U. G. Krishnamurti
Encyclopedia : U : UG : UGK : U. G. Krishnamurti
Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti (born July 9, 1918) better known as U.G. Krishnamurti, or just U.G., says he is not a guru or a teacher or a philosopher of any kind. Yet some people say he is "enlightened". This makes him interesting to many people. His ideas and statements are quite iconoclastic in nature and are antagonistic to the commonly held values of society; and are liable to be criticized by a vast majority of people.
Introduction
Many people have sought U.G. Krishnamurti for guidance on spiritual and metaphysical matters, but he has time and again stated that he has no teaching to give and that it is impossible for such a teaching to be transmitted between persons in any case. At the same time, he also says that "enlightenment", spirituality, charity, selflessness are not important anyway, and suggests that bothering with these things is a mistake. He writes no books, but instead others record his talks and publish them in book form. He has been called an anti-guru, and states that "a real guru, if there is one, frees you from himself." He says that he is not trying to sell anything and claims that he does not care whether people believe him or not. Since his experiences cannot be (and have not been) verified by other people, this article includes descriptions of happenings in the life of UG, as described by UG.The main theme which emerges from the discussions with him is the impossibility and non-necessity of any human change, radical or mundane. U.G. repeats endlessly that the body and its actions are already perfect, and attempts to change or mold the body or its actions are pure and simple violence. The psyche or self or mind, an entity which he denies has any being, is composed of nothing but this demand to bring about change in either the material or in itself. The human self-consciousness is not a thing, but a movement, one characterized by perpetual malcontent and a "fascist" insistence on its own importance and survival.
He also claims that the reason people come to him and to gurus is to find solutions to ease their everyday real problems or for solutions to a fabricated problem, namely, the search for spirituality and enlightenment. He continues to say this drive is caused by the cultural environment, which demands conformity of individuals and places within them the desire to be special. Consequently, it is this need that is exploited by gurus, spiritual teachers, and sellers of "shoddy goods", who pretend to offer the way to reach that goal but never deliver and cannot since the goal is itself unreachable.
Early life
U.G. was born on July 9, 1918 in Masulipatam, India, and raised in the nearby town of Gudivada,Andhra Pradesh. His mother died 7 days after he was born and he was brought up by his maternal grandfather, a wealthy Brahmin lawyer, who was also involved in the Theosophical Society. In Mystique of Enlightenment, U.G. told this story about his grandfather:
- "My grandfather used to meditate. (He is dead, and I don't want to say anything bad about him.) He used to meditate for one or two hours in a separate meditation room. One day a little baby, one and a half or two years old, started crying for some reason. That chap came down and started beating the child, and the child almost turned blue -- and this man, you see, meditating two hours every day. 'Look! What is this he has done?' That posed a sort of (I don't want to use the psychological term, but there is no escape from it) a traumatic experience -- 'There must be something funny about the whole business of meditation. Their lives are shallow, empty. They talk marvelously, express things in a very beautiful way, but what about their lives? There is this neurotic fear in their lives: they say something, but it doesn't operate in their lives. What is wrong with them?' -- not that I sat in judgement over those people."
- : — (Krishnamurti, U.G.; Arms, Rodney, Ed. (Third Edition, 2001). Mystique of Enlightenment. Part One. Retrieved April 18, 2005 from [link])
Meetings with J.Krishnamurti
From 1947 to 1953, U.G. regularly attended talks given by Jiddu Krishnamurti in Madras, finally beginning a direct dialogue with J. Krishnamurti in 1953. U.G. describes one of their meetings as follows:"We really didn't get along well. Whenever we met we locked horns over some issue or other. For instance, I never shared his concern for the world, or his belief that his teaching would profoundly affect the thoughts and actions of mankind for the next five hundred years--a fantasy of the Theosophist occultists. In one of our meetings I told Krishnamurti, 'I am not called upon to save the world.' He asked, 'The house is on fire--what will you do?' 'Pour more gasoline on it and maybe something will rise from the ashes,' I remarked. Krishnamurti said, 'You are absolutely impossible.' Then I said, 'You are still a Theosophist. You have never freed yourself from the World Teacher role. There is a story in the Avadhuta Gita which talks of the avadhut who stopped at a wayside inn and was asked by the innkeeper, "What is your teaching?" He replied, "There is no teacher, no teaching and no one taught." And then he walked away. You too repeat these phrases and yet you are so concerned with preserving your teaching for posterity in its pristine purity.'"
Their dialogues continued, but finally came to a halt. U.G. describes the final discussion as follows:
"Again I asked him if there was anything behind the abstractions he was throwing at me, 'Come clean for once.' Then he said with great force, 'You have no way of knowing it!' Then I said, 'If I have no way of knowing it and you have no way of communicating it, what the hell have we been doing! I have wasted seven years listening to you. You can give your precious time to somebody else. I am leaving for New York tomorrow.'"
After the break with J.Krishnamurti, U.G. went to the United States seeking medical treatment for his son, and stayed there for 5 years.
London period
U.G. ultimately separated from his family and went to London where he lived a bleak existence, alone and penniless, wandering the streets, often depending on the charity of others for survival. While sitting one day in Hyde Park, he was confronted by a police officer who threatened to lock him up if he didn't leave the park. Down to his last five pence, U.G. made his way to the Ramakrishna Mission of London where he met with the residing Swami, who gave him money for a hotel room for the night. The following day, U.G. began working for the Ramakrishna Mission for a period of 3 months. About this time, J.Krishnamurti was in London and the two Krishnamurtis renewed their acquaintance. J.Krishnamurti tried to advise U.G. on his recent marital troubles but U.G. didn't want his help. Still, J.Krishnamurti persuaded U.G. to attend a few talks he was giving in London. U.G. attended the talks but found himself bored listening to J.Krishnamurti's same old routine. In 1961, U.G. put an end to his relationship with his wife, who had recently been suicidal (she later underwent shock therapy and died of an accident in 1963). U.G. then left London and spent 3 months living in Paris, using funds he had obtained by selling his unused return ticket to India, during which time he ate a different variety of cheese each day. Down to his last 150 francs, he went to Geneva.Early Swiss Period
After two weeks in Geneva, U.G. was unable to pay his hotel bill and sought refuge from the Indian Consulate where he met a Swiss woman named Valentine de Kerven, who was active in experimental theatre and a former associate of Antonin Artaud. Valentine and U.G. became close friends and she provided him a home in Switzerland. It was the beginning of a lifelong relationship. By 1967, U.G. was still concerned with the subject of enlightenment, wanting to know what that state was, which all the sages were said to have attained, such as Buddha. Hearing that J.Krishnamurti was giving a talk in Saanen, U.G. decided to attend. During the talk, J.Krishnamurti was describing his own state and U.G. thought that it referred to him (U.G.). He explains it as follows:'Why did I want to know his state? He was describing something, `movements', `awareness', `silence'-- `In that silence there is no mind; there is action.' I said to myself, `I am in that state. What the hell have I been doing these thirty or forty years, listening to all these people and struggling, wanting to understand his state or the state of someone else, Buddha or Jesus? I am in that state. Now I am in that state.'
U.G. left the tent where the talk was being held, and finally permanently broke with J.Krishnamurti.
Calamity
The next day, on his 49th birthday, U.G. experienced what he termed a "calamity", a series of bizarre physiological transformations which took place over the course of a week, impacting all of his senses and finally resulting in a deathlike experience. He describes it this way:"I call it 'calamity' because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen."
Upon the 8th day:
"There was a tremendous outburst of energy--tremendous energy shaking the whole body and along with the body, the sofa, the chalet and the whole universe--shaking, vibrating. You cannot cause that movement.... Whether it was coming from outside or inside, from below or above, I didn't know--I couldn't locate the spot. It lasted for hours and hours.... There was nothing I could do to stop it; I was totally helpless. This went on for days. It's a very painful process. It's a physical pain--it has a form, a shape of its own. It is like a river in spate. The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body; it is not interested; it has its own momentum. It is not an ecstatic, blissful beatitude and all that rubbish!"
Post-Calamity
After his calamity experience, U.G. remained based primarily in Switzerland but often embarked on various travels in other countries around the world. He swiftly gained a reputation as an enlightened person, though he always refused the label. Many people sought him for answers to their spiritual dilemmas, and he was always willing to talk with them, but staunchly posits that he has nothing to teach and that no one can really learn about enlightenment by depending on someone else as an authority, teacher or guide.Philosophy
Although denouncing conceptual systems, U.G. may be compared with early Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Diogenes--not only because his 'thought' is all given orally and discursively rather than in writing, but also because he deals in aporias (Socrates) and espouses a materialist, cynical world vision (Diogenes). Extensively educated in philosophy at Oxford, UG is comfortable referencing such thinkers as Kant and Bertrand Russell. Insofar as 'a' philosophy can be teased out of his conversations, it appears to be one of extreme nominalism and skepticism, comparable in some respects to the British empiricists and the Enlightenment philosopher Hammann--although U.G., by contrast, does not believe in the concept of the mind as tabula rasa, and sees a negative value in faith. Thirdly, U.G.'s emphasis on corporeality and his nominalist, constructivist interpretation of discourse allows him to be associated with Artaud, Nietzsche and the French poststructuralists. Foucault, for instance, wrote: "The body is the prisoner of the soul," and Deleuze & Guatarri's thoughts on the 'body without organs' could usefully be compared to U.G.'s descriptions of his physiologically mutated condition. In U.G.'s thought, a person's biology, not personality, is the source of true individuality. Whereas thought is inherently collective and conformist--a matter of inter-referential signifiers and floating abstractions--the body is irreducibly unique. While compelling, this thesis can appear blind to the ways biology has genetic tropes and opaque, arbitrary residues of its own.
Quotations
- "The moment you repeat that which is not yours, you have become the follower of somebody."
- "If books and talks could change people, this world would become a paradise."
- "If you want really to learn something, school is the last place to go."
- "Once you are relieved of the burden of culture, any potential will be exposed. What stands in the way is the culture, all the teachers and what they have taught."
- "When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn't there any more, you are not in conflict with yourself."
- "I am not out to liberate anybody. You have to liberate yourself, and you are unable to do that. What I have to say will not do it. I am only interested in describing this state, in clearing away the occultation and mystification in which those people in the 'holy business' have shrouded the whole thing. Maybe I can convince you not to waste a lot of time and energy, looking for a state which does not exist except in your imagination."
- But unfortunately, in the market place, we have many claimants who say that they are enlightened, and they are in turn out to enlighten everybody. There is a market for that kind of thing. The demand and supply principle is responsible for that. But actually an enlightened man or a free man, if there is one, is not interested in freeing or enlightening anybody. This is because he has no way of knowing that he is a free man, that he is an enlightened man. It is not something that can be shared with somebody, because it is not in the area of experience at all."
- "Your minds pose as much a threat to the future of mankind as the nuclear weapons. The hydrogen bomb has its origin in the jawbone of an ass. The caveman used it to kill his neighbor. Here your civilized man is doing what the caveman did but you do it for the `good of mankind.' Those who still hold that right is all on their side and that their eternal good will burn away the evil of others are the real enemies of mankind."
- "To be an individual and to be yourself you don't have to do a thing. Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy -- the will, the effort -- we waste trying to become that! If that energy is released, what is it that we can't do? How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world!"
- "All learning, all teaching is for destructive purposes. You learn about the laws of nature to control and dominate your neighbor. It's a game of one-upmanship. I'm not saying anything against it. I'm just saying that's the way it is. All learning, all teachings are 'war games'. Winning all the time is all that you are interested in. Charity is the filthiest invention of the human mind: first you steal what belongs to everyone; then you use the policeman and the atom bomb to protect it. You give charity to prevent the have-nots from rebelling against you. It also makes you feel less guilty. All do-gooders feel 'high' when they do good."
- "On one occasion, when I asserted with great vehemence that whatever happened to me had happened despite everything, despite my visit to Ramana Maharshi, despite my contacts with J. Krishnamurti and my personal conversations with him, and despite all the things that were expected of somebody who wanted to be an enlightened man, one friend in the audience said, 'We cannot accept your statement of "despite"....' He said that my statements were irrelevant. 'The problem is very simple,' he said. 'If we accept what you are saying, namely, that whatever has happened to you has happened regardless of what you did, and that everything you did was irrelevant, we lose the only hope that we have in you. We still feel that although we have lost faith in them all, we cannot lose faith in you.' I told him that that is the one thing that is standing there in him which makes it impossible for him to free himself from whatever he is trying to free himself from, because he has replaced one thing with another. That is all that we can do. One illusion is replaced by another illusion and one teacher is replaced by another teacher."
- "I have no particular message for mankind, except to say that all holy systems for obtaining enlightenment are nonsense and that all talk of arriving at a psychological mutation through awareness is rubbish. Psychological mutation is impossible. The natural state can happen only through biological mutation."
External links
- [http://www.well.com/user/jct/]
- [http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/]
- [http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/ug_video/ugv_bcpa2_2/relationship.ram]
- [http://www.julius.it/ugkrishnamurti/]
- [The Natural State; in the words of U. G. Krishnamurti, edited by Peter Maverick]
- [Raging Sage and Killing The Buddha]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.