Chapter V of Rio Plus 20 Document by Cho Tab Khen Zambuling (Alfredo Sfeir-Younis)
V. Natural Laws
Global warming is one of the most important natural phenomena facing humanity in this millennium. Global warming is not just a physical phenomenon. It is a very intricate and vast happening out of both material and spiritual realities. This phenomenon can be traced back to a number of key relationships, including our human spirituality and the spirituality of all living beings.
This is why it is essential for us to start by recognizing that spiritual laws –the laws guiding our spiritual transformation– and natural laws –the laws guiding the processes of material transformation– belong to the same realm. But, this common realm is not well understood. In most cases, it is easier for people to know, or simply experience, the relationship between any states of nature (quantity and quality) and the processes of material transformation including, for example, production, consumption, disposal, and trade. In those processes, one often has a direct or an unequivocal experience about how the destruction of nature translates, for example, into food shortages and hunger, climate change, and proliferation of varied diseases. Specifically, soil erosion, air and water pollution, desertification, clear-cutting natural forests, polluting the oceans, and eliminating existing wildlife, for example, are major conditions of the relentless poverty, loss of productive assets, and immense human suffering evident now.
In some sense, the above would normally dictate that we should reverse the trends in environmental destruction. Our material nature depends on that process. Nevertheless, despite this information and our growing awareness of these conditions, we know that little is being done to reverse most important trends. In contrast, we often ignore the rather unique relationships existing between those fluctuating states of nature and our inner human evolution; i.e., our individual and collective spiritual transformations. For instance, we hear very little about how changes in environmental quality (e.g., pollution of air and water) affect our ability to attain higher levels of human consciousness, awareness and coherence. Despite this disconnectedness, we have experienced that all of these relationships are essential to our spiritual transformation, universally.
In addition, we also ignore the relationship that exists between our spiritual evolution and nature (i.e., our outer environment). We believe that the state of our spiritual evolution affects nature. In particular, it is through these relationships that one is able to experience how the state of our own human consciousness (inner soul) impacts (shifts) the state of the natural environment. In a sense, we are suggesting that the relationship with nature is a ‘two-way street’. Also, we are suggesting that the state of our inner self, and the unfolding of our inner qualities and capacities, directly influences the state of the outer natural environment.
The relationship between our inner self and nature is not a new discovery. This relationship has been taught by many spiritual groups in our societies, particularly amongst indigenous people throughout the world. They see no boundaries between human existence (in all its forms), living beings and nature. All those inner and outer dimensions are part of a holistic whole. It is to a large extent paradoxical that we, human beings, see no recognition of the relationship between spirituality and global warming. This is particularly interesting when we know that most ancient cultures, and the fundamental spiritual origins of humanity, were founded on the notion, premise, and practice that there is a one-to-one relationship between the quality of the environment and spiritual transformation. Today, in places where indigenous cultures still exist, it is ingrained in them that Nature and Spirit are One and, as such, all people accept the fact that nature affects our spirit and our spirit affects nature.
In essence, natural law is one with all spiritual laws, and vice versa.
Some indigenous peoples explain this multidimensional State of Oneness through embracing, accepting, and practicing exactly at the “junction” of Natural Laws and Spiritual Laws. These inseparable interactions are illustrated by the shared symbols between many religions. They have plenty of teachings, traditions, and stories in which nature plays an important role. Think about Moses and ‘fire’, the Red Sea.
One important spiritual law, for example, is that “the inner is like the outer and the outer like the inner”. If one embraces such a law, it would imply that we, in our inner development, are responsible for global warming and that global warming is a State of Being manifesting inside us. One may also say that our personal and collective ozone layers are being depleted, and that what we see outside us (external environment) is actually the mirror image of our inner spiritual crisis. There is nothing that happens outside, which is not inside us. Another spiritual law states “there is a perfect relationship between the quality of the natural environment and our capacity to evolve both materially and spiritually”.
This means that in order to evolve spiritually here on Planet Earth we must have a high quality environment. In this case, the destruction of the environment is therefore a major constraint to our spiritual evolution and it represents also a major limiting factor to finish the mission we have come to implement during this lifetime. For those beings that are to implement complex missions, the existing environmental degradation represents a very negative phenomenon. Yet, a third spiritual law states that “nature, all living beings, including us humans, have equal wisdom and intelligence” and, thus, in this earthly existence there is no such thing as a differentiated intelligence in creation. Human beings are not more intelligent than nature and vice-versa.
In many ways, the above represents a call to understand that nature is not inert, passive or limited in intelligence. Nature is an infinite depository of all forms and manifestations of pure and unbounded levels of intelligence. In this case, humans are not more or less intelligent than nature. This law is essential to be experienced because our spiritual development does not happen in the abstract. It is inserted within an infinite number of interactions that take place within the natural environment. These laws result from the fact that nature has a spirit, and that our spirit is rooted in nature. For most people, nature and the external environment are seen as detached from our human nature. In that case one would be postulating that the mind and corresponding human behaviour might function in parallel or independent of nature.
Similarly, natural law (the laws governing nature) would also be seen as separate from the whole process of spiritual transformation. Some may understand these two as very different processes, one material and the other spiritual. However, the same people have all somehow experienced that this is not the case, and that there is a deep and meaningful interdependence among all forms of transformation: spiritual transformation and material transformation.
Somewhere, somehow, these relationships have been lost, and we intend to explore some of the reasons why this is so. And, we will make a few suggestions regarding how to recover or rediscover those spiritual relationships. For me, the external and internal states of being or/and becoming are two inter-dependent and inseparable aspects of our reality. This book unfolds some hypothesis explaining the reasons behind our insensitivity in relation to how our material reality connects deeply with our spiritual transformation.
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