Can a nation have a soul?  It's rather difficult to imagine if you live in America today -- or when you watch the evening news and observe any nation.

But just as each of us have both a self-centered personality and an altruistic soul with a higher purpose, the same can be said for nations.  The problem is, few nations seem to express their soul very often. More often, their personality is acting out on the world stage.  We can see this clearly in the way nations vote at the United Nations when they act purely in their self-interest.  But their soul shines through when they promote the general welfare of all nations on issues such as preventing violence, or protecting human rights or the environment.

Most nations originally came into being as a result of a group or an individual who articulated in some way a tiny spark of the spiritual soul of that nation and began to bring to it a sense of coherence and direction.  The great Indian sage and political reformer Sri Aurobindo said, "The nation or society, like the individual, has a body, an organic life, a moral and aesthetic temperament, a developing mind and a soul… [I]t is a group soul that, once having attained a separate distinctness, must then become more and more self-conscious…"  

Just as individuals must struggle with the process of personality integration, bringing the physical, emotional and mental components of their personalities into a coordinated, working whole, so too must a nation become an integrated personality before it can successfully invoke its soul.

The Personalities of Nations

Just as developed, individual personalities which haven’t yet integrated with their soul  tend to be separative, self-centered, arrogant and materialistic, the same is true of the developed personalities of nations.  Nations identified primarily with their personalities tend to be self-aggrandizing and assume their nation is superior to others. Sound familiar?

When a nation is governed primarily by its personality, it will be materialistic and self-seeking and see itself as the center of the world. There will be an attempt to manipulate relations with other nations solely for its own advantage, with little likelihood of cooperating with other nations. The world will be viewed through the lens of realpolitik (the politics of expediency), and all relations will be seen as struggle for power and dominance.  This type of expression governs most nations in the world today.

The United States, for example, is idealistic and chauvinistic to a fault and thinks all other nations should adopt its particular political and economic values and in fact, often pressures other nations into adopting them.  England thinks it is superior to all others because of its age and long experience as a colonial power.  France has relied more on its brilliant intellect than on its spiritual soul. China has thought it could stay separate from the rest of the world to protect its authoritarian governing system.

A deep-seated flaw in the Russian personality is "the slave that lives within every Russian soul," as Chekhov put it - the psychology of the victim.  The centuries-old Tartar yoke of oppression was thrown off, yet the command system under which Russians have lived for so long has left a deep imprint on family as well as political life and is hard to eradicate.

There are struggles within any national psyche between those elements representing its soul and those representing its personality.  But, ultimately, in the long sweep of evolution, the soul will come to overlight and control the personality of a nation.  To the degree that soul impulses are not heeded and the lower desires are allowed to dominate, there will be problems and even disaster in the national life. .

When there is long-standing racial or ethnic antagonism that crystallizes into hatred, such as the old animosities among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the former nation of Yugoslavia, there will inevitably be an outer explosion of these inner destructive attitudes.  This resulted in the brutal civil war and "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims by Serbs that erupted in that country in 1992.

Crises present opportunities for a fresh look at national priorities and purpose.  They often signal a conflict between the values of the soul and those of the personality.  The 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States came just as the administration was withdrawing from many international treaties to build what many called “Fortress America” and so  provided the opportunity for a major soul awakening. No nation can wall itself off from other nations or from the desperate conditions that breed poverty and terrorism around the world.  The U.S. personality responded with fear and vengeance in attacking countries it accused of harboring terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. A more spiritual response would have been widespread national soul searching about why recent U.S. policies around the world generate so much hatred in so many countries—in developing countries as well as in European countries.

The oil crisis of the 1970s was an opportunity for many industrialized nations to examine their inefficient and wasteful lifestyle and to develop energy-saving technologies and a simpler way of life.  Although more fuel-efficient cars were popular for a time, ultimately the United States went back to costly, fuel-wasting cars and consuming a huge proportion of the world’s oil, while Japan responded more from a soul level and dramatically increased its energy efficiency.

Invoking the National Soul

Once a nation has become integrated, successful, and powerful, its evolution does not stop there, as most people think.  Just as with an individual, once the personality of a nation is fully developed, the fulfillment and apotheosis of its existence is to invoke, contact and express the nation's soul, its inner, spiritual potential.  This is done by strengthening its national will through self-discipline rather than self-indulgence, looking ahead and evaluating the future results of current choices, and willingly choosing to live by higher principles. The national will then aligns with the higher Divine Will and becomes a gift to humanity rather than an obstruction to evolution.  A famous example of this higher soul expression was the ancient Athenian city-state.

Georg Hegel, one of the West's great philosophers, saw pure Spirit incarnating into the world, not just as one great beam of light, but as refracted light of many different rays.  He described these rays as incarnating into particular geographical regions that have an ecological integrity or clear boundaries.  The local ecology- fauna, flora, and humanity- interacts with the incoming ray of Spirit, and the result of that interaction eventually becomes a nation.  Thus, each geographical community has its own ray of Spirit, which, as it incarnates, creates the emergence of the volkgeist, or folk soul. 

The national folk soul, which has also been described as an overlighting angel (or “deva” as it’s called in the East), carries the unique energy of its people and can be seen manifesting in the culture, songs, and myths of its people.  This loose-knit grouping of peoples eventually unifies as the Spirit of the nascent nation incarnates more fully.  Eventually the soul of the nation begins to express through the sophisticated form of the state, with all its social forms and complex laws which embody the ever-growing collective learning of its people.

An invocation of the soul is made when the personality of the nation asks for help-- when the collective cry for change or help arises from the people of a nation.  This invocative cry then meets with a response from spiritual sources, as it must under spiritual law.  This spiritual aid can be in the form of ideas, new vision, a fresh infusion of energy to achieve a higher purpose, the emergence of new leaders, or protection from enemies.  The process of invocation, whether by an individual or a nation, needs to be preceded by integrating, purifying, and controlling the personality as a fit instrument for higher impulses.  If not, shadow or negative elements can distort any higher energies invoked.

Cleansing the Personality Shadow of a Nation

As the shadow elements in the national psyche are gradually cleansed through painful experience, national "soul-searching," and ultimately corrective action, the nation's soul, its higher values and impulses, can manifest more fully.  When invoked, the soul will do its work of destroying limited aspects of the national personality, attracting new energy, and rebuilding the national personality.  The 1960s civil rights movement, which finally eliminated institutionalized racism in the United States, is one example of this cleansing process-- cleansing the karma of slavery.

The efforts of individuals and groups who are truly working for inclusive solutions to problems help invoke the soul of their nation.  Whatever draws out the highest impulses, brings forward progressive ideas, helps win a victory over fear, inspires to self-sacrificing efforts, or promotes beauty and nobility in national life helps to invoke the Soul of the nation.  Individuals and groups can invoke the soul of a nation by consciously calling for its influence, meditating on its qualities, and praying for assistance.

Examples of Soul-Influenced Nations

The soul of America responds to every form of idealism and humanitarianism and to compassion for all suffering.  The soul of Russia responds to brotherhood, to sharing, and to linking the cultural gifts of East and West.  Great experiments in fusing many racial types are going on in both the United States and the former republics of the Soviet Union, which are very different and yet equally important experiments in government by the people.

The soul of Great Britain has been a great champion of liberty against autocracies, such as Phillip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, and Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler in Germany.  The soul of Japan expresses loyalty, sacrifice, hard work, reverence for moral codes, and orderly organization.

As with individuals, the soul of a nation is often called upon only in times of great need or emergency, such as during war, famine, or oppression.  A good example of this was the great French contribution to world evolution that emerged during their revolution of 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man.  This document enunciated the principles of freedom, equality, and brotherhood as rights for all peoples, during a period of upheaval and bloodshed in that nation's life.  This Declaration was part of the planetary evolution of human rights that included the signing of the Magna Carta during the reign of England's King John in 1215; the Declaration of Independence in 1776; and the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms signed in 1941 by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Allies, which later became the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  These documents have codified, strengthened, and steadily expanded the rights and responsibilities of all people throughout the world and are examples of the touch of the soul influencing the personalities of various nations, resulting in evolutionary progress for all humanity.

Another way the soul of a nation is invoked is when an inspired leader, along with his or her accompanying soul group, emerges as an expression of the national soul and takes difficult action for the greatest good of all citizens

The role that Winston Churchill played during World War II is an example of an individual focusing Britain’s soul purpose. His famous quote promising people of England only "blood, sweat, and tears" in their ultimate struggle to resist Hitler's Third Reich was an invocation of soul sacrifice for the common good.  The voluntary relinquishing of outer worldly power in response to the inner promptings of the Soul asks a nation to do what is right regardless of the national cost. 

Mikhail Gorbachev is another example of a soul-inspired leader who offered a clear choice between past values of domination, fear and selfish isolation, and the new soul values of sharing, cooperation, and goodwill. There is a great passion in the Russian soul and a tremendous sensitivity to beauty, art, and poetry.

Nations are not going to disappear in the near future.  But they can become the building blocks of a better world, if citizens learn how to invoke their nation’s soul and develop a greater soul consciousness among the people.  We must all recognize that the survival of our planet depends on nations' considering their own interest within the context of larger planetary needs.
 

Excerpted from Spiritual Politics by Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson. They are co-authors of Builders of the Dawn, and co-founders of The Center for Visionary Leadership in Washington, D.C. and of Sirius, an ecological village and educational community in Massachusetts.  Corinne coordinated a national task force for President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development.  Gordon was formerly the Executive Director of the Social Investment Forum and of The Center for Environmentally Responsible Economies, and was broker principal for Ally Capital’s Environmental Fund. To order Spiritual Politics contact:  The Center for Visionary Leadership, 369 3^rd St. #563, San Rafael, CA 94901; (415) 472-2540; email: corinnemc@visionarylead.org. Website: www.visionarylead.org.