Meditate on the cosmic purpose

Another form of meditation is to meditate on the cosmic purpose; this is to meditate on one of the traditional forms of the Lord. In the Eastern texts, they’re given in the form of riddles and they are as a matter of fact, in the Christian texts, but this has always been played down. The gospel says quite clearly, ‘Christ always spoke in parables’. If you look at the text, what it says, ‘lest the people should understand’ and you think, “What?” That part of the gospel was all read very quickly. He always spoke in parables. He said, ‘I speak in parables, lest they should understand’. You think, “What?” Well, for Christians, I suggest to identify these places and it comes more than once in the gospels, and then to look at some of the parables. If they’re read with attention, we’ll find there’s a riddle in them.

Everybody knows the parable of the sower, ‘And so I went forth to sow and cast the seed and some fell on the road side. It was trampled underfoot. Some fell among thistles, the thistles choked. Some fell on the rock.’ It’s not the way you sow. Throwing seed on the road, throwing seed on the rocks, throwing seed among thistles. That’s not how you sow. You make a furrow. Put the seed in the furrow, cover it over. There’s a riddle. Now, people who meditate, make the picture vivid from one of these, for instance, gospel stores in the West or in the East, one of the traditional riddles there, and meditate on it and try to find – there’s a secret in it. When that secret it found, there’ll be a revelation. Well, so we’re told, and people are told that if they want to try, they can meditate for 20 minutes, sitting on the hilltop, throwing the thoughts away. Empty. And then the second one, on the cosmic purpose, and this is done, one of the traditional ways is on these riddles in the traditional texts, to meditate for 20 minutes making the picture vivid and then trying to penetrate what was happening there.

We can say, “Well, what is this going to do?” The purpose, or one of the purposes of the meditation is to make us free. When Hannibal invaded Italy, the Roman armies had to meet him. He was a general of genius and they had considerable difficulty. They were very much hampered, because the Roman army always had to keep between Hannibal’s army and Rome, always. Rome was here, they always had to keep here. If he moved around there, they had to be here. So they didn’t have freedom of movement. He had freedom of movement. He could go anywhere. They often had great difficulty.

Now, one general in Japan, mainly, in the era of the wars, followed the example of a general in China who didn’t have a city to defend. He was very successful because he had freedom of movement and all other generals had to defend their city and keep between the invader and the city. But this general had no city and could go anywhere. He did a lot of damage before he was finally defeated by a confederation. If we can become independent of a particular set-up which we feel we must defend at all costs, then we can have freedom of action. We can say, “Well, are we going to let it go?” No, not necessarily; but not that you have to be tied to that. And one of the things that they do is to test one’s flexibility.

In India, the great test used to be that the Brahmin had to serve one of the lowest cast with the food. My teacher’s teacher – in his time in India, the untouchable prejudice was still strong – was one of the first of the brahmins to break this. When somebody came to him as a disciple, one of the things they had to do was to serve the food on the palm leaf, to everybody present. Some of them were the so-called untouchables and when they became able to do this freely, then their mind became flexible and their heart became free of this prejudice, which simply limited their movement.

He used to give that as an example. We could say, “Well, what always happens with spiritual things is, something that impresses, one does it with enthusiasm for a time and then somehow it gets stale and it gets, sort of, tasteless and you feel, ‘Let’s have a bit of a change. Do something else.’ For the riddle itself, let’s go on to another one, just like kids do when they can’t do a sum, they think, ‘Let’s try another one, maybe it’ll be easier.’”

The principle’s the same or, you get the answer from someone; but that doesn’t help because you haven’t learned how to solve it, how to do the sum. We go around, we search around, like searching for water in the desert. You might find an oasis occasionally, when you move on. You have to move on. You can’t stay there forever, and then you’re searching for water again.

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