[రచయిత ఆర్. సుదర్శనానికి కొడవటిగంటి కుటుంబరావు తన ఆలోచనా పద్ధతులను తెలుపుతూ రాసిన మూడు ఉత్తరాలను వారి శ్రీమతి ఆర్. వసుంధరాదేవి గారి సహకారమూ అనుమతితో మొదటిసారిగా ఈమాట పాఠకులకు ప్రత్యేక కానుకగా ప్రచురిస్తున్నాం. వసుంధరాదేవిగారికి మా కృతజ్ఞతలు- సం.]
1, 4th cross street. Trustpuram, Madras – 24, 3-6-78
Dear Sri Sudarsanam Garu,
I got your letter today (Instead of yesterday) because there was a “bearing” on it due to revised postal rates & my wife didn’t take it yesterday. I have already read the Illustrated Weekly article and understand it. You may be surprised to know that I was just 8 years old (in Dec 1917) when I first had my “miracle”. It was just an “out of the body experience” and quite genuine. Only I don’t call such things miracles.
ఆర్ సుదర్శనానికి కొకు రాసిన
ఉత్తరం పే.1, 03-06-1978
There is something primitive to the way of my thinking when people look upon as unearthly or divine or miraculous anything for which they don’t find any possible explanation. The primitives had a justification for thinking s, but we, confounded with the almost inconceivable mysteries of quantum physics have no justification to consider extremely unusual and apparently impossible phenomena as miracles. There is a materialistic expression, only we don’t know it. And did you hear about persons losing such powers when they were not acquired through yoga or pranayamams? It happens. Quite a few child prodigies – miracle workers of a low order – lose their power on puberty. Also, I happen to have an idea how these powers work. (It was really the hypnotic processes which gave me the clue.) So I am not moved by such powers. On the other hand I feel they contribute nothing to the common good. I never heard of any Baba waving his hand producing a fistful rice or other food stuffs, enough to satiate even a baby’s hunger. But these people with their miracles spread rank superstition all around.
I never spoke of low philosophy, only of the heights of philosophy. It is quite obvious that you can crawl either up or down the philosophical ladder.
“Unity of mind and matter” is quite acceptable. But should it be achieved? Is it not always there? Can we imagine mind functioning apart from matter? On the contrary I feel that mind is a very feeble instrument for realizing the full reality of matter. If we had 5 more senses we would have a much better idea of matter. Even scientific gadgets like electron microscope, the particle accelerators are within the scope of mind. Even the photographic emulsion showed what a tiny fraction of electromagnetic radiation we are aware of with our normal senses.
On Dadaji
1. I saw equally baffling hypnotic feats done by విప్ర వినోదులు, not in the privacy of an apartment nor for the benefit of individuals, but in our High School square at Tenali, surrounded by hundreds of students. They didn’t lay claims to any spirituality. They were almost beggars and called their act కనుకట్టు.
2. When did Dadaji start exhibiting these powers? I am old enough to have heard about him if he had these powers during the last half century if only they were mentioned in the press.
3. There was a Bengali young man (in the 30’s) who was suspected to be a terrorist and was under police vigilance. He gave performances in which he washed his hands in nitric acid & drank it after dissolving a copper coin in it, stopped bullets with his hand, got himself hanged and got a road roller pass over his body.
ఆర్ సుదర్శనానికి కొకు రాసిన
ఉత్తరం పే.4, 03-06-1978
The police forbade him to do the bullet and road roller “tricks.” I didn’t see his performance but my friends did. During the war he was in Madras and got a very bad name because of his “objectionable” behaviour. My friend, one Ghatak, conceded his powers but just hated him.
4. People declared clinically dead come alive and there are investigations going on regarding their “death” experience. In the cases I read about the agency for coming alive is not mentioned. Probably people like dadaji could intervene but most definitely they can’t bestow immortality in the flesh to anyone, nor can they have it.
5. Western science and “materialism” of a very unimaginative kind is not prepared for any unusual occult experience and is knocked down by it so very easily. (our own neo-materialists are aping them.) Thomas Mann an embodiment of western Scientific Thinking and Culture attended a seance and wrote a lengthy article the essence of which is “What am I to make of this experience?” Most “superstitious” Indians can take such experience in their stride.
K.K. Rao