Guiding Light by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Spiritual lessons from a baby

Sometimes people come to the spiritual path when they have some disappointment. This is not the case for all, but usually it is such. However, the fact is that every child is born with spiritual knowledge and as you grow up, you start losing that. Yogi is becoming a baby again. Getting in touch with your pure essence. It is as simple as that. You don’t need a yoga teacher. Just look at a baby from the time it is born, to the age of three, and they will teach you everything. But you have to observe them every day for all three years. The way they breathe, the way they smile. They feel so connected with everybody. It is we who corrupt the children and spoil their naturalness.

Everyone has child-like qualities in them. Not childish but child-like. When one is a yogi, this happens automatically. Everyone seems to be one’s own. Ego, any kind of self-identity that one has, gets dissolved. A baby smiles, cries and radiates love from every cell of the body. You can read a lot of books, write volumes on love, but if, in your vibrations, love does not show up, it is all no good. Your dog or baby at home, will tell you what love is with one look, with all its heart, and then you know what love is. So love is in the presence. And there is no need for words where presence carries love. This is an indication of a yogi – He/She speaks through existence.

That is why a baby is superior to a monk. An ascetic has an ego, “I have renounced the whole world.” But a child has not even grasped the world yet, let alone renounce. If you ask a baby, or a small child of 3 years of age, what they want. They will look at you and say “nothing”. Desire is wanting joy, not joy itself. But when you are joyful there is no want there.

Wisdom is cleansing our presence, not just our words. It makes you happy from within. A Yogi and a baby may not have too much intellectual knowledge, yet they are better than an ascetic, better than a scholar, better than someone who does a lot of work, because they are united with the existence, and with the divinity. And if you understand this, you are the greatest.