The Raging Sage
The Illustrated Weekly of India, First Person, March 31-April 6, 1985
By Mahesh Bhatt
On October 26, 1979, U G Krishnamurti, UG as he is known, put me in a cab and said: “When you look back, you will see for yourself that this was the happiest day of your life. Go, Mahesh, and carve out a future for yourself. You cannot help this girl. This is finished.” That ended my two-and-a-half-year-old relationship of dependence and mutual exploitation with Parveen Babi. She was with UG in Bangalore recovering from the first major mental breakdown. I don't want to dwell long on this subject. I must confess that not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that this would change the entire course of my life.
UG left me stripped, shattered and alone. My façades collapsed. I realised that at any given point in my life, I was a total failure. My only identity in the scheme of things was that of a flop director, talked about only as Parveen Babi's boyfriend. Yet, at that time the encounter with this blunt fact gave me an extraordinary drive to become somebody. “Don't make a virtue of failure. I will never forgive you, if you are not a success,” added UG rubbing salt into my wounds. Six years later, as I sit here writing this, I realise that by amputating me from the sordid, dependent relationship and not even offering a helping hand as a crutch, UG gave me the courage to walk. Today, I look back and call that, the happiest day of my life.
“What are you, UG?” asked the eighty-four-year-old Swiss lady, over lunch, the other day. She has been with UG for over 20 years and most of us at the table stared blankly at her. That startling question is, in fact, the question of all those who have come in contact with UG.
A friend of mine who is referred to as ‘one of those intellectuals’ was instrumental in introducing UG to me. And he himself has been in a dilemma for years in figuring out ‘who and what UG is’. His efforts are frustrated at every turn. So he decided to put this question to the I Ching, the ancient mystical classic of China. He got this surprising answer in the book. ‘He is not a guru, not a priest, not a teacher, not a servant. He has no interest in enlightening you and, in fact, does not intend to do anything. He burns brightly with passion and without purpose. He is as lost without you as you are without him. His light dies if you do not reflect it. Your life is dark without his light.’ And I might add, that passion is certainly not that of an evangelist.
Here for the first time, in the history of mankind, is a man who talks of enlightenment as a neuro-biological state of being. He says that it is utterly free of religious, psychological or mystical implications. This represents a whole new concept, a new and genuinely fresh approach to that thing called enlightenment. He also scoffs at serious and sacred things, at religion, and particularly at the whole idea of enlightenment. For the religious buffs, his shocking statements are largely unacceptable and may even sound like that of a man, wise in his own conceit.
And yet, what he says has a tremendous significance to those who are searching for enlightenment. UG does not give lectures or write books. Furthermore, he emphatically says, “If you are searching for the one who will enlighten you, you have come to the wrong man.” Despite this, I wonder why hundreds and hundreds of people – they are neither asked to come nor to go – have passed through the portals of his residences in California, Switzerland, India and elsewhere. Why, I ask myself often, do I go and hang around this man? To the outsider, as well as to my near and dear ones, my being constantly with him during his entire stay in Bombay, neglecting even my work, looks as if I am totally dependent on him – like a dog on a leash. Yet, whatever I am today, is entirely due to him. I never hesitate to record my debt to him. As far as I know, he is the one and only one who doesn't abuse or take advantage in any way of those who come under his influence.
On his 49th birthday, UG died. And what brought him back to life was a mundane call the landlady said was for him. Now, the question that arises is what brought about this death? It would be impossible to go into the details, because then I would have to tell the full story of UG, his life. A quotation from The Mystique of Enlightenment should suffice.
“What brought me back to life, I don't know, I can't say anything about that, because the experiencer was finished – there was nobody to experience that death at all.” He insists that it was completely a physical and not a psychological death. From that point, his life was not under his control nor was there any entity controlling it.
He maintains that he is an automaton, a sophisticated computer plus a robot, that is functioning the way it was programmed; so are the rest of us humans whether we like it or not. That may be the reason why he dwells on death much too much for our comfort.
I am vividly reminded of the talk UG and I had when my son was born three years ago. It was before the crack of dawn when my wife had her labour pains. I rushed her to the hospital and delivered her into the hands of my mother. I went to UG. As dawn broke, we chatted on the subject of birth and creativity. “Birth is painful to the mother as well as to the child, but that pain does not leave any scars. Just forget all that hokum about traumatic experience of childbirth and the attendant emotional shock having a lasting effect on you for the rest of your life. Freud, that fuddy-duddy founder of psychoanalysis is outdated, and his most complex theories, considered to be theories of all times, have lost their relevance except for those who make a living out of it. The child who is going to be born will be an expression of distinctive individuality. I know what I am talking about. We can ignore the know-it-alls on the subject of childbirth. Never was a child like that and never will there be a child like that in the future. Nature is the only thing that is creative. It doesn't use anything as a model.”
I asked, “Do you mean to say there is nothing to the creativity of artists, poets, musicians, sculptors, etc?” UG said, “The creativity you are talking about is not only a cheap imitation of a model that is already there in nature, but also sordid in its expression. They assume importance because they have recommendation and commendation of your spiritual, artistic and intellectual values. That drive for self-expression is born out of neurosis. This applies to spiritual teachers of mankind too. There is no such thing as a direct sense experience. All forms of art are nothing but an expression of sensuality.” This jolted me out of my wits. It knocked off the whole image I have of myself as a creative film maker.
It is no wonder that it gives comfort to those who are awed by their own intellects and abstract reasonings and purposeful thoughts etc to call this man a fraud. It was at the Mysore University campus, at the house of the head of the philosophy department, where UG made this astounding statement when the professor introduced him as a godman.
“To remove any possible doubt from your mind, let me assure you, I am not a godman. I would rather be called a fraud than a godman.” The gathering consisted of some heads of departments, some research students, leaders of some religious orders, poets, writers and the various etceteras. UG was in his element. He was like a raging bull. His fury was stunning. It was strangely attractive. What happened there is still fresh in my mind.
“The quest for God has become such an obsessive factor in the lives of human beings because of the impossibility of achieving pleasure without pain,” he said. “That messy thing called mind has created many destructive things. By far the most destructive of them all is God. God has become the ultimate pleasure. The variations of that – self-realisation, moksha, liberation, the fashionable transformation gimmicks, first and last freedom and all the freedoms that come in between – are the ones that are pushing man into a manic depressive state. Thank God, they are not clinical cases yet. “Somewhere along the line of evolution, man experienced self-consciousness for the first time in contradistinction to the way consciousness is functioning in other species. It was there, in that division of consciousness, that God, along with the nuclear doctrine that is threatening the extinction of all that nature has created with such tremendous care, was born.
“No power on this earth, no God, no avatar, no Krishnamurti can halt this. Man is doomed. He has no freedom of action. What all we can do is to wait for the end of the world – talking of steps to stop a nuclear holocaust. This may sound like a Jeremiah or apocalyptic warning of a prophet of doom.”
“Are you not taking away from us the hope?” questioned an upset leader of a religious movement. “Am I? I am no jaunty optimist. You can all live in hope and die in hope.” The religious buff walked out livid with anger. UG did not even bat an eyelid.
I was watching a man who had a supercilious look on his face. He was waiting for a chance to have a go at UG. Here, he thought, was his much-awaited opportunity. “I don't think you are saying anything different than J Krishnamurti. Yet why are you cynical about him? Do you question the honesty and integrity of the man?” he hit out. An emphatic ‘No’ was UG's answer. The man did not give up. “I have heard it said that you single him out for attack every time you get an opportunity. Rajneesh has given four lectures against you. You have not said a word against him or any other guru.”
UG answered, “Gurus play a social role – so do call girls – while Krishnamurti puts you on a merry-go-round, price or no price. Unfortunately, in society what the gurus are offering is not only socially acceptable but also considered the be-all and end-all of our existence. The others are not. You choose what suits you best.
“Krishnamurti is not even in my consciousness. When the whole Krishnamurtian lingo is thrown at me, I find it necessary to point out the absurdity of all these empty words and empty phrases. What is of importance to me is to point out that there is nothing to be transformed in them. The whole talk of transformation, radical or otherwise, is pigposh. He says there is. I say there is not. Where does that leave you? You are in the most awkward situation of accepting one or the other as an act of faith. Sorry. Why he does what he does is his own affair. For what I know, he has raised self-deception into a fine art and trapped you all.”
Suddenly a parapsychologist butted in: “Do you have any comment to make on clairvoyance, clairaudience, extra sensory perception and psychic phenomenon?” UG nodded and explained, “Man is one of the species on this planet to inherit these things in common with all the other species. Man in his anxiety to maintain his non-existing and illusory identity, has been using thought to translate the sensory perception. Now the yogis are promising them back to us and making a business out of it. It is indeed a lasting shame that all of you are falling for it. Let me give you an example of how effectively it operates in animals. In Switzerland, where we live, up in the Alps, hunting of deer is permitted from the 16th of September every year. Would you believe it! On the 15th of September hordes and hordes of deer come down from all over into the safety of the animal sanctuary, next door to us. What explanation do you have for this phenomenon!”
At this point, a politician waylaid him as it were and asked: “If humanity is to be saved from the chaos of its own making, what role can India play in restoring peace to mankind? Can the heritage of India be of any value to mankind?” UG's answer was, “India has neither the spiritual power nor the material strength to be of any help to mankind. Sorry.”
The sageness of this man called UG is not acquired by years of learning and experience. What spills out of him does not seem to have a laboured feel. What could be the source of it? For those who cannot make sense out of what he says, to them it may sound like the rantings of a raving maniac. Whatever it is, when he left, the room had a feel as if hit by a raging storm. Then recently, a famous film star made a pass at my woman. This literally drove me mad. Every cell in my body vibrated with jealousy. I felt like strangling that man and my woman. I fought hard with the upsurge of my wild emotions and realised that it was a losing battle. So, I ran up to UG and asked him, “Is it possible for me to be free from jealousy and at the same time have sex, pleasure, companionship, exchange ideas and opinions with my girlfriend?” UG said: “Your wanting to kill that man and your woman is something natural. That is a healthy reaction. If you felt otherwise for any reason, religious or otherwise, then something is wrong with you. You are a sick man.”
“What culture has done to you is, unfortunately, to turn you into a hypocrite. When someone makes a pass at your woman, or when you suspect unfaithfulness, you are bound to be tortured by jealousy, by hate, by anger and the agony that is going on in you. If some ugly saint in the marketplace says that it is possible and that there is a way out and that you can be free from jealousy and yet have sex and the rest of it, he is taking you for a ride. I am sorry. I can't swallow that pill. Sex and jealousy are the opposite sides of the same coin. If jealousy goes, sex goes too. If you can make it possible without going mad, good luck to you.”
Every time I go to him, my mental processes are put to rout. I go to UG for help and what I get is despair. The hopelessness of my situation was like the story of a man who is lost in a pitch dark jungle. He is in great pain because of a thorn stuck in his foot. He gropes around and finds another thorn to remove the thorn which is causing him agony. Instead of freeing himself of the first thorn, what he finds to his dismay is now he is stuck with two thorns instead of one. So, here I am now stuck with two thorns – jealousy and despair. It is a dead end. I see no way out. Perhaps the only way out of this feeling of utter hopelessness and desperation is to resort to an action of recklessness.
It was two in the morning when this drunken man walked into UG's house and rang his bell. He opened the door. And I said: “I want to kill you. Why the hell did I ever have to meet a man like you? No matter what topic I begin with, it ultimately ends up in despair.” UG said: “Why don't you sleep, Mahesh? There is the sofa and there is the blanket. If you want to kill me you will do well to wait till tomorrow when people will be around and make a ritual of the whole thing.” Minutes later, I bid him good night kissing his hand “UG, I love you.”
