Unfortunately lot of people in the world suffer from preconceived notions and concepts about spirituality and enlightenment. One of them is that, Art of Living has rearranged ancient knowledge of all the scriptures and put it in a package and sold it to millions and made lot of money. In that case what is a book? Its just words from a dictionary rearranged. Why do we spend money to buy books and not just dictionaries? Spiritual knowledge was given by masters as per the need of the time. A master “HAS” to package the knowledge in such a way that is relevant to the prevalent times so that people can relate to it and implement it in their day-to-day life.
A few others say that Art of Living is just brainwashing people into something and charging money to support Sri Sri 's extravagant life style. Well,according to me there are far more easier ways of earning money than going around teaching people how to meditate. I would also like to challenge such people to keep pace with Sri Sri's schedule for more than a week. They would have no energy left to even wonder about the difference between "extravagant" and "extraordinary".Moreover service and charity cannot happen with an empty bowl. I would challenge the cynics to do a bit more research about the service projects of the Art of Living rather than just having blind faith in the words of a few other cynics. Just because the media rejects all good news as "soft news" one cant go on believing people who have got into the habit of resorting to shameless and baseless character assassination.
I recently attended a satsang in the Bangalore ashram in the presence of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Towards the end Sri Sri was talking about a story of a village called kathewadi in Nanded district in Maharashtra which was completely transformed in a few months after a few dedicated volunteers of the Art of Living reached out to the villagers with this beautiful knowledge and also trained them into organic farming. The village was totally violence prone but now the entire village folk get together every morning and meditate. There is no sign of any violence. Everything that is sold in this village is organic. There are shops with no shopkeepers! People take what they want and drop the money in a money box. You would barely find anybody smoking or consuming alcohol. Each one has done the Art of Living course and has been brain–washed!! As Sri Sri narrated the story HE introduced us to the village sarpanch (Village Head) and a few others who had come to the ashram to invite Sri Sri to the village. It was quite heart warming to see the gratitude in their eyes.
I don’t see anything wrong with such kind of brain washing! After hearing and reading what people talk and write about something so genuinely beautiful I think there are lot of brains out there that need to be washed… desperately. While I was having dinner I met a young guy who had just finished teaching the Yes!+ course to 200 inmates of the TIHAR jail. His experience was absolutely amazing. He said that quite a few of them told him that if they had met him earlier they would not have landed up in Jail.
Given the end result I would only wish that more and more people get their brains and minds washed and create a beautiful environment which is exactly what is anyway happening and no matter what will continue to happen.
J
