But in Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine, over dozens of kilometres the forests look like it is autumn in August, the green swept away by arid browns and yellows. In our temperate regions, the earth is overheated and parched. The average thinking of scientists and of broad sections of the population is that we did this. We humans, by our way of life, have put the entire living earth in a state of overheating.
Overheating occurs when there is too much. Too much friction in a ball bearing. Too much electrical current through a copper wire. Too much radiation in a nuclear reactor. It’s always about energy. Too much … what do we humans do too much of? And so what would be the right measure?
Perhaps it is best to look at the earth again first. In unconnected thinking – I as a subject perceive the earth as an object outside me – the earth is a crystallised sphere of matter with a thick crystalline layer around a liquid sphere with a fiery core. We humans are a life form that moves across the earth’s surface, occasionally scratching into it or extracting mineral parts. Like coal, petroleum, natural gas, the energy from the sun stored in crystallised form. It is the use of these energy resources that has enabled the great leap to ‘too much’ for humanity.
In connected thinking, the earth may look different. The fireball with its crystallised exterior is part of the solar system. Solar light makes life possible on this sphere and guides that life in its development. On Earth, there is a delicate balance between land and water, continents and oceans. Life originated in the water, in increasingly complex forms. Higher forms of life will at some point leave the water and develop further on land. Some will later return to the ocean, with their now refined consciousness. From this whole evolution, man eventually grows, as a life form of the earth that can carry the human soul, which comes from elsewhere.
The human-animal, in small numbers, is part of the living organism of the globe with its myriads of life forms. He is part of, he is connected. He is one with that great life. He is two because his soul comes from elsewhere.
The sacred earth… What images come to mind when you hear this phrase? A richly fruiting nature where small communities of people live their lives in harmony with tame and wild animals. The beauty of flowers and blossoms, of ferns and trees on a brilliantly sculpted earth. The scene infused with sparkling, swirling, clear water in streams and rivers, carrying life in concert with the warm sunlight. Man leaning on minimal technology.
You find that sacred earth described very beautifully in Doris Lessing’s sci-fi novel, Shikasta. Rohanda is the sacred planet on which humans, guided by higher developed souls, shape their lives and cities in harmonious resonance with the music of the spheres. People consciously vibrate along with the organic life of the universe. In the novel, the earth will decay into Shikasta, a name with the hissing sounds of the serpent. The fall happens very gradually under the influence of a small shift in the planetary positions and of a jammer from yet other superhuman beings. And people remember Rohanda. And people are happy when they are reminded of Rohanda in the great stories. And people forget Rohanda. They know only the cold, being separated in a struggle for survival in a world in which then even the great stories before the next turn in time are skewed and forgotten as meaningless. So much for Doris Lessing’s narrative.
Humans consciously vibrate with the universe. Consciousness is the fruit of the earth. We humans are called to bring forth that fruit, to give birth to a human consciousness that vibrates in the frequencies of the all. As in the drawn line of the number six, human souls descend into the sphere of the earth, in the number nine the light of a higher unity consciousness will detach itself from the earth again. This cycle of development is then complete.
J. van Rijckenborgh writes in his book Christianopolis
And God said, Let us make men in our image, after our likeness, and that they may have dominion over all the kingdoms of nature. And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said, Be fruitful, bring forth as a spirit of fire, and fill the earth and subdue it. And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Then came the humans, and they tore each other alive with the claws of their hands.
Then came the humans and they rained each other to the knife.
Then came the humans and they shot each other to pieces.
Then came the humans and with the help of the black religion, which from its sewers and with the help of art that imprisons it all in delusion and with the help of science that devises everything that serves destruction, they murdered on a large scale.
Then the humans came and their priests blessed the murderers and their artists plastered the graves with white marble statues and the insane intellectuals were decorated.And from the earth escapes a scream that tears the heavens, a scream of fear and intense suffering of people, caused by people. Thus we find ourselves again seeing our broken reality. We see ourselves as children of God, of whom it was once said : And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
If you understand that, that in the beginning it was very, very good, then you will discover that we are equipped with immeasurable powers according to our deepest being. Then you discover that we have to say goodbye to all delusions, to all black entanglements, to this whole world of impurities. That we must become strangers in the face of this sinful nature in all its broken manifestations of art, science and religion. And that we must be born again to find God, our creator, and come to know God’s plan with world and humanity.
Genesis is one of the ancient stories that attempt to remind us of our origin and task. The author very sharply outlines the state we humans have arrived in by the disconnection of our small consciousness from the big plan. By giving priority to the small consciousness and its drive to persist, its drive for eternity. That priority is called ego or I. That priority leads to too much. That priority leads to overheating.
American botanist L.H. Bailey published a booklet entitled The Sacred Earth in 1915. The booklet contains some interesting statements about man and the sacred earth.
Our relationship with the planet must be raised into the realm of the spirit. We cannot be fully useful otherwise. The tendency is to be removed further and further from the everlasting backgrounds. Our religion is detached. The great inventions and discoveries of recent time have extensive social significance. Yet we have other relationships than with the physical and static materials. We are parts in a living sensitive creation. The theme of evolution has overturned our attitude toward this creation. The living creation is not exclusively man-centred: It is biocentric.
We perceive the essential continuity in nature, arising from within rather than from without, the forms of life proceeding upwardly and onwardly in something very like a mighty plan of sequence. man being one part in the process. We have a genetic relation with all living things and our aristocracy is the aristocracy of nature. The creation, and not man, is the norm.
The ultimate good in using the land is the development of the people. It is our problem in dealing with the resources of the earth to develop in the group the highest expression of duty that is to be found in individuals.
A useful contact with the earth places man not as superior to nature but as a superior intelligence working in nature as a conscious and therefore a responsible part in a plan of evolution, which is a continuing creation. The remedy for some forms of erratic futurism and for forms of illusion is to put the man hard against the facts: he might be set to studying bugs or soils or placed between the handles of a plough until such time as objects begin to take their natural shape and meaning in his mind.
The last sentences read like the task setting of alchemy. From the handling of matter for a living, a transformation of consciousness takes place in the magically living human being. In that transformation, both man and matter regain their place in the grand plan. In this way, they both become healed and thus sacred. The relationship between man and matter then rests on the right measure. The overheating diminishes, the temperature drops. It again reaches the 37 degrees Celsius that stand for human life.
Also the mineral earth is alive. The distribution of elements in the earth’s crust is intelligent and evolving. This distribution interacts with the consciousness of observing humans. New crystals appear on the earth’s surface. They become visible and their influence on humans conscious. Very old crystals are the diamonds. Once a shower of stars fell into the then not so compacted earth. The currents in the thickly liquid earth’s crust brought all those seed crystals that came from elsewhere deep into the earth. Under high pressure and temperature and over very long times, those tiny crystals grew into diamonds. That is carbon arranged in a special crystal structure. Transparent and with a special interaction with incident light. Sometimes the earth brings those diamonds to the surface. That too takes time, a lot of time. Flowing water then slowly but surely washes out that impounded cone of matter. The diamonds will be found again as a cloud of light crystals downstream, for sifting out and picking up. For spreading the sun’s light into sparkling tiny rainbows. Diamond tells the story of man. Who penetrates deep into the earth like the number six. Which under the influence of pressure, temperature and a lot of time can be transformed from the black coal to the transparent diamond. Which is thrust by the earth to the surface, washed out, comes to rest in the bed of the stream. Where it is found by the light to spread it into the seven colours. Then it becomes like the number nine. There is only one condition: leave the excess behind. Your soul comes from elsewhere.
Bibliography:
Lessing, Doris, Canopus in Argos: archives. Re: colonised planet 5 Shikasta, Grafton Books 1981
Rijckenborgh, J. van, Christianopolis, Rozekruispers, Haarlem 2019, p84 ff.
Bailey, L.H., The Holy Earth, Charles Scribner’s sons, New York 1915
