Frozen Darkness Melting in the Glow of Ashtavakra Gita

Nina’s face glowed in the evening candle-light as we listened to an audio lecture of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s commentary on The Ashtavakra Gita, the classical scripture in Sanskrit narrating the historic dialogue between King Janaka and the great sage Ashtavakra.

     The year was 1999.  We were in Tbilisi, the capital city of The Republic of Georgia.    Together with The Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, it belongs to the Southern Caucasus region of the former USSR.  These three countries have ancient, rich, and distinctly different cultural, scientific, and literary traditions, dating back to the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE  and, according to some scholars, even several centuries earlier.

     The economies of the outlying former Soviet Republics were continuing to struggle after the collapse of the Soviet Union.   In each of the three countries of the Southern Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, the supplies of gas and electricity were minimal, sporadic and unpredictable.  This meant there was neither heat nor light most of the time.  So in addition to feeling cold all the time and not being able to do anything that required electricity, we couldn’t cook food or even heat water for tea. 

     Some of our Art of Living course participants laughed that their situation reminded them of a story in one of the lectures of the Founder of the Art of Living Foundation, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. In his series on the Bhakti Sutras of Narada, he describes how someone came to him for help with a problem with bathing.  The gentleman was able to wash only one of the various areas of his body during his bath each day, so it required several days in a row of bathing before his whole body got washed.  Our participants described how they, too, washed only one part of their body each day, because, with ice cold water in an unheated home, it was too cold to endure bathing any other way!

     During this period, there was an increased mortality rate among the vulnerable populations, such as the children and the elderly.  Living at a constant temperature no higher than 45 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 7 degrees Celsius), both inside and outside the home, levies a stress on the human nervous system that is hard to imagine.

     However in our groups of Art of Living course participants, we were very fortunate not to have such instances.  The depth of the rest and the unique state of integration that the body and mind  experience during the Sudarshan Kriya Yoga and the Sahaj Samadhi Meditation techniques made it possible for the people who took the Art of Living Happiness and Meditation programs to maintain their health and to find joy and peace, even in such difficult circumstances.

     Even though we had to wear hats, gloves, scarves, warm socks, and layers of warm clothes at our meetings – and we were able to see each other only in the faint glow of candle light, we nevertheless gained indescribable peace and comfort from the soothing effect of practicing the Art of Living yogic techniques.

     Once, several years before, at the beginning of my stay in Moscow, when I thought I couldn’t go on anymore, I asked Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar what to do.  He answered, “Have you heard Ashtavakra?”

     So several years later in Tbilisi, Georgia, Nina and I and several other dedicated Art of Living volunteers wrapped up in our blankets, snuggled into the soft chairs in George Lavrelashvili’s apartment, enjoyed the warmth from the kerosene heater and listened, in the soft-glow of the candle light, to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Commentary on the Ashtavakra Gita.

-         Hannah Surd