The Anti-guru

By T. T. Ram Mohan

I stumbled on U.G. Krishnamurti (UG) by the purest accident. Here, at last, was a voice of honesty and courage. These were not the usual homilies about love, compassion, enlightenment and the betterment of mankind. The man spoke with clarity and what seemed an utter certainty. My experience is not unique. Many who have come in contact with UG, whether through books or in person, have found themselves hooked. His utterances shake you up. They leave you dazed—and pining for more. There is an explosive honesty about his views that blows away much that you have accumulated over time. All the familiar ideas about God, religion, enlightenment and the rest fall by the wayside, leaving you lighter and refreshed.

UG, who passed away in 2007, is the anti-guru of our age, a man who consistently lobbed grenades at the flourishing spirituality industry. He is far less well known than the gurus and godmen of our time, such as J. Krishnamurti (JK), Rajneesh (Osho), Sai Baba and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. That is because UG had no organization, gave no speeches, provided no darshan, authored no books, did not profess to have any message to offer the world.

What we know about him is based on books written about him and recordings of exchanges that people have had with him, either in groups or individually. These books and recordings somewhat happened against UG's own wishes. He was unwavering in his belief that there was nothing of value he could ever communicate to his listeners.

If, nevertheless, books and videos on him have emerged, it is because he chose to indulge his fans in a good-humored way. These books and videos have been a great hit. Many of the books have been translated into several European and other languages.

Who was this man? Why has he proved so popular and influential despite his shunning the mantle of guru?

* * *

UG was born 9 July 1918 in Machilipatnam, Madras Presidency, British India. His mother died seven days after she gave birth to him. UG's father soon remarried and left UG to be cared for by his maternal grandparents. Before his mother passed away, she had predicted a great future for him. His maternal grandfather, a wealthy Brahmin lawyer, took the prediction seriously and devoted himself to lavishing care on the child.

UG's grandfather was an important member of the Theosophical Society as led by Annie Besant. UG spent many of his formative years around the headquarters of the society at Adyar in the city of Madras (now Chennai). There was an atmosphere of intense religiosity and spirituality at home. UG's grandfather was host to numerous swamis, gurus and religious scholars. As a young child, UG was made to listen to readings from various Hindu texts such as the Upanishads and the commentaries on these texts. By the time he was seven, UG could recite passages from most of these texts. He was taken to holy places and centers of learning all over India.

One incident early in his childhood set UG on his quest for truth. His grandfather had a meditation room where he used to meditate for hours. Once, during his meditation, his great-granddaughter, a little baby, started to cry. Furious at having his meditation disturbed, UG's grandfather came out of his room and gave the baby a thrashing. This caused UG to wonder about the business of meditation. There must be something shallow about it, he thought, if his grandfather could behave the way he did.

Other incidents reinforced UG's skepticism about religion and meditation. Every year on the death anniversary of his mother, he was made to fast. He could only eat at the end of the day after the priests who conducted the function had eaten. On one occasion, UG caught the priests eating heartily at a nearby restaurant even while the function was on. He was furious. He ran home to his grandfather and broke his sacred thread. It was a harbinger of a comprehensive revolt against the norms imposed on him by culture and tradition.

UG embarked on his quest for moksha or liberation by practicing all sorts of austerities and religious practices. He spent seven summers in the Himalayas studying yoga with a well-known guru, Swami Sivananda. One day he found the swami devouring pickles, forbidden for yogis, in secret. The young UG was shocked at the deception. He gave up his yoga practice and left Sivananda.

At the age of twenty-one, UG enrolled as a student at the University of Madras. He studied psychology and philosophy, among other subjects. He was curious to understand the human mind. One day he approached his professor and asked him, “We are talking about the mind all the time. Do you know for yourself what the mind is? All the stuff I know about the mind is from Freud, Jung, Adler and so on, that I have studied. Apart from these descriptions and definitions that there are in the books, do you know anything about the mind?”

The professor replied, “These are dangerous questions. If you want to pass your examinations, memorize what there is in the books and repeat it in your examination papers. You will get your degree.” UG said he wanted to know about the mind; he was not interested in a degree. He did not bother to appear for the examination. He was to say later that the professor was one of the few honest men he had met.

A friend suggested that they go and see Ramana Maharishi, the famous sage of Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu. When he came face to face with the sage, UG asked him three questions. He received answers to all of them.

“Is there anything like enlightenment?”

“Yes, there is,” replied the master.

“Are there any levels to it?”

The Bhagavan replied, “No, no levels are possible. It is all one thing. Either you are there or you're not there at all.”

Finally, UG asked, “This thing called enlightenment, can you give it to me?”

Looking the serious young man in the eye, Ramana replied, “Yes, I can give it, but can you take it?”

The encounter convinced UG that there was indeed a special state that Ramana Maharishi was in. However, he would have to discover by himself what that state was.

During his student days, UG lived in Adyar and worked for the Theosophical Society of India. He later became Joint General Secretary of the Indian Section of the Society. Later he became National Lecturer for seven years. In that capacity, he spoke at almost every college in India. He also lectured extensively in Europe. It occurred to him that he was wasting his time. There was a certain shallowness to his talks—anybody could gather the same information and throw it out. He decided to leave the Theosophical Society sometime in the late 1940s.

In May 1943, UG had got married to a Brahmin girl, Kusuma Kumari, selected by his grandmother. He was to say later, “I awoke the morning after my wedding night and knew without a doubt that I had made the biggest mistake of my life.” They had three children, including one boy who came to be afflicted with polio.

In 1953, UG and his wife went on a six-week visit to Europe. In London, UG met Bertrand Russell. He told Russell, who led a worldwide protest against atomic weapons, that it was futile to talk of peace without disbanding the many subtle forms of violence in the world. UG is said to have told Russell, “The H-bomb is an extension of the policeman! Are you willing to do away with the policeman?” Russell replied, “One has to draw the line somewhere.” UG told him, “If we settle for lesser evil, we will end up only with evil.”

In 1955, UG decided to take his son to the US for treatment. He took Kusuma along but left behind their two daughters in care of her elder sister. He had just enough money to pay for his son's treatment. The doctors told him that his son would be able to walk in a year's time. UG had to find the money to support his stay. He decided to give lectures on his own. He gave nearly sixty lectures in the US on a wide range of subjects: philosophy, education, politics, international affairs, etc. He was paid $100 per lecture.

After a year of lecturing, UG lost interest. His manager was shocked. UG had by then become hugely popular and there was easy money to be made. UG was, however, adamant about not continuing with the life he had lived thus far. He conveyed his decision to Kusuma and handed her his last hundred dollars. He told her that she would have to manage on her own thereafter. He then walked out of his house. As he was walking along, he ran into a stranger, Marshall Dixon, who had come out of the building of the Theosophical Society of Chicago close to UG's flat.

Dixon was a retired auditor general and former theosophist. He stopped UG and told him that he had had a dream the previous night in which an evolved soul of the Theosophical Society had appeared. The evolved soul had told Dixon that he would run into somebody from India who was in great trouble and that Dixon should help him. Dixon offered to pay UG $200 every month forever out of his pension. UG accepted his offer. He had spent most of the fortune he had inherited and had little choice if he wanted to stay on in the US and continue his son's treatment.

With Dixon's help, UG also managed to get Kusuma a job as a research fellow at the World Book Encyclopedia. UG had long wanted Kusuma to have a job and be independent so that he could go his own way. She had acquired two postgraduate degrees by then, one in Sanskrit and one in English. She was placed in the Indian section of the Encyclopedia and had to make notes and respond to queries on Indian religion and culture. UG helped her with her work. He now stayed at home attending to household chores and looking after their handicapped son.

The family carried on in this way for nearly two years with support from Dixon. Kusuma did not much like staying on in the US—she didn't get along very well with Americans. They had their fourth child, a boy, during their stay. Kusuma was worried about the future of the two boys and she was also keen to get back to her two daughters whom they had left behind in India. She was also concerned about the changes in UG's personality and was afraid of losing him.

UG received offers from the UN and the New York Press Association but did not evince any interest in these. He gave a few more talks, perhaps out of a need for money. After his last talk in Texas, a wealthy woman invited him home. UG slept with her. The news reached Kusuma. She was now determined to leave the US with her children. She begged UG to accompany them. UG refused. He gave her the tickets for her flight back to India and handed over whatever money he had. This was towards the end of 1959.

UG now needed a sponsor in order to stay on in the US. He found one in the World University which offered him a job. UG made a trip to India on behalf of the university. He went to Adyar to wind up matters. When Kusuma heard about his arrival, she went to his hostel along with his children in a desperate attempt to get him to join the family. UG would not hear of it. He never saw his wife again. Some members of Kusuma's family and UG's elder daughter never forgave him for his hard-heartedness.

UG's friends from the Theosophical Society took him to meet Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, then Ambassador to Russia (and later to become President of India), in Delhi. UG is then believed to have met Prime Minister Nehru in connection with his work at the World University. He came to be included in a cultural delegation being sent to the then Soviet Union. After a month's stay in the Soviet Union, UG visited several Eastern European countries as a tourist. Finally, in 1961, he landed in London just as winter was setting in. The stay in London was to set in motion a remarkable transformation in UG.

* * *

UG had little money with him when he arrived in London. He didn't feel like doing anything particular. He describes this period as a “withering away of the will.” To escape the London cold, he spent the day in the British Library. In the night, he wandered the streets. He earned a little money by giving lessons in Indian cooking.

One night, while sitting in Hyde Park, UG was warned by a policeman that if he didn't leave, he would be locked up. Something told him to go to the local Ramakrishna Mission. UG took a train as far as he could go with the five pence he had. He walked the rest of the distance to the mission. It was 10:00 when he reached there. The staff refused to let him in but the swami in charge himself emerged.

UG showed the swami his scrapbook of news items about himself and his lectures. He asked the swami for permission to use the meditation room for the night. The swami said he could not allow that as it was against the rules. However, he gave UG some money to stay at a hotel for the night and asked him to come back the next morning.

When UG showed up the next day, he was invited for lunch. It was the first proper meal he had had in days. At the swami's request, UG agreed to work on a special issue being brought out on the occasion of Swami Vivekananda's centenary. He was paid five pounds. He would work at the mission until afternoon and then go off to see a movie.

After three months, UG decided to leave. The swami gave him fifty pounds. UG wrote a letter to his wife ending their relationship. About two years later, his wife died. UG wrote to his children expressing his sympathy for their loss. He learnt from one of his daughters that his wife had gone into deep shock after their separation. She was hospitalized and received electric shock treatment. A few weeks after she was discharged, she slipped, broke her neck and passed away.

From London, UG moved to Paris. He returned the airline ticket he had for India and got paid $350. He stayed in a hotel and wandered around for ninety days. He then went to Geneva with 150 francs in his pocket. He continued to stay in a hotel even after he had run out of money.

When the hotel produced the bill, UG approached the Indian consulate for help. He asked the consulate to send him home to India. He showed the vice-consul his scrapbook containing opinions about him from S. Radhakrishnan (the former President of India) and Norman Cousins, a well-known American editor. The vice-consul was impressed but made it clear that the Indian government could not pay for his return to India. However, he offered to put up UG at his own place until he could get some money from India.

At this point, the hand of destiny showed itself, so to speak. A Swiss lady, Valentine de Kerven, had been witness to the exchange between UG and the vice-consul. She was a translator at the consulate. She offered to put up UG at her place until the vice-consul worked out something. She had a small inheritance and a pension which were enough to take care of the two of them. UG agreed. Valentine quit her job at the consulate, and she and UG took to traveling in and around Switzerland. Later they began spending their winters in India. UG did nothing for the next four years other than reading Time magazine and going for walks with Valentine.

UG and Valentine started spending their summer months in the beautiful valley of Saanen overlooking the Swiss Alps. UG was approaching his forty-ninth birthday. For many years now, he had been experiencing terrible headaches and taking large amounts of coffee and aspirin to cope with the pain. UG calls it the “incubation” period, a time when the body was getting ready to undergo major changes.

Some years earlier, in 1963, when he was staying at the Ramakrishna Mission, UG had experienced a strange movement within. He had understood this movement as the stirring of the kundalini or serpent power that is part of Indian mysticism. In the years that followed, there were other developments that suggested his body was undergoing physical changes. Whenever he rubbed his palms or any part of his body, there was a sparkle, like a phosphorus glow. When he rolled on his bed, there would be sparks.

Two months before his forty-ninth birthday, UG happened to be in Paris at the well-known Casino de Paris. While watching the show, UG could not make out whether it was the dancer who was dancing or he was on stage. There was no separation between the dancer and himself—he felt a strange movement within. A week after this experience, while in a hotel room in Geneva, he had a dream. He dreamt that he was bitten by a cobra and died instantly. His body was carried on a bamboo stretcher to a cremation ground. As the flames leapt up, he was awakened. UG also developed occult powers. If a person came into the room, he could read the person's entire past. He could look at a man's palm and tell his entire future.

In July and August 1967, J. Krishnamurti (JK), the well-known philosopher, came to Saanen to give a series of talks. UG and JK went back a long way. Both had been connected with the Theosophical Society. JK had parted company with the Society and started his own Krishnamurti Foundation. UG had listened to several of JK's talks in Madras. He had had several conversations with JK, often demanding to know what state exactly JK was in. UG had not got satisfactory answers. Throughout UG's stay in the US and his wanderings in London, JK had kept in touch with him.

In 1953-54, UG happened to listen to JK talk about death in one of his talks in Madras. UG said out loud to himself, “Apart from all the discussions I have heard and my own so-called experience of death, I really . . .” He wanted to complete the sentence by saying, “I really do not know . . .” But the words “do not know” disappeared from his consciousness and he found something happening to him, “something like a fading out.”

JK looked at him but didn't say anything. The talk and the discussion of death went on for another hour or so but UG was completely out of it. UG felt that the episode had created some change in him. It had led to an indifference to family and money matters and caused him to look at everything very differently.

In 1966, UG had attended JK's talks at Gstaad in Switzerland. The moment JK talked about the art of listening, there would be no listening on UG's part. The words seemed to just hit him and go back. Still, there was a sort of “watchful expectancy” in him. He often felt weak. At times, he got the feeling that his head was missing above the eyebrows. His friends remarked that he seemed to be operating at a different level of consciousness. He struck some as being free from anxieties and worries.

The encounter with JK in Saanen in 1967 was to carry forward the changes in UG over the past few years and mark a clean break with UG's past. As UG listened to JK's last talk, he got the feeling that JK was describing his own state! This realization hit UG in a big way. “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?” He then walked out of the tent and never looked back. In a later section, we dwell further on the relationship between UG and JK.

The question then transformed 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?” The next day he sat on a bench under a wild chestnut tree overlooking Saanen with its seven hills and seven valleys. The question, “How do I know that I am in that state?” went on whirling around in his mind until it disappeared. The transformation, UG emphasizes, was a physiological phenomenon. “It was a sudden ‘explosion’ inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body.”

At that very moment and in the years that followed, UG's body underwent profound changes. Immediately after the “explosion,” his head tightened. It was as if his brain cells were getting squeezed together. The explosion seemed to shatter every cell, every nerve in his body. He had terrible pain in his head. This continued for three days. While lying on a couch, he felt that his body was missing. He slept well. When he woke up the next morning, it was as if he was waking up for the first time in his life.

There were many other physical changes that UG talked about in later years. He developed a sort of panoramic vision. His skin became soft. He stopped blinking. His senses of taste, smell and hearing seemed to have undergone a change. His hands and forearms changed their structure so that they faced backwards instead of facing the sides.

At those points on the body, which kundalini yoga calls chakras (energy centers), there were swellings of various sizes and shapes that came and went at intervals. These images and descriptions are to be found in various religions and cultures. This suggests that, over the centuries, in different parts of the world, people recognized as sages, saints or evolved souls must have undergone a similar physical transformation.

A week after the “explosion,” UG experienced what seemed like death and rebirth. He felt his feet, his hands, his whole body go cold. The energy seemed to be ebbing out of him. There was no consciousness in him. Forty-eight minutes later, as he recalled, somebody called out his name. It was his landlady calling to say someone was on the phone.

UG went downstairs and spoke to his friend, Douglas Rosestone. UG asked him to come over to his place. As the trains were not running and Valentine had told him that UG was dying, Rosestone ran the distance of three kilometers to UG's place. When he entered UG's room, he found UG in an arched position, what is known in yoga as the posture of the bow. When he asked UG what it was all about, UG told him simply, “It's the final death.”

The separative thought structure—the sense of “I”—had dissolved. The whole of the past had been wiped out. The body had undergone a radical mutation and started functioning very differently from the way it had functioned earlier. This did not correspond to anything like “enlightenment,” moksha or liberation, as is widely supposed. It was not a blissful or ecstatic state of being. For this reason, UG took to calling his transformation a “calamity.” It was his way of debunking popular notions about the state he was in. The transformation he had undergone had to do with the body, not the mind, and it had been sheer torture for the body.

For a year after he underwent these experiences, UG did not say anything about them. He shunned public talks, did not start an ashram, wrote no books, disavowed any intention to uplift mankind or save humanity. When he started talking about himself, it was with small groups of people. For some forty years after his transformation, he kept traveling around the world, staying with friends and having long question-and-answer sessions that seemed like conversations. He also gave the occasional interview on radio or television.

UG made it clear that he had no message to offer mankind. He often joked that he entertained visitors only because it was rude to turn away people or call in the police. Nevertheless, it's hard to resist the feeling that he did feel an obligation to communicate a few basic messages. At the very least, he wanted to disabuse people of notions they may have picked up in the spirituality bazaar.

Mukunda Rao discerns three phases in UG's life after the “calamity.” In the first phase from 1967 to the late 1970s, he was soft and obliging in his interactions with people. He would refer to other sages and their teachings and certain religious texts approvingly. He would explain the functioning of the body and the mind, his understanding of the “natural” state, etc.

In the next phase, the 1980s and the late 1990s, he became what he is best recognized as—something of a raging sage. He debunked everything and everybody. He became famous for his subversive one-liners: love is war; mind is a myth; thought is your enemy; there is nothing inside you but fear; and so on. By negating and rejecting all our ideas and ideals, he wanted us to get a sense of the true nature of things.

In the final phase, which was the last ten years until his death in 2007, he became playful and steered clear of any serious conversation. He would invite friends to sing, dance and share jokes. Everybody would join in mocking and laughing at everything, including UG himself. It is well to bear in mind the phases he went through because one can often get the impression that he was saying different things at different times and contradicting himself. On JK, for instance, he sounds respectful at one point and scathing at another.

What we have by way of his “teachings” is an enormous collection of audios and videos, transcriptions (anthologies), and writings about him. The themes are often repetitive but UG is always engaging. There is a refreshing lack of pretense to his statements. There is no evolved soul preaching to lesser mortals. Just somebody who's telling it like it is—without any ulterior motive and certainly without trying to gain anything for himself. In what follows, I propose to cover UG's views on a range of matters.

* * *

UG's most significant contribution is the understanding that what is characterized as “enlightenment” is a physico-chemical transformation of the body. He insisted that it is the body that undergoes a change, not the mind. As mentioned earlier, he preferred to call his experience a “calamity”—it was his way of mocking those who think of “enlightenment” as a spiritually elevated state.

UG has given us a vivid description not only of the process of transformation of the body but of the way the body functions once the transformation is over. Several things things seem to happen to people who enter this state—the likes of the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ramana Maharishi and UG himself. In what follows, I will highlight important characteristics of the “natural” state as described by UG. These are collated from various sources.

Thought, the entity that gives one a sense of individuality, seems to burn itself up. Thought is matter and when it burns up, the body gets heated and is covered in ash. All that is part of one's consciousness—the collective memories handed down through the genes and embedded in oneself—is flushed out.

Among the Brahmins, there is the practice of applying ash to the forehead, hands and the torso. UG believes that the yogis' practice of smearing ash on themselves was done in imitation of what they saw on the bodies of those who had got into the “natural” state. Ordinary people may have followed suit.

When a person enters the state that UG talks about, the body automatically assumes poses that correspond to a number of classic poses taught in yoga. This is the energy in the body expressing itself spontaneously. Those who have watched people in that state may have been led to believe that if they assumed those poses, they too could get into the “natural” state! That's how the practice of yoga may have started. Cause and effect seem to have got mixed up in the minds of ordinary people. The yogic pose follows the “natural” state, not the other way around. Whatever the health benefits of yoga—and UG had misgivings about these as well—it cannot lead to the fundamental transformation implied by the “natural” state.

As UG describes it, when one is going through the process of transformation, one's consciousness takes the shape of all those who have been in a similar state before—Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Muhammad, Socrates and hundreds of others. All these people are part of one's consciousness and now they begin to leave. This process goes on and on until only the uncontaminated, primordial consciousness is left. UG had dramatically described this process of expulsion as “the saints go marching out.”

Thought, which directs and dominates one's activities, is relegated to the background. It surfaces only when required. Otherwise, there is only awareness. As UG puts it, thought changes from being a master to being a slave. In the initial days after coming into the “natural” state, UG had serious problems. He could not put a name to various objects. He would point at a flower and ask, “What is that?” The knowledge was in the background, it never came to the forefront.

UG got used to this becoming a permanent part of being. When he looked at something, he didn't know what he was looking at. Those familiar with JK's teachings would know JK's question, “Can you look at the flower without naming it?” There is only awareness of the flower—the word “flower” does not pop into the mind. After listening to UG, we can infer that JK was describing his own state which was, perhaps, close to the “natural” state. Someone who is not in that state can never quite comprehend what JK is talking about.

Several glands become active or more active than before. The thymus gland is active in children and becomes dormant when one attains puberty. Thanks to this gland, children have extraordinary feelings. In a person who enters the “natural” state, this gland becomes active again. This gives rise to an extraordinary sensitivity. UG interpreted “affection” to mean, not an emotional feeling for something, but simply the body being affected by everything around it.

A couple of incidents in UG's life illustrate this point. UG was once staying at a coffee plantation in India. A lady happened to beat her child badly. UG watched but did not interfere. When somebody asked him about his seeming indifference, UG told him that the marks of the beating were to be found on his back as well. When consciousness is not divided, what happens out there happens within oneself—one is not separated from what is happening out there. The question of sitting in judgment on the lady beating up the child does not arise because there is no sense of “I” and “she.” In the “natural” state, the separative consciousness that underlies all value judgment is missing. (“I am right and the other person is wrong.”)

A similar thing happened when UG, on a trip to Goa, was sitting near a hillock and Valentine climbed up to join him. She slipped and fell and injured her knee. UG hitched up his trousers to reveal that there were scratch marks on his knee as well.

There is an intense awareness of all that is happening within oneself and outside. UG said he could feel his pulse without an external aid—and at sixty-four different points in his body. He could listen to his heartbeat without a stethoscope. He could sense that the body was an electromagnetic field. When he ate food, he could sense the blood rushing to his stomach. This rush of food produced an extraordinary enjoyment, a “peace that passes understanding.” Most people can't sense this because they are thinking of something or the other while having food. The interference of thought mars the enjoyment of food and it also interferes with digestion. UG conjectures that, perhaps, this is the reason that one is advised not to talk while eating.

The linking up of various sensations through thought is not there. The continuity that is provided by the sense of “I” is broken. The coordinating function is taken up by the pineal gland, which gives the necessary instructions to the body. This gland is called the ajna (command) chakra in Indian spiritual literature. In the absence of thought as a coordinator, the sensations stay as “pure and simple” sensations.

The absence of thought meant that UG would be aware of somebody only when he was looking at that person. The moment his head turned away, UG would not be aware of him. Out of sight was truly out of mind! JK often made statements—“dying to one's yesterdays,” “looking at one's wife without past images”—that people found mystifying. Spiritual leaders exhort us to “live in the present” or “live from moment to moment.”

We can now relate these statements to the state that UG talks about. In the “natural” state there is no past, hence no yesterdays. One is effortlessly living in the present. There is no memory that intrudes into one's consciousness. So when one looks at one's wife, one is not influenced by all that has happened earlier. There is only the awareness of whatever is before oneself. Whenever UG encountered something of beauty—say, a beautiful piece of scenery—his body would respond by taking deep breaths. The word “breathtaking” took on a new meaning for him. There was no thought intervening to call the scenery “beautiful,” only the natural response of the body.

These are not attitudes of mind or states of being that one can will. Quite the contrary. It is the very absence of mind or will that makes these experiences possible. For a person who had come into this state to exhort others to do any of the things mentioned above is absurd. One begins to understand what UG means when he says that no meaningful communication is possible between somebody who is in the “natural” state and somebody who is not. The two individuals are functioning in very different ways. In one, thought is absent; in the other, thought is dominant.

In the “natural” state, since one is living only in the present, untroubled by the past or the future, there are no anxieties or worries, no regrets or sorrows. Since the “I” has disappeared, there is no greed or the desire to accumulate, to plan for the morrow. Pleasure and pain, which are constructions of thought, cease to be. Since there is no “I” that needs to be gratified, the ego is dead. The egoless existence that sages preach to others is not something that one needs to strive for at all; it is what obtains in the natural course. It follows that if one is not in the “natural” state, attempts to shed one's ego and forego greed and desire are futile. Sermons to this effect are wasted. The whole quest for spiritual betterment, which is something of a thriving industry today, is doomed to failure.

The “natural” state is not attained through austerities, self-mortification, intense meditation or any other effort prescribed over the centuries. UG emphasizes that what happened to him is utterly acausal. He did not get into that state through any particular effort of his. If anything, his reading of the scriptures, his doing meditation or yoga, his interactions with JK—everything that he did in the quest for “enlightenment”—only retarded his efforts. Any effort that one makes reinforces the mechanism of thought, whereas the “natural” state is all about the annihilation of thought. The quest for “enlightenment” is the very antithesis of “enlightenment.”

When one abandons the quest for “enlightenment,” then—perhaps, then—something may happen that triggers the “natural” state. Even then, we have no assurances. It may well be that a few people are genetically programmed to come into that state. They are the chosen ones, so to speak.

There is no way that one can come into the “natural” state by seeking answers from others, by reading religious or philosophical texts, by invoking the blessings of godmen. What is required is a burning hunger for the question or questions one has and a rejection of all the answers one has received.

A few people seem to stumble into the “natural” state every now and then. These are the ones venerated as religious leaders or sages over the years. As UG puts it, those who get into this state represent the end product of evolution. All consciousness is one. So the transformation that comes about in these individuals, the change in their consciousness, seems to affect all mankind.

UG speculates that this could be the reason that there is some sort of quest in most people, a certain restlessness. Because some individuals have, over the ages, broken out of the stranglehold of thought, there is a sense in the human consciousness that a better state is possible. Life pushes us all in the direction of freedom. Alas, few of us make it. The “natural” state eludes all but a chosen few.

At this point, the reader may well wonder what proof we have of UG's being in the “natural” state. How can we be sure that these are not the concoctions of a clever mind or a con man? Well, it is open to the reader to go through the vast collection of UG's utterances to judge for himself whether these sound plausible at all. Besides, we do have the accounts of various people who were witness to UG's physical transformation. We also have anecdotes narrated by people who came into contact with him. These testify to a remarkable personality. I will mention a few from Mahesh Bhatt's biography.

Bhatt once spent time with UG at the hill station of Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu. Bhatt had gone there with his friend, the Bollywood film star Parveen Babi, who was suffering from mental illness. Bhatt had heard stories of UG taking walks with cobras. When he asked UG about it, UG merely said, “We will see.” Later that evening, when Bhatt and Babi went for a stroll with UG, all of a sudden, UG said, “Stop,” and holding Bhatt and Babi back, said, “look and see for yourselves.” Bhatt spotted a king cobra with its whole family. Bhatt and Babi fled in terror.

On another occasion, Bhatt was in Rome, looking for a black panther to cast in one of his films. By some coincidence, UG happened to be in Rome at the same time. Bhatt found a black panther in a private zoo owned by a trainer on the outskirts of Rome. The trainer took Bhatt and UG into the zoo and showed them the black panther. Soon, the panther began growling. UG gestured to the panther and said, “Quiet, sit down.” The animal obeyed. This happened several times when Bhatt and UG were talking to the trainer. The trainer was surprised and wanted to know whether UG himself was a trainer!

Bhatt speaks of the “peace, security, comfort, intimacy and communion” that people derived from merely sitting in UG's presence. He has written of the current of energy that he himself experienced during his contacts with UG. Many others have written in a similar vein about their experiences with UG.

* * *

In the years following his transformation, UG expressed himself on a wide range of subjects. He refuted any suggestion that these were ideas he was producing. He insisted that whatever answers he was providing to questions came out of him without the interference of thought—somebody was throwing a ball and the ball was just bouncing back.

His views are provocative, outrageous, unsettling and even anarchic. They are a repudiation of everything that may be said to be mainstream or conventional.

For instance, UG didn't think India's vaunted spiritual heritage was of much use to the world. He did not deny that the heritage was considerable. India had produced many saints and saviors over the ages. But that heritage was not helping India put its house in order. So how could it be of any use to the world?

One of UG's most striking statements is that thoughts do not come from within a person, as all of us suppose. We believe that each of us has a mind or a brain that generates thoughts. Not so, says UG. There is no individual mind. There is only a World Mind or universal consciousness. Or, as he puts it, there is a thought sphere in which all of us operate.

All of us have our antennae that pick particular thoughts from out of this thought sphere. We are not separate from the universal consciousness. The brain is not a producer of thoughts but a reactor that processes these. All attempts on the part of brain physiologists and psychologists to locate the seat of human consciousness in the brain are, therefore, doomed to failure.

Once we understand this, we also understand that the entire range of thoughts and emotions—anger, jealousy, hatred, lust, kindness, compassion, contempt, etc.—will be experienced by all. There cannot be morally superior individuals who don't experience any of these. There may be some who don't allow these feelings to get the better of them but it's not that they don't experience these feelings in the first place.

It makes no sense to ascribe negative or inferior thoughts to others—that chap is full of envy, the other guy is greedy, and so on. What is out there is also in here. The envy and greed that one sees in others is very much part of one's own make-up. To recognize this is to shed one's assumptions of moral superiority and to pause and reflect before condemning others. It is to be humbled into a recognition of our common heritage.

The fact that the individual mind is just part of the World Mind has implications for what we might do to bring about changes in the world. Most ideologies and attempts to reform societies focus on what is outside oneself, in the world at large. UG makes it clear that these ideologies have no chance of success. They are all born of thought. And thought is fundamentally divisive; it separates the thinker or the “I” from the rest of the world. Thought can only, therefore, breed more conflict. The mess that we see in the world is only a reflection of the mess within each one of us.

It follows that the only change one can bring about in the world is to change oneself. (To use the now hackneyed expression, “Be the change you wish to see.”) Any improvement in oneself constitutes an improvement in the world. The world is most dramatically impacted when an individual moves into the “natural” state. All of human consciousness is affected when that happens. Such an individual is like a flower that radiates fragrance. The vibrations that he gives off seem to leave an impact on all of human consciousness. At some places, UG even suggests that the effects of such an individual linger in the universal consciousness long after the individual has passed away.

UG debunked the commonly held idea of a soul that survives death. It is the body that is immortal, not the soul. So much for the idea of a soul or atman that lives on forever after the body is extinguished, an idea that finds expression in the Bhagavad Gita and also in other religions. UG says bluntly that ideas such as soul, an afterlife and God are all born of fear, the fear of death. The individual or “I” knows that death is inevitable and doesn't want to accept the fact. So he creates the comforting idea of a soul that is permanent or indestructible.

* * *

UG was often compared—and sometimes confused—with his more famous namesake, JK, often hailed as one of the great teachers and philosophers of the last century. A brief word about JK would be in order.

As a small child, JK was identified by the theosophists as a person with the potential to become a great spiritual teacher. He was later educated and groomed by the theosophists for the role of World Teacher. In 1911, the Theosophical Society established the Order of the Star in the East and named JK as its head. In that capacity, he traveled widely delivering lectures and meeting people. When JK's younger brother, Nitya, was diagnosed with tuberculosis, JK and Nitya traveled to California in 1922 as it was felt that the climate there would help him to recuperate.

In the Ojai Valley of California, JK underwent what was described as profound transformational experiences. These experiences involved physical pain. JK never spoke about these experiences at any length. Nitya died in California. This was a great shock to JK, especially because the theosophists had led him to believe that Nitya would be with him in his life mission.

In 1929, at a meeting of the Order in the Netherlands, JK dissolved it, declaring, “I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” He dissociated himself from the theosophists and thereafter delivered talks on his own. Eventually, he was to found his own organizations, including the Krishnamurti Foundation, which became the principal vehicle for dissemination of his teachings. He died in California in 1986, aged ninety.

The lives of UG and JK seemed bound together in strange ways. They both had a long association with the Theosophical Society. The first contact between the two happened when UG was seven years old. UG was taken to the Golden Jubilee celebration of the Society at Adyar. UG saw JK on stage and heard him speak. The next evening UG was wading in the waters of a nearby beach when JK happened to be taking a walk with some admirers. On seeing UG, JK broke away from his circle and joined UG in collecting shells. Did the older man sense some potential in the child? Between 1947 and 1953, UG listened to talks that JK gave at Adyar in Madras. There was no personal interaction with JK in that period.

A common friend arranged a meeting. Several meetings followed during the rest of JK's stay in Madras. As mentioned earlier, UG had a polio-stricken son. JK offered to try to heal him. He massaged the boys legs for several days. It didn't work. During their meetings, UG would confront JK with highly provocative questions. Had JK arrived at his state through the method he was preaching to others? Why did JK continue to teach after disavowing the World Teacher role the theosophists had assigned him? Why had he started schools for children with a special approach to teaching when he did not believe in conditioning minds?

One day UG asked JK bluntly: Was there anything behind the abstractions that JK was throwing at people? JK said vehemently, “You have no way of knowing it.” UG retorted, “If I have no way of knowing it and you have no way of communicating it, what the hell have we been doing?” UG soon left for the US. JK continued to keep in touch with him through friends.

UG's next meeting with JK was in London in 1961, a time when, as we have seen, UG was adrift. When JK got to know that UG was in town, he sent word asking to see UG. When they met, JK tried to persuade UG to return to India and get reunited with his family. UG was in no mood to oblige. At JK's insistence, UG attended JK's talks for three days at Wimbledon. Their next meeting was in the mid-Sixties in Saanen where UG was staying with Valentine. JK and UG bumped into each other a couple of times.

The last encounters happened in August 1967 in the days leading up to UG's “calamity.” UG attended JK's talks in Saanen. UG heard JK say, “. . . in that silence, there is no mind; there is action . . .” It struck UG that he was precisely in that state! He walked out of the tent, never to meet JK again.

In the initial years after he got into the “natural” state, we find UG discussing JK's teachings somewhat favorably. He makes laudatory references to the way JK develops argument—looking at a problem from different angles before leading up to the main point and getting people to examine their premises and preconditions about a topic. In his later years, we find him savaging JK and his teachings.

UG's basic criticism is that JK never quite discarded the role of World Teacher although he moved away from the theosophists who had wanted to cast him in that role. He merely substituted the Order of the Star with his own Krishnamurti Foundation. JK said there could be no teacher and taught that all authority must be shunned and yet produced seventy-two books totaling four million pages in twenty-two languages, around twenty-five hundred audio cassettes and twelve hundred video cassettes.

UG was also critical of the fact that JK had created a spiritual goal—“mutation of the mind”—that could be attained through particular techniques, such as “choiceless awareness.” By this is meant being aware of one's thoughts and reactions without passing judgment on these. UG argued that “choiceless awareness” was a meaningless concept because there was nobody inside oneself who was aware of anything.

There was no question of “mutation of the mind” because there was no mind. Self-realization was an absurdity because there was no self to be realized. The only transformation that was possible was a complete change in the functioning of the body of the sort UG had himself undergone. And there was nothing one could do to bring about that.

It is not clear, though, whether UG's harsh criticism of JK should be taken at face value. Going through UG's comments on JK at various times, one does get the feeling that some of the remarks are intended for effect. They are meant to disabuse JK's followers of blind reliance on authority. His intention seems to be to dissuade them from seeking some magic pill for their problems in the form of JK's teachings.

For all his criticism of JK, UG acknowledged that JK had been an important influence on him. He seemed to have a certain regard for JK. When Mahesh Bhatt asked UG who was the most remarkable man he had met, he promptly said, “Jiddu Krishnamurti.” When Bhatt pointed out that only that morning, he had treated the subject of JK with derision, UG simply said, “I never say anything I don't mean.”

The most dramatic proof that the lives of the two men were strangely intertwined came when JK passed away. On the night that it happened, sitting in a house in California four hundred miles from Ojai Valley, UG seemed to sense that JK was dying. He called some of his friends and asked if they could come over to his place right away. When they entered the room, they found UG sitting cross-legged in bed in his pajamas. UG said to them, “I don't think I'm going to survive; the energy is so strong, the body can't take it.” His friends could see ripples moving down from his head to his face. His whole body seemed to be shaking. This went on for a while. UG kept his eyes closed in a yoga posture. He survived.

* * *

Society conditions us to set morally lofty goals for ourselves: achieving peace of mind, becoming a good human being, leaving the world a better place. UG emphasized that these very goals were stumbling blocks to our being in harmony with the world around us.

We are all the time trying to be something other than ourselves, reaching out for some goal that society has conned us into seeking. We are thus in conflict with ourselves. Once the quest for something better ceases, the conflict within ceases. We are no longer in conflict with the world. Take, for instance, the ideal of being selfless. Trying to be selfless is a self-centered activity. When you stop wanting to be selfless, self-centeredness ceases.

UG was also severe on people seeking answers to timeless questions such as the meaning and purpose of life, what happens after death, whether there is an afterlife, etc. He insisted that a living person would never ask such questions; he would just live. Only people who were not truly alive would pose such questions. These questions also arose from the relentless pursuit of pleasure. When one pleasure after another was satisfied, boredom set in. Then, people would begin to ask: Is there something more beyond all this? In the spiritual marketplace, there is no dearth of persons ready to cater to such needs.

And the reason that spiritual leaders or godmen cannot provide moksha, salvation or enlightenment is because, as mentioned earlier, the transformation that needs to happen is utterly acausal. It's like being hit by a bolt of lightning, an accident that happens to one in a billion. Not only does it not come out of any determined pursuit, it's the very pursuit that must come to an end for the transformation to happen.

UG had interesting and outrageous things to say even about mundane matters such as diet and nutrition. He rejected the view that health had anything to do with diet and exercise. He was vehement in his denunciation of nutritionists. He ate very little and yet was full of energy and vitality. A reporter once told UG that he was incredibly good-looking and youthful. UG replied, “That's because I don't eat health food, I don't take vitamins, and I don't exercise!”

He believed that the body needed a little basic food and it could turn that into the energy it needed to survive. He put forward the radical view that the stomach had the capacity to digest almost anything. The idea of “right food” was a concept created by the human mind. This concept had destroyed the natural capacity of the body to process whatever was given to it—and reject whatever was not right. In a radio interview in the US, he once claimed that during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, people had survived on mud. A lady from the Soviet Union, who had survived the siege, later called him to say he was right!

UG was equally severe on things like yoga and meditation and the notion that these could help achieve something called “peace of mind.” He argued that the yogic poses and meditation brought a temporary sense of well-being. The chant “Om,” repeated several times, changes the breathing pattern. In chanting it hundreds of times, one hopes that the pattern will change sufficiently to fall in line with that of the “natural” state. This does not happen at all.

Meditation brings a certain peace. So, people keep meditating in order to recapture that experience. However, if one abandons the notion of some mythical “peace of mind,” one accepts thoughts as they come and go. In the process one becomes peaceful.

UG had little patience with talk of creativity, the great works of poetry, music and the arts. He believed that there was little that was original to so-called works of creativity. Almost everything that people did was an imitation of something else. Artists, writers and the rest were mere craftsmen.

Even the taste for art, painting and music, he pointed out, was a cultivated taste. One was taught to appreciate these things. Only when one did not use anything as a model could something creative emerge. Nature alone was capable of such creativity—no two faces, no two leaves were identical. Many pride themselves on their works of creation. Others are given to admiration of these. UG's dismissal of so-called creativity is chastening.

UG often expressed himself in extreme or frivolous terms. For instance, he exhorted people around him to simply focus on making money. He composed 108 money maxims. The number is intentional. As many readers would know, that number is considered sacred in Hindu religion. Prayer malas typically have 108 beads. Choosing that many maxims to extol the virtues of money was UG's way of mocking religion and spirituality.

UG's own life was the exact opposite of these maxims. At the end of each year, he distributed whatever surplus was left and started the year on a fresh note. (He kept getting gifts from admirers.) In prescribing these maxims, UG was trying to describe how the vast majority of people actually behave behind a veil of spirituality or goodness. He meant to convey that obsession with money is one of the realities of the world.

UG also composed his Ten Commandments. These can be said to be the very antithesis of the official version. Again, UG is taking aim at the pretence and hypocrisy, the fears and phoney beliefs that characterize our lives. The devastating cynicism in his commandments is intended to get people to face up to the squalid reality of their thoughts and feelings. UG is telling people, ‘This is what you are, none of the holy gospels to which you subscribe operates in your life.’

It's hard to encounter UG's writings without being changed in some way, however modest. His brutal honesty about our lives can be unsettling. He can be scary because he takes away all our crutches, demolishes our cherished illusions. However, after the initial shock of being stripped of whatever one is carrying, one begins to feel a little lighter. It is possible that a quality of courage enters one's life.

* * *

UG had a fall in the bathroom in 2004. He recovered from it. Three of his long-standing friends built an apartment for him in their villa in Vallecrosia on the French Riviera. In the years that followed, UG traveled indefatigably from one place to another, sometimes spending no more than a few days in one place. Most of these travels were in Italy, France and Switzerland.

UG had another fall in the bathroom in February 2007. His head hit the sink and started bleeding. UG passed out. When he regained consciousness, he heard knocking on the door of his apartment. UG managed to crawl his way to the door and open it. He had injured his leg and was helped on to a couch.

UG decided he did not want to carry on in a way that would make him even more dependent on his friends. He refused all medical help. As his health deteriorated, he decided it was “time to go” and let the body take its own natural course. He remained confined to bed and the couch. His consumption of food and water decreased and virtually stopped.

As word spread of UG's decision not to continue living, his friends from different parts of the world gathered in Vallecrosia. Some of them came after getting summons from UG. They sat around him, posing questions and getting responses as they had been for years. There are video recordings to be found on the Internet of UG's final weeks on the planet almost up to the last days. Although weak in body, UG remains his fiery self, mocking those with beatific thoughts and lashing out at pretenders in the spiritual market.

Some of his friends recalled that when UG had had a similar fall a few years earlier, he had told them he could see things happening in places as far away as Australia. He even said he was out on the stars and he could see things on other planets.

We have vivid accounts of UG's last moments from many people. Narayana Moorty, a close friend of UG's, is one of them. UG called Moorty in California to say that he would like Moorty to visit him. “I have to see you before I die. If I don't see you, I'll have to die in great pain.”

Moorty flew to France and was driven to Italy. As he entered the room in which UG was lying and approached UG, he could feel himself “entering into a vast field of energy” in which he was enveloped. Moorty notes that despite the fact that UG's end was drawing near, there was a festive atmosphere in the place. People chatted away busily, videos and photos were taken, there were readings from UG's materials. Chocolate was passed around.

UG ate little—a small amount of rice sticks, idli or upma and a sip of orange juice or hot water—and he kept throwing up. He collapsed once on the toilet seat and thereafter did not walk at all. It was obvious that he was in pain although he showed it very rarely. Indeed, he seemed supremely unconcerned about his health; there was not even a trace of fear.

Ten days before he passed away, UG conveyed through Mahesh Bhatt that he wanted everybody to leave except for Bhatt and two others. His instructions were faithfully carried out.

UG died on 22 March 2007 at around 3:00 in the afternoon. He had been in a coma for about four days prior to his death. There was no funeral and no ceremony. His body was taken to the crematorium where it waited in line for a week.

UG had left instructions for the disposal of his funds. Much of it was to be given to deserving young girls of Indian origin who were studying abroad. His apartment in Gstaad had been rented until August. UG had told his friends that they were free to stay there and enjoy themselves.

Rebels With a Cause, 2020