"We do not lack the dynamic forces we need to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all our comprehension. However, this energy is ultimately ours not because we control it, but because we invoke it."
Thomas Berry
An excerpt from Thomas Berry's book Great work – our journey into the future (from the fifteenth chapter of "Dynamics of the Future"), which we are preparing to publish at Malvern Publishing House. Translated by Jiří Zemánek and Marie Vlachová.
As we enter the 21st century, we are witnessing a widespread awakening to the wonder of the Earth. We can see this in the writings of naturalists and in the work of environmental organizations dedicated to preserving the integrity of the planet. There are also other scientists who give expression to the beauty of things, such as Peter Raven, Norman Myers, Lynn Margulis, Eric Chaisson, Ursula Goodenough, Brian Swimme, and others, who reveal to us the larger pattern as well as the intricate details of the visible world around us.
Our human adventure depends entirely on this capacity for wonder, awe, and joy in relation to the Earth and all that lives and grows on it. As we isolate ourselves from these currents of life and from the deep states of mind they awaken in us, our basic sense of life satisfaction weakens. Nothing our machines have produced, nothing we have achieved with the help of computers, can evoke this total commitment to life that springs from the subconscious realms of our being and that is needed to preserve the Earth and to carry both ourselves and the entire integral Earth community into the precarious future.
How we experience ourselves and the processes of the Earth is a most pressing question, especially when we are presented with the idea of the Earth as a collection of commodities to be bought and sold. In this question lies the true meaning of the Earth, as well as of the human energies necessary to shape a desirable future. In our journey of understanding, we might begin by noting that the Earth is a manifestation of a vast amount of energy, captured in diverse forms, for which there is no explanation in terms of human understanding or imagination. In a series of successive mutations, vast reserves of energy have been deposited into the Earth, not only as fossil fuels but also as life forces within the very fabric of matter.
Our current risk is not the first that the Earth and the living beings on it have had to endure. The Earth found its way into existence amidst an amazing series of creative and destructive experiences. A long series of cataclysmic events shaped its continents and the various life forms that were themselves involved in an ongoing struggle for survival. But what threatens our planet today is the first conscious disruption of the natural rhythms of Earth's processes on a planetary scale. It is something fundamentally different from seismic tremors, glacier shifts, and earlier emergence and extinction of species. It is the exploitation of energy to its complete exhaustion. It is a shift from storing energy to burning it, in such a way and on such a scale that these energies will no longer be replaceable in any conceivable historical period of human existence. Because of our need to power the industrial world, we have created a technosphere that is incompatible with the biosphere. (…)
As material resources become less available, psychic energy must support the human project in a special way. This situation brings us to a new necessity to rely on the forces within the universe and also to experience our deeper self. The universe must be experienced as the “big self.” One is fulfilled in the other: the big self is fulfilled in the personal self, the personal self is fulfilled in the big self. Alienation is overcome as we experience this surge of energy from the source that has carried the universe through the centuries. Today, new fields of energy are beginning to open up to support our human adventure. These new energies find expression and support in celebration. For ultimately, the universe can only be explained in the context of celebration. It is all an overflowing expression of existence itself.
This sense of celebration brings us back to the previous pages of this book, where I mentioned the way in which indigenous peoples and the people who formed early civilizations sought to coordinate all of their human activities with the moments of seasonal renewal in the natural world. Each phase of life found its validation in this larger context. But while in earlier times we celebrated moments of seasonal renewal, today we must also celebrate the gradual moments of transformation in the evolving universe. This story of the universe is now our central sacred story. (…)
Another force that needs to be mentioned and in which we can place our hopes for the future is the power of will. Although the subject of will was the main area of interest of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in the 19th century, it has not received adequate attention in recent times, either theoretically or practically. Nevertheless, the demands placed on the will have rarely been as great as they are today. Interest in the will appears in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, especially in his book LʼÉnergie Humaine (Human Energy). This thinker clearly understood that we must consciously want the next stages of the evolutionary process. Carrying this responsibility almost immediately became too much for us. We are now experiencing a moment of indecision - we carry the world in our hands and are afraid that we will trip over our own foot and let it fall into ruin.
But while this danger is cause for concern, it is also cause for a deepening of our consciousness. Responsible people no longer think of the world simply as a collection of natural resources. We have begun to realize that the Earth is a wondrous mystery, as fragile in its very nature as we are. However, our responsibility to the Earth does not simply mean preserving it, but being present on it in the next sequence of its transformations. Whereas in past centuries we were unconsciously guided by the evolutionary process, the time has come when we must, in a sense, guide and animate this process ourselves.
For this task of shaping the future to be successful, the will of our larger self must function. Individual will can develop such a capacity only through its conscious unification with the deeper structures of reality. Above the connection with the human community, our connection with the Earth, with the universe itself, must be in full awe of its existence. Only the Earth can adequately affect the Earth. If we are to affect the future effectively, it will only happen because of the guidance and forces of the Earth that have communicated with us, not because we have decided the future of the planet purely on the basis of some rational faculty.
Central to this process is our connection with the sacred and with the vast scope of the psychic dynamism of the Earth. While our sense of the sacred can never be restored exactly as it existed in earlier centuries, it can be restored in the mysticism of the Earth, in the epic of evolution. Various spiritual practices are being revived all over the world today. Some experience the greatest mystery of things in the depths of their inner selves, others within the human community, and still others in the earthly process itself. And yet, in each case, the full sense of connection seems to be present. The path to accepting the full spiritual heritage of the human community, as well as the full spiritual heritage of the universe, is now open to every human being. Within this context, the religious antagonisms of the past can be overcome, certain traditions can be revived, and the experience of participation in the sacred universe that once dynamized and sustained human affairs can be rediscovered.
We must feel that we are sustained by the same power that brought the Earth into existence, that woven the galaxies into the universe, that lit up the Sun and set the Moon in its orbit. It is the energy that has given rise to the various forms of life on Earth and that has brought about in man a special mode of reflective consciousness. It is the power that has guided us through more than a million years of wandering as hunters and gatherers; it is the same life force that has led us to found our cities and that has inspired thinkers, artists and poets throughout the ages. These same forces are still present; indeed, we could feel their impact at this time and understand that we are not isolated within a freezing universe, burdened with an uncertain future and without the support of any other power.
We are omnipresent. We are that reality in which the whole Earth has reached a special form of reflective consciousness. We ourselves are the mystical quality of the Earth, the unifying principle, the integration of various material and spiritual polarities, the physical and the psychic, the natural and the artistic, the intuitive and the scientific. We are the unity in which all this is inherently present and achieves a special way of functioning. In this way, man acts as an all-pervading logos. If man is a microcosm, the universe is a macroanthropos. Each of us is a cosmic subject, Mahapurusha, a great figure of Hindu India, expressed in the universe itself.
Therefore, we must be sensitive to the Earth, because the fate of the Earth is identical with our own fate, the abuse of the Earth is the abuse of man, the liquidation of the aesthetic beauty of the Earth means the weakening of our existence. We do not serve man by blasting mountains to pieces for mineral resources, because with the loss of the miraculous and awe-inspiring properties of the mountains, we also destroy an indispensable dimension of our own reality. The ancient rituals through which we communicated with the Earth and enhanced its fertility may no longer be entirely effective, it seems. Yet they express a deep respect for the mystery of the Earth. It would be philosophically unrealistic, historically inaccurate, and scientifically unfounded to claim that man and the Earth no longer have an intimate and reciprocal emotional relationship. We do not lack the dynamic forces we need to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all our comprehension. However, this energy is ultimately not ours because we control it, but because we invoke it.