The stranger appeared to be walking very purposely, though the walk appeared not to lead in any particular direction. He met another man and told him, “My teacher sent me to the Lamp Shop, and I am looking for it.” The second man said that he had lived in the area for a long time, and could help him find the shop. But the stranger refused. “I have been told directions, to turn left here, and right there, and straight to the shop.”
“I see,” said the local person, “you don’t want to know about the Lamp Shop, but you just want to talk about it. You just want company, and feel good about talking about the lamps!”
The stranger thought that he had come so far without guidance, and though he had heard that it gets difficult towards the end, he could still manage.
And the local person asked him, “Why do you want to go the Lamp Shop”? “It supplies devices that enable reading in the dark,” replied the stranger.
But there are prerequisites for this to actually happen, the local man said, and wondered if the stranger had thought of these?
“First, to use a lamp, we must recognize it when we see it,” he said, “and two, even if we recognize the lamp and the light it emits, we must already know how to read. If either is missing, our journey is of no use.”
“Go back to your Teacher, tell him that he is the only lamp you need, and stop searching for the shop,” advised the wise local guide.
The Guru Granth Sahib says:
If a hundred moons and a thousand suns appeared,
It would still be pitch dark without the Guru.
The Guru enabled vision of wisdom, and dispelled the darkness of ignorance.
By the Lord’s Grace, I have met the Holy One; O Nanak, my mind is enlightened.