Spirit of the Earth, Gaia

India needs Special Ecological Zones

2010-10-12T15:30:00.002+05:30

In India there is a rat race to create SEZ - Special Economic Zones. In these zones, economic activity can be conducted as per the whims of Big Business. Considering the fact that the kind of capitalism found in India is mostly a toxic mixture of crony capitalism and predatory capitalism with little trace of any social or ecological responsibility, the Special Economic Zones have proved disastrous for the marginalised people and the delicate ecological balance of the country. The destruction of ecologically sensitive areas happen with impunity in the name of infrastructure development and the construction of industrial complexes. The situation is similar to what we saw in the movie Avatar. The ministry of environment, though more proactive than in the past, seems to be selective in its approach to handling such situations due to narrow political considerations.

The advent of such unsustainable economic fundamentalism has also caused a reaction in the form of intensifying Maoist insurgency. Like capitalism, Maoism also is an ideology that has never shown any sense of ecological awareness. So in effect, it is a clash between two extreme capitalist and communist ideologies of economic fascism, that try to gain control. Amidst this pandemonium, the fragile ecology of India is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of global warming and it will be the poorer sections of India's population who will suffer the dangers of ecological destruction more. The time has come to look beyond the duality of the bankrupt conventional right wing and left wing politics. India needs Special Ecological Zones, where humanity's activities are carried out in harmony with Nature with social and spiritual awareness.

Communion with Earth

2010-09-06T20:09:00.000+05:30

Humanity's disconnection with the Spirit of the Earth has played a serious role in the rape of the planet perpetrated by polluting industrial practices and the obsession with mechanical methods. When the Earth is seen as something lifeless or as a spaceship on which we live, there is no sense of a living connection with Gaia. The outdated mechanistic model of economic development, based on technology that damages the ecological web of life, also encourages the separation from the living reality of Nature. Human beings confined in the concrete jungles of urban centres suffer severe alienation from the life-enhancing energy of Nature.

The ecopsychologist Dr. Michael J. Cohen is a pioneer who has been working to create awareness about the importance of our connection with Nature and develop practical methods to restore humanity's lost communion with Earth. According to Cohen, we and all of Nature, are built of attraction bonds that hold atoms and the world together. In us, at least 53 of these bonds register emotionally and spiritually as 'biophilia,' a binding, 53-sense love of Nature.

Our Nature-disconnected ways de-energize biophilia out of our awareness. We instead believe we have only five senses. Writes Cohen, "During the eons before humanity walked on Planet Earth, the natural world and its spirit, - an attraction to support life in balance that some call green spirit - thrived and grew in the non-polluting ways of nature's self-correcting perfection and restorative powers." The 53 natural attraction senses are nothing but the manifestation of this green spirit.

This web page gives a glimpse of Michael Cohen's vision of Green Spirituality:

http://www.ecopsych.com/kechnholspirit.html

We live inside Gaia

2010-08-20T17:15:00.001+05:30

The general popular belief is that we live ‘on’ Earth. This belief arises from the assumption that Earth is a not a living organism and we live on the surface. However, if we look at Earth as a living superorganism, it becomes clear that the envelope made of Earth’s atmosphere that gives us the life-giving air is very much part of the living planet. Since we live inside the atmosphere, we are living inside Gaia - completely immersed in Gaia.

The very term ‘environment’ is based on the erroneous idea that the biosphere that surrounds us is something external to the human species. Actually, we are in constant communion with the interconnected activity of the web of life, though most human beings are unaware of it. Instead of being our ‘environment,’ which implies a non-existent separation, the atmosphere and the biosphere of Earth exist as aspects of the body and consciousness of Gaia. Humanity as a species is an inseparable and integral part of it and our very existence depends on the optimum functioning of this interconnected web of life. Any imbalance in any factor of this living web has an impact on human species.

This Gaian web of life, in which we are immersed in, is not only physical, but it is also a collective consciousness. The collective consciousness of humanity is a part of it and the well-being of human species in fact depends on our healthy interaction and communion with the other species and the whole planetary consciousness. Here is a link to an article about the perceptual implications of Gaia by David Abram

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/gaia/esp_gaia10.htm

Abram's article looks at Gaia from a mostly scientific perspective, but it is different from the rigid reductionist mainstream science.

Earth is alive

2010-08-17T14:42:00.000+05:30

At this time, when Global Warming has become the buzz of the millennium, humanity is still in a state of denial of the deeper issues behind this ecological crisis. Anthropocentric sections of both the religious and materialistic fundamentalists try to relentlessly deny that the ecological meltdown is the result of humanity messing up the planet. The religious fundamentalists would like to go to a religious Heaven, and the techno-economic fundamentalists want to trash the Earth after gobbling up all the resources of the planet and move on to colonise other planets. The advocates of the New Agist version of ‘leave Earth behindism,’ see the Earth as a low vibration and want to escape into ‘higher dimensions’ that they claim to be superior. Another Earth-weary philosophy is the dogma of the transcendentalist illusionist spirituality that dismisses the Earth and the Universe as mere illusions.

Our Earth is not an inanimate rock that spins around the Sun as the materialists would have us believe. This planet is not a low form of existence that should be left behind to escape into some ethereal dimensions or a far away Heaven. Earth is a living Being, a Divine superconsciousness with physical, psychic and spiritual dimensions – Gaia.

Though it was the scientist James Lovelock who created the scientific hypothesis, which sees Earth as a self-organising super organism, and named it after the Greek Earth Goddess Gaia, it is not a new idea at all. And Lovelock’s hypothesis, which remains within the scientific rationalist paradigm’s limitations, doesn’t see Earth as a sentient consciousness, because that is far beyond the comfort zone of conventional scientific dogma. The awareness of Earth as a Divine superconsciousness, existed on this planet in ancient times in many cultures before the patriarchal social and religious structures emerged. In ancient India, Earth was revered as a Goddess – Bhoomi Devi. Such an integral understanding acknowledges the Earth, the Sun, the physical Universes, the non-physical dimensions and the Transcendental Emptiness as equally real aspects of an infinite, integral and multidimensional Ultimate Reality. All the infinite dimensions of reality can be accessed through Gaia consciousness and Heaven can manifest right here on Earth.

The hardened scientific rationalism that sees Earth as inanimate, and the conventional religious/spiritual systems that dismiss Earth as low existence or as illusion, interestingly arose as byproducts of the patriarchal conquest that suppressed and subjugated the Divine Feminine, women and integral traditions of spirituality that revered Earth as a manifestation of the Divine.

The current environmentalist initiatives try to address Global Warming by tackling the issue mostly at a rational and scientific level. This crisis, the Earth faces, is not merely a result of the ‘assault on reason’ that Al Gore talks about. In fact, not only blind religious faith, but ideologies and isms based on reason have also contributed to this scenario. Global Warming is not just a physical crisis, but it is also a spiritual crisis. The ‘assault on intuition,’ by both scientific rationalists and the other-worldly ‘leave Earth behind’ religious/spiritual ideologies, has played a role in this ecological crisis. Humanity has lost the intuitive spiritual connection and Communion with Earth’s intricately interconnected and interdependent web of life. This disconnection has prompted humanity to treat Earth and other living beings as rubbish resulting in the self-organising systems of the Earth consciousness initiating balancing measures to restore the living planet’s integrity. Global Warming is only a symptom of this process. Economic jokes like emission trading that refuse to replace outdated development models, the attempts to try technological solutions and even the Al Gore model that focuses mostly on scientific, social and rational aspects of Global Warming, leave the deeper spiritual crisis of consciousness unresolved. That is why there is an urgent need to create awareness about the importance of restoring humanity’s intuitive Communion with the Spirit of the Earth, Gaia.