The Don Rickles of the Guru Set

San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 1989

By Don Lattin, Religion Writer

The message he teaches is that there is no message.

You know there is something different about U.G. Krishnamurti when you read the disclaimer on the first page of his book, Mind Is a Myth.

“My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.”

For 20 years, thousands of disillusioned spiritual seekers have come to see this 72-year-old native of southern India at their homes and apartments in Switzerland, India and the United State, among which he divides his time.

After they discover that their own guru is a fraud, they come to Krishnamurti. When they lose their faith they come to Krishnamurti. He offers no consolation, provides no hope.

He Has No Answers

U.G. Krishnamurti has no church, no ashram, no answers, no organization, no publishing house, no spiritual message. He has no desire to have any followers, disciples or devotees.

“They always call me a guru, I don't know why. There is no religious content to what I am saying,” Krishnamurti said recently at a friend's home in Mill Valley. “People come to see me. Except for a few friends, they don't stick around because they don't get anything from me.”

Perhaps the easiest thing to say about U.G. Krishnamurti is that he is not related to the more famous reluctant sage of India, J. Krishnamurti. Both of them, however, were raised in the inner circles of the Theosophy movement in India, and went on to reject that occult philosophy. They have similar messages – only U.G.'s is more radical, more controversial, more hopeless.

Categorizing U.G. is not easy. He has been called a guru as well as “the un-guru.” Some see him as a philosopher, while “anti-philosopher” may be more to the point. Words such as cynic, nihilist and iconoclast could also be used to describe this disarming, charming and alarming little man.

There Is Nothing

Krishnamurti says there is no such thing as mind, soul, psyche, self, spirituality, individuality, enlightenment or afterlife. Spiritual seekers, he says, are wasting their time meditating, praying and worshiping. All of the world's gurus, priests, preachers, rabbis, philosophers, psychologists and theologians are operating under one gigantic illusion, he says. They have, in his view, been fooling themselves and the rest of us for centuries.

U.G. Krishnamurti is the Don Rickles of religion. He makes Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the infamous atheist, look pious.

“All of this talk of personal change, of spiritual transformation, has no meaning to me because there is nothing to transform. There is no mind. Our thoughts are not self-generated. They are simply responses to stimuli. What we call ‘mind’ is simply the totality of thoughts, feelings and experiences.”

Thus, he says, searching for “peace of mind” or “the meaning of life” is useless because there is neither mind nor meaning.

According to Krishnamurti, all mystical experiences, transcendental states and spiritual experiences are simply neurological glitches in the brain – biological functions with no more supernatural meaning than other natural functions of the body.

No Expectations

Dr. Paul Lynn, a 47-year-old San Francisco physician and Marin County resident, spent years in a search for spiritual enlightenment before coming to Krishnamurti. Lynn, who first met “U.G.” on a trip to India in 1973, went on to become a devotee of Da Free John, an American guru who was born in New York as Franklin Jones, founded a Marin County-based spiritual empire and now lives on his own Fijian island. After realizing Da Free John “either didn't know what he was doing or was a total fake,” Lynn left the fold in 1982 and reconnected with Krishnamurti.

Spiritual seekers, he says, are wasting their time meditating.

Lynn insists he hasn't simply switched gurus.

“It's very different,” he said, “Da Free John said he was a guru and there is something you can do to get enlightened. I don't expect U.G. to make my life better. I have no expectations of U.G.”

Julie Thayer, a New York photographer who hosted U.G. during a recent visit to that city, stumbled across U.G.'s first book, The Mystique of Enlightenment. Like his other book, it consists of transcripts of dialogues with his visitors (Krishnamurti says he receives no payment or royalties from either book. One New York rabbi has even taken his disclaimer seriously and published his own version.)

“I asked U.G. about surrendering, which was the path of this guru I was following,” said Thayer. He asked, ‘What are you surrendering?’ and ‘Who are you surrendering to?’ It just clicked that I was on the wrong track. Since then, there's been no more seeking.”

Krishnamurti acknowledges that many of those who come to see him mistakenly believe he has The Answer, and want to make him their new guru.

“Everybody is selling enlightenment in the marketplace. It has become a shoddy piece of spiritual goodies,” he said. “There is a market for it. Once you feel all your needs are taken care of, naturally the question arises, ‘Is that all there is?’”

The Beginning of Religion

What we call “religion,” Krishnamurti said, began somewhere along the evolutionary process when humans – unlike the rest of animals – began feeling self-conscious and separate from nature. “That is what is responsible for this feeling of fear – of feeling lost and all alone,” he said.

“There is no room for the religious man in the natural scheme of things,” he said. “The saints and saviors have only succeeded in setting you adrift in life with pain and misery and the restless feeling that there must be something more meaningful to do with one's life.”

In the gospel according to Krishnamurti, all political ideologies, wars, economic systems, value systems, senseless violence and ideas about morality flow from this ultimately false assumption that there is a mind, spirit or meaning.

So what are we to do with our lives?

“Don't ask me,” Krishnamurti replies.

Humanity, he says, long ago started down the path of total annihilation and absolutely nothing can be done to save it.

Have a nice day.