A Man Called UG
Sunday Mid-Day, January 26, 1986
By Mahesh Bhatt
And how he blew the author's mind
"Religion has outlived its purpose. Communism is a warty outgrowth of religion” says a man called UG. He has been called “outrageous”, “infuriating”, “cosmic Naxalite”, and “prophet of anti-wisdom”. U.G. Krishnamurti, U.G. as he is known, 67, is an extremely handsome man and looks much younger than his age. Despite his protestations, he is commonly regarded as a Guru. Abroad his name has already been made as a spiritual teacher. Because of the impossibility of placing him in any known framework, people consider him a great soul whose spiritual development entitles him to be a Guru. Nothing is more apt to surprise those who go to U.G. believing him to be a spiritual teacher.
The Hard to define
There is nothing to show in his demeanor that he is a religious man. Outwardly, he looks just like any ordinary man. He refused to be called a Guru and claims no undue importance, much less divinity. He is one of the most interesting and enigmatic sages of our time. When I first met U.G. a decade ago, he blew my mind. I was a Rajneesh disciple then. There is something you can't define about him. He has a peculiar, quieting feel about him, that seems to affect people that come to see him. The peace that radiates is not obtrusive. It seeps into you. He has a great influence over others but allows the people to think just what they please. He, at any rate, is the most remarkable man I have come across.
To portray him in a piece this size is well-nigh impossible.
It would be appropriate here to say a few things about U.G.'s background. While searching for enlightenment, he suffered hell. He tried everything in the book. He went through all the traditional disciplines. He had an extraordinary experience of body and mind, as all true seekers have, and rejected them all.
During his formative years, he grew up among theosophists, and later devoted himself to the cause of theosophy and the theosophical society, lectured, in India and abroad, and naturally came under the influence of J. Krishnamurti – and he rejected them all.
But hunger for enlightenment carried on. One day, on his forty-ninth birthday, through some strange chance of luck the question disappeared.
“It burned itself out. Not that I found an answer. The question was not there any more. The search for enlightenment burnt itself out. The hunger burnt itself out. The thirst burnt itself out without satisfying itself. What I'm left with is a sort of burnt out case. It is not just a burnt out case. The flame still burns. Whether it would have an impact on others, or the society, is not my concern.”
Now the question arises as to how or by what means he stumbled into this stage of being. Has his life been a preparation for this? “No”, says U.G. He stresses that nothing he did nor experienced in his life had anything to do with his coming into this state. He adds, “It is acausal.”
He has no teaching, he has no interest in converting people to a specific way of life or new ideas. He demolishes, without compromise, all the stereotypes without fashioning new theories. What is original, new and out of the ordinary in his teachings, that must claim our attention, is that no one, till now, has spoken of enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being. None before him has attempted to present it that way. U.G. insists that to describe such a condition in mystical and religious terms is not at all accurate. To do so introduces magical, mysterious and emotional elements, which have no relationship to the actual condition of man or woman, when they function free from the limitation imposed by thought.
An extraordinary interest is being shown throughout the world today in altered states of consciousness, mind expanding drugs, religious experience and enlightenment. U.G.'s emphasis seems not only eminently suitable to such times but necessary, because of all the exploitation and mystification preferred by ‘the ugly saints’ in the marketplace. As for U.G. he has no interest in becoming an instrument of physiological research any more than being interested in being a subject of a religious movement. He simply wishes to describe the condition whereby he lives in the language of modern physical sciences.
He doesn't give talks. His informal conversations with those who come to see him, in India, Switzerland and California, have the sparkle of life. They have been transcribed and published. Nobody has any copyright for them. The book The Mystique of Enlightenment – Unrational Ideas of a Man Called U.G. – has been a sell-out.
In passing, a reference must be made to the death of U.G.'s son, Vasant Kumar, one of the top copy writers of India. The impact of his death was so shattering for me that it has consciously become the basis for all my “creative” work.
“He is dead” said U.G. in a matter-of-fact tone over the telephone. He asked me to meet him at the hospital to make arrangement for the funeral. We all knew that his son was on the point of death for some weeks, but I was hoping against hope that U.G., the so-called godman, would save his own son through some miracle. Even then, as I walked to the hospital, I still believed that somehow, U.G. would bring his son back to life.
What actually happened at the hospital, took me totally by surprise. U.G. wanted the body to be removed and cremated immediately without any ceremonies. The hospital would not release the body until the bills were paid. It was 6 a.m. and our total combined resources were nowhere near the amount. Then U.G. laughed and said: “You can forget your sentiments and the solemnity surrounding death. In the end it all comes down to money.” We were shocked, we all found his conduct quite lacking in the decorum that such an occasion demanded.
The expected miracle did not happen. What awed us all was the way he functioned. There was not even a touch of emotion in him. He simply attended to the legal formalities that were necessary for the cremation and walked away from the scene.
As I watched the corpse, reduced to ashes, what he had said earlier flashed through my mind. “If medical technology cannot save this boy who is dying of cancer, no power in the world can help him. All of you feel that the Avatar Sai Baba, who is in town now, can save him, seek his help, by all means. He can't do a thing.” We did see him. The boy died the very next day.
Later, that evening, many people came to see him and I asked them: “Does he look like a man who has cremated his own son this morning?” To me, he looked quite unaffected by the events of the day.
Amongst those who came to see him that day was a social worker, connected with many institutions and the president of an organization dedicated to social causes and reforms of all kinds.
He asked U.G.: “You don't seem to have any love for the fellow men. Are you not indifferent to the poverty and suffering around you? Your teaching has no practical utility for mankind.”
Pat came the reply: “You are just the good man blinded by the folly of doing good to others. What is a good man good for? What makes you think that you are living to do good unto others? To live to do good to others is a self-absorbed, self-centred activity of yours. You are not decorous enough to admit it. You call it a mission in life to serve humanity. You have been amply rewarded for the service to your country. Humanity is just an abstraction. Death will lay its icy hands on you too. You know damn well that there is an end for you too. That is why you project permanence on mankind, struggling against all change and passing away. The belief in the eternity is of the same source.
“U.G. Is the most radical man I have met,” said my writer friend. He was keeping a hawk-like eye on everything U.G. said and did. He had come to meet U.G., reluctantly, hesitantly and unwillingly, on my insistence. He is an intellectual devoid of any religious or spiritual aspirations. He is a leftist who was once the member of a terrorist group that failed to achieve what they set out for. Now he is full of bitterness. His life is drained of any purpose, simmering with anger and frustration.
He asked, “Has life any purpose?” “Because you think there must be something more meaningful, more purposeful, more interesting than what you are actually doing, whatever you are doing. Why must there be a purpose or meaning to life?” said U.G.
“We must latch on to something to prevent us from disappearing. So why should I not commit suicide?” This question sounded like that of one who is intent on taking his own life.
“Do you have the courage to do it? Go right ahead and do it. Don't forget that if you failed in your attempt, the long arm of the law will be after you. You don't have the courage to live. You don't have the courage to die. And yet you don't grudge to lay down your life in the name of freedom or communism or whatever happens to be your particular fancy. Or you can give a name and philosophy to that thing called despair and market it. That brings you into the limelight, and the Nobel Prize too,” said U.G. with total seriousness.
“This is no laughing matter. All joking aside, let me ask you a question that is of great importance. The end of civilization seems to be around the corner. Nuclear weapons are threatening our very existence.”
U.G. interrupted him, saying “Isn't it strange that you are talking of suicide in one breath and nuclear holocaust in another breath?”
“Paradoxical as it may seem to you but nonetheless the fact remains that mankind too seems to have opted for suicide.” These questions really got U.G. going.
“Your minds pose as much threat to the future of mankind as the nuclear weapons. The hydrogen bomb had its origin in the jawbone of an ass. The cave man used it to kill his neighbor. Here your civilized world is doing what the cave man did but you do it for the good of mankind. You cannot wish it away, for the world alliance in support of the ban on nuclear proliferation.
“There is no way for you to save mankind. It is not a question of whose military force has an edge over the other but confrontation or doctrines or practices that are held to be right or true by an authority, standards and traditions of the countries that have a means to explode us all.
“Those who still hold that right is on their side and that their eternal goodwill will burn away the evil of others are the real enemies of mankind. Does it matter how the world will blow itself up – with a bomb that has the markings of stars and stripes or hammer and sickle or crescent or Jewish star or Ashok Chakra?”
Every word he said had a sense of finality. Yet we all knew that he did not intend to invoke paranoia within us. I asked: “Is it possible to avert the catastrophe by somehow changing or improving human nature?” What he said to me was something which I had not asked for.
“Man is merely a biological being. There is no spiritual side to his nature. All your virtues, principles, beliefs, ideas imposed on you by cultural and spiritual values are mere affectations. They haven't touched anything in you. Religion exploited for centuries the devoutness, piousness, whole-souled fervour of the religious man. Not in ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ but in terror, that if you tried to kill your neighbor you will also be destroyed along with him, lies the future of mankind.”
How long? “Anybody's guess.”
He is no siren call to overthrow, overturn or subvert the governments of any country.
I often ask myself what value has all this to me. In fact, none, I still am and perhaps will always remain what I am. Though I am somebody now, deep down in me, I know I am ordinary. A somebody who is in fact a nobody. I have tried every creed and they have all failed to comfort me. Where do I go from here? U.G. curtly says, “Get up and go.”
What he says is unacceptable, and how he says it is revolting. No wonder he is called a cosmic Naxalite. Yet never have I seen or met a man who was so certain about what he is saying. It is this certainty which plays havoc with our attitudes, platitudes, et cetera. . . . cover up my inner torment with the mask of a clown in his presence. It doesn't work. I realise it is a put on, what they call “gallows humour.” An invisible straight jacket controls me. Yes, I have no freedom of action. I am no different from the herd of cattle heading towards the slaughter house, still obeying the traffic rules of “culture”.
