THE THEOSOPHY OF BARACK OBAMA
U.S.A. President Follows
Principles Taught by Universal Wisdom
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Barack Obama
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A 2013 Editorial Note:
Working with pragmatism and common
sense,
the humanistic thinker who
presides the most powerful
country on Earth has abandoned
conventional militarism
as a priority and helps
prepare - in a rather silent way - the
ethical foundations of
future civilizations. The following text
describes his philosophical
trajectory until his first election in 2008.
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“The true Theosophist belongs
to no
cult or sect, yet belongs to
each and all.”
(Robert Crosbie)
“In
our household the Bible, the Koran, and
the
Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside
books
of Greek and Norse and African mythology.
On
Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag
me
to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist
temple,
the Chinese New Year celebration, the
Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.”
(Barack Obama)
“To form the nucleus of a Universal
Brotherhood of Humanity,
without distinction
of race, creed, sex, caste,
or color…”
(The first object of modern theosophical movement)
“The walls between old allies
on either side
of the Atlantic
cannot stand. The walls between
the countries with the most
and those with the least
cannot stand. The walls
between races and tribes;
natives and immigrants;
Christian and Muslim and Jew
cannot stand. These now are
the walls we must tear down.”
(Barack Obama)
Theosophy is a planetary philosophy, and its
first goal is to stimulate an understanding of Universal Brotherhood as a law
of Nature.
Both theosophy and
the theosophical movement are beyond labels, personal names, ideologies or
organizations. The field of action for classical theosophy and its students is
defined by real, yet invisible factors, like an understanding of the laws of
nature, an ethical consciousness, and a feeling of solidarity towards all
beings.
Having access to
divine wisdom is the goal of souls, not of institutions or corporations. Hence William
Judge, one of the founders of the modern theosophical movement, wrote:
“The Theosophical
Movement being continuous, it is to be found in all times and in all nations.
Wherever thought has struggled to be free, wherever spiritual ideas, as opposed
to forms and dogmatism, have been promulgated, there the great movement is to
be discerned.” [1]
From such a
viewpoint, a citizen who has good will, who adopted noble goals and possesses an
open mind must be seen as a theosophist, even if he is not a member of any
theosophical association. It does not matter whether he is a Jew, a Muslim, a
Christian or a Buddhist; or if he follows some other philosophy. As long as he
understands and shares the universality of planetary ethics, his life helps
opening room for the perception of universal brotherhood, and he is a true
theosophist at the soul-level.
This may be the
case with Mr. Barack Obama, who was first elected as president of the United States
in November 2008, and reelected in 2012.
Upon examining a
few facts from Obama’s life and the books he wrote, one can evaluate the degree
of affinity between his efforts and the Cause of modern theosophical effort.
Dissolving Walls Between Nations, Races and Religions
In July 2008, Barack
Obama spoke in Berlin, Germany, to a multitude calculated
in 200,000 people. He opened the
unprecedented event by saying he was there as “a citizen of the world”, an
expression which actually contains, in itself, the ideas of planetary
citizenship and of a world without borders. Obama was then a candidate
in the U.S.
presidential elections, talking to a
street meeting in an European country. On
the occasion, he presented his idea of cooperation among all nations, which
corresponds to the first object of the modern theosophical movement.
Referring to the
fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, he said:
“Partnership and
cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to
protect our common security and advance our common humanity. That is why the
greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The
walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic
cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the
least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants;
Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear
down. We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of
Europe have formed a union of promise and
prosperity.”
And he added:
“Here, at the base
of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast,
where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans,
where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to
justice; and in South Africa,
where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid. So history
reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True
partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice.
They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and
peace. They require allies who listen to each other, learn from each other,
and, must of all, trust each other.” [2]
To Liberate The World From Nuclear Weapons
In the same speech,
Barack Obama said:
“This is the moment
when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two
superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close
too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall
gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly
atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of
nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. (…) This is the
moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear
weapons.”
He then examined
the need for peace in the Middle East, and
mentioned the ecology of the planet:
“This is the
moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we
will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads
and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations -
including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your
nation [Germany] [3], and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the
moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as
one.”[4]
The Need for Remaking the World
Obama seemed to
know well the direction he wanted to go. And he could not be accused of having
too modest a goal. Born in Hawaii, the son of
a Kenyan citizen, he closed his first speech outside the United States
with these words:
“People of Berlin - people of the
world - this is our moment. This is our time. I know my country has not
perfected itself. (…) We have made our share of mistakes. (…) But I also know
how much I love America.
I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived (…) to form a more
perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our
allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every
language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours;
every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united
us - what has always driven our people, what drew my father to America’s shores
- is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people; that we
can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and
assemble with whomever we choose and
worship as we please. (…) People of Berlin - and people of
the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long.
But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We
are a people of improbable hope. With an eye to the future, with resolve in our
hearts, let us remember this history and answer our destiny and remake the
world once again.” (“Change We Can Believe In”, pp. 270-271)
More than one year
before his Berlin
speech, Obama already expressed the same clarity of goals in his public speeches.
In February 2007,
on his Declaration of Candidacy, he said he would work for an ethical and
ecological change in planetary scale:
“Let’s be the
generation that finally frees America
from the tyranny of oil. We can harness homegrown, alternative fuels like
ethanol and spur the production of more fuel-efficient cars. We can set up a
system for capping greenhouse gases. We can turn this crisis of global warming
into a moment of opportunity for innovation, and job creation, and an incentive
for businesses that will serve as a model for the world. Let’s be the
generation that makes future generations proud of what we did here.” [5]
Unafraid of
adopting visionary goals, and looking much further than those North-American
elections, Obama said in that inaugural occasion:
“And if you will
join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see, as I
see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us; if you sense, as I
sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear,
and make good on the debt we owe past and future generations, then I’m ready to
take up the cause, and march with you, and work with you. Together, starting
today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth
of freedom on this Earth.” [6]
The Golden Rule
Obama’s project
regarding the United States
and the world was accused by his adversaries of being too vague and ambiguous. He
was even denounced as “not quite American”.
The truth was that he had a deeper and more complex vision than mere
nationalistic and electoral slogans. The foundations of his approach to social
reality are simultaneously inter-religious, ethical and philosophical. The
center of his thought is on the well-known Golden Rule, an ancient principle of
the Eastern wisdom, and of the Greek classical philosophy, taught by Confucius
in the “Analects” (see Book V, paragraph XI) and only later adopted by Christianity. This timeless ethical
principle could be correctly called “the law of good karma”.
Obama clarifies:
“In the end, then,
what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s
great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto
us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s
keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our
politics reflect that spirit as well.”[7]
The Aloha Spirit
There seems to be an
authentically theosophical substance in the real life of Barack Obama, which
can explain why he makes a constantly renewed “brave declaration of principles”,
to use the words from the Golden Stairs of H. P. Blavatsky’s theosophy. His
“mantramic” teaching of theosophical principles is especially clear regarding
the essential unity of all religions, in Ethics as in Wisdom.
But what exactly
is his direct experience regarding universal wisdom?
In what an
atmosphere was he educated?
Barack was born in
August 1961 in Hawaii,
and it is not pure chance that his life and ideas express, up to a certain
point, the “Aloha spirit”.
The word “Aloha”
is a truly sacred mantram in Hawaiian culture, which is known all
over
the world for its open-mindedness and its feeling of brotherhood towards
people
from all nations. “Aloha” is a greeting and also an universalist and
theosophical
concept. The term is equivalent to the sanskrit word “Namaste”, which
means “that
which is divine in me greets that which is divine in you”. It also
means “Shalom”, or “Peace”; and “Compassion”, and “Friendship”.
The so-called
“Aloha spirit” indicates a mental state based on peace with oneself and peace
with all beings. The speech, the philosophy and the actions of Mr. Obama seem
to express something of this mantram and of this culture present in his youth.
His maternal
grandparents, who played a central role in his education as a boy, not only
lived in Hawaii
with him, but they also were influenced in some moment by the Unitarian
Universalist Church. That was a Church
which worked for the fraternization of all religions and kept close ties with
the hindu society Brahmo Samaj. The
Russian thinker Helena Blavatsky wrote a great deal about the Brahmo Samaj
movement. She admired its founder. She criticized the mistakes made by is later
leaders.[8] Barack Obama himself wrote this on his
maternal grandfather:
“He liked the idea
that Unitarians drew on the scriptures of all the great religions”.
According to
Barack, his grandfather considered joining the Unitarians a unique opportunity:
it was “like you get five religions in one”.[9]
An African Medicine Man With Healing Powers
Hussein Onyango
Obama was Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather. A Medicine Man in Kenya, Africa, he
was a Muslim who had healing powers and dedicated his life to local traditions.
[10]
Barack Obama’s
father, who had the same name Barack, was also Kenyan. Barack, the father, was
his son’s hero and spiritual master. He left
in the life of little Barack a transcendent presence and a mystical influence.
In the world of Barack, the son, the intangible realm where his absent father existed
got, somewhat occultly, mixed with the very origins of the Kosmos. And this is
more than a psychological event.
The origin and
destiny of the Kosmos is a central topic in Theosophy. In the Eastern esoteric
wisdom, it relates to the great initiations and the path that leads to them.
All along her work
“The Secret Doctrine”, H. P. Blavatsky makes a comparative study of the main
narratives about the origin of the universe and mankind. She shows the points in
common among the Chaldean Account of Genesis, the Jewish Kabalah, the Jewish
and Christian Bibles, the Central American “Popol Vuh”, the Hindu “Puranas”,
and scriptures of many other traditions. Students of esoteric philosophy will
see a meaning in the fact that Barack Obama faced the cosmic issue during his very
childhood, and associated it to his quest for a mythic, heroic and inner father.
Obama confesses, with
a degree of self-irony:
“The path of my
father’s life occupied the same terrain as a book my mother once bought for me,
a book called Origins, a collection
of creation tales from around the world, stories of Genesis and the tree where
man was born, Prometheus and the gift of fire, the tortoise of Hindu legend
that floated in space, supporting the weight of the world on its back. Later,
when I became more familiar with the narrower path to happiness to be found in
television and the movies, I’d become troubled by questions. What supported the
tortoise? Why did an omnipotent God let a snake cause such grief? Why didn’t my
father return? But at the age of five or six I was satisfied to leave these
mysteries intact...” [11]
An Universalist Mother
It was Barack’s
mother, a white North-American lady, who taught him in daily life an
inter-religious and philosophical view of life, besides the habit of daily
self-training and self-discipline. She
kept a critical distance regarding dogmatic religions. This she had in
common with the original and classical
theosophy, while the pseudo-theosophy created by Annie Besant has preferred to
create its own versions of dogmatic sects, with their priests and rituals.
Barack writes that
his grandparents transmitted to his mother a combination of realism and
joviality, and he adds:
“Her own
experiences as a bookish, sensitive child growing up in small towns in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas only reinforced
this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her
youth were not fond ones. Occasionally, for my benefit, she would recall the
sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world’s people
as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation - and
who in the same breath would insist that the earth and the heavens had been
created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary.
She remembered the respectable church ladies who were always so quick to shun
those unable to meet their standards of propriety, even as they desperately
concealed their own dirty little secrets; the church fathers who uttered racial
epithets and chiseled their workers out of any nickel that they could.”
Such a “religious”
mediocrity did not occur by chance.
There is a wider
context around this sort of narrow-mindedness, which is not a local phenomenon.
It constitutes a global problem, decidedly denounced and fought by Helena Blavatsky
and a few other theosophists since 1875.
True religiosity
cannot be the prisoner of an institution or ritual, and it can’t be far from
philosophy or science. It must make progress in an interdisciplinary way and
accepting liberty of thought. In the famous Letter 10 of the Mahatma Letters
(or Letter 88 in the Chronological edition), a Master of the Himalayas
- a raja-yogi - says that two thirds of human suffering are caused by the
falsehood and illusions of conventional, priestly religions.
Barack Obama’s
narrative goes on:
“For my mother,
organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety,
cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness. This isn’t to say that
she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge
of the world’s great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded
education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on
the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter
or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to
the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and
ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious
samplings required no sustained commitment on my part - no introspective
exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she
would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways - and not
necessarily the best way - that man attempted to control the unknowable and
understand the deeper truths about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion
through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become; it was a
phenomenon to the treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable
detachment as well.” [12]
Obama adds this on
his mother and teacher:
“And yet for all
her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually
awakened person that I’ve ever known. She had an unswerving instinct for
kindness, charity, and love, and spent much of her life acting on that
instinct, sometimes to her detriment. Without the help of religious texts or
outside authorities, she worked mightily to instill in me the values that many
Americans learn in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed
gratification, and hard work. She raged at poverty and injustice, and scorned
those who were indifferent to both.” [13]
A Theosophical View of Life
Barack built his
life on these philosophical and emotional foundations. While having intellectual
depth, such principles are inseparable from practical actions in the world.
In the books Obama
wrote, the reader finds many passages in which he makes once and again, and
under many forms, an open-minded declaration of principles. It is not difficult
to see that Obama’s view of life can be called theosophical, both in the
classical and modern sense of the word. He teaches theosophical ethics by speech
and action.
He said:
“Given the
increasing diversity of America’s
population, the dangers of sectarianism have been greater. Whatever we once
were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a
Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of
nonbelievers.”
And Obama goes on:
“But let’s even
assume that we only had Christians within our borders. Whose Christianity would
we teach in the schools? (…) Which passages of Scriptures should guide our
public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests that slavery is all
right and eating shellfish is an abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which
suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just
stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage so radical that it’s doubtful that
our Defense Department would survive its application?”
Obama thinks and
openly says that all forms of blind belief in dead letter must be abandoned. The
essential principles must be perceived, and they are beyond visible forms.
Obama concludes by choosing common sense:
“What our
deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously
motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than
religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to
argument and amenable to reason.” [14]
The President Doesn’t Make Miracles
As president of
the United States,
Obama didn’t make many visible miracles.
Working under
Karma - that is, within the historical limitations of his own time - he
produced an international atmosphere leading to a growing sense of respect for peace and for non-violent
conflict-resolution.
The militaristic euphoria
of previous times was abandoned. He
helped create an atmosphere where dialogue is possible. Besides his clear words, Obama also silently
stimulates ethics and understanding at various levels of reality, apparent and
non-apparent.
Some of his
critics, however, are rather myope and can
only see small objects situated immediately under their noses.
They are happy to
exaggerate short term difficulties and mistakes of Obama’s administration in
the conventional and material aspects of daily existence. This is part of life.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama helps build and establish the ethical and humanistic
foundations of the civilization of the future, the civilization of brotherhood.
The next evolutionary step for
our international community is a shared respect for peace and justice,
and it must be kept daily in view.
In September 2011, Obama said in
an address to the United Nations General Assembly:
“It is
the nature of our imperfect world that we are forced to learn these lessons
over and over again. Conflict and repression will endure so long as some people
refuse to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Yet that is
precisely why we have built institutions like this - to bind our fates
together, to help us recognize ourselves in each other - because those who came
before us believed that peace is preferable to war, and freedom is preferable
to suppression, and prosperity is preferable to poverty. That’s the message
that comes not from capitals, but from citizens, from our people. And when the
cornerstone of this very building was put in place, President Truman came here
to New York and
said, ‘The United Nations is essentially an expression of the moral nature of
man’s aspirations.’ The moral nature of man’s aspirations. As we live in a
world that is changing at a breathtaking pace, that’s a lesson that we must
never forget. Peace is hard, but we know that it is possible. So, together, let
us be resolved to see that it is defined by our hopes and not by our fears.
Together, let us make peace, but a peace, most importantly, that will last.” [15]
NOTES:
[1] From
the article “The Theosophical Movement”, by W. Q. Judge. It can be seen at www.TheosophyOnline.com
and its associated websites. It is also at “Theosophical Articles”, W. Q.
Judge, The Theosophy Co., Los Angeles,
1980, a two-volume edition, see vol. II, p. 124.
[2] “Change
We Can Believe In - Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s
Promise”, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2008, 274 pp., see pp. 265-266.
[3] Germany is one of the countries where
environmental consciousness is relatively strong. The then chancellor Angela
Merkel herself defended environmental causes before leading the country.
[4] “Change
We Can Believe In”, see pp. 267-269.
[5] “Change
We Can Believe In”, pp. 198-199.
[6] “Change
We Can Believe In”, pp. 201-202.
[7] “Change
We Can Believe In”, p. 228.
[8] See,
for instance, “The Collected
Writings”, Helena Blavatsky, TPH, India, volume III, pp. 55-61 and pp.
286-287. And also “The Collected
Writings”, volume IV, pp. 439-443, among
other texts.
[9] “Dreams
From My Father”, Barack Obama, Three Rivers Press, 1995 and 2004, New York, 458 pp., see p. 17.
[10] “Dreams From My Father”, Barack Obama, see p. 09.
[11] “Dreams From My Father”, p. 10.
[12] “The Audacity of Hope”, Three Rivers Press, 376 pp., 2006, pp. 203-204.
[13] “The Audacity of Hope”, see p. 205.
[14] “The Audacity of Hope”, see p. 218.
[15] “Remarks
by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly”, United
Nations. Link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/21/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly.
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The first version of “The Theosophy of Barack Obama” was published in 2008 in
Portuguese language by www.FilosofiaEsoterica.com and
its associated websites. Original title: “A
Visão Planetária de Barack Obama”. The text was published in English on November
the 7th, 2012.
Always
visit www.Esoteric-Philosophy.com , www.TheosophyOnline.com and www.FilosofiaEsoterica.com .
If you want to have access to a daily study
of the original teachings of Theosophy, write to lutbr@terra.com.br and ask for information on the e-group E-Theosophy.
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