Earlier civilizations understood more about how nature works than we do today. Their scientists were priests and vice versa; they saw the whole world as interconnected and indivisible.  The building designs of the ancient Chinese cultures were informed by geomantic principles which recognized that straight lines and shapes fostered disruptive behavior. Our geometry is Euclidean, using straight lines and shapes that nature abhors. The Roman and the Greeks had porous egg-shaped earthenware pots to keep water and wine in good health; the Etruscans used wooden pipes to carry drinking water.

Modern times have seen two major evolutionary changes in humanity: greater emphasis on the intellect and the globalization of culture as never before. The biggest shift began about four hundred years ago when the ‘Enlightenment’ brought the growth of rationalism, with its emphasis on the importance of the individual that has produced a collective amnesia in modern society. It is surely not a coincidence that in the same period, that we have progressively lost the connection with our roots, with the numinous and magical essence of place. This has resulted in a deep split in the human psyche between our memory of being part of the Earth – and, in its most positive aspect, the need for independent thinking in order to pursue individual creativity and expanded consciousness.

Our natural world is essentially an indivisible unity, but we human beings are condemned to apprehend it from two different directions – through the perceptual, our senses and through our minds, conceptual. A child just observes and marvels, but as our rational minds become trained we are taught to interpret what we see usually through other peoples’ ideas, in order to ‘make sense of’ our sensory experience. Both are forms of reality, but useless unless we are able to bring the two aspects meaningfully together, the world will present nothing but incomprehensible riddles to us.

This, in fact, is the basic shortcoming of our present human society. It is the great weakness of the prevailing scientific orthodoxy. Some of the pioneers of science were able to bridge this dichotomy. Their way was to immerse themselves so deeply in the world of pure observation and experience, which out of these perceptions the concepts would speak for themselves. Thoreau was one who possessed this rare gift.

The majority believes that everything hard to comprehend must be profound. This is incorrect. What is hard to comprehend is what is immature, unclear and often false. The highest wisdom is simple and passes through the brain directly into the heart. We have experiences every day that fall outside the accepted conventions of reality; like little synchronicities, anticipation of events, the sensing of different qualities of ‘atmosphere’ as emanations from people, situations or places, the power of thought over action, intuitive communication with other people and animals. At best these phenomena might be labeled ‘psychic’ experiences. We are lost because there is no system to ‘make sense’ of an important part of our lives. They are not part of conventional wisdom.

When we gaze up into the night sky on a cloudless night, or when we reach the top of a mountain with a view as far as the eye can see, and feel the joyous humility of being a tiny part of a wondrous world – to describe rationally the immense feeling of oneness with the universe or with nature is quite inconceivable.

These insights may help us to see our world better as an interconnected whole that resonates with the principle ‘as above, so below’. If nature is the mirror of the Divine, then we would expect to have some of its attributes. In nature there is an enormous intricate interdependent aspect that is closely linked with natural processes. I am convinced that nature is guided by the highest intelligence, and this is redolent with both meaning and higher purpose. This means that I have not been ‘brainwashed’ by scientific training. Nature is my teacher, and from childhood I have spent days observing nature in the raw forms. These methods of observation, learned in childhood, have taught me about the intricate connections that flow between all forms of life, they have kept me grounded, and supported my keen intuition and developed sensitivity.

There is no morality in nature, whose evolutionary imperative is part of the Divine master plan of creation. The essential condition of nature’s evolutionary process is the need for balance between species, between active polarities, never at rest. The extraordinary fecundity of nature is endowed with both purpose and meaning. While purpose is like a community of bees at work, meaning lies in the oneness, the unity, of all creation. As a human society, we urgently need to understand nature’s imperative for diversity; in our relationships, in agriculture, husbandry, fishing and forestry. Can we make this leap?