From a large planet of overwhelming magnitude, unlimited resources and endless mystery, the Earth has suddenly become a small planet, thoroughly explored, limited in resources, and reduced in mystery.

What is happening now is of a geological and biological order of magnitude. We are upsetting the entire earth system that, over some billions of years and through an endless sequence of groping, of trials and errors, has produced such a magnificent array of living forms, forms capable of seasonal self-renewal over vast periods of time.

Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.

What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation...Our task at this critical moment is to awaken the energies needed to create the new world and to evoke a universal communion of all parts of life.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

All human professions, institutions, and activities must be integral with the earth as the primary self-nourishing , self-governing and self-fulfilling community. To integrate our human activities within this context is our way into the future.

Our main source of psychic energy in the future will depend on our ability to understand this symbol of evolution in an acceptable context of interpretation. Only in the context of an emergent universe will the human project come to an integral understanding of itself. We must, however, come to experience the universe in its psychic as well as in its physical aspect. We need to experience the sequence of evolutionary transformations as moments of grace, and also as celebration moments in our new experience of the sacred.