So many people feel totally overwhelmed by the problem, and this at all levels. The ordinary citizen sees himself as a tiny pawn without any significant influence on a chessboard with 7.9 billion players. The director of a large multinational company immediately sees the constraints of a system that would oblige him/her above all (supposedly) to aim at the best possible profit for the shareholders. The politician is too often trapped by a system that tells him that it could cost him votes to take measures that would lower the standard of living…

If such a point of view is totally understandable when one has a primarily material view of historical progress, it is totally wrong from a spiritual point of view (especially if one takes a non-dualistic view of spirituality as does the author of these lines). A non-dualistic approach will not see itself as a small ant among 7.9 billion others, but as the Divine expressing Itself on this earth, with an intelligence that will always guide one to the appropriate action to take. Such an approach will not see our planet as a small floating entity among hundreds of billions of others in the universe, but as a planet thought out and willed by a cosmic loving Intelligence that directs and governs absolutely everything in the universe, “from the mental molecule to infinity” to quote one of the greatest American spiritual writers of the 19th century, M.B. Eddy. For as a famous English astronomer of the last century humorously put it, the chances that the universe was born by chance with a mysterious “Big Bang” are as great as seeing a terrible hurricane blow over a huge pile of scrap metal and leave behind a brand-new Boeing 747.

Our universe has a meaning that is totally beyond us, but it has a meaning. Our planet is not “this little bit” of nothing but a creation whose complexity and wonder are totally beyond us. Yes, there is a meaning behind it all. Even our mistakes are part of a divine heavenly pedagogy to make us grow. We can believe in it and act constantly and intelligently to correct the situation or give up and think that everything is doomed.

Each one must choose which vision will be his or her own. And it will change his/her whole life.

Pierre Pradervand