S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 5 1 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos The environmental crisis is so critical that it is necessary to quickly go beyond what has been done during the past few decades to solve it. What is required is the re-examination of our very understanding of what it means to be human and of what nature is, along with the re-establishment of the harmony between man and nature. How different would things be if the reality of both ecology and economics reflected their original meaning; that is, living with a sacred remembrance of our collective home – the earth! The root cause of the ecological crisis stems from a sickness that has its origin in amnesis (amnesia) or forgetfulness of the Sacred. This requires that we heal our noetic faculty which allows us to perceive divine reality at the heart of all things – something that psychology today has completely failed to grasp due to its crippling epistemic limitations. A true “science of the soul”– found in all times and places – cannot be restored at large until the discipline of psychology is no longer in the thrall of a pseudo-metaphysics and a desacralized worldview. Therefore, the degradation of our environment will continue unabated until its root cause is acknowledged and tackled directly: “Truly God will not change the condition of a people until they change the condition of their own souls” (Qurʼān 13:11). We close with an important message from Nasr (1993, 145): “The solution of the environmental crisis cannot come but from the cure of the spiritual malaise of modern man and the rediscovery of the world of the Spirit.” Notes [1] “Locke, [note: is] the founder of modern psychology” (Guénon 2004b, 92). [2] “We would seem to be headed toward conclusions unpalatable to many Christians. Since both science and technology are blessed words in our contemporary vocabulary, some may be happy at the notions, first, that, viewed historically, modern science is an extrapolation of natural theology and, second, that modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist realization of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature. But, as we now recognize, somewhat over a century ago science and technology – hitherto quite separate activities – joined to give mankind powers which, to judge by many of the ecologic effects, are out of control. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt” (White 1967, 1206).
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