DISCOURSES Volume II - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

THE TYPES OF MEDITATION: IV 141of a higher form and a correspondingly more developedconsciousness of the gross world. The soul, therefore, has toassume higher and higher forms (like metal, vegetable, worm, fish,bird and animal) until at last it assumes a human form, in which ithas developed full consciousness (in all the aspects of knowing,feeling and willing) of the gross world.The manner in which sanskaras result in the evolution ofconsciousness and the corresponding form has a useful analogue inordinary experience. If a man has the desire to act the part of aDriving force ofevolutionking on the stage he can only experience it byactually putting on the garb of a king and goingto the stage. This is true of aspirations anddesires, which can only be worked out and fulfilled by bringingabout an actual change in the entire situation, as well as themedium, through which the situation may be adequately experienced.The parallel is very suggestive in understanding thedriving force of evolution, which is not mechanical but purposive.The sanskaras are not only responsible for the evolution ofthe form (body) and the kind of consciousness connected withit, but they are also responsible for the riveting of conscious-Identification withformness to the phenomenal world. They makeemancipation of consciousness (i. e., thewithdrawal of consciousness from the phenomenalworld to the soul itself) impossible at the subhuman stageand difficult at the human level. Since consciousness clings to theprevious sanskaras, and experience of the phenomenal world isconditioned by the use of an adequate form (body) as a medium,the soul at every stage of evolution comes to identify itself with theform (e. g., stone, metal, vegetable, animal, etc.).