The dire need to connect with the earth alive, not dead

Nations such as Sri Lanka which had such a rich way of existing with nature have failed to conserve and spread their heritage knowledge 

By Surya Vishwa 

We are caught in a vicious cycle we created for ourselves. Having destroyed the lungs of the earth – our trees that keep us alive – we are now gasping for oxygen. 

The world has been systematically burning, poisoning and beheading the very species which keep us alive. Having thus broken the backbone of the earth, humanity still has not woken up to the fact that we are at present witnessing a world crumbling before our eyes.

We also do not seem to be aware that fate is making us reciprocate in kind – that our own actions are returning back to us. We who failed to appreciate the beauty of this earth and denied it the respect due, who were so busy developing technologies that stifle the air and pollute, in the name of modern comfort and speed, are now forced to wear masks and stifle our lungs. 

We are now gasping on hospital beds dying because we cannot breathe. This is probably how the Amazon forest and the forests around the world felt during forest fires. This is how forests feel when their age old limbs – the trees are cut and land cleared for ‘business investments.’ This is how the animals whose homes we are destroying when clearing forests feel and this is how the fish in the ocean gasp when we murder them with our chemicals. 

We have unhesitatingly polluted our minds, the land and the air. We are now breathing our last. Imprisoning ourselves in petty luxury, we have been myopic to what these ‘luxuries’ have done to the earth.

Designating ourselves as the superior most beings of the planet we have appropriated the earth for ourselves and our notions of what ‘development’ is. We have set up the tombstones of life sky high and prided in them being the hallmarks of our ‘achievement’. Our so-called achievements – our ‘discovering’ of how ‘science’ could feed us by poisoning the earth, by killing off other living beings has not considered that these creature were since time immemorial part of the cycle of life along with us; that they were part of the eco system that not only fed off but most importantly shared in the duty of assisting in the agrarian process. 

Sri Lanka

In the Sri Lankan context, the small bird, the wee kurulla as we call it, was the tiny guardian angel of the paddy harvest as it would hunt down the insects that attacks the paddy fields. The insects and the worms would each have their own role to play in enriching the soil. 

A soil devoid of earthworms is a dead carcass. Earthworms are the nutrient enhancers of the soil. Today there are no more clouds of wee kurullas as seen yesteryear in Lankan paddy fields. There are hardly any earthworms within the chemicalised soil. They are all dead. Murdered by the post-Colonial Sri Lankan misguided ideology of hero worshiping anything that the West comes up with under the guise of science. 

Instead of the usual sets of insects that could be chased off with some harmless herbal infusions (harmless to man, to the insects and to the plants) as our ancestors created with their knowledge, we instead have now surges of deadly insect attacks. These are often not a natural process but dubiously ‘engineered’ for commercial reasons. We live today the deathly life of commercialisation. 

Our genes are the ancient most surviving historical intelligence of this earth – and in some quiet moment – the ancient may speak to us – tell us of its wisdom. It may tell us that there is no more a future for us unless we return to earth – not to the six feet we will anyway inherit and not as the ashes we may become. But to return to the earth alive while we still breathe. The ancient is constantly speaking to us from within us. But are we listening? Can we hear? Can we feel?

Ayurveda

We the hydraulic civilisation that marvelled the world and fed the nation for thousands of years without resorting to the murder of other living beings are today clueless of the vast knowledge that we had on ancient agrarian practices. Most of us are clueless that we had a branch of Ayurveda called Wruksha Ayurveda where there were natural ‘health treatments’ for the earth and its diverse green children. In the past decade or so there have been attempts to revive this knowledge in Sri Lanka by indigenous organisations such as Hela Suwaya. These entities link nature and wellbeing where medication merely means getting close to nature and consuming of food as it was meant for humans – in the purest form. 

Concepts such as ‘Govithenata Oushada’ (tonics for the earth) replace fertiliser. Dr. Kumudu Dahanayake, a Western Allopathic forensic medical practitioner who is now part of the Hela Suwaya agrarian and holistic treatment process through the naadi system once stated to this writer that even the marketing of such ‘tonics for the earth’ were an arduous task. Why? Because, such holistic ways of preserving the health of humans and nature are seen as a ‘threat’ to the diverse industries concerned. 

These industries are torchbearers of modern science but we could and should argue that essentially it is not modern science per se that is the culprit but in the manner it is used and the arrogance in which it is used. Modern science could indeed be used in countless ways to protect nature. It can be used to prevent plastic. The same technological premise that goes for making plastic can be utilised for the creation of nature based products. Why this manner of using technology is slow is because modern man is not empathetic to nature. 

He is not trained to be empathetic to nature and to use his modern knowledge to protect nature. He is not trained to think that he is part nature. The current modern education system has done the very opposite. 

Paying the price

Nations such as Sri Lanka which had such a rich way of existing with nature have failed to conserve and spread their heritage knowledge – we send thousands of youth to global universities and exclaim in pride that they have gone to such and such a place or learning. But we have not realised that without conserving the intangible heritage knowledge of the past within our own culture that we cannot proceed into the future. We have still not realised that today we are paying the price for this in Sri Lanka. We are paying the price of our intellectuals having totally lost their connection with the core aspect of the knowledge of our ancestors.

In this pandemic time we are paying the price – we are paying billions of rupees for other countries for buying vaccines when we do not listen to, recognise, investigate, analyse, understand and test for use the medications of our traditional physicians of Sri Lanka (vedamahattayas) who have developed and are now exporting worldwide COVID-19 specific medications. We no longer recognise that our traditional physicians were and are the life force of the nation. Some of us even within the sphere of Ayurveda use arguments such as ‘anyone with a wattoru can cure early COVID symptoms’.

This was said by a Sri Lankan Ayurvedic doctor in reference to a young traditional physician who has by now about 200 testimonies (signed by diverse Lankan authorities) of preventing the spread of COVID-19 in quarantine centres and prisons. I asked the Ayurveda doctor concerned that if indeed ‘anyone with a wattoru’ (which are uprooted plants and not unknown synthetic medications) could prevent COVID-19 why it would not be a good thing.

This is how the sailor Robert Knox imprisoned in the country in the 17th century saw us – a set of people who were all physicians unto themselves. But today we are waiting for our own Allopathic doctors to investigate the ‘scientific nature’ of coriander! 

Modern science

What we need today is to use the Western science method of investigation to query how Western science is cultivating death and disease and the sweeping destruction of the planet. We need to look into how the business tycoons who profited by this vicious cycle have been fattening academia the world over, especially universities in the West, to be not only blind to this phenomena but to whitewash, promote and to seal the blindness by supporting filtered topics for research. In this manner public opinion is shaped the way industries want; whether it is agriculture, medication, nutrition, environment or animal welfare. 

Few international universities, countries, communities and individuals have gone in the reverse direction in standing up genuinely for the rights of this earth, its creatures and thus for humanity. 

As mentioned earlier while recognising that modern science has given us good things such as electricity and bought the world closer through technology it could be interpreted that modern science has become the master and not the slave. Science should be intelligently used for wellbeing and not destruction and greed. Science should be the slave of the prudent mind. Not the master of an imprudent one. 

Modern science should not be allowed to stuff our minds with false beliefs, severe our umbilical cord with our ancestral link with this earth and blind us to common sense. It should not be allowed to erase from the collective mind of man the emotional and intellectual link with the vast age old knowledge the world had – the ancient sciences and technologies that were non-toxic to man. The world over ancient sciences enabled the coming into being of marvels such as the pyramids and the age old medical systems such as Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha (and the rich nature-based medicinal systems such as those of Africa, – and other ancient civilisations and tribes). This knowledge is today wiped out by the Western science obsession to control the world with its superiority complex. 

Nature first

Ancient sciences were not developed in prison like labs but in the nature-infused mind of man. Ancient humans were an extension of the universe – a component of universal consciousness – they knew when the rain would come, they spoke to the sky and to the moon, they worshipped the sun. They revered the earth and would have torn their hair to see how their offspring are schooled to destroy the planet, to laugh at the love their forefathers had for the eternal mother that is the earth.

We consider ourselves superior. Yet the universe does not think so. We are nothing in the eyes of the earth. We can all fall dead this very minute and the earth will go on. The earth certainly does not need us. It is we who desperately need the earth. 

In a recent discussion with a senior Sri Lankan traditional physician, he insisted that he does not call this current pandemic by the name that we have been told – this traditional physician insisted that he called it ‘Deiyange Ledak’ (illness sent by the gods). This is how Lankan ancestors termed in Sinhalese to describe mysterious ailments which surfaced upon the earth for which cures were not found or ailments which had intriguing symptoms which seemed ominous. 

We can see that the current pandemic has now become lucrative for some; it is lucrative for vaccine makers. We have vaccines made for the first variant and now we have three to four variants cropping up all over the world within the past one year. Except for a handful of rebel veteran Western scientists no one is commenting on whether the vaccines are creating the variants.

No one can know for sure the exact details because the international media is a web dominated by a one track vision; those who call for alternatives to Allopathy such as homeopathy to be tested as potential COVID19 immunity boosters are shut down as promoters of ‘pseudo’ science and ridiculed with the placebo effect theory (despite the fact the man who introduced the holistic Western science option of homeopathy being a renowned Allopathy professional) who knew how to make medicines and read dozens of languages) which enabled him to read of diverse plant-based remedies of different parts of the world. 

What we primarily see today is that the world which once was so close to mother earth as its natural pharmacy is currently devoid of such an affiliation. Even the few communities and nations which have this knowledge are pushed by the industry that is the health sector, carefully engineered by diverse entities, to opt only for synthetically generated options for health. 

Thus we have human beings instead of planting their own fruit trees, medicinal plants and vegetables, gulping synthetic tonics and vitamins.

Ancient wisdom

Yet we are not as modern as we would like to think. We are in fact billions of years old. We are as old as the earth. Our cells are ancient. In them lie billions of years of ancestry dating back to the original species that inhabited this planet. 

Our genes are the ancient most surviving historical intelligence of this earth – and in some quiet moment – the ancient may speak to us – tell us of its wisdom. It may tell us that there is no more a future for us unless we return to earth – not to the six feet we will anyway inherit and not as the ashes we may become. But to return to the earth alive while we still breathe.

The ancient is constantly speaking to us from within us. But are we listening? Can we hear? Can we feel?