To Hell and Back


The Times of India, Sunday Review, December 29, 1985

By Mahesh Bhatt


“Why do you collect so many photos and save every letter from UG, Papa?” asked my 12-year-old daughter Puja.


“Because some day, my love, I plan to write a book on UG,” said I. “That would be something. Imagine a madman writing a book on a sage,” she added smiling.


Mention must be made here of a salient event in UG's life. U. G. Krishnamurti was sitting on a bench under a wild chestnut tree overlooking one of the most beautiful spots in the whole world – the seven hills and seven valleys of Saanen, Switzerland. That day happened to be his 49th birthday. The question of enlightenment that had obsessed him all those years, ever since he was a little boy, suddenly disappeared. He stumbled into what he calls a “natural state”, a state in which the self is dissolved, or when it is perceived that the separated self was never there at all. It hit him like a thunderbolt.


What does he stand for? It is a hard question to answer, for there is no definite teaching. Gurus come in all shapes and sizes. There are quite a few non-guru gurus today. UG is the odd man out. Whether or not he is a guru, there is no dearth of people who visit him – philosophers, psychologists, scientists, leaders of religious movements, poets, artists, movie stars and crazy people – wherever he happens to be. He now divides his time between California, Switzerland and India.


UG responds only when questions are asked. He cannot give talks on the “natural state” of his being. He finds such a situation artificial. Serious-minded people who come to see him with pious expectations of the man, are often taken aback with the atmosphere that surrounds him, since it is amazingly informal. “When you throw a ball at me, the ball bounces back and that is what you call an answer. But I do not give answers. If what I say has not helped you, what makes you think it will help others?” That is what he says about his so-called teachings.


It was during our morning walks that the idea of writing a full-length biography of UG first took root in me. I have maintained a recording of events and experiences, in a sort of “audio diary” over the years.


Madame Valentine de Kerven, the Swiss woman who has been with UG for 21 years, joined our walks almost regularly. The daughter of a famous surgeon and granddaughter of a clergyman, Valentine left her home in Switzerland at the age of 18 for Paris, then in its heyday. Never a believer in any religious doctrine, she was a revolutionary in more ways than one, belonging to a party of artists and writers and living – at her insistence unmarried – with a friend, at that time a punishable offence in Switzerland. She and her friend were the first to cross the uncharted Sahara on motorcycle and with her own film company she made a documentary on the gypsies. In the '50s she drove from Switzerland to India – a trip which proved to be only the first of many to this country. At 84, she is slowing down – her memory is failing. Yet the vitality in her eyes is extraordinary.


Her friendship with UG was sparked by a chance meeting in the Indian consulate in Geneva. Since then their lives have melded and they have been, as UG puts it, “fellow travellers with no destination”. Their present plans include, besides the usual three months in Gstaad, Switzerland, a trip to the US. This brings us to the oft-asked question of how they fund their travels. Valentine created a “Fund for the travels of UG Krishnamurti” from her heritage. They have friends all over the world who offer their hospitality wherever they go.


1979. That was the year in which a watershed event occurred; a year which marked the turning point in my life. Odd as it may seem, I still find myself writing about Parveen Babi. She doesn't seem to have faded with time.


Her first breakdown is an old story – the madness that goes under the euphemism of “nervous breakdown”. I wonder if anyone can imagine what it is like to live with a person going mad. Parveen's madness and then the threat from the film industry to get her back in front of the camera at any cost, the psychiatrists throwing up their hands, the mother yielding to their pressure for shock treatment – there must be an end to misery!


“For God's sake, help us!” I cried out to UG, “we are at the end of our rope.” My mood was such that I was ready to follow him over the wall and even venture to assay the first jump if he so commanded. To our rescue came UG and shielded us from all those pressures. I felt guilty at times for imposing my problems and Parveen's illness on him. I got him engulfed in our private hells anyway. Every time she sought his help, he stretched out his helping hand. He was blamed for it. He has now stricken her off. He is blamed again for it.


In October 1979, I “shanghaied” Parveen to Kodaikanal, where UG actually planned to spend a month. Being there with UG helped her. Her condition was slowly improving. All her fears that somebody wanted to kill her had gone. UG was like a solitary tree in the wasteland, sheltering us to rest in its shade and breathe a while. . . . Not for long. Kodai turned out to be something like a page from Dante's Inferno.


Parveen locked herself up in her room and would only come out to have her meals. UG too was not well. Because of his “cardiospasms” he just couldn't eat or drink anything for 36 hours. Parveen stopped eating and drinking – perhaps a sympathetic reaction. The damp, cold, wet weather contributed to our discomfort.


Suddenly one night, a gripping pain seized UG. Looking at Valentine he said: “It looks like the time has come for me to go.” To which Valentine remarked half seriously, half jokingly: “UG, I don't think it is practical to die in a place like this, at a time like this.” UG burst into laughter – that was the only laughter that echoed within the four walls of the cottage in a week. Well, anyway, that freed UG from the difficulty much to the relief of everybody.


All in all, it wasn't a pleasant week for anybody. As for myself the seven days I spent there were the most harrowing, agonising, vexing and tormenting days I have ever had. I think I was more deeply depressed than anybody there. Next day, it was almost midnight, UG was still in the drawing room all alone, watching the fireplace still glowing. I joined him in a troubled state of mind over the uncertainty of our future together – Parveen and I. UG sensed my sadness and despondency and said: “I see little chance of complete recovery. All mental maladies are genetic in origin – like it or not. The psychiatrists know it too, but they won't admit it. It would put them out of business.


“We have had enough of this place. We might as well pack up and go. We can face the whole problem squarely in Bangalore and seek the help of my friends at the institute of mental health.”


He denies everything. But when you are with him, you feel the presence of a man who has qualities which are ascribed to enlightened men. There is no getting away from that.


As we were getting ready to leave for Bangalore the next day, quite unexpectedly, one Mr. Bernard Selby, a postman from Manchester, England, showed up. For a postman, his mind is very agile and his knowledge of things almost awed me. He is sharp-witted. He is a “Krishnamurti freak”.


This morning we all went for a walk along the lakeside. Our conversation centred on J. Krishnamurti. UG bore down hard on him. That was the most vehement attack on him that I have ever heard.


As I listen to the recordings of these tapes, I find that one of the subjects that keeps popping up is J. Krishnamurti. Surely, the following conversation is the most interesting thing I have recorded in Kodai.


“UG, if I asked you to name the most remarkable man you have met in your life, whose name comes to your mind first?”


“Jiddu Krishnamurti, but. . . .” He didn't complete the sentence. “Are you backtracking?” “No, oh no!” protested UG.


When you are with UG you won't even know what hits you. But this blow was so hard that it almost knocked me out. And it took me a little time to recover from this shattering blow. From then on I think I am not surprised at anything.


“I can't figure you out, UG. This morning you treated the subject of J. Krishnamurti with disdain, now you say he is the most remarkable man you have met in your life.”


“I never say anything I don't mean. Do you know the ‘Legend of Krishnamurti’?”


“Not really.”


“The people from whom he sprang up – Theosophists – looked up to him as the Buddha of the 20th century and believed that his teaching, ‘a new birth of belief’, would last 500 years. They founded an organisation, ‘The Order of the Star in the East’, to propagate his teachings. When the awaited saviour of mankind dissolved the organisation and walked out, those who had put him up on the stage as the world teacher, felt betrayed. Naturally, all this had a magical connotation throughout my boyhood. No doubt he has lived down all that. He is considered to be the most outstanding religious teacher of our time. There is no question but that he is immensely popular.


“He is a showman par excellence and master of words. The teachings of Krishnamurti, a century ago, may have sounded very revolutionary. But with the emergence of new revelations in the fields of microbiology and genetics, the ideas taken for granted in the whole field of psychology will be challenged. The ‘mind’, the exclusive franchise of psychologists and religious teachers, and all their assumptions will also be undermined. The fashionable teachings and modern therapies they are marketing are like the ‘cabbage patch dolls’ – tantalising and sensational, instead of the old fashioned toys. They try to titillate instead of satiate their followers. They haven't got much of a future and will be outdated.”


A few years ago, I accompanied UG to see an old friend of his in Thane. The visit was an extraordinary one. His name is L. V. Bhave. He was an old man, very graceful, handsome but sad. This was the man who was responsible for bringing together the two Krishnamurtis. Mr. Bhave used to organise J. Krishnamurti's talks in Bombay in the late '40s and early '50s. One could see clearly that his end was near. To use UG's phrase, he belonged to Krishnamurti's “Sixty Year Club”. Mr. Bhave said, “I have built a new house close by but I cannot leave this old house. How can we die to our yesterdays – the refrain of Krishnamurti's song?” UG for a change said nothing. He hugged him and we left.


“A teaching implies a method, or a system or a technique or a new way of thinking to be applied in order to bring about a transformation in your way of life. I am not certain of anything in this world. But if I am certain of anything, it is this: mind is a myth – let alone mutation of mind, radical or otherwise.”


“How can you be so certain? So sure?”


“I would be glad to be wrong!”


“Are there no spiritual needs of people other than material needs?”


“The false distinction between material and spiritual needs is the cause of man's misery. Man wants to believe and needs to believe. The loss of faith in traditional beliefs is responsible for the recent and sudden growth of cults and revivalistic movements. And the experience, through drugs, of altered states of consciousness, has created a demand for varieties of religious experience – providing a fertile soil and a ready market for gimmicks like transcendental meditation, Krishna consciousness, choiceless awareness etc.


“When the individual's interests are in conflict with those of the state, the state with its self-destructive militancy and power politics will destroy what is left of our fundamental dignity and the significance of the individual – in the name of freedom, humanity or whatever. Animals are free. I was, perhaps, born free too. But society robbed me of my freedom and loaded me with concepts of freedom.”


The subject of our conversation suddenly veered to sexuality.


“Do you have any special attitude to sexuality?”


“Let me mention, en passant, that my whole thinking on the subject of sex had been formed at the hands of the holy men. Now I maintain that a life of ascetic austerity, denial of sex and all the disciplines associated with religious life, have had nothing to do with whatever has happened to me. That is not to say that indulgence in sex or a life of promiscuity is the springboard to enlightenment or whatever you want to call it. You have been fed on that bunk and I am not in any way compelled to disillusion you. You can delude yourself that smoking marijuana or preaching sexual freedom is the sure path to ‘selfhood’ or ‘samadhi’. The fact that you are violating both moral injunctions and legal codes of conduct is a matter between you and your society. Social attitudes may be changing but your actions are still considered to be anti-social. Your guru has given you the license and cover so you don't feel guilty or immoral or impure. You feel superior.


“Similarly, those aspiring starlets, who have sex on what they call in Hollywood ‘the casting couch’, with the producer to get a part in the film, also feel superior to those pom-pom girls – to put it crudely, ‘roadside broads’. They get away with that because they belong to a glamorous profession. I have no moral position. My basic question is: Are you happy? Who amongst you is happy – yourself, your girlfriend, your wife or her boyfriend? Everybody is unhappy. Don't forget that your actions affect everybody. Everybody is miserable.”

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