“UG is not Real”

Once I said to UG, “UG, at a certain level, I feel as if none of this is real; even UG is not real.” UG replied, “No, UG is not real.”

UG not a person: The first time I had a clear inkling that there is no ‘person’ inside UG was when I was visiting him in Corte Madera, California, in the early years of my acquaintance with him. It was a rare moment when I looked into his eyes, inside the pupils. What I saw was startling: it was a vast impersonal energy. No sign of a person and nothing which would recognize me as a person, either. I can never forget that deep inside, what was moving was not anything I expected such as a reflection of me or something which would look at me and recognize me.

Now, when I look deep within myself, I see nothing but surging ‘Energy’ (I don’t know what other term to use.) Even the images and sounds I talked about in my recent paper are just waves surging from this energy. I don’t exist there! That must be why I felt at times when I was close to UG physically that there was no separation between us. It’s not that I am in that awareness or energy most of the time. But I know what the ‘bottom-line’ reality is.

UG asserted more than once that the ‘division’ which is millions of years old keeps occurring in him, bringing ‘UG’ into the picture, and that it will never go away. It’s that UG we saw from time to time, the ‘UG’ who reacted to people and situations, sometimes through his own conditioning.

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The Lion’s Den: I was always bit suspicious of and annoyed with UG’s statements like “There is no such thing as matter,” “There is no space,” and “Thought interprets reality.” I felt that UG’s talk of everything being an interpretation is like the Advaita Vedanta’s assertion that “The world is Maya”. ‘Interpretation’ a like a huge lion’s den into which everything went and nothing came out.

I tested UG once on this: while I was visiting him in Palm Springs, I asked him: “UG, please raise your arm.” First, he was reluctant to do it, even after several requests. Finally, he did. I said, “See, I made some sounds, and you raised your arm,” meaning that the raising of the arm is not just an interpretation, although my instructions may be mere noises (because he would say that the meaning we give to the noises is an interpretation). He replied, “Your seeing of my arm being raised is also an interpretation.” Then I said, “I see what you did,” and didn’t say anything further.

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One of the recent e-mails commented on a paragraph in my “Natural State” paper: In Reflection A (3) of the paper I said, "Even toward the end of his life, UG seemed to believe in the ‘basic’ status of the body. He would say something to the effect, “The body doesn’t let me go,” or “The body is not ready to go.” If the body and its solidity are put together by thought, it’s not clear, how he would take the body as basic or real. Of course, he could say that these statements too are just interpretation. Or, more appropriately, UG’s statements could be taken to mean nothing more than preventing you from believing anything as real; his statements are just teaching tools to demolish our mental structures."

The correspondent’s question was: “It is still not quite clear to me as to your Reflection A (3): ‘His statements are just teaching tools to demolish our mental structures’.”

I replied: “In UG's statements, you could see how from one point of view (from the way we look at him and his body) ‘the body doesn't let me go’ could be true, and yet from another point of view, that is from his point of view, even the body isn't real (in fact, neither is thought, although he did say that the body and its solidity are put together by thought). The confusion arises only when the two points of view are mixed up.

In fact, UG didn't care much if you understood him or not. Nor did he rely much on words or statements to teach. They were all just tools he would use for the moment and throw away the next. He never worried about contradicting himself.

UG never really relied on words or logic to do his teaching. When he is done with them at the moment, he would discard them.’

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“Two dogs barking”: , UG would conclude many conversations by saying, “We’re just two dogs barking,” meaning we are merely making sounds and the meaning is all made up (by thought). His statements about his body and people’s responses to him are all just noise at a certain level (or from a certain point of view). Underneath, there are not even noises. No one is saying anything and nothing is being said. Not even consciousness or energy or waves, or noises and images, and of course, there are no bodies. There is no wakefulness, no dream and no sleep. There is no life or death either. It’s a vast ocean of peace.

On the surface, it seems like UG was talking about living and dying, the body not wanting to go, and so on and so on. But that’s all an appearance. There is a place where none of this is real, UG is not real, his living or dying is not real and neither is ours. There is just this vast ocean of peace. You and I are part of it.

This morning I was lying in bed feeling all this. I also felt that I wasn’t breathing. “It was being breathed.” The body is a surface phenomenon.

No wonder I felt at times that there was no separation between UG and me.