I’ve never been headucated

 Sunyata was born on a small Danish farm in 1890 with the name of Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sorensen. At the time of his birth, his two sisters were 12 and 14 years old. As he was only educated up to the 8th grade, he would often joke that he had escaped “headucation.” During his childhood, a big shock occurred when he was 14 and the family farm was sold to strangers who had no respect for the land. He began an apprenticeship in horticulture, and eventually moved to England where he became “a simple gardener.” As a gardener, he worked from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening in such big estates as Forty Hall, Sunbury Court, Hampton Court, and Dartington Hall. While he was working on the gardens of Dartington Hall in Devonshire, Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, came to speak.

Emmanuel (this means the “indwelling God” and was Sunya’s favorite Western name for himself) played a Beethoven quartet for Tagore on an old gramophone; Tagore was so impressed with the quality of Emmanuel’s silence (lack of willfulness and ego desires) that he invited him “to come to India to teach silence.” But how can you teach something except by being It? Being It he was, and his arrival in India in 1930—in his 40th year—marked the beginning of a new phase in his life’s drama. People immediately thrust titles upon him like ‘baba’, ‘saint’, and ‘guru’, but none of these names seemed true to his being. He did accept small gifts from people, but refused them if they were more than he needed at the time. For 45 years he was to live in India, where his work was simply to BE and his days as a gardener a thing of the past. Everything was given to him. In Sunyata’s words: “We live so close to Heaven.”
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For the next four decades, Sunyata continued to live in his Himalayan hut not far from Almora. About his new home, he said, “I was contented in Denmark though I could see the others regarded me as an oddity. In England I felt freer. In India I felt at home. But in the Himalayas I feel closest to Heaven.” During all these years in India, he was never employed, but found money being pushed on him. He was once offered 20 rupees a month ($2.50), but only accepted 5. Then in 1950, the Birla Foundation in New Delhi (whose purpose is to assist saints and saddhus) asked him if he’d accept 100 rupees a month and he agreed to accept 20. “It was more than I needed at the time,” he admitted, “but I thought prices might rise.” It was later raised to 50 rupees where it remained for more than 20 years. Even after inflation made it hard to live on 50, Sunyata would never consider getting a raise through asking.

Living nearby to his Himalayan hut on Crank's Ridge were such neighbors as the Tibetan Buddhist scholars Lama Anagarika Govinda and Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz. He would often make pilgrimages to the plains of India during the win- ter season, and return to his hut—high in the mountains— when the plains began to sizzle with the summer heat. He became personally acquainted with such leaders of the Indian independence movement as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. He also came to know Anandamayi Ma and Neem Karoli Baba and many realized beings who are virtually unknown in the West.
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During most of his life Sunyata was a quiet listener and did not seek to impose, share, or even to discuss his consciousness with others. Growing up in Denmark, he was not really under- stood by his own family and his mother once commented that she thought him “a bit queer.” Her opinion, as well as the opinions of others, did not concern him. When he accepted Tagore’s invitation to visit India and people thrust such names upon him as baba, guru, and saint, he remained unaffected. Sunyata would often say: “What Peter says about Paul says more about Peter than Paul. Do not dissipate your energy trying to explain yourself to others. Simply radiate your light.” In India people who regarded Sunyata as a guru sought his blessing and tried to thrust things upon him; however he would never accept more than what he needed. The “curse” of possessions and property was never anything he desired. The only thing he readily accepted was books—which he always shared.

When he read the collection of recorded talks given by Nisargadatta Maharaj entitled J Am That, he was so impressed with the quality of consciousness in this book that he obtained as many copies as he could in order to give them away. He was indeed very generous with the small amount of money people gave to him.

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Elliott’s Recollections

I met Sunyata for the first time in the summer of 1981. A friend had told me about a 90-year old “mystic” who was holding a question-and-answer period once a week on a houseboat that had been owned by the philosopher Alan Watts. I thought it would be fun to meet a “mystic,” so I agreed to go with my friend the very next week.

When I arrived at the evening gathering, Sunyata hadn’t yet entered the central room of the houseboat, so I just sat upon a cushion and waited patiently for his arrival. Then I saw an unusually dressed person enter from the back of the room and nimbly make a pathway through the people sitting upon the floor. His appearance was both striking and other-worldly; he wore loose-fitting Indian-style pants and shirt, and around his head was wrapped a large turban; all of his clothing was of the same hue of light purple. He sat upon a chair facing those who had gathered that evening, and began the meeting with a few minutes of silence. Then, speaking softly with his ever so slight Danish accent, he told about his life and how he had been “kidnapped” and taken to America; he concluded this 5-minute introduction by saying that he had “nothing to teach and nothing to sell.” He then asked if there were any questions. As he answered the questions, he would often smile and make jokes, and he always seemed to be radiating gentleness and playful- ness. He was quite relaxed and exuded an air of confidence. I saw that neither by listening to his voice nor by looking at his face would I have been able to tell whether Sunyata was a man or a woman. At that first meeting, I realized that Sunyata pos- sessed a rare humility and that he had told the truth when he had said he had “nothing to teach and nothing to sell.” I became a regular visitor at these weekly gatherings. At that time I had just started doing research for my doctoral dis- sertation; because of the sustained mental concentration needed for the research, I often found myself a bundle of nerves. It was only when I was in Sunyata’s presence that I was able to contact a silent part of myself. In my week away from Sunyata, I would accumulate quite a bit of anxiety and tension, and then during my weekly visits I would watch as my nervous energy dissolved and melted away. Sunyata would often say that his life had been worry-free. When asked how this was possible, he would answer that in order to feel worry, it was necessary to be in your “head” and—he would playfully exclaim—"I’ve never been headucated.” And I would think, “Here I am in the final stages of my headucation—and it seems all I do is worry.” What was undeniable to me was that Sunyata was having a different experience of life than anyone else I had ever known.

I could sense his spontaneous and natural ease in accepting—and even embracing—opposites that seemed to me to be irreconcilable. He was always playful, and I never noticed in him even a trace of sadness or resentment. Over a period of several years, I saw how anyone who spent any time with him would comment how they had never met a person who radiated so much peace. .

When in his presence, I could see how it was my desires,  fears, and expectations that were cutting me off from the Silence that was always there. Sunyata was like an ocean-bound river that was always murmuring cheerfully no matter what the appearance of the scenery that was passing by; just to sit by that river gave me a calm sense of detachment and inward peace.

At one of these gatherings, Sunyata made the prophecy that the word innerstand — a word that he himSelf had invented—would one day be in the dictionary. When asked what he meant by innerstand, he said:

Here in the West, people are so mental— they understand rather than innerstand. After hearing him use the word innerstand ina variety of contexts, I gathered that it was a way of comprehending that was not mental. Because it came directly from the beyond, it required no words, thought, or even effort—but only intuitive apperception. According to Sunyata, only when one became mind-free—not necessarily free of mind, but certainly free in mind—could one begin to innerstand. Sunyata believed that as Westerners became more trusting of their intuition that they would feel a need to find new words that honored this sense, and he offered the words innerstand and innerstanding as his gifts to the English language.

Two years after meeting Sunyata, I finally did receive my doctoral degree; it was a special treat for me to have Sunyata come to my graduation as my guest of honor. He sat right next to me, and I felt blessed to have such a friend.
And I did experience Sunyata as a friend. He made himself so accessible—I could call him on the telephone and have a chat, or even arrange a Visit to his house. Because he was so unimposing, I found myself drawing closer and closer to him. Occasionally I would experience him as my “brother,” but then I would remember how old he was, and he would suddenly become my wise old “grandfather.” But most of all, he was a friend.

Like most of the people around him, I assumed he would be around for his 100th birthday. In all his 93 years, he had nev- er been sick or even had such a minor ailment as a headache. He had never seen the inside of a hospital. I just figured that since he was stress-free, he was aging at an extremely slow pace. He would often joke about how he would invite the Queen of Denmark to his 100th birthday party, and—even if he claimed that he had no psychic powers—I just assumed that he knew that the event would happen with him there in his bodily form.

When I learned he was hit by a car, I came quickly to visit the hospital. Within the first moment of the visit, I awared that he was never going to recover. He was (barely) in his body, hanging onto it by merely a thread. But—to my amazement—I could feel Sunyata’s “awareness” permeating the entire room.
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SUNYATA The Life and Sayings of a Rare-born Mystic

edited and compiled by Betty Camhi and Elliott Isenberg North