" Stimulus and response are a unitary movement " - UG

Once in Bombay, some elderly gentlemen in mid-80s sat around UG reminiscing good old days. I, in my mid-thirties, happened to be the youngest in the crowd. An impish thought entered my head –‘what on earth could the oldies do other than gossip?’ The very moment, UG caught me and said, ”Sir! We are all oldies here, we have nothing better to do, we are useless. Unlike you, we have no work, we simply sit here and chat the whole day !", and with a mischievous smile added, “We are idlers but good observers!"

At various points in time, UG, the ‘biological freak’, as he 'idled around' the globe, spoke of the way he functioned saying that there was no purpose to his talks and actions. They were only in response to questions posed, or to situations to which he was exposed. One could clearly see the distinct lack of purpose or intention behind his words and actions at any given moment. He seemed to personify that hackneyed phrase, ‘living in the moment.’

Living in the moment perhaps is possible only if there is complete freedom from the past, from all kinds of preoccupation. UG had this to say about how he operated, “Stimulus and response are a unitary movement!"   A rare insight indeed but confounding!

 For us, logically grounded minds, burdened with knowledge, it is a puzzle how the stimulus, something external, could be unitary with response, something internal or subjective? To us, they appear as two distinct and diverse events! We are not in a position to appreciate the phenomenon that presupposes the total absence of the 'subject', as is the case with UG.

    

‘Action is born of stillness', says the Taoist sage! Perhaps it is stillness or absence of thought or thinking that ties the stimulus and response (action not born of thought or premeditation) into a continuum and makes it a unitary movement. It is the thought or thinking that divides this unitary movement into two distinct events - the stimulus and the response.

Also stimulus and response is a unitary movement when one is facing a physical threat or danger.  We instinctively shy away from a stone pelted in our direction. There is no thinking involved ; there is no division or choice in our response! As soon as we see the stone coming, we duck!

Being part and parcel of the social environment and its offspring, the psychological world,we are stuck with this superimposed reality. UG very often reiterated, " The only reality is, that which is imposed on us by society."  

Thinking gets invariably triggered when we are faced with a psychological challenge or stimulus. We then respond like robots programmed with premeditated choices born of incessant conditioning from childhood.  

There is no way for us to see or grasp the unitary nature of stimulus and response that UG and the Taoist sages talk about!

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Those who have tasted the 'sugar' (the reality of life) see no separation or division. They see no 'others', they see no 'world' ouside of themselves. They are rightly called the 'seers'.

We are lucky, we have examples like Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana, Sri Nityananda and others in the past century who operated in that division-less state.

In this context, UG's observation that 'response is not separate from stimulus' is revelatory.

When 'thought' or 'agency' or 'self' is absent in 'stimulus and response', then response does not spring from the past (or the acquired knowledge) and hence it is complete, total or untainted.

Thought, UG emphasised causes the division between stimulus and response as an agency that weighs the options on how to respond. The absence of thought makes the phenomenon unitary.

Are there any acts of ours where thought is absent and the stimulus-response is purely unitary?

Perhaps empathy is the closest in our vocabulary that denotes the unitary nature of the 'stimulus-response' continuum.

Unlike empathy, sympathy involves thought. Sympathy is when we see 'someone' suffer, we see the 'other' as separate but do not suffer viscerally. Sympathy, a result of moral and ethical or cultural programming gives rise to action, which is an after-thought - a conditioned response which is metered and calibrated by thought!

Empathy, on the other hand, is the 'house on fire' response, it is visceral. Hence empathy is total action, not calibrated. Here there is no thought or agent or self. There is only action! Like you jump into the pool and save the baby, may not be yours!

Action is empathy, donation is sympathy!

All of us go through these fleeting moments of empathy and we just act.

Yes, these are tiny, little moments that give us a glimpse of what is a 'stimulus-response' continuum which has no trace of thought or premeditation present in all our day-to-day actions.