Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

A liberated person is justified freely to perfect their liberation, to make it ever more secure against loss, and to discover, flourish, and proliferate their intentions and skills.  In theology this is called sanctification: transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, the secular into the sacred.

The prius of sanctification is liberation, which is a gift of Divine Grace that justifies a person to blaze for themselves a pathway of life, of expansion, forwards and upwards.  Sanctification is a trail a person blazes for themselves, not a road, stretching forth ahead of them, made by someone else.  No such road exists.

When they have freedom, a person — with a tutor’s help — can lead out from within themselves (the meaning of the word education) their inner necessity.  They can secure resources for their use, and they can generate knowledge and habits that conduce to fulfilling goals they set for themselves.

Illustrating this phenomenology in the army is an ancient wisdom: wars are won on the drill field more than on the battle field.

Let us note what exactly is taking place on the drill field.

Commonly, we think of army drill as drilling in to Soldiers physical fitness and mental alertness as well as the habit of obedience to orders and the methods of moving a fighting formation in an orderly manner to deploy in line of battle facing a specific direction.  That is an accurate way of assessing the value of the drill field, but it also is not the fullness assessment of what occurs there.

What happens on the drill field is akin more to a drilling away than to a drilling in.  The sculptor does not chisel the statue in the marble block so much as he removes from the block marble that hides the statue within it.

Drilling on the field does not make recruits into Soldiers.  Drilling on the field removes from recruits unsoldierly qualities that restrain the Soldier inside them.  Drilling on the field is more about losing impediments to soldiering than gaining knowledge of it.

In the same way, theology notes that the phenomenology of sanctification reads more as a dumping of garbage, an expulsion of ignorance, than as an acquisition of traits or, par excellence, merit.

No one has merit.  Ever.

If you want more light, lose the curtains, don’t add more fixtures.  If you want a Soldier, lose the civilian, don’t add a man-at-arms.

The Soldier is already present.  He wants only to be coaxed and coached out into the open where he is free to prosper soldiering skills and knowledge inhering in him.

New Army Recruiting Motto:
Free Up Your Inner Soldier, Come Drill With Us

Perfection is the secular synonym for sanctification.  When one speaks of sanctification, one speaks of perfection.  Now, when speaking of perfection, we speak of ability and prestige perfection, not moral or intellectual perfection.  Moral and intellectual perfection belong to no one and are available to no one save God Alone.  However, in matters of ability and prestige, human beings are very capable heirs to the counsel of perfection.

No one is blameless, but many are perfect.

Army leaders strive for perfection in performance of their duties and execution of their missions.  Army leaders’ duty is to train the force to win the nation’s wars.  They and the army have no raison d’être besides than that one.

A perfected war-fighting instrument sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America is the very nature and devotion of The United States Army.

Now, a perfected war-fighting instrument wins fights into which it is thrown.  That means it trains . . . and trains . . . and trains.  It also means it thinks, and thinks, and thinks.  The ideal (perfected) warrior is a scholar just as the ideal (perfected) scholar is a warrior.

As much time as it spends on the drill field, an army spends even more time on the mind field, so to speak.  As much as an army can hurl physical annihilation at an enemy, it must hurl even more notional annihilation at an enemy.  Complete and continuous training of the force to perfection in drill and study is the soul of army life.

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

Basil Henry Liddell-Hart

Theologians call perfection sanctification, holiness.  A perfectly trained army force ready and able to annihilate aggression is indeed holy, pleasing to God.

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The plan is for five posts on the topic A Theology Of The Army:

Introduction
Liberation
Perfection
Absolution
Conclusion

This post is on Perfection.

Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA