"I Was As Much Afraid As You !" - UG

UG often reiterated, " There is nothing here (pointing to himself) that you do not (already) have!". To the orthodox, who sometimes made a vain attempt to touch his feet, his rejoinder was," Hey! Don't touch my feet - they are dirty! Why don't you touch that servant's feet ? What is 'here' is 'there' too!"

This brutal honesty about UG, his ordinariness and naturalness endeared him to all. It brings to book the false claims by market gurus and godmen who act like potentates, living in palatial mansions with a fleet of cars and retinue of servants. Pretension is the order of the day in the spiritual bazaar.

To use UG's own phrase, the market gurus are not 'honest, decorous and decent enough' to admit that they too are human with feet of clay. They are frightened that any such candour on their part would only bring them crashing down from their ivory towers to 'ground zero',  sending them into the realm of the ordinary, normal and the common. 

In a path breaking departure from every other teacher before him, UG came down heavily on 'seeking' or 'searching'. He completely rubbished all kinds of spiritual goals (not material goals), emphasising and re-emphasising that 'there is no oasis yonder, you are stuck with the mirage'. His message ( if there was one) was straightforward and simple, " Stop looking for something, there is nothing to look for!"

The older Krishnamurti, Jiddu, nailed it when he said that one could only discover what one already knew! Perhaps it might be  possible to discover the needle in the proverbial hay stack, but there was no way one could ever discover God or the 'unknown'?

 UG went a step further! He brushed aside even the possibility of existence of the 'unknown', in a pointed reference to JK! Such a possibility would only further the 'search' and propagate thinking or thoughts! For UG, the talk about the 'unknown' is still within the realm of the known and therefore a projection of the mind and hence a trap, an illusion, a mirage!

UG never claimed or pretended to be any different from us.

Once he was waxing eloquent about the falsity and futility of spiritual goals. As I sat at his feet wondering what made him so different from the rest of us, he suddenly leaned forward and thrusting his finger into my chest said, " Look here! There is no difference between you and me, none whatsoever ! We both function in exactly the same way! Only thing is that you are in conflict with society and I am not!"  

On a different occasion, UG was speaking of the courage to stand alone. He thundered, " You are nothing but FEAR!" The truth of this utterance hit me like a ton of bricks!

Agreed, we are bundles of fear but then how do we rid ourselves of fear? UG maintained that asking 'how' would  only propagate and perpetuate the mechanism of thought. Any demand for a method or technique to conquer fear would only breed thought.

Thought is nothing but fear! Thoughts can only be about yesterday or tomorrow. Yesterday's failures or tomorrow's losses are what constitute our psychological fears.

Does that mean we are stuck? Are we not capable of this extraordinary courage that he is talking about?

As I sat lost in reverie, UG seemed to have read my mind and in a flash responded, " Sir! I was as much afraid as you are! Only in my case, I was lucky, fear was thrown off my system!" 

I was stunned at his honesty and humaneness. How many gurus can be so open or candid and connect with people, the way UG did?

How many gurus dare say ," I am a dog barking!"  One is reminded of the sage Nityananda of Ganeshpuri who sounded similar, "I am just a crow (raven) cawing ! "

Nityananda was among the countable few that UG held in high esteem.  Sometimes he would narrate to us the extraordinary anecdotes from Nityananda's life.

The real gurus erase all lines of distinction and let us taste the real beauty and greatness of life, our true inheritance. The fake ones create a 'distance' through their self-importance and make us feel 'small' and worthless.

 Once again, to borrow UG's expression, the gurus in the market place are 'riding the tiger', they are simply afraid to get off its back, lest they be eaten alive! The tiger being their persona or façade !