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| UG & Dr. KBR (both in white) and Dr.S.S. Raghavachar |
UG And His Encounter with 'Calamity'
---By Dr. K B Ramakrishna
Rao
For all purposes, U G (that is how U G Krishna Murthy is known)
is like anyone you may come across. But begin to listen to him, at once you
feel that a description ‘extraordinary’ would be simply inadequate. He pronounces,
‘whatever he has said or has been saying is tradition‘. This amazes you.
For what of that ‘tradition’, he has spoken? As he talked, you were feeling
corroded -- and when he says, it is all tradition you feel he is kidding you.
For you have witnessed the uprooting of the ‘tradition’ you had known. And its
collapse!
Yes. How can everything that has been or has come into being
be 'tradition’?
UG admonishes: ‘No, that is no tradition, that is no
authority’.
Then, what is that ‘tradition he says he is speaking of? It is
neither old, nor what is believed’. It is the truth that speaks for itself and
by itself. Its emergence is not related to time or belief. lt is not corrected
by experience, nor perfected through practice and skill. It is not obtained by
meditation. It is not a result.
What the sacred scripture (the ‘sastra') has wished
to convey, but failed to express, or what it said, but we have failed to grasp,
that sprouts here, in UG, with extraordinary power and life. Maybe, what had
all along rusted in the course of custom and habit, bursts forth here with a luster,
and we are dazzled by its brilliance. We proclaim, ‘how new it is, how refreshing
and pure it is!’ In no time we have realised how this ‘tradition’ of U G has
exposed all false tradition we have been in and about.
A ‘State’
U G is not a ‘person’. He is a 'state'. lt is this ‘state’
which the Vedanta identifies as the ‘Brahman‘ or the ‘Atman‘, or 'Moksha‘ or
‘Ananda’. We do study the Vedanta and the scriptures. We think we have
understood the secrets of Vedanta so well taught by the teachers. We are proud
of our learning. But we should only ask ourselves, if really we had the
experience of the truth or a glimpse of the thing indicated by the sacred lore.
We are too prone to dabble in terms and loudly too on several occasions. We
speak of those great terms: Atman, Brahman, Sushupti, Turiya etc.
Neither having understood their depth nor having grasped their extension. We
speak as though they are like concrete things on our work-table—a ‘fait
accompli’. But a single encounter with U G will be sufficient to realise
how deluded we were about things and concepts. All our storehouse of knowledge
is belied in his presence. He will have destroyed our ‘knowledge‘, and pride
too!
Is it, then, our learned knowledge and scriptural mastery ignorance of false?
Meet UG and discover for yourself the answer, how to receive
it and how not. ‘Lead us from darkness to light’ is our constant prayer. It is for this purpose we put our effort,
practise meditation, cultivate austerity. But UG brushes them aside, and
decrees: ‘all that leads you from darkness to greater darkness’.
U G says: ‘this State in which l am, was not obtained
by all such Sādhana,
however sincere it was. For, that is not
of the nature of a result. It should happen, and can happen to anybody in spite
of endeavour. lt is something far removed from the relationship of cause and
effect. And so, l could not obtain it by Sādhana’. We may be surprised at such
statements. But they are true we learn in his company. We are taken aback at
first, but while coming back, we wonder whether all our labour and schooling had
not been futile.
But we ponder, and ask ourselves: How could that be
admitted? ‘Haven’t we had numberless saints and mystics in our religious
history? Haven't they wanted us to do sādhana?
Aren't we told that ‘avatars' themselves had descended to lift us
up and redeem’? Aren't we told of devotees in scores getting salvation by
grace? We ask, aren't these our evidences for accepting the 'way' tradition has
decreed, and the 'goal’ it has visualised? We are satisfied, and nurture our
hopes and work for our salvation. We continue our search for a Guru and his
promises of a heaven, a bliss, a beatitude, till we, again, encounter UG.
He smiles at us, and dashes our dreams! With a calmness that
has the strength of Himalayas, he says : ‘All that you need to know and ought
to do is just to seek for food and clothing!‘ ‘Beyond that, any pursuit of bliss
or beatitude or salvation is will o’-the-wisp!' This is plain talk and we are
told that all aspirations of getting an eternal and unchanging bliss or
salvation, would be the first blunder. It is like being in one's own home, but
seeking outside its address. It is the sign of having missed what you have, but
going out in search of something which is not.
Is it, then UG is a rank materialist, an atheist or a
positivist?
He is none of these. He is simply a ‘natural man’. He has no ‘theory’ to put forth, and no argument
in defense. ‘l am not speaking’, he
says, ‘the State is expressing itself’. Yes. His statements have nothing in
them of the heat one may find in the dialectic of the pundits engaged in
establishing and describing the nature of reality, either as one or many, or as
this or that.
There is always a twinkle in U G’s eyes, and his smile
beguiles us. He draws us as a magnet would do, and we go. He asks: ‘why have
you come here? I cannot do anything for you. Neither can I give, nor can you receive.
Get out of here!’ Yet an inexplicable
force draws us to him.
If ever we can intuit of what he says, that would be the end
of our stay there. That may also be the end of all our seeking, our visits to
holy places and holy men! The peculiarity of this ‘magnet’ of U G is, as it
draws, so it repels!
Many are caught in to the magnetic web of U G. They lose all
awareness of time or surroundings. Hours they sit enraptured and mystified. How
does this happen? Look at him straight. He is a spell, both his form and
deport. All our scholarship, wisdom, and knowledge of sciences and scriptures get
dumb in his presence.
The most talkative gets mute. And the most argumentative misses
his logic. The hair-splitter gets lost. The invincible meets his defeat!
But is it ‘defeat?’ No. That should be ‘victory’! For
herein, one has unwittingly stumbled upon something he has been in search for
ages, and has been missing all along. It is an ‘accident‘, one which changes.
You don’t stay there. You run. All by yourself, towards no ‘goal’, but towards
yourself avoiding all mentors who may promise heaven, bliss and all glory!
Is this not new? Is this not strange‘?
Not a Recluse
UG is not a recluse, nor a sanyasi. He wears no ochre robe. Neither
rides on a palanquin with pomp and pageantry. There is no intermediary or a
mediator. Many who have gone to meet him, have asked him ‘where is UG?’ Yes,
you can even address him by his personal name. This is extraordinary for one expecting
to meet a ‘spiritual guru'. But here there is no embarrassment or need to
prostrate or address him as Lordship, Holy presence or World teacher. He says,
he is none of these. It is rare to come across a man of the type of U G. He is
just there, a simple man. You knock, and he opens the door!
‘Calamity’
Not many have heard of him. And of those who may have heard,
not many have met him. It is not enough you meet him, you must be with him—not
once, but often, if possible. And what may happen to you, you alone can be your
witness! That may be your ‘calamity’ -- not a bad word, indeed, if you come to
know what it means in the context of UG.
What is U G's message?
‘Nothing’, says he.
His words are like those of ‘Upanishads'. Many a time you find
in what he says reflections of the great sears. Yajnavalkya, Aruni, Sanatkumara,
the seer of the Mandukya Upanishad come out of him and speak to you. Buddha,
Gaudapada and Sankara stand before you. For those who cannot follow U G everything
would be inconsistent. But for him who can know, it is all joy, nay, it is fulfillment.
The vision that U G gives is new. Here the philosophy of Self
of the Upanishads is reconciled with Buddha's philosophy of No-self: the
immutable theory of the real is harmonised with theory of eternal flux. Are not
these sets mutually contradictory? The question bothers the follower of the Upanishads,
even as it does the opponent. Herein
lies the most unique aspect of UG‘s vision.
What U G says, the pundit neither can digest, nor reject. Pointing to
his chest, U G says ‘There is nothing here called the Atman, but there is
Witnesshood. Here there is no agent, but
all that is action. There is no subject here, but every object creates it.
There is no immortality, but nowhere there is birth or death. There is no mind,
and if there is one, it is not different from the body. The mind divides life,
but if it unites with life, ‘it illumines and makes it dynamic.’
Such statements naturally bewilder us. Here the ‘tradition’ that we know fails us and
logic gets derailed. Yet UG says with a smile: ‘there is nothing that mystifies
here, there is no mystery at all!’
U G is akin to an ocean. Of it, if you ask, ‘is it unchanging, static
or eternally dynamic?’ he simply says: ‘it is your question, not mine. I am not concerned at all. lt need not even be
answered. If you realise the meaninglessness of it, it disappears.’ All this is confusing to us. Yet, it we can
intuit the 'state' of U G, in the words of the Upanishad, ‘the unheard becomes heard,
and the unknown becomes known.’
Root of Dharma
UG warns: in this ‘state’ there is no 'religious' content,
yet we cannot forget that it is the root of all ‘dharma’ (in its primary sense
of an all-bearing and all-sustaining force). He says there is no ‘social’ content in it,
yet we see in it the foundation of all social structure and good life. He says,
there is no ‘value’ here, yet we cannot deny that all value originates therein,
and gets evaluated.
If such is not the truth, we would not have reason to go to U
G, nor like to listen to him enraptured. Even though he does not invite any,
what reason compels us to go to him?
Is U G a ‘mystic'? Is he a ‘prophet’?
None of these. As he
says of himself, he is just a ‘natural man‘, ‘the end product of human
evolution.'
Not that we can understand such simple statements. Perhaps never
can we understand. The Evolutionist, both the philosophical and the scientific,
has something new here to encounter in the description: ‘the end-product of human evolution.’ Does the
Evolutionist digest it, or gets dizzy when he does? It is an open question.
Naturally we become curious, and ask: ‘how and when this state
occurred?’
And he answers: ‘when all my inherited tradition of history
and culture, and all the instruments and institutions that these had fostered
broke down in my life.’ And after that
he says: ‘l have no biography.’
U G describes it as a strange ‘happening.’ ‘Every cell in my
body exploded. Biological and chemical
changes took place. A strange awareness came about. What had hitherto been an
unnatural life, mistakenly taken for the
natural, came to a close. That is the happening of the real Natural State.‘
Of this UG calls a ‘calamity.’ For him
the term ‘realisation’ is like a worn out coin, much used and disfigured. He
does not use it.
What the jnanin, the yogin, the tapasvin
craves for, but fails to get, is that Primordial State, which UG calls the ‘Natural
State.‘ How can we understand him who is in that State? Does he help us‘? He says, 'no'! But we hear
him saying. ‘it is unique, peerless, deathless and birthless. It is no effect, has no cause. That is no
bondage, nor even freedom. It is a
divisionless awareness, a witnesshood.'
Again, you ask him, for you are enchanted: ‘how to know it, how
to be it‘? UG repeats: ‘I do not know myself, I cannot teach. It is a state of
not-knowing. To know, and to make one know I have no means with me!' Is it
helplessness, or is it the uniqueness of the ‘state’, which does not admit of
communication'?
If one who is in that ‘state’ were to say what is said, does
it not strike us queer or crazy? No, for that is the very logic of it, as the
Upanishad says:
‘How to know that, by which everything is known? How to know
the Knower?’
( Reproduced from the Article published by Manasa Gangotri on 20-03-1978 by Dr. KB Ramakrishna Rao.
Dr. Rao hosted UG regularly in Mysore in the late '70s and also was instrumental in introducing UG to many a friend in Mysore and Bangalore.
Article Courtesy: Dr. Narayana Moorty, Montery, California)
