AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNITY AND CONCERNED SCIENTISTS

Let me introduce myself. My name is Jeffrey Eisen and I hold a Ph.D. in Psychology. I was trained at New York University and the Alfred Adler Institute, and have come to consider social and environmental issues from the vantage point of holistic psychology. Why is it that we find the world in crisis today when so many good people are well intentioned? I have become convinced that by joining psychology to the scientific and spiritual traditions we gain tremendous insight into the psychological underpinnings of the problem. I frame the problem as a matter of identity.

There's a place where psychology, science, and spirit come together, and that place is in the identity of the observer. Individuals that consider themselves separate, from others and from the body of the earth, will always be competitive, short-sighted, trapped in linear thinking, and unable to take a whole system perspective. What is needed is an identity with the All, in which every enfolded level of organization, even our planet, is an integral part. Only when there is no "other" to oppose or conquer, are we able to conceive and take the actions needed to ensure our collective survival. It is to further this identity that I am forming the organization called Omnius.

Why should Omnius, a spiritual organization, be of interest to concerned scientists and the environmental community?

Properly understood, we are all part of the same global movement. The separate boxes into which we have put the social and behavioral sciences, the hard sciences, and the spiritual sciences are symptomatic of the same illusion of separate identity that plagues us as individuals. It is time to take all fields of knowledge out of their separate boxes and acknowledge their common root.

Enlightened identity, although perhaps not consciously formulated, is just as much common to concerned scientists and the environmental community in general, as it is to spiritual seekers. Concerned environmental awareness is inherent in the realization of common identity I call Omnius. If our realized identity as individuals is as cells in the All, it is in our enlightened best interest to be custodians of the All. Selfishness and altruism, mine and yours, my race, my species, my backyard, my country, and yours, all these intersect in common identity. The dictum of Chief Seattle, that anything one does to harm the earth harms oneself, becomes a matter of course in common identity.

This realization corrects the Western emphasis on competitive individualism. However, it does not condone the punitive sacrifice of the individual to the whole, whether that whole is the group, the nation, or the ecology of the earth. Rather it emphasizes that all levels of organization from the individual up, are equally important, are equally one flesh. This means that the only acceptable solutions are win-win solutions. It is going to take whole system thinking and an open yet scientific approach to devise these solutions. It is going to take intelligence to advance this paradigm.

THE AIM OF OMNIUS:

For some tribes, the name of the tribe simply means the people. Everything that is conceived by that culture as intrinsic to human identity is signified by the tribal name. What if there was no difference between the identity of those tribesmen and any humans anywhere? This is the aim of Omnius. Omnius is truly the common human identity, as it is in a deeper sense the identity of all life. All that remains is to realize it.

The intelligence and technological power that humanity has evolved is a Pandora's box. From it come all the evils of unconscious production and consumption by individuals and corporations that hold themselves separate in a competitive world. But at the bottom of the box comes hope, hope that we will be able to realize our common identity and come together to act on it, before the power of our illusory separateness degrades the world beyond reclamation.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Omnius is a membership organization. Members are called partners, after the Judaic creed of Ticcum Olam, roughly translated as partners with God in the healing of humanity and the earth. At this point one allies through the website [www.omnians.org.] This letter is a call for concerned people everywhere to partner with Omnius and affirm our common identity. It is a request that you sign up on the website and acquaint your colleagues, interested friends and family with Omnius and encourage them to sign up. We are interested in affiliating and trading Web links with like-minded organizations. We would appreciate anything you can do to faciliate our work in this regard. All further correspondence is invited.

Beyond that, we practice and teach a sacred technology for realizing the experience of being an Omnius called spiritual empowerment. We encourage Omnian groups to form, either general groups or issue specific ones. We will get together with them to teach them these techniques. If you are interested, we encourage you to seed a group in your community

Environmental concern is compassion for the earth.

Jeffrey Eisen, Ph.D.