O.V. Vijayan on Navajyotisree Karunakara Guru

Revelatory Religion in Historical Perspective
O.V. Vijayan

Revelation is like a constant rain that saturates the knowing of man, yet many reject it, dulled as they are by gross pursuits. The Guru intercedes and sensitizes him to the perennial rain.

Even this intercession is fraught with danger. Systems arise from it, exclusion, and the eventual denial of the perennial totality. Mohammed had said:

When you meet the people of the Book (Jews) and the Christians, tell them that the God you worship- is the same one as theirs.

Even the Guru is put to test, test exceedingly harsh and he also responds with exceedingly harsh truth. A Gentile woman sought the aid of Christ who responded: ‘My mission is to the children, not the dogs”. She replied: “Lord, the dogs eat what the children discard. Grant me but that’. Full of joy, the Redeemer said, ‘Woman, your faith has made you whole’.

The early Christians limited their apostolic mission to the Jews, until Pauline Christianity made the apostolic concern universal.

A Guru by historical accident, functions within inherited traditions and images. But his message eventually transcends these and fulfils itself as Revelation.

Human societies have tended to reject the mystical because it is strenuous and perilous, and without the guidance of a preceptor fraught with demonic perception. In the Christian tradition as elsewhere the mystics have been preserved as saints, as cult figures, the dispensers of miracles while the perenniality of the mystical itself has been rejected by the ordinary worshipper. Even so the mystical keeps company with man all the time and it merely takes a look around the shoulder to discover it.

A Glimpse on the Core Teachings of Navajyothisree Karunakara Guru

Karunakara Guru is a Teacher in the absolute sense of the term, in the tradition of revelations and prophecies, and the acceptance of this in a civilization overwhelmed by chemical and mechanical cleverness is perhaps the initial hurdle before the reader. If one accepts the Supreme, its immanence in our midst becomes familiar reality. In his life and mission Karunakara Guru exemplifies this familiarity; he does not speak a language of theology, or at least keeps it to the minimum and discourses on practical paradigms.

Santhigiri Ashram he has set up near Trivandrum has no doubt a core of renunciates and seers, but is sustained by a large number of resident householders. They are the task force of the Guru and he expects them to cleanse themselves through right action and right thought and become vehicles for a purer progeny in which will be born the evolutes of the future. The Ashram’s mission is predicated on the certitude of such births as the revealed Will of the Absolute.

Navajyothisree Karunakara Guru is no island in the flux of prophecy and Revelation. There have been Teachers earlier who said much the same thing, but perhaps not with such immediacy and fullness. The purpose of creation is the elevation of all creatures through tortuous stages to the realization of the Absolute which is the Supreme Light. The ancient Indian called it the Brahman. In other ethnic bowls the same has been known as Allah, the Holy Spirit and so on.

The simplicity of man’s communication with the Supreme Light was lost by the very process of historical duration. Evolution has left us with different orders of beings, from the visible and gross creatures to tiers of astral entities. These represent stages with all the impermanence, and passing, that we witness in the biological world. The Supreme Light alone endures.

The intermediacy of revelation has caused the limitation of human vision and its confinement to these different stages. Thus the cosmic gods, which the Hindus call the Trimurti and the devas have been mistaken for the Supreme - an instance of arrested vision.

All religions, to a lesser or greater degree, have thus been seduced but in the case of Indian religion - Hinduism if we might use a convenient term - the investiture of the cosmic gods has been widespread and spiritually retrograde. By mistaking the Trimurti and the devas for Brahman, and their revelation with the Revelation of the Brahman, Hindu society has put limits on its spiritual growth.

This spiritual retardation in turn has led to widespread societal distortions. It is the bane of social sciences to keep the mind out, certainly the spirit out, and embark on analysis with purely secular historical tools. Navajyothisree Karunakara Guru does not repudiate these tools, but tries unobtrusively, and in the language of the wood hewer and the earth-tiller, to link these tools with tools of the supreme consciousness.

The cosmic beings namely the Trimurti and the devas are rejected as objects of ultimate worship by the Guru but he does not deny their veracity or the spiritual eminence they have achieved. Theirs is a splendorous astral world, and if the worldly human is overawed by it, it is understandable. Their eminence too is sanctified by the Supreme as a necessary stage in astral evolution. But they are not the Supreme and the path of the jeeva or the soul is not to end in them, or at their stage of astral evolution. If worship leads to such a destination, it will fall short of the realm of Truth.

These are the spiritual pitfalls in the practice of religion. The splendorous deva is mistaken for a manifestation of godhead, and the epiphany for the exercise of God-energy. In fact God does not manifest Himself in Trinity; the Absolute God in the Trimurti will be a contradiction in terms. Creation, Sustenance and Destruction are not separately structured processes, but coexistent aspects of the same evolutionary process. It is almost mechanical to designate these as separate tasks to separate gods.

The idea of the Supreme Godhead manifesting itself as avtars has caused havoc in the Indian’s response to Brahman. We have the reality of designated World Teachers, some of whom were spiritually higher than the Trimurti.

An example is Krishna. He has been degraded by the ritualists into an avatar of Vishnu, one of the Trimurti. Krishna was a human Guru, sent to relate humanity to the Brahman. Incidentally, if we go by the lore of Krishna, we find him exhibiting the miracles of the devas but all the while going beyond them, and prophetically proclaiming the path of the Teacher-the path of the Brahman.

Many such Teachers have been sent to many ethnic communities and regions, some of the most significant in recent history being Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and Sankara. One says recent history because there is a calendar infinitely vaster, awesomely so, than the historical one. This is the Manu Calendar, made up of age quartets, the chaturyugas, and quarter clusters, the manvantaras.

Many manvantaras make a kalpa. The modem man with is limited historicity, will find this hard to accept, but such is the mindboggling trajectory of the jeeva, the soul.
The Gurus are human who have been given visions of these spans of Time, and the relative stature of each Guru varies with the extent of revelation he has received. Very often it will not be possible for a guru to receive it all in one life time. So he repeats his life or stays content to remain in whatever stage of spiritual evolution he has arrived at. However some gurus, by the grace of the Supreme, are able to take in their visions in relatively short spells of time. Thus we have a hierarchy of gurus, which is really a hierarchy of the Absolute’s instruments.
According to Revelation a major error occurred in the Guru tradition. This was in the third age quarter of the present manavantara and in the Manu-lineage. This recoiled on the Manu-lineage, and its, memory ceased to be alive.

From the seventh through to the eleventh quarter the Supreme evolved the cosmic gods to rectify this error. However, lulled by the adoration they received from the humans these cosmic gods perpetuated that worship and failed the Supreme.

The last five thousands years were the ongoing Kali, the concluding age of the quartet. It is during Kali that the karmas of the quartet are resolved and hence the Absolute enriches it with prophecy and redemption. A fresh attempt has been made in this Kali, starting with the advent of Krishna and following through the prophets worldwide, to redeem the Error of the Manu-line.

All this is precarious as secular history. But the Santhigiri Ashram and its Guru have borne testament in numerous experiential cameos to which we can only invite the reader’s attention by first stimulating his primary receptivity. To those who might think it absurd, we would only request to take a humbler look at the absurdities our present civilization is founded on: chemicalization, pollution, genetic distortion, environmental degradation and the constant possibility of the nuclear holocaust.

(Quoted from the Introduction by Sri O.V. Vijayan to the book 'A Dialogue on Human Prospect' of Navajyotisree Karunakara Guru, Santhigiri Publications)

(Late Sri Padmabhushan O.V. Vijayan is a well known writer, novelist and cartoonist. He won several literary awards including Kendra Sahitya Academy Award)

The Guru of O.V. Vijayan, famous Novelist

Gurucharanam Saranam
The Guru of O.V. Vijayan
G.P. Krishna Kumar, Santhigiri

Late Sri O.V. Vijayan’s association with Navajyoti Sri Karunakara Guru is well known.  The famous writer once said about the Guru:  ‘GURU is an experience beyond translation….’ A few remarks made by O.V. Vijayan on his relationship with Navajyoti Sri Karunakara Guru are quoted below:

Guru – an Experience beyond translation

‘the ever stable Guru is a great motion. This is my experience. I happened to meet Guru more or less in a barren situation. I had no knowledge or prejudice about Gurumargam. I do not intend to evaluate that meeting in a logical perspective. But I do not require the help of any theology to distinguish the organic evolutions that took place within my inner alertness. Like a piece of emotion surpassing time, a fear of existence or a self ecstasy, something stirred inside me. Try not to define. Only one! Only this! The dizziness from this contact changed it to a movement. I dissolved myself in the great current of Guru. If this is attempted to concise in words, perhaps problems arise. There is no translation for experience’.

Guru – a Great Movement

‘after a long silence, although the circumstances were unfavourable, I started writing. The inspiration for that humble creation was the compassion I could experience myself. I was brave enough to make my literature the medium of that compassion only because of my becoming a part of the great movement of Guru. This gift is not mine. It is of Guru. I know about that only as a small dot of the total knowledge. I have no authority to handle the figures of virtues characterized by me. But I consider that Guru has made me an instrument. The concept of God is beyond the reach of us who are immersed in the futilities of modern life. But Guru becomes the exchange of this experience. Without the help of any theology! ’

Prostrations to Guru

‘I do not ordinarily pray. If at all I pray in some extraordinary circumstances that would be for selfish motives only. My past is full of mistakes. The memory of those mistakes leads me to inertia. But Guru says these are all human. In one word “No-problem”. This one word of pardoning was terrible than any other verdict of punishment. The energy out of that rejuvenates me. Prostrations to Guru’!

Guru was catalytic to my literary works

For Vijayan, Guru was an experience. Vijayan used to come to Santhigiri to experience the infinities of soul and its everlasting beauty. His contact with the Guru, for more than a quarter century, was not accidental. It was the culmination of his prolonged enquiries. His life’s desire was to dissolve in that ocean of love and he achieved it. Without the help of any theology Vijayan recognized Karunakara Guru.  ‘What is the factor that Karunakara Guru attracted you’? Vijayan did not have to think a second time to answer the question. ‘The relation of love, the eternal love no one else can give. That noble love touched my soul and my literature…’

Perhaps we were not able to comprehend the turning point of Vijayan to spirituality as we wanted him to be in a particular plane of intellectuality as he always was… He suffered much for his visions. The words of V.K.Madhavankutty are proof for this. “I could not understand what Guru has said or what Vijayan had comprehended. But Vijayan was firm in it. Vijayan had to sustain the blame of advocating Hindutva. I can tell that he was not so. Vijayan did not complain to anybody.”

Vijayan has written about his experiences in a small book in Malayalam ‘The turtle fish misled to the sea” published by D.C.Books.  Answering the question why Vijayan comes to Santhigiri, the great Novelist said, “I come to Santhigiri to untie and keep down the bundle of my ego, of my intellect and art and to bathe in humility.” 

 O.V.Vijayan in the Preface to ‘Dharmapuranam’

‘Some problems arose between the years of serializing it and publishing it as a book. Most important of them was the character formation of “Sidharthan”. At that time, I happened to be in contact with the great Acharya Karunakara Guru of Santhigiri Ashram, situated near a small village called Pothencode. From the Gurusankalpam as the result of this contact, I could change “Sidharthan” as Guru and the revolutionary touch of Sidharthan as Guru’s gift. This change was reflected throughout the story and made several concepts remain vague in the series more distinct in the book. As there were tamasik and murderous portions in it, I asked whether I can drag the name of a Guru in its presentation. But Guru answered in the affirmative. This reply made me grateful and self confident. I firmly believe that the technicality of ‘Dharmapuranam’ will guide the good minds ……..above all it’s the obscenity’. 

‘The erotic bio-insurgences and the gentle death are the two ends. It is the interval between the two that we, who have born as humans, have to handle it carefully. We are all counting the waves in the shore of the sea called ectoplasm. Here where is room for any dualism. Light and darkness identifying their half portion… impotency again conjoins. Births and deaths unite. The Guru at the same time remains in the dissolution point of the handful of water and the sky rocking ocean enquires our welfare. That is the severe and personal of the extreme dissolution. ‘Gurusagaram’ was the witnessing of thousand fold Guruthva. Oh! My Atoms which immerses in the great bliss being self reformed particles always guiding to the multiple formations of creation, I prostrate you. Lift down our dirty baggage in this journey. Why? Reject them by opening our inner faculties, our positions, honors, education, physical fairness all and all.

Sacrifice is a great experience. Gathering them from the original textures we have made it fossils, by discarding values, externalized, made prose and verses and fractionalized the creativity as the satirical imitations. When we unload from our shoulders, make a sigh of relief, when the pure knowledge of the universe only remains, the co-traveling child laughs. Only with the knowledge and karma we can know as to how far we can laugh like that. But we can say one thing. Just outside the window panes of the aircraft Guru shall remain always as the co-traveler of this traveler’.