A New Visionary
Manasa Gangotri, Feature Supplement, March 20, 1978
By Dr. K B Ramakrishna Rao
The otherwise serene campus, this summer, had the rare occasion of receiving an unusual and uncommon personality – what the learned describe – a philosopher. It was none other than Mr U G Krishna Murthy, a distinguished friend of Dr K B Ramakrishna Rao, Professor and Head of the Postgraduate Department of Philosophy.
What was more gratifying to witness was the scene at Dr Rao's residence when batches of the interested but uninvited guests met UG in an informal fashion and atmosphere. Also true was the fact that most of the visitors were not well aware, if not ignorant, of UG's philosophy (UG has great contempt for this word).
One may be tempted to ask what is so special of UG in a country where a galaxy of established and self-claimed preachers, philosophers and godmen are loitering. It is not an uncommon question for a fumbling mind.
Those who listened to Mr UG could very well comprehend that state of mind, for themselves, a total blink and bewilderment at the very understanding of our knowledge of men, mind and matters. One had to but awe at the incisive analysis by UG, of our meaningless intellectual acrobatics and acts.
Many would confuse UG Krishnamurthi for J Krishnamurthi. He is totally unrelated and unconnected with JK.
Living in the West, and at the same time, maintaining almost hypocritically oriental mind – this is what one can say about UG Krishnamurti who is a ‘physiological, psychological mutant.’
UG was born in Andhra Pradesh in 1918. Having lost his mother a few days after his birth, UG was brought up by his grandfather, a rich lawyer seriously involved with the theosophical movement in the country. This spiritual atmosphere had already inculcated in him a philosophical and religious outlook. His meetings with Swami Sivananda Saraswati and Ramana Maharshi infused a liking for spiritual pursuit till he was 21. Then he broke this contact for graduating in philosophy and psychology, at the University of Madras.
This early contact with the Theosophical Society enabled him to give lectures for the Society. It was in the forties that UG heard J Krishnamurti's speeches – after which he ‘heard none and read no books.’
He married in 1943 and went to America with his family for medical treatment of his eldest son. His financial stringency forced him to send his wife and children back to India – and travelled almost like a rolling stone, as his friend says: ‘going downhill fast.’ He was at last given a pause for his wandering life by a Swiss lady, Valentine de Kerven. She has looked after him ever since. On his forty-ninth birthday, his questions finally disappeared, and his body fell into what he calls its ‘natural state.’ His body underwent a series of transformations at this ‘natural state.’ ‘It was the different functioning of his body that consisted of his natural state, not a change in his psychological processes.’ He no longer likes to recount his past, which he says is meaningless as it is not the experience itself. He neither knows what it is like to experience nor is capable of imagining hypothetical situations. He claims it as a ‘calamity.’
UG now spends half his year in India and half in Switzerland, leading a simple life, not cut off from the mundane details of existence but at the same time keeping away from its pleasures as diversions. One thing is very obvious of Mr UG: he is much more than he seems to be.
For all purposes, UG (that is how U G Krishna Murthy is known) is like anyone you may come across. But begin to listen to him, at once you feel that a description ‘extraordinary’ would be inadequate. He pronounces, whatever he has said or has been saying is tradition. This amazes you. For what of that ‘tradition,’ he has spoken? As he talked, you were feeling corroded – and when he says, it is all tradition you feel he is kidding you. For you have witnessed the uprooting of the ‘tradition’ you had known, and its collapse!
Yes. How can everything that has been or has come into being be ‘tradition?’
UG admonishes: ‘No, that is no tradition, that is authority.’
Then what is that ‘tradition’ he says he is speaking of? It is neither old, nor what is believed. It is the truth that speaks for itself and by itself. Its emergence is not related to time or belief. It is not corrected by experience, nor perfected through practice and skill. It is not obtained by meditation. It is not a result.
What the sacred scripture (the sastra) has wished to convey, but failed to express, or what it said, but we have failed to grasp, that sprouts here, in UG, with extraordinary power and life. Maybe, what had all along rusted in the course of custom and habit, bursts forth here with a lustre, and we are dazzled by its brilliance. We exclaim, ‘How new it is, how refreshing and pure it is!’ In no time we have realised how this ‘tradition’ of UG has exposed all false traditions we have been in and about.
UG is not a ‘person.’ He is a ‘state,’ which the Vedanta identifies as ‘Brahman,’ or the ‘Atman,’ or ‘Moksha’ or ‘Ananda.’ We do study the Vedanta and the scriptures. We think we have understood the secrets of Vedanta so well taught by the teachers. We are proud of our learning. But we should only ask ourselves, if really we had the experience of the truth or a glimpse of the thing indicated by the sacred lore. We are too prone to dabble in terms and loudly too on several occasions. We speak of those great terms: Atman, Brahman, Turiya, etc. Neither having understood their depth nor grasped their extension. We speak as though they are like concrete things on our work table – a fait accompli. But a single encounter with UG will be sufficient to realise how deluded we were about things and concepts. All our storehouse of knowledge is belied in his presence. We will have destroyed our ‘knowledge,’ and pride too!
Is it, then, our learned knowledge and spiritual mastery ignorance and false?
Meet UG and discover for yourself the answer, how to receive it and how not.
‘Lead us from darkness to light’ is our constant prayer. It is for this purpose we put our effort, practise meditation, cultivate austerity. But UG brushes the aside, and decrees: ‘All that leads you from darkness to greater darkness.’
UG says: ‘This state in which I am, was not obtained by all such sadhana, however sincere it was. For, that is not of the nature of a result. It should happen, and can happen to anybody in spite of endeavor. It is something far removed from the relationship of cause and effect. And so, I could not obtain it by sadhana.’ We may be surprised at such statements. But they are true we learn in his company. We are taken aback at first, but while coming back, we wonder whether all our labour and schooling had not been futile.
But we ponder and ask ourselves: How could that be admitted? Haven't we had numberless saints and mystics in our religious history? Haven't they wanted us to do sadhana? Aren't we told that ‘avatars’ themselves had descended to lift us up and redeem? Aren't we told of devotees in scores getting salvation by grace? We ask, aren't these our evidences for accepting the ‘way’ tradition has decreed, and the ‘goal’ it has visualised? We are satisfied, and nurture our hopes, and work for salvation. We continue our search for a guru and his promises of a heaven, a bliss, a beatitude, till we, again, encounter UG.
He smiles at us and dashes our dreams! With a calmness that has the strength of Himalayas, he says: ‘All that ye need to know and ought to do is just to seek for food and clothing! Beyond that, any pursuit of bliss or beatitude or salvation is will-o'-the-wisp.’ This is plain talk and we are told that all aspirations of getting an eternal and unchanging bliss or salvation, would be the first blunder. It is like being in one's own home, but seeking outside its address. It is the sign of having missed what you have, but going out in search of something which is not.
Is it, then, UG is a rank materialist, an athiest, or a positivist?
He is none of these. He is simply a ‘natural man.’ He has no ‘theory’ to put forth, and no argument in defence. ‘I am not speaking, the state is expressing itself.’ Yes. His statements have nothing in them of the heat one might find in the dialectic of the pundits engaged in establishing and describing the nature of reality, either as one or as many, or as this or that.
There is always a twinkle in UG's eyes, and his smile beguiles us. He draws us as a magnet would do, and we go. He asks: ‘Why have you come here? I cannot do anything for you. Neither can I give, nor can you receive. Get out of here!’ Yet an inexplicable force draws us to him.
If we can intuit of what he says, that would be the end of our stay there. That may also be the end of all our seeking, to holy places and holy men!
The peculiarity of this ‘magnet’ of UG is, as it draws, so it repels!
Many are caught in the magnetic web of UG. They lose all awareness of time or surroundings. Hours they sit enraptured and mystified. How does this happen? Look at him straight. He is a spell, both his form and deport. All our scholarship, wisdom and knowledge of sciences and scriptures get dumb in his presence.
The most talkative gets mute. And the most argumentative misses his logic. The hair-splitter gets lost. The invincible meets his defeat!
But is it ‘defeat?’ No. That should be ‘victory!’ For herein, one has unwittingly stumbled upon something he has been in search for ages, and has been missing all along. It is an ‘accident,’ one which changes. You don't stay there. You run. All by yourself, towards no ‘goal,’ but towards yourself avoiding all mentors who may promise heaven, bliss and all glory! Is this not new? Is this not strange?
Not a Recluse
UG is not a recluse, nor a sanyasi. He wears no ochre robe. Neither rides on a palanquin with pomp or pageantry. There is no intermediary or a mediator. Many who have gone to meet him, have asked him, ‘Where is UG?’ Yes, you can even address him by his personal name. This is extraordinary for one expecting to meet a ‘spiritual guru.’ But here there is no embarrassment or need to prostrate, or address him as Lordship, Holy presence or World teacher. He says, he is none of these. It is rare to come across a man of the type of UG. He is just there, a simple man. You knock, and he opens the door!
‘Calamity’
Not many have heard of him. And of those who may have heard, not many have met him. It is not enough you meet him, you must be with him – not once, but often, if possible. And what may happen, you alone can be your witness! That may be your ‘calamity’ – not a bad word, indeed, if you come to know what it means in the context of UG.
What is UG's message?
‘Nothing,’ he says.
His words are like those of the Upanishads. Many a time you find in what he says reflections of the great seers. Yajnavalkya, Aruna, Sanat Kumara, the seer of Mandukya Upanishad come out of him and speak to you. Buddha, Gaudapada and Sankara stand before you. For those who cannot follow UG everything would be inconsistent. But for him who can know, it is all joy, nay, it is fulfilment.
The vision that UG gives is new. Here the philosophy of Self of the Upanishads is reconciled with Buddha's philosophy of No-self: the immutable theory of the real is harmonized with theory of eternal flux. Are not these sets mutually contradictory? The question bothers the follower of the Upanishads, even as it does the opponent. Herein lies the most unique aspect of UG's vision. What UG says, the pundit neither can digest, nor reject. Pointing to his chest, UG says, ‘There is nothing here called the Atman, but there is wonderhood. Here there is no agent, but all that is action. There is no subject here, but every object creates it. There is no immortality, but nowhere there is birth of death. There is no mind, and if there is one, it is not different from the body. The mind divides life, but if it unites with life, it illumines and makes it dynamic.’
Such statements naturally bewilder us. Here the ‘tradition’ that we know fails us and logic gets derailed. Yet UG says with a smile: ‘There is nothing that mystifies here, there is no mystery at all!’
UG is akin to an ocean. Of it, if you ask, ‘Is it unchanging, static, or eternally dynamic?’ He simply says, ‘It is your question, not mine. I am not concerned at all. It need not even be answered. If you realise the meaninglessness of it, it disappears.’ All this is confusing to us. Yet, if we can intuit the ‘state’ of UG, in the words of the Upanishad, ‘the unheard becomes heard, and the unknown becomes known.’
Root of Dharma
UG warns: ‘In this “state” there is no “religious” content, yet we cannot forget that it is the root of all “dharma”’ (in its primary sense of an all-bearing and all-sustaining force). He says there is no ‘social’ content in it, yet we see in it the foundation of all social structure and good life. He says, there is no ‘value’ here, yet we cannot deny that all value originates therein, and gets evaluated.
If such is not the truth, we would not have reason to go to UG, nor like to listen to him enraptured. Even though he does not invite any, what reason compels us to go to him?
Is UG a ‘mystic?’ Is he a ‘prophet?’
None of these. As he says of himself, he is just a ‘natural man,’ ‘the end product of human evolution.’
Not that we can understand such simple statements. Perhaps never can we understand. The Evolutionist, both the philosophical and the scientific, has something new to encounter in the description: ‘the end product of human evolution.’ Does the Evolutionist digest it, or gets dizzy when he does? It is an open question.
Naturally we become curious and ask: ‘How and when this state occurred?’
And he answers: ‘When all my inherited tradition of history and culture, and all the instruments and institutions that these had fostered broke down in my life.’ And after that he says: ‘I have no biography.’
UG describes it as a strange ‘happening.’ ‘Every cell in my body exploded. Biological and chemical changes took place. A strange awareness came about. What had hitherto been an unnatural life, mistakenly taken for the natural, came to a close. That is the happening of the real natural state.’ Of this UG calls a ‘calamity.’ For him the term ‘realisation’ is like a worn out coin, much used and disfigured. He does not use it.
What the jnanin, the yogin, the tapasvin craves for, but fails to get, is that primordial state, which UG calls the ‘natural state.’ How can we understand him who is in that state? Does he help us? He says, ‘No!’ But we hear him saying, ‘It is unique, peerless, deathless and birthless. It is no effect, has no cause. That is no bondage, nor even freedom. It is a divisionless awareness, as witnesshood.’
Again, you ask him, for you are enchanted: ‘How to know it, how to be it?’ UG repeats: ‘I do not know myself, I cannot teach, it is a state of non-knowing. To know, and to make one know, I have no means with me!’ Is it helplessness, or is it the uniqueness of the ‘state,’ which does not admit of communication?
If one who were in that ‘state’ were to say what is said, does it not strike us queer or crazy? No, for that is the very logic of it, as the Upanishad says:
‘How to know that, by which everything is known? How to know the Knower?’
