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| UG and Melissa |
Happy Birthday UG!
The lure of music, magic and logic on humans is well known.
The Trinity has played a powerful role in proselytization – in the spread of many religions, traditions including all sorts of cults. The three are deadly lures that give us a ‘high’, just like narcotic drugs that enslave people.
Music has been paramount to Bhakti or devotion or emotion in religious lore whether in Hinduism or Sufism or Christianity etc.
Magic is akin to spiritual powers that are no more than the naturally endowed faculties, perceptions that are sometimes triggered in certain individuals but dormant in most.
Logic or reasoning, is yet another trap, the exclusive domain of the intellect, it is the disease of polished minds that exhibits an overarching tendency to ignore what is essential or real.
Religions and traditions have resorted to some or the other form of music, logic or magic to impress upon people, and sometimes on all three to dominate, enslave and rule the human mind.
The appeal of logic and reason has swayed the best of brains, magic has confounded the masses. And music, with its universal appeal, has captured people’s minds and hearts and mesmerized one and all.
Only a sagely soul like UG could debunk all the three and point to our excessive attachment, overarching tendency to be caught up in some of these golden traps.
UG on numerous occasions reiterated that there is no difference between his talk and the barking of a dog, letting us be grounded and not place a premium on speech. He explained that for him, operating in natural state even the musical notes of the Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony were just a play of sound and interval. He summarily dismissed music as acquired taste, a mere interpretation, translation of sound by a trained mind!
Similarly UG debunked all claims of magic, a powerful tool in the hands of market gurus– he used to relentlessly mock at the magic show of a famous Baba, the Walking God, the Miracle Man, Avatar from South of India who had global following, and who materialised imported Rolex watches out of thin air, but when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency, ended up in materialising local HMT watches!
UG could see through the subtle influences of music, magic and logic on our minds, how we could turn them into our crutches, without our being even aware!
शब्दादिभिः पंचभिरेव पंचपंचत्वमापुः स्वगुणेन बद्धाः ।
कुरंग मातंग पतंग मीन भृंगा नरः पंचभिरंचितः किम् ॥
The deer, the elephant, the moth, the fish and the honeybee - these five meet death because of their bondage to one of the five senses. What then is the condition of a person who is attached to all five?
Today is UG’s birthday, incidentally Guru Poornima, the Full Moon Day dedicated to Guru!
Guru (personally speaking) is not a person, it is a Principle, a Universal Guiding Principle. It sets us free from illusions and delusions and all false notions! It is the Guiding Force that puts an end to all crutches, never becoming a crutch in the process! Guru can never be encapsulated and restricted to any form!
The Guru Poornima is also dedicated to Lord Dattatreya who summarily dismissed the misgivings of people that ‘Guru is only One’, by pointing out that he had as many as twenty one gurus – that He learnt from each and every form of life (animal and bird) around him!
And UG emphasized, re-emphasised and over-emphasised:
“A true Guru frees you from himself!”
Happy Guru Poornima and Happy Birthday UG!
