October 18 in the frame of the Day of Spiritual Accord, at 14:00 (GMT + 6), Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan) will host an International conference themed: "Strengthening interfaith and interethnic harmony as an answer to modern world challenges ".

04.10.2021

Appeal for SPIRITUAL, culture-based Action and Thinking

The increasing frequency of cataclysms primarily occurring in nature but also in today’s world of technical civilization, have a severe impact on all societal structures. The present time shows very clearly that such epidemic hardships can happen on all continents. Unfortunately, however, in many cases the countries’ political and social leaders reveal an extreme helplessness in face of such circumstances. Human suffering, even in most prosperous states, increases dramatically due to ravages of all kinds, including greatest damage to the achievements of civilization!

These global catastrophic developments are mainly attributable to the fact that the modern age – basing its targets on what is politically, technically and financially possible – has lost its connection to people’s demands and understanding of culture, thus initiating numerous gigantic projects on speculative grounds (just take the construction of nuclear power plants in areas exposed to earthquake hazards as an example of many). This development has gradually proved to be in the totally opposite direction of any sound idea – and from a cultural-spiritual point of view this fact must be called even criminal. By using unilaterally interpreted economic reasons for such decisions (which even threaten statehood in many cases), the voice of CULTURE is totally ignored giving priority to speculative arguments. Here again, those who built the nuclear fusion reactors have revealed only too clearly that even 50 years later there is still neither a physical nor any other solution to the problem of nuclear waste and its deadly radiation.
Therefore, any type of application technology with, direct or indirect, life-threatening effects, or “side- and later-effects” must by all means be abolished. In case of negative effects showing later, all levels of responsibility (politics, culture, science and others) have to find solutions to neutralize or withdraw (if possible) the impact of the cause.
Such ETHICAL CONDUCT certainly requires a mutual agreement among all peoples (ethnics) existing within a culture, within a society, within a national territory whose cultural well-being must become a POLITICAL issue of primary concern. Therefore, such a constitutional-democratic establishment of intercultural dialogue and communication between politics and the different ethnic groups and cultures is a valuable, democratic progress (as an example: Kazakhstan created such a “Peoples’ Assembly” already 15 years ago!). Therefore, it is high time that cultural leaders of other states follow this example and begin to make use of the energy of their different peoples and cultures, for the benefit of both the national as well as international community.
Spiritual Culture – what exactly does this term express?
Although the origin of many different cultures is rather mystical-mythological, many similar principles are reflected in the ETHICAL rules of conduct, the different worshipping cults and in the respect shown towards other peoples and life forms! It is obvious that the CULTURES OF THE WORLD share the same roots, that they have a common base, a common origin whereby all the PEOPLES on our planet – the whole of MANKIND – are connected, related to each other and therefore, from a spiritual point of view, should see themselves as BROTHERS AND SISTERS, and thus ACT accordingly!
In this sense, the basic ETHICAL rule should be: Let us ACT together, in the name of “your god”, for the good of humanity, for the benefit of the WHOLE OF MANKIND!
SPIRITUAL CULTURE may also be referred to as the dimension of the HEART, of INTUITION (the higher feelings residing in our heart)! If political leaders ignore this binding force and the energies harmonizing and supporting community and society, they will degenerate themselves to become heartless, inhuman dictators! Spiritual Culture and the every-day-practice of these guidelines will ennoble those feelings coming from the heart (the human consciousness and character) – and therefore also refine the interpersonal energies and potentials, among the different peoples, among humanity!
Spiritual Culture – a culture resulting in ACTING ethically – will overcome material, ethnic or racial separations and exclusion of others. Spiritual Culture means helping one another, principally prohibiting any use of violence – it also means cooperation with ALL world views (religions or ideologies) and Social Sciences, but particularly with POLITICS in order to find harmonizing improvements, solutions and commonalities. No doubt, mankind’s future is more and more marked by the development of consciousness, a broader awareness, and the complex spiritual-cultural and social sciences.
Absolute recognition of the laws of nature: the basis of the spiritual-cultural order or code of conduct.
Due to the mystic-mythological preliminaries, natural scientists have long claimed not only to take the lead in socio-political subjects (as an example: the development and abuse of nuclear technology) which they influenced in line with their own interests, but they also depreciated, even discriminated the cultural domain, the dimension of spiritual culture. However: SPIRITUAL CULTURE IN RELATION TO ACTION IS BASED ON THE SAME COSMIC, UNIVERSALLY VALID LAWS OF NATURE, as they are scientifically recognized by physicists, chemists, biologists and others!
The crucial point, therefore, is to understand the principle of CAUSALITY – the law of cause and effect – as a guiding principle, an ethical prerequisite to which all actions should be geared. All world teachers – be it Buddha or Krishna, Jesus or Mohammed, Confucius or Plato and many others – emphasized that every human being or nation, even mankind as a whole, can only harvest what they – CAUSALLY – once sowed! In this sense, Spiritual Culture raises the level of consciousness and at the same time helps to ennoble the character qualities – to gradually cause POSITIVE effects by avoiding NEGATIVE causes.
Accordingly, ETHICS, as a social science in the area of politics, is gaining more and more significance as an important decision-making tool in politics and in the culture of conduct!
But apart from the principle of CAUSALITY, of course, other (scientifically proven) cosmic laws of nature apply to everyone in terms of SPIRITUAL CULTURE! These include, among others, the law of EVOLUTION, the energetic HIRACHIES, the „conservation of ENERGY”, and thereby IMMORTALITY of existing energy fields!
Weak points in our thinking and behaviour – from a spiritual-cultural point of view!
The major shortcomings in our global, multi-ethnic community or human family are becoming apparent and reveal those „specialists“ with their speculative- claims and wishful thinking, on the basis of which our technical civilization was built and is still being built.
In addition, the current focus on commercial and financial interests in today’s economy and society is indeed one of the reasons why in all these areas decisions are being implemented without the application of any form of Spiritual Culture! This leads to purely intellectual, materialistic, speculative criteria in decision processes – the main reason why our home planet, the whole of humanity is forced to suffer from those effects!
It is important to consider the fact that a political perspective is mostly limited to a period of more or less 4-5 years, allowing just a short term perspective – whereas a SPIRITUAL-CULTURAL approach, AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE, bears a  LONG-TERM PERSPECTIVE, forward-looking and geared towards future development, even towards eternity in a way! Thus, honest politicians, seriously acting to serve the people, will take into account „THE VOICE OF SPIRITUAL CULTURE“, which, at the same time focuses on up-coming generations, the FUTURE and the ASPECTS OF A HIGHER, ETHICAL CODE OF CONDUCT! [In this context, we have to distinguish clearly between the term SPIRITUAL CULTURE and today’s TRIVIAL New Age (esoterical) movements causing confusion throughout the world].
Proposal for action:
The establishment of a governmental “BASIC VALUES-Council”, in which representatives of social sciences and CULTURE (religion and ETHICS) work together in order to provide advice to politicians and support on political issues.
It is most unfortunate that economy undermined existing institutions of education and knowledge, with the consequence that this development also contributes to the cultural degeneration; however, by excluding CULTURE those educational institutions no longer serve their students, but only their own economic interest. This system has grown into a worldwide, well established network, revealing its unethical and unscrupulous semi-finished products (take the example of “nuclear fission”). The cultural history of mankind offers numerous examples of nations that eliminated themselves due to their intellectual subtlety instead of safeguarding their deep cultural values.
Politics would be well advised to take advice from a “BASIC VALUES-Council”!
The present perspective of politics on the whole is especially lacking spiritual-cultural guidelines supporting society and ethics by giving certain limitations to politicians’ or economists’ decisions and actions. But in order to determine and define such limits and concepts of implementation to primarily serve and support all forms of life – it is necessary to initiate a scientific-cultural BASIC-VALUES-COUNCIL with the competence to adopt decisions and recommendations as well as to give the necessary guidelines at the highest level! Such a council should consist of the most highly qualified scientists and representatives from all cultural communities – a commission adopting decisions according to a kind of “Round Table”-principle!
Summary: The social or socio-political evolution once again will come to accept limits set by nature and the cosmic laws, since only in this way the survival of the human race will be ensured in such an anti-biological age of technology and physics as ours!
The international movement of the “IMPLEMENTATION OF SPIRITUAL CULTURE” (Executive Committee) which currently is being set up in Kazakhstan and Russia, therefore recommends that all state leaders and politically powerful groups should use the latest knowledge and findings of natural, human, cultural and social sciences and build bridges to the spiritual-cultural potentials of their different peoples!

By the International Association PEACE through CULTURE
Wilhelm Augustat
President