Not-Two Is Peace – A Definitive Guide to People Power

I had wanted to introduce this remarkable book, “Not-Two Is Peace” by Adi Da to the Malaysian readers, but felt daunted and inadequate. Truly there is nothing I can write that will do justice to the profundity of this book – except to bring up a few salient points.

This book is about establishing world peace and cooperation; however the wisdom is applicable in the local context as much as in the global context. One important point I like to highlight is that People Power is not about everybody having a lot to say about everything. Rather the key is an initial council of morally enlightened lenders, who has the capacity to make connection to the people and establishes a right representation of the whole population.

Below are some excepts for Not-Two Is Peace. The book is published on-line HERE.

Part I
On the dangers of the old tribalisms, and the necessity for a Global Cooperative Forum based on the Prior Unity of humankind

1.1. The old moral, social, and political order of humankind is now dead.
1.2. This is the moment when it will be decided what the future is going to be…

1.28. At present, a culture of total war, a culture of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in consumerism.
1.29. The only power on earth that can stop the trend toward total war is the power of the human population declaring it will not cooperate with this nihilistic culture of total war and the ideologies of total dominance.
1.30. In the present day, declarations of independent states based on ethnic and religious traditions are creating huge problems. Previous larger confederacies are breaking down.
1.31. This trend is all about tribalization, setting up absolute pockets of power—based on the mythologies of the past, the traditions of the past, the separateness of geographical zones, the separateness of particular classes or races of people.
1.32. This disastrous fragmentation of humanity has to stop. What is needed is exactly the opposite of that.
1.33. The absolutization of tribal minds is the happening of the human race in this moment, and this is exactly what must be transcended. That requires a new kind of political orientation…

1.45. Presently, the powers of the separate state are being used to control populations all over the world.
1.46. The power of industry and money is actually senior to governments, and is now controlling the entire world.
1.47. The only power that can deal with these powers that are on the verge of destroying the world is everybody-all-at-once—meaning not merely mob power, but a new cooperative system for dealing with issues.
1.48. The efforts of separate states and vested interests to control the people are not going to work forever. Sooner or later, the global population is going to demand a cooperative, benign situation.
1.49. That is why there needs to be a Global Cooperative Forum, in which all of humankind participates through right representation.
1.50. Such a Global Cooperative Forum would not be subordinate to a tribalization program imposed by nation-states, but would inform all of the existing political entities benignly and cooperatively.
1.51. Humankind has got to get down to its own business and choose itself, and the Global Cooperative Forum is the means to do that…
1.55. In the "room" of humankind as a whole, the "room" of everybody-all-at-once, there is no "two"--there are no flags, there are no religions, and there is no "self"-imagery that may be exclusively asserted. Rather, humankind must simply represent itself, and get together to create a new global domain for human existence. This is the great project.


Part II
On the Necessity to Give Institutional Form
To the Principle of Prior Unity

2.18. The means to bring about the Global Cooperative Forum is not some council of highly-placed morally-enlightened individuals merely making a proposition to everybody that this is necessary.
2.19. The role of the initial council must be to accomplish the connecting with the human totality.
2.20. Without that participation of the world population, the Global Cooperative Forum would be just another group of highly-placed people communicating high-minded notions and struggling to achieve them. It would be back to the same old process.
2.21. The initial leadership of the Global Cooperative Forum will come from individuals who are disillusioned with power, and who see that the current efforts to improve the situation of humanity are not sufficient to transform the whole.
2.22. If the initial council knows how to make the connections, and does so, and establishes right representation for the global population, then the Global Cooperative Forum will emerge virtually out of the woodwork.
2.23. It is essential to fully connect the six and a half billion people to a process. That means that the total human collective, or everybody-all-at-once, must become conscious of itself.
2.24. Everybody-all-at-once must be communicated with by the initial council, and enabled to make itself known.
2.25. Everybody-all-at-once must be able to require that it be heard and that its requirements be acted upon in every positive sense.
2.26. This is the happening that is not in the works. Making the connection to the six and a half billion people has never been done.
2.27. The Global Cooperative Forum is the institutionalized face for the six and half billion to manage itself.
2.28. The initial council is needed first. That council defines the issues and also organizes all the means of connectedness to the human totality. Then an effective, participatory process of global dialogue can begin.
2.29. The internet would be the necessary means of this connectedness.

Part V
On Non-Cooperation with What is Wrong
and On Mobilizing the Human Totality
Based on the Self-Evident Truth of Prior Unity

5.18. In fact, the Global Cooperative Forum begins in the instant of its being communicated to the human population. Everybody-all-at-once has the immediate ability to implement it, by virtue of everyone hearing the message and seeing the tacit obviousness of it.
5.19. The happening of truth is not through the mind--it is at the heart. Truth is not a proposition argued over against other propositions. Truth is self-evident, because the heart authenticates it in the moment of reception.
5.20. Truth is an embrace, just as love is. You do not get argued into love. It is self-evidently right.
5.21. One responds to truth as one does to love, simply through recognizing it. It is not about argument, not about the domain of mind, or of opposites.
5.22. That is how the Global Cooperative Forum will come about. It will happen with everybody-all-at-once, because it is right. It is true, it is so. There is no argument either for or against it. It is simply self-evidently true—immediately, on the moment of its presentation.
5.23. Merely to create another NGO, or some kind of entity that is going to try and convince everybody through argument, or, essentially, the play of opposition, to join a Global Cooperative Forum is never going to work. It will just be another piece of the tribal world.
5.24. Prior unity is not a union of many; it is an intrinsic unity in which there is no separateness, no differences, no others, no oppositions, no duality. It is one.

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