Story based on an interview in 2014-2015, with Lawrence R Gelber, by Kirthi Jayakumar
One often hears
of declaring war: whether in history, policy or in simply in the news. But to
choose peace, and opt for a peaceful way to settle a dispute takes greater
courage. Showing the world just that:
the fact that the path of courage is a wiser option, is Lawrence Gelber.
An only child
born in the Bronx, New York, to a lower middle class family of somewhat
observant Jews, Lawrence grew up in a household that emphasized the importance
of education. His parents were both high school dropouts and children of the
depression. He went to public schools in the Bronx in the 1950s and 60s, and a
few months before he turned seventeen, Lawrence entered City College of New
York in 1964 – a rather tumultuous time. John F. Kennedy had recently been
assassinated, the civil rights movement was heating up, and the music scene was
changing with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the Beatles, among many other notable
groups having a huge influence on the consciousness of a generation. In short,
Lawrence was a hippie.
Just a few
credits shy of a degree, Lawrence dropped out of college and made his first
international trip, spending a couple of months in Ibiza in 1968. With the
intention of finishing his degree, Lawrence made his way back to New York, and
following graduation, he learned Transcendental Meditation. Then, after working
some minor jobs, left the United States again, this time for 18 months, during
which time he lived in Nerja, Spain and Heidelberg, Germany and then traveled
overland from Germany to Nepal and back. His experiences in Afghanistan and
India, among several other places, dramatically altered his world view, and
made him realize that people were the same everywhere. While in Germany, notwithstanding
that he was a pacifist who had resisted the war in Vietnam (Lawrence was not
drafted out of what he deems ‘sheer luck’), he voluntarily worked for the
United States Army, washing pots and pans at an officers’ mess club in a
military village outside of Heidelberg. This too expanded his perspectives.
Lawrence soon became very inspired and influenced by Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi). In 1977, when Lawrence was on a long Transcendental Meditation course in Switzerland, learning the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhis program derived from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, he realized in a post-meditative epiphany that he should become a lawyer. In the language of the Gita, Lawrence grasped that being a lawyer was his dharma. He then took to law school quite like a phoenix takes to the open skies. He has been practicing law since he graduated from Law School in 1981.
Lawrence soon became very inspired and influenced by Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi). In 1977, when Lawrence was on a long Transcendental Meditation course in Switzerland, learning the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhis program derived from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, he realized in a post-meditative epiphany that he should become a lawyer. In the language of the Gita, Lawrence grasped that being a lawyer was his dharma. He then took to law school quite like a phoenix takes to the open skies. He has been practicing law since he graduated from Law School in 1981.
While many of Lawrence’s experiences while
young were immensely formative insofar as his worldview went, it was 9/11 that
proved to be a catalyst. In downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11,
2001, Lawrence’s office at the time was on the corner of Broad Street and
Exchange Place, right next door to the New York Stock Exchange. He was about to cross a street to the
entrance to his office building when Lawrence met an acquaintance and stopped
to chat. All of a sudden, things were hitting him on the shoulders. Lawrence
described what happened: “I looked up
and the sky was a yellowish color and papers and other debris was falling, so I
ran inside. I went up to my office and
looked out the window and saw the North Tower burning. Then I saw the second
plane come in over the harbor, bank slowly and hit the south face of the South
Tower.”
Nine years after that, somewhere around 2010, Lawrence woke up one morning and simply said, “I Declare World Peace”. One of the things that Maharishi always emphasized is that all actions stem from thought, and it occurred to Lawrence that war usually starts after somebody says “I Declare War”. It similarly occurred to him that perhaps peace could start, or at least the thought of peace could be created, by the converse declaration. Lawrence became aware a year or two later that John Lennon apparently said a similar thing about declaring peace decades earlier.
Nine years after that, somewhere around 2010, Lawrence woke up one morning and simply said, “I Declare World Peace”. One of the things that Maharishi always emphasized is that all actions stem from thought, and it occurred to Lawrence that war usually starts after somebody says “I Declare War”. It similarly occurred to him that perhaps peace could start, or at least the thought of peace could be created, by the converse declaration. Lawrence became aware a year or two later that John Lennon apparently said a similar thing about declaring peace decades earlier.
As the next
course of action, he went to his Facebook page and wrote the words “I Declare
World Peace”. Somebody opined that it
was a great post and it should go viral. With time, Lawrence’s wife Rita designed
the IDWP website, and together they started a separate Facebook page, while
also running streams on Twitter with the hashtag #IDWP. One of their goals was
to keep it from being a “lunatic fringe” project, and so Lawrence and Rita styled
it as an art project modelled on The Gates[1]. So they promoted the phrase
“I Declare World Peace” as a “flag” to be installed in the consciousness of
humanity, a form of mental installation art. Working with the idea of raising
peace consciousness, Lawrence and Rita have posted a number of meaningful
documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, an anti-war treaty that has been signed by over 60 nations,
among other on the IDWP web site.
Though IDWP is
an art project, Lawrence is actually interested in promoting real peace. As a
result, the IDWP project aims to see injustice eliminated and has allied with
other groups across the world. As a
result, the I Declare World Peace project is growing at an ever increasing rate
and the phrase, or affirmation (or mantra) is spreading throughout a vast range
of social media. The IDWP project does
not accept donations, and instead, Lawrence and Rita spend their own money to promote
the project. With simple activities that include tweeting, re-tweeting and
posting online all of the content that resonates their affirmation and
hash-tags, the IDWP project has grown to become a tremendous movement with over 262,500 twitter followers, growing by approximately 1,000 followers every
week. People attach images –
photographs, memes, peace symbols – or include quotes, along with the phrase “I
Declare World Peace” and the hash-tag #IDWP, and it has become popular. The project also welcomes people to send in
videos of themselves saying: “Hi, my name is [first name]. I am from [city,
town country etc.] and I Declare World Peace.”
These videos are posted online on social media channels, and are a viral
campaign in themselves.
Counting on
being fortunate to have been born in a time and place where opportunities
existed, Lawrence attributes much of the good in his life to the many
opportunities he had. The circumstances
of one’s birth can be viewed as creating obstacles or opportunities. To him,
growing up came with the freedom to do and be whatever he wanted: and though
there may have been limiting factors, nothing was an obstacle. Personally,
though, Lawrence counts naiveté, immaturity and ignorance among his greatest
personal obstacles. As he progressed through life, though, he came to
understand that all obstacles were of his own creation. Fortunate enough to realize quite early on
that blaming others for his mistakes was misguided, he soon developed the habit
of not ducking responsibility. The
development of the I Declare World Peace project was premised in part on the
notion that everything that happens in the world is the personal responsibility
of each of us. Due to his own “naiveté,
immaturity and ignorance”, he encountered various frustrations, false starts
and struggles as a new lawyer. But, as
trite as it may sound, Lawrence found that anytime one door closed, another
door always opened.
The IDWP project
has garnered widespread global support. People have written to Lawrence with a
note to the effect that the project has made a positive difference in their
lives. Many people have told Lawrence that they get up in the morning and
audibly verbalize “I Declare World Peace” and that it has a positive effect on
their days. Convinced that social media
can provide the vehicle through which human consciousness can be raised by the
sharing of positive ideas in a way that was never before possible in history,
Lawrence And Rita continue the promotion on a daily basis.
Despite growing
up in a family that treated boys and girls equally, Lawrence once nurtured a
belief internally that boys were better than girls. This “knowledge” was
transmitted in very subtle ways – for instance, the word “doctor” could only be
male and “nurse” female; females who drove cars were not drivers; they were
“women drivers”. Somehow, Lawrence woke out of these misconceptions and came to
understand that there cannot be male without female. As Lawrence moved through
the various stages of life, it became crystal clear to him that, though
different, men and women are perfect, necessary complements, each to the other
and that necessitates unwavering commitments to equality.
Lawrence points
to a Yiddish word – “mensch”. While this
word sounds like it refers to a masculine quality, it means “human being”. It refers to a person of integrity and honour,
somebody who does not take unfair advantage of a situation or benefits him or
herself at the expense of another. This value was instilled in Lawrence since he
was young, in the form of exhortations from his mother. While he may not have
given thought to what it means to be a man, Lawrence frequently has given
thought to what it means to be a mensch, a human being, a person of integrity
and honour. Once he grasped that men and
women experienced all the same things, with the lone exception of looking at
women as potential romantic partners, he looked, from then on, at men and women
the same way. It made no sense to him to cause suffering if he could help it.
This was a major realization on the path to becoming a mensch, and it meant do
not cause suffering to any human being, male or female. Lawrence never felt
that he was entitled to something simply because he was a man. Being a man, to
him, means being a human being. Not more. Not less.
For Lawrence,
promoting the idea of peace worldwide on social media through the IDWP project
is a way to change, or at least try to change, the existing false paradigm that
peace is not possible. The project was
set up with the idea that it would take 30 years for it to gain real traction. However,
the long term goal is identical to the short term goal – World Peace. It cannot
happen soon enough. In physics, there is a phenomenon called “phase
transition.” It can be explained many ways, but one of its simpler explanations
has to do with the effect of synchronization of a small population on the
larger population. Viewing humanity as one giant complex organism, in order to
“synchronize” or harmonize that organism, it would be beneficial if enough of
humanity shared the thought “I Declare World Peace” in the hope of inducing a
phase transition whereby the idea of peace is no longer far-fetched and the
idea of war becomes as preposterous as it should be.
Persevering in the hope of
achieving world peace, Lawrence labours on, advocating for the
collective voice of reason in a world that takes, very easily, to battle.
[1] An
installation art by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude called "The
Gates" in Central Park in New York City. It was a giant installation of
7,500 orange fabric gates, 16 feet high (4.87 m) of varying widths, lining 23
miles (36.8 km) of footpaths in the park.
