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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Dr. Ravi Kapur on the Life of Sadhus in India

DELHI, INDIA, 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.

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