109. Association with Ordinary People of Other Lands Draw Closer These Lands

When I was in the human flesh people were also interested in what was developing in other lands. And the only source of this news was traveling. I did experience many pleasant moments while associating with the passengers of the camel caravans, traveling via Nazareth around all the-then world of the Roman Empire. Since my very childhood I was lucky to have been able to associate so much with different people for very many conductors of the caravans would come to my father to his goldsmith‘s workshop for the repair of their broken belts with metal buckles or the camel harness. The father once there was a need did work as both a carpenter and smith and even repaired the camel harness, belts, and various leather baskets.  

I memorized very well all the news from the other lands I heard my father discuss with the visitors. I had a very strong desire to see these lands myself so that I could also experience that versatile life that had been experienced by the conductors of the caravans while traveling for weeks along the Mediterranean shore or further deep into the Roman empire. I did desire to participate at these conversations myself rather than merely to listen to what others were saying. And very early I myself started asking the visitors what interested me. If my father was more interested in the safety of traveling, in how often the caravans could be attacked and robbed of all the goods by robbers, meanwhile my interest was preferably lying in the every day life experience of these people. I was thirsty to know the customs of different lands, in what manner people associated among them, what they breathed with every day, what they were interested in every day. Therefore, I myself began to ask them these things more often. I was answered as a grown-up rather than as a child. However, they were scared by my questions about the religion of different lands, about the belief in God of these nations since they were little interested in such things in other lands that did not cross with their own belief. Thus, even during their travels they could not see the life of these nations from within; they saw it only as much as they themselves would get in touch with a different life in their own daily matters; and not more. Therefore, I began to feel an ever growing desire to experience the life of these nations from within, to feel with all my soul what the people breathe with within, what is the spirit of their living, rather than getting acquainted with merely their outer life visible to the material eyes only.             

Now that you have the versatile means of broadcasting the news, the fast means of traveling you can associate among yourselves much freer than in those times. And you can help those who cannot travel due to different reasons. You can show these travels on television or online, you can describe them in newspapers and books, you can relate them on radio so that as many people get to know one another as possible. However, you must do all this by participating yourselves within the everyday life experience of other lands rather than just looking on the surface like the travelers of the caravans were doing. A tourist shall never see a life of any other nation if he associates only with a local guide and walk along those routes that are meant for excursions. Such travels do not provide the true taste of knowing another nation, is it similar to the partaking of an unsalted food. You are eating it and feeling that something is missing for the tongue to feel the fullness of all the taste.     

It is for this fullness of taste that I was traveling around the remote lands of the Mediterranean and putting out to sea visiting islands, and reaching Rome, Athens, and many other cities to live there and spend time with ordinary people so that thru this association with them I could know such a life of theirs that merely the material eyes cannot see it during such a short time, however much they might desire it..  

And a better knowledge of others brings them closer to one another. While associating with common people you learn about others and even others learn about your land that they might have never been to and even maybe they will never have a chance to go to. And then you begin to feel that you, even being alone, at the moment represent all your land since others look upon you in such a way as if in your land all the people are similar to you.

Your present traveling is a search for impressions and entertainment while it must be a search for your own deeper attitude to man so that by expanding your knowledge you would be able to get closer to your brethren. And in a similar manner those who meet you in other lands look upon you as upon the visitors that they might profit from rather than upon their brethren.

Now the goal of tourism does not at all correspond to its true content for instead of the knowledge of different cultures and rather than drawing them closer it has been turned, by the selfish people of business, into a source of making profits.

And it is only due to the fact that you have not discovered the Father within you do not dare to change the direction of tourism from commerce to a means of rapprochement so that people rather than staying in luxurious hotels might stay within families, and together with these families they might participate in their daily life while in the evening they might gather together in one expanded common family in order to know one another better and share their experiences.

Now your look is directed to the buildings, to the architectural structures, you have heard of or seen, to entertainment and relaxation but leaving an ordinary man and the tasting of his every day living from within absolutely beyond your look.

This type of tourism seems to you to be impossible but in the future it shall be widely spread throughout the planet. Merely a search for an outer glamor to one‘s eyes and a comfort to one‘s material body in another environment does not differ from your life in your own land where you also strive for the glamorous things on the surface only. Therefore, such a tourism supplies you with plenty of impressions and pleasures but does not build up your soul, does not allow you to discover your new brethren dwelling in a different ambience, entertaining a different concept of the purpose of life and meaning as well as of God, and even belonging to another race.     

And by your direct association within the family you might also expand the views of these families. And it is absolutely irrelevant that you could not speak their language, it would be your opened up souls that would be speaking, and this language is common to all. You would understand fairly much by definite gestures and actions. And every day an interpreter would live with a different family so that at least for one day you could have a deeper association with the members of that family. Meanwhile in the evening there would be held a joint gathering in one of the hosting families.

As long as this type of tourism does not exist it seems to be unpopular, maybe even tiring. However, the sooner it starts the bigger number of you shall desire to participate in it. You need to merely transform yourselves. And this transformation is the only one – to discover the Father within so that you would consider all the people, irrespective of their living place and race, as your brethren. And then you shall begin to desire to know these brethren of yours, inhabiting other lands, by directly associating with them, with their families, and with their children rather than thru a bus window. And then you shall begin to ever more perceive they are also the children of the Father even as you are, they also have their love and pain, joy and sorrow, every day problems and dreams. And then you shall begin to look upon these views that are currently being imposed on you by television in a totally different manner. You shall begin to see and perceive that you have been poisoned by merely the shallow jokes, by an outer superficial glamor and a multitude of the scenes of violence in both films and the news programs or on the pages of newspapers and journals.