Toxic environments create all sorts of calamities! Unsafe water, polluted air, denuded forests, choked rivers, melting glaciers, oceans befouled by mountains of plastic and even space pockmarked with floating debris : what a telling commentary on the progress of civilisation! The flotsam and jetsam of “development” has inescapable effects on human beings and vice versa, singly and collectively. Is it any wonder that societies worldwide are in turmoil ?

As every spiritual tradition teaches us, what is out there is what is within! So, toxicity within creates toxicity without. The micro creates the macro. Trillions of cells interlinked create a human being. What is within each cell therefore creates the person! By extension, what is within each person creates society. If within every individual a toxic environment of anger, hatred, jealousy and possessiveness reigns, the fallout is as toxic as a nuclear disaster! Insecurity and fear then fan out like a mushroom cloud, contaminating society with corruption, dishonesty, inequality, greed and all manner of addictions. Spiritual, mental and intellectual toxicity within human beings is the root cause of all external toxic environments. This causality is simple and yet difficult to comprehend because human beings are alway focused externally.

If all our policy making and regulation have failed to produce sustainable evolution of the planet it is because the internal environments of human beings have veered off into toxicity. Our success now critically depends on how well we create an environment for individuals to regulate their own internal environments. When most human beings exercise some semblance of internal mastery and equipoise the synergistic effect is bound to be a more sustainable planet. Therefore, our effort at policy making must incorporate an approach to make internal environments healthy and positive.