Let us reflect together for a moment…
We will start our reflection with the perspective on the earth from space.
Have you ever heard or read about the so called “Overview Effect”?
This is the name astronauts give to a life-changing experience: seeing our Earth planet from space. Can you imagine that? Being weightless while looking from an enormous distance at that small blue-white sphere against the background of a huge, dark void?
It seems so random, but still, it is perfectly balanced: the precise distance from the sun ensures optimal temperatures, the unique blend of oxygen, nitrogen, and water in the atmosphere fosters life, and the rotational speed brings a rhythmic cycle of day and night. Everything is in perfect harmony.
From space, the borders between countries have vanished, while the conflicts over these borders suddenly seem irrelevant. When we are looking from this larger perspective, then everything seems interconnected, everything seems to rely on everything, which underlines the importance of treating our planet with care and sustainability.
Astronauts describe this Overview Effect as an indescribable but life-altering experience that influences their whole outlook.
In our contemplation, we also will seek the Overview Effect, but then by detaching for a moment from our busy daily lives that takes place in a divided world. Let us, for a moment, zoom out entirely and become silent. Let’s take a moment to look together at the great perspective that is connected to our lives, to humanity – yes, to the entire planet. This great perspective we sometimes experience in a quiet moment is indescribable, and we sense how significant and life-altering these moments are for shaping our daily lives.
We are inhabitants of the universe – the macrocosm – and of our planet, our Earth, but we also inhabit our own smaller worlds: our microcosms.
It was in 1543, that the mathematician and astronomer Copernicus demonstrated in his book “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” that the earth was not the center of the universe, as had been assumed until that time. Instead, in his heliocentric model, the Earth orbits the Sun, which was a paradigm shift that marked the start of a new scientific way of thinking, resulting in the development of our modern natural science.
Right now, we live in an era of new realization. As industrialization and economic development strain our ecosystem, causing rising temperatures and reduced biodiversity, we start to become aware of the fact that humanity is actually not the center of life on Earth. We can even come aware to the fact that there is a spiritual sun that maintains the all harmonious life that we are only barely learning to attune to.
What is it that forms the center of our microcosm, of our own, small world? When will we realize that thoughts, desires, feelings, ideas, and actions, are not the center of our small world? And what lies deeply hidden in every human heart, at the centre of every microcosm? What is that Sun around which our inner world can orbit?
St. Augustine wrote, “Man was created so that there might be a new beginning.” The philosopher Hannah Arendt suggests that we continuously carry the potential for a new birth within ourselves.
The School of the Golden Rosycross sees this same message as the goal of every human life: To be born into one’s original being. To become authentic while being truly Human, as we enter into a New Soul, into a New Consciousness.
We are talking about a birth that begins in the centre of our being while simultaneously happening in the world around us. While we take our place in its sacred ecosystem, we find out that the laws that govern us within also govern everything without.
Everything that we find in nature is in constant development, driven and nourished by sunlight. Consider, for example, how sunlight penetrates the bottom of a lake, where a lotus stem pushes through the warmed mud, turning towards the light. It pushes forwards towards the light until it breaks open in a perfect bloom on the surface of the water and to be embraced by the sun’s rays.
Nature is dynamized with inner solar energy that drives everting to harmony, and we can find this also in the unity of macrocosm, of cosmos, and of micro-cosmos. Everything is brought to the perfect dynamics of the omnipresent Light.
So everything in existence is called by the light to develop according to God’s great plan. Everything is continuously called up to be consciously moved by it and to build with it. And in his our question of “why are we here” can evaporate, as we recognize that we are here to build in unison with this divine plan.
God is sometimes called a circle whose center is everywhere while its circumference is nowhere. God is an omnipresent and invisible Light: a radiation of love that we can’t perceive with our human consciousness, because it is infinite and all including. Its perspective is unfathomable for our concrete minds.
But nothing exists outside of this divine sphere of love as everything falls within its infinite field.
The centre of god, so of love, is everywhere. So, each living entity, from atoms to galaxies, is connected to the harmonizing power of this inner Light. Everything is unified from its invisible centre to every other centre that also lies within this field of the Divine, sometimes called heaven.
Maybe it is now easier to see yourself as a microcosm seeking to find the orbit of the original central sun of love that lies in your heart. This is despite the chaos, struggle, and separation that we all experience in this world. Maybe it is easier to see that we, at the centre of our being, are touched by the Divine. At the centre of our being, we are part of the same divine sun that also lies at the centre of everybody else. And it vibrates in our being – it is the omnipresent divine Light of love that radiates in one unity without any separation.
When we give space to that inner Light, to that love that warms everyone and everything, then we can let our lives be driven and nourished by it, while the birth of a New Consciousness arises naturally from its centre.
What does out planet need right now? What does the world ask of us?
Is it simply to care for the Earth, make conscious choices, and repair its damages?
Or is there something more fundamental?
Around us, humanity seeks sustainability while many are worried about nature and the climate because the ecological limits and the livability of our planet become very visible. At the same time, humanity searches for natural growth, driven by a longing for peace and freedom free from the laws of space and time as it seeks the freedom of God within God. At best, each human being seeks to unite his inner, exiled God with the absolute freedom of God while she or he accepts all the consequences of the transformative path towards it.
A century ago, Inayat Khan was asked: “What does the world need now?”
He answered:
‘What is needed is the awakening of the spiritual ideal for humanity, the realization that humanity itself is the Holy Scripture.
Now people’s eyes must be opened to read His Scripture in all life.
All nature is the Handwriting of God if only people could read it.’
When we find the central sun in the silenct space of our being, then we are enabled to read the characters of this scripture in all life, we recognize its words from every essence that we meet.
When we then choose to base our lives on this living essence, on this inner sun, on this nucleus that is the harmony of love, all answers will naturally rise within ourselves and without, while we all become builders of a sacred earth.