Mindstates
An Earth Renewed:
The Environment is our Consciousness
By Pietro Grieco
Have you ever asked yourself why some people see angels and beauty in nature, while others can see only how much money they can make with nature? Why some people honor nature and others seek to exploit it? There are no easy and universal answers to these questions. In some cases the problem may be ignorance, but in most cases it is a belief system that guides us how to relate to nature. If humans are indiscriminately killing whales, elephants and seals, producing deforestation and contaminating rivers, oceans and the air, we cannot expect to look at nature and find a solution. We have to look at the human consciousness to find out why our environment is suffering.
The earth has the capacity to renew itself if we don’t interfere, and that is why we have to look at the human consciousness for renewal and rebirth.
If we look around the areas that were consumed by the California Fires last year, those black hills that were once covered by ashes, are greener. I have seen trees after a fire multiply so much in a few years that it is nearly impossible to go through them. As our thoughts are put into practice and impact nature, our environment will begin to mirror our own consciousness more and more.
The dilemma appears when we get in touch with people or societies completely alien to us and where the simplest things are different, and the first childish attitude we experience in a situation like this is that the others are wrong and we are right.
This is what I discovered twenty years ago while visiting the Indian Reservations in Patagonia, Argentina. Accompanied by a Mapuche Indian as a translator, I discovered with amazement how contrasting visions about nature come from different states of consciousness constructed by different cultures. My interpreter, Luis Mansilla, also known as “Don Luis,” roamed the hostile environment of downtown Buenos Aires, a city of more than thirteen million people. He entered a church after many days of not having a bath and probably not eating very well. We were introduced, and after a little talk about Christian love, and giving him some money for a sandwich; I invited him to come the following day to my office. He came. His amazing and incredible stories originated my urge to plan the visit to some of the Reservations. As we had to travel long distances, we had long conversations, some of them about religion, but most of them about his culture and beliefs. One day, I asked him if the Indians fished and how they did it.
He told me, “We sink the basket in the water and when a trout goes in, we take it out. We thank the fish for its willingness to give itself as food for us. After expressing our gratitude, we can eat it.”
Accustomed to fishing with a hook or nets, I was astonished with his method, and asked if they caught many fish with that procedure. His answer again surprised me.
“Oh, no, only what is needed for the moment. Otherwise the spirit of the lake or the river could get angry, and next time you go, He can punish you.”
Smiling, I questioned the probabilities of there being a spirit of the lake, and his answer wasn’t so much in his words as it was in his body language.
“Yes, the spirit of the lake!” He replied, but from his tone, pitch and sincerity he was telling me, “Are you so ignorant that you don’t know the spirit of lake?”
I realized then that we had two visions of reality. For him lakes, rivers, and the earth are living entities while for me, they weren’t. N. Scott Momaday, a Native American Pulitzer Prize winner, expressed it this way in his book The Man Made of Words: “The earth is our mother. The sky is our father. This concept of nature, which is at the center of the Native American world view, is familiar to us all. But it may well be that we do not understand entirely what the concept is in its ethical and philosophical implications.”
There was a clear concept all over the Americas: humans belong to the earth, and not the other way around.
The religious history expresses the idea of animism, or the ability to see a spirit or a soul in nature. This corresponds to an early stage of the evolution of human consciousness. In the West, we are educated and formatted in the belief of monotheists, and this is called the “superior” stage of evolution, and we dismiss other ways of thinking as “primitive” and “inferior.” The fact that things are primitive doesn’t mean they’re wrong or untrue. The kind of respect for all that exists is not primitive at all; it is the authentic way to relate to nature: respectful and harmonious. It is time to ask if thousands of years of western rationalization didn’t impose too much self will and dominion over nature.
We can conclude that there are at least two visions of the world: the planet as a mother and a friend, or the planet as an enemy to conquer and enslave. If we are on this planet with the first view, we are going to appreciate, be grateful, and enjoy being in our mother’s friendly home. If we think that the world is a slave to do our will and we can do what we want, we will exploit, use and discard it, and the end result is quite different.
If we need help understanding what steps to take, look at ancient teachings. Buddha taught one of his best sermons not with words but by just holding a flower in his hand, until one of his disciples understood heart to heart communication. Jesus told his disciples to observe the lilies of the fields, as they are living lessons about the beauty that no human wealth or power can produce or buy.
When I remember my interpreter’s words, I remember Einstein’s concept: when we change the way we look at things, things change. Can humans change the way they look at things and produce a complete renewal in the environment? Yes! Even when many places of the earth have suffered catastrophic damages, there is hope.
Rivers that at one point had no life in them because of pollution, like the Thames, have been cleaned and have plenty of fish again. As we have had a negative impact on our planet, we can reverse our actions and bring renewal into nature. We don’t need a green mind; we need a pure and compassionate consciousness about ourselves and the environment.
Pietro Grieco is a professor at Cal State University, San Marcos and the president of The Foundation for Development of Spiritual Thinking.