posted November 22, 2008 12:20 PM         

Between 14 and 21 years of age, UG went through all possible travails to learn about the state of release. In 1932, the head of the Siva Ganga Pitha [seat of religion] initiated him by giving him the Siva Mantra. Since then he had been repeating the mantra. UG says he also used to repeat the Gayatri Mantra three thousand times a day. For seven years he practiced meditation, yoga, pranayama and such in Swami Sivananda’s presence.

Even in those days, the experiences he had had were not ordinary. When he was 14, Master Kuthumi, whom Theosophists believe in, appeared to him. UG says that Kuthumi accompanied him in his subtle body for two years. How is that possible? UG says that our thoughts have so much power. It seems more appropriate to call them our ‘will’ than our ‘thoughts’. The power of the will is so immense. Whenever UG thought of him Master K.H. would appear before him. “Thought is very powerful. You can create your God in front of you; you can take a walk with Him hand in hand,” he says now, meaning that the visions he had had in those days were all created by him. He says there was no end to his spiritual experiences. Samadhi -- savikalpa and nirvikalpa Samadhi -- happened to him easily. He experienced all sorts of states of bliss. “Is that all there is to those experiences? If I could experience them, then I must have had previous knowledge about them. I was imagining what I had already known and was deluded into thinking that I was experiencing something new,” he concluded and brushed those experiences all aside.

Just as Nachiketa’s strong urge to find out what death is brought him to the abode of Yama, the urge to know “What is that state called release; and what is that unequalled state which prophets like Buddha and Sankara proclaimed?” became a wildfire within UG and finally consumed his ‘garden of life’. A thriving family, name and fame in society, inherited wealth – all got consumed like fuel in the fire of life. On his 49th birthday he himself was consumed in that fire as the last piece of firewood. What finally remained? Was the fire extinguished? Did he realize the truths he was seeking? “Nothing of the sort,” declares UG, “That UG is gone; he has never returned. A fire which smolders day and night, a fire covered with ashes, constantly burns silently just as rice husk that has caught fire. You can’t see it from the outside. But if you touch it, it will burn you.”

Venkata Chalapati insists that all the sadhanas UG had practiced before surely helped him. Not just Chalapati, but anyone who is caught in the nexus of cause and effect would assert the same. “The repetition of Siva mantra or the repetition of Gayatri – how can he claim that none of them was of any use? His present state is indeed the result of those sadhanas,” they say, as if they know it all. They try to convince UG as if he has been caught in some confusion.

Many people strongly believe that there is no possibility of anything happening without a cause, although they don’t believe that whatever they see, whatever appears to the senses or occurs to the mind is literally real. “We may not see the cause on the surface, but it must be there,” they argue. When UG says to them, “This is purely acausal; none of the struggles I went through or the efforts I had made have any relevance to it,” they smile with their eyes, as if they know what has happened. With statements like, “UG detests tradition and ancient ways. Although he admits that he followed them, he is reluctant to give them credit. That’s why he puts them down,” they justify their beliefs.

Is UG deliberately misleading us? Is he trying to hoodwink us with his tricky words?

“This occurrence is acausal” -- he said this not just today; he has been saying it ever since the Calamity had occurred. In fact, it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that UG is the only person who has been emphasizing this from the beginning so clearly and consistently, without leaving any room for misconception.

Every event is independent. Our daily events are not connected to one another. ‘You’ are the one who is linking them up and creating a cause-effect relationship. If you watch UG’s daily conduct of life, this ‘linkless activity’ becomes quite evident.

When we wake up every morning, how do we know that the ‘yesterday’s we’ is the same as ‘today’s we’? Isn’t it on the basis of memory? That means our whole existence is memory. There is nothing outside of memory. Based on it, we string together the various incidents that occur in our everyday life. If that string is broken, the events become scattered. It is this truth that UG strives to show us; no, it is the truth that he appears to us as striving to show.

Venkata Chalapati closed his eyes for a little while and fell into deep contemplation. He has one great trait: he is not keen on selling his beliefs.

Whether we agree or disagree with what UG says, we gain little. By merely learning that there is no cause-effect relationship in our day-to-day activities we will not be transformed into gods. Even that knowing is part of the cause-effect relationship. This [statement] too is [based on] knowing. If we keep thinking like this, like peeling an onion layer by layer, we will have nothing left in our hands. But our tears from the fumes won’t stop.