Change the roots of consciousness

Now, recently I’ve been in India and there’s a desert there, the Rajasthan desert, and they were looking for oil. The geologists told them there might be oil down there. Well, that desert is a terribly depressing place. There’s about one person every three or four kilometres, it’s almost unliveable. But if there was oil there, of course it would be of some value, well, be of great value. So they started boring for oil. It went down deep and the engineers say that there’s a moment you can tell when there’s going to be, sort of, breakthrough. I don’t know the details, but you can tell when the drill is coming through and they got [an idea] that they’d come to this kind of formation below which there might be oil. So they dug and everybody was waiting for the report, but it wasn’t oil – it was water. So the message came, “Water” and it went up to the deputy minister: “Water. Not oil, water.”

“Water? Water?” – a huge river underground; and it’s going to make the whole of that desert [flower]. We can search for water in the desert [on the surface], but there’s another way of searching, which is searching down. Now, when we do religious practices, when we do a meditation, for a time, it’s all new and fresh. We feel we’re looking around surface and perhaps finding something interesting. And you get to know the place, and it gets boring sitting on a hilltop throwing stones because we’re not going deeper. We’re just staying with the description. “Oh, yes, I imagined I’m doing that.” Then, you start thinking of something else. “Oh.” And then you come back to it.

There’s a way of going deeper and then we shall come to water. Something will come up which will make the desert flower. We can say, “Oh, well, we’ll try and so on” but nothing seems to happen. There is no response, and you’re giving it time. People say, “Oh, I put up a beautiful, inspiring text and every morning I look to it.” Then after a few weeks, you’re no longer noticing it. No longer any significance. We don’t know how to go deeper. There are new meanings to be found in these things. There’s a new experience, there’s a change of consciousness can be brought about by focusing and going deeper.

Now what happens then? Well, one example is (I know the Japanese history, and I know this case), when the country was opened up, they had the alternatives. One of the alternatives which they adopted was they must become masters of Western technique. So the proposal was to send all the promising young men abroad to learn. You could invite a few experts there, but it didn’t make much impact. But they said, “No, you can’t send all the best people away. We need the young men here. They’d go, many of them, abroad, and that would be a loss to the country; more and more difficult. They’re not here to help, we’re left.” But then they began to come back and after about 20 years, they transformed the country.

Well, in the same way, we’re putting our thoughts, our will, our concentration into these practices and nothing comes back. One feels that one is getting fed up and it’s gone. Time has gone, your attention has gone, your interest has gone, nothing has come back. But after a time, it’ll begin to come back. Something will begin to come back. If we persist. Now, if they had sent those young men abroad and then decided, “Oh, no, we can’t spare them, bring them back and stop sending any more,” then the attempt to change the country and westernise the country would have failed. But they persisted and, finally, it came back and the transformations were made.

Well, another example that’s given in the East, is Kuroshio, but to us it would be the Gulf Stream. There’s a stream in the depths, which brings the warm water to this island and makes this island a bit different from Moscow. Edinburgh is further north than Moscow, but the climate is a lot better. There is a Gulf Stream. It’s deep. On top, there are waves going all directions, moved by the wind; but underneath there’s a deep current. Now, the yoga says ‘by meditation, go deep and we can become one with the cosmic purpose. Otherwise, if we stay simply on top, we shall be responding to the waves’. We may go in any direction, in this direction, in that; but there is a deep purpose. In the same way, there is a cosmic purpose.

The last illustration that’s given is, when I was a boy we treated infections by an antiphlogistine and a poultice and so on. Then, it was cut and it was squeezed. It hurt like hell. Now, you take something. “What? Here, take it? The infection is here. You’ve got to treat it here.” You take it, it goes into the bloodstream and clears it. Well, in the same way, in the yoga meditations, if they’re done and they go deep, then something purifying will go into the, what’s called, Karana Sharira. There’s a common consciousness and it would change the roots of consciousness slowly for many people.

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: The Need of the World

Part 2: Evil in the world

Part 3: Learning how to handle one’s own heart

Part 4: Don’t depend on connections in the world

Part 5: Creativity in Life

Part 6: Meditate on the cosmic purpose

Part 7: Change the roots of consciousness