Stopped In Our Tracks

It was perhaps in December 1976. We arranged for U.G.'s stay in Bangalore in Sannidhi Street, across the street from the Mallikarjuna Swami Temple. That evening, Brahmachariji came to visit U.G. from his Ashram in Bannerghatta. It had by then become customary for U.G. to spend without fail two or three nights in Brahmachariji's Jnanasram whenever he came to Bangalore. It was from U.G.'s giving the first donation that Jnanasram came into existence.

In the ashram, Brahmachariji had built not only a school, but also a Ganapati temple. He had just gotten the image of Ganapati installed and was deeply immersed in the construction activity of the temple. U.G. forced Brahmachariji to stay in Bangalore, without returning to the Ashram. Brahmachariji tried to excuse himself saying that he had to perform the worship of Ganapati, but U.G. said he could perform the worship in Bangalore.

It was a winter night. The cold wind outside was penetrating through the holes of the closed doors. We all listened to Brahmachariji's recitation of the Ganapati Upanishad. U.G. sat on a rug on the floor in the lotus posture. Brahmachariji sat facing him. The recitation went on for about twenty minutes. All that time U.G. sat motionless, with eyes closed, in his lotus position.

The things U.G. said after the recitation stunned everyone: "I feel as if the sounds of the mantras are coming out of myself. I had the experience of the sound going around in circles with a sort of rhythm and spreading throughout my consciousness." He demonstrated those circular movements with hand gestures. "Suddenly all that took the shape of Ganapati. In my consciousness my face became the face of Ganapati. My nose stretched and drooped down like an elephant trunk. Then, as though something snapped, the movement stopped. The form was erased. Perhaps there was some mistake in your recitation at that point."

Brahmachariji admitted that was true. He said that he forgot the mantra at a certain place, and repeated those portions of the mantra to the end without errors. "Now it's all correct. There are no gaps in the movement. Everything is quite rhythmical. Perhaps the sage who wrote that Upanishad must have been reflected here because of the sounds," said U.G.

U.G.'s words sounded astonishing. I felt that we could believe in those experiences because it was U.G. who was narrating them. The thought that the sage Ganaka, who wrote the Upanishads hundreds or thousands of years ago, took his own form and appeared in U.G.'s consciousness thrills me even now. How was this possible? U.G. explains this process in terms of modern physics. According to it, sound waves can be transformed into electromagnetic waves and those in turn into light waves. The light waves can again be transformed back into sound waves. But all that is achieved through scientific instruments. Perhaps in the case of U.G., all that is possible without the help of those instruments.

The sage's existence must somehow be embedded in the mantras created by him, in their sound. U.G. said, pointing to himself, "Because there is no division here, all those sounds, along with the form imbedded in them, have echoed in my consciousness."

Something similar was said to have happened when U.G. was once living in the Tirthagundi Coffee Estate. That town is in the Chikkamagaluru District of Karnataka. Around 1968, U.G. was in its guest house for almost four months.

One day, suddenly a scene presented itself to U.G. It wasn't quite a vision, nor was it a dream. It was as though it actually occurred in front of his eyes. Three sages in the middle of a big lake, with bushy beards, and submerged up to their necks, appeared in the scene. They stretched their arms toward U.G. and cried, "U.G., we are drowning, please rescue us."

"Who are you?" U.G. asked them.

"We are your ancestors. Hurry up and save us," they said. Then U.G. understood that they were his clan sages whose names were Atreyasa, Arjunasya and Syavasya.

"You deserve the punishment. Drown and never rise again," said U.G. to them. Then, helpless, they drowned and the scene disappeared. U.G. said that all the visions that started occurring after his Calamity ended with this.

How do all these strange events occur? This wasn't a fabricated story, nor was it magic. If, on the other hand, we think that U.G. somehow imagined them, we know that he never believes in such things. "If a miracle happened right in front of my eyes, I still won't believe it," says U.G.

Then how do we explain this? Why do such accidental events occur? Why do they happen only to someone like U.G.? While Brahmachariji was reciting the Ganapati Upanishad, we were all present. Why didn't that sage Ganaka appear in our consciousness? If we asked such questions, U.G. tries to evade them saying, "They are all mere experiences. Don't torture your heads with such questions." If we persist in our questioning, he throws us into some more confusion by talking about light and sound; he talks as if this is a very ordinary matter known even to a fifth grade kid.

When I think about it, it appears to me that we should just observe such events and keep quiet, and that it is foolish to try to know about their true nature or understand them scientifically. We don't know anything. I am also certain that U.G. too does not know in the way we try to know. We have no way of knowing at what level he knows. All we can do is gossip about strange events like this.

All the genteel folk in Bangalore came to know of that night's incident. U.G.'s ability to find errors in Brahmachariji's recitation surprised our friend Satyanarayana, who was utterly devoted to studying scriptures like the Vedas. He was even more interested in what U.G. had said about how he would know the original sounds from the movements which recreate the mantras, regardless of any errors that might have rolled into the recitation, and regardless of the additions and modifications made to the original mantras of the rishi.

There is a belief that the Vedas were authorless revelations, and were handed down for thousands of years from generation to generation in accordance with tradition. There was always a possibility of additions and modifications seeping into them. Thus, Satyanarayana became keenly interested in selecting and memorizing, as much as it was possible for him, the portions of the Vedas composed originally by the rishis. For many years before that, he had already been studying the Vedas with a teacher.

Every year, when he came to Bangalore, U.G. used to stay for two or three months. Satyanarayana, along with his friend Sashidhar, started reciting the Vedas every Sunday, early in the morning, for two hours, in U.G.'s presence. Before they started, when they asked U.G.'s permission to recite the Vedas in his presence, U.G. responded, "Go ahead, by all means. As far as I am concerned, there is no difference between a dog's barking, a cat's mewing and Vedic sounds. Recite the Vedas and as for myself I will sit down and listen." That was how the sorting out of the Vedic mantras began.

Every Sunday, early in the morning, Satyanarayana, Sashidhar, and sometimes their fellow student Chandrasekhar, would come to U.G.'s residence in the Anjaneya Temple Street, after their early morning oblations. U.G. got ready after his bath and sat on the mat in the hall before they arrived. By that time, I and a couple of other friends joined him to hear the Vedic recitation of Satyanarayana and company. Before they started, not heeding his attempts to stop them, they would prostrate before U.G. They excused themselves by saying, "This is our Vedic tradition, U.G. The Rudra Patha we are going to recite is full of salutations."

"But," U.G. complained, "when I keep saying that there is no power apart from you, why do you do me such honors?" When they countered, "Please excuse us, we have not grown into that state yet," U.G., being helpless, kept quiet. After finishing the recitation they would again prostrate in front of U.G., reciting, "Na karmana na prajaya...." We too followed suit. We weren't aware of it in our singlemindedness, but U.G. felt irked by such behavior on our part.

U.G. wore pajamas and jubba at the time of the recitation. It was bitter cold outside. Amidst those four walls we were all clad in dhotis and wore ashes on our foreheads. We would doze off every now and then, while watching U.G. from time to time. As for U.G., he would sit straight in the lotus posture with closed eyes. One day, as he sat, he removed his jubba and under-shirt, and remained there until the recitation was finished.

Mahesh too was in Bangalore with us then. Those were the days when Parveen was living with U.G. Learning that U.G. sat down removing his upper clothing, Mahesh teased U.G. saying, "Oh, I missed U.G.'s strip tease show!"

We sat there even after the Vedic recitation was all over. Sometimes, U.G. would mention what sort of movements of energy the Vedic recitation would cause within himself, where the recitation was flawed, and in what stages of the recitation there were breaks in the energy movements. All those details sounded marvelous to listen to. Satyanarayana kept a record of them.

One day, they were reciting arunam. U.G. was, as usual, sitting in his lotus posture. Nartaki was also with us then. After they finished the recitation U.G. said, "While you were reciting, I felt that suddenly I too joined my voice and recited with you for about fifteen minutes." When she heard this, Nartaki became excited and said, "That's very strange, U.G. I too clearly heard a third voice along with theirs. I was wondering whose voice that was and looked around."

Later, U.G. told us: while the two Satyanarayana and Sashidhar were reciting, they disappeared and in their place two dark and bulky sages appeared, reciting the Vedas. One had his hair knotted on top of his head, and the other had a big bushy beard. U.G. thought that the portions of the arunam that were being recited were authored by them and the remaining portions made place for themselves in the text in the course of time.

Another time, the two scholars were reciting Sikshavalli and Bhrguvalli in the Taittiriya Upanishad. After listening to it all U.G. said, "Those mantras all sound like the trashy lectures given by the vice-chancellors in the universities at the time of giving diplomas. They sound as if the writers of the Upanishads were repeating what they had learned, but the sounds do not express any experience." When we were listening to him, U.G. reported, the movement of energy in him was attempting to form circles, and was subsiding before it completed a circle—like an aeroplane making futile attempts to lift off into the air from the ground.

I remember that when we were listening to the Mahanarayaniya Upanishad also, U.G. said similar things: "Those sages are ordinary aspirants; they are not wise men. Just like college professors, debate with their pupils and teach them philosophy. Or, like today's scientists, they make speculations about the origins of the universe. That's all you see in them." But things were more interesting when we heard the Rudrakrama. U.G. said, "The sounds of the mantras you have been reciting have been producing divisions in this undivided consciousness."

Satyanarayana responded to this saying that was the right effect: "The rishis all gathered together and recited the Rudra Krama with the intention of bringing Rudra, who was united with the unlimited consciousness, to their level. They created Rudram, Namakam and Chamakam—all three with the same intention. Thus there came about a division in the one Lord, He became a family man and caused the birth of Kumaraswami," he said.

Then U.G. said, "The spine is a very important part of the body. Most of the experiences we go through, our feelings and thoughts, have a basis in the spine. The spine takes care of them before it lets them reach the brain. Once, when I was listening to the Veda, my spine felt like it suddenly sprung up and stretched about three feet higher than my head... Maybe because the movement of energy also took the form of circles, the Yogis talked about chakras. The energy of consciousness coils around like a snake, rises upward swiftly and goes out of the head. But the experience is never one of it descending; but always of spiraling upwards. All these are experienced only when I listen to the Vedic mantras, not when I listen to music or some other sound. What is the use of such experiences? None. From listening to the Vedic mantras and Upanishads divisions arise in that consciousness."

It is clear that it is by the recitation of the same hymns, which all the sages recited with the aim of attaining the undivided consciousness, that divisions occur in the undivided consciousness of U.G.

U.G. says: This has no use for me either. It's not of any use to you at all. Three quarters of those Upanishads are of the lamentations of those sages for that undivided state. Those were the verses. The remaining one quarter were descriptions of that state saying, "It is like that, it is like this." In some places, in some remote corner, we hear the essential truth, viz., "Whatever you do, you won't get it."

They say that by reciting the Upanishads, the nervous system will be purified. But no one has explained what that purification means. Even less, is there someone who can guarantee it? If we accept claims of this sort, orthodox people will force us, will provide sacred meanings to threads, tufts of hair and shaven heads. They will justify them, will rub ashes on us and make us sit among the Bairagis (spiritual mendicants). As if that's not enough, they even burn the incense of science to get us more intoxicated.

Because U.G. is an arch enemy of such superstitions, he has been able to avoid the many strategies devised by the followers of his religion to fit him in their orthodox framework. U.G. says emphatically that no one can attain any higher state by merely reciting the Upanishads, or by contemplating, digesting and assimilating the truth in them. He says, "Those sages too know that. That's why they claim that all will eventually burn down and turn into ashes and they pray, 'Tryambakam yajamahe (I worship Tryambaka).'"