Once a journalist asked Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,"Are you enlightened"? and He said, "NO". The journalisk repeatedly kept asking. He said ," no tell me really are you enlightened?" Sri Sri repeatedly kept saying "no I am not". We always know the truth. Deep inside our heart knows. So even when he said "No I am not enlightened" the journalist could not believe it.
Many a times I have seen arrogant, rude reporters asking idiotic questions to Sri Sri. It is great to see the calmness with which he replies all the questions and there definately seems something special in the personality. But more importantly even if we assume that he is a FAKE and is a born great actor what about the thousands of his followers on whose faces there is an unmistakable sense of joy, enthusiasm, and a willingness to contribute.
One of my friends in Ahmedabad told me that on 2nd november the Art of Living family is hosting an event called ," Annabrahma". 5000 varieties of food are going to be cooked and served to underpriviliged children. Sri Sri is also going to inaugrate the project of free tribal schools in Gujarat in the presence of thousands of people during the evening satsang.
Around 1000 part time volunteers and teachers are having a great time working for it. He was telling me that the levels of enthusiasm amongst the volunteers is unbelievable. Of course there may be differences of opinions, a few skirmishes here and there but instead of doing a postmortem of the negative events I really wonder what on earth inspires these guys to do and accomplish such events at such a large scale.
Is this just a bubble thats going to burst in just a matter of time? Are all these people faking joy? Even in that case good work seems to be happening in society. Atleast they are not sitting at home and plonking themselves in front of television sets watching stupid TV serials and cricket matches.
Something worthwhile is being done. Instead of jumping to conclusions and screaming at the top of our voices just because we know of a few others who were fake, let us atleast wait and watch. So far these guys seem genuine.
"J"
