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                                 Sringeri Days

Bowing to the repeated requests of a few disciples of Sringeri Jagadgurus I am sharing some of my experiences through a series of posts. More I think of my 40 years of mental association with Sringeri Gurus, more i am stunned as to why it happened to me.
There is nothing remarkable in me or my life. I have never been blazing brilliant student in schools, nor have i been an erudite scholar in sanskrit or Shastra Literature. I am not a great adherent of Karma Mimamsa which has meticulously laid dow rituals from dawn to dusk; nor an I a great contemplator looking at a single word for days trying to understand the meaning. My Yoga and dhayana practice is tardy at best. I don't have a deep belief or commitment to any specific religious practice and I have a great aversion to getting entangled with Bhajans, Satsangs, discourses, visiting punya Kshetra Dhams. I can't recite Vedas properly nor can i quote any great passage from Scriptures. I don't have great attachments, relationships with family or friends ;nor am I known to be the Go To guy if any one needs help....


With all these, why did Shri Abhinava Vidyatheertha Mahaswaminah, the great Tapasvi /Yogi Jyestha Mahasannidhanam take me under his benign grace? Why did the then young successor Shri Bharati Theertha assure me that I will be dear to them wherever I go, whatever I do or don't- he declared his doors will be open for me any time.
Considering I was born in an orthodox Maadhwa family this is remarkable indeed - Madhwas hate Shankara Advaitha so much they call it Halahala , the most dangerous snake poison, and declare Shri Shankara Bahagavtpada was an incarnation of a demon sent to earth to mislead millions to hell.

The photo attached in the post shows Shri Abhinava Vidyatheertha Mahas Swaminah teaching Shri Bharati Theertha and other Sanyasis. Whenever I visited Sringeri, Jagadguru would ask me to sit through such classes - even though I could understand very little of Sanskrit. He would say that this will help my samskara and the meanings will find me over a period of time.

It all began in a radically different way far away in Chennai , some 700 Km away, in an engineering college. It was a hot summer evening in 1977 and I was delivering a lecture on Quantum Mechanics to fellow students; it was the usual extra curricular science club thing.

I was explaining the Louis De Broglie's Matter wave equation λ = h/mv (where λ is wavelength, h is Planck's constant, m is the mass of a particle, moving at a velocity v). The fellow students listened with awe as well as disinterest. It all changed in a moment into a commotion.

In walked a tall , fair, young man with a face that dazzled like thousand suns - sporting his usual pure white pant and white shirt, sacred ash adorning his broad forehead. It was R.M.Umesh. He came in with a few of his friends and sat in the first row. He was so brilliant that he could complete all requirements of a PhD even as undergrad student. He was in EEE while I was in ECE major. He was very famous in the campus for making professors squirm with his trick questions.

What is he going to ask me ? This was bothering me all through my talk , but he kept smiling at me without any interruption. I started to calm down and thought he wouldn't ask any question at all; may be i was brilliant too ! I had thought too soon.
" Is the De Broglie equation valid for all reference frames" a voice rang out. It was Umesha asking that. Every one sat up in rapt attention. The Roman circus was now open for business and the Lion was ready to pounce on the Gladiator me. "It is valid for all reference frames" , I answered.

" If so, am I a DC Generator?", he asked with an innocent smile. It took a while for me to get him and tried answering; most fo the students never understood us but sure did they enjoy my squirming under his laser sharp questioning.
As happens always, I met him outside after the lecture and he walked me towards his favorite tree behind the building .We sat there, he started talking and mentioned I should come with him and meet his Guru in Sringeri - Abhinava Vidyatheertha and his young successor Bharati Theertha. I promised I would and went home, with no idea that my life was changing for ever from that moment.

I Had not even an iota of inkling that Umesha will become a permanent thought in my mind ; or i will find a father in jyestha Mahasannidhanam and a affectionate elder brother in Bharati Theertha. Slowly and steadily i lost control of my life; it would be as per Sringeri Acharyas wishes and conveyed through mentor Umesha , many times through telepathy.







Umesha is such a recluse he would not share any photo with us. He continues to be just a thought in my mind , even after 40 years. Nearest I can point out is the protagonist character in Cho Ramaswamy's "Enge Brahmanan" series in Thuglaq Magazine.
But how do I go to Sringeri and meet Shankaracharya in close audience ? My father had passed away some 14 years back when i was just 8. So, we were very poor and had no money to make that 700 Km trip. More importantly we were an orthodox Madhwa family and family elders would excommunicate me if i ventured to meet an Advaithi Guru. In the 13th Century, Shri Poorna Prgana, a young ascetic broke away from Advaitha to form Tatva Vaada philosophy that Maadhwas followed. Why would i throw away Nectar and drink Halahala , my uncle growled at home.

So, I plotted a scheme to secretly visit Sringeri. Had to wait for a year to make it happen


After that eventful lecture on Quantum Mechanics, Umesh, a few of his ‘disciple’ classmates  and I started meeting every day in the campus. We shared  our thoughts, life stories and experiences. We were all very eager to know more about his spiritual experience.We looked very desperately for proof of God and wanted him to guarantee that we will have similar if not same ‘results’ as him. Obviously we were so ignorant about what jignAsa, the individual effort meant.

He narrated how his life changed dramatically. He was a teen ager at Don Bosco school with dreams of going to US for higher studies; just a chance meeting with Sringeri Shankaracharya  turned him into  an accomplished Siddha Yogi with vow life long asceticism and Tapas. With lots of coaxing from us, he shared that incident.

His grandfather had taken him to have a darshan of Sringeri Shankaracharya Abhinva Vidyatheertha who was visiting Chennai. One look at Umesh , Acharya understood who he truly was and suggested he visit Sringeri for a leisurely conversation. Umesh was deeply impacted by him and he visited Sringeri a few months later as asked. There Acharya blessed him by touching his head and this single touch triggered the dormant Yoga Shakti in Umesh. After that, there was no looking back and Umesh progressed very fast into an accomplished yogi. Needless to say he had to face opposition at home that melted away over a period of time. 

He asked me about myself and I had nothing dramatic to tell. My father died suddenly in Bangalore when I was 8 years old. We had to come to Triplicane, Chennai and live under the roof & kindness of grandfather. 


As a teenager I was fascinated by Thakur Rama Krishna Parama Hamsa and spent every evening reading spiritual books in a nearby library. There was enormously voluminous biography Raamakrisha Kathamrita written by M running to a couple of thousand pages. It was more of a meticulously catalogued diary of Thakur’s life every day.



By the time I finished I was inspired by Ramakrishna’s life. Every day I waited for my family to go to sleep and start meditating for an hour or more. 

I also shared an interesting aspect of our family. Our maternal grandfather lived in Madurai. It is believed in family circles that this was the house in which the great Maadhwa Yogi Shri Raghavendra Theertha spent his teen age studying Vedas & Shastra under his brother in law. It is believed we are some branch’s descendants. This meant Raghavendra Theertha was so emotionally important for us , he was in every family members mind, thought and breath. Raghavendra swamy would show up at every key turning point in my life and we will see him many times in this story.

I told Umesh that beyond this I followed nothing else; was feeling some push, some urge to go after something that was not clear to me. He suggested if I wanted I could join his Satsang every Saturday. His friends Neelu, Suresh, Jayaraman were part of that satsang. I decided to try it out. Umesh was extremely funny and hilarious making parody of things, cutting jokes, etc.Every one will be laughing all the time and hours will melt away in minutes. No one would have any idea he was a great accomplished yogi. He made Vedantha such a fun and enjoyable.


I was the odd man out in the group-the only Maadhwa among the bunch of Smarthas. Maadhwas are very orthodox and strict in religious observance with enormous focus on Madi & Achara. The daily life has so many do’s & don’ts , making the  modern non-veda-patashala life very difficult. For example, we need to take bath every evening after coming from school/college without touching anything and wash the clothes worn to college. Any contact with outside world would harm the spiritual purity and this was just simplest of all rules. Smarthas - who follow Shankara Advaitha - are lot more relaxed on these ritualistic disciplines. I was also different from others in another way - I was incessantly debating with Umesh on contrast between Advaitha &  Tatva Vaada Dwaitha philosophy. 

Umesh was a great tease, always pretending to be scared of Maadhwa madi Achara , caution every one in stern voice to be careful as I walked in every time. It did not matter to him that I never followed any of it;He just wanted to make every one laugh. While every one was rolling on the floor laughing, his mood will change abruptly. He will explain his deep meditation experience in detail in a sombre voice. We would sit dumbfounded as he explained how Lord Nataraja appeared  dancing in the sky ,occupying the whole firmament. He would nonchalantly tell us of an incidence where Lord Shiva was debating with him, golden hued body, matted locks flowing down to shoulder, sitting on Shiva Linga, gently rocking his legs like a boy !

I was so ignorant  and did not get that this was an ultimate spiritual experience.Being able to see God form with eyes open wide is the ultimate -aparoksha Anubhuti. This was the clear indication that Umesh was a jiVan Mukta , a liberated soul. We never understood it at that time. Shri Abhinava Vidyatheertha would later tell me not treat Umesha just as a friend - he was a liberated soul ,a great yogi and any one he touches will be liberated. 


It would take decades for me to understand this, that too through an endorsement from totally unexpected person. Some thirty years later, I was researching Shri Ananda Theertha Muni’s Tatva Vaada Philosophy. I was  in my quest for establishing harmony between Advaitha and seemingly contradictory Dwaitha Tatva Vaada. 

Shrimad Ananda Theetha had written 37 books in all establishing Tatva Vaada; of the 37, I was focused on his ‘Blue book’ Tantra Sara Sangraha. It is breathtakingly short work that has amazing breadth & depth. I have never seen any guide book on spiritual practice that has a technique for any which way one wants to practice. A statement in that book hit me straight, taking me back decades to Umesha’s experience.  “ Without directly seeing the Ishwara there is no possibility of Moksha”, he had written. Proof of pudding is in eating after all . If God exists, we should be able to see him/her just as we see each other. Finessing that God is just a feeling is begging the question. 

Ananda Theertha was being his usual brief, direct and up to the point.

“अपरोक्ष दृषेरेव यस्मांमोक्षो नचान्यथा 
अपरोक्ष द्रिषश्रचैव श्रवनान मननान अदनु 
समयङ्निश्चत तत्वस्य निदध्यासनया भवेत्|4:135”

This tallied with the answer Thakur Ramakrishna gave the rebellious youth Narendra Dutta. “I see Mother Kali clearer than I see you” was his response to the budding Vivekanada.


We kept meeting several times a week and engaged in weekly satsangs in different homes across Chennai. Umesh kept bringing the issue of my visiting Sringeri and one fine day he was definitive. He wanted me to take the plunge and stop dilly dallying .“When & How are you planning to visit Sringeri?” he asked. I could no longer duck the issue and time to catch the bull by its horn was getting closer. 

I thought for long and answered,  “This summer, with the help of Beer Lambert & JC Bose”




When I said I will take the help of Beer Lambert & JC Bose , Umesh was not puzzled. Intellectual giant that he was, he very well knew that I was talking of Skin effect theory  and electrical activity in plants. He was just curious to know the intersection of the two and how I planned to harness it. He always liked my energy ,enthusiasm, reading some new stuff and trying ‘path breaking’ stuff. Never mind I didn’t make a big success of it; the whole restless quest was endearing to him. 

He already knew I was chasing the scientists at Institute of Mathematical sciences with a theory to prove Einstein wrong. He knew I was pursuing famous Dr George Sudarshan of University of Texas on this-until Dr Sudrashan wrote back saying theoretical physics was a full time job, and it will ruin my engineering studies; I should finish my engineering degree and plunge full time he said. 

Umesh regaled our Satsang members how I was troubling  ‘the Mad engineer of Mylapore’ with my quest for ‘Delta Antenna’. By applying the skin effect , I had come out with a design of Yagi antenna with wood electroplated to skin depth. I was trying to persuade them to manufacture the Delta Antenna until his cautious wife put an end to the plan.

So he teased me wondering who was at receiving end of my new quest this time. “It is University of Agricultural sciences, Hebbal , Bangalore”, I replied. Umesh burst out laughing and asked what this part time, amateur, quantum physicist attempting in U of Agri and how it was connected with Beer-Lambert theorems.

I explained this time around I was studying electrical activity in plants , the field in which Sir J.C.Bose had done pioneering work. Why not use plants as antennas ? Why not let your Rose plant  receive the Doordarshan TV signals ? This is where I started working with Hebbal University of Agri Sciences. 

Bangalore was only 330 km away from Sringeri and more importantly it gave me a cover, a ruse to tell my mom why I was going. The opposition I was facing in family circles for getting involved deep with Umesha  and Advaitha was escalating. Enormous pressure was being applied to ensure I don’t go the ‘Shankara’ way. My family even enlisted  oracles , astrologers and Maadhwa scholars to persuade me.

I secretly intensified my meditation with gusto; now I had a great Yogi Umesha guiding me and so why worry. Due to his guidance and grace of Sringeri Acharya, I started making rapid progress. Umesha used to converse with the Acharya from time to time and apparently Acharya was very pleased at my efforts. Some times, in meditation, I would feel I was expanding bigger and bigger till I felt as if filled the universe; another day I would feel I was spinning at such a great speed I would feel I was everywhere at the same time; Occasionally it would be as if there was a tube in my back bone that was getting filled with ice cold water. Every next day I would consult Umesha on my experiences and he would guide me how to handle it.

From time to time my other friends would request me to bring Umesh to their house for a short visit. Every one believed they will be blessed enormously if Umesha’s feet just touched their home once, just once. Though he was a recluse, Umesha would oblige once a while, and he would come to my humble home on his Motorcycle, pick me up and I would take him to a friend’s home. Of all such visits we made, one visit is etched in my memory-visit to  my friend PMJay’s house. PMJay was my closest buddy and his parents are such humble and simple souls. They would treat all of PMJay’s friends as their own children.No wonder we spent most of our free time in their house. His parents were overjoyed to see Umesh and in traditional Indian style prostrated to Umesh who was just as young as their second son. Such a humble couple.

As my family continued to grow jittery about my involvement with Umesh, they decided to take action.They decided to take me to Mantralaya, where Maadhwa Yati Shri Raghavendra Theertha had walked alive into Brindavana tomb way back in 17th century. Shri Raghavendra Theertha is an unparalleled Yogi- his compassion, Vedic scholarship, Yogic achievement, mystical power, musical talent, erudition in all shastra was unmatched by any one in the history of India. Even 300+ years after his entry into Brindavana, he continues to inspire, guide, help and give succor to troubled people.

My elder brother & his wife were making a pilgrimage to Mantralaya and I was commanded to go with them. It was hoped that Rayaru would bring me back to ‘right ways’.  We reached the dusty village Mantralaya in the late evening and checked into a small accommodation. The plan was to go the temple early morning next day. 

As I sat down for meditation in the night, an image flashed in my mind - Rayaru was sitting in the Brindavana , a few feet below the ground, smiling at me.I was intrigued as all the portraits show him above the ground level.
I just let it go and went to sleep. Next day as we entered the Brindavana area, the same image flashed into my mind. Later did I find out that the portraits we see of Raghavendra Swamy siting above the ground level is not the right one. Brindavana super structure was built on the top of the vault into which th great Yogi had walked down to sit on meditation; once he went into Samadhi, the devotees filled it up with sand, saligrama and granite.

The Brindavana temple was located on the banks of Tungabhadra river.  Tungabhadra was a confluence of Tunga and Bhadra rivers , both originating in the western Ghats near Sringeri. That was totally lost on me as I took sacred bath in Tungabhadra. I was fated to start my journey downstream at Mantralaya  and slowly move up the hills of Western Ghats to Sringeri! 

Yet another aspect of this journey dawned on me years later. Goddess Sharade was there in Sringeri, with her son Abhinva Vidya Theertha, while the other son Raghavendra Theertha was down at plains at Mantarlaya. All of us know how Sharade appeared in young Venakatanatha’s dream and persuaded him to become Raghavendra Theertha. 

My brother & I got Mudradharana done by the then pontiff and returned to Chennai. I bought a few books written by Raghavendra Theertha including his magnum opus Sudha Parimala. I didn’t have much scholarship in Sanskrit but was sure that with the blessings of Rayaru I will understand them some time in life. After all Rayaru made a cowherd  Appanna a scholar Appannacharya merely by blessing him. I was very comfortable being an Appanna for ever. 

We started our journey back to Chennai. I had no idea that Lord Nrusimha and a 14th century  Madhwa Yati Akshobhya Theertha were being enlisted by my family to block me from meeting Sringeri Acharya. They were waiting for me.