RESTORE
Separation from
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ne particularly egregious side-effect of the Western industrial lifestyle which Science and Spiritual Practices directly addresses is our separation from nature. Combined with our growing separation from each other and ultimately from ourselves, it does much to explain the mounting destruction and degradation we witness all around us. Events in the wider world simply reflect our inner world. They are a projection of collective consciousness. “Our whole culture is split,” says Sheldrake. “There’s a sense in which many of us have connections with nature as children. Then we become more and more separated from it. Nature’s just there as raw materials for us to exploit for economic growth and human progress. And there are now lots of children who hardly ever go outdoors because they’re on screens all the time. “Most people go along with the mechanistic worldview because that’s the official orthodoxy and that’s what business and education are all about. But especially at weekends and in the evenings and on holidays people revert to a completely different view of nature, seeing it as alive and themselves connected with it, the more romantic view of nature. Which is why the great cities of the Western world are clogged with cars on Friday evenings as millions of people try to get back to nature in a car. A lot of people who spend their lives exploiting nature trying to get rich don’t want to get rich because they hate nature, they want to get rich because they love nature. They think if they make enough money they can buy a little place in the country away from it all and go on retreats to a beautiful cottage in an unspoiled village with their family and friends. It’s a kind of crisis in our civilisation.” Sheldrake continues: “I think losing connection with spiritual practices impoverishes life, and regaining that connection conversely enriches life, and as I show in my book, it’s quite easy to do.
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And most of these practices cost nothing. I feel that all our lives can become better, more satisfying. And through feeling more connected we can also do more for other people. It makes us feel more generous if we feel ourselves to be more connected. And the common feature of all these practices – meditation, gratitude, connecting with more-than-human nature, relating to plants, singing and chanting, ritual, and pilgrimage – they’re all bout creating a greater sense of connection with that which is greater than ourselves, and with each other. That is something that makes us happier and healthier and more able to help other people.” And that, ultimately, is the message of Science and Spiritual Practices – restore balance, heal yourself, help others, renew the world. Science relating to neuroplasticity and Sheldrake’s morphic resonance shows that our minds are malleable, even at the physical level. So-called human nature’ appears more like a work in progress. This is not a road of no return; the future is what we make it. From timeless spiritual teachings to cutting-edge science, it is clear – or at least very strongly suggested – that everyone and everything is interconnected, interdependent, and from a single source. The implications of this are vast and cannot be ignored. When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books. Learn more at www.sheldrake.org
