It's not love but terror that keeps us together


Times of India, Agenda, August 7, 1990

Philosophy / Frank Noronha


It's not love but terror that keeps us together: U.G. Krishnamurthy does not like to be called a self-realised, or an enlightened soul or a guru. Says he, “To call me a godman is to insult both God and religion.” Nevertheless, there is something about this individual that is strikingly different than other mortals.


UG could have easily set up a roaring “holy” business. But as he says, “This is something that I cannot be because what has happened to me is such that it cannot be shared with anybody. There is no question of I want to share or I don't want to. But it is something that cannot be a self-fulfilling activity.”


The following excerpts of my conversations with UG have been put together from several talks with him spread over several days.


Q: UG, I feel that you use the term ‘natural state’ for what others call enlightenment. Why are you so much opposed to the latter term?


A: When I use the term ‘natural state’ it is not a synonym for ‘enlightenment’, ‘freedom’ or ‘God realisation’ and so forth. Not at all. When once, through some miracle or strange chance, the living organism is freed from the stranglehold of culture, what you are left with is the ‘natural state’ – the natural functioning of the human body without the interference of thought.


Q: What is the connotation of the word culture when you use it?


A: I use ‘culture’ in a loose sense, not in any way to refer to art, artistic achievements or appreciation of beauty, but a way of life, a way of thinking, and also the totality of man's experiences and thoughts passed on to us from generation to generation.


Q: People of a particular culture look up to it as a source of inspiration. How can you dismiss and discount the whole thing?


A: It is like this. What you call culture is responsible for the battle that is going on within everybody. However, the living organism is not interested in the perfect man or the good man or the virtuous man that your concept of culture places before us. The body is not concerned about values.


Q: Can your ‘natural state’ be a edification to others?


A: That is the very thing I am against. Nature does not use models. No two leaves are the same, no two faces are the same, no two human beings are the same. First of all, I am not selling my natural state or anything else. Second, your interest is to use such a state to change man. I say that no change is necessary. The demand for change, to become something other than what you are, is imposed upon you by society or your culture. What I am emphasising is that through some miracle or strange chance I stumbled into this natural state on my own, and it has no value for me nor can it have any value for mankind. That is why I don't sit upon a platform haranguing about changing the world or individuals. Any attempt on the part of man to bring about a change in himself or in others is against the way nature is operating.


Q: Then why do you talk?


A: I am only talking in response to your questions. There is no urge in me to express myself to you or anyone else.


Q: If that is so, has existence no purpose at all?


A: I don't see any plan or scheme there at all! In fact I can't even definitely say if there is such a thing as evolution. But whatever it is, when the process slows down then a ‘revolution’ takes place. It tries to put together something and start all over again, just for the sake of creating. This is the only true creativity. Our creativity – creative thinking, creative ideas, creative business and so on – is valid and works within its own particular framework. But the creativity of life uses no model.


Q: What about a beautiful painting? Is it not an act of creativity?


A: All these extraordinary painters we have use something that is already there. They pick up something of this and something of that, put them together and think that they are really being creative. They are all imitating something that is already there. This is the only creativity we have.


Q: What is the big deal about being in the natural state when you constantly emphasise that it is of no use to anybody.


A: It is of no use to me because I cannot set up any holy business and make money. I am not interested in freeing anyone or taking anybody away from anyone else. They can get what they are interested in from their gurus. You need to be comforted, and they provide you with that.


The demand for permanence, to maintain something forever, is not going to succeed. So in your attempt to create permanence for yourself you talk of the family, the nation, the world and mankind. These are mere projections of your mind and are merely its creation. Indeed, your talk of permanence of mankind is really no different from the permanence you demand for yourself. You ignore the knowledge in you that you are not going to succeed because everything is constantly changing, is in flux.


Q: What is your approach towards death?


A: What is death? It is simply a condition of the human body. There is no such thing as death. The death of you or the death of your near and dear ones is not something you can experience. What you experience is the void created by the unsatisfied demand to maintain the continuity of your relationship with that person. So we have invented the life after death, reincarnation and so on. Basically the demand for permanence is all you are interested in.


Q: Is there nothing which lives after the body is dead? Soul or self?


A: There is no beginning and end of life. But what happens after you are dead? The body no longer responds to stimuli the way in which we know it to respond now. But the dead body provides a feast for all other living things. They live on that. Through your death you are giving continuity to life, or whatever you call it.


Q: Don't you feel that you have an obligation towards mankind?


A: Who has given me the mandate to save mankind? Mankind, in the sense in which we normally think, and its continuity or its permanence and so on – has no meaning to me.

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