something about ug

UG: Yes. That’s a fact. We do not want to accept it because it destroys the myth that human relationships are something marvelous or extraordinary. We are not honest, decorous and decent enough to admit that all relationships are built on the foundation of “What do I get out of this relationship?”. It is nothing but mutual gratification. If that is absent, no relationship is possible. You keep the relationship going for social reasons, or for reasons of children, property, and security. All this is part and parcel of the relationship business. But when it fails and does not give us what we really want, we superimpose on it what we call “love”. So, it is just not possible to have any relationship on any basis except on the level of mutual gratification.

If we could understand and digest even a little of this and learn to live beyond superimposing artificial concepts that we label as love, but with genuine concern and respect for each other, I believe the world would be a better place 🙂

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Another interesting incident on his site is his encounter with Shri Ramana Maharishi, whom you may well know is venerated as one of the greatest sages of India.

When people came to Shri Ramana Maharishi with questions, he has this amazing style of asking a counter-question, that pulls the rug of surety out from under the feet of the questioner! Kind of like a Zen Koan. And this was the case with UG as well.

When UG went, he had this sceptism…

Everybody says “Don’t get angry” — I am angry all the time. I m full of brutal activities inside, so that is false. What these people are telling me I should be is something false, and because it is false it will falsify me. I don’t want to live the life of a false person. I am greedy, and non-greed is what they are talking about. There is something wrong somewhere.

The interesting thing to note here, is that at this point, UG was able to know that he’s angry. Usually angry people don’t really acknowledge that they’re angry. And esp cultured people in modern society are trained not to show anger. We are trained right from our upbringing to subdue anger, be polite, maybe even smile at people we may actually absolutely loathe in certain circumstances. This becomes a sort of playacting that is so convincing, that we ourselves starts ignoring the anger or tension within (wrt ordinary circumstances of minor annoyances that we hardly notice, though of course maybe in certain situations it is so high that it is obvious).

I’ve just read random chapters here and there from the books, and another episode he narrates in the book No Way Out…

We were about to make love, and my two-year-old girl cried. We had to break up, and you can’t imagine what violent feelings I had at that time. I just wanted to strangle that child! Of course, I did not act on those feelings. I could have. That was the frame of my mind. I said to myself, “That is the blood of my own blood, to use an idiotic phrase, bone of my bone – my own child. How can I have such thoughts? There is something wrong here” [Pointing to himself]. I told myself, “You are not a spiritual man, you are not what you think you are and what people think you are.” I was lecturing on the Theosophical platforms everywhere. I said to myself, “You are `this’, and `this’ is you. This is what you are – all this violence.”

Its really important to note that when UG is saying that he is angry, that he is greedy, that he is a brute… that he is really no different from any other common man.

There are some important points to note here.

First of all, he is simply being honest about his true feelings.

The second point is that he is sensitive enough to know about his feelings. He is not concealing them under the veil of an idealistic image of himself that “I’m a good guy and can’t possibly be a brute”.

The third point is that he is not trying to change it. He is accepting himself for what he is, instead of what he wants himself to be. Simply knowing about the truth of this moment, however unpleasant it may be, I believe is vital.

There is a story…

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner.

“Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.”

When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed the most”

One thing I’ve felt so far is that rather than trying to use positive thinking, merely by knowing and being completely with the truth of the current moment as it is – however pleasant or unpleasant it may be, one can simply stop feeding it further, and it ends up fading away.

Many years ago, someone had given me this analogy…

“Imagine a bad tempered street dog following you and growling at you on the street. If you run away, it chases you. But if you just stand still and simply be aware of it, it hesitates, and then walks away.”

UG had no blind beliefs, he was simply looking for something that convinced him personally, not attracted to anything or anyone simply because it was recommended by others.

Finally when he did meet Sri Ramana, he asked…

“Can you give me what you have?” — I asked him this question, but that man didn’t answer, so after some lapse of time I repeated that question — “I am asking ‘Whatever you have, can you give it to me?'”

Ramana’s answer was a turning point for UG.

“I can give you, but can you take it?”

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(Excerpts from The Mystique of Enlightenment, and No Way Out)

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See also: ug has moved on