The guru who had no message
Sunday Chronicle, January 24, 1993
By Mammen Thomas
I am not a film-goer. In fact I consider most of our films an insult to my intelligence. However, just to keep in touch I see a couple of feature films every year. Recently, courtesy of Doordarshan, I saw a film titled Daddy. It was directed by Mahesh Bhatt, and his daughter Pooja was the heroine. “Here's a man who is capable of good movies,” I thought to myself. The film had all the masala elements – such as a gazhal-lover who defies his favourite singer – and it was mushy at places. But there was also a refreshing touch of refinement, and quite some genuine humor too. I wondered, “What sort of person is Mahesh Bhatt?” Now I know. He is well-educated, urbane, and writes superb English. And he is also struck by a common malady of modern man, to which people of the film world, with their fame, money and meaningless pursuits, are specially susceptible: the need to seek gurus who they hope will somehow enable them to find purpose in life even when they continue to worship the gods of razzmatazz.
U.G. Krishnamurti, the subject of Mahesh Bhatt's book, is of course the archetypal anti-guru. He declares loudly that he has no message for anybody. And that attracts people to him in droves. No guru has ever claimed that he has nothing to say, and this makes him different, interesting. It also creates the lurking feeling that maybe this is the man who really has a message since he is so humble about the whole thing. A friend of mine once interviewed a sadhu known for his vast erudition. “Why do you wear expensive silk saffron, and have so many beautiful women as disciples?” he asked. The saint was livid with anger. “Are you jealous?” he screamed at the top of his voice. My friend says that he did not publish the interview because he was afraid of the repercussions. Krishnamurti is a lamb in comparison.
However, Krishnamurti also claims that he died and came back to life. Now that is an extraordinary claim to make. Does he mean brain-death, when grey matter ceases to function? Coming back to life from that state seems impossible. Quite likely, there are intermediate stages from where, God willing, you can bounce back.
That brings us to the glaring “omission” in Krishnamurti’s non-message: there is no mention of God. It is as if he has closed his mind to this possibility. He seems to practise an extreme form of humanism where God is neither necessary nor sufficient.
However, precisely because he is anti-everything that mankind has traditionally believed in, Krishnamurti is fascinating, even exciting. Take for instance the following paragraph…. “But one thing I can say with certainty is that the very thing I searched for all my life was shattered to pieces. The goals that I had set for myself, self-realisation, God-realisation, transformation, radical or otherwise, were all false. And there was nothing there to be realised and nothing to be found there. The very demand to be free from anything, even the physical needs of the body, just disappeared. And I was left with nothing. Therefore, whatever comes out of me now depends on what you draw from me.” The reference here is to his “death” or the calamity as Krishnamurti calls it. And it is clear that the experience was cataclysmic and brought about an upheaval that left his personality permanently altered. It is quite possible that his mental and spiritual faculties reached a level of receptivity normally not possible to ordinary human beings.
Perhaps it would even be correct to say that the experience left him drained of the normal motivations of man, especially self-interest which is considered necessary for survival. The following quotation will illustrate the point: “What I am left with is something extraordinary – extraordinary in the sense that it has been possible for me not through any effort, not through any volition of mine. Everything that every man thought, felt and experienced before has been thrown out of my system.”
“Your natural state has no relationship to the religious states of bliss, beatitude and ecstacy. They lie within the field of experience. Those who have led man on his search for religiousness throughout the centuries have perhaps experienced these religious states. So can you. They are thought-induced states of being and as they come, so do they go…. The timelessness can never be experienced, can never be grasped, contained, much less given expression to by any man. That beaten-track will lead you nowhere. There is no oasis situated yonder. You are stuck with the mirage.”
Krishnamurti therefore seems to make a distinction between the religious experience and the natural state if man which he is privy to. This natural state, which comes out of the draining away of much that man clings to, seems to result in a personality singularly in empathy with the outside, especially with other personalities. Many incidents mentioned in the book accentuate this fact: Krishnamurti quietening a restless panther with an order; Krishnamurti being photographed with a young girl, a total stranger, asking for the photograph which she duly frames to hang in her room; the help he gives to Parveen Babi when the film star's personality was on the point of disintegrating; the considerable source of meaning and inspiration he has been to Mahesh Bhatt himself. The examples could be multiplied.
Regrettably, as Krishnamurti himself repeatedly emphasises, the natural state of emancipation cannot be taught. You either experience it or you don't. So what do poor mortals like me do to find peace and meaning in life? This is the paradox of the situation. When a guru has nothing to offer, we can only admire him and see some of the effects he has on man and nature. We are unable to emulate him because the secret is hidden forever from us.
Or is it that the life of the guru, the totality of his rejection of everything, and resultant splendour of personality is an affirmation of the very God he fails to acknowledge? If this is so, then probably the “poor” of the world can be satisfied with what a great saint said many years ago: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.” Perhaps the complete rejection of self-interest is the same as the total acceptance of God and His truth!
