WT: That's a very tricky question. Our work in interfaith doesn't require us to submerge our differences or to sacrifice what one has seen or experienced of ultimate truth or ultimate reality, but it does require us not to be quite so overbearing. It's not a competition. It's a question of sharing what we know and what is our position, our faith, our experience—just not in a militant way where we lose compassion and perspective.

Why was Jesus so angry with the money changers in the temple? Because they were misguiding the people. The temple was supposed to be a forum for relating to God, and it had become a very worldly place of commerce. They had distorted what that was all about; that's why he got so angry. I think it was like a therapy to shock them out of that kind of behavior.

WIE: With the crisis facing the world, it seems like we have to do a lot of shocking at this point.

WT: Right. Exactly. We need to do it. But I don't think we can shock George W. Bush out of unrealization. He seems to be fixated on it!

WIE: At previous times in history, revolutionary thinkers believed that changing our social or political structures would bring about the changes we so desperately need to make in the world, but nowadays many visionary futurists are convinced that in order to change the world, we must first change the human heart. At an event connected with the recent State of the World Forum, you exclaimed, "What we need is a spiritual revolution!" What do you mean by that, and what do you believe will bring that about?

WT: Let's put it this way: Christ said two thousand years ago that before kingdoms change, the hearts of people must change. The revolutionaries have not seen that; they've focused on the external. And we have seen the disasters that have occurred, for instance, with Marxism. The problem with Marxism is that it never looked at the agents of change. It only looked at the process of change. It never looked at the transformation that needs to occur in the individuals who foment change. They defined the human in the abstract, and they ended up killing the human in the concrete.

I really feel that what we need is awareness, and you can't get that simply through a political process or an ideology or a slogan. It's something that has to engage what is deepest in the human. We have to have a holistic, integral kind of development that isn't simply intellectual or moral but that is also deeply mystical. A kind of development that engages one with the Source itself, the Source that is that pure love, pure concern, pure sensitivity, and which then allows that to radiate out into our actions and our attitudes and our perceptions and how we relate to one another in the world. I think that only spirituality will bring about that self-knowledge that will allow us to purify ourselves and to shift to a focus that protects the interconnectedness of all life and all being.

So I like to put it this way: The real revolution, the definitive revolution, is the spiritual awakening of humanity. The real revolution is one that goes to the radical core of human limitation and raises that up to transformation, to development. Unless that happens, the seeds of corruption are still going to be there—and the seeds of inequity, of exploitation, and of a selfish, greedy existence that neglects the welfare of the masses and of the planet.

WIE: What do you see as the most pressing crisis facing our world community at this juncture in history?

WT: The ecological crisis, and the kind of change required in humanity that would allow us to resolve it. It's a crisis of the environment, but it's also a crisis in the style of life that people are living. On the one hand, there's an agreement that we have to do something about the environment, and on the other, there isn't really the will to change our style of life to allow a resolution. I see that as the most pressing threat and the highest moral priority because, as Thomas Berry says, if the life raft, which is the earth, goes, what use will our economic system be? Or even our spirituality?

Take, for example, the heavy use of fossil fuels, the rise in the rate of global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, the deforestation in the Amazon. Just the cutting down of trees in the Himalayas is causing massive flooding in Bangladesh every year. All of these factors add up. We need to really simplify how we are living and using resources. We don't know enough about the resilience of the planet in restoring itself and its ecosystems, but we are aware of how much damage we're doing. If you take the American dream and you apply it to six billion people, there's no possibility of our species surviving. We will destroy what we have left around the planet.

WIE: Given the severity of the crisis, do you feel optimistic about the future?

WT: Well, clearly the situation requires a fundamental change in how we live, and right now, given our spiritual and psychological understanding and how we view our individual responsibility for this situation, it's hard for me to be optimistic that people will make the sacrifices necessary for us and for other species, other sentient beings, to survive. But I think optimism can be found in our spiritual technologies. I would suggest that we utilize those technologies, those forms of spirituality that transform attitudes, that open minds and hearts, and that change consciousness. One of the great practical values of a spiritual transformation is that it does possess the resources to change humanity, and to change humanity in time.

WIE: You obviously feel very passionately about bringing about a real change in the world in our lifetime. What makes you care so much? Can you describe the turning point in your own life when you realized this passionate concern for the state of the world?

WT: I think the concern has come out of my spiritual life and out of my years at attempting prayer. You know, it's very strange. I used to wonder whether I had any compassion. I wasn't sure I understood it. One of the turning points for me was when I was walking around a lake in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I saw a mother and her two sons, maybe seven, eight years old. The two kids were throwing stones at these swans, and one of them hit one of the swans. And I instantly felt an incredible, overwhelming grief at the suffering of that poor swan and also anger at what the children had done. I realized in that moment that, yes, I guess I do have compassion.