" Do for others what you think I did for you " - UG to Mahesh Bhat

  There are many known, unknown and hidden dangers and traps in the shady bylanes of the spiritual bazaar.

There are plenty of impostors in the garb of gurus and swamis, and multitudes more of unsuspecting and gullible followers.

In this treacherous spiritual milieu, a naïve, blind follower could easily end up as a ‘sitting duck’ for spiritual predators.

In what could be described as the case of ‘misplaced trust’, oftentimes faithfuls get stripped of everything they possess - dignity, property, and sanity by unscrupulous conmen.

In this clip, UG debunks any show of gratitude using a parody (of a follower’s expression of gratitude),

“My encounter with you has helped me to come into my own, (you helped me) to become me.”

These words capture the sentiments of a typical follower or devotee.

Yes, there is nothing wrong per se about being grateful to those who genuinely care for us or help us or benefit us. Gratitude is considered as a virtue and being grateful, a noble act of civility and refinement. 

Remember, gratitude is not an artifact of human value system but natural instinct common among sentient beings. We witness its operation in mother nature, in birds and animals too.

However, things are highly distorted in the spiritual marketplace. It is an extremely treacherous transactional world where gurus are salesmen selling ‘cheap and shoddy piece of goods’, where bogus spiritual help carries a hefty price tag, and seekers end up being at the receiving end, relegated to the role of hapless customers.

When the source of spiritual help itself becomes suspect or spurious or untrustworthy, one must be extremely watchful. In this context, any show of gratitude could be misplaced. 

When trust and gratitude are carried to extreme forms like blind loyalty or unquestioning servility, one is stepping into the danger zone of abuse or exploitation by conmen.

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UG always downplayed his role or influence in the success of people whom he touched. And there are many beneficiaries.

The young and incredibly talented Mahesh Bhat initially met UG during his days of struggle in the film industry as a flop director, but later went on to scale dizzy heights in Bollywood, winning several national and international awards in his career.

Here is UG’s plain talk to Mahesh on expressing heartfelt gratitude for everything that he had received from the master,  

“Mahesh, if you think whatever you are today is because of me, which I don’t think so, then do for others what you think I did for you.”

Decades later, Mahesh Bhat still recalls every word of what UG said that day. This has gone deep into his bones and become the credo of his life,

“That has become my Dharma, my Kashi, my Mecca, that is what I do, I live my master’s words.”

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UG vehemently rejects all attempts to put him on a pedestal, or enshrine him into a guru or guide,

“Nor will I be fooled by what you are saying (your sweet words of gratitude). That is the end of it.”

UG raises a red flag not to be fooled or emotionally blackmailed by any speeches or acts of gratitude and not to be led up the garden path by one’s own followers, a great caveat for all wannabe gurus.

Even the best and the noblest among men meekly succumb to sentiments of gratitude, praise, and adulation and fall into the trap of gurudom and followership.

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But first, why this thirst for spiritual experiences? Why this craze for gurus?

The reason is not far to seek.

The emptiness or meaninglessness of life, the daily grind, the misery, the harsh realities of life could all be so overwhelming that even the bravest of hearts crumble under the pressure and seek for an escape route or even an alternate reality.

The desperate search for peace, fulfilment, and happiness leads seekers inevitably to the doorsteps of ashrams or spiritual gurus.

The lure of spiritual life makes even the best and finest minds to abandon all caution, give up all elemental reasoning and discrimination, and walk into the snare of unscrupulous gurus.

Like drugs, the lure of spiritual goals is extremely seductive.

The spiritual bazaar is abuzz with all kinds of fly-by-night operators - godmen, conmen, peddlers and scamsters.

There is a huge demand for spiritual services and a plethora of spiritual goodies are on offer including ‘enlightenment’, ‘awakened state’, ‘blissful state’ or ‘eternal happiness’ and, what have you!

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UG offers us a simple ‘safety net’ against all spiritual cons.

Firstly, he asks us to STOP in our tracks RIGHT NOW and stop chasing after fictitious goals.

And here are his pointers to stay safe from all kinds of con artists,

“What is a good man good for? Only for the bad man to exploit.” (To be good in a treacherous world, is to be vulnerable to predators)

“Stop looking for roses and there will be no thorns” (Stop chasing after spiritual goodies, and you are insured against all threats or traps of the spiritual kind).

“There is no such thing as ‘enlightenment’ or eternal happiness…” (All spiritual goals are mental abstractions, the conjectures of rich, productive minds).

“You don’t need crutches (gurus) of any kind.  You can walk alone without crutches. If you still fall, your knees and elbows will put you back on your two feet. You will get up and walk…” (Your single decision to walk alone is your ticket to freedom from all kinds of harmful dependencies, spiritual or otherwise).

“This body is designed to handle any crisis, physical or psychological, even when hit with the worst psychological trauma in life, the body knows how to handle it, the consciousness cuts off for some time, you fall asleep, and when you wake up, you are once again fully charged and ready to move on with your life” (Stop looking for all outside help, your natural built-in resources are enough to handle any crisis in life).  

Then UG goes on to offer us an invaluable tip in identifying the real guru (‘if there is one’),

“The real guru is one who frees you from himself.”  

And finally, here a golden rule to avoid all kinds of spiritual traps,

“Test every word of what I say, or someone else says, find out for yourself and by yourself whether it is true or not, else reject.” - UG

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UG not only cautions the followers, but also points to the dangers and traps awaiting even the well-meaning gurus.

"If anyone thinks he can help you, he will inevitably mislead you. And the less phony he is, the more enlightened he is, the more misery and mischief he will create for you!” - UG

UG does acknowledge here that not all wannabe gurus are conmen, there could be some fine men and women with right intentions but still deluded (‘do-gooders’).

But the decision to go public, to gather followers (loka sangraham, लोक संग्रहं), to form spiritual groups, to build ashrams, is fraught with great danger and is extremely risky. Here, even the noble ones, well-intentioned ones could go astray.

Many are initially reluctant to go public, to start ashrams or organisations but eventually they succumb to the sentiments of followers.

Many gurus lack the clarity and courage to say ‘NO’! They turn into puppets in the hands of followers.

“You (seekers) are the ones who put them(gurus) on the pedestal giving them their power, without you, they are nobodies” - UG

Playing guru or influencer is narcotizing, giving a spiritual ‘high’.

Also, when the guru goes public, he or she could easily become the target of sinister machinations by phonies and flunkies masquerading as followers.

The gurus are completely trapped in their own game and get dragged into cults and movements.

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Spiritual land is a tantalizing minefield.

Spiritual circus is all about gurus and seekers, about mutual exploitation. It is a deadly interplay of authority, power, and control.  

The real courage is to refuse to play god, or seek one!

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 Video Transcription:

Nobody like that (you) anywhere, on this planet, unique, unparalleled…It will express itself, but then you don’t go around the world telling people ‘I am unique, there is no one like me, I am the one and the only one’. No, not at all!

You are calling me unique; I will never tell myself that I am a unique being. I can tell you, but you will not come to me and thank me, ‘my encounter with you has helped me to come into my own, to become me’, no!

Nor will I be fooled by what you are saying. That is the end of it.

You will not go anywhere and ask anyone, THAT’S THE ONLY ACID TEST!

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Hacking the ‘self’ – the UG way!

UG on ‘self’ or ‘I’:

‘Self’ is the ‘movement of knowledge’ - UG

This video clip is ‘Quintessential UG’. Here, in the very beginning, UG knocks off the ‘self’, ‘I’, ‘soul’ etc., dismissing them as pure fabrications of the psychological kind, with no reality or basis whatsoever.

UG offers a whole new rationale for the appearance of the ‘self’. He maintains that the virtual ‘self’ or ‘agent’ comes into play when there is a need or demand for knowledge.

Knowledge is put into motion when there is a need, say, while planning a trip or seeking a job or finding a solution to a problem.

‘UG’ appears whenever there is a need or demand.’ – UG

Knowledge in motion is ‘thinking’ and thinking gives rise to the illusion of the ‘thinker’ or the ‘self’ or the ‘doer’. It is all a unitary process.

Even the very thought that there is a ‘thinker’ does not occur while there is thinking going on.

Thinker is a logical conclusion, a ‘post hoc’ illusion, an after-effect of thinking.

The entire structure of Western Philosophy is premised upon a single sentence, “Cogito ergo sum” – “I think, therefore I am”. This logical, verbal assertion single-handedly legitimizes the ‘thinker’ or ‘self’ making it into a reality for the philosophers.

The suggestion here is that as long as there is thinking, there is bound to be an agent or thinker associated with it. Corollaries of this statement include - one, no thinking is possible without a thinker and two, there is no thinker without thinking.

Contrast this with the Eastern traditions including observation of UG,

“There is only thought but no thinker.”

To borrow words of UG, the truth about the thinker is only a logically ascertained premise.

Thinker is a stubborn illusion like that of a shadow. As long as there is light, there is the shadow, as long as there is ‘thinking’ there is the ‘thinker’.

While there exists a physiological entity, biologically programmed to survive and operate independently in nature, the psychological agent or the ‘self’ is purely incidental and is born during every social transaction as the ‘agent’ of such transaction.

While banking, one is a 'customer', while paying tax, one is a citizen etc.

‘Self’ is therefore necessitated by the social demand or need.

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UG on 'intellect':

Let us now de-construct the ‘intellect’ in light of UG’s many utterings.

Intellect is the psychological power-center and the de-facto ‘decision maker’ birthed and shaped by culture, honed by education, experience and knowledge over the years.

Intellect is actually a formidable instrument, the tool of discretion and discrimination, of refined thought, of reasoning and logic. The accumulated, curated ‘knowledge and experience’ forms the basis for ‘intellect’.

Intellect empowers the individual to live sanely and intelligently in society and guarantees livelihood and sustenance. The key to good living is the way the intellect gets deployed. It could make for either great fortune or grave calamity.

Intellect plays a huge role in our day-to-day living.

It is a fact that every physical sensation gets filtered by the intellect.
Intellect turns physical ‘sensations’ into psychological ‘perceptions.’

The raw sensations of stimuli (‘qualia’ of philosophers) like heat, cold, soft, hard etc. are handled by biology, while ‘perceptions’ are acts of interpretations by the intellect.

Every sensation is translated, recorded and gets stored as ‘experience’ by the intellect for its future use, for its perpetuation and continuity.

The mere biological ‘sensation’ of ‘heat’ gets smeared with a psychological ‘layering’ by the intellect and gets perceived as either ‘pleasant’ or ‘moderate’ or ‘unbearable’.

This is true of everything that we see, hear or experience.

Every experience or perception is therefore a smearing act by the intellect.

UG makes this distinction clear as daylight, “There is no experience without knowledge.”

Here is an interesting observation by Sage Vasishta about perception:

“ चेत्येना रहिता यैशा चित्तंब्रह्म सनातनं ...”

‘Awareness without perception’ is the eternal principle of primordial Life…
(Upashama Prakaranam, Yoga Vaasishta)

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UG on ‘understanding’:

“Understanding is nothing but hashing and rehashing of thoughts” - UG

UG maintains that ‘understanding’ is an act of the intellect, an act of clarification, an act of hashing or rehashing, ordering or reordering of thoughts, to look out for any confirming patterns. This act then throws up different and new forms of the same old knowledge and experience like the old wine in a new bottle.

Superior intellect facilitates superior understanding to form educated, informed inferences or postulates or surmises. All concepts, theories, doctrines take birth in such ‘understandings ’.

Oftentimes, simple but extraordinary outcomes born of such understanding are mistaken for flashes of ‘creativity.’

UG totally debunks human creativity,

“The fact is nature is truly creative. Every leaf, every flower, every plant, every animal and individual, is utterly unique and unparalleled. It never repeats or reproduces one like the other.”

All human imagination, invention, innovation and creativity is nothing but the ingenious ability of the intellect to recast old forms of 'knowledge and experience' into their new forms. Everything here is just a modified continuity of the old stock.

“Nothing or no one is original.” - UG

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Finally, UG on ‘insight’:

‘Intuition’ or ‘insight’ is yet another highly convoluted and misunderstood term in the psychological jargon.

It is conceived as a rare form of ‘direct perception’ beyond thought or intellect. This misconception is widespread. Insight is held to be independent, subtler and far superior to intellect, and capable of providing direct, magical results.

For UG, insight is just another piece of fabrication,

“Intellect has created what we call the 'insight'.”

The idea of insight is deeply entrenched in our minds.

One becomes an expert in any field of knowledge after putting in dozens of years of single-minded, relentless, dedicated hard work.

When the expert employs his or her ‘understanding’ (‘the lens of knowledge and experience’) to discover or uncover some hitherto unknown facet or fact in his or her particular area of work, we tend to think of it as an act of great ‘intuition’ or ‘insight.’

UG dismissed insight as nothing special but merely the outcome of constant churning of thoughts. He explained that any expert in his or her own field of expertise who spends all waking hours on solving some problem or the other is bound to discover some pattern or solution or answer.

But UG maintains that all ‘insights’ are restricted only to a particular domain of expertise, and not beyond. He concludes,

“Intellect is the only instrument we have, and there is no other instrument” - UG.

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Video Transcription

UG:  There is no self,

there is no ‘I’, there is no spirit, there is no soul, there is no mind, there is no psyche, so that knocks off the whole list…

There is no way of finding out what you are left with.

The instrument which we are using, has, in a very ingenuous way invented all kinds of things like intuition, like insight and like this, that and the other and through this very insight that we think we have come to understand something, without the help of this intellect, without the help of our thinking, is the stumbling block.

All insights, however extraordinary they may be, are worthless because it is that (intellect) that has created what we call the insight, and through that it is maintaining its continuity, it is maintaining its status quo.

Q: I think, I might understand that but what I am still trying to pursue is the physical side of this, if I could, which is this – that clearly it is observable– the human organs and their interrelated functions all work harmoniously into an integrated healthy body.

UG: They messed up even that…it is not possible to experience and understand except through the knowledge that is given to us by the physiologists.

Q: Not by our own observation? There is no experience?

UG: There is no such thing as your own observation. Your own observation is born out of the knowledge you have.

This knowledge comes from the physiologists, this knowledge comes from those who have been involved in this medical technology, trying to find out how this is functioning, how the heart is functioning, before lot of things that we have become familiar with, through the help of what they have discovered, is something which cannot be experienced by us.

Q: Then you are really saying that there is no such thing as direct, immediate experience.

UG: No experience at all without knowledge, that’s all that I am saying. There is no way you can experience reality of anything except with the help of this knowledge.

So, what I am saying is what you do not know, you cannot experience.

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