|
Between 14 and 21
years of age, U.G. spent seven years off and on
with Swami Sivananda in Rishikesh practising yoga
and meditation. He had various mystical visions and
experiences there, but he questioned their validity
as he thought that he could recognise them only on
the basis of his prior knowledge he already had
about them.
In 1939, when U.G. was 21 years of age, he went and
met Sri Ramana Maharshi and asked him, "This thing
called moksha [liberation], can you give it
to me?" Ramana reply, "I can give it, but can you
take it?" struck him like a "thunderbolt" and set
him up on a relentless search for Truth that ended
at the age of 49 with a totally unforeseen
result.
After leaving the university, U.G. joined the
Theosophical Society as a lecturer and toured the
country giving talks on Theosophy. Even after his
marriage to Kusuma Kumari in 1943, he continued to
work with the Theosophical Society and gave
lectures in European countries, until, in 1953, he
realised that what he was doing was not something
true to his real self and quit the post in disgust.
After that, he met J. Krishnamurti, who was by then
famous as an unconventional spiritual teacher. For
two years, he met him now and again and got into
fierce discussions on spiritual matters, but later
on, he was to reject J.K.'s philosophy, calling it
a "bogus chartered journey."
During this period, U.G. also underwent a
life-altering, mystical experience, what he
sometimes called a "death experience". But he
"brushed it all aside" as of no importance and
moved on, further probing and testing and
questioning every experience until he came into his
own.
In 1955, U.G. went to America with his family to
get medical treatment for his son's polio
condition. When his resources began to diminish, he
took to lecturing for a fee. He gave talks on the
major religions and philosophies of the world and
soon came to be recognised as a fine teacher from
India. But, as it happened before, at the end of
the second year, he lost interest in lecturing and
then the inevitable happened. His seventeen years
of marriage came to an end. His wife returned to
India with the children. And U.G. drifted from one
thing to another. After his aimless wanderings in
London and Paris, like a dry leaf blown here, there
and everywhere, he landed in Geneva and at last
found refuge in Valentine de Kerven's chalet in
Saanen. By then incredible experiences had started
to happen to him and his body was "like rice chaff
burning inside". It was a prelude to his "clinical
death" on his forty-ninth birthday [in
1967] and the beginning of the most incredible
bodily changes and experiences that would catapult
him into a state that is difficult to understand
within the framework of our hitherto known mystical
or enlightenment traditions. For seven days, seven
bewildering physical changes took place and he
landed in what he calls the Natural state. It was a
cellular revolution, a full-scale biological
mutation.
In 1972, U.G. gave his first public talk at the
Indian Institute of World Culture, Bangalore. He
never again gave any public talk. But he did
not/could not stop people from meeting and talking
to him. He responded to their queries and answered
their questions in the way only he could. He
usually stayed with friends or in small rented
apartments, but never stayed in one place for more
than six months. He gave no lectures or discourses.
He had no organisation, no office, no secretary,
and no fixed address. Despite his endless
repetition that he had "no message for mankind,"
ironically yet naturally thousands of people the
world-over felt otherwise and flocked to see and
listen to his "anti-teaching". The first book,
The Mystique of Enlightenment – The
unrational ideas of a man called U.G., put
together by Rodney Arms, appeared in 1982. In 1986,
he went public and gave his first TV interview,
which was soon to be followed by several TV and
radio interviews the world over. And U.G. made
publishing history by not allowing copyright on any
of his books saying, "My teaching, if that is the
word you want to use, has no copyright. You are
free to reproduce, distribute, interpret,
misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like,
even claim authorship, without my consent or the
permission of anybody."
In the last seven years during his stay in
Bangalore, he rarely engaged in serious
conversations; rather he started to do something
else other than answer tiresome questions, for he
found all questions [except in the technical
area, which is something else] were variations
of basically the same question revolving around the
ideas of "being" and "becoming". There used to be
long stretches of utter silence. It used to be
embarrassing; also a tremendous relief from the
burden of knowing. And then U.G. would start
playing his enigmatic little "games", or invite
friends to sing, dance, or share jokes. And the
room would explode with laughter: funny, silly,
dark, and apocalyptic! At last freed from the
tyranny of knowledge, beauty, goodness, truth, and
God, we would all mock and laugh at everything,
mock heroes and lovers, thinkers and politicians,
scientists and thieves, kings and sages, including
U.G. and ourselves!
Who was this U.G.? What kind of person was he? He
was the most enigmatic person you could ever meet
– at once kind and cruel, most loving yet
stern, constantly talking about money, seeming to
"extract" it from friends, yet most generous in
giving; seemingly abusive and punishing, yet
showering affection on the same person the next
moment; utterly carefree, yet worrying about what
might happen to the person in front of him;
directing people to act in specific ways, yet
instantly accepting of any outcome; demonstrating
the most incisive logic, yet making utterly
contradictory statements. For a man who complained
that we are constantly preoccupied with something
other than what is happening at the moment, he
endlessly talked about himself and his past.
One could never fathom U.G.'s true intentions
behind his statements or actions.
His answers to our questions came straight like
arrows, unsettling our minds. He was
well-known for striking down not only the edifices
we have so carefully built in our own minds but the
foundations of human thought as a whole. U.G. was
truly enigmatic, subversive and revolutionary, and
totally fearless.
There was a unique energy with U.G.: in
speech or in stillness it was constant and vibrant,
and had a profound effect on those who were around
him.
And let this be told: when U.G. rejected the notion
of soul or Atman and declared that our search for
permanence was the cause of our suffering, he
sounded like the Buddha. We thought of the fiery
and abusive words of the great 9th century mystic
of China, Rinzai Gigen, who declared, "I have no
dharma to give… There is no Buddha, no Dharma,
no training and no realisation." When he spoke of
"affection" as "thuds" felt in the spot where the
thymus gland is located, we related it to Sri
Ramana's declaration that the "true Heart" is
located on the right side of the chest. Likewise we
sometimes connected his radical statements to
certain expressions or declarations in the
Avadhuta Gita, Ashtavakra Gita, the
Upanishads and Zen Koans, or compared
them with the teachings of J. Krishnamurti,
Nisargadatta Maharaj and even the post-modern
"deconstructionists". We could go on thus, making
such connections and comparisons, but that did not
help us to get a handle on the mystery that was
U.G.!
That mystery, that enigma, is no more. Once, a
couple of years back, when he was asked, "U.G., how
would you like to be remembered?" U.G. had said,
"After I am dead and gone, nothing of me must
remain inside of you or outside of you. I can
certainly do a lot to see that no establishment or
institution of any kind mushrooms around me whilst
I am alive. But how do I stop all you guys from
enshrining me in your brains?"
|
