In India, there is a saying that when everyone gave a finger of co-operation, the mountain of sorrow was lifted. If we look with open eyes at the world of today, and at current social, financial and environmental trends, it's clear that there is widespread suffering and sorrow, that it is likely to get worse, and that to remove this sorrow will be a task like lifting a mountain. Meditation ignites a conviction inside us that the task will be done. Although we have such different backgrounds, cultures, personalities, and so on; meditation shapes our personalities in such a way that it becomes easy for us to share our resources, work together, and give our own finger of co-operation in the task.

The way meditation achieves this is interesting. Look at the other side – at what prevents co-operation: it is ego, where I am in a state of self-glorification, hungry for personal praise or fame, and not concerned about the wellbeing of the team. In ego, I think I am the only one who knows, the one who is right. Ego kills co-operation.

Ego is closely connected to body-consciousness. An enormous 'I and my' factor comes in when I think of myself as this body, and lose sight of the soul. My race, my color, my gender, my physical appearance, my education, my family, my job, my position, my possessions – all these become part of the build-up of ego. Working with others with co-operation, who may at any moment challenge my ego with their own different agendas and needs, then becomes stressful.

Every creative task needs humility behind it, for humility is plainness and on plainness the colors and shape of the work are clear to see and mould. If a new world were to come, it would need vitally this quiet basis to form itself on, that could stay the same whilst things were changing. Humility is the willingness to be used in any way that’s necessary, however out of character it may seem; for in humility, individuality has been exchanged for the task it is involved in. Quietness in this case is an unquestioning acceptance of whatever has to be done. Humility is rare, because to have it you have to want nothing. If you do have it, you get everything.