the master, another premie or yourself. That's not living, that's bamboozled
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yeah, a clear conscience, or at least clean enough to feel comfortable, is definitely a major factor for inner peace. 
multifactorial, still I think the most important part is love. fulfilling that. When my mum was so incapacitated and vulnerable in her latter years I always wanted to be by her side and it was stressful when I wasn't. I remember one evening we were finally together, sitting side by side and holding hands, not speaking but the feeling of peace within was very strong.
yes, what a good post, Suzy, the idea of inner peace did not bring peace. and I remember, it was distinctly icky walking around after a program feeling like I should be a light in the darkness, I felt better once it wore off again so yes, when it comes to it, we are lucky to be the bamboozled rather than the bamboozlers.
Intent weighs in so strongly despite actual results when it comes to inner peace.
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"Isn't what Rawat says these days as nuts as when he was the Lord of the Universe?" Yes. I was going to leave it at that, but... 1. I said just the other day that everything would be nice and peaceful if it weren't for other people. The problem with that notion is that those other people probably think the same way. (I can hear that premie lurker shouting, "You see?? They need to stop thinking!! It's the mind -- the MIND! -- that's the problem!" Rawat's "peace" is the equivalent of yanking the batteries out of the Energizer bunny.) 2. Rawat's notion of "peace" once again raises the specter of infantilism. 3. In hindsight and outside of their fantasy day dreams, premies in general were among the most dispirited and down people I ever met. This may have been due to mental burn out from the constant bombardment of mixed messages and the chasm between their gross infantile idealism and the down to earth reality of everyday living -- the reason they were reduced to hiding behind the lie of being "delegates" at a "peace convention." In the end just before I left, I preferred the company of my non-premie work friends over the depleted core of chronic video event goers. 4. I'm sure it's easy for Rawat to pontificate about so many things that he knows nothing about from deep inside his isolated security bubble, fortress and private jet acquired with other peoples' money -- avoiding life's mirrors that help keep us grounded. PS, In Rawat's world, "partnering" is the processing of glomming on to other people's/organization's success and name recognition and exploiting it for personal gain.
Modified by lakeshore at Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 05:18:27
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"Rawat's "peace" is the equivalent of yanking the batteries out of the Energizer bunny."
that made me laugh, it's funny and so horribly true.
In the world of bridge, partnering is key. If you can form a good partnership you will do well. If you cannot form a good partnership it doesn't matter how well you play you will not win. So how do you make a good partnership? it's pretty simple, you need to cooperate with each other.
Shouldn't be too hard should it? yes it is. yes it is. terms like seniority and captaincy should give you a clue. North is better than South, East is better than West. Number of points, years of playing, who you know. They don't even realise they're doing it half the time - competing with their partner. You can just about hear them thinking tho, damn I'm the senior partner it's my contract, and yet you need to be precise and flexible, the captaincy of one hand even can change during the bidding process let alone over all the hands.
I tell you, the people in a bridge club who are capable of a cooperative relationship with their partner are outnumbered by those who aren't.
we're talking a friendly game here. What chance world peace?
I've just had the pleasure of a good partner, up here with his wife on Winter holidays, very experienced, definitely the senior North sitting partner. We've been playing for several weeks and both been enjoying the unusual experience. He had retired from bridge tournaments but last weekend we went to one, I haven't done that before and I didn't realise it was one with cash prizes either, and that had attracted quite a crew.
There was a lot of good play and the partnering much more effective, except I did feel like I'd been swimming in a vat with piranhas afterwards and I am half attracted and half dis-attracted to do it again.
world peace? we're still just playing a game here and it wouldn't have been big sums of money.
so yes, our only chance of world peace is down to people being at peace within themselves and not done by being lobotomised, their chemistry changed or even because their focus on their breath has become sublime. But happened for real because the world ethos has shifted from a competitive to a cooperative model in order to support people in following their heart.
Do I think this is possible? No I don't. I agree with Jim that the idea itself even is more problematic than helpful because of white-anting the strength of our Western democratic societies to respond to being threatened by other groups.
And I've been to a bridge tournament now. I've faced the sharp toothed weasels and the glint in their eye - world peace is not on!
look I've always thought peace of mind peace of heart peace of soul is not something to be talked about so much as worked, hoped for cherished and followed.
shalom
peace out.
Modified by lesley at Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 20:21:35
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Thanks for not stopping at 'Yes'. It was uncharacteristically and disappointingly concise.
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It hasn't changed since his father's day. Still the same old discredited shit that no-one took any notice of back in 1961, or whenever it was that Shri Hans wrote to JFK & the UN, exhorting them to take up the science of of the soul as the solution to imminent nuclear armaggedon. That was a big worry at the time, which those of a certain age may vaguely recollect.
I say discredited, but maybe overtaken would be more charitable in this pc age. Back in the early C19th when Hindu India was allowed to flourish intellectually, the Muslim rulers having been supplanted by the British, it was catch up time, big time. So those who sought to take Hinduism several pegs up from peasant superstition, looked for a correspondence in the latest European ideas. That was the discovery of electricity & the expectation that the soul would be found as a result. The background to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel.
Certain individuals,of the type that Stalin recognised when he said that history is made by those who show up, took aspects of yoga which they claimed gave them a voice in the debate, added in a progressive social outlook vis a vis equality of the sexes, the irrelevancy of caste & it caught on big time. Or maybe not, given the huge population of India, but at least enough to make them, the Sant Mat gurus, a force. Why & how a small part of the western LSD generation of the late '60s early '70s discovered & adopted this movement, virtually unknown outside the subcontinent & controversial within it, is of course the subject of this forum, though for me now only of intermittent interest in the particulars.
There is no secret place of peace inside, common to all mankind, which is in the gift of any other human to reveal to the rest. There is no-one, nor ever has been throughout all of time, not a priest, pandit, imam, shaman, pope, caliph, prophet, guru, who knows what happens after death, nor will there ever be. Anyone who claims otherwise because they have a special connection to a superior power is a liar.
This is a perspective which enormous numbers of people worldwide are resistant to. I don't see any possibility of universal peace as long as this is the case. In the meantime we have to put up with irrelevant little Hitlers like Prem Rawat guffing off on the fringes of the UN, an organisation based on the alliance of the victors in the world war which ended 70 yrs ago, & which despite much good work is now looking distinctly elderly & frayed around the edges, in the matter of bringing peace to the world.
I don't know what's in Pinker's book, but I'm sure it's of little comfort to those unfortunate to be caught between big power politics & resurgent Islam in the middle east, or between western hedonism & the cocaine traders in Mexico & central America.
Rawat telling people to just breathe doesn't really cut it.
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'There is no secret place of peace inside, common to all mankind, which is in the gift of any other human to reveal to the rest. There is no-one, nor ever has been throughout all of time, not a priest, pandit, imam, shaman, pope, caliph, prophet, guru, who knows what happens after death, nor will there ever be. Anyone who claims otherwise because they have a special connection to a superior power is a liar.'
Well, that's clearly and unambiguously stated. It's a bit long, but otherwise it would do nicely as a second strap line for this forum. A good starting point to gaze out from at all the gibberish and lies.
Small point, you're forgetting Madame Blavatsky and Krishnamurti, Steiner and the theosophical movement, who planted the seeds of the idea of finding an enlightened guru into the minds of the fore-runners of the hippies. I know some hippies managed to hitch-hike to India, but the jumbo jet might have been as significant as LSD in sparking the thing off in the 60's. I remember the first jumbo that was chartered by premies to go to India - the notion of a whole plane load of devotees flying so far suggested the dawning of a new age in so many ways.
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Yes, I had forgotten the fragrant Madame, so I looked her up to refresh my memory. Jesus, what a loathsome piece of work she was. Interestingly, although she invented a great deal of the hocus pocus that is the New Age, she was more or less unknown come the hippie era. You're right about planting the seed even though early DLM & probably the other Rhadasoami type groups cynically sidelined any curiosity about those sorts of connections.
I notice, sample of 2 so not reliable, that another grotesque Russian chain smoker & allround ball breaker, Ayn Rand, is recently popular with lifer premies as well as with some aging hippies of the more successful through their own efforts variety.
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If you have a better idea I'd like to hear it.
https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/anger-management-relaxation-techniques/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/05/14/breathing-and-your-brain-five-reasons-to-grab-the-controls/#1c0ffe4b52aa
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-it/201304/breathing-the-little-known-secret-peace-mind
There are hundreds of scientific studies on-line that conclusively prove that focussing on the breath has both physical and mental health benefits. Don't believe me, just look.
Modified by Steve at Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 11:59:56
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I wasn't really referring to the possible benefits to the individual, but to the notion that the aggregate benefit, an impossible goal btw, would be world peace.
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John Gray on Stephen Pinker's book. His bleak views inform my own. I heard Gray on the radio a while ago and was surprised and pleased that he seemed such a good humoured fellow, which I really hadn't expected after reading his book, 'Straw Dogs'.
Instead of becoming ever stronger and more widely spread, civilisation remains inherently fragile and regularly succumbs to barbarism. This view, which was taken for granted until sometime in the mid-18th century, is so threatening to modern hopes that it is now practically incomprehensible.
I wouldn't like to pit myself against either Pinker or Gray, but I'm sure the both of them understand a lot more about peace than the still uneducated charlatan Rawat.
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i know that breathing and focusing on your breath is good advice in general - But just in general - there are other times - where i cant hear "just focus on your breath" - because i need to understand the whole picture sometimes and just focusing on my breath just doesnt cut it.
Which is the whole point of me finally seeing i needed to set myself free - I needed to be guided more when i was younger - not just magically focusing on my breath.
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