Honoring Commons-based Circuits of Value
Honoring Commons-based Circuits of Value
It is becoming clear that our path beyond the pandemic, climate change, social inequality and much else will require some serious social and political transformations. But to navigate a reliable path forward, we must learn how to protect forms of value that cannot be expressed through price or created through markets. Otherwise, the capitalist machine, and especially finance, will capture, colonize and control the many powerful nonmarket realms of value-creation that are vital to our survival.
We must therefore ask: How can we safeguard ecological, personal, social, local, ethical, intergenerational value in a world dominated by capitalist finance and enforced by its legal codes for property and commerce?
The late David Graeber, an anthropologist and activist who taught at the London School of Economics, pointed out that the idea of value is an important part of human meaning-making. People express a sense of value as they adopt identities, social practices, and culture. In this sense, value-creation should be the starting point for thinking about politics, Graeber said. As he noted in his 2001 book, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, “The ultimate stakes of politics are not even the struggle to appropriate value [as political ideologies attempt to do]; it is the struggle to establish what value is. Similarly, the ultimate freedom is not the freedom to create or accumulate value, but the freedom to decide (collectively or individually) what it is that makes life worth living. In the end, then, politics is about the meaning of life.”
Capitalist finance declines to address these questions because it regards the answers as self-evident and settled. (In addition, opening up a broader discussion of value would be terribly disruptive to some lucrative, well-established enterprises.) The investment world asserts that maximizing financial forms of value – through efficiency, productivity, extraction of natural resources, growth, etc. – “grows a bigger pie for everyone.”
Unfortunately, financial forms of value tend to siphon away value from the “real economy” of production that everyone depends upon, so finance arrogates to itself the lion’s share of benefits from the economy. Even though the pandemic wiped out at least 225 million full-time jobs worldwide, the world’s ten richest men, cosseted within a financial system, saw their wealth grow by half a trillion in 2020, writes the anti-poverty group Oxfam; their total wealth was equivalent to G20 governments’ total Covid-19 recovery spending. Given this sort of distributional power, it is entirely appropriate to have a meaningful debate about what sorts of value contemporary finance should maximize.
The idea of the commons can help us answer this question. Commons-friendly finance makes the bold claim that there are other circuits of value-creation that lie outside of the market that finance must actively nourish and protect. These other circuits – our term for committed, symbiotic relationships in a flourishing living system – are not static forms of objectified value measured by price, as finance and property law dictate. They are dynamic living systems whose actual value eludes quantification and monetization.
Inspired by feminist economic theory, J.K. Gibson-Graham uses an iceberg image to suggest how much of “the economy” lies outside of formal markets. Huge swaths of value-creating human activity – care work, parenting, social nutrition, open source software, the social economy, community gardens, etc. – remain largely invisible to economics and are treated as inconsequential. Many of these non-market activities are not necessarily coherent and persistent enough to constitute a commons – a stable nonmarket circuit of value-creation. Nonetheless, the behaviors enumerated by the illustration [Figure 1] suggest how much economic work takes place outside of wage labor and production for capitalist markets, in non-monetized forms.
These robust circuits of value-creation, often marginalized by standard economics and finance, can be seen in the generativity of local communities, ecosystems that comprise the biosphere, networks of social cooperation, and intergenerational lineages of people. However, these circuits of value-creation live in a fraught tension with markets because capitalism is structurally motivated to own and control the relational value that they create. It seeks to monetize that value, especially biophysical assets, and accumulate them as privately held capital. That is what enclosures of the commons are all about – the commodification of common wealth by converting it into private property that can be sold in markets and converted into state-backed money.
Whether by choice or age-old prejudice, conventional finance generally ignores or misconstrues relational circuits of value-creation. Marx alluded to this lacuna in economic theory with his “labor theory of value” analysis. He argued that price does not reflect the actual value of the actual inputs needed for market production because economics doesn’t really care about nonmarket inputs that are needed; they are secondary and contextual, and therefore something “others” or “nature” can take responsibility for. In other words, the fruits of relational value are “free for the taking.”
Market prices may measure the man-hours needed for labor, noted Graeber, but they don’t take account of the value of the tools, know-how, materials, culture, and social reproduction (child-rearing, education, socialization) needed to provide human labor. Feminist scholars like Silvia Federici have carefully documented how the social reproduction of labor is considered “off the books” and gendered as “women’s work,” effectively rendering child-rearing and care as “free” inputs for capitalist production. Suffice it to say that a $15/hour minimum wage does not begin to cover the actual costs of sustaining a person’s life and family with dignity; that shortfall is subsidized by individuals themselves and, in part, by government welfare programs.
Marx aside, even progressive economists often have trouble recognizing nonmarket, nonmonetized value as a vital wellspring of wealth. Economist Mariana Mazzucato, for example, regards “value” as monetized property as traded in markets, treating other forms of value as personal values that exist outside of what we call “the economy.” This premise immediately marginalizes countless realms of serious value-creation even though markets paradoxically depend on these nonmarket sources of value: the complex relations among soil, microbiota, plants, and hydrological cycles that sustain agriculture, fisheries, and wildlife; the social practices that engender trust and therefore functional markets; the varieties of human care that must be present if a workforce is to succeed; the uncompensated cooperation that generates open source software.
The value generated in these circuits is not driven by market transactions among individuals. It comes from complicated, dynamic, and subtle relationships and norms among living collectives. Living systems are generative because there is a requisite variety of interdependent species that are mutually catalytic and symbiotic. “The current revolution in ‘plant communications’ shows that even herbs, trees and mushrooms are capable of communication, choice and mutual aid,” writes biologist and ecophilosopher Andreas Weber. This procreative logic of nature, forged over millennia of evolution, is profoundly generative, yet it has been seriously damaged by the capitalist apparatus as it imposes its objectified, reductionist notions of value.
It is helpful to look more closely at some specific, alternative circuits of value-creation. There is the care economy, as described by many feminist economists, is a realm that draws upon the love, devotion and commitment of people as they provide to family, colleagues, and friends in the course of work, education, household upkeep, socialization, and eldercare. Care is valuable precisely because it relies on known and trusted people (not just anyone) who show a generous spirit and lots of time. For this very reason, authentic human care is not easily integrated with markets and their monetary incentives and productivity demands.
In a related vein, anthropologists have long studied gift economies as a source of social meaning-making, bonding, and collective provisioning. Complex circuits of gift exchange can be seen in premodern societies, academic communities, artistic networks, and online communities. Lewis Hyde explains how the circulation of gifts generates increases of value: “Capital earns profit and the sale of a commodity turns a profit, but gifts that remain gifts do not earn profit, they give increase. The distinction lies in what we might call the vector of the increase: in gift exchange, the increase stays in motion and follows the object, while in commodity exchange it stays behind as profit.”
In short, the “surplus” generated by circuits of gift-exchange must keep moving as a gift – meeting needs and weaving community in the process. Treating the surplus as profit, a necessary return on capital, objectifies the surplus as money, removes it from circulation for private control, and essentially renders it dead, as a lump of capital to be deployed to generate still more objectified value. Commercializing a gift tends to destroy the fecundity of the gift economy, as Hyde explains. Or as record producer Quincy Jones put it, “When you chase music for money, God walks out of the room.” This insight makes clear why artistic gift economies (for example) must protect the integrity of gift exchange among artists. It’s the only way to assure that their generativity can continue.
Natural ecosystems of plants, animals, microorganisms, land, and other biophysical elements constitute mutually supportive webs of generative aliveness and emergent complexity. Through the “interbeing” of their mutual cooperation (and competition), they create a natural usufruct – renewable resources upon which markets rely. The contemporary fields of complexity science, biosemiotics, and the new animism, building on the Gaia hypothesis of the 1970s, are confirming what Indigenous peoples have known for millennia: autopoiesis and symbiotic relationships in nature are profoundly fecund. Indigenous peoples have built cosmologies around this idea, that humans are entangled in a meshwork of bountiful living relationships. Life freely gives and nourishes additional life so long as the collective unfolding of shared life is given due attention and respect, so long as the gifts of life are kept in circulation.
Permaculture and agroecology are types of agriculture that deliberatively work in constructive alignment with natural dynamics. They regard human society and ecosystems as holistic systems whose elements must be carefully integrated and brought into symbiotic balance. This helps minimize the work needed in growing food while maximizing natural generativity in sustainable ways.
Social cooperation in digital networks, often known as peer production, is a potent circuitry of value-generation. Self-organized communities of creators provide the energy and governance for open source software, wikis, open access publishing, citizen-science, and open source design and manufacturing. Salient examples include the Linux computer operating system, Wikipedia and its spinoff projects, and the Public Library of Science, but there are countless small, lesser-known digital communities whose cooperation creates significant pools of useful knowledge.
A key lesson from such commons-based circuits of value-creation is that living subjects, through their self-organized relations, are hugely productive. Here, capital accumulation fueled by market exchange is not the point; the goal, instead, is to fortify relational strategies for producing value. As outlined by Bollier and Helfrich in their book Free, Fair and Alive, commoning requires a keen focus on the social norms of a group and its peer governance and provisioning systems.
Community forests in India flourish through the affective labor of villagers working together. They love and care for their forests, and the culture revolves around that task. As people share responsibility for tending forests, allocating wood and fruit, and scaring off poachers, their stewardship conserves the forest while meeting household needs. In like fashion, open source software communities thrive as more people coordinate their contributions to produce high-quality working code. The relational ethic produces value, as two open source software aphorisms suggest: “Many eyeballs tame complexity” and “the grass grows taller when it’s grazed on.”
The primary problem in commons is not managing scarcity through price, as economics attempts to do; it is aligning living forces into shared purpose and structures as ways to generate abundance and maintain common wealth.
This essay is derived from a forthcoming report on commons-based finance by David Bollier and Natasha Hulst. For more about commoning, see Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons, by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich (New Society, 2019), [www.freefairandalive.org]
The Soul of Nations
The Soul of Nations
We are in the midst of a global evolution into a new sense of identity and of belonging on this planet. Through wars and conquests over centuries, borders of nations have shifted and changed. Today massive migrations of refugees and asylum seekers are changing the demographics of many nations that formerly were defined by primarily one major culture. At the same time, there is a rising interest and curiosity, especially among young people, about life beyond the borders of the nation of birth. Since WWII international tourism and intercultural exchange has become a mass phenomenon, expressing itself not only in both physical and virtual travel to other cultures and world regions, but also through the widespread exchange of movies, fashions and cuisines that expand identity and options beyond national borders.
However, these shifts and changes are not welcome changes for everyone. Many do not share an interest and curiosity about other cultures. And many millions are forced by circumstances to leave the native culture and country they call home when ongoing civil wars, violent political oppression, or economic poverty leave them no other choice. Many of these forced emigrants feel stranded in cultures that are alien to them. While they may be granted basic human rights by their new country, at the same time they face major cultural gaps in terms of world-view and basic customs. In too many cases, they experience hostility from citizens of the host countries who would prefer to have kept things as they were before the arrival of “foreigners.”
But is there really a way back from this new world order? Or are we at the edge of outgrowing nations and cultures that have been shaped for centuries by history and local geography? If so, how can we prepare ourselves to make this major transition an enriching and fulfilling experience on both an individual and communal level? How can we live in an interconnected future as a more or less united humanity on this planet?
Modern visionaries, such as the late Indian philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo Ghose and the contemporary US-American consciousness researcher Ken Wilber, envision this emergence of a transnational identity as part of the new step in human consciousness that is presently unfolding. For the first time in human history, a large number of people feel their growing individual awareness is enabling them the freedom to leave their inherited religions, traditions, customs, as well as their own native lands. This new level of independent thinking and acting is also happening even in parts of the world where the vast majority of people continue to faithfully follow traditional rules and modes of government.
Wilber, Sri Aurobindo, and a growing number of innovative thinkers around the world, hold that this trend towards a new individual freedom is inevitable. Their basic sense is that this impulse is evidence of the latest evolutionary step in human consciousness, surpassing the former primacy of biological evolution. In fact, geologists have termed the current planetary epoch the “Anthropocene,” the era in which human decisions are the primary force in shaping the planet. For better or for worse, it is obvious that current changes on Earth are mostly human-caused.
This view, that the evolution of human consciousness is the main determinant in the overall process of planetary evolution, has come to be known as “Integral philosophy.” As I discuss in my book, this perspective also opens up new insights regarding the evolution of nations. The best current model for the application of this philosophy, in terms of evolving collective views, is Spiral Dynamics, an Integral concept originally developed by US- psychologist Clare Graves to describe both personal and collective development. On the collective level, this theory presents a model of how worldviews (memes) within a culture develop in a predictable sequence. Spiral Dynamics describes several levels of awareness progressing from the basic level of survival up to a holistic view that sees the world as an interactive, interconnected system. Graves observed that these stages of development are basically evident in every society, in various degrees, and in any given moment overlapping each other within individual societies and worldwide.
For example, an early worldview would be the magic-shamanistic meme, in which an animistic and animated world can be influenced by rituals and sacrifices. This worldview is succeeded by the religious or mythical meme in which eternal truths are revealed by a founder and maintained through authority based on succession. In the order of Spiral Dynamics, the modern rational-scientific enlightenment, and its variation the post-modern view, follows, proclaiming a relativistic view in which there are no absolute standards. These latter worldviews are mainly spread in Europe and the USA today.
But according to Integral thinkers who apply this system to the evolution of consciousness, the process does not stop here of course. According to this view we are presently experiencing the emergence of the new holistic or Integral meme, one which will embrace all previous worldviews. Each of the previous memes, be they shamanism, religion or scientific rationalism, has a true but partial view of the whole of reality, yet each has typically excluded the other views, claiming to have the whole and final truth. In contrast, the Integral meme recognizes the core of truth in each previous worldview. It holds that, for example, both religion and science see only partial and different aspects of the complex totality of the world. The emerging meme integrating these partial truths into an overall picture then is called Integral and holistic.
A Brief Interview | Auroville and Communities of the Future
KOSMOS | Out of curiosity, did you grow up in Auroville*?
WOLFGANG | No, I came to Auroville for the first time when I was a young man . The place was still relatively new, just 4 years old. Since then I returned numerous times.
KOSMOS | How would you describe the ‘soul’ of Auroville?
WOLFGANG | I see it as a colorful and multidimensional mandala. At the core it has a golden, spheric center piece.
KOSMOS | What do intentional communities generally offer us that expands our understanding of identity?
WOLFGANG | An intentional community is one evolutionary step further than a tribe, which is based on shared kinship and genetics. But probably you are referring to an intentional integral community like Auroville. Those places can offer to interested people a training ground for the evolutionary transformation from modern ego to a connected individuality. We cannot do this shift alone, instead It needs a kind of sangha. We are no longer aiming to reach an inner nirwana in a remote cave on our own , but we are co-creating together a spiritually and materially transformed outer world.
KOSMOS | In the face of what many believe will be the eventual collapse of the nation state, how will our conception of belonging change?
WOLFGANG | Quite a few nations will collapse, others will try to seclude themselves, and some will transform and unite. In the latter case the members will keep a core identity of their culture and country and at the same time develop a world-centric sense of belonging.
We will “plant roots in our own unique pasts and at the same time grow wings for our common departure towards future and still unknown destinations,” to quote myself in my new book.
KOSMOS | How would you describe the ideal social/political/spiritual structure of the future in very general terms?
WOLFGANG | Politically I share the vision of the Indian yogi and philosopher Sri Aurobindo, who saw a future world confederation of nations. (Not a autocratic world union!). This world community may have an Integral structure as, for instance, the author Steve McIntosh is describing. It means the whole existing range of memes, religions and systems has its place under a integral leadership.
And as individuals we will continue our grand evolutionary journey from unconscious matter to enlightened being. I doubt that this future is ever ending.
*Note: Auroville is a universal city in the making in south-India dedicated to the ideal of human unity based on the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.
In my book I apply this holistic view to the evolution of nations, exploring what various distinct national qualities can contribute to an emerging world culture. In the final chapters, several current examples of this creative process are presented.
What exactly is it in a nation that is evolving though these different stages of memes and worldviews? I find Sri Aurobindo’s view as most relevant in answering this question. In his view each human being has a core identity that, starting with seed elements at birth, grows and evolves through life, gaining insights and knowledge as the individual proceeds through stages of development, in some ways comparable to the memes identified in Spiral Dynamics. Despite changes in and evolution of this core identity, something unique and essential remains the same. Sri Aurobindo calls this “something,” that is characterized by both being and becoming, the “soul”. He applies this same understanding to the birth and evolution of human communities and nations.
It should also be mentioned that for Sri Aurobindo, soul also has another quality as well. In his inner experience, besides a soul’s uniqueness, it is at the same time a drop in and a part of a universal consciousness. However, I mainly consider the specific ways each nation sees and acts in the world as an expression of its unique and evolving soul. In this view, just as each individual has a specific life mission to fulfill based on its unique potential, the same is true for nations. To search for and embody that mission is what we can call our destiny, for both an individual and a nation.
In this process we meander along many dark roads and through distracting shadows, and we also discover many deep rewards, as we move toward this self-realization. As we evolve and heal as individuals, we are also clearing the shadows of our own nations and discovering their specific core qualities. In fact, how could this be otherwise, since through growing up and sharing in the culture of our country, or countries, our personal soul is connected with the soul field of our nation.
Thus a main content and goal of my book is to present models for doing the shadow work that allows us both personal and collective integration of the unique qualities of our own nations.
The New Narrative: Evolutionary Nationality
In many societies politics is shaped by a deep conflict between the progressive and the nationalistic factions. The former defines a national community mainly as an arbitrary and pliable social structure while the latter holds that a nation has a kind of unique and unchangeable core identity.
Since both views have a legitimate point and some value, what is urgently needed is a unifying and updated understanding of what a nation is today, and what it has to become in order to contribute to what might be a shared and peaceful future world. This depends on addressing (drawing on the principles of integral philosophy), healing aspects of the national shadow while at the same time awakening the unique national soul qualities in both individual citizens and nation-states.
“The Soul of Nations” features examples of these healing and transforming developments in countries as disparate as the USA, China, India, Russia, Iran, Germany, Colombia and Israel. Sustaining this transformation requires the individual members of a national community, which means each one of us, to initiate and foster these processes.
In this follow-up to his award-winning study of the German soul, German-American author and workshop leader Wolfgang Aurose carves out an evolutionarily new understanding of the nation-state and our national identities. “The Soul of Nations. Healing and Evolution” is available in the virtual bookstore of www.lulu.com as print book (145 pages, $14 plus shipping) or as ebook ($7.75) . Also at Amazon and in bookshops.
Global Citizenship and Universal Values
Global Citizenship and Universal Values
Global citizenship is a concept which intertwines our identity with the interconnected, interdependent world of today. It seeks to transcend geographical limitations and expand the definition of our personalities. As expounded by the United Nations, global citizenship is a new and vital force, which operates beyond the traditional spheres of power. In some instances, it has also been described as “a way of life”, a set of guiding principles for a sustainable lifestyle.
The rise of globalization has implied that the ripples of an act committed in one corner of the world will be felt at another corner of the world. This has implored the human community to accept that we cannot live in artificial silos anymore. Instead, there is a need to connect with our larger identity and tap into a collective human experience if we want the future to be one with peace, prosperity and stability for all. In the end, we are one human family.
The characteristic of global citizenship as a universal concept renders it a degree of intangibility. The context of an individual’s environment and their trait of self-awareness impedes the realization of oneness with the global community. It has resulted in personalized definitions becoming the norm, wherein the individual links their personality with moral and ethical values.
Moreover, the task of seeing oneself as a global citizen is complicated in an increasingly nationalistic, separated, protectionist and xenophobic world. While global citizenship is an important trigger to overcome these restrictions, it remains confined to intellectual discussions amongst a relatively small number of people, giving it a halo of elitism. Hence, even though the task of popularizing global citizenship has been touted as institutional or international, it is, in fact, of personal origins.
The fundamental challenge is to transmit the sense of responsibility of global citizenship across locations, age groups, cultures, and generations. There exists a resistance to accept this responsibility as a consequence of widespread fear and misunderstanding. Stagnating socio-economic mobility and mistrust has conflated global citizenship with globalization’s underlying issues, creating a hostile environment. However, there is also great potential in promoting the idea of global citizenship, as it opens the way for collaboration across boundaries of place and identity to solve global challenges.
Given the difficulties to position the idea of global citizenship as a prime identity, we want to pose a series of question to advance the conversation:
- Is global citizenship a homogeneous concept? Does it have space for multiple identities to exist?
- How can global citizenship be grounded so that it applies to everyone? How can it shed its image of an elitist phenomenon?
- How can global citizenship be a universal guiding principle for collaboration and sustainable behavior?
The following deliberations set out to give some answers to these questions. After reviewing fundamental documents that shape the idea of global citizenship, we discuss the universality of the concept. We then touch on the Indian context as our conversation took part in South Indian metropolis Bangalore. We move on to look at ways in which we can promote global citizenship principles and while considering the challenges in our way forward, we draw final conclusions. (Read the full whitepaper on The State of Global Citizenship here).
Universal Context
One of the first questions that arise is: Is there a set of universal values that all inhabitants of the world can subscribe to? Even though the UDHR establishes a solid foundation of shared principles, it is far from promoting a rigid set of universal values. While examining global citizenship from a universal standpoint, it is crucial to recognize the fluid nature of the concept. Fluidity refers to the multiple layers that overlap to form an individual’s personality, such as family, religion, ethnicity, and culture. The existing realities in different parts of the world differ vastly from each other. Global citizenship incorporates several dynamic elements, each synergizing to meet the current needs and aspirations of youth and society the world over. Therefore, global citizenship in no way means or endorses a homogeneity of opinion or consensus. In fact, it is the opposite. It indicates that there is a spectrum within which a range of opinions and values can co-exist even if they conflict with each other. This requires us to practice not only tolerance but compassion as well. At an individual level, this allows us to hold honest, sometimes heated exchanges that are entirely free of hate or malice. If we meet our differences with empathy and respect, there is a way for reconciliation and to find middle grounds that are acceptable with the prevailing community and its culture.
One way of articulating global citizenship as a universal concept can be its manifestation as an ethic of care for the world and each other. This understanding focuses on awareness, moral resilience, judgment, and action. It provides a sound moral background for any action taken and places a premium on responsibility and accountability. Even if this ethic of care calls for action, it does not necessarily relate to activism. The concepts co-inhabit some ideological spaces. However, if activism is about bringing attention to injustices, then global citizenship is about leading people to shared mutually beneficial conclusions on their own terms. This unbounded empowerment allows people to eventually reach a more developed and nuanced shared understanding of the world and cherishes the wellbeing of all people and the natural environments they inhabit.
A discussion about the universality of global citizenship has to acknowledge that the standard framework in which today’s world is organized are nation-states. Countries are basic entities in which rules are made, and their citizens should theoretically have all the same rights and responsibilities as they are all governed by the same laws. In that sense, citizenship and its attached benefits and duties are, under normal circumstances, universal concepts within a nation. The most common traits for granting citizenship are blood, soil, culture, and law. Blood indicates direct ancestry; soil points to the physical place of birth; culture alludes to their cultural integration within society, and the law is concerned with codified rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Rights shared by all citizens typically inspire broad agreement amongst community members, while responsibilities differ wildly based on possibility, opportunity, status, wealth, and several other factors. The opportunities structure within countries is often very unequally distributed. We cannot deny socio-economic differences and multiple forms of discrimination within and across nations. On a global level, we see even greater differences in economic development, political systems, and individual freedom. The nation-states remain the strongest denominator of identity. If we look at surveys such as the World Values Survey, people around the world first identify as a citizen of a country instead of thinking of themselves as a citizen of the world. However, global citizenship as an overarching and fluid concept is not in contrast to the narrower ideas of national citizenship. It is not related to passports or a critique of patriotism. Instead, it suggests another layer of citizenship that transcends nationalism and points toward the shared destiny we face as humans in this world.
The challenge to conceptually differentiate global citizenship from national citizenships is that global citizenship now seems beyond the reach of large sections of society because the concept appears mentally incompatible with our national identity. If your national identity is at odds with your ideas of citizenship and its associated rights, then global citizenship will remain a mirage. Global citizenship, though, is not aiming to compete with national, regional, or ethnic identities. Within global citizenship, there is even ample room for patriotism, however, not as one nation before others, but as a sense of responsibility towards the world departing from one’s own feeling of belonging. Global citizenship acknowledges origins and belongings but argues for an overarching idea of shared responsibility towards each other, transcending national borders.
However, global citizenship does conflict with strong nationalism. The growing nationalism of stagnating industrial economies was built on the back of pro-globalization and pro- immigration policies. These upsides have already been socially and economically absorbed over two or three generations. Still, the current task of equitable sharing of resources and opportunities has become a polarizing social and political choice in all advanced nations. This is because it would require these societies to recalibrate, and there is a fear of losing their worth and sacrificing their quality of life by being accommodative for the sake of others. The strong nation-first rhetoric we hear is in contrast with multilateralism and global collaboration. Understandably, governments need to fulfill their citizens’ needs first, but when nationalism leads to isolationism and hostility, it conflicts with global partnerships for addressing shared problems.
To counter such sentiments, it seems advisable to value and promote traits such as empathy, respect for diversity and collaboration across boundaries. However, these aspects of global citizenship are not yet institutionalized as universal values across the world. It is not part of the lexicon of politicians, parents, teachers, and caregivers. There is a whole generation of young people who are not taught what it means to accept diversity of thought. Remedial influences for such an audience remain unproven because they display monolithic thinking, which is extremely difficult to change without strong stimuli. For global citizenship to become a universal concept, we would need to agree with such fundamental values to be taught to younger generations to internalize the spirit of open debate and accept differing world views.
Often those who travel extensively or have access to multiple cultures are considered to be global citizens. This is because it is somehow implied that people who have visited different regions of the world are more open-minded than others. However, this cosmopolitan view lacks nuance and depth. It is an elitist concept which does not withstand a closer test. If global citizenship is interpreted only as a cosmopolitan attitude, it will rule out most of the world’s population. It implies that those belonging to lower socio-economic backgrounds who lack travel opportunities can never become global citizens. Experiences in other cultures may help form one’s own identity in relation to others. Still, traits mentioned such as empathy, care for the world and valuing diversity are not dependent on socio-economic status. If global citizenship is to be a universal overarching concept, then it cannot be tied to monetary resources but needs to be based on the common ground of all people being citizens of one planet that we need to protect and care for, foremost through local tangible actions that positively influence global developments.
Besides, global citizenship must acknowledge the diversity of people regarding their upbringing, their cultural, ethnic, religious, regional, and national influences when forming their identities. A starting point to understand cross-cultural variations of values across the globe is the World Values Survey (WVS). This global research project aims to identify and group people in different countries on several cultural parameters and analyze societies based on the data. It specifically asks for opinions and influence of markers such as the impact of globalization, the role of religion, culture, family, and the attitudes toward ethnic minorities, foreigners, and environmental conservation. The survey results can add to the framework of global citizenship by showcasing on a more macro level the major differences in prominent attitudes throughout the world. The data is presented on a national level, though, and therefore can only serve as the first point of orientation as national societies themselves can be highly heterogeneous.
One interesting outcome of the survey is the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map (see graph no. 1). It plots societies based on their position relative to secular-rational vs. traditional values on the vertical axis, and survival instincts vs. self-expressionist instincts on the horizontal axis. Traditional values here associate with a nationalistic outlook in which traditional institutions are sought to be preserved. Secular-rational values associate with an opposite trend, accepting new institutions into its fold and destigmatizing taboo topics. The survivalist societies tend to exhibit lower thresholds of trust and tolerance and yearn for economic security. Towards the right of the spectrum lie the societies emphasizing self-expression, marked by greater democratization and tolerance.
Graph 1: The Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map 2020. Source: The Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map – World Values Survey 7 (2020) [Provisional version].
It is an insightful exercise to place yourself on the Inglehart-Welzel map because your ascribed values-based identity may significantly diverge from your national identity. Culture is essentially institutionalized knowledge living inside of people. We gain fluency and nuance in this knowledge by interacting with everyone around us. True global citizenship should allow us to hold multiple cultures and realities within us with some confidence in our ability to switch and navigate between them instead of assigning to one-dimensional identities.
With the world map divided into cartographic regions of modern nation-states, the puzzle to be solved by the advocates of global citizenship is the accommodation of diversity under an overarching framework of inclusion within a broader society, characterized by a feeling of belonging to the global community. Placing oneself on the world map gives one a sense of control and enables one to assess situations from a bird’s eye view of prevailing conditions. Hence, a person’s global identity in the world, while uncontested, forms an integral part of global citizenship and allows one to view things from varying distances in a changing milieu.
In conclusion, global citizenship is not the opposite of national citizenship. Quite the contrary: as a universal concept, it embraces the diversity in nation-influenced convictions as much as religious, secular, traditional or modern values. Its universality lies in mutual respect and the willingness and ability to collaborate across boundaries to solve the global problems we humans face. It has a firm grounding in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a framework of action in the SDGs. However, the concept goes beyond that. Its universality lies in a familiar feeling and ethic of care for the world and each other. It is not uniform in terms of culture, religions, thoughts, and actions but on a responsible way of life where we take care of others and the environment within our spheres of influence.
Citation: The Melton Foundation (2021). The State of Global Citizenship Whitepaper about an emerging concept. Willington: MF.
Licensed under Creative Commons
Autobiography of a Yogi | 75 Years On
Autobiography of a Yogi | 75 Years On
To those who were personally acquainted with Paramahansa Yogananda, his own life and being were convincing testimony to the power and authenticity of the ancient wisdom he presented to the world. Since 1946, countless readers of his autobiography have attested to the presence in its pages of that same light of spiritual authority that radiated from his person. Hailed as a masterpiece when it first appeared in print seventy-five years ago, the book sets forth not only the story of a life of unmistakable greatness but a fascinating introduction to the spiritual thought of the East—especially its unique science of direct personal communion with God—opening up to the Western public a realm of knowledge hitherto accessible only to a few.
Today Autobiography of a Yogi is recognized around the world as a classic of spiritual literature.
In the chapter “Years in My Master’s Hermitage” from the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, Paramahansa Yogananda describes the masterful qualities of his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, which he observed during the 10 years of training at his guru’s ashram.
Paramahansa Yogananda was instructed by his line of gurus to travel to the West to spread the science of Kriya Yoga, an ancient science of the soul to which millions have been introduced through Autobiography of a Yogi. Kriya Yoga offers powerful methods for awakening higher spiritual consciousness and the inner bliss of divine realization. Yogananda arrived in the United States in 1920 and established Self-Realization Fellowship that same year to disseminate his Kriya Yoga teachings. Today the society continues his spiritual and humanitarian work from its international headquarters in Los Angeles, California.
“Making a Spiritual Effort Now”
An Excerpt from Chapter 12, “Years in My Master’s Hermitage”
from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
Sri Yukteswar was reserved and matter-of-fact in demeanor. There was naught of the vague or daft visionary about him. His feet were firm on the earth, his head in the haven of heaven. Practical people aroused his admiration. “Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not incapacitating!” he would say. “The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.”
My guru was reluctant to discuss the superphysical realms. His only “marvelous” aura was that of perfect simplicity. In conversation he avoided startling references; in action he was freely expressive. Many teachers talked of miracles but could manifest nothing; Sri Yukteswar seldom mentioned the subtle laws but secretly operated them at will.
“A man of realization does not perform any miracle until he receives an inward sanction,” Master explained. “God does not wish the secrets of His creation revealed promiscuously. Also, every individual in the world has an inalienable right to his free will. A saint will not encroach on that independence.”
The silence habitual to Sri Yukteswar was caused by his deep perceptions of the Infinite. No time remained for the interminable “revelations” that occupy the days of teachers without Self-realization. A saying from the Hindu scriptures is: “In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”
Because of my guru’s unspectacular guise, only a few of his contemporaries recognized him as a superman. The adage: “He is a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom,” could never be applied to my profound and quiet master.
Though born a mortal like all others, Sri Yukteswar achieved identity with the Ruler of time and space. Master found no insuperable obstacle to the mergence of human and Divine. No such barrier exists, I came to understand, save in man’s spiritual unadventurousness.
I always thrilled at the touch of Sri Yukteswar’s holy feet. A disciple is spiritually magnetized by reverent contact with a master; a subtle current is generated. The devotee’s undesirable habit-mechanisms in the brain are often as if cauterized; the grooves of his worldly tendencies are beneficially disturbed. Momentarily at least he may find the secret veils of maya lifting, and glimpse the reality of bliss. My whole body responded with a liberating glow whenever I knelt in the Indian fashion before my guru.
“Even when Lahiri Mahasaya was silent,” Master told me, “or when he conversed on other than strictly religious topics, I discovered that nonetheless he had transmitted to me ineffable knowledge.”
Sri Yukteswar affected me similarly. If I entered the hermitage in a worried or indifferent frame of mind, my attitude imperceptibly changed. A healing calm descended at the mere sight of my guru. Each day with him was a new experience in joy, peace, and wisdom. Never did I find him deluded or emotionally intoxicated with greed, anger, or human attachment.
“The darkness of maya is silently approaching. Let us hie homeward within.” With these cautionary words Master constantly reminded his disciples of their need for Kriya Yoga. A new student occasionally expressed doubts regarding his own worthiness to engage in yoga practice.
“Forget the past,” Sri Yukteswar would console him. “The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.”
✧ ✧ ✧
These photos, courtesy of Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, Calif., can be found in the new deluxe edition of the book, which will be released in October.
Our Spiritual Commons
Our Spiritual Commons
Cover image: Corinne Boureau | Spark of Life (https://www.artsy.net/artist/corinne-boureau)
“A human being …experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”
― Albert Einstein
As we come to new terms with just how profound our commonality is, it is imperative that we work in realms that lie beyond our “optical delusion” of separateness. The “fierce urgency of now” necessitates that we make sacred space in the commons conversation so that we can congregate around the commonality of the human spirit – a spiritual commons.
The spiritual commons is a territory for souls to do the work and play of souls. It is a place of operation for our non-physical aspects like consciousness, inspiration, intuition, meaning and contentment. It is sacred ground for cultivating a common vision for mutual thriving, a highly ethical domain that is built on the understanding that we are physically, emotionally and spiritually ‘interdependently co-arising’ with one another and with the planet itself.
The spiritual commons is a metaphysical realm where heart, soul and spirit are properly valued as the driving forces of causality that they are.
Especially given the consistent and extraordinary impact of faith-based pursuits throughout human history, our spiritual commonality is under-represented in our social calculus. In my work representing Kosmos Journal and Unity Earth at the United Nations, I am often in meetings with colleagues representing religious organizations who are always at the table in their roles as social service providers. Although service is a big part of almost all spiritual and religious traditions, that is not their primary work. The evolution of souls is. Despite the bloodshed and suffering caused in the name of religion, it is still apparent that bringing ageless and universal spiritual guidance to decision-making tables would likely result in less need for social services, which would allow faith-based leaders to turn their attention back toward their essential work, which would likely alleviate social service needs even further.
Religious and spiritual traditions hold millennia of wisdom on how to raise up the human condition. That wisdom is consistent among religious scriptures and practices and it resonates with most of the hearts and souls who fill this world. Yet, that expertise is categorically excluded from our decision-making tables where spirituality gets sidelined, even covertly and/or overtly censored, and the causal role of consciousness gets ignored.
I am sometimes at the UN with indigenous leaders who seem to always represent their social service needs, which can be gut wrenchingly dire. Just like with religious leaders, I think about how there would be less need for social services if we tapped into indigenous understandings of natural law, of spirituality, of fruitful deliberation, and of living in deep and conscious commonality with the environment and all beings. The spiritual commons is a ground of being, an ontological place setting, that includes the indigenous capacity for living in harmony.
The spiritual commons is a kind of clearing for discovering new ways to integrate the best of indigenous, philosophical, religious and spiritual wisdom with beliefs of groups like atheists and secular humanists who do not subscribe to the realm of the spirit. The spiritual commons is a metaphysical domain in that it functions at the level of causality and beingness, which lies beyond our five senses and the laws of physics, beyond cultural norms, and beyond doctrine and specific beliefs. It is the domain for syncing up our inner GPS’s so that we navigate all of the commons in compliance with the Golden Rule, which is common to every major religion’s teachings, and is consistent with indigenous and other spiritual understandings and with non-theistic and humanist principles.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
-Rumi
Sufi mystic, Rumi’s poem invites us to the “field beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” so that our souls can meet on the type of grass where “even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.” Rumi is not just talking about breaking through the separation of right/wrong judgmentalism, which would be a game changer in and of itself. He takes a step further into the spiritual commons with the understanding that even thinking of “each other” still depicts too much separation. Unity is fundamental to our success as a human race yet we are reluctant to step onto Rumi’s metaphysical field of consciousness, where unification is rooted.
Even with best of intentions and methods, we often end up perpetuating dysfunctional separation-based norms because we completely ignore the common metaphysical field that Rumi leads us to. For example, the United Nations has a motto, “No one left behind” and extraordinary work gets done in fulfillment of it. But, to the extent that our cultural constructs accommodate such a thing as “behind,” people will inevitably end up there.
Rumi encourages us to treat no person as the “other.” Indigenous wisdom keepers move even further into the spiritual commons with their understanding that there is no such being as “other,” not even a rock. Other-ness is a precept for maintaining the place of behind. Commonality, by definition, has no behind so the spiritual commons is more circular in nature. Concepts like “behind” and “other” do not fit into its ontology.
The spiritual commons is also a place for recognizing our unity with all of Nature and our innate love for Nature, and for factoring in the magical nature of Nature. It is a space for developing our commons consciousness beyond the management of the physical manifestations of Nature so that our interconnectedness with it, and the sacred majesty of it, are appropriately valued in our social and economic structures.
The majority of people in the world believe that there is something important in the mostly mysterious realm that is common to our souls and psyches. Our spirituality, whether it expresses in traditional or non-traditional ways, is a metaphysical force that is at least as powerful as, and likely far more powerful than, our intellects. Yet, in standard social and economic valuations, we hold little to no value for the power of that metaphysical, causal force while we hold extraordinarily high valuation for intellectual concepts like, for example, capital gains.
The spiritual commons holds more accurate valuation for the requisite metaphysical factors that go into manifesting common good. For example, attending to consciousness is a priority in the spiritual commons because consciousness is recognized as the causal factor it is in all social, economic and governmental decision-making. Consciousness is causal. It always comes first but it is mostly overlooked as the critical component it is in creating our reality. How we manage our commons depends primarily on our commons consciousness (see my 2015 article: https://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/consciousness-seeds-and-soils-of-the-commons/). Because it is an essential underpinning of transformation, commons consciousness requires its own focus.
The currency of the spiritual commons is love. Its economy runs on life-enhancing and soul feeding practices. It accounts for vitality and for the mystery that flows between and beyond religions. Presence is the entry key to the spiritual commons and that is why its economy values personal journeying into the very essence of our beings so that we might find ever-greater presence with the self-actualizing life force that is unique in each of us and common to all.
Hindu mystic, Rabindranath Tagore, called that force “the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood.” The spiritual commons holds sacred space for transcending spiritual and religious boundaries by valuing and cultivating that life-throb, that spark of life that makes the difference between being able to put all the elements of an apple into a lab dish and being able to make an apple.
That metaphysical spark is spiritual commons capital. It may well be the most powerful force on the planet. The spiritual commons makes way for, and holds high valuation for, that revitalizing, generative, trans-denominational power that can never be adequately captured by words. The economy of the spiritual commons accounts for the metaphysical spark of life itself and for our connection with that mysterious force that pulses life through the collection of elements that we are.
Evolving our inner lives is the starting place for reinventing social norms, rituals and customs. The spiritual commons is a domain for the reflection, visioning, meditation, and prayer that’s required for the spiritual growth that seems to be inexorably linked to norms transcendence. It is a place for digging deeper into individual and collective consciousness and for bringing mass consciousness into coherence around creating the compassionate and just world we all want to live in.
The spiritual commons is a sort of metaphysical laboratory for determining higher, and more accurate, valuation for heart and soul factors. It is transformational space because it runs on the most powerful driver of human behaviors – love. Twentieth Century Jesuit mystic, de Chardin, wrote that when we harness the mysterious power of love, we “will discover fire for the second time.” The spiritual commons is a love-fire circle where we can forge a world where needs are met so our spirits can fly. And where leaders recognize that needs get met when spirits fly.
The Moment | Alan Watts and the Eternal Now
Video Transcript
for the original full text, see 1.1.12. – Limits of Language – Pt. 2 | April 16, 2019 | Essential Lectures, Alan Watts Organization, https://alanwatts.org/
So, when we say to ourselves, “You must go on,” the reason is, you see, that we are not living in the eternal now, where reality is. We are always thinking that the satisfaction of life will be coming later. Don’t kid yourself. Only suckers put hope in the future. There really isn’t much of a future. You are going to die.
So therefore, this hope for the future is a hoax, it’s a perfect hoax. Because you are not fully alive now, you think maybe someday you will be…Look, supposing I ask you, “What did you do yesterday?” Mostly we say, “Well, let me see now; I got up at 7:30 and I brushed my teeth, and I read the newspaper over a cup of coffee, and then I looked at the clock and dressed, and got in the car and drove downtown. I did this and that in the office and so on.” You go on and on and suddenly you discover that what you have described has absolutely nothing to do with what happened.
You have described a fleshless list of abstractions whereas, if you were actually aware of what went on, you could never describe it. Because nature is multidimensional, language is linear, language is scrawny. And therefore, if you identify the world as it is with the way the world is described, it is as if you were trying to eat dollar bills and expect a nutritious diet. Or eat numbers. A lot of people eat numbers. People play the stock market and they are doing nothing but eating numbers. They are always unhappy, absolutely miserable, because they never get anything. So therefore, they always hope more is coming because they believe that if they eat enough dollar bills eventually something satisfactory will happen. So eating the abstractions all the time…we want more and more and more time.
Confucius very wisely said, “A man who understands the Tao in the morning may die with content in the evening.” Because when you understand, you do not put your hope in time, time will not solve a thing. And the Christian word for “sinning” (in Greek is amatanene), which means “to miss the point.” And the point is eternal life which is here and now.
But until there is silence of the mind, it is almost impossible to understand – eternal life, that is to say, eternal now.
But then when you are fully aware and not thinking, you will notice some amazing absences: there is no past. Can you hear anything past incidentally? Can you hear anything future? They are just not there to the plain sense of ones ears.
Well, I remember in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus said a lot of things about this. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” And if God so clothed the grass or the field which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you faithless ones?” Wow.
So do not worry about tomorrow saying, ‘What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Or how shall we clothe ourselves?’ All the rabble seek after these things. “Sufficient to the day is the worry of it.” Nobody ever preaches a sermon on that text, never. I have heard lots of sermons but never one on that, because people say, “Look, that’s all very well because Jesus was the boss’s son, and he knew that he was really in charge of the universe and had nothing to worry about. But we have to be practical.”
Oh? What do you suppose the Gospel was? The good news – you know it never got out. You, too, are the boss’s son: that was the gospel.
Lots of people in India know that perfectly well…when you get to be a certain age, and after you have studied long enough with a certain guru, then and only then may you realize this. You have put in the time and they finally let you in. Here you have to wait, until you are dead.
The only place to begin is now, because here is where we are. So why put it off? A lot of people say, “Well, I am not ready.” What do you mean you are not ready? What do you have to do to be ready? Well, “I am not good enough, I am perhaps not old enough, not mature enough for such knowledge. I am still frightened of pain. I am still dependent on material things. I have to eat a lot, drink a lot, and I think I had better get all that under control first.”
Oh? You want to be able to congratulate yourself for having gone through the discipline which is rewarded with realization. That is trying to quench fire with fire. Wouldn’t it be great to have no fear, no attachments, no hang-ups, to be as free as the air? Wouldn’t it be crazy to have that courage? But if you look into yourself honestly you will find that inside you are actually a quaking mess of sensitivity, running away from the quaking mess, escaping. You never can.
There is nothing you can actually do to transform your own nature into unattached selflessness because you have a selfish reason for wanting to do it. What does it mean that you cannot do anything about it? It is singing loud and clear: The reason you cannot do anything about it is that you do not exist. “You” as you conceive yourself to be, that is your ego, your image of yourself is not there, it does not exist. It is an abstraction.
When you understand that, you are liberated.
There is the happening, the suchness, yes, sure – you bet, but it is not pushing you around because there is no you to be pushed around. This illusion of the persecuted ego who is pushed around by fate has altogether disappeared. And so in likewise the illusion of the ego who pushes fate around has also disappeared.
There is a happening. By dying to yourself, by having become completely incompetent and found that you do not exist, you are reborn, you become everything.
In the words of Sir Edwin Arnold, “Forgoing self, the universe grows I.”
Synthesis and the Intuitive Mind
Synthesis and the Intuitive Mind
The pandemic has shaken us up in ways that few would have expected. All of us will have experienced friends and acquaintances who have been thrown seriously off kilter by what has happened and is happening. And while this seems true of individuals, it is equally true for group identities like nations. After all, no matter how separate we think we are, we live within communities of thought.
The enforced isolation and social distancing produced by the pandemic is one powerful element in the mix of the current environment of thought. Other features affecting our thinking are the divisions over how we respond to vaccinations and how we understand community health and what we might consider to be be an appropriate response to the pandemic. En masse, human beings have been exposed to the recognition that death may be closer than we think – and community conversations are saturated with the shock and trauma that comes with the death of loved ones. All these elements of this time have pushed many into an introspective, reflective space; and for some they are a source of profound disturbance.
But there is more to the spiritual intensity of these times than the pandemic. For we are living through a period of pronounced ethical crisis – the deepest part of our nature is being challenged by what is an increasingly raw conflict between the human experience of separation and the equally human intellectual and spiritual understanding of the wholeness of life. Nowhere is this conflict more present than in the hazards that arise from climate change, food nutrition, racial injustice, and the ever-widening economic gap. For young people the apparent inability of our systems of governance to respond to these hazards with any measure of appropriate urgency creates a particularly intense crisis – reflected in, among other things, widespread depression and startlingly high youth suicide rates alongside all the heady energies of social activism and a deepening interest in finding an authentic spiritual path.
The turning inwards that is a part of the crisis brings questions: ‘Who am I?’; ‘Who am I in relation to the social and cultural crises of my time?’; ‘Who am I in relation to others, to humanity and to the ‘other’ species in the world?’; ‘Who am I in relation to the dull, absence of delight which permeates modern culture?’.
What makes these questions so powerful, and so hopeful, despite the pain that often accompanies them, is that they lead us to gateways into the spiritual commons. As I understand it these commons are universally, freely available. They offer a space where the high stimulation of community concerns and emotions as they are reflected in the self can be observed with detached calm, so that purpose and meaning can be revealed.
In one sense the spiritual commons can be thought of as the accumulated wisdom of the ages – a universal body of teaching about the worlds of soul and spirit that are more available to intelligent seekers today, than at any previous time. This reservoir of lighted insight and understanding takes form as that archive of literature or music or art, from every known tradition of thought, that fires the imagination with the vistas of interdependence, wholeness, and oneness. It provides all the tools necessary to help us learn the necessary skills of discernment as we search for a pathway into ever increasing wholeness. The widespread accessibility of the spiritual commons today is significant because it prepares us for revelation and sets us on a path towards new understandings of synthesis, and a new awareness of the relation between part and whole; self and other; local national and global. The Yoga for our time has been called the Yoga of Synthesis, with exercises and practices to foster a synthesis of spirit, mind and body; an inclusive, intuitive relationship between self and community; an ability to see anew the spirit of goodness, beauty and truth as it expresses itself in all manner of social and institutional forms.
In another sense the spiritual commons can be thought of as the shared space where deep reflective thought about meaning, and purpose; principle and ethics occurs. It is where we are thinking together as a species in response to both the hazards and crisis of our time but also in response to the great mysteries of Presence. It is in this shared space that we think together about Life itself and who we are as human beings. In the process, it is the space where we encounter liberating ideas and principles that carry the Presence of the mind and spirit of enlightened ancestors; where we become open to impression from the great Lights who live in our time as much as they have ever lived – the Christ and the Buddha, Confucius, Krishna and so on.
From this perspective the spiritual commons are a force of light in the consciousness of our time. Vast, abundant energies are being invoked by the depth of the ethical choices facing us as we navigate our way through all the hazards of living in an interdependent age while we remain entrenched in the dominant mind-set of separation. The well-known Great Invocation from the Alice Bailey writings includes a call to ‘Let Light descend on Earth’ and the comment is made that in making this appeal for light, we are “invoking something which humanity will have to learn to handle… All planetary developments are attended by risks, and none more so than that of the absorption of light – on a world-wide scale – by humanity” [Alice A. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age, Vol. II, p. 327].
This recognition that the soul is shining its light into the human, stirring things up, and bringing its own hazards, seems to me to be an important and necessary shift in the way we look at the world and social/political/cultural crises we are living with. It turns the imagination upside down. We are understandably so centered in the worlds of time and space and the reasoning mind, that we have forgotten that there is another realm of intuitive mind. We can begin to think from the perspective of the spiritual commons – acknowledging the psychic role these commons are playing in all the ethical crises of the age.
Mark Vernon writes: “Imagination, relationship, knowledge, delight. Wisdom and time, truth and love, the implicit and the felt. The meaning of suffering and the purpose of struggle. Life has been organized around spiritual commons before.” He goes on to ask: “Might training ourselves to become conscious of their abundance again help us to do so once more?” I believe that this is happening in ways that we often don’t recognize. More are becoming conscious in an intelligent and thoughtful way of the abundance of these commons than ever before in human history. The multitude of groups, writers and thinkers bringing traditions of universal spirituality into the realm of social commentary are reasonably well known and easily accessible. But there are many who use the language of the secular to bring imagination, spirit and wisdom into this engagement with, and invocation of the spiritual commons that we may often not recognize.
These secular voices challenge us to free ourselves from the political slogans and sound bites of so much of today’s commentary on the crises of the age so that we can reach into the principles and ethics at the core of the issue. One, perhaps unexpected example of this is to be found in the thinking at the heart of UNESCO’s ‘Futures of Education: Learning to Become Initiative’ that is discussed in the 2021#2 issue of the World Goodwill Newsletter.
Gert Biesta of Maynooth University in Ireland, an influential participant in the UNESCO focus, draws attention to the critical role that schools, and universities can play in helping young people become aware of the worlds of desire and the way in which these worlds create and are a part of response to climate change, race relations and so on. The ‘educative power of the arts’ he suggests, are to be found in the “exploration and transformation of our desires so that they can become a positive force for the ways in which we seek to exist in the world in grown-up ways”. Schools and teachers can best prepare their students for the modern world by ‘interrupting’ their sense of their needs and desires, helping them understand the consequence of their choices and actions so that they can freely choose how they will live in the world. Teachers who take seriously the task of preparing their students for the future, need to introduce “the question whether what we desire is actually desirable, both for ourselves and for the life we live, with what and who is other.”
Every profession has its communities of thought that approach the crises of the age through a similar depth of enquiry. And its important to acknowledge that each offers a portal or a gateway into the spiritual commons. Whether the presence of the Great Potencies of the Christ, the Buddha and the Enlightened Ancestors of all traditions are acknowledged or not, spiritual traditions suggest that these Potencies are the source of Light that is pouring ideas of wholeness and oneness into the mind and heart of the human at this time. They, and the Commons where The Great Ones reside, are both a source of deep disturbance and of transformation in the way in which we think about all of the ethical issues of our age – from pandemic to climate change to human rights and freedoms in an interdependent world.
Waters of Spirit
Waters of Spirit
The sound of the rising tide is heard clearly
The miracle happens
A beautiful child appears in the heart of a lotus flower
One single drop of this compassionate water
Is enough to bring back the refreshing spring to our mountains and rivers.
-Thich Nhat Hanh, tr. from The Lotus Sutra
Dear Reader,
In a younger time, I was staying in a hut on a small island off the coast of Belize. The area was sparsely populated and the electric generator that powered the compound was off for the night. That day, I had been injured when I jumped off a dock onto a pointy shell that pierced my foot. I tossed and turned on my cot as the wind outside the hut howled. My foot was inflamed and I felt a sense of panic rising in me, alone and far from home. The darkness in the hut was stifling and humid as I forced myself to rise and hobble outside.
Immediately, I was transported to a paradise. The air was cool and the wind refreshing. Illuminated by the nearly-full moon, giant clouds flowed across the sky like floats in a parade. The sea glittered and heaved, a great breathing being as the palmetto leaves softly chattered. Pain and fear dissipated as I gazed in solitude and awe.
When I think of spiritual transformation, it is something like this vivid memory. We are often locked up in our suffering, fearful and alone. We imagine many terrible things that can befall us, our loved ones and the world. There does not seem to be any way out. And yet, we may only need to make one small step to see that the Mind of Creation is always right there, supporting us. We can call this nirvana, the presence of God, or nature’s ‘animate intelligence’ to quote Jeremy Lent. By any name, it is the unconditioned state of being where the soul soars free.
Of course, many who suffer severe pain and oppression do not find such relief and must wonder if their prayers fall on deaf ears. That is why we who have some relative comfort must make effort to rise above the noise and confusion of our time, simplify our small lives, and find common cause with the broken-hearted and marginalized.
At a time when people can barely agree on the color of the sky, what truths can we hold in common? Surely, we share a common concern for the wellbeing of our children and their children. How can we heal, reimagine and regenerate our world with this common love at its core? We are in the early stages of profound change on our planet, and this is the moment when people of goodwill must channel their energy in service to All – not just I, or even “we” in the narrow sense – but in service to all Earth’s children and all Life.
To do this work we need ways to tap our spiritual commons, human capacities for insight and awareness, resilience and creativity. These abundant collective resources also include ancestral wisdom, feelings of gratitude, wonder and awe, appreciation for beauty, our powers of concentration and insight, our capacity to awaken, spiritual traditions, and personal practices such as prayer and meditation. I see our spiritual commons as a river of pure life-giving waters that each of us can draw from freely. In this edition of Kosmos, we examine and explore these rich inner resources.
Steve Nation has written a beautiful Preface to the Edition and Joni Carley (who first described ‘spiritual commons’ to me), has written the Keynote. I hope you will begin your journey with these two essays. Maybe you have seen the recent Joanna Macy video, Climate Crisis As Spiritual Path. If not, it is twenty minutes well-spent. We spoke with the makers and have provided a full transcript. Please also read the brief and sobering Message from Haiti.
All spiritual ideas are ‘a commons’ and in this light we revisit seven ancient principles of Hermetic Law and re-read The Autobiography of a Yogi on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. James Quilligan and David Bollier have each written brilliantly about the global commons and our need to reassess how we value the natural world. There is much more. After each article, you will see related reading from previous editions of Kosmos – an ever-growing archive – and I hope you will return to dip your cup often.
Our Cover is At the Jordan River, a painting by Yoram Raanan. The Jordan River has since ancient times been imbued with powerful symbolism and layers of meaning. It is ‘both a boundary and a crossing point, a metaphor for spiritual rebirth and salvation, a shared resource and a source of holy water.’* It is the same with our spiritual commons, waters that quench our real thirst and awaken us to the miracles available in every moment.
Love, trust and gratitude,
Kosmos
* https://origins.osu.edu/article/baptized-jordan-restoring-holy-river
Seeking the Honey of Life
Seeking the Honey of Life
“There is much that man could learn from the bees, but he does not have the patience.” – Karl von Frisch
Having built a new home, filled the larder with food, and started a family, would you leave it all behind and set off on a journey with no known end?
For us, this would be extraordinary behavior. For honeybees, though, it is entirely natural. When a bee colony has prospered through the spring, filling the combs with honey and brood, the urge to swarm sets in. On a sunny day in early summer more than half of the colony may set off with their queen, leaving an infant queen behind, not even hatched.
A swarm appears as a wild, chaotic cloud; the beating of so many tiny wings rises from a buzz to a roar. There is little danger of being stung, for the bees are full of honey and intent on their task. Yet the sight of swarming bees almost inevitably inspires fear in us. We do not want to be reminded that we too must sometimes abandon our settled past, and seek an unknown future.
It is a kind of death, and bees are often associated with death in folklore; in Celtic tradition the soul was even thought to leave the body in the form of a bee. The custom of “telling the bees” of a death in the family was taken very seriously; if not solemnly informed of the event, they might leave their hives, never to return.
It is no wonder that bees should be considered guardians of that unknown country. Bees willingly “die” to their old hive in order that the colony may be reborn. The drive for new life is the only law they know. We grasp what we already have, and become imprisoned by it; the bees give everything away, and are free.
When they swarm, their final destination is not yet decided. At first, they do not go far from the old hive, but will cluster nearby. This is the moment when beekeepers may recover the colony and settle it in a new hive. If left to themselves, they begin to send out explorers who search for a suitable home, returning to “dance” their findings on the surface of the cluster.
These movements, described by their discoverer Karl von Frisch in The Dancing Bees, enable the bees to communicate their findings to one another with incredible precision. The direction, speed, and liveliness of the scout bee’s movement all convey information that is received and interpreted by the watchers, who learn from her where to fly. Even when forced by obstacles to fly a roundabout route, they are able to arrive at the correct location, up to two miles away. How exactly these tiny creatures are able to calculate time and distance so accurately is still not understood.
This ingenious system of communication seems to embody what we usually do not attribute to other creatures than ourselves: “an intelligence independent of instinct.”1 Scientists are still baffled by it. The more we study what happens within the hive, the more an intelligent being appears to be at work, not in the individual bees, but between and among them. As we scurry about on our isolated, self-oriented quests, could we not stop to consider whether, if we let ourselves become aware of it, a higher intelligence might speak to us? As Karl von Frisch remarks, “There is much that man could learn from the bees, but he does not have the patience.”2
If not captured by a beekeeper, the swarm will settle in any protected place where they can build new combs and raise their young. In their new home, the bees dance again, this time to tell one another about food sources. They now must build up honey for the winter, or the colony will perish.
Though they knew nothing of the remarkable “language” of the bee dances, the ancients recognized the creation of honey as wisdom made manifest. The Bible is full of it:
“My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to
………….thy taste;
So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul…”3
It is notable that in gathering nectar, the honeybee need not destroy or injure any living thing. A Buddhist proverb advises, “As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the flower, or its color or scent, so let a sage dwell in the community.” Indeed, the bee not only does no harm, but performs a vital service in carrying pollen from one flower to another. The true seeker, she reminds us, is one who serves the whole.
After taking in the substances offered up by the plant, the bee further transforms them within her own body, not in the stomach but in a special honey sac. The honey is carefully spread in the comb so that water can evaporate; the bees know the exact moment when it is ready to be capped without fermenting.
The transformed nectar takes on an eternal quality, remaining sweet, fragrant and golden indefinitely without preservatives. It is literally food fit for the gods; it nourished Zeus in his cradle, and has been found in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. The Vedas describe it as an attribute of the Asvins, twin gods of light. For the bees, of course, it is life itself.
Sweet things are no longer a rarity or a luxury to us today. But when we taste a drop of honey, we may try to recapture the reverence and wonder that once arose from this experience. It is the product of prodigious feats of navigation and tireless labor, a living symbol of the sweetness that springs from wholehearted entry into life, seeking only to transform what one meets and offer it back again. Truly, there is much we may learn from the bees.
References
[1] William Longgood, The Queen Must Die (New York: Norton, 1985), p. 203.
[2] Karl von Frisch, The Dancing Bees (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966), p. 148.
[3] Proverbs 24:13-14.
Reconnecting Our Children to Nature
Reconnecting Our Children to Nature
We’ve been told a story that we are selfish, aggressive, and rugged individuals. But if that were true, we should have no problem with physical distancing and self-isolation. The pandemic showed us that this story is not who we are.
That’s because we evolved in cooperative bands of kin and non-kin where we were nurtured and welcomed by all members of the community. We lived together, we gathered food together, we sang together, and we danced together. We knew it would have been impossible to survive on our own. But together, we thrived.
Today, we are living in a culture that goes against everything it means to be human. Our culture emphasizes toughness over tenderness, isolation instead of togetherness, even for babies. As a result, we are depressed, anxious, chronically ill, and at the bottom of every international indicator for health. We are living in a trauma factory.
We are stuck in a cycle of competitive detachment where we feel disconnected from others and even ourselves, while at the same time feeling we have to compete for anything worthwhile. There is a way, not only to break this cycle, but to create a new cycle, one that reclaims our humanity and helps us heal ourselves and our culture. We can create a cycle of connected, cooperative companionship.
For most of our existence, we have created culture from the bottom up, from the way we raised children, and from the top down, from the stories we told one another (Four Arrows & Narvaez, in press). Children were nested in loving supportive village care, growing deep connections to and respect for the natural world. The stories they heard spoke of their relationships to and responsibility for the community and the earth.
In modern culture, children are raised with disconnection, with little concern for their basic needs and with an almost random set of relational experiences. They still hear stories, conveyed by various media, but they are full of put-downs, egoism and violence.
Babies require an external womb experience to grow and connect with others. They need calming affectionate care, immediate responses to keep them optimally aroused while rapidly growing brain connections. Without this early care, without meeting our millions-year-old biological needs for our evolved nest, babies learn a pattern of disconnection from the self, others, and the world, manifesting in self-protective mindsets and irritation with people from different backgrounds or with different ideas. We withdraw from social life because it is just too painful, triggering the traumas we experienced early on in life. We constantly seek to fill a void we were never biologically intended to experience.
The good news is that it is possible to break this cycle of competitive detachment and restore the cycles of connected, cooperative companionship. We can learn what our basic needs are and find ways to help everyone get them met. We can take steps that open our minds and hearts and build empathy towards others who are different from us. We can become aware and careful about where we put our greatest asset – our attention. We can build attachment to the natural world by immersing ourselves in its beauty and developing our connection with its aliveness.
Cultures can and do change. It begins with each one of us realizing that we are living in a culture that is at odds with our inherent nature to be empathic, flexible, and sovereign beings. We can take steps to heal and restore our core nature of sociality and connectedness.
Many of us assume that the culture we live in mirrors innate human nature. But today’s dominant cultures of competitive destructive detachment are rare and recent. Nearly every other culture that has ever existed during our species history over millions of years has been one of connected cooperative companionship.
Nurturing the wellbeing of community members characterized many First Nation communities over hundreds if not thousands of years. The ancestors of the San Bushmen, extant for over 150,000 years, provided contemporary humanity’s genes. Their longevity demonstrates the importance of aligning with Earth wisdom.
What does aligning with Earth wisdom look like? It means following evolved practices that promote wellbeing and sustainability, common in the traditions of First Nations around the world. Along with deep place-based knowledge, the Indigenous worldview is one of respectful relations with all members of the biocommunity, from plants and animals to waterways and mountains. Robin Wall Kimmerer described the “honorable harvest” principles that traditionally guide Native American communities. They include asking permission before taking the life of a plant or animal and respecting the answer; not taking the first or last; leaving at least half; giving a gift in return for life taken.
To embrace this orientation to kinship relations and not dismiss it out of hand, one must build a deep sense of nature connection or ecological attachment. As poet and activist Wendell Berry noted regarding honoring earth, “it all turns on affection.” To care for the earth, one must feel bonded to it. Many do not. Nature immersion from a young age avoids this ‘nature deficit disorder’ that is now rampant among children and adults in the USA. Ecological attachment can be built with daily practices of attention and immersion, along with cultural stories about our kinship with a sentient living earth.
Fundamental to growing an earth-respecting member of the biocommunity is our species’ evolved nest, a set of practices more than 75 million years old, passed on through our social mammalian line. Neuro- and social sciences are demonstrating the importance of each nest component for child and adult wellbeing. Soothing gestation and birth foster resilient social and emotional intelligence. Breastfeeding for several years stimulates proper jaw and brain development. Positive touch promotes healthy self-regulation. A welcoming social climate supports a sense of belonging and positive growth. Self-directed social play promotes friendship and control of aggression. Alloparents (other responsive caregivers) nurture flexibility and openness. Responsive relationships support healthy social and physical development. Nature embeddedness ensures a sense of placefulness on the earth. Routine healing practices offer ways to maintain harmony and healthy balance in self and relationships, including with the other than human. Societies that provide less of the evolved nest, like the USA, suffer from species-atypical outcomes that compound over generations—high rates of depression, anxiety suicidality, dysregulation and illbeing.
While critical for building humanity’s social brain in early life, nestedness appears to be vital throughout life for maintaining full humanity and an earth-based moral compass, as demonstrated by San Bushmen. To heal ourselves and our world, we simply must return to this way of nurturing children, adults and communities.
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