Extraordinary ordinary
News Time, October 7, 1990
By Frank Noronha
UG Krishnamurti shuns the tag of godman and blatantly denies having any spiritual attributes. He claims nothing and promises nothing. Yet people from various walks of life flock to him for both succour and sensation, imbibing his views on matters from disease to divinity. These discussions centre mostly around god, enlightenment, meditation and other related themes and UG's remarks often smack of blasphemy and border on heresy.
Whether UG has succeeded in convincing his audience of anything or not, still the spiritual aura surrounding him is deeply entrenched. Despite his stubborn resistance to don spiritual robes, some of his admirers have thrust upon him the title of guru and others looking for a more fitting label have called him a “reluctant sage”, a “raging sage”, a “prophet of doom”, and a host of other unusual names.
The story of UG has all the ingredients of a thriller. One episode in his life leads to another without any systematic sequence. When he reached the age of forty-nine, there was a sudden turn of events. Something happened to him which he called a “calamity” (to help our understanding), when he stumbled upon a “natural state”, wherein in his words, “everything that man has said, felt or seen, in fact, the whole heritage of mankind was thrown out of my system.”
But according to UG, as he is widely known, this was not what he had desired. He was looking for a spiritual dreamland waxed eloquent by the holymen – frauds as well as genuine. The religious atmosphere was part of his background. UG was born into a middle-class Brahmin family in Andhra Pradesh. His mother died soon after giving birth to him and on her deathbed said her child was cut out for something “immeasurably high”. UG's grandfather took her words seriously and groomed him in an ascetic atmosphere.
A small episode, however, was a turning point in UG's life. His grandfather was once meditating in the early morning when he was disturbed by the cries of a child. The old man was so angry that he beat the child black and blue. The incongruity and brutality of the scene had a traumatic impact on the tender sensibilities of UG. He said to himself, “If this is what meditation is about, it is worthless.” He threw away his sacred thread and threatened to walk out of the house.
UG's life thereafter was an experiment with truth. An insatiable hunger overtook him to try to find out whether there was anything behind the abstract pronouncements of the so-called spiritual men. He met various masters including J. Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi and practised traditional meditations. He exhausted every means possible to reach the “promised land” and at the end of it was bereft of hope and thrown into utter despair.
On his forty-ninth birthday he was sitting on a bench overlooking the green valley and rugged peaks of Oberland in Switzerland. It suddenly occurred to him, “I have searched everywhere to find an answer to my question – ‘Is there enlightenment?’ – but I have never questioned the search itself. Because I have assumed that enlightenment exists, I have had to search, and it is the search itself which has been choking me and keeping me out of my natural state”.
He said to himself, “There is no such thing as a spiritual or psychological enlightenment because there is no such thing as spirit or psyche at all. I have been a damn fool all my life, searching for something that doesn't exist. My search is at an end.”
His voracious hunger to find the fairyland promised by the prophets and spiritual masters had burnt itself out. The occurrence had telling effects on his body. Many physical changes took place within him which bewildered the medical men and friends around him. His life thereafter became one in which there was no thought for the morrow nor grief over the past. According to UG, grief and joy are realms of mind. The body is interested in neither. Its only interest is in surviving the day to day challenges it encounters from moment to moment.
UG's statements are enigmatic and if heard or read without his presence can be construed either as a product of a supreme intellect or a madman's litany. His words defy the logical framework with which we are accustomed. UG dismisses the possibility of any experience except through knowledge. According to him, it is the knowledge which creates the experience and the experience which strengthens the knowledge. Knowledge does not have any metaphysical or epistemological overtones. It is simply that something is a chair or a table or some sensation is either pleasurable or painful. In fact, even the process of recognition and naming of something is part of knowledge. The total operation is known as thinking.
What distinguishes us from UG is that this knowledge which is operating through the process of thinking is in a declutched state in UG while there is a constant undercurrent of thinking activity within us whether we like it or not. Our mind is constantly churning out thought after thought in various shapes, colours and sizes. UG says that it is through this constant thinking that we are maintaining the continuity of what we call the “I” or “self”.
In UG the continuity of self has been snapped. Thoughts come to him in a disjointed manner without any link-up. He “thinks” only when there is a demand for experience. Otherwise, what is there is only the simple activity of the senses – the stimulus and response continuum. Since it is the continuous thought activity that gives the illusion of “self” or “I”, there is no feeling of “self” or “I” within him.
UG says the stranglehold on the physical organism of what is called knowledge has the potency of millions of years. The knowledge which operates in the form of thought has set up a parallel empire of its own in contradistinction to the ways of nature or whatever one wants to call it. But the “thought” subtly knows its ephemeral nature and the fear of its fleeting existence propels it to erect a marvelous structure of culture, civilisation, religion, politics, the various institutions and values that govern our lives and, in fact, everything that one can conceive of.
All these facets of human life are nothing but props through which “thought” tries to enthrone itself in permanence. In other words, what we call “I” or “you” is a thought, seeking permanence in innumerable activities. UG says only when by some miracle or strange chance, the living organism is freed from the stranglehold of the empire created by thought can the body with its extraordinary intelligence free the human being to be in the natural state.
But, according to UG, one cannot use one's volition to go through any rigorous discipline to come into the natural state. Such a state is beyond the field of experience. UG often described this situation thus: “How did it all happen? I don't know. What is it that has happened? I don't know. Has anything happened at all?” He says that what has happened to him is such that it cannot be shared by anybody; that the natural state cannot be expressed or contained through thought. Nor are we in a position to listen or understand it except through thought. “Therefore no communication is possible and no dialogue is necessary”, says UG.
What use is the so-called “natural state” to people who are not functioning in it? The question after all is asked from a non-natural state perspective by mortals who are looking for a panacea to all their problems. Peace and happiness are what we are all after and UG's “natural state” offers us no experience of anything like it. So what we are left with are our points of view about the person, depending on our prejudices and conditioning. Call him a fraud or a freak of nature but once you are anywhere near the vortex of UG's existential presence you are left dumbfounded. Your expectations and opinions are shattered. You are left to wonder as to what is the source from which his statements spring. Beneath his apparent human form there lies something which defies description.
But if you persist in trying to pigeonhole UG, you end up with contradictions. “He looks extraordinarily ordinary. He has an arrogant humility. He is a naked man wearing clothes.” A poet said, “I am so vast, I can contradict myself.” UG is a rare bird who cannot be caged by our minds. Let the bird fly in all his freedom and glory.
