Gaia con Dios
by
John Omaha
The Gaia Hypothesis tells us that the earth is an organism. Every living thing, whether animate like goldfish or inanimate like rocks, every person, every animal, every plant and tree is an integral part of the organism. Shamanism knows this is true and using the modality of the shamanic journey, it is possible to receive information, teachings from stones or trees or plants. The knowing revealed herein comes from such a shamanic journey.
For aeons the planetary organism functioned well. It grew and developed and plants and animals evolved. Eventually humans evolved and they were integrated into the whole. The animals including the humans received information in the course of the functioning of the planetary organism. The wild horses and other animals knew when an earthquake was imminent. The medicine people among the humans learned to work with Father Sky and to bring rain. In the jungles medicine people learned to use plant helpers to assist them in finding game. Communication among animals and plants and the earth itself was powerful and effective, and there was harmony on the planet.
Then the Contagion arose. It was an infection that affected people's behavior, their thinking, their emotions, what they felt, and what they believed. For 200,000 years before the Contagion came into being, the people lived peacefully with their relatives the Neanderthals, even interbreeding with them. The Contagion developed over time beginning about 50,000 years ago. It reached its zenith a couple of decades ago and it consists of greed, the motivating emotion, money, the concept of property which separated people from a oneness with the planetary organism, self-absorption which replaced the idea of tribe and community that had kept the people functioning for the common good, and violence, murderous violence that motivated killing of other humans and any animal perceived as a competitor. The archeological record pinpoints the onset of the Contagion to 50,000 years ago when humans began slaughtering the Neanderthals. The Contagion spread through the European populations and in modern times it has infected almost every human sub-group on the planet.
Contagion-infected people began to assault the planet itself, extracting oil, coal, gold, natural gas, and water. Because they were infected with the Contagion, the people could not sense the effects of their extraction on the planetary organism. They were unaware that the oil, which had been formed in the heat and pressure of the deep layers of the planet and had seeped upwards to form great pools beneath the surface, they were unaware that these rivers of crude oil had functioned as part of the nervous system that united every part of the planetary organism. Another component of the planetary nervous system was the great aquifers, the lakes of water that sat near the surface. The vast pools of natural gas, some of it held in the earth's mantle, are also part of the nervous system. The pools of oil and water and natural gas integrated the functioning of the atmosphere, the functioning of the oceans, and the functioning of the planetary mantle. Because they had evolved from the atmosphere, the oceans, and the mantle, the plants and animals were also united by the nervous system of oil and water into the planetary communication system. Until the Contagion, the planetary organism functioned in a state of homeostasis. Perturbations were evened out. The planetary organism survived five near death experiences when asteroids struck. Currently the Contagion, spreading among the humans, threatens the health and homeostatic functioning of the planetary organism.
Pumping the vast lakes of oil, water, and natural gas has disrupted the nervous system of the planetary organism. Huge empty spaces exist. These empty spaces do not transmit information, just like in Alzheimer's disease when neurons die, and empty spaces exist where once there were functioning cells. The Alzheimer's patient loses the integrative functions that maintained smooth homeostasis of behavior, emotion, and thought. In the same way, the planetary organism has lost the integrative functions that kept the planet functioning smoothly. The atmosphere no longer communicates with the land. The oceans no longer communicate effectively with the atmosphere and the land, and gigantic storms build up and tear into the land. Because the people, driven by Contagion, have cut down the forests that maintained the integrity of the land, the storms unleash floods and mudslides that bury whole communities of humans and other animals. The polar ice caps and the great glaciers of Greenland and Asia have lost touch with the atmosphere and the land. The ice caps and glaciers melt and run off into the seas raising the levels of the oceans. The rising oceans and melting ice caps evidence the disruption of the planetary nervous system.
The planetary organism has an immune function, just as humans have cells that recognize contaminants, mark them, and then destroy them. As the planet develops a fever and warms, as the ice caps and permafrost melt, the planet's immune function is activated. Methane gas comprises the planet's immune function. The gas has been held in a frozen form hundreds of feet below the surface where it was contained by the frozen soil and frozen water above it. Relieved of containment, the methane bubbles to the surface, gigatons of methane gas bubble up into the atmosphere where it adds to the greenhouse effect and further heats the planet and raises the levels of the oceans. The planet is attempting to kill the infection that is killing it. Already droughts in Africa and India are killing wild and domestic animals and humans. Within 20 to 50 years the planet will be so hot that crops will not grow. Rising oceans are already displacing populations of humans. The Contagion-motivated Middle East invasions to secure more oil and the ensuing wars devastated whole nations, and their citizens are fleeing. Immigrants increase overcrowding that is worsened by overpopulation. Competition for food is beginning. Exhaustion of easily available energy sources means it will not be possible to transport food from where it is produced to where it is consumed. As the planet heats and the oceans rise, the humans carrying the Contagion will die off in the Sixth Extinction event. Money will provide no protection from extinction, because no amount of money can make crops grow if there is no water and the temperature is too high.
The Sixth Extinction will eradicate whole phyla of organisms, plants and animals, down to the level of the Porifera, the sponges. This great cleansing will remove the carriers of the Contagion. Humans will have failed as an evolutionary experiment because they could not recognize the Contagion or its consequences. In the long, ensuing millennia, Gaia will recuperate. Perhaps organisms capable of self-aware self consciousness such as some of us humans possess may once again evolve. As the Sixth Extinction plays out, take a moment to notice the beauty of roses and butterflies, of bees and bluebirds. Hold the smile of a happy child in your awareness. If you feel resistance to the concepts this essay presents, realize that is the Contagion in you. A Contagion that Gaia will soon purge from her body.
Copyright by John Omaha, 2017. All Rights Reserved.
