Global Research Assembly

Chicago

July, 1977

WHAT HATH BEEN WROUGHT?

My beloved colleagues, all and each, though I've not been temporally ordained to do so, wax bold to bring you greetings from the globe-at-large and from all of history. Forthrightly, I intend to be a bit tedious relative to time, and I intend to display a touch of kitchen­sinkness, but I do not intend in any way whatsoever to be practical. I must begin by confessing, that a year ago, before this Assembly, I misstated the truth, unintentionally. It was not the truth when I said that the greatest year of my life was my 65th year. The truth of the matter is, the greatest year of life is my 66th year.
You can't keep things quiet in the Assembly; most of you know that for some five days of the Assembly, I was in the hospital and there wasn't anything really wrong. They found certain things that disturbed them about my kidneys, my back, my heart and my lungs. They summed it up as normal deterioration along with age. I, too, feel like a young man with something gone wrong. But I have not told you the good news. They must have taken my blood pressure twenty times. I began to get curious, not to say a bit frightened. So I asked them about my blood pressure. They said, "Every day it shows up normal."
Then my mind went back to this past year, I have never lived through such a hectic time in my whole life. I have been humiliated more deeply this year than ever before. And I am an old pro at being humiliated. There were times on an airplane when I thought, literally, that I would get up and start screaming, but I didn't. Time and again I considered just getting myself lost in Bombay, never to be seen again. I experience my insides as just ground to pieces or as if they were an atom bomb just about ready to blow me and everything around me into kingdom come. But my blood pressure was normal!
I asked them what blood pressure meant. They said, "Well, first of all, it determines whether enough of the waste matter has been eliminated. Secondly, it tells whether, at the moment, enough blood is being forced through the body to maintain the mind and physique. But, most of all, it checks on your state of anxiety, or the effects of strain." And I was normal. I read into that what I'm not sure they would have read. I confess to you that in the midst of the agony of this last year, my total life has been one of effulgence. My life has been one of fulfillment. That is not because of anything I've done, because fulfillment is a state of being over which you finally have no control. And mark you, I have been under strain, what in the world have you been under. Not once during this year have I even come within several miles of a live bullet. I have not been in a fox hole. I can tell you from experience that being back at the command post in a war has a certain calm about it that even visiting the front lines does not have. As I sat here this morning I was tremendously and overwhelmingly impressed. I thought, if they took our corporate blood pressure, much to our humiliation and embarrassment, it would be normal!
Two years ago at this time, I warned you that if you didn't take care of yourself you were not going to make it, because the group could not, for the next 18 months, take care of you. I warned you that it would not be the young ones who would pick up their two suitcases and go because they wouldn't believe that you have to take care of yourself. It would be the old ones. That has happened. Now, I believe that along about next March, a kind of corporateness will be at hand such as you and I have never dreamed possible. And we're old hands at the experience of corporateness. Another time I'd like to describe what I think that will look like. This morning as I listened, I saw extremely visible signs of that kind of corporateness emerging, but I warn you, you are going to have a few more months without the group's care.
I want to remind you why it is necessary to take good care of yourselves. You and I understood that, two years ago when we started out to literally move the universe, we would have no time to take care of ourselves. I was very pleased with the training report today, as long as somebody doesn't think it should start tomorrow. We do not have time to train ourselves. Whether you know it or not, you are on what Sun Tzu called "death ground." You've been there for two solid years. When you are on "death ground", you have no time to train anyone to use a rifle. You just hope he shoots out of the right end, that's all. That will still be true this year. You don't think for a moment we could have possibly done 24 Social Demonstrations, 1500 Town Meetings in 23 countries if you cared about whether Rodney or I or somebody else got proper training or got proper care. No! There comes a time when you are on "death ground", when you just have to move, and not care who it is that takes the hindsight.
Secondly, two years ago when we probed into the deeps of profound consciousness we found that there was no way to be of assistance to each other, that finally, every individual is all alone before the Final Reality. Husbands, wives, children, colleagues and friends are of no assistance.
We have to learn for ourselves, as unrepeatable individuals, to walk in the Way; to live in the Other World in the presence of this world. That can only be done in total and absolute solitude. In anything else we can assist each other. But in the profound deeps of consciousness we walk alone. It is a quality of consciousness itself. In the last two years, if you have not learned to walk alone, you either built an illusion around yourself like never before in all your life, or you got your two suitcases and got off the front lines.
Sometimes I hear people talk as if we should have had the practical wisdom we have today five years ago. Well, nobody else in the world had it five years ago. There are few who have that kind of practical wisdom today. You get that kind of wisdom only through raw experience. I am trying to say God knew when to send the "death ground". And, by golly, you either learned or you didn't survive. The kind of know­how that went into your reconstructing the weaponry of our task this summer did not come out of textbooks. Experts were of little use. It was learned in the raw experience of hell, in Kwanyung Il, Kawangare, Maliwada, Majuro and Oombulgurri! It could have been learned no place else. In that kind of learning, the kind of established structure, whether it be a group like ourselves, or the educational or scientific institutions of the globe, is quite secondary.
The last reason why you have to take care of yourself we'll be able to explain better a year from now. You see, what we never intended to stumble onto, we stumbled onto. That is the awareness that is humanness universal. If you think that is not a profound statement, you did not even hear me. I mean, we stumbled onto the fact that the most profound bigotries in our existence were capable of having a fist stuck through them. The most profound bigotry in me, as I have admitted to you, is the religious poetry I grew up in. It is with a kind of sense of pride that I can say that I do not experience myself as an American these days. I experience myself as a human being. I do not experience myself, I tell you true, as a white man. I experience myself as a human being. Maybe you women will not even want me to say this: I do not experience myself first of all as a man but I experience myself as a human being.
Now, moving into that depth beyond all depths of life, is a kind of wrenching of the spirit that goes beyond any communal association. For what it requires is that you tear yourself asunder, not from the external, communal relationships you have, but from those relationships which are buried, rooted firmly in the deeps of your psyche. We have been alone in our togetherness and we have had no other course.
A few months ago, when I first began to see that the life force was coming, I tried to draw together the statement of what it was that we have wrought, and then, quickly, I changed that into the statement of what has God wrought in us. Or, what have the powers that are beyond our activities and efforts made of us. I listed these. First, He has made of us a global service network. Secondly, He has made of us a global corporate style. Third, He has made of us a worldwide credibility net. We have far to go but this has been done. Fourth, it has made of us a worldwide development system. Again, we have far to go. Fifthly, He has made of us a worldwide support force. I mean by that, and I want the word "US" to be very large, it includes patrons that would never be guardians. This includes the guardians who would never live the kind of life you live or I live. And it includes the local men and women in the villages of the world who would never find themselves in the blue, but who care. This is the support net. Mark you, if all the patrons put the blue on, then we embarrassedly would have to go out and constitute another patronage. Do you understand that? Sixth, we are a comprehensive philosophical ground and I want to start talking in a minute from that beginning. And lastly, we are a comprehensive methodological schemata.
Now, the question that lies ahead is, what in the world are we going to do with this? That is the issue! Any sense of virtue we may have at arriving at this hour turns into nothingness as we face the horrendous decision of, now what are we going to do with this? In another way, what I am talking about this morning has to do with precisely that. The dynamics are something like this. To win this next year means sticking your fist through the dynamics of the three campaigns. Guess where your fist will come out. In the midst of knowing, doing and being, exactly where we began. This is what I mean when I say that, when all is said and done, I am not a practical man in terms of popular and common definitions of Practicality. I could care less about glazed, heat-resisting, lightweight, low­priced roofs. I could care less about an effective design of global economy. I care not about tripling total village income in two years. What I am concerned about is profound humanness. I am interested in any company and its product only to the degree that it finally ministers unto the possibility of the poorest of the poor of this world experiencing themselves profoundly as human beings. This is true whether it be ferryboats in Majuro, comprehensive cooperatives or any other practical things.
Now we have gotten around to the practical. But, to be honest with you, I am not impressed with your excitement about the practical. This September we will have been in existence for 25 years. The greatest thing we ever did was not to allow ourselves to become publicly known. Never to publicize ourselves in any way, but to try to focus our attention on what we accomplished. Twenty­five years ago, we looked very carefully at the historical renewal forces in Europe that came after World War II, and every one of them was practically oriented. They were moving into the practical­social, the practical-economic, the practical-cultural issues head-on. There is scarcely one renewal force still alive today.
At that time we made a decision that was far more significant than we had the intellectual capacity to understand. That was, that we first had to ground ourselves in the profound deeps of humanness. We used other language in those days, but that is what we meant. Only when we had broken through into the dimension of what it means to be the full and the fulfilled human being were we ready to deal with what books call the practical.
That was a long journey. The symbol of that journey that covered years is in this little triangle. We believe that, whatever your culture, whatever your cultural conditioning, that when you are able to see what this is pointing to, you say, "Yes". That's what it means to be human. It has to do with knowing and doing and being. It has to do with profound awareness, with historical engagement and fulfilled humanness, attuned to what is the Mystery. The awareness, and finally, the heart of consciousness is there to seize upon and to understand. Than you can talk about it any way you want, or use any kind of poetry to ground it existentially in your existence, or in history's being. But it is, first of all, an acknowledgment of that reality that begins the journey of what it means to be a human being and nothing else.
The second thing that we discovered was that one did not really know, save he "doed". Which is a way of understanding that there is a dynamic in consciousness, or profound humanness, that was beyond what we usually isolate as awareness of knowing. It had to do wish activity, historical activity, not busy-ness, with shaping, forming, forging, bending history itself. Where you, grasp yourself in the service of no other Lord; no other Sovereign, save the Mystery itself, before which the arena of action could be nothing less than the whole world and the length of history itself. The acknowledgment of the Mystery and serving of the Mystery are but two sides of the same coin.
The third thing we discovered was not a third dynamic, but was the fact that once you intensify awareness and once you intensify engagement, there comes a sense of plethora. The fulfillment of full humanness which though it does not exist in itself as a third element, becomes a reality in the intensification of the first two poles. This I call re-presenting; re-presenting the Mystery. Now another way to talk about these three dynamics is faith, and love, and hope.
Last week, in New York, I had lunch with the Chairman of the Council of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in India, Archbishop Fernandez. He told me a great story. Some people in his church who had been proselytizing and educating for years decided that now they'd go help the local people. They decided that they would do that by enabling then to intensify and expand their agriculture. So they went to the Ministry of the government for authorization. The Minister was a Hindu. He said, "Gentlemen, we would be very delighted for you to work with the local people, but from our perspective they need one thing, that is just a little bit of hope. If and when you bring that, you will find that all the practical things that you are concerned about will take shape." That's what I mean by presence.
I have been brutal on you who have been in the front lines of these projects. I have been brutal when I did not see visible change, economic progress, or new housing and intensification of farming. I say to you now that that is your great power and your great strength. That is the secret of it all; your presence there. What is presence? It is sharing the presence of Mystery itself which is the hope beyond all hope and itself remaining a mystery. Now, can you understand that the definition of those who care, I mean those who care in this room ­ is found in this bit of symbolism, this triangle. We spend years of our life while people told us were doing nothing, forcing through to the bottom. What we are finally about, whether we are doing Town Meeting, Social Demonstration or anything else, is nothing more and nothing less than giving the privileged opportunity of experiencing what it means to be a genuine human being to the last man and woman on this earth in our life time.
What is the job of those who care? We already know in Chardin's language that it is to go out and reconstruct the times in which we live in order that the possibility of humanness may be there. What is the content of this? Where is it that we see to it that that which every man knows, that all the earth belongs to all the people, finds a new social container which is a kind of abstract idealism. Any such understanding is always within a temporal container which denies forever anything that people win by perfection or completion. History is, in one sense, an endless process of rebuilding the earth. But if "all the earth belongs to all", that means all the fruits of nature, however they are distributed, finally belong to every man. Then it is important. The decision-making process, the opportunity to participate in deciding not only one's own destiny, but the destiny of history itself, belongs to every man. Up to this moment in history, I believe that less than 5% of the people who have ever lived have directly and authentically participated in determining the course of history. What an hour! And then all the gifts of humanness...
We throw around the 15% and the 85% figures so much I feel we may get callused. Nor are we aware that most people would not have the slightest idea what we mean when we say 85 and 15. To say it again: the 15% of us who have all the education, we have all the health, we possess the resources and the means of "the good life." I'm saying on your behalf, and on behalf of all who care, all who have experienced profound humanness, that what we nave also belongs to that 85% of have­nots. We care not, in our lifetime, that history is wrapped up. That's not our job. Our job is to stand and to stand tall, rebuilding the earth, keeping for our moment in history a move toward the realization of the common human awareness that all the earth belongs to all.
Now we come to how we do that. First of all are the large ontological maneuvers, that's the maneuvers of the void to use the terms of one Japanese man of long ago. Secondly come the historical maneuvers. The historical maneuvers are within the circles of our global campaigns. How many years did it take us to finally come up with this? My mind gets foggy with time, for instead of 25 years, it seems like you and I have been at it for several centuries. As a matter of fact, what I am doing this morning is attempting to interpret who we are under the rubric of space, as over against the rubric of time. When interior space has been exploded, it's only filled up with the concretizing of love or concern. When you're dealing with temporality or time, the sudden interior explosion is only filled up with acknowledgment or faith which confines time in such a way that you can get your being around it.
My point here is, that it's not enough to know that all the earth belongs to all. One has to be able to decide, in the historical scope, however modestly, precisely how. That can become a possibility in your lifetime. Thus, the campaign of awakenment of all men. The specific form of this, right now, is Town Meeting. Second is the task of engaging every person in the world. Providing the possibility of engagement to every man in the world is the meaning of Social Demonstration.
I want to talk a little bit about Town Meeting. You know that sometimes I've been amused at Town Meeting. My amusement has to do with the things we've learned in the midst of that campaign. We've chickened out about the idea of doing ten thousand. So we dropped it to five thousand. It'll get funnier in a minute. Then we made the mistake of holding the five thousand up in front of us, which paralyzed all of us. Rather than becoming great generals and breaking that down, and breaking ourselves down into groups so that at any moment we would only have one Town Meeting to do. That's the only way you win. You put up figures like 10,000 and 5,000 and try to get your spirits up enough, and to get something big enough to give your life to. Then when you mean to do it, you absolutely invert that and get it down to the smallest requirement with the troops you have. Now, that's funny, too. But we've learned it, haven't we? Well, you see, the 10,000 and the 5,000 was a joke in itself. We joked ourselves. Why, 5,000 and 10,000 had nothing to do with our mission. Do you know how many possible rural villages there are in this world? Two million, they say. We would have died if we put two million up. But that is what Town Meeting is all about.
Now there is one other little amusing thing. You have to always say that one of these days we are going to turn our methods over to somebody else. Then you say, "Goodie, goodie", because the strain of doing them is something. Now, granted we must be willing to have anybody, at any time, take our methods and use them. But you don't go out and try to create people to take over your methodology. If you hand them over to the educational system in the United States of America, which is shot through with the decadence of "Dewey­ism", you have destroyed not only the future possibility of Town Meeting, you have destroyed every ounce of blood you have already put into it. The only thing we should be worrying about is how to get Town Meeting to the two million rural villages of the world. Why? Because it is THE crucial instrument of awakenment in our time.
In recent days I have begun to talk to myself about the "magnificent seven" revolutions that are happening all at once at this moment in history. There has never been anything like it before.
One is the revolution of the third world. What a revolution! We have noble first­hand members of that revolution in our midst today. We have some second­hand members, and I am one, who symbolize the fantastic dimension of the revolution of the third world.
The second of the "magnificent seven" is much harder to explain. It is the part of the technological revolution that has to do with people. It has to do with the thrust toward globalization of humanity. It is nothing more or nothing less than the so-called international communities of the world, The heart of this is the national and multi­national corporations which, are doing the revolution. No matter what your abstract liberal friends may have to say about such corporations, they are revolutionizing the world. And if you live long enough, you are going to see that, in spite of your abstract criticism, that is the way history is.
The next, and this may be first of the "magnificent seven", is the feminine revolution. I want to witness to this body that I will continue to say that over the years I have not been one who has appreciated the rise of women in history. In this last year when I saw that 300,000,000 of the women of the world are a part of the poorest of the poor and spend their total life in a way that is worse than that in which a dog or a donkey lives, I have become a full convert to the women's revolution. Maybe in the long run, that will be the most important one that has happened in our time in history. If you have any questions about whether we should make every effort to reach the last of these 300,000,000 through women's courses and through the Social Demonstrations, don't let me hear it. Tell somebody to come and tell me. That's because I want to get to heaven and be angry as few times as possible.
The next of the "magnificent seven" is the minorities revolution. It is the black man of America who enabled other minorities in this country and the rest of the western world, to rise up and demand of us nothing less than an equal opportunity to make of their lives what you and I have the opportunity to make of our lives. The next revolution is the youth revolution. It's calmed down now, but don't you ever think that it will ever be the same again to be a youth. Don't you think that it will ever be the same to be a parent. Women who suckle their existence from their children are going to find their lives changed. And we he­men who have taken such great pride in being the proper father while we saw all the mistakes of our brothers, our hour is also gone. The youth course is going to be important.
The last revolution of this type is the educational revolution. I don't think we've seen the profundity of that. One thing I'm clear about, even though right now the universities in our country are experiencing a kind of resuscitation in terms of their ancient image, somebody else is going to see to it that the whole approach to education around this world is changed. I think it is going to be the college students in the third world who are going to carry the revolution and require a totally new understanding of what it means to be an educated person.
Now, I've been saying all this only to get to Town Meeting. Profound as these revolutions are, THE profound revolution in our time is the rise of local man. Though it is still the morning star on the far horizon, save for those who have eyes to see, local man is on the move. He is going to radically, profoundly alter history in terms of any image that anybody up to this moment in history has ever conceived.
I am going to recommend to the Area Priors that we turn on all of the impactment current we can with LENS, with the women's course, with the youth course and with a way to get back to the university with more emphasis on the third world. But anybody who does not see that Town Meeting is the core of all impactment has not been doing very profound thinking in the last couple of years. Town Meeting is the key. There are two million such communities in the rural area alone.
Social Demonstration, which has to do with engagement, is held with the 24. In one way, compared with the whole historical task we have, they are but comedies. I have even thought during this year, and mark you, I have put my life blood into getting 24 of these under way, that the only real significance they had was to give us the credibility in the world so we could do Town Meeting. Do you hear that? At least I know it has already done that. When a human being is awakened, his creativity begins to flow. I mean the creativity the he is begins to flow. In principle, that creativity will find its own point of engagement. Now the Social Demonstration assists that creativity in that it is a demonstration of how the most local of the local of all local men can engage himself in a way that will affect history itself. Therefore, for the sake of Town Meeting, you need so many of these demonstrations. But finally, you have to see that the task for those who are concerned with the three campaigns is to emphasize awakenment and not engagement, except in terms of theoretical presentation. Do you hear that? There is no way to stand over some 2 million social demonstrations. If we are concerned with mass awakening of the 4 billion people in the world in our lifetime, then we understand the vocation of profound consciousness.
Even to suggest that any of these social demonstrations has not come off is enough to make me explode. Not because of what that says, but because it gives evidence of not knowing what it means to be a general. Without generals we are lost. The job has not yet been to do these social demonstrations. The job has been to set them up and keep them alive until all the plates were spinning. Our colleagues, who have been in those social demonstrations have done that, and with a sense of victory that overwhelms us. Now, next year we have to "do" them. That is the time to do them. Thank God that they are set up and ask for strength to get them done next year.
Both Town Meeting around this globe and Social Demonstration has just been set up. Town Meeting in this country had to reach 1500 or we were not talking about anything to do. In principle we have reached that. Town Meeting is set up in this country. Now we have to do it. It is in the same position as every Social Demonstration. The most overwhelming thing in this whole Assembly was the 24 flags of the countries where we had community forums. We have Global Community Forum set up. Now, let's go do it globally.
Look at those 24 consult documents. The life blood that's gone into them is overwhelming. The human development projects are set up. Next year, we do them. This means in one year from now every one of those 24 projects be "doed". That means the ones that started last month as well as the ones that have been under way for eighteen months. We do them and we do them all within one year. One auxiliary, who has become a symbol of mine, says he believes they can be done in six months. I'll give him twice the time. But, he of all characters around here, had better have his project done when he shows up here next summer.
Now, I'm not too much interested in replication. I'm not interested in replicating anywhere but where we are, which is India. Replication is an experiment that has never been carried on in history before. To think that we know the methods of rapid replication and, if it isn't rapid, it's not replication, is to deceive ourselves. I only want to see us replicate in places where a forty­five pistol is at our head. There are a couple of places here, if we don't begin replication, we are not going to be able to do the project we're in. That's what I mean by a forty-five at our head. We do what we have to do in order to bring that project off so people can see what local individuals around the world are capable of doing themselves toward self-confidence, self­dependency and self­sustenance. What we are doing in Latin America is not replication. Nor is what we are doing in the United States replication. But if we move into Kenya, that's replication. If we move into the aboriginal people in Australia, that's replication. If we move into the Philippines, that's replication. If we move into South Korea, that's replication. Now, I'm not saying that I don't think we ought to replicate this year. But I want to warn you, we are not prepared to replicate. If you don't believe that, ask to be assigned to India in Maharashtra State this next year. Then come back and make this speech. I just do not know how in the world we are going to do 250 in one year. But I believe we are going to do 250 because there's resolve in this Assembly beyond any measurement of blood pressure machinery.
This doing is to get ready for next year. A year from now, and only at that time will the meaning of this pluriform yin­yang come into being. We have no intra­global movement campaign there yet. Now, the core of that is going to get our minds and spirits fixed in spelling out practically the new spirit mode of the 20th century in a global sense, plus creating a new sociological instrument that will effectively nurture those who care around the world. That latter is going to be the important one. You're not going into the State of Maharashtra and awaken 232 villages into caring if you do not find a social instrument whereby their care can be continually nurtured. In one sense this is what we have been looking forward to. It is not going to be easy hut we won't even dare put our mind to it if we do not do Social Demonstration and Town Meeting this next year.
What's the key to this doing? Four of the words are on the summer symbol. It is going to take certain qualities in order to do these campaigns. One quality is just caring. I mean caring about the whole world; not about your children; not about your spouse; not about your nation; not about your culture, but caring about humanity. Unless that posture is honed into that, in the 19th century would have been called a quality of character, you are not going to stand long.
The second word up there is courage. Fundamentally, what I mean by courage is integrity. You decide who you are and spend your whole life being that and nothing else, no matter what the external circumstances are. Without that kind of ontological courage you're not going to win.
The next word is cooperation. I don't mean some superficial getting together to make the task easier. I mean the awareness that you and I are first of all social beings and, secondly, individual beings. The corporateness that you exist in and that other people wonder how you can live in, is simply the sociality that is at the bottom of humanness itself. Without that kind of corporateness you are going to fail in Town Meeting and Social Demonstration.
The last word is creativity. What I mean by that floats out of all the others. It is not true that sometimes I'm creative and sometimes I'm not, or that some of us are creative and the rest of us are not. Man is his creativity. I repeat what used to be in old lectures. Some people think I'm just fat. That's not true. That happens to be where the creativity that I am is located. Without guts enough to allow that creativity, wherever you store it, to be released, there is no doing. That is another way of saying that there is no place you can telephone that will tell you how to go about doing your village. They never install telephones in heaven. That's why I want to go there.
Down underneath these qualities are decisions. This is the profound resolve that's behind the concept of winning. If you do not decide all over again you have only one life to live, you are not going to win. Oh, how long do you young ones go on really thinking that you are not going to die? No, you know better. You only go around the clock once. The question no longer is, what is the meaning of going around that clock once. The question you have to face now, and you have to face it in absolute solitude, is what in the world are you going to do with that one life that goes around the clock once, not twice. In one way, you never get a second decision.
The second decision you have to make, and you have no choice, is to decide where the moral issue is in history. Let's say it's not where we've been saying it is. That's fine. You have to decide it. Once you decide that you have only one life to live, then you are going to decide where THE moral issue is. For you are going to use that one life where the crucial import of your time in history is. Nothing moral about the moral issue. The moral issue is an ontological reality. No longer do things such as salaries, badges, and degrees have meaning for you. It is where the issue of history lies in your own lifetime.
The third decision you have to make is whether or not you are the anointed one. I remember Jesus and his disciples one time getting awfully clear that somebody had to knock their skulls against the establishment, which was smothering the suffering people of the time. Jesus asked who is the anointed one to knock his skull against the fortress that was the establishment. Those disciples said, "You are the anointed one." When you're dealing with your own life in the moral issue, it's a vocational decision. There's a chemist, there's a doctor, there's a lawyer. When you're dealing with what I am talking about, those things seem quite incidental. The real vocation of life is what you decide that you are anointed to do in history. Then you do it. You alone can decide it.
Now, the last decision you have to make. Isn't it funny, Sun Tzu and the others were right in the arena of winning and they come down heavy on this. You have to decide all over again about your death. You understand what I mean? You have to decide whether you are a dead man. If you have decided you are a dead man, Maliwada can't throw you. If you have not decided, it will chew you up and spit you out. If you have not decided that you are a dead man, filling in all of those counties in the United States of America and then starting on the townships of the United States of America is going to chew you up and spit you out. You have to decide that you are a dead man. You have to decide whether your death is embraced. You have to decide that you have one life and that it is stuffed into the moral issue and that you are anointed by the powers that be. I'm just dealing with the hard­headed realities of being of service to the poorest of the poor of this world.
There is another category of words which has to do with maneuvers. You can make all the battleplans to fill the field reserve and that is not going to accomplish anything. You have to learn maneuvers, which gives a context for all your tactics. In the book, The Five Rings, written in Japan, Murashi says that to be a Samurai you carry two swords. One is a short sword that you carry in your belt. The other is the long sword that you wear in a scabbard. When you enter into combat, you have them both. The long sword is for maneuvers. The short sword is for the infight. To exaggerate just a touch, your long sword gets the maneuvering done so that your tactics can drive home to the core. We are going to learn to do that, or we are going to fail.
As a matter of fact, battleplanning is nothing other than arranging your implementaries within a context of effectivity. There are four principles. One is timing. Timing means there never are "ants in your pants." The guy who has ants in his pants has a failure mentality written all across his mind. There is a time to move. And there is a time not to move. The author calls that "applicable timing". First of all there is the timing of life itself. If you have not decided that you are going to spend all of your life struggling against any power that keeps you from being a profound human being, then you are back in basic maneuvers. That he calls "the maneuver of the void". Then you are not going to be capable of dealing with historical maneuvers. Historical maneuvers has to do with the profound change of our time. Is local man on the rise? I ask you now. Is the way to bring about profound humanness to have campaigns of awakenment, engagement and one that makes possible the fullness of humanness? Then, in every area and in every task maneuvers have to be built that have timing in them.
The next thing is that you have to know your enemy if you are going to maneuver. In our situation, that enemy always remains half invisible. Now, he isn't an enemy until he becomes incarnate. You have a hard time seeing that enemy of principalities and powers. Those forces, whether they are in established form or simply in mindset, keep men in darkness, in inertia and in despair. This is what you are finally attacking.
The next quality is weaponry. When you said that this assembly was all about advising the Council, that's right. But it is not the heart of the matter. If this Assembly had any opinion to pass on, it wasted its time. What you were out to build is the weaponry for the effective doing of Social Demonstration and the effective doing of Town Meeting. The Council will be able to make up its own mind about where and how the forces shall be committed. That does not mean your work will not help them.
The last thing is the deployment of troops. This is far more complicated than assignments. Some general who lets his religious houses go while he pulls all his troops out to do some little old battle out here has lost, even though he thinks he wins. Deployment is complicated. The crucial thing is how you get your troops at all times in a position of advantage.
I asked my brother, the Bishop, what it was that he thought, above all else, that held this group together. He thought for some time and he said he thought it was discipline. That pleased me, but I was trying to get him to agree with what I would say, corporateness. Then I decided that both of us were wrong because corporateness is discipline and discipline is corporateness. And when you put those two together it's unity.
In this year of doing I would call upon you to guard your unity. That means guarding any kind of reductionism. Wherever you are you must think blue, guarding against the propensity in yourself and in your neighbor to be somebody. Any awakened person in our group ought to realize that you, I and everyone runs our whole group. The power is in the center of the table. Unity is the key.
Finally, guard irrational conflict. Maybe I can plead a personal statement. I am extremely grateful to all of my colleagues over the last twenty­five years who have with patience that, in my solemn moments, astounds me, put up with all my stupidities, my personal flaws, my personal mistakes, my wickedness, my stumbling, my downright sinfulness. In case I never get a chance to do it, I express my gratitude to you. It has occurred to me that if you could put up with my flaws, stupidities and mistakes through all these years, you ought to be able to forgive the mistakes and the flaws and the stupidities of each other.

Joseph W. Mathews