Living Relatedness: An EcoCentric Worldview

Today we are going to continue our Remarkable Minds series with a spiritual ecologist, an earth pilgrim, a vegetarian who led a civil disobedience movement in efforts to restore humanity’s sense of community. He is Satish Kumar and he is one of the few individuals who fully embraces the principles of Mahatma Gandhi, to promote a spirituality opposed to war and ecological destruction.

2012: A Prophecy and a Prayer

Are we facing a global catastrophe or a golden age, or both? As 2012 comes closer with its Mayan prophecies of the end of time, we are being forced to face the realities of an ecological disaster on a global level. What does this mean to us now, in this present moment?

The Etherealization of Capitalism

Cross-cultural trade is as old as the hills. In Neolithic Chatalhoyuk in ancient Anatolia, we find cowrie shells from Jericho, and in Jericho we find obsidian from Anatolia. A by-product of such trade in objects is an exchange of words, ideas, animals, even humans, both male and female.  Human intelligence grows as the gene pool grows larger, as the complex system of human culture moves from band to tribe to clan to town to city.

Magical Mindscapes

Sacred geography is where land and mind meet. Ancient and traditional peoples have found many different ways to invest their home territories with mythological or spiritual meaning. Such geographies could be small and intimate or cover large tracts of ground; they could be natural or constructed, or a combination of both. 

Recent Readings

Dispelling Ignorance and Developing Harmony

What ignorance are we addressing here? I am considering ignorance here from the point of view of a westerner. We live in the global village, we share the same roof, we are interdependent and co-responsible for care of the Earth. And yet, we still think of ourselves, and our religion, as separate, distinct, and unique.

A New Story for Children

Thomas Berry, in his landmark essay “The New Story: Comments on the Origin, Identification and Transmission of Values” (Teilhard Studies no. 1, 1978), was among the first to express what many already knew but didn’t dare say—that the Western creation story no longer serves as a reliable rudder. Based on information people had thousands of years ago, it's no longer adequate for today and a new story based on up-to-date information and knowledge inside a larger context, according to Berry, hasn’t yet come into a form that's compelling enough to guide people as to how to live....

Seeing the Earth as a Planetary Body

Photographs of the Earth from space, the first from 1966, and now of planets circling other suns, new in November 2008, enlarge our vision of the planet where we live and enrich our view of the universe.

Sacred Earth: A Global Cosmology for our Time I

This discussion with the cultural historian Thomas Berry about his cosmological and geologian worldview with philosophy professor Ashok Gangadean was originally published in a slightly longer form in Elixir: A Journal of Consciousness and Conscience no. 2 (Spring 2007). For background on Thomas Berry and his contribution to a New Story about the cosmos, see Mary Evelyn Tucker’s "Thomas Berry, A Profile" Ashok Gangadean is a professor of philosophy at Haverford College.

Sacred Earth: A Global Cosmology for Our Time II

Part 2: Wonder, Interconnectivity, A New Universe Story

Sacred Earth: A Global Cosmology for our Time III

Part 3: Institutions, Planetary Rights, Mystical Economics