“The cabbage is more alive than a human being”

The Times of India, Sunday Review, Encounter, March 27, 1988

By Anees Jung

Don't go to U. G. Krishnamurty if you are seeking answers. He claims he has none. And yet, in the manner of any bazaar guru he entertains audiences in the evenings and holds forth on the evil nature of man and his life. All I know of him is that he had been a guru of Parveen Babi and her one-time friend Mahesh Bhatt.

The guru, as we know, did not lead the actress to herself but into a wilderness in the United States from where she has not surfaced. The gentleman has remained on the scene, made one good film and made attempts at others that have not been significant. He continues to rage and remains an ardent devotee of U.G. to meet whom, he came for a day in Delhi, I am told, in awe and admiration.

Apart from the two, U.G. has no other VIP devotee. And he does not care. “I seek no one. They come in hordes to see me,” he mutters humbly. He is claimed to be an enlightened man, a fact he denies consistently. “I have no insights. I know nothing of the world. You can do what you want with what I say. I have no copyright on it. You can print it, distort it, garble it, throw it out.”

And yet it seems he enjoys hearing his own voice, delights in long-winded sentences and sprouts words for which he says he has no respect. Even after the 90-minute tape has run out, he does not stop. The words lead one into a maze that is dark and forbidding, from which there seems no way out. I leave him as I had arrived – empty-handed.

The “guru,” a man of 65, does not look his age. He is dressed in the manner of a younger man, in fawn coloured pants and a turtleneck sweater. His grey hair, bobbed like that of an old lady, is not the colour of dignity. Nor does his face have the radiance that one associates with a “realised” man. When I tell him that, he throws the ball back in my court and asks, “What is radiance, it is all in your head.” Can the interview be video-taped? “Do you ask the permission of a tree before you photograph it?” he rages back. Excepts from the conversation:

Are you related to J. Krishnamurti?

No. Like him I was born in Andhra Pradesh. And I grew up, like him, among the Theosophists.

What do you think of the violence that has gripped Lhasa?

The same thing happened when Buddhism spread to Japan. The monasteries maintained armies. Buddhism has had its share of violence. It is not all peace and harmony and all that. Anything that is born out of thought is a protective mechanism. Violence and all religious experiences are born out of the same source.

Teachings of all spiritual teachers have ended in violence. We don't blame the spiritual teachers but always the followers, exonerating the teachers. The fact that led these teachers on was a drive that borders on a manic-depressive state, a state of inner violence. In the name of God many more people have been killed than in the two recent wars put together. How do you explain that?

Thought is violence because it is trying to protect itself. There is a basic contradiction in what the body demands and the movement of thought which is interested in self-perpetuation. All the human values born out of the thinking of man are the cause of his tragedy. We have created a framework which is totally unrelated to the needs and functioning of man.

Are you saying that thought is totally unnecessary to the harmonious survival of the body?

It is necessary to a certain extent, but once it is used to achieve certain goals which are no doubt the extension of the same survival mechanism, they are bound to end in violence. Everything that is creative in nature is violent. The eruption of a volcano, for example destroys life, property and yet in the long range it is precious to the soil. Nature seems to be interested in activities which have a long-range value. I'm not sure if value is the right word. It is not interested in permanence in the way thought is.

Are the so-called primitive people, who do not think as visibly, more blessed than the so-called civilized man?

There is no question of our going back. They were not any different. Their problems were less complex. Ours is an extension of the same thing. We are preoccupied with everything that is happening around us. Life is active all the time. Thinking is when you want to achieve goals, whether materialistic or spiritual. The instrument you are using to achieve these is materialistic in value. You cannot separate the two.

Without thought, how can one be aware of life around?

You are not separate from others, from the totality of things happening around you. There is no such thing as you and me. We like to believe that we are individuals, that we have freedom of action. The totality has created you and me. You have no isolated existence. The demand to be an individual is the real cause of man's misery. The belief that we can be individuals has no foundation. The relationships we establish with near and dear ones or the world at large are basically false. Why do we need relationships? To fill a void, an emptiness, we use others.

But doesn't knowing the other also affirm one, awaken something that may have been dormant, lend an echo?

There is nothing in one which can be reawakened, there is no separate self. There is nothing to know, to find out.

How does one then live life, make it meaningful?

The problem is how to live. And that how to live is imposed on us by culture. That culture has imposed these so-called values on us. And since these values are false and we put all our effort to fit ourselves in that framework, we become an expression of that. I am not dealing with the desire, but how to deal with that desire. That's why there is violence.

So man is at war with his society. Is there no other way? What solution do you offer?

I am not offering any solutions. We are always dealing with solutions but not the problem. The problem is the meaninglessness of solutions offered by the so-called wise men. If there were solutions, why is the problem still there?

Are you saying that all the solutions so far offered by prophets and teachers are all wrong? If they are, what did these men represent?

They are all false. All those men were manic- depressive individuals like any other painter, musician or politician. They talked and talked and conned themselves. If there was truth in them why would the world be in this state? Look at the country today. You celebrate a wise man's birthday: issue a stamp, lick it and stamp him out of existence. You don't question him. Truth is a movement. You do not cross the same river twice. The moment you separate yourself from the movement, you create a stagnant pool.

You make the world seem so sordid. Is there no hope?

You create a dream and try to live it. That's all.

How do you live this dream?

The how is absent for me. The “hows” dished out in the marketplace are not for me. The one who is living doesn't ask how to live.

What is that gives meaning to any life?

There is no such thing as meaning or purpose. Only one who does not see meaning in what he is doing, seeks.

So one exists like a cabbage?

The cabbage is more alive than all the human beings alive in the world. You will be more useful to nature dead than alive. You are trying to put life into something that is dead. There is no happiness or harmony for me. Your wanting to understand what I am saying has destroyed the harmony already there. Your idea of harmony is just a concept. There is no such thing.

Do you see any value in man despite the values that the systems and religions that have imposed on him, corrupting him as you see?

There is no natural man. He is moulded and shaped by culture, genetically controlled. He has no freedom. What is it that made men con themselves into believing that they had discovered something extraordinary that they wanted to share? There are only two religions – Judaism and Hinduism. The rest of them were all a series of reactionaries – Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Mahavira. I reject them all.

My hunger has not been satisfied by anything offered by teachers alive and unborn. I have stumbled into a situation where the very demand to be free isn't there. I have experienced nothing. When they want to publish what I say or write I say they are not mine. I have no copyright on them.

No, I have no friends. I neither drink wine, tea nor coffee. I have no taste of anything until it is on my tongue. Every form of pleasure is sensual. It has no place in the living organism which is essentially involved in two things – survival and reproduction. It is a lot easier to live in a jungle than a human jungle created by thought.

There is no special way for man?

The human being should be free from “how to live”. Why look for another “how”? If man goes, nothing is lost. But unfortunately he will take everything with him, leaving behind a few cockroaches. The process of mutation will perhaps involve a species better than man.

You give me a headache.

Then go take an aspirin. Or go to the mosque and pray. I have nothing to offer. What you want is a how and I don't have it.

You have no desire to share what you have realised…

It is difficult for me to talk about myself. Everything that everybody thought, felt and experienced I have thrown out of my system. What is left is a pure thing. Shall I call it consciousness?

That pure consciousness in your case has no radiance…

What do you mean by radiance? How does it express itself? Have you looked at anything in your life? You have no way to see it if you have not yourself shed. What I have is none of the things you know of. What you see is your own creation. You can't feel it here. Empty-handed you go…