Gospel of the Living Tree

 

 for Mystics, Lovers, Poets & Warriors
by Roderic Knowles

Gospel of the Living Tree

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Gospel of the Living Tree
by Roderic Knowles
2009, Softcover
6" x 9" - 352 pages
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€15.00
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A Feast for Passionate Tree-Lovers

Gospel of the Living Tree is a treasure trove of tree-related material, drawn from a wide range of sources, not to be found in any other work. It includes insights and accounts of experiences by artists, poets, mystics, musicians, philosophers, presidents, generals, scientists, economists and wisdom-teachers, with glistening gems of wisdom from diverse disciplines and ages, from Homer to Jung, Buddha to Beethoven, Goethe to Gandhi, Nietzsche to Chopra, legendary botanist George Washington Carver to Nobel quantum physicist Max Planck.

Gospel of the Living Tree is a celebration of the sacredness of trees and their role in human consciousness and culture, narrated mostly by the trees themselves. It is also a moving call to action on their behalf, containing visionary yet thoroughly realistic proposals for the setting up of a new type of university wholly devoted to Living Trees.

A creative and scholarly work, mythologically rich, lyrically playful, philosophically and spiritually profound, warrior-inspiring and, in the critical ecological context of our times, stirringly relevant.

“What I know of the divine sciences and Holy Scripture, I learned in wood and field. I have no other masters than the Beeches and Oaks.”

– St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Reader-friendly, it can be picked up and enjoyed one section at a time.

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Preludes

A Tree is not a Tree
is not a Tree …

On Their True Identity,
Wisdom & Sacredness

The Wisdom of Trees

Way back in the twelfth century, the great Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, acknowledged by historians as the most powerful and influential figure of his age, made an interesting confession:

“What I know of the divine sciences and Holy Scripture, I learned in wood and field. I have no other masters than the Beeches and Oaks.”

He was not alone. In the same century, the mystic Bernard of Morlaix proclaimed:

“Trees will teach you more than you can learn from the mouth of a doctor of theology.”

How is this? Do trees speak?
Is the notion so absurd?
Or is it, rather, a profound and sadly forgotten truth?
One can trace its origins to the Bible:

“But ask the beasts, and they will teach you … or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you.”

So it is written in The Book of Job (12: 7).

We may also read in one of the great classics of Hindu literature, The Bhagavad-Gita:

“He who knows the tree is the knower of the Vedas” – meaning he is the knower of spiritual knowledge.

So is the wisdom of trees revered.