THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT

The profane man is always willing to set his eyes on his failures and the lack of immediate results. Always impressed with the negatives of life, forgetting the positives. His thoughts and his conversations revolve around the evils he has suffered or fears to suffer and close his eyes to the goods of which life has to offer. He ignores that “evil” is not based on any reality because “evil” is simply the absence of the “real,” which is the “good.”

Darkness is the absence of light...

Sickness is the absence of health...

Death is the absence of life...

Sin is the absence of holiness...

The profane man, victim of his ignorance, seek to curb the negatives of life, the evils, by attacking them directly from the front - which is as absurd as wanting to end the darkness by using swords or rifles.

Since darkness is only the absence of light, and the only way to end the darkness is to replace it with the presence of light, there the darkness is gone! For the negative is incompatible with the positive.

In the same way, no one can expel the disease except by replacing it with health, as no one can abolish sin except by the introduction of holiness.

Similar attracts similar - this is the eternal and the universal law that governs the outer macrocosm and the microcosm in man. Those who habitually live in a morbid climate of negativity - fear, hatred, rancour, resentment, pessimism, sadness, discouragement, a spirit of criticism and a lack of charity - are always preparing the ground for new negativities and defeats. Every negative attitude is like a pregnant woman who carries in her womb an embryo made in her image and likeness, and sooner or later will give birth to a new offspring of negative character - thus perpetuating the endless chain of evils.

The only way to improve the world and human life is to assume and maintain an invariable positive attitude - altruism, love, benevolence, joy, trust, the spirit of charity and conciliation, the atmosphere of harmony and goodwill - because the dynamics of the positive creates potential positives, and these, when properly matured, generate new positives, creating epics of well-being and happiness.

The profane man, because of his negativist reactions, rely on the spirit of force, physical violence - and does not believe in the power of the spirit; but the spiritual man knows that all violence is a certificate of weakness, and that meekness is strength and power. The children of darkness, due to their illiteracy, expect positive results coming from negative means, a dagger, swords, rifles, machine guns, torpedoes, atomic bombs, etc., while the children of light, thanks to their wisdom, abstain from all brute violence and take advantage of the invincible power of spiritual factors synthesized in love.

Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Leon Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Schweitzer and many others were masters at The University of the Spirit. Not to resist evil, to pay evil for good, to be willing to suffer a thousand injuries than to commit a single one, to prefer to die rather kill - all this, which to the profane seems so inefficient and impractical, is for the spiritual man, supreme realism, efficient philosophy, the only path to individual happiness and social harmony of the human race.

The profane man, the victim of his chronic unrealism, calls “idealism” something which is infinitely more realistic and real than all his alleged “realism.”

There is only one infallible way to exterminate all our enemies - it is to love them as friends. Adding a negative to a negative is not abolishing it, but doubling it, or to do evil to those who have done me wrong is to create two evils and thus increase the sum of existing evils in the world; is to make the world of today worse than it was yesterday. To stop paying evil for evil does not increase existing evils but does not diminish them either, for the evil of my evildoer continues to exist. But to pay with good, evil, is to cancel with a positive a negative; who does so make the world of today considerably better than the world of yesterday.

The profane man seeks to exterminate his enemies by killing them because, in his primitive and narrow way of thinking, he completely ignores the great cosmic law that hatred breeds hatred, violence breeds violence, negative creates negative, perpetuating and increasing the endless chain of evils, for he lives handcuffed to the law of retaliation, thus also handcuffing his opponent, multiplying more and more evils. It is like the monstrous hydra of ancient mythology: whenever Hercules cut out one of its numerous heads, two new ones were born in the place of which it existed.                                                            

In his deplorable blindness, the evildoer does not realize that the evil he inflicts onto others is a greater evil for himself. For those who suffer, evil is only an external evil, but it is an internal evil to the one who produces it. The object of evil is struck externally only, whereas evil, the wrongdoer, is wounded internally. Suffering from injury does not make me worse, but doing injury makes me worse, diminishes my inner values, and degrades my human personality's intimate essence.

If men comprehended this simple truth and lived according to that comprehension, the environment in which we live today would be completely different.

The best way to perpetuate the existence of our enemies indefinitely is to be their enemy - and the safest and only way to be in peace with them is to be their friends.

“If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”