IT’S NOT ABOUT CORONA
I know of the atrocities being done around the world in the name of Corona: The inescapable poverty, the suffering of the children, the hopelessness, the lonely deaths of those from whom all human contact has been withdrawn, the concentration of wealth and power into few hands, and much more. At the same time, there are very many people who recognize how all these things are connected, and who are beginning to rise up in opposition. But with the following essay, I would like to turn our attention to entirely other things, which we will have to consider when faced with the questions of why Corona could spread across the globe, and what a new future worth living might look like.
Dr. Dieter Duhm, May 2021
Today I received two messages from the world. One came from Bethlehem, from Sami Awad, a very active peaceworker of the Defend the Sacred Alliance. It included the question, “How can we end this permanent war in the Middle East? Two thousand years ago, Jesus preached peace. Since then, there has almost always been war in the world. What can we do, to nevertheless manifest the message of peace on Earth?”
The other message came from a Portuguese friend, who said to me in English, “Whatever it is, it is about love.” – After long community experience, I know with what depth this statement is meant.
The longing for love and the reality of war: The whole human world of today moves in this tension, from religious conflicts into even the most intimate love relationships. Where this tension explodes, horrors take place, which we cannot bear if we see them up close. What human beings do to one another is just too terrible. And it is also too terrible, what they do to animals. And now we have the worldwide Corona-movement, from which there will be no return to the past “normality”.
If this tension continues to rise, under the pressure of a global system so hostile to life, then we will face a dramatic event. An event of new dimensions. Without a doubt, we stand before either a world-wide apocalypse, or a new era.
We have no time to lose. Genocide, the slaughter of animals, the destruction of nature. We can hear the cries of the tortured people and animals from the North Pole to the South Pole.
We have seen the photograph of the drowned three-year-old, washed up on shore from a sunken refugee boat.
We know the suffering of the refugees, who in the urgency of their need must survive winters under indescribable conditions. The biosphere is poisoned by horrors we can hardly imagine, committed against both people and animals. I am thinking not only of war and the destruction of nature. What does it mean for the biosphere that, each year in Germany alone, 60 million(!) slaughtered pigs exhale their last breaths of fear into the atmosphere? Or an even more shocking example: What does it mean—I hardly dare to say it—that every day in Africa, the genitals of 6000 little girls are mutilated, often without anaesthesia? Do we still have the courage to face this? And this is only one example, among many, many others. What, for example, is hidden behind the term “child pornography,” which is widespread throughout western societies? Could it be that the story of Corona takes place in the context of a biospherical and spiritual poisoning of our entire planet, caused not by a virus, but rather due to a mis-oriented human civilization?
This atrocity against people, animals, and nature, which has come to be practiced everywhere on the planet; the corresponding fear, mistrust, the subterranean war even in the most intimate relationships: This is the toxic fluid, in which Corona is spreading around the world. No vaccination can help. Because I do not believe that we can bring an end to the arms industry, to genocide, to the murder of animals, to the destruction of nature, and to climate change, though vaccination. The current madness goes even further. To fight the corona pandemic they want to forbid contact and joy,These methods will only make the crisis of life more intense. Driven by a fear of death, they are destroying life.
I would like to step back and look again at the whole situation again: All of life together makes up an interdependent whole, a continuum. All the beings of the Earth are organs of this one body, and spirits within this one spirit. What we do to other beings, will always come back to us in some way. We cannot destroy an organ of the body of life, without damage to the entire organism. Contemporary civilization finds itself in a fundamental contradiction. It makes war against supposed disruptive factors… and does not see that through this war a situation is created, in which ever more new disruptive factors arise. It makes war against a virus, in order to give rise to healthy bodies, but destroys souls; it makes war against so-called pests, in order to create healthy vegetables, and destroys the living fabric of the gardens. It tortures laboratory animals, to develop medications against disease—and by doing this and so much more, it makes the overall situation of life much worse. The daily work of a single animal laboratory creates more sickness in the life-body of the biosphere than the knowledge gained by that work can heal, because the horrors of the animal laboratory do harm to the bio-body as a whole.
In order to heal the people and the Earth, we are compelled both scientifically and ethically to find a new path. The world of universal life, the Sacred Matrix, is based on cooperation. The one possibility we have to overcome this crisis is not to develop ever more new vaccines, but rather to detox the biosphere, and build a healing way of life, in which the virus will disappear by itself.
Some activists from our own ranks, while working in various crisis areas, were no longer able to face the global pain, and became sick or depressive. Medical diagnoses like depression, cancer, or others, don’t really make sense anymore. For a while already, it is not only about this or that individual problem. It’s about a pandemic of global confusion. It is no longer about appealing for help, or about wishes and hopes. It is about doing something that changes the planet. About doing something that brings the healing information into the world. The Earth needs new information. Human culture needs a new geistig foundation.
Perhaps it is Corona that will bring people to the thought that it is not about Corona, but rather about a new foundation of soul and geist, for the whole of life. But what kind of foundation? A new geistig basis for the areas of life: nature, Eros, and religion. Anyone who finds this foundation for one of these areas, has also found it for the others, as all the forces of life are bound together in the same source. We continually refuse to talk about religious matters. But what took place a few years ago, when Pope Francis came to Rio de Janeiro? Two million young people spent the night in sleeping bags on the coast, to not miss the message he brought. I experienced something similar at a Pentecost celebration at the Taizé monastery in France. Thousands of young people placed their tents close together, to spend a week hearing the message of Frère Roger and to live together in this spirit. It was a beautiful week. Neither of these cases consisted of believers bound to a religious denomination. They were, rather, simply moved… people searching for life’s meaning.
Very obviously, we need a new geistig anchor for our existence, in something higher. The happiness we long for will be found when we are securely embedded in this higher something. This means relocating the foundations of our soul to the level from which life, love, and healing come. The level from which we all come, and to which we all belong. We need a planetary answer, a new answer to the questions of love, and of life on the Earth. An answer, in which all children feel well. Not only our children, but also those children who are now fleeing the bombing of their houses and the destruction of their homes.
There is such an answer. It exists in the blueprint of creation, and reveals itself here and there in the miracles of charity and of trust, and also sometimes in near-death experiences, or miracle healings. There is a universal, divine order to life in the world, everywhere based on unity, love, and healing. In my book, I described this order as the Sacred Matrix. Wherever people meet one another in this higher level of life, love naturally arises. We have seen two lovers caught in an unsolvable conflict until the woman offered a supporting hand, when at once, the war in the soul transformed into love.
It truly is the power of love that opens the gate. Whether sensual love, or soul-love, or spiritual love, whenever it is about love, there is always a divine dimension of the world-soul at work. May I be sentimental? Do we still remember the experience of two loving hands touching, the experience of that first kiss? This absolute experience of happiness and acceptance! “This kiss to all the world!” as Schiller wrote in his Ode to Joy.
One hardly has any sense anymore, of what a fundamental meaning love has in the lives of ALL people. It is the essence of all good things. Here, my Portuguese friend is completely correct: There is something in us, deeply based on friendship, on solidarity and community, on honeymoon and eternal love. We experience it intimately in brief encounters and meetings, we experience it sometimes so deeply that we want to protect it forever. And yet we lose it again and again… until we remember it once more, often on the verge of death. Why could we not manifest it in real life? Because humanity has destroyed nearly everything it once loved, in a war that has lasted thousands of years. Where once there was love, hate has arisen—yet behind basically every act of aggression hides the pure childhood wish for love.
Once I passed by a farm in Bavaria, and noticed the aggressive barking of a German shepherd. As I had no fear of dogs, and because the gate was not locked, I entered to greet the dog. It jumped up on me, hugging me, not wanting to let me go. It was pure love.
It is no longer enough to set up alternative ways of life, as was once done on Monte Veritá. They will fall apart because of the eternal tapeworm of hidden human conflicts. This spectacle has been repeated all too often, in every community and movement. And mostly it was really about the ever-present issue #1: love and sexuality, with all its resulting symptoms, like jealousy, violence, abandonment, and despair—subjects for the whole of humanity today. No soldier of the so-called Islamic State would ever have killed anyone, if he had been raised in a loving parental home and in a healthy social environment.
There can be no peace on Earth, as long as there is war in love. When this war is finally ended, anywhere on the earth, an entirely new picture of our lives will take shape in the cosmic kaleidoscope. Our friend Arkan Lushwala (originally an altar-keeper from Peru) wrote, “When a man and woman heal their relationship, they are healing the environment, because they are bringing back the balance of the fire and water on Earth.” And Vincent van Gogh simply said, “Where love is born anew, life is born anew.”
The project of Healing Biotopes arose a few decades ago from just such thoughts. People came together who sincerely wanted to work together towards a way of living for world peace. They were aware of the endless suffering on Earth. They were aware of the collective unhappiness in love. They were aware of the corruption behind international politics, and of the unspeakable destiny of refugees. They knew what torture means. They knew the horrific destiny of animals. And now they also see the pain of loneliness, poverty, and hunger caused by the dramatic worldwide responses to Corona.
They had been active for years in various peace movements. But they had also realized that most movements stand on unstable ground, because their cohesion always depended on an external enemy. That cohesion was absent when it came to internal matters like power, authority, sex, and love. No peace could therefore arise, because we can only create peace outside ourselves to the extent we have it in ourselves. We often carry in our own hearts, the chains from which we wish to free ourselves.
Why have people in these times still found the courage, to believe in and commit their lives to a future worth living? Because they know that there is another world that exists alongside this one. We are not only citizens of a particular nation or of a specific culture. We are also planetary beings of the cosmic world. Did we not all come from that other world? Who brought us into existence, with our organs and our cells, our thoughts and our consciences? From where do all the forces come, that steer our lives? When we keep some space free in our minds and hearts for the wonders of life and love, what do we see then? Perhaps one has to be able to perceive heaven, in order to face hell without fear.
I give thanks for the privilege of living in peace among friends, again and again to be able to see the light that shines above all misfortune. Here I would like to repeat what I wrote in my last text (Corona and the Other Reality):
“Beyond all the horror, we see the spiritual dimensions of a universe where the light of some eternal sun shines through, from the deepest innermost to the outermost emanations. And this is forever reflected in all beings.
In the universe, there is a healing power that shines even to the bottom of the sea. There, a tiny fish sculpts its perfect mandala. (This amazing phenomenon can be seen in an online video.) It is a power without which, no child can be born, no flower can bloom, and no star can shine in the sky. It is the power that makes it possible for people to go to the limits of their strength, to help those whom no one else will help. It is the power that enables people, even in the worst of conditions, to endure in resistance to injustice and violence. It is also the sacred power that moved a wild boar, early one morning, to come to me and lay its head on my arm. This power saved the lives of my partner and myself from an inescapable situation on Gomera—and not least, it is the sacred power of the love between the genders, from which all human beings have arisen.”
It is the power of healing. Here true miracles arise. One of these, a story I like to tell, contains such a simple message that I would like to bring now as a simple example. I was on the island of Corfu, when I heard loud cries from next door. I went to investigate, and found two hysterical parents with a nine-year-old child, who was dying because he could no longer breathe. I told the parents I was a pediatrician, and asked them to stay in the next room. I took the child in my arms. Immediately the child could breathe again. Its healthy color returned to its face… the child was healthy again. It was a small “miracle healing,” but I felt like neither a hero nor a miracle healer, because the healing power did not come from me; I merely followed its guidance.
What matters now is that ever more groups around the world rediscover this healing power, and learn to follow its operating principles and commandments. For this we need lived communities and research centers of a special kind, so-called Healing Biotopes, committed to building real, living models of a nonviolent life of cooperation between humans and all other beings. The whole Earth should become a Healing Biotope. This is the direction of evolution for the next level of humanity: that the divine system of life, the Sacred Matrix, is brought to Earth, creating a new civilization. A transformation in this sense is already happening. We humans are able to do this, because we carry in us the ethical imprint of the Sacred Matrix. The divine world needs our cooperation, because it works through our thoughts and with our hands.
When groups have learned to live together in deep trust, making possible an unbreakable ethical cohesion, then they have an effect on the world far beyond their personal domain. Why? Because they are in resonance with a higher power, stronger than any conflict. It is the power of the cosmic healing field, the power of the Sacred Matrix. This power exists everywhere on Earth, and has an effect wherever people are open to its influences. In principle, its healing power has no limits, as seen in cases of spontaneous and miraculous healing. When this power has been activated deeply enough anywhere, it is activated everywhere.
The vision of a healed humanity: It is the vision of a very concrete utopia, one that has existed in the universe for a long time, and is waiting to be summoned by us human beings, and manifested on Earth.
Again and again I have experienced the presence of a world, which I have described as “the other reality.” I know that it is already fully present, hidden in the fog of daily life, but long existing in the Universe. This latent utopia of a healed world is written into the implicit order of the living Universe, even into the nuclei of our cells.
It is the utopia of people who have rediscovered the light. It could be that in this moment, the whole world is preparing itself for this process: The world on land, the world in the waters, the world above.
To close, I would like to remind us of the legacy of a young woman, who was murdered at the age of 29 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp: The Dutch woman, Etti Hillesum. In her journal, she wrote the following sentences:
“The misery here is quite terrible and yet, late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire and then time and again it soars straight from my heart—I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force—the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent and that one day we shall be building a whole new world. Against every new outrage and very fresh horror we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, which we must master in ourselves.”
Today, nearly 80 years later, are we willing to follow this call? Are we finally ready to free this world from its suffering?
In the name of love for all creatures.