In this exclusive book excerpt, from Awakening the Universal Heart – A Guide for Spiritual Activists, Dr Serge Beddington-Behrens writes about the necessity for the corporate world to do good around the world

Innovation is inordinately expensive. If a new culture is to come fully into being, many trillions of pounds are going to be needed to finance it. Where is this money to come from? Certainly not from activists, most of whom do not devote their lives to becoming rich. We also cannot depend on the philanthropy of a few generous wealthy individuals. Nor can we rely on governments, many of which, in this time of financial crisis, are strapped for cash and are doing their utmost to cut costs.

Most of the money has to come from the corporate world, not only because this is where the money resides, but also because it possesses the enterprise and capability to get things done. And a lot of things need doing – and doing well – if a new and better world is to come into being. Therefore, the more that those who run businesses work at finding their heart and souls, and in so doing, discover what the true or deeper purpose for their businesses is (we cannot discover the corporate heart unless we first discover our own hearts), the greater the possibility that changes for the good will occur.

IBM founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr, understood this, “Companies were not created just to make money but to knit together the whole fabric of civilisation.”

What I believe has gone wrong with capitalism is not the system itself, but the low level at which people have engaged with it. What we call capitalism’s dark, ‘unacceptable face,’ symbolised by a well-known merchant bank recently described as a “Giant vampire squid, eager to get its tentacles around anything smelling of money,” is created by the wounded ego or the deficient heart state of normal man, wholly disconnected from experiencing the beneficence of the universe. This mindset, we remind ourselves, is inherently non-compassionate; it is overly materialistic and insecure, feels separate from the world, is not interested in doing good (unless the good can be seen and acknowledged), can never see life in terms of larger wholes and consequently uses capitalism solely to serve its own self-centred, deficient and neurotic agendas.

By contrast ‘natural capitalism’ must also encompass living systems, which includes grasslands, savannahs, wetlands, estuaries, coral reefs and rainforests. I find this hugely inspiring. As someone once said, “We have the know-how to create a better world. What we don’t yet have is the willingness to implement it.” Perhaps this is about to shift. What is needed in the world is “A new type of industrialism, one that differs from the system that is the standard today.” Paul Hawken explores this more deeply in his book Natural Capitalism. The following words, with which he opens his book, paint a picture of how our new society might look, if businesses began operating according to these principles:

A world where cities have become peaceful – cars and buses are whisper quiet, parks and greenways have replaced unneeded urban freeways. OPEC has ceased to function because the price of oil has fallen to $5 a barrel, but there are few buyers for it because cheaper and better ways now exist to get the services people once turned to oil to provide. Involuntary unemployment no longer exists and income taxes have been largely eliminated. Houses, even low income housing units, can pay part of the mortgage costs by the energy they produce. Atmospheric CO2 levels are decreasing for the first time in 200 years, and industrialised countries have reduced resource use by 80%, while improving the quality of life. With the exception of family-wage jobs, welfare demand has fallen. A progressive and active union movement has taken the lead to work with business, environmentalists and government, to create ‘just transitions,’ as society phases out coal, nuclear energy and oil. In communities and towns, churches, corporations and labour groups promote a new, living wage social contract as the least expensive way to ensure the growth and preservation of valuable social capital. Is this the vision of a Utopia? In fact the changes described here, could come about in the decades to come as a result of economic and technological trends already in place.

What is also positive is that emerging out of corporate evil are increasing numbers of traditional organisations making definite attempts to move in more life-enhancing and sustainable directions. Some firms are trying to design production processes that provide a greater livelihood for the local workforce, while using the fewest possible non-renewable materials in their products. They are also learning to honour the human needs of their employees, as opposed to trying to squeeze every last bit of juice out of them.

The large blue-chip insurance firm RSA has gone into partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature, to sponsor a series of environmental projects. It is taking particular interest in the future of the polar bear. Its CEO realises that with huge losses due to climate change, it can in no way afford to neglect awareness of the environment. Rio Tinto is currently investing in solar and wind projects, while Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Pepsico are all trying to improve their environmental records, becoming increasingly convinced about the benefits of sustainability. Unilever has succeeded in reducing its CO2 emissions by 44%, while Canon, the Japanese maker of cameras and photocopiers, has shifted away from using batteries, which are an environmental hazard, and is currently testing flexible, amorphous solar cells which could provide energy without affecting the environment. As metals are hard to recycle when combined with plastics, they have been eliminated from Canon cameras, which are being redesigned with parts that can be reused, and all lead has been eliminated because of its known toxicity. However, these are only a few of many examples.Sceptics may say that these organisations are only making these changes because they have seen the writing on the wall and are basically the same old wolves, only now they are trying to reinvent themselves and pretend to be sheep. Whether or not there is any truth to this, we need to acknowledge that the changes that are happening are positive ones (one has to begin somewhere) and seem to be moving in the right direction.

Just as in our personal development, our hearts need to open gradually and we can’t progress from closed-heartedness to huge-heartedness overnight, so this holds true at a corporate level.

Interestingly, if an organisation starts making external shifts, they often begin to percolate down into its inner culture as well. I recently consulted with an organisation that was starting to move into new, more sustainable waters. While I discovered that this was initially being done from an ulterior motive – that is, to look progressive – it nonetheless transpired that the entire firm began thinking along new lines, and quite spontaneously stopped manufacturing a particular product, which, while financially lucrative, was deemed detrimental to the environment and therefore not in alignment with the new direction in which the organisation now found itself headed.

It is my belief that in 20 years’ time, these imaginative and essentially compassionate ways of approaching business are going to be the norm instead of the exception, and that we will find many similar, visionary enterprises all over the world.

Serge Obolensky Beddington-Behrens is from a Russian royal family. His new book is a plea for humanity to awaken its heart and make the shift from being part of the problems of the world to being part of their solution. He coined the term ‘spiritual activism.'