Pushing humanity into universal active compassion with Andrew Harvey

Where is the meaning of the crisis through which our world is passing? This is the guiding question of a conversation between Laurence Freeman and Andrew Harvey, who have been friends since they were both students at Oxford. For Andrew, the world is facing a defining crisis of human evolution, an apocalyptic situation: ‘Apocalypse is a word that turns in two directions: on one hand, it can be used to mean destruction, the complete unraveling of all the old structures. On the other hand, it comes from the Greek for the unveiling, revealing. So, this absolutely terrifying apocalyptic crisis, which is a concatenation of crises, is in part a climate collapse. It is also a potential economic collapse. It is evidently now a Coronavirus pandemic, which may be the seed for other pandemics. But it is also a profound moral and spiritual crisis. All these are converging. They are coming together for a distinct purpose: to force humanity to evolve to another level of active universal compassion. This wide-ranging, deep-looking, friendly exchange both confronts the urgency of the crisis and its real dangers – what if we fail to meet the challenge? – and explores the need for hope, fortitude and good humour.