So What !!

A close friend of mine after reading my earlier Post exclaimed.."SO WHAT? WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT A CATERPILLAR TURNING TO A BUTTERFLY, IT'S NATURAL!! How is that related to your Art of Living and your Guru?"

I could see that 'Nature' did not hold any great magic for my friend. I thought about this a bit and the following came up:

I asked him, " Have you heard of this phrase: Tamaso Maa Jyotir Gamaya?" ( a line from an ancient prayer in Sanskrit ).

He: "Of course, it was part of a prayer I used to recite in school. It literally means - Lead me from Darkness into Light."

I: " What does it mean to you?"

He: (after a little thought): " It is like asking a bigger power to show me the right way. This world is anyways full of negativity (darkness), therefore please bless me with some brightness in my life"

I (reminded of an email i had read earlier) : " Does darkness have an independent existence?"

He: " What?"

I: " I mean, can you make something more dark, can you add darkness to an existing darkness?"

He: " What do you mean? I don't get what you are saying."

I:" Darkness is not a physical substance. It is just the absence of light. Right?

He (slowly): "Y..e...s"

I: "When you extinguish the light then what you get is darkness and not the other way round."

He: " Yes. Of course. That is known to any child. But what are you getting at?"

I: "To me, the prayer means, help me get over the darkness within me (Tamas) and realise the (Jyoti)/Light that is within me, the Light that I am. Thus what the Prayer is hinting at is that You are the light."

He: ""hmmm"

I: " Nature doesn't just leave it at abstract prayers, it shows this truth to us practically when the caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. You see and realise that within every caterpillar is a beautiful butterfly!"

To take it one step further Sri Sri says (not verbatim) " Everyone is inherently good. If someone does something 'bad', it is because of stress".

Thus this prayer could also mean - Please help me get rid of the stress in me... and thats what The Art of Living does - Breathe out the stress and know that you are the Light.

The biggest secret however is that this is just the beginning.... To know more you have to ask Dadasaheb Khatar, a farmer in Maharashtra....

More on this later...