ASKINGFOI

Waking Up to the
Spiritual/Ecological Crisis

James George
Preface by H.H. The Dalai Lama
Foreword by Maurice Strong
 Asking for the Earth

James George is a retired Canadian Ambassador with a long-

standing commitment to environmental issues. A founder of the
influential Threshold Foundation and President of the Sadat
Peace Foundation, he led the international mission to Kuwait
and the Gulf to assess post-war environmental damage.
For my teachers and my loves
For Carol, my beautiful partner of half a century
For our children and grandchildren
For Tara, and for Spiderwoman
Embracing the interconnectedness of all life
For all sentient beings
For the earth itself
In the moment ofp resence
No separation!
Asking for the Earth
WAKING UP TO THE
SPIRITUAL/ECOLOGICAL
CRISIS

James George

ELEMENT
Shaftesbury, Dorset • Rockport, Massachusetts
Brisbane, Queensland
© James George 1995

First published in Great Britain in 1995 by

Element Books Limited
Shaftesbury, Dorset

Published in the USA in 1995 by

Element, Inc.
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Published in Australia in 1995 by

Element Books Limited
for Jacaranda Wiley Limited
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ISBN 1-85230-621-1
 Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
FOREWORD: H. H. The Dalai Lama 1
PREFACE: Maurice Strong 2

PART ONE: The Taste 5

1. In the Beginning — Grandfather David 7

2. As Above, So Below — Tibetan Style 11
3. Wholeness is All — Interconnections 13

PART TWO: Body — The Outer 15

1. On Grandchildren's Bay 17
2. Science and Ecology 20
3. The Environmental Crisis: How Bad is it? 25
4. What Can be Done? 35
5. Kuwait's Oil Fires Burn for Me 47

PART THREE: Heart — The Inner 53

1. What Science Does Not Yet Know: Consciousness 55

2. What Can We Learn From the Spiritual Traditions? 58
3. Hinduism: (a) Yogaswami 61
(b) The Shankar Acharya of
Kanchipuram 63
4. Sufism: (a) Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh 66
(b) Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan 71
5. Christianity: (a) Father Nikon 73
(b) Thomas Merton 75
vi • Asking for the Earth
lgo Khyentse
6. Tibetan Buddhism: Dudjom Rinpoche and Di
Rinpoche 78
7. Krishnamurti 84
8. Gurdjieff and Jeanne de Salzmann 91
9. A Swiss Mountain Retreat 96

PART FOUR: Conscience — The Secret 101

1. Bringing Science and Spirituality Together Again 103

2. The Gurdjieff Work:
(a) To Be or Not to Be: Psychology 110
(b) The Great Chain of Being:
Cosmology 116
3. Gurdjieff and Ecology 128
4. The Work and the World 133

PART FIVE: Summing Up 141

1. Rebuilding Our World on Firmer Foundations 143

2. What is a Paradigm Shift? 147
3. Counter-cultures as Proto-cultures 154
4. The Threshold Experiment 162
5. Dancing With Dolphins 173
6. Just Be! 176

APPENDIX A: World Scientists' Warning to Humanity 179

APPENDIX B: Declaration of the Sacred Earth
Conference, Rio 184
APPENDIX C: Threshold — a poem by Thomas Berry 185
NOTES 188
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 189
INDEX 192
 Acknowledgments

I t would be the dream of every author, with something

to say about the spiritual/ecological crisis of our times,
to be launched with the blessings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and of
Maurice Strong. I am deeply grateful to them for their foreword and preface,
and honored to be associated in this way with their World Cup team which is
trying to contain the crisis, with the support of all women and men of
conscience, everywhere.
Many friends have kindly read and commented on earlier versions of this
book. I thank them all, but especially Michel de Salzmann, William Segal,
Thomas Forman, Jacob Needleman, Roger Lipsey, Ellen Ruth Topol, Sandi
Chamberlain, Patricia Remele, Caroline and Christian Wertenbaker, and
Laura Taxel. I am particularly grateful to Michel de Salzmann for his
permission to quote from his mother's notebook, The Awakening of
Thought. At Element Books, John Baldock helped me to reshape and
integrate my material with his judicious blend of criticism and encourage-
ment. Closer to home, my eagle-eyed friend William McWhinney acted as my
editorial advisor in the final revision. From all of them, I had much to learn,
and needed the help they generously gave me. In a class by herself, of course,
is my angelically patient and rigorously meticulous wife, Carol. The failings
that remain are my own.

Copyright acknowledgments

Sources of quotations are acknowledged in the text and in the bibliogra-

phy. I acknowledge gratefully permissions to quote from the following
sources:
Part One, Chapter 2: I owe the Tibetan mu-thak story to Lobsang
Lhalungpa.
Part Two, Chapter 3 and Part Four, Chapter 4: Earth in the Balance, by Al
Gore. Copyright © 1992 by Senator Al Gore. Reprinted by permission of
Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Part Two, Chapters 3 and 4: Annals of Earth, 1993 and 1994, and Dr.
Donella Meadows.
Part Three, Chapter 4a: The extract from Dr. Nurbakhsh's poem The
Present Moment is Precious is reprinted, as is much of this chapter, by
permission of Sufi — a Journal of Sufism, published in London. The poem
appeared in the Spring 1993 issue, and the earlier version of the article on
Dr. Nurbakhsh in the Summer 1992 issue.
ew,
Part Three, Chapter 5b: Harold Talbott and Tricycle, The Buddhist Revi
ader,
Summer 1992; and Doubleday & Co, New York, A Thomas Merton Re
T.M. McDonnell (ed.).
viii • Acknowledgments

Part Three, Chapter 6: Sogyal Rinpoche and HarperCollins Publishers Inc,

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, copyright © 1993 by Rigpa Fellow-
ship; and Tricycle, The Buddhist Review, March 1992 (Khyentse Rinpoche
interview).
Part Three, Chapter 7: Pupul Jayakar, Krishnamurti, a Biography Harper &
Row, 1989; Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Limited, Brockwood Park,
Bramdean, Hampshire S024 OLQ, UK, Krishnamurti's Notebooks;
Krishnamurti Foundation of America, Ojai, California 93024, USA (1948
essay reprinted in The Sun, March 1993); Mary Lutyens and Farrar, Straus &
Giroux Inc, The Years of Fulfillment.
Part Three, Chapter 9: Les Dossiers H, Paris, The Awakening of Thought, and
Dr. Michel de Salzmann; English translation reprinted from Parabola, The
Magazine ofMyth and Tradition, Vol. XIX, No. 1. (Spring, 1994), New York.
Part Three, Chapter 9 and Part Four: I am particularly indebted to Ms. T.
Nagro, copyright holder of P. D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous,
and to Triangle Editions, copyright holder of G. I. Gurdjieff's three series of
writings, collectively called All and Everything, for their generosity in
giving me permission to make extensive quotations from these works.
In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky, Arkana, 1987, was first
published by Routledge Kegan Paul Ltd, copyright © T. Nagro, 1965, and is
reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson by G. I. Gurdjieff, translation copyright
1950, © renewed by 1978 by G. Gurdjieff, revised translation © 1991, is
used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
Meetings with Remarkable Men by G. I. Gurdjieff, copyright © 1963 by
Editions Janus, is used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of
Penguin Books USA Inc.

Part Four, Chapter 2a: Dr. Basarab Nicolescu and Les Dossiers H, Paris,
"Gurdjieff's Philosophy of Nature"; and Michael Murphy, The Future of the
Body, Tarcher/Putnam, 1992.
Part Four, Chapter 3: James Moore and Element Books, Gurdjieff — A
Biography, 1991.
Part Four, Chapter 4: Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self, Parallax
Press, 1991.

Part Five, Chapter 2: Lyall Watson, Hodder & Stoughton, UK, and Simon &
Schuster, USA, Lifetide, 1979.
Part Five, Chapter 3: Martha Heynemann, Father Thomas Berry, and Sierra
Club Books, The Breathing Cathedral, 1993.

Appendix C: I thank Father Thomas Berry for permission to use his

previously unpublished poem, Threshold.

While every effort has been made to secure permission to use copyrighted
material quoted in this book, in the event of any inadvertent omission, the
publishers should be informed and acknowledgments will be included in all
future editions.
 Foreword

M y old friend James George has written a book

in which he shows that the global environmen-
tal crisis is actually an expression of inner confusion. Buddhism
teaches that the root of all our problems is ignorance — a failure to
understand our true nature. In reality everything is relative, nothing is
self-sufficient. Whether we look at economics, politics, the envi-
ronment, or human relations, everything is the result of a succession of
causes and conditions. This is the meaning of interdependence.
If we want to live in peace, abundance and harmony we must
realize that we too are dependent upon others. We cannot survive in
isolation. I often advise that if you want to be selfish, be wisely selfish. To
act with total disregard for the rights and concerns of others is the
path of the fool. That way you will never achieve genuine lasting
happiness. Our narrow pursuit of selfish interests has resulted in the
global problems that endanger us all.
To be wisely selfish means that even if your aim is personal
happiness and peace, the way to achieve it is to concern yourself with
the interests of others. This is essentially the path of non-violence.
Protection of the environment is a natural result.
Healing the world has to start on an individual level. If we cannot
mend our own ways, how can we expect anyone else to do so. We
need to be more farsighted; too often we meet with difficulties
because we do not look ahead. We only awaken when our mistakes
start to bear fruit. By then it is almost too late to react.
However, we can take courage that many people are now adopting a
greater sense of responsibility. James George's book, which is
evidence of this, is the product of long association with people of
diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. The ageless wisdom he has
found common to them is the need for generosity and kindness. People
who seek to make this world a better place to live in will find a great
deal here to inspire them.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
 Preface

T first knew Jim George as one of the most eminent

and respected ambassadors in the Canadian For-
eign Service. But it soon became clear to me that he was no ordinary
diplomat. He impressed me immensely with his ability to penetrate to
the root sources of the plethora of urgent and complex political and
practical issues which dictate the day-by-day agenda of diplo-
macy. His deeply perceptive insights into the cultures, the values and
spiritual traditions of the East gave him a unique capacity to under-
stand their perspectives and priorities on critical international issues
which are often so different from those which we in the West consider
rational and pragmatic. These differences, I recall him explaining to me
in Teheran, are at the heart of the many conflicts inspired or
exacerbated by Western misunderstanding.
I soon came to realize that Jim George's insights and concerns
were not confined to the areas in which he represented Canada so
well. When, as Secretary General of the First United Nations Con-
ference on the Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, I traveled
throughout the world to consult with governments, scientists, and the
then small cadre of environmentally concerned leaders in various fields,
I found to my pleasant surprise that some of the best thinking and well
developed ideas on the environment came from a Canadian diplomat
— Jim George. At that time, environment was not in a formal sense
an important part of his responsibilities. But it was soon evident to me
that he had a deep conviction that the environmental degradation of
the planet, which was the focus of the Stockholm Conference, stems
primarily from the emerging moral and spiritual crisis of our industrial
civilization. It was, he explained persuasively, in his quietly provocative
manner, primarily an issue of the moral and spiritual values which
motivate individual and economic behavior.
This struck a deeply responsive chord in me, as I shared this view,
though had not been able to articulate it as he did. Jim George's
ability to do so is superbly manifest in the seminal book he has
produced. It makes riveting, indeed imperative, reading for all those
 Preface • 3

concerned with the future of our planet. With a fascinating combi-

nation of autobiographical anecdotes, incisive analysis and political
and philosophical acumen, he examines the dilemma confronting
humankind in the context of his own spiritual search and experience.
Quietly, yet relentlessly, he has pursued his quest for enlightenment in
the ways we manage our affairs as the dominant species on the
planet. In the course of this he has had a pervasive influence on
others. But with characteristic modesty he has insisted on exercising his
leadership through initiatives and organizations for which others have
primary leadership roles and recognition.
That is why this book is so uniquely valuable. For those who have
only experienced pieces of Jim George's remarkable life, this book
ties it all together. It makes clear that the insights and actions which
have inspired the esteem of all who know him are the product of a
comprehensive world view — indeed, one might more accurately say a
cosmic view — of the human condition and the dilemma we face,
individually and collectively. Human numbers and the acceleration of
human activities made possible by advances in science and tech-
nology have reached the point at which we are now the architects of
our own future. We literally have responsibility for our own evolu-
tion. What we do, or fail to do, in this generation will determine,
perhaps decisively, the future of our species, and of other forms of
life on earth.
It is an awesome responsibility — one we cannot escape. This was the
message of the Stockholm Conference in 1972, and the message was
reinforced and amplified at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June
1992. An unprecedented number of world leaders in Rio subscribed
to the thesis that only a fundamental change in direction and behavior
can produce a secure and sustainable human future.
Governments at Rio agreed on a program of action, Agenda 21,
which provides a basic framework for launching us on to this new
pathway. But thus far the response to Rio, as to Stockholm, has not
lived up to the rhetoric they produced. As this book makes so clear,
governments cannot and will not do what people are not prepared to
accept or do not require them to do. In the final analysis,
politicians will only move when the people move them. And the
movement of people is ultimately rooted in their own values and
priorities, which in turn are a product of their deepest moral and
spiritual beliefs.
Jim George has always contended, and articulates forcefully in this
book, that we cannot look to politics, economics or technology for the
fundamental changes we must make. Although these are, of
4 • Asking for the Earth

course, valuable, even indispensable instruments of change, they are

not the underlying sources of change. These are to be found in the
moral and spiritual realm. We must make the transition from an ethos
that is primarily dominated by commercialism and self-interest to one
that is based on our highest and best spiritual and moral values. This
requires that we heed Jim George's call for a cultural revolution.
This book is both analytical and prescriptive. Drawing on a
uniquely rich personal experience, Jim George offers to the readers the
fruits of an exceptional and inspired life in which he combines the
insights of a philosopher, the professional qualities of a talented
diplomat and the practical skills of a man of action. The result is a
book that illuminates the human dilemma as none other that I have
read. And it marks out the only viable pathway to the future of our
planet as a secure and hospitable home for our species and the other
forms of life with which we share it. For this, we all owe him a great
debt of gratitude.
Maurice Strong

Maurice Strong was Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992, and also of the United
Nations Conference on the Environment, Stockholm, 1972. He is currently
Chairman of the Earth Council, and of Ontario Hydro, one of North America's
largest public utilities.
PART ONE

The Taste
In Nature, everything is connected, and everything is alive.

G. I. Gurdjieff

Only connect!

E. M. Forster

What you do not know is the only thing you know,

And what you own is what you do not own,
And where you are is where you are not,
Leading to a condition of complete simplicity,
Costing not less than everything.

T. S. Eliot

It is from Unknowing that all the myths and all religions issue forth.

P. L. Travers

It would not be an oversimplification to say that looking back tends to make the
present a past, whereas remembering makes what is valid in the past part of the
present.

Sir Laurens van der Post

 In The Beginning -
Grandfather David

I n silence, we stood facing the black wall of the

mountains to the east, Grandfather David, Chief
of the Hopi Nation, in front of me, silhouetted against the dawn. It
was August, but the early morning air was cold at over 7000 feet,
and we were still only half-way to the summit of southern Colorado's
Sangre de Cristo range, already capped with its first dusting ofwinter
snow. The quiet was intense, the air charged. An eagle rose above us to
meet the day, quietly circling on the still air.
David Monongva turned to the right and again stood still; again he
turned and stopped. Twice more he turned and paused, silently
blessing the four directions in an inner movement that at the same
time blessed both of us. Slowly, the St. Luis valley behind us filled
with light, the sun shining on the continental Great Divide of the
Rockies beyond to the west.
His ceremony completed, David led the way back across the scrub,
past twin ponderosa pines, growing out ofa single stem, to the house.
Over breakfast, he began to explain:
If we do not faithfully perform, every morning at daybreak, these
ceremonies we have been given by our grandfathers, we believe that the sun
will not, rise and the rains will not come. We do them so that our people
- aannd not only our people - may be fed and live. Life itself depends
on a connection with the Great Spirit; we try to keep that connection
open in this way. If we do not do this, not even the Great Spirit can
reach us, and through us our Mother Earth. Look what you people are
doing to Her! In my nation's territory, coal and uranium are being ripped
from the earth, leaving huge wounds. The tailings of plutonium from
bomb production poison Rocky Flats. Not even our sacred sites are
spared. Diseases spread among our people and many children are born
dead or so damaged we wish they were dead. But the worst is that we are
even forgetting our own ceremonies, and few of us now hear and
experience the movement of the Spirit within us that our ceremonies
allow us to receive. Your people have forgotten altogether and lost what
your traditions, in the beginning, had established also in

7
8 • Asking for the Earth
ore help you to
you. But some of you are searching, and we will theref find
fear that, as
the Red Road once again, if you will listen to us. But I our
n that case,
prophecies have foretold, you will not be able to hear. I
live and
destruction will indeed befall us all, and this earth, once so a
scious
pure and bountiful, will wither and die, murdered by uncon
human insanity.

He fell silent for a long time, looking past me at the sun rising now
over the mountains. With the help of his silence, I felt I was
beginning to hear the silence and feel an energy, a tingling down the
back of my neck, a life-force in the lower abdomen, that I had
seldom experienced and had perhaps never before recognized for
what it was.
Later, as we worked on the text of the appeal of the Hopi Nation to
the United Nations General Assembly, calling on the world's
leaders to listen to the wisdom of the elders of traditional peoples
and change course, or face the ecological consequences, Grandfather
David told me that, according to the instructions in their ancient
Hopi prophecies, he was bound to make this final appeal; but he had no
illusions that it would be heard. If those in what their prophecies called
"the House of Mica" turned a deaf ear to the warning, the eventual
purification of the planet from the present plague of hu-
manity would be extremely painful, and not too long in coming. We
sent the appeal; it was duly circulated as a United Nations document to
all delegations — and filed. The world's political leadership was not
about to listen to some old Indian who could not afford a telephone
and could hardly sign his own name.
This book is written in the hope that we can still find a way of
surmounting our multiple crises. It may not yet be too late. Perhaps,
when the true gravity of the ecological crisis outside and the related
spiritual crisis inside finally hits us, it will wake us up — just in time! Or
perhaps not. I don't know. But I do wish, with all my being. For I, too,
am an earth-lover.
What does that mean — to love the earth? Let the Navajo chant
reply:
The mountain . . . I become part of it.
The herbs, the fir tree . . .
I become part of it.
The morning mists,
The clouds, the gathering waters . . . I
become part of it.
The sun that sweeps across the earth . I
become part of it.
 In The Beginning — Grandfather David • 9

The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen . . . I

become part of it.

With the cold eye of science, we cannot readily see what Grandfather
David really meant, or understand the Navajo refrain. But we can,
perhaps, have a feeling of inner conviction. that there is indeed
something that could be called The Great Spirit, and that we live our
lives, unfortunately, almost totally removed from any connec-
tion with such a Whole, whether we call it Higher Consciousness or
Being or God. But to go from there to David's confident
affirmation that unless some men and women can somehow keep
open a channel for the Great Spirit's grace to reach humanity, the
earth is headed for destruction, may seem to most people today
far-fetched. We have no scientific knowledge of what our ancient
ancestors from the four quarters of the globe have, with astonishing
unanimity, believed to be a fact: I am not a separate entity but a part of
a whole. I don't become part of it — I am part of it. There is a
higher level above our lower level of consciousness, there is heaven
just as certainly as there is earth; and the place in which we find
ourselves in this cosmic order is precisely in between. That being,
called "man," meaning both men and women, stands between
heaven and earth, linking the two levels, at least potentially. But to be
that link, we must be — some of us, some of the time — we must be
open, aware and receptive. That would be Grandfather David's
position, although he would not express it in exactly those terms.
And since it is what we would call a hypothesis that has been almost
universally shared by humanity throughout our history, except for
the past two or three hundred years, I would say that it is worth
serious examination and enquiry: to see which facts confirm and
which deny this hypothesis.
There can, in any case, be little disagreement today with the
proposition that our culture, our economy, our society and what we
are pleased to call our civilization are all in crisis. As we shall see in
more detail later in this book, the earth itself is clearly in crisis — the
ecological crisis — which is surely not unconnected with the fact that
unprecedented numbers of us, in the world that calls itself "devel-
oped," are suffering a spiritual crisis, of which our negativities,
depressions and addictions are only the superficial symptoms. In
other words, we are facing crises, both outer and inner, on many
levels. It is my experience that neither our sciences nor our religions
have in the past been of much practical use in helping us to look at
ourselves and at our modern world in a way that takes both science
10 • Asking for the Earth
with-
and spirituality into account. We need both perspectives. One
out the other is not enough.
ing.
This implies that we must find a new way of thinking and be
er
Albert Einstein told us that forty years ago. He said, a few years aft
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "Now everything has changed — except our
way of thinking — and so we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe." In
a similar vein, T. S. Eliot wondered whether the world would end "with
a bang or a whimper." Whether we drift towards the "bang" of a
nuclear war, or the "whimper" of ecological collapse, the
impending catastrophe still demands a change in how we think, in
how we see the world and ourselves, in our consciousness.
During the course of a long and full life, first as a diplomat and
later as an environmentalist, I have had remarkable opportunities to
study at first hand other cultures and peoples — their traditions, their
sufferings and their joys, not just their politics and economics. I have
seen how some of the greatest beings among them faced death and
embraced life. I have benefited from their wisdom. They have
brought me closer to being able to face my own death as part of life,
rather than as the end of everything. They have changed the way I
think and am. They have allowed me to see that my own life's journey
could, had circumstances been a little different, have been yours, or
anyone's; and in that spirit I invite you to share it with me.
Thanks to these experiences, I have come to see, with Grandfather
David, that there is a dangerous and widening gap between ordinary life
and what an earlier and less secular world called "sacred" — a
critical disconnection in the cosmic order that could have cata-
strophic consequences. I now understand that what is missing in our
Western culture (which is fast becoming the global culture) is that
people are no longer serving as the link between the higher and the
lower, having virtually forgotten that there are different levels of
energy which only humans can mediate, and then only if they are in a
state of consciousness that is higher than the ordinary. At the
ordinary, automatic, reactive level of consciousness, "sleeping" hu-
manity is in no state to experience higher energies, much less transmit
them to the planet. Without the input of such life-giving forces,
however, we are estranged from ourselves and live lives deprived of
meaning; and the earth itself could even lose its amazing
homoeostatic capabilities to sustain life.
2. "As Above, So Below" -
Tibetan Style

ne of my earliest memories is of my grand-

O mother telling me a story before I could really

understand her words. As I listened to her, with an attention I wish I

still possessed, something was evoked in me at a deeper level than
verbal comprehension — an image of verticality standing against the
horizontal flow of time, as I would put it now — the beginning of a
sense, still to be articulated, that there are dimensions of reality
beyond those that we can see and touch.
My grandmother's story was "Jack and the Beanstalk." I can still
see Jack climbing up and up, getting smaller in the green foliage,
until he and the beanstalk are swallowed up in a cloud cap of cumulus in
the great blue sky. I see where he has gone, but I can no longer see
him, until he chooses to reappear and return to earth again,
descending this world-axis tree trunk.
My grandmother stops speaking and lays her hand quietly on my
head. I am falling into sleep. When I grow up, will I follow Jack into
the sky? If I do, will I ever come down again? Would it matter if I did
not? Or if I did? What is the sky? Who am I?
Many years later, on the other side of the world, in India, I hear a
similar story from a Tibetan. It is a story about the first kings of
Tibet, who lived a millennium before Tibet became Buddhist. Their
right to rule derived from their ability, unique for humans, to go up
and down a long cord which they called the mu-thak (literally the
"cord of emptiness"), linking heaven and earth. The very first king of
Tibet came down to that highest of kingdoms on the mu-thak, and
could go back up whenever he wished. He taught many of his
subjects how they, too, could ascend and descend at will, and so live in
peace with one another and with themselves.
For seven generations, as the lineage passed from father to son, the
kings of Tibet governed and taught in this way, being both kings and
priests for their people. But then, with the seventh king, Gri-
gum, came a catastrophic break in the tradition. When his court
oracle prophesied that he would die by the sword, Gri-gum became

11
12 • Asking for the Earth

enraged and challenged his ministers to a duel to disprove the

prophecy. The keeper of the king's horses, Lo-ngam, accepted the
challenge. The king attacked, wildly waving his sword above his head
and, in a moment of terrible anger and forgetfulness, inadvertently
cut the mu-thak, and was slain by Lo-ngam. From then on, his
successors and his people were confined to an earthbound existence,
with no contact with the higher. For this reason, his descendants
were no longer considered priests, only kings.
The Golden Age was over. With "below" disconnected from
"above," how could order and love inform the world below? A
dimension of reality had been lost, and from that time on, other
means had to be sought to re-establish a connection and to regain
access to the higher realms of human possibility. Jack had severed his
own beanstalk. Yet the memory of another reality remained, and it is
said that even today heaven is required, by law, to let down a ladder to
earth when those below burn with sufficient intensity with the wish
to be.
Today we have almost lost the sense that there is such a reality as
was indicated by Hermes Trismegistus when he wrote, "as above, so
below." What is "above" — above our ordinary way of experiencing the
world and ourselves? What is "below" that "above?" What is sacred
and what is profane? Is there really a world of Platonic ideas or
Jungian archetypes? To most of us, reality does not appear to be
multi-layered. But to Grandfather David at sunrise, and also to the
physicist dealing with microphysical and macrophysical realities, it is.
And even for us, in one state we see the world "as through a glass
darkly;" in another, as if "face to face." Isn't this what all our
scriptures, myths, fairy tales and wisdom traditions, East and West,
North and South, have been saying for thousands of years? But do we
hear them?
3 Wholeness Is All —
Interconnections

0 ne ofthe loveliest ofMarc Chagall's lithographs

is a haunting sketch of Notre Dame de Paris in

the moonlight, with the figure of the Virgin standing beside it,
holding her Child, while below her feet, in the bottom right corner, is
a disembodied human head (that happens to be a self-portrait of
Chagall) looking angrily at the pavement — entirely oblivious to the
magical beauty of the great cathedral above him.
Nothing, it seems to me, could more graphically and poignantly
represent the unconscious plight of modern people, separated from
what we have been exploring as the "higher." It is a disconnection, at
the same time, of head from body — as if we were living only in our
heads, and had no bodies.
The same point is made in an ancient Hopi pictograph carved on
"Prophecy Rock" in Arizona. It shows the coming of the white man, a
gangling figure in a top hat, with his head as if cut offfrom his body by
a line through the neck. In contrast, the Hopi figures around the white
man have no lines through the neck, disconnecting head from body.
Chagall and the Hopi artist, although separated widely in time and
culture, were saying essentially the same thing.
In the same way, I see the root of our common spiritual/ecological
crisis today in the separation of head from body in our culture, in our
lack of wholeness, in our disconnection from the higher energies that
could bring us fresh understanding and new life. In terms of the last
chapter, we live in the "below," with no awareness of the reality that is
"above." The mu-thak cord that once linked our culture to the sacred
may still be there somewhere, but we have forgotten all about it. We
need to find it again.
To study the ecological crisis, we need to employ the data that
have been gathered by the best scientific research — the information,
sifted through careful rational analysis, about the outside world. But if,
on the other hand, we wish to express how we feel, or how we are in our
inner worlds, the language and method of science is of little help to us.
The spiritual crisis is an inner one, and, though psychology

13
14 • Asking for the Earth

has tried to bring scientific rigor to the service of untying our inner
knots, the psychiatrist has to be more than a scientist — he or she has to
become a poet, a priest, a physician and a shaman to heal.
I therefore propose to the reader a joint exercise: to bring all that
we can find through science to the understanding of the ecological
crisis, and all that has been given to us by way of spiritual training to
the exploration of our spiritual crisis. This accounts for the next two
parts of this book, dealing respectively with the outer world (the
"body" of the earth), and the inner world of consciousness or mind, as
if they were separate.
The fourth part of the book is the reconciliation and reuniting of the
scientific and the spiritual through a view and a practice that comes
from what I am calling "Conscience," and which applies to both the
world out-there and the world in-here, which are, after all, one.
Following the Tibetan tradition, I am calling this reconciliation at a
deeper level "the Secret." The "Secret" is a blending — an
ecopsychology and a spiritual cosmology — that can make possible a
way of working in the world as a spiritual discipline. It is in this
synthesis that I see hope for the new renaissance, through which both our
inner and outer crises can be healed and transcended before we miss
the deadline for changing ourselves and stopping the damage we are
inflicting on the planet.
In the fifth part of the book, the summing up, I conclude with a
review of the amazing shift that is taking place, almost unnoticed, in
our culture. Only time will tell whether this shift will be sufficiently
profound and pervasive to bring about the sort of renaissance that
we hope will resolve the widening crisis which now threatens to
engulf our world.
To mitigate the limitations of a rigid structure, I shall interweave
our two main themes, the ecological and the spiritual, in recognition of
the fact that we "walk on two legs" and are not dealing with two
separate problems, but with the outer and inner aspects of one whole,
which is our present reality.
PART TWO

Body — The Outer

 al degradation is fast
Today, all over the world, including Tibet, ecologic
us do not make a
overtaking us. I am wholly convinced that, if all of
bility, we will see the
concerted effort, with a sense of universal responsi
rt us, resulting in
gradual breakdown of the fragile ecosystems that suppo an
, Earth.
irreversible and irrevocable degradation of our planet

The Dalai Lama

Our home, our planet, is being ransacked.

Al Gore

The rape of the Earth is the crucifixion of Christ.

Matthew Fox

We stand between hope and hopelessness.

Trungpa Rinpoche

The ecological imperative has forcefully entered the policies of states and of
people's everyday life. It is becoming unconditional — the hour of
decision, the hour of historic choice, has come — and there is no reasonable
alternative for man because he is not predisposed to suicide. Humanity is
part of the single and integral biosphere.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Once I understand intellectually that my relationship to the earth is that of a

leaf to a tree, it's obvious that the needs of the tree have priority over the
needs of the leaf.

John Seed

The most important thing we can do is to hear within ourselves the sounds of
the earth crying.

Thich Nhat Hanh

1. On Grandchildren's Bay

Tt is summer in Quebec, near Ottawa, where I used

to work in the Department of External Affairs
during the few years that I was not serving abroad. Now I have come
from Toronto with my wife to our log cabin on Lake McGregor,
where we are joined by our daughter and her two children, a boy of six
and a girl of three. They come from a still bigger metropolis — New
York. We are all refugees here, fleeing from the suffocating heat, the
crowding, the noise, the violence, the cement houses and har-
dened hearts of modern city life. We come here for peace, healing
and communion with what we do not find in big cities anywhere in the
world.
Yes, we are lucky to have this simple cabin in the woods by the
lake facing the sunset. No television, no bathroom, no indoor toilet,
only two rooms, one above the other, bounded by huge cedar logs
hand hewn 160 years ago for a settler's family in the upper Ottawa
valley near a town called Carp. But I prefer it at this time of year to
any of our splendid ambassadorial mansions in Delhi, Colombo and
Teheran, and to our two ministerial apartments in Paris, or even to
our family house in Toronto that has been home since I was five.
One of the reasons I love the cabin so much is no doubt the
personal expenditure of energy all members of our family put into it,
moving and rebuilding it mostly with our own hands (and those of
some of our close friends) nearly thirty years ago. We found the
original cabin an hour's drive north-west of Ottawa in a farmer's
field. The roof was beginning to cave in, but it was otherwise
remarkably intact for its age. The farmer said he had been going to
burn it down to make more room for planting, and we could have it
for $50. First, we numbered the logs, then loaded them onto a
rented truck, and dumped them into the lake at roadhead, towing
them the next half mile by motor boat to our remote point of pine,
cedar and birch on rocks as old as any in the world. By the time we
finished the cedar shingling on the new roof, we had one night to
sleep in it before being posted to Paris at the end of the summer.

17
18 • Asking for the Earth

Now we are here again, as in so many past summers, this time

teaching our grandchildren to swim, paddle a canoe, catch a frog or a
fish, build a tree house, walk through the trackless woods without
getting lost, and listen to the wild, shrill call of the loons after
watching the play of light on the interference patterns of waves on the
lake as the sun goes down. Our grandchildren are learning that the
world does not consist only of cities; that nature is something to be
loved, not feared; and that dogs and cats are not the only creatures with
whom we share this planet — there are porcupines and beavers here
too. After a week at the cabin, the children glow with a radiance I have
not noticed when they are back in the city. It is as if they have
discovered a part of themselves here that they had never known in the
city, an energy that they need — and will continue to need all their lives
— to be fully human. It is an energy — like clean air — in short supply
in cities.
But even this idyllic picture begins to reveal its shadow side. This
summer, ultraviolet radiation levels have been extraordinarily high.
Daily readings are now given with the weather forecasts throughout
Canada as warnings to the public. Children especially are advised to
wear broad-brimmed hats, and use sun screen cream when exposed.
Ozone depletion here this summer is about 23 percent, almost
double what it was last year. The dermatologists' offices are full of
anxious people wondering if they, too, have skin cancer, like many of
their elderly friends who grew up, as I did, thinking of the sun as their
friend, and are now beginning to pay the price.
What sort of world, I wonder to myself, are we passing on to our
children and grandchildren? My secret inner goal, in entering diplo-
macy after I left the Canadian Navy at the end of World War Two,
was to do what I could with my life to make another world war
(probably a thermonuclear one) a little bit less likely. For my
generation, it seemed and still seems to me, that was the challenge of
our lives. Today the danger of that sort of war seems to have
receded, but the great task for the next generation is surely to do
everything in their collective power to draw us back from the brink of
finding ourselves on an unsustainable earth, poisoned and de-
pleted of resources, its life-support systems unhinged, perhaps
irretrievably, by human activities which will be intensified by another
doubling of world population, with at least 93 percent of it in the
Third World.
For my grandchildren, the crippling deficits — national, provincial
and municipal — may be the least of their problems, though they will
surely make it even harder to find the resources and capital needed