Friday 11 May 2018

" Why do you ask people not to meditate?" - Dr. Sreedhav



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!"

My next meeting with UG happened in Yercaud, a hill resort near Salem in South of India.[1]

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.



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