Over the summer, In the holy city of Najaf, Iraq, Moqtada Sadr’s al Mahdi army fought against U.S. forces. The rebels, protecting the holy men of the city, used the shrine of Imam Ali as their base. By the end of the fighting, most of the old city surrounding the shrine lay in ruin. In the past century, the United States has broadened its foreign affairs while remaining isolated within the North American continent, within its own geographical “shrine,” while the rest of the world has, in turns, crumbled under the destructive forces of world wars and the power plays of superpower governments. Today, whether one looks out across the sea from the eastern or western coast of the United States, and, especially, if one gazes south toward central and south america, one knows there is a much larger neighborhood that lay in ruins. In this respect, the citizens of the United States of America are not much different than the terrorist rebels with which our military was engaged in the battle for Najaf, a battle that left the city destroyed.
What are our responsibilities as US citizens? As our armies march forward in our name, what are we to do? We sit behind the walls of our borders and watch with dismay, the destruction of a world “outside.” But this world outside is our home, it is ours. Not ours in the imperialist sense of the word, but in the sense that a neighborhood is ours. We participate in politics. We try and help communities that are suffering within the US. You can add to this list all you wish. But we do this is within the walls of our shrine.
In Iraq, an intervention occurred. Since Sadr would not give up on his own, someone whose moral authority exceeded that of Sadr’s stepped in: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite leader. Who is our leader? How can we have a leader that wields such authority when the Christian leadership in the United States is not a spiritual, but a political leadership. Nearly two millennia have elapsed since the language of Christianity arrived in the mouths of it’s messengers. How quickly this language, was manipulated for political purposes. One need only study the long history of the christian heresies to see how one thing came to be it’s opposite. Surely, there is no paradise on earth. Even a perfect sociopolitical solution can not remain the solution once it is attained. Because we change. And what fits one epoch will not fit the next. The challenge is to find which realities can guide us, help our thinking adapt, so it remains concurrent with the times. The only place this can begin is in the human being’s self understanding. And this means, to quote a comment the hungarian anthroposophist Georg Kuhlewind made in a lecture a few nights ago, “Understanding that our roots are in what is above; they are not in the physical.” Until this becomes one part of the threefold foundation of our social building, we can expect chaos. The economic, and political spheres will be balanced by this third sphere of spirituality. But we can not continue to look at this spiritual sphere through the eyes of scientism.
There is a beautiful story recounted by Steiner in his book, The Fifth Gospel, about an experience Jesus had in the years before his baptism by John. It took place at an Essene community. In Jesus’ time the Essenes had developed practices of purification that protected their communities from the suffering that plagued the people of those times in Palestine, times not unlike our own. The Essenes were the keepers of many secret texts and wisdom. To become an Essene and before one gained entrance into their communities, one had to go through many trials of purification and initiations. Jesus spent time with the Essenes and was recognized as a powerful incarnation and he was allowed thus to enter the most sacred depths of the order. Steiner writes, “One day Jesus of Nazareth had a particularly important talk with the Essenes , discussing sublime spiritual matters. As he left the main gate of the Essene building he met the figures he knew to be Lucifer and Ahriman. He saw them flee away from the gate of the Essene monastery. A question entered his soul with elemental force: ‘Where do Lucifer and Ahriman go; where does their flight take them?’ He knew the monastery had put them to flight . And the question would not let go, burning in his soul like fire; in the weeks that followed it stayed with him hour by hour, indeed minute by minute.” Jesus’ epiphany came in the form of another vision, a vision of the Buddha: “Jesus of Nazareth heard the Buddha say more or less the following: ‘If the doctrine I have given taught were to come to fulfillment, all people would be like the Essenes. That, however, cannot be, and here lies the error of my teaching. The Essenes, too, can only progress by setting themselves apart from the rest of humanity; other people have to be there for them. Fulfillment of my doctrine would mean that all people become Essenes. And that cannot be.’”
What does this mean to us of the U.S., we, whose principals of freedom are our sanctity? Where goes the evil that runs from our gates. The world has to be there for us. This is the cost of our borders and freedom: the worlds suffering, ecosystems destroyed for a golf-course. Therefor, I wonder how we can separate ourselves from the insurgents of Iraq who, locked behind the doors of a shrine, let their city and people take the destruction.
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