With this post we conclude the lecture on democracy by Hazrat Inayat Khan, begun here. In the first part he made it clear that democracy is not some recent invention or discovery, but that it is innate in human nature. Here, he shows the necessary connection between democracy and the spiritual ideal.
If one asks whether one person’s mind is equal to another’s, or different, the answer is, it is never equal; there is an immeasurable difference between minds. One mind may be developed more than two, another more than ten, another more than a hundred, another more than a thousand persons. One person whom we meet and talk to and sit with makes us feel as if we had been in heaven, so full is he of gentleness, knowledge, response, and goodness. With another, however open-minded we may be, we find that his manner, his point of view, everything, is repulsive, and we cannot help it.
This shows that the root of civilization is idealism. The seedling was in aristocracy, the plant of civilization grows in aristocracy, and the climax comes in autocracy; for it is comfort and power that have always blinded men. We always find people who are without money more thoughtful and considerate than those who have wealth; blinded with wealth they have no time to think of another person. Even helpless people will have sympathy and share our pain, while those who have the power to help do not.
This aristocracy on one side, and on the other side the authority of a Church with temporal power, both reach a climax when they are blinded by the power of wealth. The aristocracy which was the virtue and culmination of civilization turns into autocracy; and once that autocracy begins, whether with king, president, eider, or head of a family, there arises a bureaucracy: what the king does the officer does, what he does the policeman, the constable and everybody else does. As it is said in Sanskrit, ‘As the king is, so becomes the subject’. Everybody values the leader. An autocratic leader produces an effect on every person, making him an autocrat himself. If the king is fond of luxury, the man whose duty it is to wait on the king also becomes fond of ease and comfort. He is too lazy to get up in the morning because the king is lazy also.
When this is so it means that the time has come for another form of life to appear. That is why there come wars, revolutions, floods, strikes, rebellions. These are all signs that life is going to change. It is not only today; it has been so in all ages. Such signs always mean the change from autocracy to bureaucracy, and then the new era begins, the era of democracy.
By the time that this new period has arrived, the spirit of independence has become ready to meet it. When this spirit is understood wrongly it becomes a time of great trial to the world and humanity at large. When violence comes, rudeness and crudeness predominate in social life and disregard of the true spirit of religion, and of consideration for others; these are the degradation of democracy.
Human nature is just like goats and sheep: where one goes, twenty will follow, and fifty more want to walk behind. So it is with man: one comes and seeks democracy, and the others follow without knowing what democracy is. Democracy is not a craze, not lunacy, not a spell; it is the maturity of souls; that is the real democracy. The soul now feels the responsibility, the value of its own power, the latent power and inspiration which it possesses. It does not necessarily mean breaking with Church or religion or law, nor a disturbance. These would be a degradation of civilization.
Where can this spirit, this true spirit, be learned? From socialism? Only a little. From politics? Only partially. The view of the politician is a partial view. In the law-courts the pleader may tell the truth, but the other side also may tell the truth. Politics may give education, but the perfection of democracy can only be learned from the real science or religion, from the spiritual ideal.
Real spiritual democracy we see in Jesus Christ. According to their law the Jews wished to accuse the people who had sinned, but he told them to let him who had never sinned throw the first stone. That was the outlook of democracy. In that Christ suggested that human nature was everywhere. See the picture of the Master washing the feet of his disciples!
Then in the life of the Prophet we read of a negro slave whom the Prophet’s grandson called by his name. The Prophet said, ‘That is not good manners; call him “Uncle”, he is older than you’. He taught his followers that in the house of God there is no distinction between king and servant; the place of prayer should not be for rich people only. All can pray together, shoulder to shoulder; the sultan and the beggar can meet and pray thus. That is democracy.
Whence did it come? It came from the depth of religion; it came from spiritual law. However humble and low a person may be in occupation and evolution, we are none the less interdependent and require his help and service as he needs ours. However much wealth or power or rank we possess, we still depend upon the humblest and poorest person in the world.
The realization that the whole of life must be give and take, is the realization of the spiritual truth and the fact of true democracy. Not until this spirit is formed in the individual himself can the whole world be raised to a higher grade of evolution.