WHAT GOD KNOWS THE EARTH MAY FEEL

I believe that most of what was said of God was in reality said of that spirit whose body is the earth.

A.E., The Candle of Vision

A.E. was the pen name of George William Russell (1867 — 1935), an Irish artist and social reformer closely associated with William Butler Yeats and a literary movement called the Celtic Revival. He was a man of mystical gifts who experienced spontaneous clairvoyance from an early age. In The Candle of Vision (1918) A.E. recorded lush cinematic visions of worlds out of time and mystically enhanced views of this world. The book is a beautifully written mystical memoir brief enough to be read in a couple of hours. It stands as one of the great spiritual classics of the 20th century.

There is precious little theorization in The Candle of Vision, but the theory it does present is deeply challenging to conventional beliefs about the natural world and the existence of a supreme deity beyond nature. A.E. assumed that his experiences were memories of past lives, but not necessarily his own memories. He proposed that the earth itself has a memory in which human memories are stored. This is possible because the earth is a living being who can remember as all living organisms, from whales to worms.

A.E. did not specify what things may have been said about God that could instead be applied to "that spirit whose body is the earth" (i.e., whom we lately call "Gaia"). But we can imagine what these God-like properties of the earth could be. Take any belief about God and consider how it would look converted to a belief about the Earth Goddess.

Religion asks us to believe in a God existing beyond nature, outside of time and space, who sees and knows all. The Koran (4:1, 2) says, "God is ever watching you," and similar assertions occur endlessly in Judaism and Christianity. Suppose we apply this belief to the living earth. Can we believe that the earth somehow sees us and knows our actions, perhaps even our deepest thoughts? If the earth always knows what we are doing, it would know what we are doing to it, for good or ill. Perhaps this belief, tested and developed experientially, could engender a more loving and conscientious outlook about how we relate to the natural world, the earth and all upon it that is not human.

Many people who believe God is omniscient feel guilty about some things they do, imagining God disapproves. If we believed that the earth was our witness, would we feel a similar kind of guilt about what we do to it?