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David W. Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College And as you walk you hear some characters describing what was happening at various points. You know, the collision with the moon right at the beginning, and the first bacteria etc. When I use it, it helps me feel more inside the Earth. Digital technologies are made up of minerals and metals destructively stripped from the Earth. Do you think they are playing a role in disconnecting us from our living planet and our greater selves? Having been under his tutelage in classrooms and in the woods and wilds of Devon, these personal exercises give a flavour of that group experience – but get out into the Negev Desert or the valleys and wadis of the Galilee, or which ever space is your own personal ‘Gaia space’ as Harding names it, and sense the world, as evoked through Harding’s majestic writing.
Featuring leading scientists, ecologists and authors, Animate Earth makes the case for a new holistic scientific revolution as an essential step towards solving the environmental crises created in large part by conventional science’s mechanistic view of the earth.
Stephan Harding lays bare the flaws in today’s narrowing and numbers-bound scientific model, and eloquently articulates the case for a more intuitive holistic approach." In Hippocampi, we invite you to join us in an imaginative engagement with nature, myth, knowledge, symbol and journey, as an endeavour towards finding freedom within the cycles of death and decay that currently headline our lives. In so doing we come to understand the fundamental processes of composting and decomposition that lay the terrain for new trajectories of experience and ways of living.
Anima mundi Encountering Gaia From Gaia hypothesis to Gaia theory Life and the elements Carbon journeys Life, clouds and Gaia From microbes to cell giants A planet on the brink Gaia and biodiversity Living well with Gaia Despite bringing both a scientist’s cool eye and a humanitarian passion to how the environment is being desecrated by human neglect, and giving detailed explanations of how the system responds by temperature cooling balance, for example through the ‘complexity-stability debate’; Harding is an optimist, believing in an uprising of ecological wisdom and a movement toward sustainability. Anima Mundi is leading humanity toward understanding our part in its well-being.If we develop this Gaian consciousness it must surely lead us to consider whether minerals including oil, coal and other fossil fuels, have rights- including the right to stay in the ground. They are not sentient and conscious as we are, but we can think of them as having a sentience because they are made of atoms, because they are matter. Our ally is the Hippocampus, a mythical creature summoned by intention, known through the mists of time for their benevolence, aquakinesis/fluidity, sensorial prowess, and weather magic. It is also an area of our brain concerned with emotion, memory and learning and considered to be part of the limbic system which when stimulated through meditation and other praxis can bring about dream-like imagery and a sense of well-being and connectedness.
Animate Earth is an eloquent call for a new holistic science integrating intuitive and quantitative approaches to reality. The ecological crisis demands a new harmonious relationship between humanity and nature embodied in a world view in which we are part of rather than apart from nature. ” Dr Stephan Harding leads a ‘Deep Time Walk’ at Schumacher College, UK. Photo via Good Factory. Tell us a bit about Gaia Theory. What is it? Recommended.Beautiful photography and interesting discussions related to the history of science...This film would be a good supplement for collections in history of science or environmental ethics and philosophy." There are pre-industrial peoples who for millennia have had this insight of the living Earth very similar to Gaia Theory. For them the forest is totally alive. It has a vast intelligence that they can consult shamanically to find out what’s happening in the forest- where they can hunt, where they can’t hunt- not through science as we would do it, but through an intuitive connection. The forest is alive, full of meaning. But in Gaia Alchemy, Harding goes a step further and argues that each of us, as living creatures, are participants in Gaia, and that Gaia has things to say to us if only we would listen. Part of the problem is that we must overcome the human/nature divide that for 400 years has taught us to see nature as a dead object. We must tune into Gaia as a living mystery in which we are immersed.
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For example, I helped to develop an app called the Deep Time Walk app, which takes you on a 4.6 km journey wherever you are representing 4.6 billion years, which is the age of the Earth. Stephan Harding is one of the few people who knows how to link the science of Gaia with the spirit of Gaia. He shows us that we must understand Gaia not just as an idea in our heads; we must also experience ourselves as part of her living being. . . . A brave book which may upset people from both sides of the divide he seeks to bridge - which makes it all the more essential reading for those seeking to respond to the challenges of our times." This is a conversation that is in its third year of exploration and every year we build on what we have learned from the last. Within it we bring together traditions and insights from Africa, America and the British Isles, as well as hearing from pioneering practitioners around the world. We have a mix of in-person ceremony and practice, with online speaking events and sharing circles, plus recorded material from previous years.
A technique the author uses to encourage a reader to understand further and experience what he is discussing, is to include a series of practical exercises or meditations, scattered through the book, which take the reader on the journey through Gaia. With exercises named ‘sensing the round earth’, ‘swimming through the atmosphere’, ‘breathing chalk & granite’ and ‘riding the clouds’ and half a dozen others, Harding presents the opportunity to know and feel his passion, and join one’s own soul to that of the universe too. Animate Earth represents systems science at its best. I defy you not to be swept along by Stephan Harding's account of how the Earth's natural systems (particularly the carbon cycle) have evolved and of our part in them. In the process, he brings the concept of Gaia to life, not just in terms of the science, but philosophically and personally-giving a whole new dimension to what 'environment-friendly' really means.' Animate Earth argues that we need to establish a right relationship with the planet as a living entity in which we are indissolubly embedded - and to which, in the final analysis, we are all accountable. The book inspires the reader to connect with a profound sense of the intrinsic value of the Earth, and to discover what it means to live as harmoniously as possible within a sentient creature of planetary proportions. This expanded second edition includes a new chapter on fungi, new contemplative exercises and an update on the global climate situation. He is a deeply practical man as well as theorist-ecologist: his doctoral research was on Muntjac Deer within a wild wood, and it was here, measuring and recording animal behaviour, that his listening and appreciation of the earth really began. For me as a non-scientist who struggles with the scientific principles, this is a winning read because Harding ranges from the macro to micro, from academic language to a spiritual rythmn, and as a reader I can resonate with the journey he is taking me on, despite some difficulties in my own mind with the subject area. A beautiful and profound film which includes interviews with leading environmentalists, scientists and spiritual leaders, including Brian Goodwin, Iain McGilchrist, Fritjof Capra, Vandana Shiva Jules Cashford and Satish Kumar.The [human] psyche takes part in the wider psyche of nature,” Harding asserts, arguing as a scientist that we must learn to develop a more holistic perception. By using certain techniques used by alchemists, who saw the world as a more integrated cosmos, Harding aims to overcome the dualistic habits of modern thought that separate mind and body, life and matter, and humanity and the Earth. Each chapter includes a meditation on an aspect of Gaia. Here the reader is asked to put aside their rational mindset, that sees Gaia as an elaborate but non-living mechanism, and to view Her with other faculties, emotional, spiritual, tactile, visual. I suspect that for many scientists, who are used to seeing the parts of a system rather than the whole, this is a daunting task. Harding calls for nothing less than a revolution in the way we look at the Earth, not only to see it through the prism of our rational mind, but to use our feelings to develop a closer relationship. While he skirts close to New Age mysticism, he remains firmly in the scientific world.
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