Therefore an individual salvation in heavens beyond, careless of the earth, is not our highest objective; the liberation and self-fulfilment of others is as much our own concern, —we might almost say, our divine self-interest,— as our own liberation. Otherwise our unity with others would have no effective meaning. To conquer the lures of egoistic existence in this world is our first victory over ourselves; to conquer the lure of individual happiness in heavens beyond is our second victory; to conquer the highest lure of escape from life and a self-absorbed bliss in the impersonal infinity is the last and greatest victory. Then are we rid of all individual exclusiveness and possessed of our entire spiritual freedom.
—The Synthesis of Yoga—The Soul and Its Liberation; Sri Aurobindo; p. 425
Christian theism has done much to bring about the dangerous situation to which the world has come. In varied forms it has supported anthropocentrism, ignored or belittled the natural world, opposed efforts to stop population growth, directed attention away from the urgent needs of this life, treated as of absolute authority for today teachings that were meant to influence a very different world, aroused false hopes, given false assurances, and claimed God's authority for all these sins. Those of us who know the power of Christian faith from within also know how dangerous are its distortions and misdirections of human thought and feeling. To channel the power of faith into life-affirming passion and a sense of belonging to the community of creatures is one of our life purposes.
Our Christian theism has led us to perceive this world in deeply troubling ways. Each passing year we see foreclosed happier possibilities for the future. Today we know the earth will get hotter in the coming decides and that many destructive consequences will follow. We know that the ozone layer will shrink and that much of the protection it has afforded us will be denied to our children and grandchildren. It is too late to avoid the greenhouse effect or the reduction of the ozone shield. The question now is how rapidly and how far the situation will deteriorate. But that question is not unimportant. Our actions now may determine whether the deterioration of the planetary environment can be slowed and stopped at a level that will allow much of the biosphere to survive.
The recognition of possibilities gone forever inspires us with a sense of urgency. Delay is costly to us and even more to our descendants and to the other species with which we share the planet. It is already very late. It is hard to avoid bitterness about what might have been done and about the additional missed opportunities each day. It is hard to avoid resentment toward those who continue so successfully to block the needed changes.
Yet there is hope. On a hotter planet, with lost deltas and shrunken coastlines, under a more dangerous sun, with less arable land, more people, fewer species of living things, a legacy of poisonous wastes, and much beauty irrevocably lost, there will still be the possibility that our children's children will learn at last to live as a community among communities. Perhaps they will learn also to forgive this generation its blind commitment to ever greater consumption. Perhaps they will even appreciate its belated efforts to leave them a planet still capable of supporting life in community.
—For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future; Herman E. Daly & John B. Cobb Jr.;pp. 405-6.
There are theories of existence which accept the individual soul, but not soul
evolution. There is, for instance, that singular dogma of a soul without a past
but with a future, created by the birth of the body but indestructible by the
death of the body, But this is a violent and irrational assumption, an imagination
unverified and without verisimilitude. It involves the difficulty of a creature
beginning in time but enduring through all eternity, an immortal being dependent
for its existence on an act of physical generation, yet itself always and entirely
unphysical and independent of the body which results from the generation. These
are objections insuperable to the reason. But there is too the difficulty that
this soul inherits a past for which it is in no way responsible, or is burdened
with mastering propensities imposed on it not by its own act, and is yet responsible
for its future which is treated as if it were in no way determined by that often
deplorable inheritance, damnosa hereditas, or that unfair creation,
and were entirely of its own making. We are made helplessly what we are and
are yet responsible for what we are, — or at least for what we shall be
hereafter, which is inevitably determined to a large extent by what we are originally.
And we have only this one chance. Plato and the Hottentot, the fortunate child
of saints or Rishis and the born and trained criminal plunged from beginning
to end in the lowest fetid corruption of a great modern city have equally to
create by the action or belief of this one unequal life all their eternal future.
This is a paradox which offends both the soul and the reason, the ethical sense
and the spiritual intuition.
—The Supramental Manifestation —The Problem of Rebirth —Rebirth and Soul Evolution; Sri Aurobindo; p. 112