Balbir’s friend, Kathy Miller, asked him this question as a follow-up to his “The Shadow of Light” and “The Defining Moments” stories: “What has been the life-long impact of your experience with the little flower?”
Here is Balbir’s response:
Kathy, thank you for asking this question. It is important. The experience with the little flower was at the beginning of my life, in my state of unknowing and innocence. You are asking me to review that experience when I am 89, perhaps at the very tail end of my life. Thank you for this opportunity.
A few days before my experience with the little flower, I spoke with my parents and asked them, “What is the meaning of life?” They had done their best to explain, but it was not satisfying to me as a six-year-old child.
Later, walking on the side of a hill, I saw a tiny blue flower . . . perhaps only the size of two peas, but it radiated life. It was blue at first glance, but when I looked closer, it was an amalgamation of colors with beautiful veins. It radiated an intelligence that attracted that six-year-old boy to ask his most dominating question: What is the meaning of life?
There was an intelligence in the little flower that gave the little boy an answer that satisfied him. The child came in touch with something beyond. The child identified with the flower and, in that moment, they were one. The question never arose in the mind of the child again.
The child felt small like the flower. Now, as an adult, my scientific knowledge supports that feeling. We live in a universe with billions of galaxies, with trillions and trillions more suns and planets, where our whole galaxy is like a grain of sand, and I would not register even as big as that flower. Looking back, I grasped that intuitively.
And yet, looking at that flower, it was magic. Its veins, its color, and its ability to answer my six-year-old child’s question were magical. That child understood that, even in the smallest of forms, one cannot only experience magic but be magical. One cannot comprehend the magic. One cannot change the magic or improve on the magic, but one can fully experience it. And when one is in tune with that magic, one becomes magical! Such is the mystery.
Egotistically thinking, one might think that the purpose of the little flower was to deliver that message to me. The child did not think that. The flower simply existed. The child stood in awe in front of the flower, unable to even touch it. If the purpose of the flower was to deliver the message, it was not aware of that. It was not worried about what the meaning of its life was. It was not worried about whether spring would come or rain or hot air. It simply experienced all those things. That little flower was born and died, totally content. For the flower, life was an end unto itself. The child learned from the flower that this is how all life is: Life is not a means to an end but an end in itself.
The flower taught the child the simplicity of life, just to BE–not to BECOME–but to BE. So, my life has not been about changing or improving the world, but experiencing it to the fullest extent possible and participating in the magic.
I have had many teachers in my life that have taught me many things, but as I grew up and learned new things and later delved into the books of religion and philosophy, I had a smile on my face each time I read something that I felt the flower had taught me at the age of six!
The child’s quest was fully answered: “Life is magical; it is to live and experience.”
That encounter with the little flower was the seed for experiencing reverence, surrender, and awe. Over time, my soul prayer became “Thine, not mine shall be done.”
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Life is a bundle of perspectives, and the exact opposite of what I have said is as valid as anything else. It’s not “how it is,” it is what my experience was with the flower.
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