The environmental crisis as a reflection of the modern spiritual crisis

Today’s entering the portal of the 21st century tells us that sunlight, shining everywhere, is the signature of Allah ﷻ. So, each and every detail of the totality of the Universe is home of the Holy Spirit. Allah ﷻ is not outside the world but the world itself is an embodiment of the divine.

The Reality is that there is no separation, no division, no duality and no fragmentation. Everything is connected to everything else and the existence of one is dependent on the existence of the other. Thus, earth, humanity and heaven and the entire cosmos are a seamless whole.

L’attuale conflitto e crisi politica, ambientale e religiosa derivano dalla nostra dimenticanza di chi siamo e di cosa sia la creazione. La crisi ambientale moderna è una crisi spirituale che riflette la nostra dimenticanza della sacralità della natura e e della nostra connessione con il divino.

The causes of this forgetfulness are many and can be traced back to the point where we lost touch with the sacred quality of nature. We have forgotten that the physical cannot be separated from the metaphysical.

The current environmental crisis is, in fact, a spiritual crisis. The ultimate question for us, the ultimate challenge is “Who are we? What are we doing here?”

And the response has always been that we are here first of all to remember who we are, we are here to remember what the world is in its spiritual reality, and above all, we are here to remember Allah ﷻ who is the source of both the world and ourselves.

In the deepest mystical sense, nature is hungry for our prayers, in the sense that we are like a window of the house of nature through which the light and air of the spiritual world penetrate into the natural world. Once that window becomes opaque, the house of nature becomes dark. That is exactly what we are experiencing today.

Once we shut our hearts to Allah ﷻ, darkness spreads over the whole of the world. This, of course, is something very difficult to explain to an agnostic mentality. But from a practical, expedient point of view at least, it should be taken into consideration even by those who do not take rites seriously. You have all read or heard about examples of various religious rituals and their relation to nature.

In villages of Italy and Bali, for example, when there is news of earthquake, people start reciting the beginning of the Gospel and mantra, which many still know by heart.

They faithfully recite it, in a ritual sense, to help recreate balance and harmony with the natural world by calling upon Divine Mercy.

I can hardly overemphasize the significance of this aspect of religion because it is impossible for humans to collectively live-in harmony with nature, without this ritualized relationship with the natural world and harmony with Allah ﷻ and the higher levels of cosmic hierarchy. If we do not have this relationship, nature is reduced to an "it", to a material lump.

They have similar rituals all over the Islamic world, the Hindu and the Zen Buddhist world, in Judaism and in the traditional Christian world.

I am speaking in a simple way for the purposes of this discourse. Simply put, one can say that everything in the world is a divine presence and witness to God. Every aspect of nature contains something of God. The Quran is very specific about this: "Kullu shay in Yusabbihu Bihamdihi " (meaning everything in the universe sing the praise of Him", sings the praise of God) Kuran (17:45).

Therefore, every time we destroy a species, we are destroying a prayerful being. It is like murdering someone while he is praying. It is as abominable as that.

In the next twenty years, maybe the 30% of the species in the world might be destroyed. This horrendous fact is a direct result of a type of knowledge of nature that has been lost, a knowledge which is based on the nexus between all creatures and their Divine Source.

Religious view neither limits itself to external knowledge nor does it deny such knowledge. It deals with the fact that a creature is a locus of Divine Presence. The result of such knowledge is that we must live with the creatures of the world, not only by necessity, but also because of our own spiritual welfare. The destruction of our nature is ultimately the destruction of our own inner being and finally of our external life as well.

Of course, from the point of view of Cause and Effect, it is the reverse; it is the pollution of our inner being that has caused the pollution of the natural environment. It is our inner darkness that has now extended outward into the world of nature. The chaos of the outward reflects like a mirror what has happened within ourselves.

Without revivification of this religious and metaphysical (in light of Sufism or Kabbalah) view of nature, everything else we say about the environmental crisis is just cosmetics and politics. We have to experience the profound rebirth of our conception of the world as "Temenos", a sacred precinct, as the Greek word signifies.

It is not only mosque, temple or church that is a sacred precinct, it is not only human beings, but the whole world, everything in creation that bears testimony to the Divine Presence and which is therefore Temenos. As this verse of Quran, which I cite for you, asserts, “it is not only human beings who sing the praise of God. Everything has it own tongue with which it praises Him”.

Everything sings the praise of Allah ﷻ by virtue of its very existence. We might not understand the language, but the song of praise is there. It is very significant that so many of the great saints of the Abrahamic world who were sensitive to nature claimed to have some kind of communion with nature beyond human language. For example, figures such as St. Francis of Assisi who spoke to the birds, and we have examples of that in Islam and in fact in all religions, not only the Abrahamic ones.

The Religious view of nature requires of us a complete reunderstanding of what nature is, and who we are as human beings who act upon nature, because it is impossible to discuss nature without discussing the image that we have of ourselves.

The very root of creation is the singleness of the Absolute. And the American Indian Lakota’s expression “Mitakuye Oyasin" (we are all related and connected) extends beyond tribal members to all living things.

Yusuf Daud
Founder SophiaCitra Institute PhiloSufi centre for Interfaith and Intercultural dialogue Surabaya-Indonesia