I was maybe a 13 year-old schoolboy. I used to find deep sense of peace while gazing at the night sky and unbounded happiness while walking in the woods.

I used to read lots of naturalistic and romantic poems that include valorization of nature and environment. I always felt that I had a strong affiliation with nature, the earth and the vast cosmos like some form of spiritual belonging that I am all part of it.

I used to be in awe while looking at the stars or while being in nature.

Later when I was 21, I came across a beautiful word called “Pantheism”. It was something closely connected to my experience and I also came to know that there are many people who possess the same feeling towards nature.

Pantheism dates back thousands of years and its practice is still prevalent in many world religions, cultures and indigenous communities. It is derived from the Greek word ‘Pan’ meaning (all, everything) and ‘Theos’ meaning (God, divine). All is identical to divinity. Nature, the Universe is identical to God.

I see pantheism as a beautiful lost ancient knowledge. This is how our ancestors used to live with the state of oneness with nature. It is just a humble attitude and reverence towards nature. Today we wear ties, ride fancy cars but we don’t have any time to witness and surrender to natural beauty around us.

We developed technology as we evolved but along with it we also developed rigid bounded attitude. We are driven by rugged individualism. We see nature something outside of us like a utilitarian object that is to be consumed and controlled.

The advent of technological world, modernization and industrialization has brought about a change of attitude towards nature. We need to teach our children and young generation more to connect and live with nature.

We need to make them aware about sacredness and importance of the natural environment around us so that when they grow up, they don’t see the earth as a place only to dump wastes. Our barbaric forms of modern activities have seriously damaged our natural environment.

We are the species that possesses self-awareness and contemplates on place, purpose and mortality.

This fuels us with greater responsibility to be humble towards the earth and our fellow earthlings. At last it is we who are going to disappear. We can’t destroy Mother Earth. Remember that it has been here for a long period of time before us humans evolved and it will continue to exist even when our civilization is gone.

It will survive all the catastrophic climate change, global warming and ice age. However we, humans cannot. We need to save ourselves. We are in this age of information and technology.