Destroy the Root Cause of War (Page 1 of 2)
explains Meher Baba

War and the suffering that it inevitably brings cannot be avoided by mere propaganda against war. If war is to disappear from human experience, it is essential to destroy its root cause. The life of illusory values in which man is self-caught is the breeding ground for the chaos that precipitates war; individual and collective egoism and selfishness, which hold most of mankind in their thrall, are its root cause.

Man alone is responsible for war; through greed, vanity, selfishness, and cruelty, he brings the recurring evil of it upon himself. God, in His grace, transmutes this man-wrought tragedy into a channel for the quickening of humanity to a concept of higher values. Appalling and devastating though it is, war is thus saved by the Infinite from remaining an unmitigated evil.

To purge himself, man has to become conscious of the redeeming God-design in man-created war. To understand the real significance of violence and nonviolence in this God-transmuted pattern of spiritual values requires a true perception of the meaning and purpose of existence. Man’s actions in war, therefore, should not be motivated by slogans, however high-sounding, that are based on erroneous concepts of violence or nonviolence; his actions require the prompting of spiritual understanding, which is above man-made rules, and of divine love, which is above man-conceived duality.

God’s design infuses man’s war with the capacity to generate and foster many qualities of divine importance, thus preventing it from being wholly without spiritual significance. When man’s mania for possessions and dominance forces a peaceful nation or people to take up arms for the sake of higher values, for unselfish considerations of general well-being, war becomes not merely inevitable, but spiritually defensible.

Under the stress of imminent danger, war inspires behaviour that is free from the limited self and action kindled by the impersonal spirit of willing sacrifice and suffering for the safety and welfare of others. It is better that such unselfish qualities be at least partially released under the stimulus of danger than that they remain wholly dormant; it is preferable for the pressure of collective calamity to free man—if only temporarily—from his petty self than for him to remain permanently enslaved by the ignoble pursuit of personal safety and the ruthless perpetuation of his selfish interests and existence.