Charles notes in this article that he is concerned with preserving man’s spirit, restoring what flows from man’s spirit and restoring and preserving the earth.
Quotes:
“You know all the great religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian Mysticism, Islam — they all have what we call a perennial philosophy. This goes all the way back, way before Christ, thousands of years. The idea of it isn’t just matter out there, it’s filed with some sort of basic consciousness and spirit. There is a unity between man and nature and living things. This was a philosophy that was accepted in the west right up to the Renaissance, to about 1500….
We have lost this, what I call perennial philosophy, this unity of all beings, except the native people still have it. They have this wonderful sense — like Chief Seattle’s prayer: Your are one with nature, nature is one with you, we are all part of one another….
…but what I think we have to do is get back to this sense that this unity of all beings, regain this sense of the perennial philosophy which we’ve lost.”
“…contemplation is a kind of a non-conceptual way of approaching reality with a deeper level of consciousness, which is non conceptual, is not thought out, but it brings you into contact with the earth, and with people and with God in a way that you can’t really do with thought. That’s really what the contemplative life is.”