Tansen the great musician in the court ot Akbar, is said to have lighted up the lamps with his rendering of the rag 'Deepak.' If that was possible for a musician, it should be equally possible for a man of God to set the candles alight with a Sermon that must have contained the flame of intense prayer performed over a life time. But don't rush into a discussion over the possibility or otherwise of lighting up lamps with song or speech.
What is important to consider is the question as to why we don't 'wake up' and feel the joy of life as the candles did when they started dancing. Even when the 'messengers' bring us the 'good news' and put the lighted match to our wicks, why are we so 'dead' to the whole process? Is it because we are stupefied?
When Arunachala Ramana was asked the question, he seems to have stated that most of us resemble 'wet wood.' If the wood is dripping wet there is no likelihood of it getting ignited despite all efforts. But if it is wood that is fairly dry it is possible to build up a fire, after fanning it.. But the real dry twigs are so susceptible to fire, that a single matchstick could start a crackling fire on the instant. Perhaps these are the three categories into which most human beings fall. The potential for being set aflame is there in all wood, but the wet and dry conditions of the wood make all the difference.
This is what Jiddu Krishnamurti means when he talks about our 'conditioning,' to borrow a term from the science and art of psychology. We are soaked in our tradition which prevents us from looking at anything afresh. We have innumerable rituals, the performance of which puts us in a state of complacency, inducing us to believe that we have done all that is needed in rendering unto God what is God's. The religion that we practice today is not something that is alive, vibrant or joyful, but something which is dead.
One needs to rediscover religion, or the really religious mind, without being
influenced by society which encourages division, false values, hypocrisy and
corruption. The really religious mind will, in one grand gesture, sweep away
all this rottenness, to awaken love and affection for the whole of human kind.
It will break down the walls of separation artificially erected by various denominational
religions and produce the new man of the future. This has to happen in you to
start with, and needs your stepping out of the stream. If you see the importance
and urgency of really being free of a corrupt society, then you are 'dry wood'
and you will turn into a flame with a revolutionary fervor, which will prove
a danger to all the modern day pharisees and scribes, who now lay down the law.