Is this website changing gears and shifting its emphasis from natural health to politics? No. But as I'll explain, this page is intended to contextualize the quest for optimal health through natural means.

The most appropriate context, I believe, is one that we all need to share — world peace. Not just a cessation of hostilities in Iraq or Afghanistan, but permanent peace everywhere! Such a context is not airy-fairy idealism. It is (1) possible, and (2) absolutely essential for the survival of our species, whether we enjoy good health or not.

The impetus to do this page came via a discourse given by my spiritual master, Adi Da Samraj. Whoa . . . Does that sentence mean that this website is changing gears in order to convince you to adopt my spiritual path, Adidam? No. Natural Health Yellow Pages is still about what its names implies and will remain so. Besides, even if I did intend to convince you to become a devotee of Adi Da Samraj, it wouldn't be possible. Your spiritual path — anyone's spiritual path — is a matter of the heart, entirely a relationship between you and the Divine, in whatever form the Spirit draws you deeply.

Adi Da Samraj gave the discourse that inspired this page in mid-December of 2004. Like all his discourses, it was not a public event. He is not — and never has been in the thirty-two plus years of his teaching work — a public figure. From Fiji, where he resides, he addressed only his devotees, worldwide via the internet. I will not attempt to quote him; rather, what follows are major points that impressed me as needing to be shared with you as I listened to his words of wisdom (wisdom vital to all/Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, atheist, agnostic, whatever).

"Civilization" as we have known it is finished. I put the word in quotes because the history of civilization cannot really be characterized as civilized. It is a history of enmity, of almost perpetual war, in which millions upon millions have died. Our sorry past, however, turned a corner during the last century. Diabolical cleverness invented weapons of mass destruction. In a world in which world leaders are still foolish enough to wage war, those weapons threaten every last one of us. Indeed, the future of our very species itself is threatened by the makers of war.

We — that is, the six billion of us who are all together at risk — cannot allow such "leaders" to draw us into the conflicts that interest them for their various selfish urges. Their motivations, hidden in language about patriotism and self-defense, reek of greed and the urge to dominate. There is even the odor of insanity, for it is truly insane to wage war when continued warfare would likely render the planet uninhabitable.

There is one thing that we — the six billion of us — can do to prevent the unthinkable: Refuse to cooperate. All of us. Even including the soldiers. On both sides. Lay down the weapons, refuse to use them. Because to use them is mass annihilation. If there were to continue to be 21st century warfare, there would be no winners, only losers. Now, in this century at last, war should be recognized as unthinkable.

While refusing to cooperate with the unthinkable, there is another thing we can do: Cooperate. Adi Da Samraj has suggested the following formula for the governance of human affairs:

Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace

No matter what spiritual path, no matter what religion, race, tribe, or nationality, we, the six billion, need to adopt the peace formula!

I read the other day that here in the United States people have taken to wearing either red or blue bracelets to signify either conservative or liberal political persuasions. Okay, but here's the new deal: Red mixed with blue makes purple.¹ I call for all to wear purple bracelets. Keep the red or the blue if it's important to you. Wear purple on your other wrist. Beyond being either conservative or liberal, there is our common humanity, the basis for our absolutely essential cooperation.

What I particularly appreciate about talking to you via this web page is that it represents the vehicle that will make the peace formula a reality in our lives. The internet. Truly, mass communication! For the first time in history we can, relatively, all talk to one another. The ultimate mass movement, the movement for peace, is waiting to happen — waiting to be made to happen by us, the six billion!

It is not just peace with each other that is necessary here in this place. It is peace with the place itself. For the planet is so disturbed by the scope and scale of our current disharmony that it is rebelling against us. We have just had a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 and devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands more. And violent weather has been raging massively in this winter of 04/05. After we have established peace with one another everywhere, our necessary first priority, we will be able to establish peace with Mother Earth.

We all need to learn how it is that we can effectively make war impossible, for the war mongers will be stopped cold if we, the six billion, refuse to die for them. That refusal will be the unity that will allow our species to claim the word "civilization" for real for the first time. And we all need to learn how to make effective the cooperation and tolerance that lead to peace. To say that our survival is at stake is not to exaggerate. It is to acknowledge the reality of current affairs . . . and the opportunity.

The following links are offered to facilitate your participation.

Click here to learn more about this map.

Cooperation in the large. "Fine", you say, "easy to talk about 'purple', but how are you actually going to get 'reds' and 'blues' to even respect or talk to each other, let alone cooperate with each other? There are several specific efforts underfoot with just that purpose in mind:

• The Third Way — A cooperative, bipartisan effort would necessarily have to be "centrist" politically. The Third Way is conceived as a centrist platform that promotes progressive values. In his second term, President Clinton aimed at forging such a government. As he described it in his State Of The Union address in January, 1998:
  
  

  We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say government is the enemy and those who say government is the answer. My fellow Americans, we have found a third way. We have the smallest government in 35 years, but a more progressive one. We have a smaller government, but a stronger nation. We are moving steadily toward an even stronger America in the 21st century: an economy that offers opportunity, a society rooted in responsibility and a nation that lives as a community.

  
  Not only was this a workable approach to bipartisanship within the United States; it also resulted in the forging of a "cooperative fellowship" of values consciously shared by a number of other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema. Such a world cooperative has the spirit of the United Nations, but — unlike the United Nations — also has the "teeth": the power to make changes. It was out of this fellowship that such global agreements as the Kyoto Accord were forged.
  
  While the "third way" is not the last word in the politics of cooperation, it is a good and precedent-setting example to keep in mind, a legitimate attempt to move beyond the limitations of "left" and "right", and — equally important — something that actually did happen and can happen again. (By way of contrast, breaking the partisan bickering by having a third party win the White House is still a highly unlikely outcome at this point.) Some "Third Way" links:
  
  
• Terry Mollner, The Third Way Is Here — "Metaphysically, capitalism and socialism are both based on 'the competitive assumption', which holds that the universe is separated into an immense number of parts locked in a state of constant competition for each one's self-interest. Although both socioeconomic systems accept the competitive assumption, the difference is that while capitalism champions it, socialism outlaws it. The Third Way is based on 'the cooperative assumption' — the belief that the universe is an immense number of connected parts, each of which is constantly cooperating with all the other parts for the interests of the whole, and only secondly for any one part or parts."
  
  
• Reforming and Rebranding Progressives to Build a "Moderate Majority" in America — "For example, rather than proposing a large-scale new entitlement program to help the poor, Clinton offered the Earned Income Tax Credit — this was a means (a tax cut) that appealed to conservatives, with ends (fighting poverty) that satisfied progressive values."
  
  
• The Third Way: summary of the NEXUS on-line discussion
  
  
• An Introduction to the Just Third Way — a somewhat different proposal for a "third way".

Cooperation in the small. Cooperation begins at home. There is a real sense in which we will never be able to cooperate, as nations, on a world scale, if we can't find a way to cooperate on levels larger than the individual or the family household. To do this, we need to reverse the trend that has led to the disintegration of our communities and neighborhoods, and foster the creation of communal organizations — from the Lion's Club, to food coops, to religious and spiritual communities — intermediate in size between the individual and the State.

Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity — Fukuyama argues the point that those "high trust" countries in which trust and cooperation are society-wide values flourish better (culturally, economically, and in every way) than "low trust" countries. One of the major reasons is because the "high trust" countries very naturally create and participate in communal organizations intermediate in size between the individual and the State. This helps avoid the extremes that can occur where such organizations are missing, such as the parent-State taking control of everything, by default.

"Globalization"??? — The "globalization" being promoted so vigorously by mainstream media has nothing to do with people-to-people cooperation regarding matters of our common interest. "Globalization" is a product of the world-wide cooperation between Big Government and Big Business. This "globalization" is fundamentally about bolstering governmental power structures and enriching corporate coffers in order to control politics and economics. In the mindset of those controllers, war is not just thinkable; it is permissible, possibly even desirable. We cannot afford to cooperate with the plans and policies of the controllers. There are alternatives, but we can't learn about them from corporate-controlled mainstream media. Fortunately for us all, we can turn to the internet, which is not--at least for now--ruled by the controllers. Following are some links that will help open the road to the peace formula:

• http://www.hopedance.org — "The purpose of HopeDance is simply to report on the outrageous, pioneering and inspiring activities of outstanding individuals and organizations who are creating a new world--regardless of their spiritual tradition or political agenda."

• http://www.globalexchange.org — "Global Exchange is an international human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political, and social justice. Since our founding in 1988, we have increased the US public's global awareness while building partnerships worldwide."

• http://www.counterpunch.org — "Twice a month we bring our readers the stories that the corporate press never prints. We aren't side-line journalists here at CounterPunch. Ours is muckraking with a radical attitude and nothing makes us happier than when CounterPunch readers write in to say how useful they've found our newsletter in their battles against the war machine, big business and the rapers of nature."

• http://globalresearch.ca — "War and globalization go hand in hand, leading, in the post Cold War era, to the destruction of countries and the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people. In turn, this global economic system is marked by an unprecedented concentration of private wealth. The institutions of war, police repression and economic management interface with one another. NATO is not only in liaison with the Pentagon and the CIA, it also has contacts with the IMF and the World Bank. In turn, the Washington based international financial bureaucracy, responsible for imposing deadly 'economic medicine' on developing countries has close ties to the Wall Street financial establishment."

Tolerance Oriented Websites and Books

Religious tolerance. Although tolerance is a requisite value in every area of human interaction if there is to be world peace, there is no place where intolerance has reared its ugly head to more devastating effect than in the area of religion.

• United Religions Initiative — "We, people of diverse religions, spiritual expressions and indigenous traditions throughout the world, hereby establish the United Religions Initiative to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings."
  
  
• Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance — "This is a large religious web site which promotes religious freedom, tolerance and diversity as positive cultural values."

Human rights. Tolerance is grounded and guaranteed by declaring and enforcing human rights.

• United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights — The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948. It includes such rights as: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights; everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person; no one shall be held in slavery or servitude; everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law; everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; and many more. Most groups working on behalf of tolerance and human rights take the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights as their starting point.

Peace Oriented Websites and Books

Outlawing war. How do we even begin to outlaw war? A good place to start is by outlawing war's worst potential: weapons of mass destruction.

• The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence — by Francis Boyle. Just what would allow, say, a US soldier to lay down his arms, as we suggested earlier? In this book, Francis Boyle, a world-renowned legal expert, makes a strong case for why military personnel associated with nuclear weapons should legally be able to refuse to use those weapons. But he goes much further. Based on international laws from the Hague Convention to the Nuremberg Trials, he makes a compelling argument that (a) use of nuclear weapons is criminal; (b) the military and political strategy of nuclear deterrence is criminal; and (c) mere possession of nuclear weapons is criminal. This book is a must-read: it will change your view about having to accept MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction — as the necessary status quo. And it will remind you that the five nuclear powers (United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China) that agreed to the terms of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agreed to gradually eliminate their nuclear stockpiles, but have not done so:
  
  

  Article 6. Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under stricty and effective international control.

  
  
• Trident Ploughshares — Some good folks are acting in accord with Boyle's principles. Here's one such group. Their specific (and ambitious) aim is to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system in a non-violent, open, peaceful and fully accountable manner.
  
  
• Association of World Citizens — "I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world" (Socrates). This group also is working toward the eradication of nuclear weapons and, ultimately, war altogether.
  
  
• Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World : Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People — "This book mounts perhaps the most impressive argument ever made that there exists a viable and desirable alternative to the continued reliance on war." (The New York Times)
  

A true (and truly peaceful) civilization. What would a culture (and eventually, a world) based on the twin principles of cooperation and tolerance actually look like?

• Let the Best Culture Win! — by Chris Tong. We have as yet to find out what a culture truly based on cooperation and tolerance would actually look like, says the author of this article. The article examines the history and politics of the twentieth century; it argues that communism emphasized cooperation at the expense of tolerance, and capitalism emphasized tolerance at the expense of cooperation. But it goes on to argue that the post-globalized world is in a position to serve as the fertile ground in which a cultural renaissance can take place and in which a truly "civilized" civilization can evolve. Only that evolutionary process will not be based on the survival of the fittest (and the wars engendered by that instinct and principle) but rather the flourishing of the happiest.
  
  
• An Appeal To Global Conscience — by Tom Hayden. "A global behemoth can only be fought through global resistance, locally based. We express gratitude to the global peace movement for activating world opinion against collaboration with the U.S. occupation . . .Together we can undermine the foundations of war and occupation, make it impossible for the American government to continue its course, and begin to plant the pillars of peace."

A truly civilized and single world. The entire world — not just a part of it — must be (and act) civilized before we can truly complete the outlawing of war and the weapons of war. And that means a globalized world, yes. But one in which globalization is not a process moved solely by human greed, creating an increasingly greater divide between the "haves" and the "have nots", but a movement that instead is reducing that divide: eliminating poverty, eradicating mass epidemics, and raising the standard of living around the globe. When that is the direction in which the world is moving, the "have nots" won't feel compelled to declare war or perpetrate terrorist acts on the "haves".

• The Borgen Project — How much money would it take to eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide? Provide shelter for everybody worldwide? Provide clean, safe water for everybody worldwide? This website provides informed estimates.
  
  
• The "uncivilized" world — Just what part of the world is "uncivilized", not in the sense of being lesser, but in the sense that it is not sharing in the benefits of the "civilized" world, and is therefore the source of much of the unrest, terrorism, etc. that springs from such inequity? There is no better map than Thomas Barnett's, which is the centerpiece of his recent book, The Pentagon's New Map. He refers to the "uncivilized" world as the "non-integrating gap" and the "civilized" world as the "functioning core" (because of its higher standard of living and high interconnectedness). I mentioned earlier how the Internet can be at the core of a mass movement allowing us to organize ourselves differently; but that is only true for those of us who are on the Internet. Barnett rightly contends that "disconnected" countries — those that aren't connected via information and economic networks to the rest of the world — are a major source of instability and danger, to themselves and to the "connected" world. He rightly sees the necessity of integrating the "non-integrating gap". Where we disagree is with his view that military force is a necessary component of how that integration will come about.
  
  
• Globalization and Its Discontents — by Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. This book clearly explains the functions and powers of the main institutions that govern globalization — the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) — along with the ramifications, both good and bad, of their policies. Stiglitz strongly believes that globalization can be a positive force around the world, particularly for the poor, but only if the IMF, World Bank, and WTO dramatically alter the way they operate, beginning with increased transparency and a greater willingness to examine their own actions closely. Of his time at the World Bank, he writes, "Decisions were made on the basis of what seemed a curious blend of ideology and bad economics, dogma that sometimes seemed to be thinly veiling special interests.... Open, frank discussion was discouraged — there was no room for it." The book is not entirely critical, however: "Those who vilify globalization too often overlook its benefits," Stiglitz writes, explaining how globalization, along with foreign aid, has improved the living standards of millions around the world. With this clear and balanced book, Stiglitz has contributed significantly to the debate on this important topic.

The Teachings of Adi Da Samraj

• The Peace Law: An Open Letter To The Global Human Family, Calling For the Universal Establishment of The Collective Principles of Cooperation and Tolerance — An impassioned call by the great spiritual master, Adi Da Samraj, for the outlawing of war, and the establishment of the principles of cooperation and tolerance as the basis of a new world order.
  
  
• The Time-Tested Politics of Unity and the “Anti-Civilization” Politics of Individuation — An essay connecting the Spiritual value of "oneness" with the temporal politics of "oneness", which places emphasis on the collective order and its good. How the "me" generation (and its associated politics of individuation and separation) is the antithesis of what civilization really should be aspiring to.
  
  
• Embracing Cooperation and Tolerance for the Sake of Global Peace — An overview of Adi Da Samraj's Teachings on global society (and world peace), and local cooperative community.
  
  
• About Adidam — An accessible introduction to the complete Teachings of Adi Da Samraj.
  
  
• Adi Da Up Close — Stories from practitioners of the Way of Adidam.
  
  
• The Way of Adidam — A further look at the Teachings of Adi Da Samraj.
  
  
• The Dawn Horse Press — Publishers of the Teachings of Adi Da Samraj.
  
  
• Adi Da and Adidam — A free copy of an introductory book is available from this site.
  
  
• Adidam Global Ashram Magazine — An online magazine published by Adidam.