I. The Existing Conditions

What is needless suffering?

In this technological age, we now have vast archives of advanced research and knowledge at our fingertips with the scientific and intellectual know-how to cure and prevent most diseases, disabilities and unworkable conditions which exist in the world today.

For example, with simple medicines diarrhea presents only a mild nuisance to children in the industrialized world. Yet, over five million children die every year in Third World countries because of diarrheal diseases. 1) Children dying from diarrhea is needless suffering. In India six million people are blind from cataracts. The Aravind Eye Hospital in India can perform a simple operation which will restore the sight of many of those people needlessly blind. The hospital has the capacity to perform 30,000 restorations annually at a cost of S5 per person, yet only 8,000 people are taking advantage of this operation. 2) Being blind when sight is so readily available is needless suffering.

In the United States 153,000 Americans under the age of 65 die from heart attacks each year. Each day over 1,500 suffer a non-fatal attack and many are partially or totally disabled, leaving them to face the risk of a future attack. In addition, one million Americans under 65 are victims of stroke each year, and 30,000 of these prove fatal. Despite the advances in understanding of life style changes which can reduce the risk of premature death and disability, such as relaxation training, good nutrition, exercise, smoking cessation and blood pressure control, the toll keeps mounting. At least 90 percent of the fatal and near-fatal episodes of premature strokes and heart attacks are preventable. 3)This is needless suffering. 4) "The influence of the Cartesian paradigm on medical thought resulted in the so-called biomedical model, which constitutes the conceptual foundation of modern scientific medicine." 5)"By concentrating on smaller and smaller fragments of the body, modern medicine often loses sight of the patient as a human being, and by reducing health to mechanical functioning, it is no longer able to deal with the phenomenon of healing."

The belief that nature can be reduced to mathematical descriptions, and the domination of rational and scientific thought overshadow the tremendous achievements of men like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. 6) The American poet Robinson Jeffers wrote, "Science and mathematics run parallel to reality, they squint at it, but they never touch it, it would unsky the world and shatter the bones of mankind into little white fragments, if any mind should, but for a moment, touch truth."

7) As we progressed along the path of rational scientific thought and attempted to reduce nature to a mathematical description, we also separated the body from mind and spirit. We lost sight of who we really are because we could not know our essential nature if we could not scientifically prove it.

8) In the words of C.G. Jung, "There is another person in ourselves-that larger and greater personality maturing within us, who we have already met as an inner friend of the soul-this relationship is a mystery to the scientific intellect (the ego), becustomed to regard these things unsympathetically. But if it made allowance for feeling, we it is the friend whom the sun-god takes with him on his chariot."

We do not intend to demean scientific inquiry, nor our analytical capacity, but rather we seek to restore their proper perspective in the light of our wholeness. We have made dramatic advances in the treatment of diseases. Such as Pasteur's correlation of microbes with specific ailments. However, we have lost our way in Koch's search for causes of illness by reducing organisms to their smallest parts. Ironically, it was Pasteur who said on his death bed: "It is not the bacteria, it is the terrain." 9) Our discovery of cures for disease introduced us to the notion that someone else with scientific knowledge could assume responsibility for our health. So began the denial of the healing force within all of us.

With the growth of humanistic philosophy, we overthrew God and the angels, and in so doing left ourselves answerable to no one but ourselves. By separating ourselves from nature and the cosmos, we came to believe that we are the only beings on earth with rights or destiny. Thus began the wholesale slaughter of forests, entire species of animals, and the pollution of our skies and oceans. We no longer live in harmony with nature but against her.

In the words of the Indian mystical poet, Kabir: "The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love, and the arrogance of our reason has separated us from that love."When we begin to rely solely upon reason, and ignore the wisdom of the heart, we lose the ability to look in new directions. The technology resulting from the Scientific Revolution has produced a reduction in infectious diseases, however, it has also produced as many problems as it has cures. As we address nutrition and sanitation worldwide, we are still confronting new diseases, such as chronic stress. Will wellness ever be accessible to us? We must not look toward our technology alone to heal us.

Dr. Lewis Thomas, Head of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, said, "Just a few years ago . . . I predicted that we were nearly finished with the problem of infection, and that only a handful of still unsettled matters needed to be tidied up here and there. Moreover, I took the stand that our microbial adversaries make up a finite, short list; once done with those still at large, I saw no reason to imagine the existence of others still unknown."

With the advent of such diseases as Legionnaire's disease, Lyme arthritis, and, more recently, AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), we are now facing biological mysteries that are not nearly under control. Dr. Thomas goes on to state, "I take it all back now, we are not about to finish the job of infectious diseases, nor are we likely to in the near term, maybe not in the long, long term."

Usually it is the physical aspect of a human being that comes to mind when we use the word "health." If you have a cold, high blood pressure or cancer, you're obviously ill. However, if you've lost your job, or it's smoggy, or you cannot get along with your spouse, you're still considered to be healthy. There is nothing wrong with you physically, there is nothing to see your doctor about, your health seems quite intact. Is this health? The body is apparently healthy, but what about the person? What about the spirit and the soul? What about the emotional aspects? And what about the environment's impact on you? We can lose our natural knowing about our well-being and transfer responsibility for our health to professionals administering complex technical knowledge. We lose sight of who we are as whole, unified and balanced human beings.

Another aspect of this lack of responsibility relates to our communication with health professionals. Technical jargon separates us as patients from those who want to heal us. As patients we feel alienated while our doctors and other health professionals feel frustrated with their inability to explain without jargon. This condition discourages patients from assuming responsibility in their own cure and prevents a partnership between doctor and patient from occurring. Neither patient nor health professional can realize his or her own full potential from this matrix.

By overemphasizing the technical treatment of disease we lose sight of the capacity of our families, culture, and society to nurture and heal us during illness. For example, Thomas McKeown, in his health studies report of the past 300 years in England and Wales, pointed out that medical advances generally coincided with, rather than caused, improvements in health. Only 10% of the improvements in the mortality from infectious disease could be traced to specific medical intervention. The remaining 90% of improvements were traced to such non-medical influences as environment, nutrition, and social advances.

II. Walk on two feet

The phrase "walk on two feet" is adopted from a Chinese motto used during the transition from a feudal society to a modern technological one. It was coined to illustrate that the Chinese would blend the old with the new. Both old wooden plows used for thousands of years in China and new tractors made in the plants in Peking would be used to cultivate the fields - one furrow from the man and the ox and ten from the tractor, working side by side to feed the people.

We are moving into a new age in which we need to utilize everything that is available to us, including the wisdom of our forefathers and the newest technology. For example, the medical specialist can work with the traditional faith healer, the anesthesiologist with the accupuncturist, and the nurse practitioner with the barefoot doctor. As we work in partnership and cooperation, our vision of health expands and the possibilities of our own evolution accelerate.

The English scientist Peter Russell says the process is well underway and we are moving toward the "Gaiafield" where nations and individuals will be guided by the magnetic force of planetary consciousness. Here Gaia (our planet -named for the Greek goddess of the earth) will behave as a single organism guided by a single flow of thoughts. Russell says, "We may well be headed towards a critical mass of consciousness, beyond which the momentum of raising consciousness would outweigh the inertia of the old ego-based model. If so, crossing the threshold would represent a major transformation for humanity. Beyond it society may well be completely transformed."

How soon will we reach the "Gaiafield"? Evolution has been accelerating at an ever-increasing rate. Teillhard de Chardin, the great French paleontologist, said it would take thousands or even millions of years for a new humanity to emerge. Sri Aurobindo believed it could happen within the next three hundred years. Russell asserts that we may see it within the next two decades.

We can bring planetary well-being into reality by viewing the existing conditions and patterns of thought in the world as an opportunity. As we alter our view of the present chaos and fragmentation of global health we see this as the beginning of our moving toward a higher level of wellness for all human beings. Viewed through this shift in context, the World Health Organization, for example, can be seen as manifesting an unfolding of evolution in human consciousness.

The World Health Organization has estimated that over 80% of all infectious illness and diseases in the _1/4 Third World are attributable to contaminated drinking water. 2 This is a new consciousness. The World Health Organization has declared the 1980's as the "water decade"; 158 nations of the earth have joined together in beginning a campaign for the purification of water and the eradication of disease. This is active partnership in the unfolding of creation. We know today that we have the knowledge and means to ensure basic sanitation all over the earth. 3 Looking at these two facts from the context of Health for All, the U.N. General Assembly launched the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade on November 10, 1980. The goal was to provide safe drinking water and adequate sanitation by 1990 for two billion people in the developing countries.4 We had the resources and technology to accomplish this and yet most people were unaware of the existence of this campaign.

Scientists are pointing out that the world population is expected to stabilize soon. The figure l0 is held as a benchmark in evolutionary development. It takes ten billion atoms to make a single, living cell. It takes the same number of cells to produce an ordinary human consciousness. Therefore, it should take ten billion individuals to create a global brain. At this point we could expect a new form of unity, "The Gaifield, this earth unity, this global vision, will not be the property of individual human beings any more than consciousness is the property of individual cells. It will occur at the planetary level, emerging from the combined interactions of all the minds within the social superorganism."

Peter Russell, in asserting that the process is well under way, cites the growing popularity of such consciousness raising practices in the world as meditation, yoga, biofeedback and hypnosis - inner technologies which can lead to the emergence of the "Gaiafield." Bv "Gaiafield" we mean that turning point at which all of Humankind, releasing its fear, becomes Godkind.

It appears to most profound thinkers, religious leaders, mystics, philosophers and scientists that the global brain is inevitable; that it is actually our human destiny. It seems to be where we are headed, but if we don't get where we are going, Gaia and the rest of the universe will simply go on without us. Our extinction as a species will not appreciably alter the evolution of the Universe. There are billions of planets, billions of Gaias, in our galaxy alone. The death of one species would be no more catastrophic to the universe than the death of one cell is to the human body. Indeed, the death and birth of individual cells is an essential part of the maintenance of life, and of the universe around us. In a similar way, entire Gaias may be emerging and dying within a still larger "galactic superorganism." Clusters of awakened galaxies may represent individual cells in the single life of a universal living system, a universe becoming conscious of itself.

In Building The Earth, Teilhard de Chardin wrote about the potential and promise of self love and planetary harmony, "There finally emerges in our twentieth century human consciousness, for the first time since the awakening of life on the earth, the fundamental problem of Action. No longer for our small selves, for our small family, for our small country; but for the salvation and the success of the universe, we must as modern humans, organize the progress of human energy for the best. A substantial part of this tide of available energy will immediately be absorbed in the expansion of man in matter. But another part, and that the most precious, will inevitably flow back to the levels of spiritual energy.

Between Man and Woman the reciprocal power of sensitization and the spiritual fertilization is demanding to be released. Spiritualized love penetrates into the unknown. In every field we will begin to live constantly in the presence and with the thought of the whole. The organization of human energy taken in its entirety directs and impels us towards the ultimate formation above each personal element, of a common human soul.

Daily the awakening to a superconsciousness becomes better based scientifically and more necessary psychologically . . . this very idea pushed to its logical conclusion, seems the only one capable of making mankind ready for the great event-a synthetic act of adoration in which the passionate desire to conquer the world, and the passionate desire to unite ourselves with God are allied and mutually exalted-a vital act, corresponding to a new sacred age of the earth."

The inescapable truth is that we have been given an opportunity to look at ourselves now with some perspective. It's time now to start asking some big questions, to live within those questions, because this line of thinking offers some powerful answers. We have an opportunity to alter the way we think about almost everything and this alteration is necessary to our survival. We are asking you, and everybody else on the planet, to walk along with us, side by side, to Walk on Two Feet.