As eco-awareness is increasing, more people are appreciating
how dependent we all are on nature. Without nature’s provision of our basic
necessities, we wouldn’t be able to live.
Yet this desirable eco-awareness can morph into an obsessive
fixation with nature that manifest philosophically as naturalism. By seeing
nature as the be-all and the end-all, naturalism exiles God and replaces him
with nature. Naturalism comprises a dead-end in our spiritual evolution.
While all living beings depend on nature, we humans have the
intelligence to appreciate its complexity and intricacy – an appreciation that
can be enhanced through scientific study when done open-mindedly. But we also
have a higher intelligence to perceive something more – the divine hand behind
nature. The Bhagavad-gita (09.10) reminds us that nature works under Krishna’s
supervision.
An infant eats whatever food is provided without thinking
where it comes from, but a child notes that putting some coins in a machine
provides readymade food such as sandwiches. And an adult understands that
behind the machine is the intelligence of the maker, who has set up the system
by which food is provided.
Similarly, the subhuman living beings simply live on nature,
without consciously contemplating the source of things. Whatever eco-friendly
behavior they exhibit is simply due to biological instinct, not conscious
cogitation. We humans when we rise slightly above the force of biological
drives learn to contemplate the complex natural mechanisms that make our existence
possible. When our consciousness evolves further, we perceive that beyond these
complex mechanisms is a super-intelligent transcendent maker.
The capacity to perceive spiritual reality, especially the
supreme spiritual reality, is humanity’s defining privilege. When we value
nature’s provision not as a lucky accident of unguided natural processes, but
as the benevolence of the supervisor of nature, our spiritual evolution races
towards its zenith.
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