Page 19 - All India Magazine Oct-2025

by battle and struggle and by absorbing into thyself other life. The
first law of this world that I have made is creation and preservation
by destruction."
CWSA 19: 39-40

War and Soul-Force
War and destruction are not only a universal principle of our
life here in its purely material aspects, but also of our mental and
moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual life of man in-
tellectual, social, political, moral we can make no real step forward
without a struggle, a battle between what exists and lives and
what seeks to exist and live and between all that stands behind
either. It is impossible, at least as men and things are, to advance,
to grow, to fulfil and still to observe really and utterly that principle
of harmlessness which is yet placed before us as the highest and
best law of conduct. We will use only soul-force and never destroy
by war or any even defensive employment of physical violence?
Good, though until soul-force is effective, the Asuric force in men
and nations tramples down, breaks, slaughters, burns, pollutes,
as we see it doing today, but then at its ease and unhindered,
and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your
abstinence as others by resort to violence; still you have set up an
ideal which may some day and at any rate ought to lead up to bet-
ter things. But even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only
those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more
terrible and destructive it is than the sword and the cannon; and
only those who do not limit their view to the act and its immediate
results, can see how tremendous are its after-effects, how much is
eventually destroyed and with that much all the life that depended
on it and fed upon it. Evil cannot perish without the destruction
of much that lives by the evil, and it is no less destruction even if
we personally are saved the pain of a sensational act of violence.
Moreover, every time we use soul-force we raise a great force

All India Magazine, October 2025 19