Peeling Carrots: The Evolution of Consciousness
My hand lifts an older vegetable peeler to scrape a straight peel that reveals brighter orange skin to the tip of the carrot that rests on the white, plastic cutting board. I’ve washed the carrot in soap and water; so there’s really no need to peel away the skin, as that removes nutrients, and this morning I decide that’s a habit to break.
I lose my focus and am no longer in the moment but having a conversation in my mind. I return to a breathing pattern helpful of late: quiet on an in breath, a silent repetition of one to ten on an out breath, then beginning again.
I’m not bored, yet my mind resists one-pointedness. In an unanticipated moment, my mind becomes centered and a profound, new thought appears. In this sudden, heightened state of awareness, I understand that the carrot has consciousness, and my hand pauses. Meher Baba, in His writing on evolution, states that consciousness, in a form of very least awareness, exists in a stone.* I go deeper into thought. As it is in a stone, it is in higher forms. My education is occurring not from a book but in a moment of thoughts—I think of the bottle gourd and the okra in the vegetable bin. My hand resumes the job, but I am changed.
My realization is, “Wisdom does not require great effort; it can arise unexpectedly from the most simple of tasks.”
* “The progressive evolution of consciousness from the stone stage culminates in man. The history of evolution is the history of a gradual development of consciousness.” Meher Baba,
Discourses
(Myrtle Beach, SC: Sheriar Foundation, 1987), 17.
“In the divine cosmic process, the soul travels through innumerable galaxies, through sub-gaseous and gaseous states, then through the progressive evolutionary steps of stone and metal, vegetable, worm (which includes all insects and reptiles), fish, bird, animal, and finally to the human state.” Meher Baba, God Speaks (Oakland, CA: Sufism Reoriented, Inc., 1955, 1973), 175–76, quoted in Rose Reed,
Journey in Consciousness
(Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India: Meher Mowanvani Publications, 2005), 3.