The present times are confused and conflicted. Wars, migration, gross inequality and climate change are signs of a sickness in society which is embedded in our way of thinking which is linear and exclusive, our priority of material growth, our way of organising which is national and partial, and our values of competing and winning.
They are not the solution to our confusion, they are its cause and preclude the great transformation which must take place to preserve the grace and wonder of the human race.
These encounters describe some of the wonderful sparks already happening – which could ignite that profound transformation, if they were fanned by the breath of a new enlightenment to go forth and multiply. How might that happen?
Laurens van der Post, who embodies the spirit of Ashok, tells the story of living with the bushmen in the Kalahari and learning their ways. In the long drought before the rains come, like all living things in the desert, they wait with desperate anxiety for the lightening to come, the signal of a new season of plenty. When it did burst after a long period of darkness, it was like God beckoned them and, having rediscovered their sense of purpose, they had to move towards the light. They were instantly transformed.
He was transfixed by two events. Against the water light of the stars emerged the outline of a woman holding a child high above her head, singing softly with her face lifted towards the sky. She was asking the stars to take the little heart of her child and to give him something of the heart of a star in return.
Then an old man talked of the magic of the steenbok. Too beautiful to be aware of imperfection, too innocent to know fear, too gentle to suspect violence. Disturbed, it would stand quietly by its ‘place’ and look without fear out of its great eyes to see what the wonderful noise could be about. The magic was that the hunter began to feel there was a steenbok person standing behind him willing him to act in the same way.
The Great Transformation will occur for us when we too invite the stars into our hearts and feel the presence of a steenbok person in our souls, guiding our values and our behaviour in the way of Ashok.