How Do We Create A Lasting World Peace?

Reflections And Meditations On Creating World Peace - Part 7 And Conclusion

Note: This is part seven and the conclusion to a seven part series of articles on world peace. You can read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here and part six here.

The Co-Evolution Of Plant And Animals

Macrobiotic Biological Evolution

Essential to Michio and Georges Ohsawa’s approach to World Peace is the natural biological evolution of humanity which they propose as realigning our diet and lifestyles to be in harmony and in accordance with the ongoing and ever-present order of the universe. They believed that the vegetable kingdom is the source of the animal kingdom and that the most advanced species of animals, namely, we humans, came to be by eating the most advanced species of vegetables which are whole cereal grains. The co-evolution of plants and animals where animals continue to evolve by eating the most advanced plant form is what drives the evolution of all animals and humanity. In this way, a diet centered on eating cereal grains, being the most evolved plant form, will naturally advance the evolution of humanity. This is why they recommended for us to eat whole cereal grains as our main staple. Among cereal grains, the brown rice was considered by them to be the most highly evolved plant form on the planet. Thus, if we eat whole cereal grains including brown rice as a main staple then we will naturally find ourselves to be in the most evolved and in harmony and at peace with the universe. Whatever comes next in the evolution of plants after grains is what we should consume in order to continue our own animal evolution.

Oshawa and Michio also suggested is that human evolution will move toward a greater awareness, consciousness and spirituality. Michio suggested that we will naturally evolve from “homo sapiens” to “homo spiritus” providing we continue to eat the most advanced plant forms. Michio also insisted that world peace will come about when the majority of the world’s population return to a natural whole foods diet centered around whole grains. He insisted that a peaceful mind and world can only be achieved through the biological change that occurs through eating whole grains.

Macrobiotics is, therefore, about creating inner peace by being in harmony with the universe and is an ongoing practice and discipline of self-discovery and one that each one of us must pursue and unveil for ourselves in our own time. It must be accompanied by a constant curiosity and appetite for life with an active desire to explore and discover who we are and what is this universe. In this way and as new generations appear on earth, this process will continue to repeat itself until the majority of us have reaped the benefits of a whole grain based diet. This will take a very long time. Michio estimated that the achievement of world peace through biological evolution will take at least another two thousand years.

As it is now, one individual, through their macrobiotic practice, may achieve Inner peace within their lifetime. Others may not. This variation depends upon on numerous factors and circumstances. What helps to accelerate one’s own evolution and spiritual development is to experience and confront great difficulties and hardships in one’s life. These difficulties include conflicts, loss, sickness, poverty, war and so on. The more difficulties one is able experience and overcome then the sooner they will find their own inner peace. Life teaches us to be flexible and adaptable at all times.

It should also be noted that not everyone is at the same biological evolutionary starting point. Though we may all be humans some of us may have more recently evolved from lower animal species while others may have lived and reincarnated as humans for a very long time and may soon be ready to move on to whatever comes next. We are all at different stages in our own biological evolution. The evolutionary process is continuous and ongoing and each of us are on our own trajectory. Also, according to Ohsawa and Michio, we can adjust this trajectory by changing what we eat every day. We can both evolve or devolve ourselves by changing what we eat. We call devolving ourselves as “sickness” or “disease”.

Macrobiotics Is Not Enough To Create World Peace

However, as I mentioned in the first part of this series of articles, macrobiotics is not enough to create world peace. World peace is defined not as inner peace nor peace with nature but as peace among and between us humans. Additional work must be done to make us peaceful with each other. Of course, achieving inner peace and harmony with nature is an essential foundation for establishing peace among and between ourselves. We can not create peace with an unhealthy body and mind. yet a healthy body and mind is not enough. Creating a lasting world peace requires us to look at and work on our relationships with each other. We must learn how to create peace in our relationships and with society at large. This means learning and mastering the art of language and communication.

What does it take to master language and communications? It may take one’s entire life to do so and even then one may not have discovered how to create peace in one’s own relationships. However long it takes, what is certain is this journey is deeply personal and individual Just as macrobiotic biological practice is also individually based, so too is our quest to establish peace in our relationships through the mastery of connecting and communicating with each other. This effort has been outlined in the previous articles.

The Seven Levels Of Judgment/Consciousness

We can also look at and apply Ohsawa’s Seven Levels of Judgment (or Michio’s Seven Levels Of Consciousness) as a guide to help us determine where we are with regard to achieving world peace. It should be noted that according to Ohsawa and Michio, only at the Supreme or Infinite level can we achieve a lasting world peace. All other levels will only create and temporary peace that will sooner or later turn into its opposite (the lower the level the shorter the temporary peace lasts).

The first two levels, mechanical and sensorial, is the domain of Macrobiotics and deals with our biological foundation and evolution. Levels three, four and five (emotional, intellectual, and social) deals with our relationships and the domain of language and communication. Level six, the ideological level, addresses the fundamental question of who we are and level seven transcends all previous levels where life is nothing but peace and freedom at all times.

Level three, the emotional level, is where most everyone lives and communicates with each other today. This is the world of love, heartbreak, anger, joy, happiness and sadness and so on. This the world where we try to fulfill our expected identities and roles in society such as being a good partner, a good parent, a good child and a good citizen or model for society yet we seem to fail no matter how hard we try.

Most of us live on this emotional level and we constantly struggle in our relationships. We struggle and wonder how we can create peace in our relationships, our families and in society. Most of us are stuck on this level and experience it like a kind of purgatory or hell from which we are never able to escape.

If we are able to transcend the emotional nature of our relationships then it will be through the study of language and communication on an intellectual level. Here is where we begin to understand how we communicate with each other. This is the domain of laws, politics and social influence. On this level we seek to understand what is the truth beyond our personal and subjective (and emotional) perspectives. We seek to identify what are our common and shared experiences and how, by our own actions, we can influence and change the world. The purgatory of this level is the world of law, politics, and economics. This is the domain where many people try to manipulate others to gain various advantages over each other. It is the domain of trust and distrust and any peace established on this level eventually breaks down and turns into its opposite.

On the fifth or social level, we now look at the dynamics of how we communicate and how language shapes our values and identities. We begin to understand the relative nature of our relationships and realize that we must change ourselves first in order to influence and change others and society at large. We recognize the limitations of our actions and influences and focus only on what we can influence and change. On this level we try to live by the golden rule and seek to treat everyone as the same as us. Our focus becomes not about truth and falsehoods and their effects but instead about equality, justice and injustice. We rely on the linguistic logic of just human laws to determine how we should act and behave toward others. Yet we wonder why others can not live and behave like we do. We wonder why they can not see what we see. Eventually this level requires the use of some kind of justified force to maintain peace. This is the logic of the perpetual existence of the atomic bomb. We ultimately build a society where we do not trust anyone but ourselves.

On the sixth or ideological we are concerned with the fundamentals of our stated identities and values. We understand that we are a prisoner of how we language ourselves and that everything we do will turn into its opposite. We understand and embrace the paradoxical nature of all things. We embrace both the nature of a phenomena and its opposite. We learn to embrace all. We conceptually understand that all is one yet struggle with our inability to realize our own peace and embrace our own shortcomings. We have transcended the trappings of our social reality and we understand the dynamic flow of the universe yet are unable to effect any change other than setting an example. We hope that the example that we set for others will help them with their own journey of self discovery. Yet we know we are also powerless to influence any change and that what we do will eventually turn into its opposite.

On the seventh or supreme level we embrace all and no longer are bothered by our limitations. We no longer subscribe to a fixed and limiting identity of ourselves. We may adopt any identity we wish as circumstances calls for us to do. We are no longer bothered by limitations of language and communication, or social influence and of the duality of nature. We embrace all and are at peace with all. Whatever we choose to do or not do we accept with full responsibility and joy. Whatever impact or influence we have on others we embrace fully and take full responsibility for our actions. We are free and we live life accordingly.

For Further Study

We can further break down the specifics of how we communicate including how we listen and express ourselves according to the seven levels of judgment/consciousness. These are outlined in the charts below and may be the subject of further study and inquiry.

Conclusion

Just as each of must learn to master our biology to find inner peace and peace with nature, so too must we learn master our relationships and how we communicate with each other in order to find peace with each other or social/world peace. Each of us are on our own journey of biological evolution. We are also on our journey of self-discovery and self-development. Every new generation must go through the same developmental steps of self development. With each new generation we can hope that there is a slight acceleration toward collective self-awareness and self realization such that at some point the will be a majority of us on earth with the know how and where with all to establish a lasting world peace. If and when this happens we may never know but at least we can be confident that our universal desire to stop struggling and find inner and outer peace in our lives will eventually collectively get us there. We can look forward to that day even if it may be several lifetimes away.

I imagine that, in the distant future, when we have completely adopted a society so completely immersed in the natural order of life and the universe that we would no longer have any use for words and language. We would intuitively and immediately understand each other even in silence. We may develop intuitive telepathic abilities and be able to communicate over great distances and even through time. I think we have no idea what living in an enlightened world of peace might look like. But we can imagine and speculate how wonderful it may be. Let your imaginations run free.

Peace to all,

Phiya Kushi