Author: Rajiv Malik
Publication:
Date: December 5, 2003
Dr. Ravi Kapur, a psychiatrist,
trained in India and UK, is currently the JRD Tata Visiting Professor at
the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. He has been the
Deputy Director of the same institute and before that the Professor and
Head, Department of Psychiatry at the prestigious National Institute of
Mental Health & Neurosciences. He is Fellow of the Royal College of
Psychiatrists, the Indian National Academy of Sciences and the Indian National
Academy of Medical Sciences. Dr. Ravi Kapur delivered a public lecture
entitled- "The making of a Sadhu: An enquiry into higher states of mental
health," jointly organized by National Institute of Science, Technology
and Development Studies and India International Centre under the series-DIMENSIONS
of SCIENCE, on the evening of December 1, 2003. The conference hall was
packed with intellectuals, researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists, media
persons, former bureaucrats and diplomats,
Dr. Kapur said that some of the
sadhus wanted to be on their own and did not want to be disturbed by the
people. Someone close to one such sadhu said that he was not mentally disturbed
but did not want to interact with the world. This person also gave the
instance of Saint Totapuri, the guru of Ramakrishna Paramhans, who used
to throw dirt in the face of the people as he did not want them to come
to him.
In his twenty years of research,
Dr. Kapur has interviewed sadhus of all categories. On the one hand he
has interviewed sadhus who are globe trotters and on the other hand he
has interacted with the down to earth ones and the ones undergoing penance
on the roads and in the caves of Rishikesh, Badrinath, Kedarnath and Gangotri
areas of Uttaranchal Region. Out of around 100 sadhus interviewed by him,
he spent with them two to four hours to a few days and also a few weeks,
on a case to case basis.
Commenting on his relationship and
experiences with the various sadhus, Dr. Kapur said, "I would like to share
with you that almost all the sadhus were extremely co-operative and were
very generous in extending hospitality to me. Not even one of them asked
me for money, though I myself offered dakshina to many of them."
Giving some interesting details
of the sadhus interviewed by him, he said, "Out of the 100 hundred sadhus
interviewed by me in the past twenty years, it would be around 40 of them
that I had a detailed interaction. Out of these 40, 12 had become
sadhus due to some problems faced by them in their social and married lives.
As becoming a sadhu solves their problems of food and shelter, this life
had an appeal for many people. But these 12 people still carried the baggage
of their past lives with them and kept cribbing and complaining about their
past. The rest of the 28 sadhus I interviewed had no reason to escape their
home and material world. They had opted for becoming a sadhu out of free
will and had been attracted to the life as a sadhu since their childhood
days. They were absolutely normal people and showed no signs of any psychological
problems or illness. Many of these had abandoned their successful careers
and social lives, they were happy people and had a good social network
to support them as normal human beings. When asked, they said that they
had chosen to live as a sadhu because it was in their prarabdha karma (destiny
as a result of actions in a past life) and there was no way to scientifically
deal with this phenomenon. However most of these 28 people had a religious
bent of mind since their childhood."
Said Dr. Kapur, "Many of the sadhus
I met survived on a meagre diet of cereals and fruits. They were mostly
not bothered as to wherefrom their next meal is going to come. When I asked
this question to one of them, he told me- 'I challenge God not to give
me food.' "
According to Dr. Kapur total availability
to the needy and sick, cheerful temperament and high level of energy were
some of the qualities which were common to most of the sadhus he had met.
They pursued their goal -- moksha with boundless energy.
Dr. Kapur said that in India the
young people are told since childhood that they should not waste their
semen or tejas which is very precious. "When I asked the sadhus, how they
fulfill their desire for sex, most of them told me that when they are immersed
in meditation and bhakti, the joy and ecstasy they experience gives them
much more satisfaction than they would get from any sexual indulgence.
In fact sex was nothing as compared to the ecstasy they experienced when
they were in communion with the God. To describe this feeling of ecstasy,
they said that they felt a flow of energy rushing from the back of their
spine to the top of their head."
Talking about a sadhu who lived
at a height of 15,000 feet without wearing much clothes, Dr. Kapur said
- "When I asked him how he coped with the loneliness at such a height,
his answer was, "I have ladoos [sweets] in both my hands. When someone
comes here, I feed him and feel absolutely blissful. And when there is
nobody here for six months, I am in total communion with God and am again
completely blissful. So both my hands are full of ladoos."
"Almost all the sadhus I met, I
asked if they possessed any special powers. One of the sadhus to who I
addressed this question responded by saying- 'Yes I have special powers.
I can make very good rasam (a spicy soup),' " said Dr. Kapur.
During this two hour meeting, people
listened to Dr. Kapur's lecture with rapt attention. An interesting question
answer session also followed after the lecture was delivered.
