In his lecture Friday night, His Holiness Sri Viswayogi Viswamjee Maharaj said the quest toward achieving peace and unity around the world begins with the individual and the family.
At the Baker Center’s Toyota Auditorium, the spiritual humanist said the world is lacking unity, and divisions exist in religion, socioeconomic status and language.
“We all belong to only one family,” Maharaj said. “Take away the religion. Whatever the religion may be, whatever the caste may be, whatever the nation may be, whatever the language may be, we’re all human beings.”
He underscored the point by beginning the talk in song, singing “God is one for everyone.”
Unity would erase divisions and create peace, he said.
“If we unite, we can do anything,” he said. “We can make the earth the heaven. We can throw away the financial crisis from the USA and throw it in the Atlantic Ocean.”
He outlined five essentials that must be provided to each individual to make peace and unity possible — food, clothing, shelter, education and health.
Regarding shelter, he asked those in attendance what they thought a “real home” was.
“Our body is our real home,” Maharaj said. “It is coming along with me from India to America, America to India, city to city, state to state.”
In order to protect both the individual and the country, he emphasized the importance of maintaining a healthy body and exercising.
“And learn karate,” he said with a laugh.
Mental health is also important, he said, stressing that disunity of the mind “shatters it into pieces” whereas unity of the mind “builds intelligence, which can then be used for peace.”
Maharaj said education to each person is necessary, and a lack of education is the chief cause of many problems.
Going further, he provided another question for the audience, saying there are problems everywhere, and, at the same time, there is no problem at all.
“How is this possible,” he asked.
Equipping people with the resources to solve problems eliminates problems, allowing for the paradox, he said.
“So if we educate each and every person, if we make them intelligent, they can think about it and, using their intelligence, they can solve the world’s problems,” Maharaj said.
Through the Internet, the world has become figuratively smaller, making communication more expedient and possible between all in the world.
This is where Maharaj followed up with yet another question: “Because of the Internet, the world has become very small, but the distance between one person and one person mentally (is) long, so long. Why?”
He blamed this on a lack of familiarity and knowledge with other religions, countries and socioeconomic classes.
Education doesn’t just take place in libraries, classrooms or in front of computers, he said. It also happens through first-hand experience by studying in other countries. His solution is to make the body, which he called “the mobile home,” even more mobile.
“We have to send our children from the universities to the universities of other countries,” Maharaj said. “Let them go, and, for three months or two months, let them go and understand what is going on there.”
In his introduction of Maharaj, Baker Center Interim Director Carl Pierce compared Maharaj’s humanitarian work, establishing a major hospital for the poor and needy, to the prospect of extending universal health care.
Pierce mused on Maharaj’s lofty goals for humanity.
“He aspires for all of us to reestablish an eternal code of righteous conduct, in which ultimately we will have a reform of human society,” Pierce said. “Sounds pretty ambitious, sounds pretty wonderful to me.”