A mystic on hunting and power

A spiritual teacher who founded a world-famous movement in the 20th century repeatedly spoke out sharply about two figures whom he regarded as symptoms of the same inner illness: the hobby hunter and the politician.

Both, he argued, seek power over other living beings because they lack access to their own consciousness.

The hobby hunter as a coward

In a much-quoted lecture, the teacher describes an encounter with a hobby hunter whom he asks why he kills, even though there is enough food available. He rejects the answer “It is a game”, because the animal never agreed to the rules of this supposed game. He calls it cowardly that the hobby hunter hides behind a tree and shoots with his rifle from a safe distance, while the animal has no chance to defend itself. “You are a coward, even with your weapon,” is how he puts it.

For him, hunting is not a sign of strength but the expression of an unconscious, innate lust for destruction that humans carry within them, like a child crushing ants for no reason. What is decisive is his statement that every act of killing turns one’s own heart “to stone”, and a heart of stone prevents spiritual growth because it blocks access to one’s own being. He defines good and evil not through religion or law, but through consciousness: everything that hinders the development of consciousness is “sin”, everything that promotes it is “virtue”. Since, by his logic, killing an animal blocks the growth of awareness, hobby hunting clearly falls for him into the category of the ethically reprehensible.

This assessment matches observations documented on our platform from a psychological perspective. Read more in our article Hobby hunters in psychoanalysis.

The politician as a sick mind

His verdict on politicians is even harsher. He describes them literally as «mentally ill» and as suffering from an inferiority complex that they attempt to compensate for through the pursuit of power. For him, politics is «nothing but an ego game», and humanity is the victim of power-seekers whose sole ambition in life is their own ego.

Particularly striking is his image of the tree: whoever prunes the leaves changes nothing; one has to get to the roots — yet it is precisely there that the politicians, the organised religions and the old patterns of thought are firmly rooted. For this reason, he was convinced, no politician can ever be revolutionary or radical, because «radical» literally means «relating to the roots». The politician, however, merely prunes leaves, whereas true radicalism can only be attained through enlightenment and meditation.

He even went so far as to claim that an enlightened politician had never yet appeared, because the dimension of politics is fundamentally opposed to that of enlightenment. A politician is by definition an opportunist without genuine principles, someone who talks of principles only in order to deceive people. He describes power itself as the addiction of the unconscious: «No creative, intelligent person seeks power. No intelligent person has any interest in dominating others.»

The alliance of priests and politicians

A central motif of his critique is the thesis of a tacit complicity between religious and political rulers. The two have divided the world between them: worldly life belongs to the politician, inner life to the priest, and each props up the other in order to keep people dependent. «The priests and the politicians have always been in a conspiracy against humanity», his writings state, «they have divided things up between themselves.»

This link between his critique of hunting and his critique of power is no coincidence: both attitudes spring from the same fundamental conviction that dominion over weaker living beings, whether animal or human, is a sign of unconscious fear rather than of strength. Whoever develops consciousness, so his message goes, will at some point need neither weapon nor office in order to feel themselves.

This view is part of a long tradition of critical voices on hunting, from Kant to Jane Goodall. A comprehensive collection of these voices can be found in our article «Quotes on hunting».