Ben Bowler and his wife Jildou were just about to build their dream home in Australia. Land had been purchased, a design chosen, and they were ready to sign on the dotted line and begin construction.
But at a Urantia Book conference in Sydney, Australia in 2006 Ben heard a talk given by Mark Bloomfield about Free Schools in India and Thailand.
“I became kind of emotional through his presentation,” Ben recalls. “At the end of it Mark said he was looking for people to take over the work in Thailand. So I chased him out of the room and asked ‘how does this work?'”
Ben told his wife about this opportunity and within 24 hours they had abandoned their home-building project to take “a completely different direction” in Thailand.
A lot of descriptors have been attached to Ben Bowler. Unity-activist. Serial entrepreneur. Faith dealer. Spiritual entrepreneur. He has earned a living through sales and marketing, but his true career is in galvanizing spiritual resources to solve our world’s conflicts and problems.
Curiosity and sensitivity for the human family was not foreign to Ben growing up. His father is geologist Jim Bowler, known for his discovery of the Mungo lady and the Mungo man in 1968 and 1974. The discovery of humans from 40,000 years ago on the Australian continent changed our understanding of Australia’s Aboriginal people. It also made Dr. Bowler an outspoken advocate for the cultural respect that needs to go hand-in-hand with this scientific work. In January, 2018, the remains of Mungo man were returned to his descendants for proper burial.
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Celebration of all human cultures is central to Ben’s work. His latest endeavor, UNITY EARTH, is a global network building a worldwide movement for unity and peace.
It was 2006 when he and his wife Jildou deserted their house-building project and moved to Thailand to volunteer along the Thai-Burma border. In 2008 they founded Blood Foundation together, a NGO focusing on education projects. In 2008 Ben also initiated Monk for a Month in Chiang Mai, offering men and women the opportunity to experience Thai temple life and temporary ordination.
In 2010, Ben launched Muslim for a Month in Turkey to break down stereotypes ”where fear, ignorance and superstition feed each other.” Muslim for a Month offered guests a first-hand experience of Turkish Islam and Sufism, underneath the spiritually inclusive banner of Rumi. A year later, he launched World Weavers, offering spiritual immersion programs in Tibetan India, Nepal, Cambodia and Ethiopia.
In October 2015, at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Ben launched 1GOD.com, an online platform aimed at countering religious fundamentalism, relativism and western materialism.
Since then he has worked to build UNITY EARTH into a global platform that can support and empower the many grassroots movements working towards unity and peace in the world.
At the 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto I had the pleasure of seizing a few minutes from Ben’s busy schedule to talk with him about his work with UNITY EARTH, current world conditions, The Urantia Book and how we can move toward worldwide unity through “the religions and through culture, through music, through trade and the arts.”
Scroll down to view the clips from his interview. You can also read the entire transcript of his interview below.
About Unity Earth
Ben talks about his organization, Unity Earth, which is creating something new in world religion.
The Work of Unity Earth
Ben discusses the work of Unity Earth.
The Tap on the Shoulder
Ben talks about a major life decision he and his wife Gilda made that resulted in Unity Earth several years later.
Connecting With the World
Ben talks about a very different motivation behind his world travels.
Unity Earth and Spiritual Adventures
Connecting with other religions first hand.
Another Prodigal Son
Ben talks about the religious paths from childhood to adulthood that informed his current religious and spiritual outlook.
The Urantia Book
Ben talks about finding The Urantia Book and how affected his world view.
Politics and Spirituality
Ben talks about the challenges in today’s political and economic environment and how we need to nurture the spiritual first.
Thoughts for Urantia Book Readers
Ben addresses the Urantia Book reader community and recommends how to manifest the ideals of the teachings.
Interview Transcript with Ben Bowler
This is a transcript of the entire video interview recorded November 4, 2018 at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto, Ontario.
RICHARD JERNIGAN: Well first of all, if you could just give us your name and tell us basically what your work is about.
BEN BOWLER: Okay, sure. I’m Ben Bowler. From Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been involved in a lot of different platforms over the years building up to what we’re doing now which is Unity Earth. And it’s great to be here at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto in 2018.
RICHARD: It is great. Tell me about your work and what your goals are in your work.
BEN BOWLER: We really come at this through the interfaith portal. I was in Thailand for many years working with Buddhists and then ended up going to Turkey and doing Islamic programs and built relationships with many different faith traditions around the world. So that’s really the angle that we’ve come into it-through the interfaith space. And at a later date we really added a respect for indigenous spiritualities and then an ecological dimension. It just kept growing and growing It’s really what ended up becoming Unity Earth. So Unity Earth is really a space which brings different groups together. We are about growing a worldwide spiritual culture. It fosters reverence for the sacred and respects all forms of diversity. We’re really more and more recognizing that the essential ingredient of having an ecological dimension to the spirituality as well. It’s probably something that’s been added as the environmental crisis has become more and more prevalent. I often think about the two great commandments that Jesus gave where He said … somebody asked Him about what are some of the teachings? He said, love God and love humanity. You can probably add one more nowadays which is to love earth. Really our work is where the love for God and love for humanity and love for earth come together in a three part symphony. Where the ecological, the spiritual and the social really come together and intertwine as one whole thing. And that’s what we call Unity Earth.
RICHARD: How does your work translate into specific action?
BEN BOWLER: Well, you know sometimes that’s hard to tell. We’re not a NGO that’s out there necessarily doing programs and projects on the ground. We have a lot of partner organizations that are. Our work is really more about convening cooperation between groups that don’t know about each other, maybe not even aware of each other’s existence or perhaps they are but they are not used to working with each other because they’re not natural allies. So Unity Earth is really a space that convenes different groups coming together, interfaith groups, indigenous groups, ecological groups, social justice groups. Sometimes it’s really hard to measure when it comes to impact. In terms of really the net result of what we’re doing, it’s about new relationships. It’s about new cooperations. It’s about greater spheres of unity. It’s about new harmonies, actually coming together with new melodies of different strands that haven’t played together before. Coming together to create something new, completely. That’s really where we see Unity Earth and its main focus. Through these events and convening spaces and media that are bringing other elements into relationship with each other to connect and to ask these sorts of questions.
RICHARD: You’ve been traveling a lot, I’ve seen some of your postings on Facebook. Where are some of the places that you’ve been doing your work?
BEN BOWLER: You know I’m from Australia. We lived in Holland for a couple of years in Europe. We lived in Thailand for six years. Being able to be based in other parts of the world has been a very important part of my education, I’m sure. Then the traveling part with the programs throughout Asia and India, in particular and Turkey, down into Ethiopia and right across North America, China. I’ve seen a lot of world. I’m very, very fortunate. There’s still a lot more to see. I’ve only been to a couple of places in South America. So, there’s still a lot more exploration to do, but I’ve been fortunate enough to travel. Not just sightseeing, but really to engage with the local community and engage with the local culture and to form relationships. Which I think is vital as we learn about all of these different traditions and all of these different ways of viewing God, ways of viewing life, ways of viewing the universe and the planet. It’s been a blessing and a privilege to get to know so many people from all around our beautiful home world of earth and all its glorious diversity.
RICHARD: How do you engage with people in these countries? You go into Ethiopia, you go into these places where you haven’t been before. How do you determine how to engage?
BEN BOWLER: Well, really what we’ve been doing is running what are called spiritual adventures in these places. After World Weavers we ran spiritual immersions in many places across Asia and other parts of the world. In Ethiopia, we are doing a deep dive into the Rastafarian community which comes also out of the orthodox Ethiopian church. It was a spiritual adventure, that gives a context to engage with the spiritual life of the city of Addis Ababa, spiritual life of the community in Shashamane. Learning about the history. Learning about the forms and the norms and the different religious ways of being. We are really going in there intentionally to study and to learn and have a deep dive experience of the spiritual wealth of that culture. It’s such a beautiful way to engage with people. Then the sacred music comes out, the religious forms come out and you really get to feel and touch how they experience God through their own cultural lenses and their own religious lenses.
RICHARD: How did you become religious?
BEN BOWLER: I was born Catholic, Irish Catholic, and as long as I can remember I was always aware of God and God’s presence in my life. I wasn’t always in every moment present with that. I think like any of us I went through my growing up phase. Twenties, thirties and probably into my forties where I was really in my “prodigal son” phase, perhaps in the far away countries. I found the Urantia Book when I was 28. That was in Birmingham and that was a very significant moment for… really something that helped me hang together philosophy and cosmology and religion and spirituality and science, and that was a very significant discovery for me. The rest of it has been through experience and relationship and going on these adventures and-just getting to know people. You don’t have to travel the whole world. The beauty about today is that most of us are living in big cities. We’ve got Buddhists and we’ve got Muslims and we’ve got Sikhs, like five miles from where we live. You don’t have to go to the other side of the world. You can really find it where you are and go to an Iftar dinner in Ramadan. Go in and seek out a Sikh meal or celebrate Givali with a Hindu family or whatever it might be. Look for those opportunities. It’s amazing when we really run our antenna up and put that intention out there. We find opportunities to meet and to engage with other people wherever we are. I find a lot of teaching in the Urantia Book which talks about the importance of seeking out the other and learning about the other and coming to listen and understand their point of view. We are all too quick, all too quick to want to tell everyone else what we think and how we feel and what we believe. Really the wisdom of the deepest traditions is about listening. It’s about listening to each other and it’s about listening to the wisdom contained in all of its refractive beauty. Listening to the earth and of course, listening to our inner guide. If we could all become better listeners, Richard, I think we’ll go a long way very fast.
RICHARD: Yeah. Certainly. I wanted to ask you about the political situation that we’re in right now. It’s been evolving in a certain direction. I just want to get your thinking on it. What’s happening right now and how you respond to that.
BEN BOWLER: I think that we have these vested interests, be they nation-states or corporations or religious institutions and, bless them, they’re there to serve themselves-that’s what they’re set up to do. We shouldn’t be too aghast that that’s what they’re doing! Really these institutions are about protecting their own interests. So really what we need is to just think bigger. And to create bigger as a planetary family. To develop institutions which are planetary in their scope. So we have world size problems nearly everyone agrees on that. We’ve got world-size problems such as climate change and the migration crises, refugee crisis. Global financial systems which are volatile. We need world-size solutions. Global problems need global solutions. I think we’re in the process of rich evolution and am tremendously optimistic about where we can go despite the current terror and division and very real threat that we face. I see it as the natural perturbations that we’re going through in order for us to really realize that next level of consciousness. We’re here the Parliament of World’s religions. The consciousness is there. And how long does that take to trickle down into the systems of our politics and into the systems of our economics and into the systems of our governments and their regulations. I can see, we can see …the transformation taking place. It’s a planet that’s going from tribal to nation-states to global. We’re in that process, it’s happening. And there are a number of things we can to do accelerate it. There are a number of things we can do to calmly and gently foster that. There are certain institutions that will resist it because they’re set up to resist it. So really what we are looking for here is an evolution of consciousness. I think an evolution in consciousness will precede the more united world. A more cohesive planet …and a world that makes sense. I think that rather than striking for a political unification which is premature. I think the best thing we can do right now is to foster and develop global brotherhood and sisterhood through the religions and through culture, through music, through trade and the arts. And this is really building the fabric of trust and the fabric of relationship that can be the fertile ground from which a more enlightened planetary unity can spring forth.
RICHARD: There’s something I wanted to ask you about. I’m building a house right now and I heard some story about you were going to build a house in Australia….
BEN BOWLER: (laughs)
RICHARD: Tell me about that.
BEN BOWLER: That’s right. My wife, Jildou and I were … we’d jumped from Holland and we’d found a bit of land and we bought the land and we were running around for a year looking at all the different display homes that we thought we were going to build on this place and finally we agreed on what we were going to do. We were days away from signing the contract and I went to the Urantia Association International Conference in Sydney in 2006. It might have been around March. And I saw a presentation from Mark Bloomfield who did a very inspirational presentation about free schools and the work that had been done in India and the work he was doing in Thailand. I became kind of emotional through his presentation. At the end of it he said he was looking for people to take over the work in Thailand. So I chased him out of the room and said “how does this work?” And I got Jildou on the phone and we made the decision within 24 hours to abandon our house building and go a completely different direction because of our inspirational moment. And so our lives took a completely different turn. In fact, Richard, that moment is really when a lot of the work we’re doing now with Unity Earth started in Thailand. There was three schools in the Blood Foundation, Monk for a Month and so much that was born there on the Tibiame border has now grown into what Unity Earth has become. It’s interesting when you get the tap on the shoulder. Fortunately, I’m just grateful it was so clear and so … you know it was clear as a bell. It was a beautiful moment. It’s changed our lives.
RICHARD: That’s very inspiring. Ok, the red flower (on his lapel). Tell me about that. I see them all over the place here.
BEN BOWLER: This is something they put on at the church this morning when we were coming out. I went up to the cathedral this Sunday morning and it’s a red poppy for Remembrance Day, so the 11th of November in Canada and in England and in Australia. I believe the World War One ended on November the 11th and at the 11th hour they signed the Armistice. So for a lot of Commonwealth countries this is the day of remembering war and the fallen and all of the veterans. It’s remembering all of those who have sacrificed their lives for us through battle. Many of our ancestors have been involved in bloody and brutal wars that have brought us to this point and so we remember them at this moment.
RICHARD: Thanks for reminding me of that. Eleventh month, eleventh day, eleventh hour. That’s right.
BEN BOWLER: Yeah.
RICHARD: Anyway, okay. Just one last question. I’m just curious what was it about the Urantia Book that kind of hooked you in and changed your consciousness?
BEN BOWLER: When I got the book, well the whole story of how I got the book is pretty interesting, but when I got the book I got back to my hotel room in London. Eventually I opened it up and I just starting laughing because I just knew straight away. Maybe it was the table of contents or maybe some of the names of the papers. It was just like yeah, I knew. And then, uh, it’s consistency. It’s sheer vastness of scale and its consistency internally. Its love for Jesus and who Jesus is. Its honoring of the cosmic Christ. These things that … I just knew what it was. The more I read, the more I learned, and the more I explored the more it made sense, and the more it all sort of came together for me. I wouldn’t be here doing what I am doing now if it wasn’t for finding The Urantia Book then. I’m very, very grateful. I’m very, very grateful.
RICHARD: Well, we’re very grateful for the work you do. Thank you. So is there anything else you wanted to say since you’ve got an audience for a few seconds?
BEN BOWLER: (laughs) Careful, give me an audience now (laughs). I just am so excited. Yesterday we saw Pato and Antoinette give a show. Which was full of people from the Urantia movement. It was full of people from the United Religions Initiative. It was full of community from Unity Earth, Unified, Compassion Games, all these different groups coming together. He’s got an album out called “All In This Together.” I’m sure that that’s what it’s going to take. It’s gonna take all of us together. We don’t need to agree on everything. I mean if the Urantia book teaches us anything it’s that we don’t have to agree on everything in order to have unity. All we need to agree on is that we need each other in order to navigate our way through this cosmic episode. I do believe we’re in an epochal revolution and I believe that because of what it says in the Publication Mandate where it says we’re in the middle of an epochal revolution. Just because there’s a revelation and a revolution happening at the same time figuring out the relationship between those two things is a fascination journey.
So, I just want to put it out there that reaching out beyond the walls of Urantia Book readers into a world that is vibrating with a hunger and a thirst for transformation is what we all need to be thinking about. Now that doesn’t dilute the book. It doesn’t dilute the teachings. In my view it honors them. It actually shows that we’re listening to what the book is saying. So I would invite all Urantia book readers to come to this party of transformation. Don’t miss this wave of epochal revolution because your sitting in your land reading the Urantia Book. Get out. Make relationships. Be open minded. Seek out people of other faiths. Seek out people of other views. Seek out people of other perspectives and let’s build the brotherhood of man and sisterhood of man on this planet now for the God that we all love.
RICHARD: All right. Thanks again, Ben.
BEN BOWLER: Thank you, Richard.
Sources and further reading:
UNITY EARTH
https://unity.earth/
Sydney Morning Herald “Choosing thy religion can be a close shave”
The Guardian “Finding Mungo Man: the moment Australia’s story suddenly changed”
The Conversation “Time to honour a historical legend: 50 years since the discovery of Mungo Lady”