Over six billion different worldviews are walking on our earth. Every individual I-universe has one. Together we create and carry the vibrating, advancing, struggling humanity’s creation – a moving, changing noosphere. The noosphere, a term popularized by Jesuit philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, is described as the sphere around the earth produced by the human mind, emotions, ambitions, hopes and dreams. Let us remember that our individual mind, emotions, ambitions, hopes and dreams are an integral part of this human masterpiece. In that enterprise we all are coworkers. Many of us, however, are perplexed and wondering what kind of noosphere we are creating. Is it global society or global confusion? In these days of crises, violence and uncertainties we may ask again an old question, “Quo vadis, Homo sapiens”, Where are we as humanity going? And we may also ask, Where am I going as an individual?

Let’s leave aside for a moment all the magnificent complications of philosophies, ideologies, sciences, religions, traditions and ways of life. Let’s accept them as rich fruit to nourish human consciousness. All of us, rich or poor, famous or not, powerful or powerless, educated or not, thinkers or doers, seekers or not seekers, believers or atheists, spiritualists or materialists are constructing our individual lives. In the ongoing effort of building our “personal empires” with a sense that we will live forever, we discover that we are an essential ingredient in the evolution of the cosmically unique human world. What an opportunity and responsibility!

Viewing the world situation, some signs suggest that we are gradually becoming insensitive, mechanized and dehumanized leading to a global catastrophe. Some other signs suggest that precisely due to this world crisis we are in process of opening the door to a New Humanity. Some see it and work for it with enthusiasm, intensity and love, some are reluctant, while many go around confused; but we all are marching together toward the New Humanity.

In addition to the “external” effort to better the human condition, the search for the door to the New Humanity is leading us inside, deep into our individual being where the essential human is woven into the authentic human. In special moments, out of the spiritual depth of every individual, the urge to recognize and express the authentic human bubbles up to the surface.

The present world condition calls for the mobilization of the essential human to meet the global crisis we face. Two examples illustrate the effort toward the New Humanity: one on human relationships, the other on humanity’s relationship to nature.

The Reawakening of the Hidden Remnant

Only from the spiritual depth where the divine presence dwells can we mobilize the essential humanity needed to solve the global megaproblems of contemporary society. One dramatic call went forth from the 9/11 tragedy.

In midst of pain, suffering, questionings and a sense of helplessness about the collapse of the Twin Towers, a new call was heard. Triggered by compassion, forgiveness and love the call spread almost silently all over the land and in many lands beyond. From the ruins and dust of the Twin Towers we sensed the awakening of a new spirituality. This destroyed symbol of humankind, together with people from sixty countries became, as the New York Times said, “hugely important – indeed almost spiritual – to people in New York and around the world”. The central energy for the transmutation of humanity emanated from the suffering of New York where all the world religions, all nations, all cultures and traditions, all expressions of the arts and the political, social and economic thinking are present.

In its essence the tragedy was not a call for vengeance but to awaken the inner giant within us. Many of us wept as we walked the streets of New York holding candles. Three days after 9/11 a small red sticker with the message “Our grief is not a cry for war” appeared on many walls. It was the call for the Hidden Remnant.

Whence the Hidden Remnant?

When a great world crisis is upon humanity, as it appears to be now, when it seems that all that was sane and human is just about to be destroyed, when wars and violence are threatening the land a group of people appear working selflessly to avert the downfall of the world. They are the Hidden Remnant who appear again and again in times of great danger when the world needs help to face a deep crisis. In their personal lives they stand for humankind. They stand for the authentically human and work for the completion of human destiny. They are the “I who is We” people. Plato called them “the very small remnant” in search of the truly human and of the wisdom of ages. Isiah mentioned this small remnant as that group of people who saved the land. Gerald Sykes called them the Hidden Remnant. They continue working for human sanity as if standing on a volcano that is about to explode, in spite of the apparently imminent danger of explosion. A person who escaped from the twentieth floor of the Twin Towers and called his wife to say that he was all right, but decided to return to the twentieth floor to help to evacuate his friends – and never returned – is a Hidden Remnant.

Today, once more we stand on a volcano that is in danger of exploding. In the face of new world danger nourished by blind vengeance, violence, hate and sheer inhumanity we all are invited to awaken within ourselves the Hidden Remnant. We are invited to mobilize the strength within and to take a stand, the stand for humankind.

So spoke the plant to a human

An illustration of the great interdependence where the essential human and nature entwine was offered to me in a strange way, by a tiny plant in Brazil.

In 1996, during one of our Earthwatch research trips we were collecting and studying medicinal plants in the luscious Atlantic Rain Forest, around Buzios, Brazil. We took daily collecting trips in the forest gathering the plants, sometimes with a local healer who knew them well. One day we were particularly successful in finding interesting species of healing plants. Back in the lab we carefully prepared each specimen, knowing that each one of them has its special qualities to heal, to hurt, or to nourish. We learned that in the forest there is no plant or tree that is “just there”, as we frequently think about them. All play a role in the ecological interactions and interdependence.

Tiredness freed my mind and emotions from the internal noise of the personality that almost always accompanies us. I was handling the plant ‘A041’ quietly pondering its qualities, almost as if I was inquiring about its existence. In my inner silence I became aware of a message that an important part of the creation – the plants – intended to transmit to us humans. This is what I “heard” from my magical plant.

Long before you came, our world was designed to provide for your coming. We toiled and struggled to survive. At the same time, we gathered energies and material that we offered to the rest of the Wave of Evolution.

We all grew together because we were One. We had one aim given to us by the Mother Earth. We reached for the Sun, our true giver of life. Our roots were in the Mother Earth to draw nourishment for life. We do not have time as you have it but we have rhythms – a kind of dance together.

We learned to generate what we need, without knowing that we will offer everything to the Wave of Evolution. This offer was our way to transform and make the next step of the Wave. We produced all that is needed to maintain the Great Harmony in the animal world, in the human world.

It went well for a long time. But then the Great Break came. You humans gradually forgot the Wave of Evolution. You became fascinated about what you could do with the riches of the Mother Earth. You isolated yourselves and invented your own strange purposes and definitions and you stopped listening to the pulse of life. You grew deaf to the melody of the Mother Earth. You sank into a listless world where you heard only the echo of your own doings.

Now the Great Break is wreaking havoc in our world and in the world of our brothers, the animals. You forgot that everything in you is from soil, plants and animals. Yes, you have forgotten that on the Mother Earth we are brothers and sisters sharing the same rhythm of life. You have forgotten that sun shines on all of us equally and that the Great Journey is to return to the Creator. Mother Earth nourished us all, provided for us and sent us on the journey of Cosmic design.

We suffer by not being able to tell you about our offering and that we all journey together on the Wave of Evolution. We offer you nourishment, healing, beauty and life. We suffer because you isolated yourselves and the Gift of the Plant is not recognized. We have all you need to restore the Great Harmony, and much more. It is so because we share the One Wisdom, that of the Mother Earth, that of the Creator. Silence your noise. Open your hearts. We offer you all that we are as a gift of life and let us journey on the Wave of Evolution together again.

A Note from Janis Roze

In 1957, as a herpetologist (that’s a person who studies snakes) from the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, I was doing research at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Pitrim Sorokin, a respected friend of Harvard’s Center of Creative Altruism invited me to participate in the conference on New Knowledge in Human Values organized at the Kresge Auditorium, MIT. In the next two days my world broke open. All my hopes for steps toward a new way of humankind, for hastening human development as a kind of spiritual awakening, for promoting human dignity, reverence for life, respect for the developing world and its people, and exploring the ways and power of love, as well as meeting people who were advancing it, were fulfilled. However young and insignificant, I knew that I had said yes to it. The rest of my life will be dedicated to advancing the human condition, respect for nature, integrating knowledge of many fields, seeking peace with social and human justice and, above all else, reaching into the depth of the spiritual-divine milieu to search for the meaning of being human. The cutting edge people of that time I met and heard at the Conference included Abraham Maslow, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Diasetz Suzuki, Henry Margenau, Erich Fromm, Paul Tillich, Gordon Allport, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Robert Hartman and many more. Most of them became members of the International Center for Integrative Studies that we later established in New York to promote a dialogue on “crucial contemporary issues and the future of humanity”. This dialogue is continuing in my own life.