The Secret of World Changing Impact!
Short Video
Dear Symbiotes, I was asked to re-share a short video about my spiritual friend and mentor, Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, founder of the 65-year-old Sarvodaya Shramandana Movement in Sri Lanka and grassroots leader of millions at home and worldwide, who passed away in April 2024.
For those of you just joining my Birthing the Symbiotic Age book release here on Substack, Dr. Ari, as he was called, was a singular, rare human being who touched millions of people throughout his country of Sri Lanka and worldwide.
In the video below, I answer the question:
What is the paramount quality of Dr. Ari (or any of us) that would allow for such a tremendous, magnified impact on the world?
I was in Sri Lanka for a week in April 2024 to say goodbye and offer support, along with an estimated 300,000 people from thousands of villages across the country who traveled a lengthy route to view his body over a few-day period.
I attended the State Funeral, officiated by the Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister, along with his family, friends, and international supporters. Thousands were present, and many millions watched on live TV across all TV channels.
Called by many the “Gandhi of Sri Lanka,” he offers humanity a concrete method that I believe can activate 50,000 villages, towns, and cities around the world into an alternative to the madness that’s happening worldwide— and transform (UNDERGROW) the global system using the Power of Love creating an emergent, bottom-up,
grassroots global Commonwealth of Regional Economies.
That’s one of my book's many areas of focus—highlighting the Sarvodaya Movement and Dr. Ari and sharing a concrete way that I have translated its grassroots organizing approach to the West and anywhere else in the world.
I have decided to share the Forward Dr. Ari asked me to do for the fifth volume of his Autobiography — with some slight modifications.
Our mutual, dear friend Krishna wrote to me back in 2021 —
"Ari just finished writing his autobiography, 5th volume. He woke up with this idea:
‘I want Richard Flyer to write my forward.’ An intimate account of your relationship with him and how you took the task of propagating his Vishvodaya (World Awakening) idea…"
Is it possible to harness and release the power of Love to transform not only ourselves but also our families, local communities, and the entire power pyramid of the global economic system?
Such has been the lifelong meditation of my dear friend, Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne (Dr. Ari to his friends), founder of the 65-year-old Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka.
I will never forget touring a community project with Dr. Ari. He got out of the car in his traditional white sarong. I looked at him and experienced profound spaciousness. By continually extending himself to thousands and even millions of people, it was as if his own ego had transcended and disappeared.
Dr. Ari is an example of living a spiritual life wherein one does not have to make the ego smaller by beating it into submission. Rather, by living a daily, engaged Spiritual AND community life — being of service to others, with all its challenges and egos involved, and by seeing everyone as sisters and brothers — our ego identification with everyone keeps growing until it disappears!
He has achieved what seems impossible: after 2,000 years of world religious history, he has made a recent innovation that upgrades the very idea of the spiritual life — blazing a novel, integrated path for our postmodern era, a dual awakening of Self AND Community, making real Mahatma Gandhi’s unrealized vision of building a Commonwealth of Village Republics.
Without any formal government assistance, Dr. Ari has empowered 5,000 communities in Sri Lanka, building a national network. Each community takes responsibility for its own self-sufficiency initiatives in businesses, health care, education, banking, food, culture, and much more. This is the first time a national network like this has been achieved, and I believe it offers a blueprint for the myriad of villages, towns, and cities worldwide.
As a Westerner, my heart was lifted in the 1980s when I heard about Sarvodaya. It answered my longing for a way to transform our very individualistic and materialistic culture.
Thus began my own 40-year journey to translate Dr. Ari’s principles into American cities.
While Sarvodaya built the needed infrastructure in each village, the challenge of the West is that there is too much infrastructure, with organizations driven by a competitive, siloed culture. That inspiration led us to create community-wide networks, what we call Symbiotic Networks, without becoming a new competing organization.
Imagine thousands of communities, each building multiple vibrant Symbiotic Networks, bringing together their leaders doing good in their local area: networks around the local economy, food, energy, health and wellness, arts and culture, interfaith, etc., with each community strengthening its own capacity for social and economic cooperation and self-sufficiency.
Symbiotic Culture and Networks: a fractal evolution with emergence bubbling up as communities share ideas, experiences, and economic cooperation through trade, creating a new “horizontal” people’s economic power.
It is a practical method, transforming top-down power structures into what Dr. Ari calls Vishvodaya. Vishvodaya is a planetary extension of Sarvodaya’s accomplishment and, in my opinion, the basis for lasting peace on our beautiful planet.
CATCHING UP
BUILDING BRIDGES TO A NEW WORLD - Symbiotic Culture Strategy
Check out the 2-minute BOOK SYNOPSIS.
GO TO THE BOOK TABLE OF CONTENTS — BIRTHING THE SYMBIOTIC AGE
Chapter 10: Seeking the “Holy Grail” - of Community Building —
LAST FOUR POSTS
The Greatest Obstacle to a New Way of Living — The De-Platforming of God
Breakthrough to a New Creation … New Wine in New WineSkin Networks
Chapter 11 posts: Connecting the Good: Using the Internet to Serve the “Outernet” Last 4 posts
Building a “Super-Highway of Love”… One Sphera is Born … The Currency of One Sphera: TRUST
Or, you can go to my Chapter, Jesus Sends Me a Buddhist, to read about my story about Sarvodaya.
Feel free to reply directly to this email if you would like to get in touch. Have a wonderful week! Richard