Peace, Love and Tolerance
Interviewees are not interested in trying to force their thoughts on others. Instead, they strive to contribute to a more peaceful and humane world with their ideas and actions. This more restrained attitude contrasts with how the religious practice tried to win followers with crusades and demands for repentance. The interviewees share a conviction that people, when they are ripe for this, will want to acquire this knowledge themselves. The new spirituality certainly offers answers to the big questions, but it is not something that can be convinced of people prematurely. Tolerance for other beliefs is central and people should be free to believe what they want. The ideal way of being is indicated by reference to the golden rule of Christianity, that is, that you should treat others as you wish to be treated. Having a pacifist attitude is natural. Progress and change should not be achieved through agitation or revolution: "It is better to be for peace than against war." However, there may be times when you need to stand up for yourself and act in a more determined way. It can then be about ending a love relationship that is no longer perceived as rewarding or simply demanding to get a better room in a hotel.
Many times in the interviews it refers to love. This is a major and central concept for interviewees. The group includes both those who live in a couple relationship and those who are single. Most often, however, the word refers to a deep and pure sympathy for humans and animals in general, not to affinity with a particular group or the community with a partner. If anything can be said to be the goal of development, it is to have a compassion for all living things. The ability to love is built up over many lives and through experiences of various kinds. Several respondents testify about how they can live in situations, and feel compassion for people who experience something difficult, even though the respondents themselves have demonstrably not been close to experiencing something similar in this life. This is seen as confirmation that the individual has such experience material from previous lives she has lived.
The interviewees have a respectful relationship with the animals. In some respects, animals are seen as equal to humans. "Human greatness is not that great," says one respondent. One of the interviewees says that at one point she consulted an animal communicator to find out why her dog was so anxious. The communicator had been alone with the dog for a while and was then able to reproduce how this perceived life. In the future, everyone will eat vegetarian. "So we won't get to the finish line until everyone has become vegetarians too. As long as we kill our friends… As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be war," says one respondent: "We grow animals".
In everyday speech, it is said that love and hate are close to each other, but the impression of the material is that it is not something that respondents would agree with. This gives a hint of the special definition of the word "love" that is covered. The ambition to be able to have a sympathy for everything and everyone is certainly commendable, but should be possible to problematize from a psychological point of view. Freud (1929/2008) – and then we can assume that the sympathy he had in mind was, after all, limited to his fellow human beings – describes such an ambition as inflation:
The commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" is the strongest averting of human aggression and a prime example of the unpsychological procedure of the cultural overself. The commandment is impossible to follow; Such great love inflation can only degrade the value of love, not eliminate necessity (Freud, 1929/2008, p. 469).
The theme of vegetarianism and animal rights deserves extra attention. In light of the many reports on the downsides of animal production that appear in the media, respondents' views are understandable. From a psychological perspective, however, it is possible to problematize the most radical animal ethical reasoning. That animals would be "as valuable as humans" can also be understood as an over-identification whose basis could be one's own perceived helplessness (Freud, 1927/2008, p. 390) projected onto the defenceless animals and perhaps at the price of a fortified or increased alienation in relation to the outside world or their own species.