'Why doesn't God go away?'Spirituality

The more powerful the feeling, the closer you get to the truth. On the eighth of March this year as a glorious dawn broke out and ushered in a bright new day over Nice, I headed home after paying a visit to my friend, philosopher, guide and 'God' U G Krishnamurthi, who was then alive but in the throes of his sunset hours. So profound and life-altering was the impact of this parting with him, that it left me feeling washed and cleansed. The feeling of self-annihilation, which had surfaced out of my submission to him, born out of an overwhelming love, hurled me into a space of timelessness, which had the fragrance of sorrow that still lingers in every pore of my being. This is perhaps what Rumi meant when he talked about 'oneness' with the beloved master. This is perhaps what Swami Vivekanand experienced when he had a mystical experience at the feet of Sri Ramkrishna Parmahans. So powerful is the impact of this experience that I can go on and on explaining it. But just when I begin to do that, the voice of this raging sage, U G Krishnamurthi, who, according to me, was the most subversive man to have walked this planet, and was responsible for having mauled the God - making mechanism within me - resonates once again and scorches this prized mystical experience of mine, reducing it to a heap of ashes. "Every experience, no matter how profound it is, separates you from life. You will never know what life is. You can give definitions on it but those have no meaning. There is no way you can sum up anything. Life has no destination," he says.

Yet, I wonder why this longing to connect with something larger than myself still persists within me. Why does consciousness inevitably involve man in a spiritual quest? In short, why doesn't God go away? Theologians, philosophers and psychologists have debated this question down the ages and arrived at a range of contradictory and ultimately improvable answers. Scientists say that the religious impulse is rooted in the biology of the brain. Isn't God part of man's quest for ultimate pleasure, uninterrupted happiness and permanence? Aren't moksha, soul, beatitudes - just words to keep our psychological continuity intact?

Everything around me screams and says that permanence is not the attribute of life. And yet, the search for permanence and God continues. Maybe the end of the search is the end of me? Maybe the only permanent thing is the search itself. The human body has not changed fundamentally for thousands of years. This propensity to look for God, follow leaders, avoid solitude and wage war or join groups, are all traits which are in the genetic makeup of man. It's a part of his biological inheritance. "It is the body which is immortal, it only changes its form after clinical death, remaining within the flow of life in new shapes. The body is not concerned with after life or permanence. It struggles to survive and multiply now," said U G before big sleep carried him into nothingness. To me, that is the voice of God.

( Mahesh Bhatt is a noted filmmaker )