We are all connected (article)

I normally don’t resonate with Hindu/yogic paths, but recent newsletter I got actually said something very Daoist . . . namely that the earth has a spirit body and that to treat disease you should treat the whole person, not just the symptoms . . . S
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We Are All Connected
BY SWAMI AMAR JYOTI
Excerpted from Immortal Light: The Blissful Life and Wisdom of Swami Amar Jyoti

We owe so much to the earth and all these elements, so we should not pollute them. We cannot just live separately. It is the law of nature. If we take care of a thing, it takes care of us. EARTH IS A CREATURE, a body, and we are on it. How can it be only stone and mud and dust? Have we not bacteria, germs and various living things inside us? It is the same with the earth. When the earth shakes in an earthquake, we have no power. In seconds, thousands of people fall dead. If she quivers a little, her children are squeezed. We are born out of the earth and sun, water, fire, air and ether. We are the product of it. We owe so much to the earth and all these elements, so we should not pollute them. If we pollute any of these, it will poison us. We cannot just live separately. It is the law of nature. If we take care of a thing, it takes care of us. If we spoil something, it will spoil us. And then you say the world is bad, miserable. You have made it so. Earth is heaven. Keep everything purified and it will keep you purified.

Supposing they explode atom bombs under the sea. They say, “We are experimenting,” but they are polluting. The earth takes the reaction and the results will make us suffer. Somewhere else an earthquake will happen that will kill thousands of people. Somewhere else a sea storm will come. Things happen that way. Earth is a soul, which we call prakriti. Each thing has a soul. In this great science, which you call primitive, the very basic laws are known to the yogis that otherwise are enigmatic, which geology or physiology cannot solve. Any one branch of knowledge cannot solve this because it is not a homogeneous view. You have to take the total Being.

Let’s suppose you go to a doctor when you are diseased or ill. The doctor says this is cancer or diabetes or high blood pressure or asthma or something else. He takes that one portion of your body and treats it. Perhaps it will be okay, but then that is why often we do not become healthy, because he does not take the homogeneous whole body. When you go to a psychiatrist, he sees you from a particular angle. That is not the solution. You have to take the whole personality, the whole body, mind and soul together to give a cure. When you understand this basic law of existence, your life will be sublime, blissful, peaceful and Liberated.

We have to take this homogeneous view because otherwise we are forgetting God. A psychologist thinks, “My psychology will cure you.” Does he or she remember to bring God in between? The scientist who discovers the laws of nature is simply discovering the laws of nature; he is not inventing or creating them. Any time we are going through one faculty only, we are forgetting God. When we bring God into the understanding, we are taking all the faculties together, everything. Your own aspirations, your desires and subconscious mind–everything has to be taken together in order to regenerate, to bring peace, joy, knowledge and Liberation. You have to be sublime, pure, harmless, nonpolluting, peaceful, charitable, patient, enduring, tolerant, and so on. Then your total being gets transformed.

We are all connected with everything around us–the earth, the planets. We are not separate. If we understand this we will behave so that harmony remains. “Change yourself; the world is changed.” This is a famous aphorism. But if you do not change and the whole world changes, still you will be the same. These basic laws are eternal.