Thought is your enemy: UGK


The Indian Express, Person to Person, Monday, May 8, 1972


It was an intensely personal experience – rather like downing a pellet of LSD though I crave Mr. U. G. Krishnamurthy's pardon for putting it that way. The effect of LSD is said to be utterly different on each individual and to one who has never tried to seriously come to grips with philosophy before a confrontation with Mr. Krishnamurthy would be similar.


When I first came to know of Mr. Krishnamurthy's visit and was shown a photograph of his I greeted it with a vague shock of recognition. Fans of author-philosopher Ayn Rand will be familiar with this type of recognition, her leading characters usually greet one another with it. In this case the face in the photograph sharply brought to mind another Indian thinker – Jiddu Krishnamurthy and the eyes seemed to proclaim the very same philosopher.


When referred to as a “philosopher” however it drew immediate protest from Mr. Krishnamurthy. He said he was neither a philosopher, nor a thinker, nor a teacher. So we discussed his ideas – at least he tried to get across what he felt and I sat there wracking my mind to understand what he said. And at the fag end of the evening I discovered that was exactly what he was against.


Thought, beyond its functional capacity, is the enemy of man seems to be the central theme of Mr. Krishnamurthy's way of life. But this positively does not mean that he accepts the diametrically opposite view that life should be lived thoughtlessly. A pure and physical way of living by the five senses without reaching out to be something else, or trying to emulate someone is the approach to living. Here again he clarifies “living by the five senses” as not leading a sensual life.


He could see that I was losing bearings and sympathised. His approach, it appears, can only be worded negatively and leaves the man who tries to unravel it with positive words floundering in a deeper mire of words and phrases. But, insisted Mr. Krishnamurthy, he is not handing out intellectual abstractions. What he has to say would easily be understood by the less educated like for example, as he said, a maid servant. It is the educated who lose themselves in a morass of reasoning who fail to grasp his ideas.


Vain quest


The man who is constantly on the lookout for happiness, peace of mind, call it what you will, will fail to secure it precisely for the reason he is hunting for it. The how automatically presupposes a “know-how” which the brain is busy churning out as an excess of thought–so the very purpose of the search is defeated.


In advocating (though he says he does not advocate anything) that the individual detach himself from all that he has been taught in his cultural, religious and social milieu Mr. Krishnamurthy comes close to what Jiddu Krishnamurthy means when he says “Throw away all your yesterdays.” And a profile of Mr. Krishnamurthy reveals that he came under the influence of Jiddu's teachings at one time, though he later broke away.


An iconoclast he certainly is. Asked whether such a way of life is practicable he asks, “Why not?” But when talking about myself he points out (and I identify myself with the average Indian) that I will not find it easy to root myself away from all my past experiences, all that I have been taught and so will have to wallow in misery because I use my thinking facilities to an excess.


The 53-year-old Krishnamurthy, who is popularly known as UGK is widely travelled and has been living in the Alps ever since he underwent a “total transformation of being” which he says left him a “natural man,” which, to us, would be the same as realising god-head. He teaches from his own experience to those willing to discuss life with him. He says he has no message to mankind as such and is not keen about preaching or lecturing to people.


When I came upon Mr. Krishnamurthy in an ancient looking house on Vani Vilas Road, he was squatting on the floor talking of some book that had turned famous though its findings had been proved a fraud. Not having much experience in philosophy I had hoped to unobtrusively slink into a corner and get the hang of the discussion in progress before putting any questions. But luck would have it otherwise and I was precipitated into a full-fledged dialogue with him. The following 75-minutes of conversation in which I discovered myself trying to grasp some familiar foothold was peppered with phrases, words, expressions, contradictions and indulgent laughs from spectators as at a child demanding the moon, was a pleasant if trying mental exercise.


But imagine my chagrin when I discovered that all the mental exercises I had been undergoing in attempting to understand the man was exactly what he was against. But I was secretly delighted to have picked out at least one correct interpretation from the maze of words thrown about the place.


Mr. Krishnamurthy and Mr. Dilip Kothari, former Chairman, Central Board of Film Certification, will have a dialogue-discourse at the Indian Institute of World Culture, on Tuesday evening. –AN

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