UG Archive

The Sunday Times Review , Turning Point, May 30, 1999 By Salone Mehta “Don't get me wrong, I'm not being cynical,” clarifies Mahesh Bhatt often enough to indicate that this is a repeated allegation he faces for his stark honesty. What gives this man the courage to break the mould, “not to be a party to his own myth-making…not to confuse his clothes for his skin…and not be streamlined” into conventional thought processes? “I'm pathologically opposed to authority,” Bhatt explains, trashing schools and educational institutions as “concentration camps where they cut and prune you, after talking of originality.” What has made Bhatt the filmmaker that he is? Was there one defining moment that changed his life? Becoming a filmmaker was not a turning point for him, but a natural calling, born as he was into a family of filmmakers. “The need to make money to help my mother who was rattling with problems every day, was what propelled me into cinema. Self-expression was a luxury that

The New Indian Express , Interview, Thursday, May 20, 1999 By H. R. Ranganath Free thinker, iconoclast, philosopher U G Krishnamurthi usually holds forth on life and its meaninglessness, on the mind and its non-existence. This time H R Ranganath made him speak out on politics. And UG has been at his demolishing best. Excerpts: Another election is upon us. What should a thinking citizen do? I am sorry, there are no thinking citizens in this country. If Sonia Gandhi becomes Prime Minister then I will give up my citizenship of this country. In fact, I am now asking Swiss authorities to permit me to stay there as a permanent resident. I have not been a resident of any country ever since Nehru took over. The worst that has happened to this country is Nehru becoming Prime Minister. Look at this man. He spent a better part of his life in prison. To kill time he wrote a few books. Later, he ruled this country for a very long time. But what has he done for this poor country? As Prime Minister

Indian Express , Arts, June 20, 1998 By M N Chakravarthy UG is in town. Every summer before going to Switzerland, he visits Bangalore so that his fans here can have a ‘darshan’, no, chat with him. It is difficult to describe him to the uninitiated. This is how a writer who happened to meet UG described him to a friend: Friend: I heard that you went to visit UG Krishnamurthy last night. I don't know who he is. Can you tell me something about him? Writer: He is an anti-guru. Well, he's a man totally opposed to teaching. Friend: What does he do then? Writer: Well, he teaches. No, that's not it. He sits around in other people's homes. Friend: So he lives off other people? Writer: No, he's quite well-to-do. He's just independent. Friend: And what does he do while sitting around? Writer: Talking about gurus and how much he hates them and what phonies they are - every one of them. Friend: Who listens to him? Writer: People. No, they are not disciples. They ar

Dialogues on Reality (1996) Dr. Robert Powell is widely recognized as one of the most inspired writers on the subject of Advaita, the teaching of non-duality. In each of his books, he takes us on a journey beyond the realm of the ego, beyond the subject and object, good and bad, high and low, to the ground on which the manifest universe rests. This is where the mind and intellect cannot reach and which is beyond words. Yet in these books, Dr. Powell does a masterful job clearly indicating the path to where we ever have been. Robert Powell: I am happy to see so many old faces here today. What I have decided to do for this meeting is to ask Alan to read a passage from a most unusual book that he has discovered, The Mystique of Enlightenment , by a namesake of J. Krishnamurti, a man called U.G. Krishnamurti – not because it is indispensable for our spiritual guidance or anything like that, but because it is interesting, stimulating, and it might, perhaps in some unintended way, be very