Earthmind: A Modern Adventure in Ancient Wisdom (hardcover)
By Paul Devereux
Discusses the Gaia theory--the idea that the earth is a single living organism--and argues that by adopting this philosophy the planet can be saved.
Amazon review:
This is a story of the new global consciousness that was inspired by the view of Earth from space and which was represented metaphorically by James Lovelock as the Earth goddess, Gaia. These events were contemporary with the awakening by ordinary people in the West to eastern wisdom in the 1960s and 1970s. It ushered in the New Age and Green revolutions. Ever since, there has been a much greater concern to care for our earthly environment and a slow development in human consciousness to see our lives in a more spiritual context. As Devereux says, `For a whole cultural attitude to alter, we have to change more than our industrial processes - we have to change our minds'. The sad fact is that while many ordinary people care passionately about what happens to the planet, our politicians are concerned only with economic results that will gain them re-election.
Devereux is an English environmentalist and research fellow at the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) group at Princeton University, and his co-authors are fellow environmentalists. He is a founding editor of the academic publication, Time & Mind - The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture and he has written 26 books since 1979.
The authors lament the disrespect we now show the Earth and attribute this change in attitude to the replacement of female nature goddesses by an authoritarian male deity. Our culture has now forgotten how to live in harmony with the planet. To our ancestors, Earth was `reborn every moment in some new incarnation of the life force.' Today we have to rely on shamans to transmit the wisdom of the Dreamtime to our normal consciousness. The pagan belief in the Earth as a living organism was crushed by the advance of Christianity. The emergence of the materialist philosophy of science and the economic demands of the Industrial Revolution from the Renaissance onward made respect for the Earth an anachronistic irrelevance. During the Reformation, the Christians in England were intent upon wiping out any lingering belief in witchcraft or the supernatural - unless of course it was the supernatural of Christianity.
Used, very good condition. HarperCollins