Leading Scholar Andrew Harvey Discusses our World Crises and his Vision for Change ---

I think that there is a great death going on that is obvious now to everybody with half a brain and half a heart. It involves an environmental holocaust that is devastating the environment. It involves the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons, which threaten millions of people. It involves the escalation of a massive conflict in the Middle East, which is looking extremely dangerous. It involves the dereliction of a whole world through an obsession with technology. It involves a mass media trash and trivialization at a moment when the whole world needs serious, deep, profound inspiration. It involves a pace of life that is so crazy it makes everybody half crazy. I think when you think of all these crises together you see very clearly that we’re in a situation that threatens the life of humanity and the life of the planet.

This would be a complete disaster if there weren’t some Divine meaning to it, and I believe that
there very much is. I think the divine meaning is that this great death is destined to compel humanity to discover its own divine nature and work from the discovery in unity with itself and with nature to rebuild an almost totally ruined world.

So we really deeply need to embrace the truth of this death, and also to see that it is the condition of a great birth, that this great birth is going on right now and it will compel an evolutionary leap. It is a birth in the deep, passionate growth of all kinds of people who are waking up and realizing that there is a potential extinction crisis of the human race, but also realizing that God is in us and that we do have the Divine nature. I think this crisis is to be used by the Divine as a way of crucifying our illusions to being born into the world of Divine humanity, which would give us direct access to unimaginable power. This power is to be used, not for domination and exploitation, but for healing, for tremendous worldwide healing; healing of the divisions, healing of all the separations between all beings.

People who have a deep spiritual connection to the Divine know that they are divine, know that life is divine, the world is divine and they are actually doing things in the real world with real resources out of love for the world, guided by inner wisdom. Those are the people who are going to get through a time of devastating affairs. Those are the people who are going to live the life that will make living here worthwhile. Those people are the “Sacred Activists”.

We are facing unprecedented crises with a largely destroyed psyche. That is why the whole vision of Sacred Activism is so important. It offers a way of inner healing that leads to the desire to act and the knowledge of how to act. You can’t solve all the world’s problems so decide which of them absolutely breaks your heart and dedicate your time to that, because that heartbreak will give you outrage, compassion, passion and energy. Heartbreak is kind of a divine virtue, a divine guide into the depths of your real mission. The holiest impulse behind activism is the passion for justice, to see justice done for all beings. The foundation of a new form of action is a new form of feeling.

I think it is important to be unillusioned, to be realistic, but it’s also very important to understand that there is a tremendous secret in this adventure, the secret of a possible transfiguration of humanity if we go for it with all the passion, truth, humility and deep desire to serve that we can possibly muster. Whatever happens, the only important thing will be to have lived in love, to have lived in the Divine energy, to have given everything that one could possibly give to other beings to make this unendurable situation durable.