An Evening with a Man Called U. G.


The Blade, Goa's Greatest Journal, March 1, 1982

Edited by Jagdish Rao


Termed variously “outrageous”, “infuriating”, a “prophet of anti-wisdom”, U. G. Krishnamurti is probably the most controversial of all the experts in search of that truth – what most gurus call “enlightenment”, and what U. G. calls the “natural state”. He maintains that “so-called enlightenment” 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. U. G. has been living in this state since the experience he calls the “calamity” happened to him in Switzerland on his 49th birthday.


U. G. has since become widely known, both in Europe and in India, as one who speaks with authority on the subject. It is not really surprising that he has been able to delve so deeply in the rational-spiritual aspects of philosophy uncluttered with the paraphernalia of tradition, ritual and dogma. Born on July 9th, 1918 in South India into an upper-middle-class Brahmin family of name Uppaluri. His mother died soon after his birth, and Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti was brought up by his grandparents in the small town of Gudivada near Masulipatam, in a very religious atmosphere. His grandfather was a very cultured man who knew Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society. UG's grandfather was a great lawyer, a very rich man and also very orthodox. This was a mixture of apparent cultural and intellectual contradictions that UG failed to comprehend entirely when a youth.


Enlightenment


His grandfather was convinced that UG was a “yoga brashta” (one who has come within inches of enlightenment in his past life) and dedicated himself to create a profound atmosphere for UG to be educated in the right way. The services of learned men were secured to read the sacred books and commentaries on them daily to UG at an early age. When his grandfather died, UG left the University of Madras without completing his degree. For some years he studied psychology and philosophy (eastern and western), mysticism, all the modern sciences, practically the whole area of human knowledge. Then he got involved with the Theosophical Society as a lecturer. A first-class speaker, he lectured everywhere, on every platform, and addressed every university in India. In the late 1940s he got involved with J. (Jiddu) Krishnamurti who had just returned from the United States of America and listened to him for seven years before circumstances brought the two Krishnamurtis together. There were some personal differences between them, UG wanted straight, honest answers from JK which were not given. UG then commenced lecturing all over the world, and later took his family to the United States of America to treat his son's polio. Since then, as an erudite UG enthusiast put it, he has become a man who knows the ‘holy business’ from the ground up, in the process becoming “free” not because of, but despite, a lifetime of spiritual practice, as manifested in his frank answers given below to questions about his beliefs and in his observations.


Long Search


“People call me an enlightened man – I detest that term – they can't find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I've searched and wanted to be an enlightened man an I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all and so the question of whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn't arise. I don't give a hoot for a sixth-century BC Buddha, let alone all of the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.


“I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self that there is no self to realise – that's the realisation that I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realisation, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realise – and you say to yourself ‘What the hell have I been doing all my life?’ That blasts you.


“All kinds of things happened to me – I went through that you see. The physical pain was unbearable – that is why I say you really don't want this. I wish I could give you a glimpse of it, a touch of it – then you wouldn't want to touch this at all. What you are pursuing doesn't exist, it is a myth. You wouldn't want anything to do with this.”


UG: You see, I maintain that – I don't know, whatever you call this; I don't like to use the words ‘enlightenment’, ‘freedom’, ‘moksha’ or ‘liberation’; all these words are loaded words, they have a connotation of their own – this cannot be brought about through any effort of yours; it just happens. And why it happens to one individual and not another, I don't know.


Natural State


Question: So, Sir, it happened to you. When?


UG: It happened to me. In my forty-ninth year. But whatever you do in the direction of whatever you are after – the pursuit or search for truth or reality – takes you away from your own very natural state, in which you always are. It's not something you can acquire, attain or accomplish as a result of your own effort – that is why I use the word ‘acausal’. It has no cause, but somehow the search comes to an end. The search takes you away from yourself – it is in the opposite direction – it has absolutely no relation.


Q: in spite of it, it has happened, not because of it?


UG: In spite of it – yes, that's the word. All that you do makes it impossible for what already is there to express itself. That is why I call this ‘your natural state’. You're always in that state. What prevents what is there from expressing itself in its own way is the search. The search is always in the wrong direction, all that you consider very profound, all that you consider sacred, is a contamination in that consciousness. So there's nothing that you can do. It's not in your hands. I don't like to use the word ‘grace’ because if you use the word grace, the ‘grace’ of whom? You are not a specially chosen individual; you deserve this, I don't know why. If it were possible for me, I would be able to help somebody. This is something that I can't give, because you have it. Why should I give it to you? It is ridiculous to ask for a thing which you already have.


Emotional Intensity


Q: Sir, your ideas, perhaps rightly, have been described as unrational. Would you ascribe them to the ‘calamity’ you underwent in Switzerland?


UG: The question ‘What is that state?’ had a tremendous intensity for me – not an emotional intensity – the more I tried to find an answer the more I failed to find an answer, the more intensity the question had. It's like (I always give this example) rice chaff. If a heap of rice chaff is ignited, it continues burning inside; you don't see any fire outside, but when you touch it, it burns you of course. In exactly the same way the question was going on and on and on: ‘What is this state? I want it. Finished. (J.) Krishnamurti (who was also in Switzerland said, “You have no way”, but still I want to know what that state is, the state in which Buddha was, Sankara was, and all those teachers were.’ Listening to Krishnamurti one day something funny happened to me, a peculiar kind of feeling that he was describing my state and not his state. Why did I want to know his state? He was describing something, some movements, some awareness, some silence – ‘In that silence, there is no mind; there is action’ – all kinds of things. So, I am in that state. What the hell have I been doing these thirty or forty years, listening to all these people and struggling, wanting to understand his state or the state of somebody else, Buddha or Jesus? I am in that state. Now I am in that state. Since then I have never looked back. Then, very strange, that question transformed itself into another question, ‘How do I know that I am in that state, the state of Buddha, the state I very much wanted and demanded from everybody? I am in that state but how do I know?’


Disappearance


The next day (UG's forty-ninth birthday) I was sitting on a bench under a tree overlooking one of the most beautiful spots in the whole world, the seven hills and seven valleys of Saanenland, Switzerland. I was sitting there. Not that the question was there; the whole of my being was that question: ‘How do I know I know that I am in that state? There is some kind of peculiar division inside of me; there is somebody who knows that he is in that state. The knowledge of that state – what I have read, what I have experienced, what they talked about, it is this knowledge that is looking at that state, so it is only this knowledge that has projected that state.’ I didn't say to myself ‘Oh my God! Now I have found the answer’. Even that state disappeared, the star I thought I was in, the state of Buddha, Jesus – even that has disappeared. The question has disappeared. The whole thing is finished for me. This disappearance of my fundamental question, on discovering that it had no answer, was a physiological phenomenon, a sudden ‘explosion’ inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body. And with that ‘explosion’ the illusion that there is continuity of thought, that there is a centre, an ‘I’ linking up the thoughts, was not there any more.


Then thought cannot link up. The linking gets broken, and once it is broken it is finished. Then it is not once that thought explodes; every time a thought arises, it explodes. So, this continuity comes to an end, and thought falls into its natural rhythm. Since then I have no questions of any kind, because the questions cannot stay there any more.

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