Nature and Ecology
We Are All Connected with Mother Nature
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D.
April 29, 2022
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." —Albert Einstein
Being grounded with Nature allows us to be connected with each other. We all came from her womb and she very well knows all our ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
We are all her children after all. She gave us life and continues to nourish, sustain, and protect us, even in times when we are unaware of her presence. We can always invoke her guidance and assistance. As a mother, she considers it her duty and responsibility to always look after her children.
What a great love Nature has shown us. In return, let’s acknowledge our corresponding love and respect for Mother Nature by:
(1) Loving the minerals, stones, rocks, mountains, and other objects as thyself for we all came from them; it was from them that all creatures, including us humans, came from. Their imprint is already in us, in our genes and DNA. They continue to influence our ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, whether for better or for worse.
(2) Loving the plants, and trees, for they too are alive like us. Deprive them of food—air, water, sunshine, fire, and soil—and they grow weak and even die.
They have feelings too like us. They can be sad and happy too. Let them listen to music and they become animated and lively. Chop their trunk or branches and they shed tears. Being unable to move from one place to another, they are most vulnerable to external aggression. And their primary aggressors are human beings.
(3) Loving the insects and the animals. For they too have life. Killing them is no different from killing a human being. Science says life is made of the same ingredients consisting of atoms and molecules while religion says that we all—including minerals, plants, trees—originated from the same spirit of God.
(4) Loving the spirits that dwell in the trees, forests, streams, rivers, oceans, and caves for they too form an essential part of creation. In particular, love the enchanted spirits (engkantos), dwarves, gnomes, and fairies. They deserve our respect. They’re all creatures of our Lord God Almighty. Protect their homes and shelters.
———————
They must have known that we were coming so they prepared a smorgasbord of abundance and wealth for us that can last for all the generations to come. They are our hosts and hostesses.
Our subhuman kindred are all our sources of life. Let’s take good care of them for they will continue to nourish and sustain us despite the destruction and damage we have inflicted on them.
Let’s be one and in communion with them for society depends on them.
The Parable of the Honeybees
The Cosmos has given us a model of how Nature operates. But many of us today are ignoring or taking this model for granted. Let us take the case of the flower-and-the-honeybees parable.
In the honeybee colony, Her Majesty, the Queen, reigns Supreme. But she is a Benevolent Ruler whose commands must be obeyed by her offspring in her Royal Colony. Her words are royal pronouncements and decrees. But her only decree to her Colony is not to produce and nourish another queen for she is a very protective and caring Matriarch.
The Queen establishes a system of government in which all the members of her colony directly participate in running the beehive. Each family member has its respective job description set from the very beginning. In the actual management, each one is a leader unto itself, unsupervised and unguided by the Ruling Monarch. Freedom of choice in the execution of one’s task and responsibilities in the animal world is innate and inborn.
Decisions had to be made quick from moment to moment: where to get food, which flowers have to be visited, who will gather those food, how to produce honey from the raw nectar, who will produce them, how are they to be allocated. And they have the intelligence to know everything there is to know about the outside world. Information was available to all.
While syphoning the nectar, the honeybees do not leave the flowers impoverished. For, at the same time, they also collect pollen that in turn pollinate other flowers as they hop to gather nectar from one flower to another. In the process, flowers got pollinated that enable them to produce fruits and other crops for our sustenance, in the same manner that honeybees are able to produce surplus honey that is able to feed not only the members of the colony, but us as well.
An average of 40,000 honeybees comprise a typical colony that is perched at the top of a tree to get a good GPS of the entire landscape and locate exactly where the flowers are. Hundreds and thousands of bees go out of and back to the colony at least a hundred times daily and visiting as many number of flowers per day. They have to be dispersed in several locations all at once in a shotgun approach, rather than be together in one location.
Hanging precariously on a branch of a tree, it is ready to collapse when the family population becomes so huge, with the Queen laying around 2,000 eggs to maintain her family’s work force. Daily, they have to be ready to go somewhere else in case of natural calamities, build another colony before everybody vanishes.
Anytime the Queen is incapacitated for whatever reasons, they have to be ready with a new Queen. For without the Queen, the family-colony would just gradually disappear, with the honeybees hurled violently outside travelling through distant places, looking for another Queen to stay with. But even before this eventuality happens, the honeybees seem to know already who the next Queen will be.
In all this, everybody knows where to go and what to do, unwatched and unsupervised by the Queen. Today we call this “animal instinct” often used pejoratively when applied to humans as the term connotes a bunch of morons, imbeciles, and idiots doing their thing without thinking. Worse, we are killing all non-human species with our pesticides and chemicals.
Nature had it all prepared. But we want it our way, wherever we want it, whenever we want it, and however we want it. And we never learn or refuse to learn from Nature. We never learn that there is always a time and reason for everything.
Back to Nature
October 23, 2021
Going back to Nature with the rivers, forests, and trees as well as the birds, butterflies, and the bees is not going backwards in time. It's not going away from a civilized to an uncivilized world. It's not leaving the glamorous city life just to live a hermetic life in a quiet, lush, greenery. It's not escaping life.
But the luscious and serene place I used to live in has now become a haven for smoke belchers, reckless chauffeurs, carriers of deadly corona variants. Living has become stressful, uglier, and deadlier as days go by. I want to have a wider breathing space, unrestricted by lockdowns and quarantines. But the show must go on.
1. Classes as usual.
2. My 5th cosmic book (2021), "Surviving Two Years of Global Pandemic", is now being processed for publication in the States.
3. I'm now starting to write my 6th cosmic book for the year 2022, temporarily bearing the title, "One With the Light".
4. Then, "Quantitative Approaches to Phenomenology" where I'll discuss factor analysis, cluster analysis, correlation analysis, multiple linear regression, and other multivariate tools and techniques that could reinforce the qualitative approach to ASI's Phenomenology.
Let's keep ourselves busy for humanity.
The Great Flood Revisited
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – July 18, 2021
The Earth during Noah's time was corrupt and was filled with violence. Whatever men and women thought then were only evil and this went on and on through the ages. Our situation today is very similar. Could it be that God will be sending us another great deluge? If so, does this mean that today's Noah is already here, only we don't know him yet?
Climate Change Is Affecting Our Oceans
Paul J. Dejillas, Ph.D. – June 7, 2021
The Ocean has become the world's greatest garbage dump. Sooner or later, we will be witnessing a Smokey Ocean in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.
Our ocean is the greatest absorber of carbon dioxide in our planet, more than the rainforest of the same area in the Amazon forests.
But what have we done to it? Do you know that it's legal to dump trash in the ocean?
The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (“Ocean Dumping Act”) prohibits dumping materials into the ocean that would adversely affect human health or degrade the marine environment.
But it is perfectly acceptable to dump your raw sewage, paper, rags, glass, metal, bottles, or similar refuse, as long as you are at least 12 miles away from the nearest shoreline.
A wide variety of man-made objects can become marine debris; plastic bags, balloons, buoys, rope, medical waste, glass and plastic bottles, cigarette stubs, cigarette lighters, beverage cans, polystyrene, lost fishing line and nets, and various wastes from cruise ships and oil rigs are among the items commonly found.
The US military used ocean dumping for unused weapons and bombs, including ordinary bombs, landmines and chemical weapons from at least 1919 until 1970.
While our oceans continues to absorb carbon dioxide, the level of carbon dioxide underneath is more than enough for its capacity to absorb. This is because of the enormous wastes we are throwing to the seas.
This is the "State of Our Ocean" as the United Nations celebrates Earth Day annually on the 22nd of April. It's purpose is to draw attention to the urgency of the climate crisis and environmental degradation and the need for immediate action.
Spirits are our indispensable partners in life
November 15, 2020
The Cosmos is not complete without them. While spirits are undetectable to our ordinary senses, there are so many individuals who can.
Spirits have always been with us. The Book of Genesis (1:1-2) says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
And spirits exist in all living creatures, including the animals, insects, bacteria, plants, trees, forests, caves, rivers, oceans, and in our atmosphere as well in the air, fire, clay of earth, and water that nourish and sustain us daily.
Hippocrates had already told us: “The soul is the same in all living creatures although the body of each is different.”
Let us continue to show our respect to our invisible spirits by always being aware of their presence, whatever form they take. This is the sixth greatest commandment. Our total transformation and that of our society cannot be complete without including them in whatever we aspire, plan, and do.
Nature Works Alone
April 18,2016
Nature works without a supervisor. It doesn't need a president, nor senators and congressmen. Look at the birds in the sky flying in varying formations. Look at the school of fish forming all kinds of awesome patterns. Yet, we humans, touted as the peak of creation need a leader; we need a government to govern us. How is this so?
The Seasons of Life
April 18,2016
Spring has begun and am beginning to smell the scent of a new life. Flowers have started to bloom giving a kaleidoscope of colors and formations. Soon summer comes, a time for harvesting and reaping the fruits of one's labors and sufferings in the past.
Whatever happened, it has now come to pass and life has to continue moving on. What the future may bring will depend on what one intends, focuses on and wills on the present moment. It will depend on one's alertness of the opportunities that the now moment presents as well as on how one is able to tap these opportunities.
Let our intention and intuition flow freely to lead us to a future we might have already set in mind. Having let go of the past, let us continue to move forward by simply going with the continuing flow of the present moment.
Nature Has Its Way
June 22, 2016
It's not my way, your way, or our way. It's Nature's way. This is how things are to be done from the cosmic perspective.