And later, about a month or so we were having walks and doing lots of talking, he wanted to know something about me. He was amazed by my knowledge of Indian music and Buddhism and nearly jumped up when I mentioned that I have published a book with various translations in 1984 and in it among other articles was one about Rupert Sheldrake and his theory of morphic resonance.
“Would you want to go for Rupert Sheldrake’s course?” asked me openly and caught me surprised – “What do you mean by that?” and he said: “well, you know, I’m a director of Schumacher College in England and since we are very pro-ecologically and spiritually oriented we offer various courses from world leading experts. And in a month’s time there will be six week course lead by Sheldrake.” And I freaked out and replied: “But I don’t have the money and it is too soon… and I probably won’t be able to arrange this.” He replied: “Well, take it or leave it, you can always ask for scholarship.” And so I decided I’ll take it. I applied for scholarship which was granted to me and in one month’s time later I found myself in a small town called Totnes in south-west of England.
My stay at Schumacher College was just like one long dream. The nature around unbelievably beautiful being cultivated and looked after by the local people (I used to walk to the centre of Totnes – about half an hour walk – through fields in bloom, alongside small river and unbelievable old trees and sometimes I took way round beautiful and well looked after park) and big library full of the newest and classical books about ecology and spirituality. To all that, we used to have really nice and big breakfast and dinners and the opportunity to meet other thirty colleagues from USA, England, India, Germany and even Australia and New Zealand.
But today my heart is filled with something else: with regards to the appeal of standing women, a story which tells you that a prayer (as a silent concentration on any, even seemingly absurd or silly task) works.
One evening, Rupert Sheldrake was talking about crisis that British peace movement was in, in the mid 80’s. The usual way of protests for instance against military camp bases stopped working (the protesters tied themselves up to the gate to prevent the cars carrying rockets of going out and going back inside the base, the chains they used to tie themselves up were taken down by the policemen and the protesters were then imprisoned for two days). Nobody was interested in this anymore. So then some famous people got together (including for instance philosopher Bertrand Russell) and they put their heads together to think of new solutions. And then after long hours of barren discussions when they were all worn out and exhausted, someone said – what if we all start praying or meditating about that there are no more military camp bases with nuclear rockets in Europe, what if we do this if only for 5 minutes every day? This is an absolute nonsense said some; even if we start praying and meditating we cannot expect that anything will change just by doing so. But because there was no better idea on the table at that moment, they wrote up a list of military camp bases in Western Europe and all military bases in states of Warsaw Pact. Then everyone randomly picked one military base from NATO and one from Warsaw Pact states and promised to pray and visualize that both of these bases will be free from nuclear rockets.
Then Rupert Sheldrake talked about how he got Cornwall and Milovice in Czechoslovakia. And then suddenly as if he just remembered that I was from Czechoslovakia turned to me and asked: “Are there still any rockets left in Milovice?” and I proudly replied: “No, not any more. Just a few months ago the last Russian soldier has left and the bases are abandoned.”
And Rupert Sheldrake raised his eyebrows in astonishment and said: “So it works. There are no more military bases with rockets in Cornwall either.”
And then we discussed until late night hours how prayers, meditation and power of will is like an art of direction of some intelligent space designer and genius and of miracles that happen every day.