Stop thinking & start living


Navhind Times, Sunday Folio, February 28, 1982

By M. M. Mudaliar


“The Mystique of Enlightenment” – containing selections from the conversations and the unrational ideas of a man called UG has been published by Dinesh Vaghela of Cemetill Corporation, Betim-Volant, Goa. Edited by Rodney Arms, this 153 page book is priced at Rs. 35.


“I have no viewpoint to put forward, no thesis to expound. I only respond to your stimuli,” said U.G. Krishnamurti, in an interview at Dona Paula recently. He does not believe in preaching, giving public speeches or writing. Yet books have been written, there are hundreds of admirers (he does not believe in master-disciple or Guru-Shishya business either).


The latest book is a unique guide for all those seeking enlightenment or thinking of setting out towards that goal. As Alice Furland put it, the book tells the inside story of a man who knows “holy business” from the ground up, and who reveals in a frank and direct manner how he became “free” not because of, but despite a lifetime of spiritual practice.


When I went to meet him I expected an old man in the garb of a swami or a sadhu and not the normal person clad in kurta and pajama, quite fit and alert – a calm man of about 40 years whom I saw, instead of an old man past 60 years.


This is the man who has experienced what he terms the “calamity” in Switzerland on his 49th birthday. He calls it the “natural state” not “enlightenment”. UG maintains that this state is a purely biological phenomenon, that only when we are completely free of culture, conditioning, religious thinking and intellect, can the body, with its own extraordinary intelligence, free the human being to be in the natural state. UG has been living in this state since the “calamity”, it is claimed.


It was difficult for me to go through a formal interview as his replies to my initial questions were very controversial and outrageous.


No relation of the famous spiritual leader, J. Krishnamurti, whose teachings he once admired, and now despises as “archaic hogwash”, UG's first salvo was, “Thinking is the root of man's problems.”


According to him if man had not started thinking he would be happier. In his arrogance and selfishness man considers himself the master of the world. Man has come to think that the universe has been created for himself and so destroyed millions of animals; vegetation. Imagine how happy life on earth would be without human beings, UG feels. Animal and plant life can coexist. There would be unhampered growth. No trouble, no tension. Man could have also coexisted happily, if he had not started thinking and climbed on to a pedestal of his own making.


What about animals, do the not think even in a small way?


No. They have thought. They have instinct. They know where to get food, when to eat, how to protect their young ones. They adjust themselves to realities. They live fully and enjoy themselves. They don't build up utopias or build castles in the air.


Perhaps it is the fear of death that forced man to think, I ventured.


What is death? It is not the end. It is not the end of the body even. After death the body feeds millions. It lives in those millions of living beings.


UG does not believe in teachings. “There is no teaching of mine and never shall be one. Teaching is not the word for it. A teaching implies a method or a system, a technique or a new way of thinking to be applied in order to bring about a transformation in your way of life. What I am saying is outside the field of teachability; it is simply a description of the way I am functioning. It is just a description of the natural state of man – that is the way you, stripped of the machinations of thought, are also functioning.”


“The natural state is not the state of self-realized or God-realized man, it is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence, it is there, it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By life I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper that thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive. Thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses the to give continuity to itself.”


What about the religious state of bliss?


“The natural state has no relationship whatsoever with the religious state of bliss, beatitude or ecstacy; they lie within the field of experience. Those who have led man on his search for religiousness throughout the centuries have perhaps experienced those religious states. So can you. They are thought-induced states of being and as they come, so do they go. Krishna-consciousness, Buddha-consciousness or Christ-consciousness are all trips within the field of time. The timeless can never be experienced, can never be grasped, contained, much less given expression to by any man.”


Known both in Europe and in India as one who speaks with authority on the subject of the “natural state”, UG, who has been called “prophet of anti-wisdom” may often sound infuriating.


For example, he says, “If you are searching for anything and you want anything, the first thing you must do is throw away, lock, stock and barrel, hook, line and sinker all this stuff you are hanging on to. If you follow any path, it doesn't matter what that path is, it is always leading you astray, it is putting you on the wrong path. I am not here to liberate you at all. Who am I to liberate you? What is that you want to liberate and yourself from? You are trying to ask for a thing that you have. So I only point out that you're asking me ‘what is the right track?’ What am I to do? Are you ready to accept the fact that you are on the wrong track? That means the teacher you are running after and the stuff you are thinking about – that is the very thing that must go.”


Through the ages human beings have been seeking something or the other – money, power, sex, love, mystical experience, truth, enlightenment. But according to UG it is this seeking that keeps human beings out of their natural state. “And although I am in a natural state, I cannot help someone else, because that is my natural state, not his.” This is what UG experienced in his sadhana days. He once sought audience of Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai. When he met the sage, UG asked him, “Can you give me what you have?”


“Will you be able to take it, if I give it?” was the reply.


UG believes that when man stops seeking he will attain it, but in the same breath UG also cautions, “what good is my assurance? It is utterly worthless. So, don't listen to me or anybody else. It is the cause of your unhappiness.”


It is a mystery that in spite of the fact that UG has always been saying that he cannot help anybody in any way, people continue to meet him and seek his help. There is no power outside of you, he says. If there is any power in this universe, it is in you. If you really come to the point that no outside agency can be of any help, automatically your total helplessness also goes.


UG shatters one's beliefs, wrecks one's faith, makes one feel that there is no hope of achieving anything, gaining anything, even peace of mind. He makes one feel that one has been making a fool of oneself by leading the life one has led. He asks one to stop doing whatever one is doing and on top of it he has the audacity to tell one that he has nothing to teach, nothing to give and that he can be of no help.


For him there is no positive approach, no negative approach, no path at all for anything. The human mind is conditioned to seek understanding even from a bundle of negatives. So despite UG's advice not to seek, one may try to seek a meaning from something which does not appear to possess any meaning. UG's beginningless and endless concept conforms to Shankaracharya's adwaita philosophy, when a disciple had asked Thaimanaswami what is to be done to realise God, the saint's reply was: “Be quiet.” UG appears to be on that wavelength. Yet he speaks like an atheist; he is more scientific than spiritual. Perhaps that is the secret of his success.

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