One day, a cousin of mine visited the ashram. I invited him and explained about the activities happen everyday. After all that, he asked a fundamental question. He told, Your way of life is very different than mine. I have my family, my job, my responsibilities and my life is filled with these. Leaving that way of life, why did you choose this way? I smiled told him, ‘Yeah! I felt more meaning in this than that.’ He was little puzzled. I could see a question mark in his face. I wanted to explain him practically at some later time.
After a week, I bought a new mobile phone. I purposefully uninstalled the operating system and posted it to him as a gift. After receiving it, he called me. He told, he received the gift, but he to his surprise when he switched on, it was only having blank screen and so could not use it as it was not having the operating system. I asked as to, ‘It is the same phone which everyone using. It has all the elements of a phone, the processor, memory, touch screen, speaker, camera. It is basically the same piece that is used by everyone. But why you could not use it?’ He told, ‘But there is no operating system’. I laughed and told him, that day when you visited the ashram, you asked the question as to why I am in this path. All the hardware does not make any sense or usable unless there is an operating system installed and coordinating all these hardware. Similarly, you have everything in your life like your family, job, a home, a car and a cool life. All these aspects are like all the hardware elements of a mobile phone. Spirituality is like the operating system which utilize all these resources and create meaningful operations which non of the individual components can achieve. Spirituality will install the needed intelligence within you to experience your life fully. He understood this point and it created enough interest to pursue the path. Later he attended many of my sadhana programs and progressed quite fastly.
