Ecology of Spirit & of Matter

Today, if we are to leave our earth in a state fit for others to live in, we shall have to modify our whole behaviour pattern, and to do this we shall have to reverse the “Fall” which split our various functions from each other. We shall have to teach ourselves anew the correct way of interrelating our feeling, thinking and behaving. We shall have to re-think and re-feel our whole relationship with that infinite intelligent universal power that we call “God”. It is useless for us to try find any other solution of our world-problem. No longer can we pretend that separative egotistical action is the meaning of existence. We have proved sufficiently that this pretence is vain and foolish.

There is an ecology of spirit as well as of matter. We owe it to ourselves and to all future generations to study & learn this ecology and to base upon it all our present and future activities. What the future world will be like, or whether for mankind there will be a world at all, depends on us, now.

Interrelations

In the natural world we see a delicate balance of mineral, vegetable, animal and human life. We call the study of this balance “ecology”. In the world of spirit there is also a need for a similar study, the study that we call “spiritual ecology“.

Just as in the natural world all things are interrelated, so also in the spiritual world.

Let us remind ourselves of the difference of these two worlds.
By “natural” world we mean that world in which everything happens in accord with what we call “natural law“. Everything in the natural world is ruled by forces that seem to have no control over themselves.

The natural world is a world of laws.

* There is a law of “gravity“, by which things tend to fall towards centres of compaction;
* There is a law of “inertia” by which things tend to continue doing what they are doing, either “resting” or “moving”;
* There is a law of “conservation of mass energy“, and so forth.
* Everywhere in nature there appears to be “law-conformability“.

• Minerals remain as they are because they are bound by certain forces;
• Plants grow in certain ways because they are conditioned by their environment, by earth, water, rain, wind, heat or cold, etc.
• Animals are as they are because of survival instincts which compel adaptation to each other and to their surroundings.
• But when we come to human beings, we find something that we do not find at lower levels. We are presented with a belief in freedom. We human beings not only believe in freedom; most of us are prepared to fight to retain what we believe we have of it.