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—Khushwant Singh

What irritates U.G. is that despite his denunciation of religion and godmen, a growing number of religiously inclined men and women hang on to every word he says and regard him as a modern messiah. According to him, the cause and effect theory was fallacious and operated within the religious framework. While he agreed with me that death was a full stop to consciousness, he holds that our atomic existence continued in a different shape. That also I could not comprehend. I gave up the battle – He had too many words in his armoury for me to contend with. He has spiritual energy of demonic proportions. 

“U.G., why are you going public? Why this change?”

“I don’t want to be stigmatised as a religious teacher. Life is fire, it does not tolerate anyhing dead. Your ideas are dead. They falsify life. ...I say, drop the crutches. You may fall, but I know you will rise. I will not give you a helping hand. ...All relationships are based on mutual gratification. The whole thing springs from isolation. We are isolated from the rest of creation, from the rest of life around us.” 

“To call me a Godman is an insult not just to me but to God also,” says U.G. Money is high on his agenda and he makes no bones about it. For a Godman, U.G. is incredibly downtoearth. He walks down to the Basavanagudi post office to buy stamps, hitchhikes to Gandhi Bazar to buy a mosquito net and loves instant coffee. 

Undeniably, the most revolutionary master of our times, he has rightly been described as a “Cosmic Naxalite”. Extremely informal, he heads no organisation and does not believe in the personality cult or in a following. He wants mankind to be saved from the socalled saviours. He is convinced that the messiahs have created the mess that the people find themselves in.

Treacherous territory right from the start. The man stirs up the cobwebs of dogmaanddoctrinaire rigidity. He forces his audience to question the foundation of fondly cherished beliefs and opinions. The Sage and the Housewife her affection for him often borders on adoration, which is hardly endearing to an objective reader, yet the anecdotes expose a gentle and sensitive aspect of U.G. which renders him more likable than that obtained in the question answer format of Thought is your Enemy.

               This book achieves a reasonable bridging of the sense of distance I felt from the first book. 

“All talk of moksha, nirvana, search for truth is pure hoax practised by spiritual conmen. Love is fascist, sex is violence, thinking is born out of some neurological defect in the human body,” — U.G. as quoted in the Review

Communism, as a political ideology, has turned into another warty outgrowth of the old religious thought. He thinks that Mr Gorbachev has “sold out” to the West. He has done his part and the Soviet people should pass him by. U.G., however, warns that all sorts of religious sects will attempt to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of communism and will take the masses for a ride.  

“Why are you talking to me? You earn a living by talking to me after all,” U.G. tells the reporter.

          This search for solutions is futile, as any solution that people think they find is no different from earlier solutions. Why is everyone so afraid of anarchy? It is because they do not want change or disorder. What is order anyway?

Looking to Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti for solace can be like journeying to the Sahara to escape summer. It does not help. He offers nothing. “We are not really interested in getting rid of our problems”, says U.G. “Because by getting rid of our problems, we will also lose ourselves as we know and experience it.”

When your goals and needs are the same, it all becomes very simple. Then you have enough energy to devote to living problems. There is the $120,000 dollars that Valentine set up as his travel fund and he receives the interest on it every year, $4,000 for his air tickets and $1,000 a month as outofpocket expenses. He gives it all away. In a couple of years, half the fund will go to a kindly Indian family that looked after Valentine in her last years. “Then I will have to go and sit in some cave”, laughs U.G. 

There is something about his eyes and his voice which is extremely attractive. His grey hair falling on an intriguing face only adds to his charm. I could stare at U.G. Krishnamurti forever. I never saw U.G. as a Godman or a Guru ... That is why, when I saw him on DD, having a dialogue with Bhatt, U.G. made me sit up. For the first time I realised why Mahesh was obsessed with him.  

Review of Mahesh’s TV Interview:

“I have come to the conclusion that human beings suffer from a neurological disorder of the brain which can be corrected with chemicals. But Mankind is not ready for it as yet,” says U.G.

Mr Chandrasekhar (exPrime Minister of India) said that it was a privilege to meet a person of the stature of U.G. 

U.G. also talks like J.K. The similarities don’t end there. Their faces have a striking resemblance. Both of them choose similar idioms. Both share a Theosophical Society background. In the course of time, both rebelled against it. But while J.K. spoke calmly, U.G. gets provoked easily. He is loud and informal. In fact, he even becomes angry when you try to discuss J.K. with him.

         On music: “It is the space between two notes and melody. The same is true of languages also.”  

         On noise: “I will never reject the noise out there. It really doesn’t matter whether I listen to the traffic noise or some popular music.”

        On emotions: “I am not involved emotionally, and if there is something demanding my total attention, it doesn’t have to be a sunrise or sunset. My listening is just like this taperecorder recording whatever we are talking without bothering about correcting or rejecting.”

He resents what he calls the “the stigma of being a guru” and the fact that only those in need of religious guidance come to him. He also resents being called an iconoclast, saying that he is not interested in destroying anything but delights in making statements that shock religious sensibilities. 

It was Emerson who said that if you wanted your neighbour to believe in God, first show him what God has made you like. By this standard, I am sure I will not inspire any curiosity in anybody to meet this unparalleled person. When I had known U.G. 20 years ago he was a small flame in faroff hills. The way now the U.G. flame is spreading, it seems, it is going to engulf the world soon. Mankind will not be able to ignore this man. He is like a vast canvas on which you can paint yourself. The design, the shape, the structure that appears on the canvas are your own. 

U.G. resents being compared to Buddha, Ramana, etc. He calls his state a “Natural State”. There have been many in the past who talked in this strain. But he is the only one who decried everything that man has been held sacred and valuable and yet is called a “Jnani”.

“My opinion is not of more importance than that of the girl making coffee inside. All that man had thought, felt, and experienced before me is flushed out of my system.”

         No big deal, anyone can talk like that. But then, who dares to do it?

In an age where hope is sought and given, in a sprinkling of ashes, he offers none. Yet, the faithful flock to him. The remarkable life and times of the antiguru.

In his biography on one of India’s most enigmatic thinkers, Mahesh Bhatt recounts U.G. Krishnamurti’s experience of the rarest of all transformations – the death and rebirth of an ordinary human being.

(Review of U.G. Krishnamurti: A Life)

Mahesh Bhatt should stick to making films. This book is nothing short of a complete disaster. Fashioned as a biography, it is neither a definitive account of U.G. Krishnamurti’s life and teachings nor an honest, downtoearth portrayal of Bhatt’s own relationship with him. Ironically, though Krishnamurti debunks all gurus, he appears to have played precisely that role in the lives of many. One expected better from the director who displayed considerable emotional depth in films such as Saransh and Arth.

“Today, when the book [his biography of U.G.] is out, I am happy to find that all has not been in vain. Each time I stare, secretly, at my book sitting on a book shelf amongst a crowd of big names, I feel grateful to myself for not giving up.” —Mahesh Bhatt.

        Perhaps without meaning to, Mahesh Bhatt has written a kind of everyman’s guide to spiritualism. For those interested in U.G.’s life and works, the book with all its jerks is an invaluable asset. U.G. comes across as human and fallible, not always a likeable person. 

U.G. Krishnamurti is of course the archetypal antiguru. He declares loudly that he has no message for anybody. No guru has ever claimed that he has nothing to say, and this makes him different. He seems to practise an extreme form of humanism where God is neither necessary nor sufficient. However, precisely because he is antieverything that mankind has traditionally believed in, U.G. is fascinating, even exciting. 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 from us

To him the human being is a biochemical organism. That’s all. And the body itself is very intelligent, concerned with only its survival. U.G. takes us to the brink of the abyss, exhausting the potential of Krishnamurti’s philosophy and, indeed, destroying it. While this makes him “a festering splinter that never goes away” to quote one of his followers, he does perform the salutary and necessary function of clearing whatever garbage and debris was left behind by Krishnamurti. I think he has made a positive contribution to the continuously evolving discourse of selfdiscovery and emancipation. All his negativism only functions to clear away every kind of falsehood from our lives. 

So, that is U.G., the man who doesn’t claim to have any special powers. And yet his charisma and the simple lack of pretence drew a huge following. U.G. was a different Guru in that he did not “help” his disciples but convinced them that they are masters of their own destiny. 

As it is, one is baffled by this picture of a totally negative human being – one who specialises in despair and destruction, and yet seems to have the affection and respect of so many. A more professionally competent biographer might yet write a book on U.G., which enlarges our comprehension.

Biographies ought to be, by definition, rigorous in their scholarship, committed to authentic details and objective in the assessment of their subject. Judged from these standards, Mahesh Bhatt’s biography of U.G. Krishnamurti is, to put it mildly, disappointing. A strange aura has been growing around U.G. Mahesh Bhatt doesn’t reject any of this, nor does he view it with any suspicion. If anything, he succeeds in mystifying U.G. further. 

“What kind of human being do you want on this globe? The only answer to this human problem, if there is any answer, is not to be found through new ideas, new concepts or new ideologies, but through bringing about a change in the chemistry of the human body. You may think as a pacifist today, but tomorrow if everything you have were to be taken away from you, I would not be surprised if you were to kill me, in spite of the fact that you claim to be my best friend.”

—U.G. as quoted in the Review.

In my lexicon, this man is a spiritual terrorist who wants to blow up all the rotten images of Gods created by the frenzy of fertile minds. For me, there is nothing wrong in his terrorism. I too want to believe in notbelieving. U.G.’s maverick personality gives me solace and shows a way in this human jungle. But, ultimately, U.G. is not what we think or write about him.

“Science is as much a menace to mankind as any other systems of thought. We have no doubt reaped immense benefit from the discoveries of science, which has resulted in hitech and technology. But can you get away from this fact that its benefits have not percolated down to the common man? Science is as much an aberrant as religion is. Unfortunately it has become a handmaiden of the state and tool in the hands of the leaders of mankind.”

—U.G. as quoted in the Review

“When you have lost faith in everything, health becomes an obsession. Nutritional wisdom cannot stop the ageing process. One day through genetic engineering the process of ageing can be delayed, but it cannot be stopped. Your willingness to accept man as just a biological being like any other species on this planet is responsible for your misery. Man is nothing but a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Death occurs only when there is a need for the reshuffling of atoms. The sum total of energy remains the same. The only everlasting love, the only undying love affair it seems to me, is with myself. This unabashed, unheldback affection for oneself and acceptance of death are mutually exclusive.” 

Larry Morris has given us a delightful collection of socalled poems (epiphanies would be a better description) about his relationship with that scourge of fossilised traditions of Godfearing seekers, viz. U.G. himself. Iconoclast extraordinaire and unabashed scoundrel, in short, a “useless guy”.