I found an interesting article in the Economist today entitled The Transcendental Crusader about a man who is passionately educating the disenfranchised in South Africa, but more, he’s offering transcendental meditation along with it.

I occasionally discuss meditation with my children but that’s as far as I take it. I believe meditation, at least as we practice it, is a choice. A choice that you would think needs to be very much grounded in the adult self, an adult with a strong identity, one that can stand up to the process of dissolution of self that meditation brings. I guess there are exceptions to this: souls like the Dalai Lama. But then people use meditation for other purposes don’t they.

I sometimes wonder what society would be like when humanity is well on the way to becoming egoless. What would an enlightened society be really like? When we see things just as they are, and respond without desire and according to the law of necessity. I wonder what the future would hold then.

We will have come a long way. We would have become brothers and sisters. Neighbor no longer hating neighbor. Spontaneity and intuitiveness would replace the need to control. And consumption would serve necessity and not desire. Our work would no longer serve profit seeking, but become focused on the act of some other service.

A distant vision. Too idealistic just yet. Maybe.