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UG |
The very first question I put to UG in
1992, when I got lucky to meet him, was,
" Why do you ask people not to
meditate?"
UG replied, "Those who truly meditate
will not ask this question!"
My meditative efforts had started from
the age of fifteen. I was thirty-one when I put this question to UG!
On hearing UG's whiplash of a reply, my
immediate thought was, " Oh, here goes sixteen years of meditation down
the drain!"
UG possessed this uncanny ability to turn
the spotlight on our most closeted concerns.
In Yercaud, UG resumed the topic of
meditation, all by himself,
" Sir, only two things
happen to people who are serious about their search, either they go MAD or
commit SUICIDE!"
He continued,
" In the Himalayan caves, I
was meditating for eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. I took only one day
off to go to Dehradun to rent a hotel room to prepare a cheese-based dish, the
recipe given by my grandmother, to sustain myself in the near starvation
situation in the caves!"
I was considered a madman for all
practical purposes, as I walked the streets of Dehradun. This continued for seven
years!"
On the instructions of Swami
Sivananda, I was surviving on a diet of soaked rice flakes, washed in the icy
cold waters of the Ganges, flowing close by the cave where I meditated. This
dish too was strictly once in a day.”
I then ventured to ask UG," Sir,
what actually happened during the 18 hours a day effort in that cave?"
His response literally blew me away!
UG said," Culture was getting
flushed out of the system and all that man felt, thought and experienced got
flushed out!"
UG continued,
"All those who stumbled into the Natural State were flushed out too. Here it was the opposite of 'all the
saints went marching in'. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Mahavir, Socrates, Akka
Mahadevi and Allama and so many sages both from Orient and the Occident, just
to highlight a few, all ‘went out’!"
The living room in uncle's (Major’s) cottage
in Radha Estate was in a state of stunned silence!
He turned towards me and quipped,
" I could see them so
clearly sir. Jesus was a clean-shaven man, Buddha was ugly, short, pot-bellied
and Mohammed was so handsome that even men were falling for him!
How I survived those seven years
of madness and regained enough functionality to survive in this world is
anybody's guess!
That is why I affirm that
whatever I say is from personal experience! I have wasted four decades of my
life in a futile search. Only after the SEARCH ended and all questions stopped,
did this ‘stumble’ happen!
That's why I maintain that
the very search is the stumbling block to something happening there. Take it or
leave it!"
( Dr. Sreedhav, Nellore, India)
Note: The kind write-up is a contribution by Dr. Sreedhav. Ever grateful for his time and effort.
[1] (Major Dakshinamurti, incidentally Dr. Sreedhav’s uncle, had moved over
to Yercaud to lead a life of quietude and solitude to pursue his ‘sadhana’ or ‘spiritual
pursuit.’
Major was staying in the picturesque ‘Radha
Estate.’ UG, on several occasions, visited
him and stayed there.
Major had got UG’s nod to pursue his solitary
life in the hills after a long-drawn ‘battle’. He had always sought and hankered
for a life away from the ‘noise and din’ of society. After obtaining UG’s
approval, he gave up his secure military career to embrace the solitary life in
the hills. Currently he lives in a farmhouse in the outskirts of Bangalore.
