Nature
I live on the top floor and have a view of the city which is magnificent. It is embraced by the beautiful trees outside my window. I have meditated on them for five years now! I am not kidding. They are always offering me new insights. Right now some pine cones are forming on one of them. The process... is incredible. DOREEN ESBERK
Top.The violence of nature
We have all related stories of the beauty in our universe. Hale-Bopp, the Northern Lights, The Milky Way, the cool silence of a forest after a spring rain. But what about the power and strength of our own planet. Is that not what we are all about too?
Yesterday, here in the Philadelphia area, we experienced a series of fierce thunderstorms through the area. A wall cloud rumbled through, with a distinct line to the cells. Mammatus was very prevalent and we were a little concerned for a funnel cloud or even a tornado, which we don't see here very often.
The clouds rolled in from the southeast, a harbinger of bad things to come. The clouds moved in very quickly, about 45 kts (52 mph) which is very fast, the mammatus was then visible and then the hail started. We were in our car and our kids had never seen hail before. It was about 1/2" to 3/4" in diameter and it came down in such sheets my wife and I were sure the car was going to look like the surface of the moon.
Then the rains began and visibility went down to 0. All of a sudden, the flashes of lightning were blinding. Several struck no more than 50 feet from our car. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck raise from the static electricity. Also I was scared out of my (you know what). Our three girls were just screaming with excitement (they weren't afraid because they know the car is one of the safest places to be) my wife was scared, because she had been through a tornado, and this was a prelude of what happens before it hits.
I assured her it was just a great show the atmosphere was putting on. What I was doing was reassuring myself. But just as we were getting a feel of dread in our stomachs, the storm ended as quickly as it began. We were awe struck. We were even more amazed to fine out that no one was injured and that it seemed everyone had escaped any major damage to property. In all my years in meteorology I had never experienced that raw power before. It was scary, fascinating, and awesome. I guess, like everyone, you only think of the quiet, tranquil scenes of nature. But, there are those moments that are just as thought provoking. When the sky goes from sunny to stormy, the birds hightail it to safe haven, the boats dock in the nearest cove and nature puts on it's show. Take care. LEE ANDERSONIf you can accept and love nature's violence as well as her serenity, then you're a real pantheist. I personally love the violence just as strongly as I love the serenity, and feel that sometimes the violence can express the power more clearly.
I love lightning. I'm not a storm-chaser and I wouldn't be. But I'm only too happy if I get the chance to witness some spectacular displays. For me they are one of things that induce the most intense pantheistic mystical feelings.
We don't get them often in London - but last year there was a brilliant show over Hampstead Heath - no rain at the time, just ropes of lightning curving down and up again into the clouds, like hammocks. My son and I were sitting in the open - a stupid thing to do, since we were the tallest objects for quite a distance. I have been in a plane struck by lightning - it happened too fast to be scared - and a bolt hit about three yards from my car once.
I am also crazy about volcanoes. I tape every programme about them. I would love to watch a lake of bubbling lava. I'm planning soon to visit Stromboli, off Sicily, which has a permanently active volcano that (usually) is quite safe to watch.
We love nature and the universe for their beauty, and we revere them for their power - and that includes the power of destruction as well as creation. These displays are like an epiphany.
PAUL HARRISON
Are animals pantheists?
Saturday, 24 May 1997. Jenny my Sheepdog had its second litter of pups, six fine puppies, two dogs and four bitches. Sam the father was at the birth but was not that interested, Pip the Lakeland terrier bitch doesn't know yet, she will be jealous. Sam has kept up the defence of the road from trespassers. In human law the road is a public right of way, but to Sam this his territory, our ownership of the land is only recognised by us humans. Sam's Darshana is to chase cars. RICHARD TRAFFORD.
Evolution
All individual animals, if left unrestrained by Nature, would tend to wreck it. For example, if rabbits could breed without any controls, they would dig up and chew down and prevent trees from growing etc etc. In nature there are predators that control rabbits and stop them doing this. If they could, predators would breed until they killed every last one of their prey - and ate themselves out of existence. Sometimes this actually happens (predator-prey cycles, with numbers zooming up and down like a switchback).
For me, Nature's controls are not rational: they just are, they just evolve as a marvelous system for creating dynamic balance. If there is a niche, some creature will develop to fill that niche. Evolution is so creative that every niche gets filled - so any part of nature that produces excess, some other part will develop to control it. That's how Gaia works. It appears to be the working of a mind, but it is really the working of matter and its laws. But it's miraculous, wonderful, beautiful, awesome all the same.
The problem lies with us humans. We have temporarily escaped nature's controls and are imposing many kinds of damage on most living creatures and ecosystems. We are doing this at a speed which is faster than nature's ability to throw up mechanisms to control us. I guess it's only by learning to work with nature rather than against it that some kind of balance may be restored. PAUL HARRISON
Environment
If we do not defend the earth and its ecosystem we all die; it is just a = matter of time. If nature chooses to kill us in our own waste to fix a = problem it is no fault but our own, and so be it. REGINALD ATKINS.My family's emerging purpose is to elevate ecological / environmental concerns to a "core" value. That's where Pantheism fits so well for us. By core values, I refer to those values held so closely that we take them as givens in our decision making. For most people in our society (and for me too, I have to admit) my survival ranks highest, followed closely by the present and future security of my family, followed by not killing anyone, etc.... Somewhere down the list is leaving the Earth healthier when I leave than when I came. What I hope to do through my own efforts and connecting to people in this and other groups is to move the Earth First value MUCH higher in my own and the worlds rankings. RICHARD HERVEY.
A Myth of the Fall in pantheism?
The story ("mythos" means story) of the "fall" has at least three main versions: (1) the Judaeo-Christian (the separation from God of which Christians like Augustine make a very big deal); all human sinfulness, and hence poverty, injustice, social strife, etc., derives from the original sin; (2) the Marxist, according to which social solidarity and mutual caring were quite high, and competitiveness was at a minimum, in early society (primitive communism), and the development of private property and classes was the origin of most of our problems (scientific and technological ignorance being the exceptions), and (3) what I suppose you could call the environmentalist version, of which Paul provides a variant on the SP site, according to which most of our problems derive from our separation from Gaia. In each of these versions, things go from bad to worse, with occasional ups and downs, until something occurs that permits the possibility of a reunion. For Christians the possibility of a reunion is provided by the incarnation of J.C. and his eventual return, for Marxists by the development of the productive forces and the emergence of a class (the propertyless working class) to end all classes, and for pantheists by the emergence of pantheist consciousness and the lifestyle (and economic and political changes?) which follow from it. JAN GARRET
Are machines sacred?
When I see a skyscraper, or a train, or the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, I am moved as much as when I see a redwood, a river, or a rain-forest. I don't understand why this is such a problem; the feeling I get is that this is in some way a betrayal of Pantheism. You stress the problems of creating a dualism; I feel that this is exactly what you are doing by saying that Man-made objects are not also Nature-made. If the point of Pantheism is to show us that we are in accord with the Universe and the Earth, then the products of using Nature respectfully should also be regarded as part of it; I don't see how you can praise the Universe, the Earth, the Mind, but not the amazing products of the latter.
I believe that appearing anti-Man will reduce people's affinity for Pantheism. I always wanted the central tenets of Sci-Pan to be: Divine Cosmos Sacred Earth Glorious Man SAIF PATEL.
Digest index.
Scientific pantheism index.
