For at least 2500 years, humankind has struggled with basic questions about who we are, what we are heading for, what kind of reality we are part of. Ecologist Arne Naess offers his six thought-provoking and inspiring principles to help answer those questions.

These are important guides for all of us who strive toward self-realization, and who yearn to live in a more balanced way upon the earth. Find out these important principles here:

1. We underestimate ourselves. I emphasize self. We tend to confuse it with the narrow ego.

2. Human nature is such that with sufficient all-sided maturity we cannot avoid identifying ourselves with all living beings, beautiful or ugly, big or small, sentient or not.

3. Traditionally the maturity of the self develops through three stages–from ego to social self, and from social self to metaphysical self. In this conception of the process nature–our home, our immediate environment, where we belong as children, and our identification with living human beings–is largely ignored. I therefore tentatively introduce the concept of an ecological self. We may be in, of and for nature from our very beginning. Society and human relations are important, but our self is richer in its constitutive relations. These relations are not only relations we have with humans and the human community, but with the larger community of all living beings.

4. The joy and meaning of life is enhanced through increased self-realization, through the fulfillment of each being’s potential. Whatever the differences between beings, increased self-realization implies broadening and deepening of the self.

5. Because of an inescapable process of identification with others, with growing maturity, the self is widened and deepened. We “see ourself in others.” Self-realization is hindered if the self-realization of others, with whom we identify, is hindered. Love of ourself will labor to overcome this obstacle by assisting in the self-realization of others according to the formula “live and let live.” Thus, all that can be achieved by altruism–the dutiful, moral consideration of others–can be achieved–and much more–through widening and deepening ourself.

6. The challenge of today is to save the planet from further devastation which violates both the enlightened self-interest of humans and non-humans, and decreases the potential of joyful existence for all.