Terrorism of the Righteous - Disarming the Violent HeartAn extract from
The Inner Eye of Love: mysticism and religion
by William Johnston. Published in London in 1981 by Fount Paperbacks. pp 177-178
St Paul says that the important thing is love. After extolling the various charismatic gifts he goes on to say that what is, or should be, common to them all is love. Without love the gifts are useless. And so he begins his canticle: ‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal’ (I Corinthians 13:1).
Gandhi recognized this; but in his peculiar circumstances he preferred to speak of non-violence or ahimsa. This included compassion for the poor, love of the aggressor, love of justice. It renounced all hatred and use of force; but it believed in force of another kind: satyagraha means the force of truth.
To build one’s activity on love and non-violence demands the greatest inner purification. One must constantly rid one’s heart of inordinate desires and fears and anxieties; but above all one must cleanse oneself from anger.
In our day anger seems to be the chief enemy of love and non-violence. By anger I mean the inner violence which lies not only in the conscious but also in the unconscious mind of individuals and of whole nations. This is an inner violence which has sometimes been nurtured by decades of oppression and injustice; sometimes it has been further nurtured by domestic strife in the home; always it is the source of great insecurity, inner fear and awful weakness. This is the anger which may erupt into sexual crimes or irrational murder and terrorism.
Now if I come to recognize the anger which is in me(and this is already great progress in the journey towards human maturity) and if I ask a psychologist what I am to do with my anger, the odds are that he will tell me, among other things, to get it out of my system. ‘Get it out somehow! Imagine that your enemy is seated beside you and just roar at him – tell him what you feel! Or thump a pillow or a punch-ball or a sack of hay! But get it out!’
Now this may sound a thousand miles away from mystical experience. But in fact it is not. Because in the mystical path anger comes out – it rises to the surface of consciousness. Remember that I spoke of the Buddha sitting serenely in meditation while the beasts roar and the dogs bark. These are manifestations of my hidden anger. As I have already said, I must not make violent efforts to chase them away, neither must I enter into dialogue with them. I simply pay no attention to them – and in doing this I accept them. And then they vanish. In some cases, of course, it may also be necessary to speak about them to a friend or counsellor. But in my case I get them out of my system.
But when this is done, something still remains. And this is just anger. In other words, my anger has not been annihilated but has been purified. Now it is the anger of one who has seen, and still sees, real injustice in his own life and in that of others and refuses to countenance such evil. It is an anger which could be more properly called love of justice and is accompanied by a willingness to die in the cause of justice. In itself this is nothing other than a mystical experience. It is the living flame of love orientated towards action.
Such was the righteous indignation of the prophets. Such was the anger of one who made a whip and drove the money-changers out of the temple: ‘Take these things away, you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade’ (John 2:16). Gandhi, too, was moved by this just anger: he spoke frequently of marshalling all one’s spiritual forces against the oppressor and he fought injustice by fasting, by suffering, by accepting imprisonment and by non-violence.
Gandhi recognized this; but in his peculiar circumstances he preferred to speak of non-violence or ahimsa. This included compassion for the poor, love of the aggressor, love of justice. It renounced all hatred and use of force; but it believed in force of another kind: satyagraha means the force of truth.
To build one’s activity on love and non-violence demands the greatest inner purification. One must constantly rid one’s heart of inordinate desires and fears and anxieties; but above all one must cleanse oneself from anger.
In our day anger seems to be the chief enemy of love and non-violence. By anger I mean the inner violence which lies not only in the conscious but also in the unconscious mind of individuals and of whole nations. This is an inner violence which has sometimes been nurtured by decades of oppression and injustice; sometimes it has been further nurtured by domestic strife in the home; always it is the source of great insecurity, inner fear and awful weakness. This is the anger which may erupt into sexual crimes or irrational murder and terrorism.
Now if I come to recognize the anger which is in me(and this is already great progress in the journey towards human maturity) and if I ask a psychologist what I am to do with my anger, the odds are that he will tell me, among other things, to get it out of my system. ‘Get it out somehow! Imagine that your enemy is seated beside you and just roar at him – tell him what you feel! Or thump a pillow or a punch-ball or a sack of hay! But get it out!’
Now this may sound a thousand miles away from mystical experience. But in fact it is not. Because in the mystical path anger comes out – it rises to the surface of consciousness. Remember that I spoke of the Buddha sitting serenely in meditation while the beasts roar and the dogs bark. These are manifestations of my hidden anger. As I have already said, I must not make violent efforts to chase them away, neither must I enter into dialogue with them. I simply pay no attention to them – and in doing this I accept them. And then they vanish. In some cases, of course, it may also be necessary to speak about them to a friend or counsellor. But in my case I get them out of my system.
But when this is done, something still remains. And this is just anger. In other words, my anger has not been annihilated but has been purified. Now it is the anger of one who has seen, and still sees, real injustice in his own life and in that of others and refuses to countenance such evil. It is an anger which could be more properly called love of justice and is accompanied by a willingness to die in the cause of justice. In itself this is nothing other than a mystical experience. It is the living flame of love orientated towards action.
Such was the righteous indignation of the prophets. Such was the anger of one who made a whip and drove the money-changers out of the temple: ‘Take these things away, you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade’ (John 2:16). Gandhi, too, was moved by this just anger: he spoke frequently of marshalling all one’s spiritual forces against the oppressor and he fought injustice by fasting, by suffering, by accepting imprisonment and by non-violence.
