Some years back I used to believe that Nature was benevolent and impeccable. Nature could not do anything wrong. And whatever happened naturally was the ultimate right. And all the problems in our world were because of us humans disobeying Nature.
It took time to strike me that if Nature governs everything then that means we are also being governed by the same Nature that governs the whole universe. Also realized, that Nature is not impeccable, much less benevolent. Nature creates, Nature governs, and Nature also destroys. This last function of Nature is as much common in the universe as the first two. But I guess it was the effect of conditioning given to me that prevented me from looking at Nature with this refined view. Most of us know Nature as Mother Nature. This expression itself somehow embodies the belief that Nature must be benevolent. An amazing thing about conditioning is that it never occurs to question about the thing we are being conditioned with.
Shouldn't we be asking, what is the basis of the belief that Nature is benevolent or right?
I did ask it, and bam! Nature is not benevolent. Does that mean Nature is bad? Nope, not bad too. Good and bad, benevolence and malevolence are all human concepts. Since we have consciousness and the brain capable of analysis, we can't help but distinguish our experiences and discriminate between the things we see. And when we do that, we give birth to the notions like good and bad; positive and negative. In the universe without such sophisticated consciousness good and bad don't mean anything. In fact, good and bad don't exist at all. It's only inside our minds. The universe just IS. Nature doesn't think this is good, and that is bad. It just acts.
When I believed that all problems were the result of deviating from natural living I was taking the life of the animals as a reference of the natural way of living. And what was it that enabled us deviate from natural way of living? Our intelligence! Intelligence was the evil!
Won't go into much details of it, but here is how my thought process went: Since we developed intelligence we invented things, then we assigned values to things, we invented money as a measure of value of things, we created wealth, gave birth to economy, then government, then the hunger for power, and so on. In all these new, worldly pursuits, we ignored Nature, and even started destroying it.
For a long time I believed that completely natural life was the right way. Anything created of human intelligence was bad. New term: Human intelligence. This I defined as, intelligence beyond certain point when it becomes destructive, even though the ill-effects may be in the long-run.
Anyway, if you have gone though a similar journey and are developed past it, you know that all this is very, very naïve. I don't even want to explain how.
The important question I had to ask myself then was: Who gave us the intelligence; even the so-called human intelligence? Nature itself. (It isn't even apt to think of Nature as a personal entity.)
Upon much painstaking observation and analysis I understood that the universe is designed in such a way that every living being is acting in its best interest, and still the problems will arise. Perfect is a human concept, again. To look after its best interest is the basic nature of any living being. Every human being, too, is acting out of its nature only. Moreover, that nature is not different from what we refer to as Mother Nature. Confused? Here comes the interesting thing that I figured —
Nature is not some personal entity, right? Nature, just as the word suggests, is a characteristic, a quality of something. Every living and non-living thing, even a tiniest particle has its own characteristics. That's called its nature. And collectively the nature of everything forms Nature! So, Nature simply means, the nature of existence; as in the quality/characteristics of existence. Hence, the expressions "everything is Nature" and "everything has nature" mean the same thing.
And since everything in the universe is at its core formed of one single element, some energy, we all, from stone to human being, share the same nature at the core.
We humans are functioning out of our nature. And it is the same nature a stone is functioning out of (or is made of, since it's an inanimate thing), or a dog is functioning out of.
When taken such comprehensive and fuller view we can see that we, human beings, can not possibly be what we are not meant to be. We can't do what is not our nature. In other words, we can not act against Nature. WE ARE NATURE.
We can not even destroy Nature; because Nature is not an objective entity. Nature is a quality. Nature IS, even when one single particle exists in the whole universe, or even without that. Even nothingness has its own nature.
What we are destroying when we say we are destroying Nature is, we are destroying air, water and earth. We are destroying life on the planet in a way which may eventually destroy us. But we are not destroying Nature. Nature has always been there, and will always be there. Destruction is a very normal event in the universe. Creation, evolution and destruction is the nature of existence.
Who destroyed dinosaurs? Who sends tsunami? Who will be responsible if tomorrow some comet from the outer space hit the Earth and obliterated it? Isn't it possible? Sure it is.
Just because we are "accursed" with consciousness and reasoning mind, we are taking the destruction of Nature on our conscience; which is good; even desirable, in the context of human world. But then it will always remain as a moral dilemma (some of the moral dilemmas I will discuss in separate articles), since there are no moral absolutes anyway, morality being a human concept, too.
To free our conscience of this guilt we must transcend our moral landscape and leap into the fuller reality of the existence.
The world as it is is the only way it could be. Whatever the tomorrow will be, will be the only way it can be. We can not act against Nature, because we are Nature.
It took time to strike me that if Nature governs everything then that means we are also being governed by the same Nature that governs the whole universe. Also realized, that Nature is not impeccable, much less benevolent. Nature creates, Nature governs, and Nature also destroys. This last function of Nature is as much common in the universe as the first two. But I guess it was the effect of conditioning given to me that prevented me from looking at Nature with this refined view. Most of us know Nature as Mother Nature. This expression itself somehow embodies the belief that Nature must be benevolent. An amazing thing about conditioning is that it never occurs to question about the thing we are being conditioned with.
Shouldn't we be asking, what is the basis of the belief that Nature is benevolent or right?
I did ask it, and bam! Nature is not benevolent. Does that mean Nature is bad? Nope, not bad too. Good and bad, benevolence and malevolence are all human concepts. Since we have consciousness and the brain capable of analysis, we can't help but distinguish our experiences and discriminate between the things we see. And when we do that, we give birth to the notions like good and bad; positive and negative. In the universe without such sophisticated consciousness good and bad don't mean anything. In fact, good and bad don't exist at all. It's only inside our minds. The universe just IS. Nature doesn't think this is good, and that is bad. It just acts.
When I believed that all problems were the result of deviating from natural living I was taking the life of the animals as a reference of the natural way of living. And what was it that enabled us deviate from natural way of living? Our intelligence! Intelligence was the evil!
Won't go into much details of it, but here is how my thought process went: Since we developed intelligence we invented things, then we assigned values to things, we invented money as a measure of value of things, we created wealth, gave birth to economy, then government, then the hunger for power, and so on. In all these new, worldly pursuits, we ignored Nature, and even started destroying it.
For a long time I believed that completely natural life was the right way. Anything created of human intelligence was bad. New term: Human intelligence. This I defined as, intelligence beyond certain point when it becomes destructive, even though the ill-effects may be in the long-run.
Anyway, if you have gone though a similar journey and are developed past it, you know that all this is very, very naïve. I don't even want to explain how.
The important question I had to ask myself then was: Who gave us the intelligence; even the so-called human intelligence? Nature itself. (It isn't even apt to think of Nature as a personal entity.)
Upon much painstaking observation and analysis I understood that the universe is designed in such a way that every living being is acting in its best interest, and still the problems will arise. Perfect is a human concept, again. To look after its best interest is the basic nature of any living being. Every human being, too, is acting out of its nature only. Moreover, that nature is not different from what we refer to as Mother Nature. Confused? Here comes the interesting thing that I figured —
Nature is not some personal entity, right? Nature, just as the word suggests, is a characteristic, a quality of something. Every living and non-living thing, even a tiniest particle has its own characteristics. That's called its nature. And collectively the nature of everything forms Nature! So, Nature simply means, the nature of existence; as in the quality/characteristics of existence. Hence, the expressions "everything is Nature" and "everything has nature" mean the same thing.
And since everything in the universe is at its core formed of one single element, some energy, we all, from stone to human being, share the same nature at the core.
We humans are functioning out of our nature. And it is the same nature a stone is functioning out of (or is made of, since it's an inanimate thing), or a dog is functioning out of.
When taken such comprehensive and fuller view we can see that we, human beings, can not possibly be what we are not meant to be. We can't do what is not our nature. In other words, we can not act against Nature. WE ARE NATURE.
We can not even destroy Nature; because Nature is not an objective entity. Nature is a quality. Nature IS, even when one single particle exists in the whole universe, or even without that. Even nothingness has its own nature.
What we are destroying when we say we are destroying Nature is, we are destroying air, water and earth. We are destroying life on the planet in a way which may eventually destroy us. But we are not destroying Nature. Nature has always been there, and will always be there. Destruction is a very normal event in the universe. Creation, evolution and destruction is the nature of existence.
Who destroyed dinosaurs? Who sends tsunami? Who will be responsible if tomorrow some comet from the outer space hit the Earth and obliterated it? Isn't it possible? Sure it is.
Just because we are "accursed" with consciousness and reasoning mind, we are taking the destruction of Nature on our conscience; which is good; even desirable, in the context of human world. But then it will always remain as a moral dilemma (some of the moral dilemmas I will discuss in separate articles), since there are no moral absolutes anyway, morality being a human concept, too.
To free our conscience of this guilt we must transcend our moral landscape and leap into the fuller reality of the existence.
The world as it is is the only way it could be. Whatever the tomorrow will be, will be the only way it can be. We can not act against Nature, because we are Nature.
I am your fan. The best thing about rationalism is, you can't deny what is being said, for the simple reason that there's no other truth (unless you have been "conditioned", as you put it, which of course is the reason most of the world is not rational). I love reading your blog.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that development (and hence intelligence) is the root behind all evils of today (have written about it in the past).
The thing is, we have to stop seeing good and evil, when assuming a larger perspective, that is. In the big picture, there's nothing wrong with the world. Some things are just unfavorable for us humans, so we see them as problems. But at the same time, we can't do much about it. Even if we live in a so-called natural way, the problems would be there, in other forms. Because problems and crises are woven in the very fabric of existence.
ReplyDeleteComing to terms with imperfection of the existence is the highest wisdom, and the pinnacle of spiritual development.
Awesome. Simply awesome. Before reading this yes I believe the same but your words has made me convince my mind in much more easy way.
ReplyDeleteIt is really time which matter. I really did not believe when human being are blamed for global warming. There are possibilities that it looks very true that we destroy nature but in fact everything which has birth, has death too. On the other side, it also does not mean we should not stop saving it as it won't be any other good reason to live here except loving nature and saving it by feeling part of it, part of whole existence.
Yes. What I said in the article doesn't mean we have to become irresponsible and careless with regards to environmental and other such issues.
ReplyDeleteBut the thing is, actually, if we drag this issue into the domain of morality then too it will never be resolved, simply because there's no moral absolutes. There's no moral standard which is the ultimate right. Morality is just a human endeavor to maintain order in the world, and thus, is not impeccable. So this issue will at best remain as moral dilemma.
We should do our best to save Nature (and/or ourselves) while not feeling the guilt or even dismayed for what is happening.
Nice Article. But somehow I do not agree with most of it. I am unable to tell why [currently] but there is something that does not look good to me in this article. Anyways, you write well and I like your website.
ReplyDeleteRegards
TG
This is a great post, Darshan. You have hit on a very important idea here. I enjoyed it very much. "The environment" has become a new religion, or the new "War on Drugs" here in the US, and as such it is so full of hype and propaganda that it is impossible to know what's true and what isn't--except for the fact that politicians are now using it as a way to force people to comply to new laws that just happen to make them money, and advertisers are using it to guilt people into buying "green" products that also make money. Yes, we should all be stewards of the environment, but not because the government compels us to be--where is the nobility in that? We should be stewards of the environment because we understand our true nature as connected to everything.
ReplyDeleteIt is refreshing to hear someone make the case that it is a human beings natural state to use the resources around him to improve his life, as that is truly the only resource we have--our minds. Beyond all the hype, that fact will never change, and going "back to nature" is not a rational solution.
Thanks for a great article.
Kitty
We are a Virus,virus exists in nature,we will eventually kill our host,but that's our nature...some of us philosophize,some terrorize...they are just words...meaningless in the chaos of universe.
ReplyDelete