Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

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

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Ay, the svastica is a universal symbol, cross-cultural, and I have for many years yearned that it be reclaimed. On three of Mary’s pictures of St. Francis, years ago, I lovingly drew in svasticas, but I have to admit that we have not allowed these pictures to public view. Not from fear of reprisal but from fear of hurting. How I have wished this symbol’s native grandeur and sweetness could be understood. I should be not fearful of putting it forward. My fault.

My delight was strong when Richard Bock got the “60th Birthday” on tape complete with svasticas adorning the facade of the stage Swami and speakers used. I think there are svasticas in the Poornachandra but I am not sure of this.

Yes, I had thought that the Nazis printed the svastika backwards as a deliberate reference to anti-Christ, but then I also saw uniforms and flags with it printed Sanskritic style.

I watched Leni Reifenstall films very closely for this and in the same parade noted the figure printed both ways on flags of different units. There may be some significance in the way the units printed it, but I also saw the printing reversed on flags of the same units.

So I would be inclined to rule out a deliberate anti-Christ referential intent, at least generally speaking, among the Nazis. Obviously some will want that message, but as party policy I tend to doubt that that was their intent. I think they had something more hutzpah-ish in mind, namely, that they ARE Christ. In other words, the Nazis in their most learned guise, which was semi-learned, were practitioners of superficial vedantha — “We are God,” “I am God,” etc. — which is the common, ersatz vedantha wholly unintended by the Vedic adepts, both German and Indian, but widely extant nonetheless.

The Nazis were semi-learned individuals inspired by the great German Scholars who had rediscovered the Vedas, translated them, and learned all manner of things both practical and theoretical from them, including Vedantha itself. Baba mentioned that they also learned the efficacy of manthra.

Most Germans, Jewish and otherwise, before the Nazis, were convinced from their Rabbis, Clergy, Doctors, Professors, Military and media that they were a master-race. Schweitzer himself treats not a little on the subject, not slavishly approving but nonetheless convinced. It was common feeling. We forget that it was.

The Germans — all of the learned and semi-learned ones, including Jews — knew full well what the svastika was long before Hitler arrived. They knew that it meant God and the universal. They knew that they were God. And remember that German Jews tended to think of themselves as Germans first and Jews second. And in any case, German Jews had their own master-race concepts from Rabbinic exegesis of the Pentateuch and Psalter, exegesis of two millennia’s standing. Germans knew what the svastika meant. And they thought it meant themselves: We are God. They felt they were making a victorious, positive, universal, uplifting, God/Self-centered statement by lifting the svastika to prominence.

If you have not seen Leni’s films, do so and you will see this superb self-confidence, this sense of well-being, this apparently spiritual and reverential super-vitality that the Nazis were. They did not attract followers by being mean. They attracted by being expansive and vital, fun, vigorous and confident. Leni shows all of this. To my knowledge no one has surpassed her art in this regard of propaganda.

Nazis represented superficial vedantha, which is a malignant thought that produces virulent destruction and indescribable sorrow.

However — and one should always understand the enemy not in one’s own terms but in their terms — to themselves these semi-learned individuals were heirs to the highest wisdom known to mankind and even to God, whom they could correct if need be.

Thus they demanded signed fealty from the clergy because religion was now co-extensive with the nation — we are all one, right? Hear the genius of superficial vedantha. I am reminded that Sandwiess and other devotees of supposedly Jewish background felt obliged to correct Swami on the Sarva Dharma Symbol— make it 6, the number of conflict, instead of 5, the number of harmony!

Far from thinking of themselves as anti-Christ, the Nazis thought of themselves as the builders — Speer et al — of the Kingdom of Christ on earth. They were what we would call positive, expansive, superbly constructive/innovative people.

You know that from the start of my involvement here I have been raising red flags over what I felt might be or might easily be construed as superficial vedantha and the reason for that watchtower attitude is I am bitterly aware of how easy superficial vedantha is to actualize and how terrible are its effects when ramified socially.

The most common avenue for the approach of superficial vedantha as well as for its destructive promulgation is among the semi-learned who tend, like all of us at times, to imagine themselves learned. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing is a saying both old and true.

The nature of the Nazis tends to be left unseen beneath the blather of Godwin-esque special interest groups who use their name to sway opinion this way or that. The Nazis were very bad boys, indeed, but the ways in which they were bad are, I think, not fairly understood and we lose a lot from ignorance of what actually drove them.

Killing was not the gist of it. Building was. The Nazis were positive people, in context, widely admired and deeply envied around the world. There was then as there is today a general sense that they were onto something very right and very true. If they opposed any groups of people, it was because, as Darwin would point out, those groups were evolutionary dead ends or effluvia and thus required cleaning up … and out. We hear this and get horrified. But we do not get horrified with doctors — many of them supposedly Jewish — who, in the name of population contol and bio-chemical/medical research and development, murder more children every year than Himmler did of all age groups in 20. The Nazis were very positive, uplifting, innovative people with good plans and happy results. They started the R&D just mentioned … on Jews … and now Jews are carrying it forward (?!) ….

An elderly Baha’i acquaintance mentions that he was a young man fleeing to Europe from Iran in the 1930s and Hitler then was a demi-God, the man of the hour, as he put it. He was the Bill Gates of his day. A charmer, successful, invincible, superbly inspiring to one and all, without a fault, able to accomplish anything that mere whim could produce and the world would have no choice but to accept whatever he decided the world should have and would get — and the world would be a better place for it.

And both men are perfectly wicked.

How can this be? The answer is in the dynamics of superficial vedantha, which both men represent: one to define the world as a private political party and the other to define the world as a private business enterprise.

Define the world as oneself and thus in terms it is not — and then say the world outside the definition one determines to give it, namely, oneself, is not happening and does not exist. That is the pattern of superficial vedantha. It’s a very dangerous disease.  Absolutely totalitarian, absolutist, hegemonic.

As Baba says, God is self-less-ness, self is God-less-ness. It is often missed, until late, that God-less-ness is not an operational neutral …. It has palpable consequences right here in this prapancha and they are not happy ones.

God is self-less-ness, self is God-less-ness is the alternative to superficial vedantha, but semi-learned individuals, such as Nazis and our neighbors in Redmond, are not inclined to accept that discipline and tend to prefer the me-first/me-only attitude-cum-world-definition of superficial vedantha.

I think Nazis used the svastika not to revile Christ but to assert that they are He.

Baba said once that there are three types of people:

those who do bad knowing they are doing bad

those who do bad thinking they are doing good

those who do good knowing they are doing good

Interestingly, He did not mention a class of those who do good thinking they are doing bad. There may in fact not be such a class.

He went on that of these three types, the second is the hardest to treat redemptive-ly. The Nazis were of this second type and so are our neighbors in Redmond.

The great religious symbols, originally healing and progress-inducing in nature, get co-opted by people of this second type. It is a great joy to all creation when the symbols so co-opted are returned to their rightful owners, cleaned off and re-appreciated by a grateful creation.

I could not agree more with your observations on the crucial importance of Namasmarana. When St. Paul said, “Pray without ceasing.” he meant do Namasmarana. The license plate on my 4Runner reads Ramanam which is a synonym for Namasmarana.

I started Namasmarana back in the mid-70s while working on the thoroughbred farm and have not let up since. It is habitual, mental more than vocal but sometimes vocal, under the breath. It has been involuntary for years. The name used is *Jesus.* To use *Siva* or *Baba* it has to be voluntary. It should be the Name one prefers. There are plenty to chose from. However, once one Name is chosen, one should stick to that until it becomes involuntary. The principle is that if one has enough pipe to sink a 500 foot well and one does not know the depth of the aquifer, one should sink one 500 foot well rather than several shorter ones.

Update 1: Massive Genetic Study Reveals 90 Percent Of Earth’s Animals Appeared At The Same Time

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA