The Two Seers
The Illustrated Weekly of India, Philosophy, May 25, 1986
By Mahesh Bhatt
Though they shared a common patronymic, Jiddu Krishnamurti and his contemporary, UG Krishnamurti adopted a different rationale to the conundrum of existence. While the former advocated a passive, more cerebral approach, the latter prescribed an activist attitude. Mahesh Bhatt, the well-known film director, studies the contrasting styles of the seers and asks whether U G Krishnamurti will fill the void left by the demise of Jiddu Krishnamurti a few weeks back.
“Hi UG! This is Mahesh.”
“Hello Mahesh.”
“Did you receive the article ‘Balmy Swamy’, an interview with J Krishnamurti, I mailed to you from Dubai?”
“Yes, I did. It is interesting. At least he is finally honest enough to admit that he too has become part of the entertainment industry, like a footballer. I don't think he has really taken off his mask. You know the cancer has spread from the liver to the pancreas and the old man is dying. It is a matter of days, if not hours. Sorry, the death watch has begun.”
“But the Foundation has denied it.”
“Maybe they want to build a myth around his death. You know the tradition asserts that religious teachers do not die in an ordinary way as we mortals do.”
“Are you ready for a surprise? We have suddenly decided to cut short our stay in California and return to India. What is today? Let me see. Today is February 15. We shall be arriving in Bombay on February 20 by Air India, non-stop flight from London, which arrives there before midnight.”
“Fabulous, I'll be at the airport.”
Two days later, Jiddu Krishnamurti died of pancreatic cancer.
I was stunned. Why? Why, I wonder, should these religious teachers like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Ramana Maharshi, and now J. Krishnamurti die of this dreadful cancer?
I recall what UG said when his son Vasant was dying: Cancer is no respecter of individuals – saints or sinners.
My arrangement to speed up the exit of UG through the VIP lounge was ignored by him. He came through immigration and customs as he has always done like anybody else.
During the car ride to Vijay Anand's Pali Hill flat, I asked UG: “UG, be serious and tell me how you really felt when you heard of the death of the old man.”
UG remained silent. When I persisted he talked about the weather, which I considered irrelevant. His response was un-UG like. He has always regarded the subject of JK with extreme distaste and hostility. His silence intrigued me.
Memories, memories – blurred images of JK smiling, shaking my hand gently trying to drive his point home – flooded me as I lay in my bed tossing and turning, trying to sleep. Though I did not know him intimately, I was for some reason sad. As sleep came reluctanty, the unanswered question about JK I had put to UG still loomed large there in the darkness of the room.
Next day, six in the morning, I barged into his flat. UG came out of his room fresh as a daisy. I found no traces of jet lag in him. I shot the same unanswered question at him right away. I was determined not to let him get away with his ‘better left unsaid’ attitude towards the event that had shaken one and all. The apparent indifference, the seeming apathy and that studied silence on his part pushed me further into an abysmal despair.
“Say something.”
“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to send my sympathy to those Krishnamurti freaks? Or do you want me to join the chorus of praises heaped upon him by those ardently devoted Krishnamurti enthusiasts? I am not beholden to Krishnamurti in any way. There is not much for me to say that has not already been said by me before. Why whip a dead horse? To strike a discordant note at a time like this, when glowing tributes are being paid to him and when he is being hailed as the foremost teacher of our times would be an apotheosis of vulgarity.”
I wasn't impressed. His words sounded too lame and too evasive. And then one day, I walked into UG's place with a book entitled The Ending of Time – J Krishnamurti and David Bohm, in my hand. That turned out to be like walking into a minefield. Here I am trying to capture and replay the din and the reverberations and explosions I was subjected to that day.
The following are excerpts from conversations in the book:
Dr Bohm: I think Narayan is saying that it is impossible for any material system to last forever.
Krishnamurti: I am not talking about lasting forever – though I am not sure if it can't last forever! No this is very serious, I am not pulling anybody's leg.
Dr Bohm: If all the cells were to regenerate in the body and in the brain, then the whole thing could go on indefinitely.
Krishnamurti: Look, we are now destroying the body, through drink, smoking, overindulgence in sex and all kinds of things. We are living most unhealthily, right? If the body were in excellent health, maintained right through which means no heightened emotions, no strain, no sense of deterioration, the heart functioning normally. Then why not?
Dr Bohm: Well…
Krishnamurti: Which means what? No travelling, and all the rest of it…
Dr Bohm: No excitement.
Krishnamurti: If the body remains in one quiet place I am sure it can last a great many more years than it does now…
“That joke is really priceless.
“Isn't he getting too ridiculous, carrying things to the ultimate limits of absurdity in his insistence that the body can live forever? To make such a statement in this day and age, one needs must be in the valley of green and vigorous senility. Those who are not certain of the soul and its immortal nature are the ones who swallow drivel of the immortality of the body. To have reverent affection for the man is one thing and to slur over such statements and feign agreement is another. How can you swallow that? You don't even seem to have the basic intelligence. If you accept it, you must be a low grade moron. Certainly it is the gerontologists, those dealing with the aged and the process of aging, who are the ones to make that possible in not too distant a future.”
Flashback… Drawing upon several conversations with UG recorded over years on the subject of JK, I have pieced together in this article what is germane, relevant or pertinent to it. What follows is something like a postscript on the role JK played in the life of UG.
Over the years of my association with UG, I have come across people with diverse opinions about UG's onslaught on the teachings of JK. The modern ones who are caught up in the psychological jargon feel that UG is obsessed with JK.
The religious types who view the relationship between these two through the porthole of tradition say that UG's assault on the teachings of JK is in keeping with the great tradition of India where the disciple annihilates the teachings of his guru.
The fury of UG, when on the subject of JK, is unnerving. Despite my close association with UG, I find myself still resisting all he has to say about JK. To be honest, his writings were and still are the finest works I have read. UG or no UG, JK is one of the finest men of our times.
“If that is the way you feel, it is just fine with me. For you his teachings may be full of truth and beauty. But his teachings have failed to touch my soul. The novel ideas and the mind that conceived them never interested me. Although I have never been impressed by the Victorian manners and morals, what attracted me to him at that time was his gracious attitude towards everyone. He was devoid of hypocrisy and pretense. I still consider him a beautiful human being.”
You call him a beautiful human being and yet you brush aside with derision his achievements, attainments, personality and his teachings. Don't you think that the two statements are incompatible?
What do you make of that man's contribution to mankind? What do you make of him as a man and his message? Can you deny the popularity of JK? What accounts for it?
“Because of the seductive pull of his teaching, he may seem more attractive and convincing than others in the market. It is not for me to say what his rightful place is in the world of religious thought. If the historians of human thought want to place him alongside of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed, it is their affair. But you can be sure that in the world of today, the chances of people blossoming forth are slim or none. The thirty-five leaders that are ruling the world today are the ones that will shape the minds of human beings. Unfortunately the leaders of religious movements that we have in our midst today either have become pawns in the game of power politics or have remained and will remain as ineffective movements in shaping and moulding the destiny of man.”
Hasn't he played any part in the evolution of your thinking?
“He no doubt played an important role in the evolution of my thinking.”
Why do you conceal the fact that you were in close contact with him for several years?
“I didn't live with him for several years as is believed by some. At that time, there was nothing to associate or affiliate oneself closely with him. Now of course that man has a far flung empire with foundations, schools and real estate running into millions of dollars – paradox indeed for a man who denounced organisations of every hue and colour.
“I listened to him every time he came to Madras which he did every year from 1947 to 1953.”
Why did you listen to him for seven years?
“It was noised about that he would be the messiah of the Theosophists. He accepted that role. It is an old tale most probably out of tune now. He no doubt dissolved the organisation built around him; nevertheless the gnawing question whether he was what he claimed to be remained with me. For all I know, a sort of delusional separation from the messiahhood mission May have occurred in him. But did he actually free himself from the mission set for him? His delusional concepts projected as truth and the illusion of experiencing something that is not there falsified his teaching. That filled me with an eerie feeling that something was wrong with him. I found him to be more neurotic than those who went to listen to him. You can psychoanalyse him everlastingly. What is the point?
“When once you have placed your confidence in the teacher and believe him to be in possession of it… my whole interest in him hung on that single thread. When once I perceived the limitations and illusions of his teachings, I said to myself: this is the end of the road. He is just a hesitant guru who will unfortunately leave behind a ‘no-guru-is-necessary cult’. That is all there is to it.”
On December 13, 1953, in the city of Madras, a question was put to JK in one of his talks:
Sir, what kick exactly do you get out of these talks and discussions? Obviously you would not go on for more than 20 years if you do not enjoy them. Or, is it only force of habit?
Krishnamurti: This is a natural question to put, is it not? Because, the questioner only knows or is aware that generally the speaker gets a kick out of it, some kind of personal benefit. Or is it merely old age? Or, whether one is young or old, is it the habit? That is all he is accustomed to, so he puts the question.
What is the truth of this? Am I speaking out of habit? What do you mean by habit, force of habit? Because I have talked for 20 years, am I going to talk for 20 more years till I die? Is the understanding of anything habitual? The use of the words is habitual, but the contents of the words vary according to the perception of truth from moment to moment. If a speaker gets a kick out of it, then he is exploiting you. That is what most of us are used to. The speaker is then using you as a means of fulfillment, and surely it would destroy that which is real. As we are concerned to find the truth and what is from moment to moment, in it there can be no continuity – all habit, all certainty, all desire for fulfillment, all personal aggrandisement must have come to an end, must it not? Otherwise, it is another way of exploiting, another way of deluding people, and with that surely we are not concerned.
Nobody knew who the questioner was. It was none other than UG. This resulted in a meeting of these two unique personalities which led to daily encounters for 30 days and later again for 10 days in 1954.
Here are a few excerpts of a letter from Professor T.M.P. Mahadevan, head of the philosophy department, University of Madras, asking him to extend an invitation to Jiddu Krishnamurti, to speak to the students:
“I do not belong to any organisation and am no devotee of any religion or any particular religious teacher. I do not have any connection with Krishnamurti Writing Incorporation or any gathering committees that arrange his talks here in Europe, or there in India, or elsewhere. It is not that I am interested in spreading his word but that I have often felt, and still feel, that he should be asked, if he has time, to address young people in the universities too.
“He has talked for 40 years. Krishnamurti is unchanged, except he looks a little older. Isn't it extraordinary that the augury of what had once been deemed only a fancy of Theosophist-occultists, although by its own definition that legend is now false, has turned out to be an outstanding prophesy? The spontaneity and freshness that radiate from every word comes like a cool mountain breeze to those who are sick to death of smelly little orthodoxies and pat philosophical and political theories.”
Was this letter an expression of a genuine feeling towards JK or was it a labored panygeric?
“It was a formally written letter at the request of the secretary and the yoga teacher of JK, take it or leave it.”
Like it or not, UG is here to stay as a unique personality of our times.
In the end, they say, there is a new beginning. Those who are estimating and evaluating the contribution of the two Krishnamurtis to mankind maintain that UG Krishnamurti begins where J Krishnamurti ends. Does it mean that one era has faded out and the new one is fading in? Or, are we just going to have a new old man on the scene – if that be the case, it is just too bad…
•
Question: Should the Ten Commandments be destroyed?
J. Krishnamurti: Aren't they already destroyed? Do they exist now? Perhaps in the prayer book, petrified, to be worshipped as ideals, but in actuality they do not exist. For many centuries man has been guided through fear, forced, compelled to act according to certain standards; but the highest form of morality is to do a thing for its own sake, not for a motive or for a reward. Now, instead of being coerced to follow a pattern, we have to find out individually what is true morality. This is one of the most difficult things to do, to find out for oneself how to act truly; it demands intelligence, a continual adjustment, not the following of a law or a system, but an intense awareness, discernment in the moment of action itself. And this can be only when the mind is liberating itself, with understanding, from fear and compulsions.
Rio de Janeiro 4th Public Talk
10th May, 1935
