Leadership and responsibility

The thoughts of Socrates say it all. It is said of him that he believed that people embrace and do evil only out of ignorance. A darkened heart manifests what it has in store in several ways being the fountain from which evil springs. Out of ignorance, a darkened heart does not even know how beclouded it is. It is limited. Its horizon narrows. Drawing from enlightenment made available to mankind today I have had cause to state on these pages that ignorance is the bane of life. Many instances of misconduct, of misspeak are tied to ignorance, the most obvious being that many a man has closed himself to the awareness of the ordinance that governs life. He is unable to appreciate the unassailable verity that life is governed by currents of living laws.

History says of Socrates that he believed that everyone really seeks the good (which according to him, refers to what is good for oneself). He then argues that one must know oneself in order to know what choices one should make in life, and be disciplined in order to make beneficial choices. It is said that it was one of the reasons he wished to show others their ignorance so they would not be misled by false knowledge but can know the good. Also, Socrates believed that doing harm to others actually does more harm to oneself.

A second reason Socrates wanted to show others their ignorance was because of his conviction that a wise man knows that he knows nothing. He thus came to the conclusion that the knowledge of mankind is petty and flawed compared with the knowledge that the gods have. He believed that the gods were good, moral, just beings. He had this recognition that there is life after life and that life existed for each human being before he was born and that the act of obtaining knowledge in this life is actually a process of trying to remember that knowledge that one had had before.

If it were not for ignorance of consequences that must follow choices made and resultant actions, the world would have been able to see clearly where the hostilities between Ukraine and Russia would lead the protagonists and the combatants, indeed lead the world. Mr. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President is not in any mood to back down in the bloody quest to prosecute the war to what he thinks is a logical conclusion, and that logical conclusion is to subjugate Ukraine regardless of human costs and mindless destruction of properties and age-long historical artifacts and infrastructures. He gave a state of the nation address on Tuesday to a gathering of political leaders and military high command. The political leaders consisted of parliamentarians of both chambers. It was an assembly to brief his compatriots ahead of the one year anniversary of the war, the invasion of Ukraine.

He announced at the gathering that he was suspending Russian participation in strategic offensive arms treaty, START. Aljazeera quotes him as saying: “I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive treaty.” The suspension undoubtedly portends escalation of the hostilities when all men of good will are longing to see peace returned the two lands. The New START treaty signed in 2010 had its duration extended by five years in 2021. The treaty restricts the amount of nuclear war heads that both the United States and Russia can deploy in the event of a conflict. The treaty also covers bombers and missiles, land and submarine that can be put to use. Aljazeera reports that both countries hold a stockpile of 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads with Russia boasting of the world biggest stockpile close to 6,000. What is in the hands of the two countries, says the broadcast station, is enough to sink the entire planet earth.

Holding the Western World and the Ukraine elite responsible for the war, Mr. Putin accused them of trying to divert attention away from corruption scandals in their domain under the cloak of the principles of democracy and freedom. In his words: “The responsibility is on the West and the Ukraine elite and government, which does not serve the national interest, but (rather serves the interest) of third party countries (which) use Ukraine as a military base to fight Russia. The more they send weapons to Ukraine, the more we will have the responsibility of security situation at the Russian border. This is a natural response. We don’t fight with the Ukrainian people. They became hostages of the Kyiv regime that occupied Ukraine both economically and politically. Over the years, they were doing everything to bring this degradation…They are using their people, it’s sad but true.”

Leaders, ignorant of the consequences awaiting them in the Beyond and possibly in another earthlife, do not display any qualms in plunging citizens under their charge into war and ruin. They also have no idea of hidden correlations governing their lives which threw them up to lead their people.

Mr. Putin further said in his address that since 2014 the people of Donbas had been fighting Kyiv regime to defend their right to their land, to live there and speak their own native language. “They fought and did not give up in the conditions of blockade and constant shelling, undisguised hatred on the part of the Kyiv regime. They believed and expected that Russia would come to their rescue. Meanwhile, we did our best to solve this problem by peaceful means. We patiently tried to negotiate a peaceful way out of this most difficult conflict, but a completely different scenario was being prepared behind our backs.”

Promising support for the families of fallen soldiers who had died fighting in the Russia-Ukraine War by way of a special fund, Putin said he understood how difficult it had been for them.

However, we cannot but wonder: How the hostilities are in conformity with the Laws of Creation bearing the Will of the Creator remains to be seen. All that is required is to peep behind the curtains and witness what happens to many souls, among them men and women of high social standing and power grope for light and life in the Beyond where every breach of the Law is accounted for, whether one is a leader or is an ordinary man. Before the living Laws, the uniform mechanisms that govern the entire universe, all souls are equal. Following is an experience captured in the book “A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands”, transmitted by an Italian who had passed on, named Franchezzo:

“A chain as of dark silk –it seemed no thicker than a spider’s web—held me to my body; no power of mine could break it; as I moved it stretched like elastic, but always drew me back again. Worst of all I began now to be conscious of feeling the corruption of that decaying body affecting my spirit, as a limb that has become poisoned affects with suffering the whole body on earth, and a fresh horror filled my soul…And I looked and beheld myself. As in a mirror held up before me, I saw myself. Oh, horror! It was beyond doubt myself, but oh! So awfully changed, so vile, so full of baseness did I appear, so repulsive in every feature…”

According to the report, this person had lived in the belief that everything ends with death, that it marks the beginning of a “big void;”: an idea which manifested in the world of ethereal matter as an infinite black space…While on earth he did not wish to see or hear of existence of the world of ethereal matter as he did not believe that life would continue. Since during his earthlife he remained focused only on the earthly gross material, the sense organs of his ethereal body were paralyzed and were barely receptive. As a consequence of his materialistic orientation, the cord connecting his soul with his physical body was also very dense and slow in disintegrating.

Franchezzo’s story continues: Eight to nine months had elapsed since he died and he had grown somewhat strong and vigorous that he could now move freely over the great sphere of the earth plane. According to him, “My sight and other senses were so far developed that I could see and hear and speak clearly. The light around me now was that of a faint twilight or when the night first begins to dawn into day. To my eyes so long accustomed to the darkness, this dull light was very welcome, though after I grew so long for true day and dawn that this dull twilight was most monotonous and oppressive (…)

“From this Twilight Land I took many journeys and saw many strange and different countries but all bore the same stamp of coldness and desolation. One plane was a great valley of grey stones with dim, cold, grey hills shutting it in on every side, and this twilight sky overhead. Here again not a blade of grass, not one poor stunted shrub was to be seen, not one touch of colour or brightness anywhere, only this dull desolation of grey stones. Those who dwelt in this valley had centred their lives and affections in themselves and had shut up their hearts against all the warmth and beauty of unselfish love. They had lived only for themselves, their own gratification, their own ambitions, and now they saw nothing but themselves and the grey desolation of their hard selfish lives around them.

“There were a great many beings flitting uneasily about in this valley, but strange to say they had been so centred in themselves that they had lost the power to see anyone else.

Franchezzo’s wandering, in the “Spirit Lands,” says the report leads him to many other more or less dark regions of the Beyond, for example, to the “Frozen Land” which is inhabited by cold, coolly calculating men:

“Great statesmen were amongst those whom I saw dwelling in this land but they were those who had not loved their country nor sought its good. Only their own ambitions, their own aggrandisement had been their aim, and to me they now appeared to dwell in great palaces of ice and on the lofty frozen pinnacles of their own ambitions. Others more humble and in different paths in life I saw, but all alike were chilled and frozen by the awful coldness and barrenness of a life from which all warmth, all passion, was shut out. There were men here who had been prominent members of every religious faith and every nationality on your earth…all nationalities were to be found in the “Frozen Land,” yet in scarcely one was there enough warmth of feeling to thaw the ice around them even in a small degree.”

It is stated in the report: “Whether arising from envy, hatred, falsehood, passion or other vices, and weaknesses—in every case, a place is formed which is inhabited exclusively by kindred souls. In the dark spheres the souls can live and experience to the full all their passions, all their faults and weaknesses. In the resulting reciprocal suffering lies the chance of gaining insight and consequently of improvement. However, this may take decades or centuries, as in those spheres only the homogeneous species will be encountered.”

What I am getting at is that whether high, powerful or lowly we must all worry about where our paths lead us in life hereafter—in the Beyond, as no speck of dust sticking to any souls will go unatoned for. Adamantine is the Law. The violent conflict between Ukraine and Russia, therefore, intractable as it may seem, can still be resolved at a round-table conference in love and understanding. The self-enforcing laws cannot be waived for man; it is man that must adjust to them!