Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; Mythology of war and peace, part one

But how about a little further along and when one sees what the ideal of peace to come actually is it is not all together. The world with the lamb. The foreigners shall build up your walls and their kings shall minister to you. For in my rack I see wealthy but in my favor I have had mercy on the. Reigate also shall be opened continually. They shall not be shut day or night that men may bring on to the The Wealth of Nations and their kings led captive for that nation and kingdom that will not serve the sell paradise. Yea those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee the fir tree the pine and the box tree to gather to beautify the place of my sanctuary and I will make the plight of my feet to ours and the sons of them that afflicted thee shall come pending and they and all they

that despise the sound barrier there from the house down at the soles of my feet. And they shall call the city of yobbery desire of the Holy One of Israel. Now it's strange. It has been strange past weeks to hear these very lines coming from the jubilation in Israel over the victory of the Arabs. That is to say these mythologies are alive and of course the Arabs have their mythology too. They are also as a medic people they are also descended according to their mythology from Abraham. They are the children obviously smile the first and all the son of Abraham Abraham and smile. According to Muslim mythology built the Kaaba the shrine of Mecca the central shrine of all the Arab world.

And the Arabs have been in continuous knowledge of the fact that they derives from the same tradition as the Hebrews they honor Abraham. They are on a mountain. They are also Jesus as a prophet and they declare Muhammad to be the final prophet. But they have a war mentality of ours. And from the Qur'an which is for them the most recent word and final word of God. I've taken this final little text I want to read. When you put it together with the ones have already read it makes a rather frightening point. This is from the Torah. Seventeen forty eight of the Qur'an. And when the word we is used here means God. And we gave clear warning to the children of Israel in the book the Bible

that twice when they do mischief on the earth and be elated with mighty arrogance and twice would they be punished. When the first warnings came to pass we turned against you didn't get into terrible water as they entered the very in most part of your homes and it was a warning completely fulfilled. Then did we grant you the return as against them. We gave you increase in resources and found and made you the more numerous in manpower. If you did well and you did well for yourself. If you did evil he did evil against yourselves. So when the second of the warnings came to pass we permitted your enemies to disfigure your face and then to enter your temple as they had entered it before and to visit with destruction all that fell into their power. It may be that your Lord may yet show mercy on to you. But if you revert to your sin we shall refer to our punishment. And we have

made hell a prison for those who reject the faith. These are the two warring mythologies that face each other right death minute in the Near East and may explode the world. Now the Holocaust to the matter of everybody in the town was not the kind of exclusive to the Hebrews. This was the walk they have waged in all of their campaigns the Moabite the theory and opt out. However about 30 a 730 PC. The great Assyrian moniker Kylie's a third. Realize that you but I thought somebody might realize before that if you massacre everybody in the town you don't have anybody to work for you.

And yet if you leave them there they may pull themselves together and you have a revolution on your hands. So it was highly effective in the middle of the eighth century B.C. who invented the idea of transporting people from one place to another. When he had taken a city he transported all of its population somewhere else and took the people from that place and put them here. In other words he grew to the entire Near East. From that time on there has been no ground rooted people really in the Near East. There has been a sort of horizontally related to church and effect situation not ground rooted but how exactly related people. When Israel found some 21 its people were

not massacred if they would have been a century before they were transported somewhere else and other people taken into Israel. And then when Jerusalem fell a few years later 586 again the people of Jerusalem and Judah were removed not massacred. And then came a wonderful transformation in the whole war mythology of the Neri. This was when the Persian moniker Cyrus conquered the Babylonians who had conquered the people of Judah. And here you walk you don't transport people from one place to another. You don't massacre them. You put them in their places and govern them through a subordinate who will be under you. And so he became the great Persian king of kings. And that title which he took. And that title which has remained the

title of the Persian king became the title of a large God who is called the King of Kings. Privacy in there is celebrated. And the messenger and servant of Jehovah because he returned the people of Jehovah to Jerusalem ordered the rebuilding of the roof and the establishment of a reign of peace. Now the mythology of Cyrus is wear out in the mythology of the Persian prophet Tsar after all this is a mythology of extraordinary interest to us really because it underlies the later Hebrew and Christian thinking about the nature of the Messiah. According to this mythology the first creation was perfect but an

evil power. Undermine you destroyed it. And there is now in process a conflict between the powers of good and the power of the people. Now these powers are not associated in the Persian system with any particular race or any particular tribe. They are general metaphysical cosmic powers. And every individual no matter of what race or of what tribe has the choice to associate himself to align himself either with the powers of God or with the powers of evil. And aligning him with the power to himself with the power of the good he works and fight for the restoration. But of course you know how kings are even kings of kings. It is THEY who represent the power of good.

So in this great international empire the Persians which was the first great international empire in the history of the world. Sixth century B.C.. We have an imperialist stick in power that the Persian Empire should talk to other people and gather them into the realm of light. When the work is done. There would come the end of the world that is to say the end of this world of stress the end of the world of tension and dark versus light. There would come a final savior. And he would complete the victory over evil. After which all surviving beings and there would be the resurrection of the body and all left all surviving beings were drowned in peace

and the formula of this hour as to NS is exactly the source of wealth lying down with the lamb. This is a Persian idea. Isaiah the second Isaiah was a contemporary. This restoration under fire. The person religion then is a universal not a racial religion. It is interracial. It is not tribal but Imperial. And this has become the inspiration for most of the great imperial religions everywhere think including the Chinese. The coming into power of the great first Chinese emperor actually Ponty Well shortly following the establishment of the Persian realm and he governed under the mandate of heaven under the heavens rule. But now let me just very briefly say a word about the idea of the Messiah as it

developed in the centuries. The first idea was that the Messiah would simply be the restart is to supremacy in it the main and it was thought for some time that he would actually could actually be named the Messiah. After the Persian idea had been assimilated by the Hebrews. The notion was that the coming of the Messiah would mark the end of strife. The end of strife in the world and the Hebrew Messiah would be the counterpart of the Persian. In the period of the Maccabees and I had money and kings of Israel I've restored. That was terrific work there in the Near East. The Hellenistic world

was disintegrating. The Persians were fighting in the east. The Romans were coming in from the West and within Jerusalem itself there was terrific strife strife that has money and house was not of the House of David and yet it had claimed the kingship. It was not of the house of the priesthood and yet it also claimed the priesthood. So the kings of the had money and period had them south violated the Biblical rules and the. The Pharisees were very strongly against them. I'm going to the details are quite horrendous. The struggle within the domain of doubt. It ended with an exodus of people to the Dead Sea. People who thought that the harbor was these terrible things that were going on were

actually the words of the end of the world. And these people set up a most remarkable community this was which was discovered only a few years ago. The community of the Dead Sea Scrolls here the notion was at the end of the world was about to take place was about to come the day of Yom and the day of God. And only the pure only the perfectly just were to survive. So here is a community so to say planning it out to survive and to read the Dead Sea Scrolls is one of the most touching things I think that we have recently had the experience of discovery. I thought our divine innocence they programmed a 49 year war through which they would conquer the world for ya Bay. And when you read the plans of battle they have nothing to do with battle.

They have to do with the slogans with the wonderful sayings that would be written on the weapon and written on the bugles. It is to be a war 60 years and then a famine and then six years and then a Sabbath with the enemy honoring the Sabbath as well with a whole program for which the country was to be counted first and how many days that would take. All under the sign of yah Bay is lovely. Meanwhile there were two houses in Jerusalem fighting for the priesthood. One of them invited the Romans in and then that was the end of that story. The Romans came pretty interesting watch this fence at the end of the world about to come. This is what is known as the apocalyptic period. Yeah I was about to perform the deed. The nations were to be destroyed and the two children of Israel would survive. And it is

in this context that the Christian community aroused John the Baptist. Also our waiting for the Messiah with baptizing only a few miles up the river. And to him the Christ came. And now what is the difference between the attitude of Christ never coming to the first peaceful mythology that I'm going to give you. What is it that distinguishes the teaching of Christ at this point from that let's say the ethane. It is that things are people of the Dead saw themselves as the good about to do battle with the wicked. There is one of their books called the sons of light against the sons of darkness. I have to say it is a moment of preparation for battle of Christ for you. It is that of the battle resolved.

I'm just going to call the three little quotations here which will give this sense however that there is a conflict as we all know with a Christianity which is going to come out immediately. In Matthew 5. You have had it set down shalt love thy neighbor and take time Nanami that actually what the Athenians were saying but I say to you love your enemies and pray for them to try to kill you that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. However we come to a very startling word a little later in Matthew. Also the words of Christ. I think not that I came to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword. So I came to set a managed variance against his father and the daughter against her mother and the daughter

in law against her mother in law and a man's foes shall be they of his own kindred. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he that loveth father more than me is not worthy of me. And then it looks the same echo. If any man cometh unto me and hated not his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters yea and his own life also he cannot be My disciple. Then a Matthew goes tell what you have and give to the poor. Come follow me follow me and leave the dead to bury that there. So here we find the secret. This is a teaching about cut off from all the concerns of life from family ties from community. Leave the dead. That was what we call the living to bury their dead and follow me.

This doctrine is of the order of the Buddhist of the Jane of the manic aeon. It is a pirate philosophy. And this comes out at the moment when Jesus was taken to be judged and crucified. Remember he was in the Garden of Gethsemane many and the people came with the high priests to apprehend him. And the text says in Matthew 26 and behold one of them that were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and mocked the servant of the High Priest and struck off his ear and Jesus said to him put up again and I sawed into its place for all day to take her so I shall perish with the sword that is the core doctrine here. But. This little companion with the sword wasn't the only follower of Christ to do it so odd.

From the time of Constantine in the fourth century through Theodosius to the end of the fourth century. So the third in the Albigensians crusade and Christ has been defended with the thought which is exactly contrary to the teaching and particularly in the events of the 12th and 13th century under Venice and is particularly ironic how the people who are being attacked the Albigensians were people who would quit the wealth go into the bar and let the dead bury their dead. And so we come now to the brief moment of a mythology of peace. Christianity at core is one of these. But as soon as it became an imperial religion a religion oriented to people in the world became aggressive fighting the evil with the good. The

sons of light against the thunder of darkness like mine Navajo medicine man preparing his heroes to fight the wicked ones. Probably the most stern and austere of these religions of the world renunciation is Jainism in India. The great Jain teacher was a contemporary of the Buddha but his religion was much older than Buddhism. According to this this is the religion of nonviolence. Not hurting one is not to kill or eat animal food. One is not even to take a glass of water at night because there might be a little gnat in it. People take vows progressive vows limiting the number of steps they will take because every time you take a step you kill some little insect. When you grieve you must grieve gently because when you freeze Carsley the

breath strikes back of the mouth and hurt the flower that the monks who retreat to the forest and give up the world carry little brooms and they sweep the ground in front of them so that nothing should be stepped upon. And you can see in Bombay this very day monks and nuns of the chain sect walking around with bat with cheese cloth across their nose and mouth as though they were doctors about to perform an operation so that they shouldn't be there in any living thing. This is the extreme. One is not even to eat fruit that is plucked from the tree waited two for two four and be dead. One is not to cut things. Living plants with a knife they are sensitive plant or sensitive. They have turned to the sun. You can see there because they are alive and saw the final tower of Jainism it to try. But to lose

all will to live before you die. Because if you die with the least spark of a will to live you will be back in another life killing things. This is the peaceable kingdom. Now Britain is closely related to change Islam but it does not take this killing thing literally this way. They think that is to be killed in Buddhism. Is your own fear and desire that you should live with this violence and fear less. Think about the relief of your consciousness from the illusory allures and terrors of the world and gives you that point within which we seek. Buddhism is a psychological religion Jainism is a physiological

one. Jainism is a much more primitive religion. Now the finding of the still point is finding out a relief from the light and the relief from a desire to return them to life. We look eastward to China and Japan we find another order of religion or philosophy of peace. This was of Confucius and loud. We would call it I think romantic religious. The idea is that there is in the universe itself a harmony. Dark against light. The end and the young is caught very very heavy and very energetic principles into action with each other. And all life consists of a harmonious interplay of the pair of opposite. And this comes to its highest statement in Louth in the Dao

De Jing tiny little book of most exquisite peaceful lovely aphorisms. I want approaching the conclusion here to read you just one or two of these. When a magistrate followed the Tao followed this order this way of nature. He has no need to resort to force of arms. You know how to strengthen the empire because of his efficiency alone could beat out a riot and so on to grow ranks where an army camps bad harvests not a sequel to The Great War. The good ruler will be resolute and then stop. He dare not take by force. One should be resolute but not boastful resolute but not haughty resolute but not arrogant and resolute but yielding when it cannot be avoided. Resolute but he must not resort to

violence. You have heard Joseph Campbell professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College as he spoke on the topic. The mythology of war and peace. This was another programme in the series. Peace love and creativity the hope of mankind. On our next program psychologist Emerson Coelho will speak on the topic. Love love love. What is it. These programmes are recorded at the Cooper Union by station WNYC New York. The series is made available to the station by the national educational radio network.