As always, you ask great questions!

There is always the possibility that a particular individual would not be able to accept conforming to the requirements of a society in terms of criminal behavior. I believe that a society based on love and Oneness would, in that instance, keep that person confined. However, such a society would never create a confinement that was in any way inhumane. I cannot speculate on the specifics of confinement in a highly-evolved society, but I believe that the confined person would be given loving treatment, and that the society would never give up on the possibility of rehabilitation.

Many have theorized that, in a highly evolved society, there would be much less criminal or anti-social behavior and that greater resource would be available and would be allocated to the rehabilitation of those who needed it.

I agree that it would be a highly conscious individual who would choose to die rather than defend himself, but I see no reason not to reach for that state, as an individual and as a society.

I must lovingly disagree with your comment regarding the decline of spirituality. Religions are experiencing a decline in their power precisely because religions are man-made institutions, and most have become more about controlling their adherents and maintaining their institution than truly serving the needs of their followers. Spirituality is a personal phenomenon. Each person decides for themselves what they believe, what their personal answers are to the ageless and timeless questions asked by all beings: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?

The primary problem with current religions is that they are stuck on old traditions, and do not want to consider new ideas. They do not want to admit that their doctrine might actually be incorrect in some aspects. Oneness does not seek to supplant or replace religion. Oneness accepts each person’s choices while encouraging each person to live from a place of love, honor and respect for all others. Many of today’s religions have messages of love in their doctrine, and what will occur over time, as we move to a more loving individual philosophy, is that these institutions will be forced to examine their beliefs and teaching to match the beliefs of their adherents.

Oneness is based on the recognition of each individual as a unique creation of God. Oneness holds the individual’s right to live according to his or her own agenda as sacred. Our movement of Oneness at Humanity’s Team and other organizations which have similar aims has no purpose or agenda other than simply to awaken people everywhere to their own majesty and power as children of God. We believe that a society of loving people will make choices in all aspects of life that will provide a high quality of life to all while preserving each person’s right to, as is still written in our nation’s founding documents, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Are you being too paranoid? Perhaps a little, but I believe your view reflects the view of many others in our world. The key message that I try to deliver, along with many others with write and speak about spirituality and the problems of our world, is that we must look to our beliefs if we wish to change the path our world is on. We have already proven clearly that what we have been doing for centuries does not work to the benefit of all, much less even the majority of people. It is becoming increasingly clear that we cannot continue living as we have, unless we are truly willing to risk the extermination of our species through our own greed and corruption. Behaviors come from beliefs; the only way we can truly and lastingly change our collective behavior is to change our beliefs, beginning with ourselves.

It’s wonderful to have this dialogue with you, and I look forward to continuing our discussion in person whenever we can arrange it. Until then, my love to you, old friend!

Kerry

1. What do you do with people who can never be rehabilitated? Detain them indefinately to protect society?

2. I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point of large numbers of people chosing their own demise over another who is attacking them. The instinct of self-preservation is too high and appears to be ingrained into all the genes of all species on the planet. In other words, I don’t see a lot of folks “pulling an Obi-Wan” and letting Darth Vader kill them since they anticipate something better after…mainly because spirituality and the belief in any form of religion is on a massive decline in “educated” societies. It is only on the rise in ones less educated and in poverty. Unless absolute proof vs faith can show life (and a better life) after death, I don’t see this catching on .

3. IMHO, Oneness needs to be *very* careful that their philosophy is not politicized. The danger of this message is that like any religion / philosophy is it can be perverted into something dangerous to others not a part of said religion.
In particular, the Oneness movement could be abused to justify the removal of individual Liberty and replace it with *political* Collectivism. Respect for other people (plural) must be first based on others as individuals. In short, I see this philosophy as being co-opted by the Left to justify Socialism or Communism, while the Right will attempt to link this with these political systems, even if such a link doesn’t exist.

It also should not be used to justify a global form of government. Even if the intention from the outset was a good one, the end result of large central systems and planning is usually loss of freedom, and not trying to raise the bar for everyone by growing the pie (i.e. the rich get richer but the poor also get richer), but the redistribution from the top to the bottom.

We can see this now with the co-opting of the environmental movement to justify the transfer of trillions of dollars from the few to the many, with *zero* benefit to the environment…the only ones benefiting are those that are controlling said transfer and often the money transfered never makes it to the common people but in the pockets of those in favor of these this movement of cash .

As long as this movement is about each person respecting other persons (singular), I can see its long-term success. If it gets into grouping people into collections, we all need to be careful it isn’t abused.

Thoughts? Am I being too paranoid?
~Andrew

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on the questions naturally raised by my article.

The belief of Oneness is based on the belief that all of us, and all of life, are created by God, even the bad actors, and the belief that God loves all God’s creations absolutely. Oneness calls us to see ourselves in every other person, even someone who is doing something that we personally abhor. That does not mean that we have to condone their actions, and it also does not mean that society cannot set reasonable limits on behavior.

In a society based on Oneness, it is likely that the response to serious crime would be to remove the person responsible from the society for a time, i.e., imprisonment. However, in such a society, because we would see ourselves in that person, we would be much more committed to providing an incarceration that would seriously protect and work very hard to rehabilitate that person so that he or she could ultimately be accepted as a member of the society that is not a threat. That is certainly how you or I would want to be treated if we made such a serious mistake. Sadly, it is well documented that our current prison systems are more likely to reinforce criminal belief, and therefore criminal behavior upon release, in many respects just making the problem worse.

Another attribute of a society based on Oneness is that such a society should be able to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, poverty and hopelessness, which is the major breeding ground for violence and anti-social behavior in our current society.

The belief in Oneness is usually accompanied by a corresponding belief that each of us is an eternal spirit, and death is only a passage from physical life back to the spirit realm. On eis always whole as a spirit, held in a realm of absolute love, and a threat of any kind is impossible. These physical life experiences we engage in are, in terms of true reality, just a massive illusion designed to help us understand what we really are by experiencing both what we are and what we are not. The latter could not be accomplished in the spirit realm, since nothing bad or non-serving can happen there. Many authors have said, and I agree with this, that a physical being who fully understood this would simply choose to allow an attacker to kill his physical body and let him go back to the spirit world rather than ever attack the threat with violence. While I said I agree that such might probably be the case for a highly evolved being, I cannot tell you for certain that I would not defend myself if I were physically attacked, and I certainly would not condemn anyone else for defending themselves if they honestly believe they have no alternative.

It is one thing to theorize about a highly-evolved society, and quite another to live through a transition from where we are now, which Neal Donald Walsch has characterized as our adolescence as a species, to becoming a highly-evolved society. I believe that God truly does love each of us unconditionally, and truly does understand that we are all at this point children, with much to learn. I know in my heart that nothing any of us do here matters in the eternal sense, and that we have all been very bad people at some point in our eternal existence, so that we can grow to understand clearly that such actions do not come from love, and do not serve us.

Two things I do believe strongly – violence never truly solves the problem of violence, and the concept of justice must grow to a more loving expression by losing its current base of revenge. The only way to end violence and truly have peace on earth is for all people to find peace in their own heart. When each person looks on all others as a member of their own spiritual family, thoughts of revenge for mistakes will not occur, and justice can be served with love.

Again, thank you so much for furthering this discussion. My love to you, and to all who read this!

Kerry