July 2002

The World is a Sanctuary

The time has come to abandon the metaphor which has for so long dominated our perception of the worid and to reject the damaging assumption that the world is a clock-like mechanism within which we are liltle cogs and wheels. It has led us to reduce everything, including human life, to the status of components of this great machine. The consequences have been disastrous. Only when we find a new metaphor and invent a new conception of the world shall we be able to stand up to the senseless, destructive forces that have swept over our lives.

According to one tenet of ecological thought the world is a sanctuary and we should treat it as such. This assumption is the basis of a completely different outlook on the universe and our place within it. If we live in a sanctuary, then we must treat it with reverence and care. We must be the earth's custodians and shepherds. The idea of stewardship naturally follows from the assumption that the world is a sanctuary.

These are the basic components of what I call the ecological metanoia: simultaneously changing our metaphor of the world, our attitude to it, and our thinking about it. This can and is being done. Of course it is a large and difficult project, and this is why it is progressing slowly, haltingly, some-times grudgingly. For psychological and historical reasons, we are reluctant to change, but deep down, we know that we must do so.

This is not the end of the story, however. Other important changes must occur before we arrive at a sane, sustainable and fullfilling world.

This quest for meaning leads us on to the question of the purpose of human life and to those ultimate concerns upon which our humanity is based.

One characteristic of our times is the atrophy of meaning. Both religious people and secularists are aware that there is a desperate search for meaning in modern society. We do not find a meaning in consumption, entertainment and ordinary jobs. We look for a larger purpose and we do not find it. For this larger purpose requires a transcendent dimension to our life.

This is where eschatology comes in. Eschatology is the sphere of human thinking which is concerned with the ultimate ends of human life and thus with the meaning of human life, and with the question of what gives meaning to meaning. Eschatology has traditionally been the discipline which envisages transcendent goals as the purpose of our life. These goals are often, but not always, religious. Transcendent goals and purposes must not be mistaken for a religious agenda or religious beliefs.

Why do we need a new eschatology? Why do we need a new transcendent purpose to give meaning to human life? The answer is that secular eschatology, promising fulfilment here on earth in materialist and secular terms alone has failed dismally. Instead of bringing happiness and fulfilment, it has robbed us of the deeper dimensions of human life. Some secular humanists are aware of this and have attempted to devise a new scheme, whereby a new transcendent purpose is grafted on to secularism. They postulate a task of continual self-improvement in the pursuit of perfectibility and freedom. But these are only words. If perfectibility and self-improvement are to mean anything, they must be rooted in a deeper sense of transcendence which goes beyond secularism.

It is thus time to abandon our linear modes of thinking and an exploitative attitude toward nature in favour of an ecological perspective and a new form of spirituality.

Let us very briefly state some of the main contentions of the new ecological world-view, which are also components of the new eschatology. The universe is on a meaningful journey of self-realization. We are a part of this journey. The universe is not a haphazard heap of matter and we meaninglessly drifting particles in it. The NewAstrophysics, the New Physics and the Anthropic Principle all converge to inform us that we live in an intelligent universe, self-actualizing itself. There is a wonderful coherence in this process of continuous self-transcendence. Nowadays this is well supported by science. I am not saying it is "proved" by science, for science cannot prove such things. A leading contemporary physicist, Freeman Dyson, has said: "Looking at all the 'coincidences' which have occurred in the evolution of the cosmos, we cannot escape the conclusion that the cosmos behaves as if it had known that we were coming". A leading American physicist, John Archibald Wheeler, maintains that when we look at the universe, it is the universe itself which is looking at itself, through our eyes and minds. For we live in a curiously participatory universe, and we are profoundly woven in this stupendous participatory process.

We are the eyes through which the universe looks at itself. We are the minds through which the universe contemplates itself. We have an incurable urge to transcend because the will of the universe — to continually self-transcend itself — is built into us. We are cosmic beings. We share with the entire universe the dimension of transcendence and the urge to self-realization. This has been the basis of all enduring forms of spirituality.

A wonderful journey lies ahead of us as we seek to actualize the cosmic meaning which resides in us, to help the universe and all its creatures in the journey of self-actualization and in the process of healing the earth and making it blossom again.

Henryk Skolimowski