A Roaring Peace U. G. KRISHNAMURTI

UG KRISHNAMURTI - ROARING PEACE

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A Roaring Peace

Meetings and conversations with

UG Krishnamurti Robert Cornelis Smit


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CONTENTS

Foreword Preface Three Types Of Lines UG Says... 1

Don’t Play the Giddy Goal Any help from the gurus makes us helpless

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Different From All the Winds of Heaven Every image of UG is always the wrong image

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Philosophy Is Just a Bag of Moonshine Main differences between the old- or new-fashioned philosophies and UG’s ‘tornado’

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From the Very Beginning The story of UG’s strange youth

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Right Progress on the Wrong Track UG’s death and birth in his 49th year of life

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Five Senses Creating One Soul A 20th Century scientific Bhagavad Gita

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The Disillusionm Disillusionment ent of Oneness Experiences of oneness are merely knowledge

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Not Seeing the Wood for the Trees Philosophy schools can only see one lonely tree

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There Is ‘Nobody’ Who Feels the Pain UG’s biological changes

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When the Saints Go Marching Out Together with the Devil the saints have to go

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CONTENTS

Foreword Preface Three Types Of Lines UG Says... 1

Don’t Play the Giddy Goal Any help from the gurus makes us helpless

2

Different From All the Winds of Heaven Every image of UG is always the wrong image

3

Philosophy Is Just a Bag of Moonshine Main differences between the old- or new-fashioned philosophies and UG’s ‘tornado’

4

From the Very Beginning The story of UG’s strange youth

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Right Progress on the Wrong Track UG’s death and birth in his 49th year of life

6

Five Senses Creating One Soul A 20th Century scientific Bhagavad Gita

7

The Disillusionm Disillusionment ent of Oneness Experiences of oneness are merely knowledge

8

Not Seeing the Wood for the Trees Philosophy schools can only see one lonely tree

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There Is ‘Nobody’ Who Feels the Pain UG’s biological changes

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When the Saints Go Marching Out Together with the Devil the saints have to go

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It Is a Physical Impossibil Impossibility ity The teachers and their teachings are responsible for the mess in this world

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One More Chapter, One More Useless Answer The dog dropping shit excels all meditation

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The Difference between a Photo and a Tent Our search for Truth and Life is always in the wrong direction

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Try, Try and Try, and In The Meantime People Die Wanting peace is creating war

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Still Life Full Of Action UG’s original vision of art and creativity

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Valentine The life of UG’s Western ‘Holy Mother’

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Omniscience, Omniscien ce, a Matter of Knack Outside the knowledge itself, are there things to know?

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Man Dies by Hope We are imprisoned by our own attempt to escape

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A Roaring Peace Our ‘divine peace’ is merely a sensual activity

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This Text. . . “That Thou Art” The most superficial thing in the world can be the innermost soul of man

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The Holy Hook Hooker er Saints are always having sex with God

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UG’s Tornado Just Hits and Goes - Finished A destructive way of constructing the world

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That One Fine Day Never, Never Arrive “How can I look at the thought?” The question ‘how?’ is thought!

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Nice Meeting You UG came to ask us to go

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Compelled By the Third Eye UG doesn't want to help us: “It is your sitting here, that creates the motive in me; that’s all.”

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Goodbye “You can have that pullover, anything you w ant, but 'this' is the one thing that I can’t give to you. Try your luck somewhere else.”

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Foreword I always thought that UG aimed at his audience’s belief-structures and attempted to demolish. It’s not only true that he attempted to demolish mental structures, but he tried to quell thought itself. More often than not, he tended to frustrate every attempt of thought to build, defend and justify its beliefs and constructions of various sorts. (His often used expression was: “I am always shooting; but you duck!”) And to those who have been around him for a long time, this seemed like an endless and futile effort. I was one of those. On many occasions I was myself indulging in justifying myself or attacking UG’s ideas. I even wrote several articles critiquing his teaching UG’s attempts to stultify thought is not always evident nor does it easily sink into our (the readers’) mind. Even after years of listening to UG or reading, one is still battling with what he says and try to show how his ideas are contradictory or absurd. But we haven’t gotten the point yet. To get the point is to get what Robert calls ‘The Living Truth’. All UG’s other books, The Mystique of Enlightenment, The Mind is a Myth, Thought is Your Enemy, No Way Out and Courage to Stand Alone are examples of how UG tries to drive home his message: There is no enlightenment; there is nothing to get. Thought creates the division between the self and the world and then posits an illusory ideal of the unity of the two. To think there is a ‘higher state’ or ‘enlightenment’ and strive for it is precisely what prevents us to be in our natural state. Once there is truly such understanding, one is automatically out of the ‘stranglehold of thought.’ It is Robert’s attempt in the following book to present UG and what he says as living truth. His book belongs to the same genre as the other classics of UG I have mentioned above. If the material succeeds in its purpose, which Robert hopes it will, the reader should be at least for the moment, be left in a ‘de-clutched’ state, to use UG’s own expression. Robert intersperses his transcribed dialogues of UG with his own skillful introductions, comments, allusions, background accounts and jokes, which make the text more readable, comprehensible, interesting, and hopefully enlightening. In this book Robert makes it easy for the reader to identify himself with the author and his encounters with UG, and leads slowly and gradually into the deepest recesses of UG’s teaching. He has selected those topics for his chapters which would typically introduce the reader to the wondrous being of UG and his Truth. Be prepared to hear UG grilling your mind and dinning into yours to the point of utter frustration and exhaustion! Narayana Moorty

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Preface of the Eager Author And His Reluctant Guru "UG, you said that every interpretation of you and of your 'teaching' is just the same. What do you mean by that?" UG: “The same, yes. What’s the difference between all those interpretations? Whether you call me a saint or a sinner, both are true depending upon your point of reference." "Don’t you think that when people listen to you for many years and study your tape-recorded conversations carefully, those well-informed people have a betterfounded idea of you and the things you are expressing than the people who have met you only once or twice?" UG: “No, sorry, no." "You don’t think that someone like me, who wrote this study on you, might be in a better position to introduce people to what you say and mean?" UG: “No, I don’t think so." "So, . . . the purpose of writing this book might be limited merely to the earning of some money, if there is going to be any income at all?" UG: “If you can make some money . . . I hope you will; that’s all that will please me ( joking and laughing). And you can make some money if there are enough fools in this world to buy your book. As I told you, this is the way it should be done. I am not interested - you understand me well; but, like with any other product, you have to create an interest in the man, write about him and about the book, in the newspapers, and create a demand. "And if you are not interested in it, please don’t do it at all. Don’t do it in a half-hearted way." "Of course, I am very much interested; I worked on it for half this year at least." UG: “That’s what I said: so it must produce results, dividends. And whatever dividends you get out of your efforts, they are yours, not mine. I have nothing to do with them." "UG, would you do me a favor?" UG: “Do you a favor? What favor?"

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"Well, to speak your preface for my book." UG: “No sorry!" "You are not interested?" UG: “He who buys and reads this book must be a damned fool!" (UG laughs at his own indulgence.) "Yes, this kind of excuse you always use when people come to you with some request. I don’t believe you actually mean it." UG: “I mean it!" "Come on UG, I invested fifteen hundred Dutch guilders to be able to record your voice in hi-fi stereo this time. Now, don’t brush it aside with a joke. Speak your preface, please?" UG: “What I said about the reader of the book applies to you first: you are a fool, a damned fool, to invest that much money! It is a total waste. . . !"

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UG says: What do you want

I always give the simile of the horizon: there is a horizon there, but actually there is no horizon there at all; the limitation of the physical eye has created the horizon. It cannot see beyond a certain limit. So it’s this physical eye that has created that limitation. Actually, when you move in the direction of that horizon, the horizon is moving farther and farther away. In exactly the same way, you would be surprised, when you move in the direction of attaining whatever you want to attain, permanent bliss or permanent happiness, it is moving farther and farther away. This endless journey is all that you are interested in. You see, now you are tired of the journey. So, I come back to the question, “What do you want?” -UG


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A ROARING PEACE U.G. Krishnamurti Born: 9th july 1918 - Enlightened: 1967 - Died: 22nd march 2007

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2. Different From All the Winds of Heaven

I arrived at UG’s doorstep at 6 o'clock in the morning, feeling quite tipsy and still hearing the rhythm of the monotonous disco tune “Funky Town” on my lips. UG was already waiting near the garden door, and when he saw me, he opened it to let me in. He went into the kitchen and prepared a nice breakfast for me. Unfortunately I did not really feel comfortable with UG’s caring that morning as I felt I didn't deserve it. So I mumbled a vague excuse that I felt sorry for not being so fit and ready, that I had spent a late night at the disco in the Palace Hotel, and that, anyway, I didn't have much appetite. The previous night, I had celebrated with some friends the honor of being privileged to drive UG to Milan that day in my own car. The previous afternoon, UG had announced to everyone that he would be absent for the next two or three days. He had to take care of some things about his visa; and also the talking and answering questions became too much of a chore for him these days. He had planned to travel by train, and when I offered to drive him by car, at first he rejected the idea. After a while, however, he thought it was a good idea, but on one condition: no crowds, that is, no fellow-travelers. There was surely no need for him to worry about this because my small Citroen-Ami delivery van had only two front seats. Since I had almost run out of my holiday budget money, I asked UG to pay for the petrol. And so this great honor was celebrated to an excess, until the disco closed at a late hour. Then the night’s cold weather made me suddenly remember the reason for this celebration: my appointment with UG at six in the morning in his chalet. Because of the duration of the journey, we had planned to leave this early. With a shock I realized that it was three o'clock in the morning already. And I still had to clean up my room - for this was my last night in that place, to pack my bags and put them into the car. I had only two hours left after that, so I decided to take a refreshing walk along the river. Were I to go to sleep then, I would surely not wake up in time. UG had offered me a cup of hot tea. '”You drink this, it will do you good,” he suggested in a friendly fashion. The tea tasted wonderful, “perhaps because of UG’s all-forgiving grace he might have put into it,” I volunteered with my muddled brains. As soon as I had finished sipping the tea and quenched my thirst, UG took the empty cup to the kitchen and washed it. Then we left.

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After we drove for an hour or so, the sun began to beam his warmth through the valleys and into the car, and the downside of my nightly dissipation became sickly evident: I had to fight against an overpowering lethargy. My eyes were lazily registering the winding mountain road and my hands and feet needed all their experience to keep the car on the road. The higher we got into the Alps, the more troubled my ears got by the change of atmospheric pressure. The boring, dull conversation that I reeled off - already lacking any uplifting quality - was now spoken with a most unpleasant nasal sound. I only dared to continue my stuff and nonsense after we had left the highest mountain peaks far behind us, having descended along deep ravines into regions where the air- and ear-pressure became comfortable again. The threat of those deep ravines right next to the road made me ask UG whether he was comfortable. He answered in a rather animated fashion by complimenting on the car-seats: “It’s a Citroen, hmm? A small car, yes, but the seats are very comfortable.” I expressed my fear of the car tumbling down into the yawning chasm. UG assured me that he never worried about those things and even appreciated my driving saying that “it might not be so easy if you haven't slept whole night.” As one can imagine, I was surprised by this gracious forgiveness. To depict the situation more accurately, I must reveal a little secret behind this UG’s easy and relaxed surrender: The ancient Rishis of India had predicted (in the nadi ) that UG would “live right up to a ripe old age.” So, however hazardous or risky his situation might appear to be, God himself would keep an all-seeing eye on his “Chosen One,” especially on these mountain ridges. Even the driver was no longer afraid his car crashing at the bottom of some rocky canyon. Nevertheless, it’s a miracle to me why UG accepted this negligent chauffeur. At the Swiss-Italian frontier we took a short break to stretch our legs. Due to the unpleasant after-effects of my celebration compounded by the terribly hot weather, I didn't even have the energy to get out of the car; so I leaned back in the seat. UG didn't have any problem with the tropical temperature; he looked relaxed. He walked to the shop near the petrol station and after sometime, came back with a big roll of chips and some sweets. Sitting next to me in the sweltering hot car, he tore off the roll of chips and let the package paper whirl out of the open window. “You want some of these?” UG asked me as he started munching his chips, and without waiting for my “No thank you,” he put some of his unappetizing chips in my hand. Half-heartedly I put them in my mouth and ate them listlessly. Yah! How stale and dull they tasted! I thought UG was keen on the quality of his food. To me the quality of these chips was not really great. But even before we had left the parking-place, he finished off three quarters of the chip roll! Well, about tastes there is no disputing – I’m certainly not with “One of the Great Teachers of Mankind.”


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It took us two more hours of suffering the oppressive highway before we arrived in Milan. Somewhere in the centre of the city UG went into a tourist information bureau to ask about a hotel and a few minutes later he emerged with a map rolled up in his hands. Turning it round and round, he walked down the busy street. I stayed in the car, feeling completely knocked out, but very happy to have arrived without trouble and be here with UG. In this satisfaction I rested for half an hour before UG had returned. He could not find a suitable hotel; so, we had to get into the chaotic traffic again. Eventually, at about three o'clock, the trip had been completed, right in front of a luxurious hotel. UG was speaking to the receptionist in a language sounding somewhat like Italian. When I asked him about it, he smiled and said: “Well, they were just some sounds; that’s all.” “Yes, but I thought you only spoke English sounds, UG.” “Not even those,” replied UG in jest. Anyway, within five minutes he and I each had a nice room. UG suggested that I should rest for a while, to catch up with my sleep, while he himself would give free rein to his passion for window shopping. We would meet in the evening and then go downtown. Having enjoyed a quick and refreshing bath, I went to bed. Although I couldn't sleep, two hours of relaxation made me overcome most of my tiredness. It was so special walking together with UG in the illuminated Milan shopping streets hovered by twilight. Actually, it was lovely, terrific! Truly incredible: millions of faithful followers worship their giant Jesus or baffling Buddha, and they would certainly spend a fortune merely to catch a glimpse of their saviors’ dead bodies; and here I am, loafing around with such a living and lively Superstar. I was window shopping with the Savior of Mankind, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world! UG must have detected my sentimental admiration for him; he stopped abruptly right in front of a shop window. When I stepped back to him, I saw his eyes were fixed on something in the shop window - a mobile chemical toilet made of plastic. Realizing the odd facts of the actual situation, my romantic and pious reveries were beaten to a frazzle and had to make room for a funny memory from the School of Philosophy in Amsterdam. In this institute the tutors routinely recited a certain ancient shloka in a terribly serious and deadly tone: When a realized person walks, he merely walks; when a realized person looks, he merely looks - without any distraction in his entire consciousness.

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Amused, I wondered whether, according to this rigidly repeated verse, a realized person was allowed merely to feel attracted by some 20th-century synthetic mobile toilet. After nightfall, we were lounging in a big shopping centre, and UG invited me for a pizza in a snack bar. They had pizzas with anchovy and without anchovy. UG ordered a pizza without fish for himself, because, as he said, he couldn't stand the smell of anchovies. I asked for the same. When UG had almost finished his pizza, I only took my first bite of the delicacy and distinctly tasted the strong anchovy. I asked UG whether he had not tasted something like fish. He stopped chewing and abruptly got a ‘fishy’ expression on his face! Then a quick run to the nearest garbage bin and the ‘Master of the Senses’ vomited some nice lumps of masticated pizza - with anchovy! A few days later, after returning to Gstaad, a friend of UG told me a story concerning another odd incident involving UG in Milan. She said: “When UG had entered his hotel room, he saw a freshening-up sachet on the table, and since he liked to refresh himself, he opened it and mopped his face with the odorous tissue - anyway, that was what he thought he did. But when he looked into the mirror, he saw that it was no lotion but shoe polish shining on his ‘enlightened’ face! Next morning, after having my breakfast (UG didn't have any breakfast, for he hadn’t gotten to trust Italian food yet!), we walked to the travel agencies to find out if they had any reasonably priced round-the-world tickets. UG planned to fly from Switzerland via USA to India. Unfortunately no travel agencies were open yet. Back at the hotel, UG paid the bill, while I brought the luggage into the car and replaced the cassette recorder under the dashboard. All the windows of the car were opened, and UG’s comfortable seat of the Citroen-Ami cheerfully sagged under his weight as we rode out of the town and took the highway back to Gstaad. Held up by a tailback near the frontier, we were riding slowly and quietly. I turned on the music of Carlos Paredes on the cassette player. The brilliant melodies played by this master guitarist reminded UG of the holy hymns of the Vedas. As a boy he had to listen to those chants over and over again. Hence I presupposed that he certainly would like this up-to-date version. However, after a few minutes, UG was twiddling the buttons of the recorder. “Are you already bored by your guitar-based Vedas?” I asked him. He smiled. So, I changed the cassette: “Crisis, What Crisis,” performed by Super Tramp, now filled the car with its striking tune. One thing I couldn't have presumed at this pleasant moment was that the ‘Crisis’ would soon have a reference to my personal situation. It was already getting to be evening when we arrived at UG’s Chalet Sunbeam. On the whole the journey had been rather exhausting, and I felt very happy to be back after all that driving. I put the car in the parking place behind the house, helped UG step out and took his luggage out of the trunk. With the idea that we


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would have a nice cup of tea together after our Italian adventure, I already followed him down the path to the front side of the house. But UG abruptly interrupted my sentimental tea-illusion, saying "Yes, thank you. Bye-Bye!" Whereupon he walked to the other side of the house, alone, and without looking back even once! I had to leave. Dazed, hurt and terribly lonesome all at once, I stepped into my dear Ami and left UG’s place. Driving the car down the hill, I reached the main road and following it I arrived in Saanen, a friendly village near Gstaad. Luckily I found a cheap room. But alas, its ceiling was very low, so even my own room made me bow down! . . . Prostrated, I lay down on the bed (which was too short for my length), musing upon my contribution to the propagation of the uniqueness of this Mysterious Being called UG Krishnamurti. It was only a cold comfort that one of the passages in the Holy Scriptures provided me with: the Kena Upanishad expresses how even the gods themselves had trouble with that Mysterious Being: Then the gods said to Vayu, the Air-god, “Find out who that Mysterious Being is.” “So be it,” he said and rushed toward It. The Mysterious Being asked Vayu who he was, and Vayu answered: “I am Air, also called Wind,” Then the Mysterious Being asked: “What power is in you?” “I am the air and I can blow away all on this earth.” The Mysterious Being placed a blade of grass before him, saying: “Blow away this straw.” Vayu rushed toward it with all speed, but could not blow it away. Then Vayu stormed back to the gods, confessing he could not find out what this Mysterious Being was.

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3. Philosophy Is Just a Bag of Moonshine "My interest is to strip the whole thing of any trace of religiosity," proclaimed UG vehemently over and over again. In my opinion, he jolly well succeeded in doing that. Don’t pass too lightly over the devilish negligence of a disciple when he drove his guru along high ranges of mountains and deep canyons, as I have described in the previous chapter. Of course, I apologized several times; but I am sure UG would have been less content during this Italian journey, if I had been showing off as some devotional ‘bliss-fool’ follower. Now, seriously speaking, UG says that it is his interest to strip “the whole thing” of any trace of religiosity. His aim is to lance through all the holy, sacred and mystical things our philosophic, religious and therapeutic systems and doctrines are poisoned with - an immense task which requires super-exertion. Just think of the rigid authority lingering around all the ashrams, churches and psychotherapy centers in the Eastern and Western traditions. And above all, think of all the faith and trust people have invested in all their institutions. Even bringing about a little change in such a situation would require gigantic energies. But what instrument does UG have to reach his goal of “stripping the whole thing of any trace of religiosity?” As soon as he unmasks things like meditation, devotion, intelligence, intuition, discipline, love and even the individual experience of people - because they no longer serve Life - UG can no longer use these things in any constructive way any more. Even if he strains his intellectual powers to the utmost, UG cannot expose and correct the essential error which manifests itself in the intellectual functioning of people. A simple explanation for this is that the real cause of this error keeps hiding beyond the reach of any power. In other words, UG cannot do a thing with his ‘interest’, because any action he undertakes out of this interest is immediately in conflict with his interest. Here we have a paradox of which UG is the very embodiment. For decades we have been deluged by all kinds of teachers and gurus – great ones, gracious ones as well as grappling ones - who offered us their highway or blind alley leading to the ‘Never-Ending Bliss.’ Some real champions in this field were Jiddu Krishnamurti, Maharshi Mahesh Yogi and, of course, the illustrious Bhagawan Shree Rajneesh. These three masters have pointed, one way or the other, in the direction in which peace and satisfaction in life should be found.

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Jiddu Krishnamurti has dedicated his life to the paradox of showing his disciples that a master is not necessary and that a master will always stand in the way between the disciple and truth itself. The Maharshi offered to the world his easy and practical method of mantra meditation. Countless people were able to enlighten their day-to-day life by means of this simple meditation technique. What capricious ‘silver shadows’ Rajneesh has been casting with his ‘autocrazy’ in the world we can only guess. One thing is for sure; Rajneesh has tremendously enriched the lives of thousands of enthusiastic people who had visited his bhakti tantra ashram. But only in the person of UG a totally original and powerful way of expressing the omnipresent truth comes into the light. With UG no Christian moralizing sermons are needed any longer in our time of space travels and computer chips, no holy hanky-panky in Latin or Sanskrit, nor any affirmation of secrecy or silence. UG didn't organize romantic darshans or therapeutic balls, and he never lustily recited the sacred mantras. UG did not claim himself to be a lineal descendant of Christ, Krishna or God himself; on the contrary, he was, as a teacher, totally authentic and in this self-taught quality an authority in his own right. Just a few days before my first meeting with UG, I had enjoyed a wonderful inspiring week of study at the School of Philosophy in Amsterdam, Holland.1 At the end of this week, an overwhelming feeling of happiness was glowing inside of me. It felt as if my eyes were lit with fire. In less than a week after this ‘blessing’, and after four years of sincere study at this School of Philosophy, my hope and faith of finding the ‘Eternal Peace’ by means of the teachings of this philosophy institute was slated for good: Chalet Sunbeam in Gstaad, Switzerland, where I met UG for the first time, became my new ‘school’ and UG my ‘Super Tutor.’ I had asked UG only a few questions - about meditation and about “sitting at the feet of the master.” UG answered very briefly and rather indistinctly inadequately, or it seemed to me. Anyway, I couldn't do a thing with it. Completely bowled over, I wrote an impassioned letter to Margreet, my friend, in which I tried to explain to her my bewilderment. The result, however, was that she only noticed my fascination but not the cause of it.

Schools of this institution were established in many countries all over the world. The headquarters of the institution is the School of Economic Science in England. The source of their teaching seems to b e the essence of many philosophies from all times and continents. The intention of the school is to try to make the pupils practice “love of wisdom” which is the true meaning of the word ‘philosophy’. As is the case in all schools, in this institute also there is an increasing discrepancy between ‘wishing’ and ‘wisdom’. 1

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The day before I left for Gstaad, I had prepared some reading material about UG for her, and as a tasty ‘introduction’ left a delicious fruit bar on the first page. Alas, my dear Margreet had only enjoyed the fruit bar! Not being fond of paradoxical philosophies, she had put away the text immediately after eating the bar. In doing so, she was actually practicing UG’s teaching pretty well! In myself, the safety fuse of common sense and my philosophical heart had blown completely; in my entirely chaotic mind there was not one straw of anchorage left. This turbulence lasted for three days, three terrible days in which the image of ‘Truth’ I had previously built for myself had been turned totally topsy-turvy. After this ‘initiation,’ the remaining four days, however, were more beautiful and luminous than any time before. “Everything is allowed and everything is possible!” A great feeling deep inside of me released me from any authority in the field of religion and philosophy. There was this tremendous conviction in me, clear and plain, that never again would I be under any obligation to a tutor, teacher or master, or even to a deity. I knew for sure that I was always greater and truer than any idea or faith I had put my confidence in. From now on I dared to ignore all sacred rules, holy traditions, divine disciplines and the restraining etiquette of wisdom I had learned in the School of Philosophy. Honor and respect towards leaders from now on were measured by new standards. The invisible, paradoxical influence of UG made me see that the truth of the School could no longer be my truth. According to UG, even those philosophies we call living practical philosophies are merely the dull and useless expressions of dead tradition. Once I told him my most blissful experience of oneness: “UG, I was walking in the beautiful autumn dunes when suddenly two birds were flying close over my head. Surprised by the moment, I dissolved into the landscape I was wandering in - the dunes, the trees, the birds and the sky - they all seemed to be me. Even to say that . . ." “Stop that nonsense!” UG shouted. My description was cut short rudely by UG. Rather irritated, he negated the value of my wonderful experience in a disastrous way. Yes, I was aware of the fact that to UG tradition meant nothing more than poison, but I never expected his notion of tradition would encroach into the territory of a person's experience of bliss. He brushed off my twaddle on oneness by calling it some unconscious imitation of the experiences I had heard of in the Philosophy School or had read in the Holy Scriptures. Flabbergasted by this intriguing man who spoke with a conviction I had never heard before, I immediately arranged for a visit to India, where UG would be staying in Bangalore, for two winter months.

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Returning from Gstaad, I decided to attend some holiday lectures at the School for Philosophy, just to see what influence this would have on my newly acquired knowledge. They didn't have any appeal to me at all; it was as if I had already known and understood everything they were putting across. The mysterious, luring hold the teaching of this school had had on me in former days had now been reduced to ashes. “My interest is to strip the whole thing of any trace of religiosity!” thus sounds UG’s revealing vision on life. In the School of Philosophy I had to obey one ridiculous religious rule or silly oppressive sacrament after the other. One had to devote oneself to some sacred stanza, sacrifice oneself to the School and have absolute faith in the ‘Self’ or the ‘Absolute’. Even wearing a tie for men or an evening dress for the ladies was degraded into a religious obligation: personal ideas on fashion were hardly allowed. Once a tutor told a student that a wife should never wear trousers because it could cause her partner to have homosexual feelings (yes, they really told us this!). Then Evert, a friend of some of my friends, appeared on the scene. He had revolutionary ideas and truly inspiring statements to make, regarding the management of the School of Philosophy of which he also was a member at that time. Many meetings and fascinating conversations with him delivered the final blow to my interest in the School. On a cheap ticket, purchased at the Rajneesh Foundation, I flew via Delhi to Bombay and from there, by Airbus, to Bangalore, where I met UG the second time. I visited him every day, morning, afternoon and evening - four heavy and fatiguing weeks at a stretch. In the first few days everything was new and refreshing, of course, but soon meetings with UG began to run a heavy course. Every day I had to hear anew and realize that everything I had done and still could do to reach selfrealization was the very thing that would prevent that realization for ever! After I rejected the authority of the School of Philosophy four months ago, now my very own authorities were having a rough time. UG tightened his stranglehold on them: my experience, my intuition, intelligence and my deepest emotions didn't get the slightest chance to show their ‘talents’. Nowhere in the vast domain of philosophy and wisdom were these powerful authorities of man given an occasion to perform in a constructive manner. The very moment my personal powers began to stir, it again became clearer to me that they would only hinder the natural process of self-realization.


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While the more insights nestled in me every day when I was in the presence of this paradoxical master, the less sense could I make of them. In the beginning I decided to contemplate on this vicious circle as if it were a glorious aureole of a saint, but near the end of four weeks of constant listening, this circle had been sagged and transformed into the galling halter of the hanged victim! My cup was full, but my search for Truth was not at all fulfilled. Then, the last night I spent in Bangalore was a very oppressive one: Somewhere in the dusk of drowse and dream I felt my breathing was not functioning normally. I gasped for a deeper breath, but no fresh air would come into my lungs. Then I became aware of the fact that something was clogging my throat. Scared to death, I realized that within a few minutes I would certainly die. Panic stricken, all the life force disgorged itself out of my throat. Gasping for air, something ghastly snapped and at the same time any hold the world had on me had disappeared. In a horrifying loathing of a swoon I slipped through a broken membrane, far away from the universe. Then all became quiet and serene. Slowly it came home to me that I was still living . . . But strange enough I didn’t notice any respiration in me. Then my eyes were opened and there was the relieving realization that Life did never need any lungs to live. In this joyous drowse I faded into dream. Next morning UG flew to Bombay where he planned to stay for four weeks. I left for Tiruvannamalai to visit the ashram of Ramana Maharshi. In this holy place I loved to rehash my totally chilled and ignored inner man. The romanticism of the ashram gave every satisfaction; so I decided to see the holy places of Sri Aurobindo and Sri Ramakrishna also. The sacred atmosphere in those places thrilled me. After the total defloration of feelings and emotions at UG’s, the meditation in those holy regions served as a beneficial medicine. The last blessed place I visited on my Indian journey was the majestic temple building of Sri Ramakrishna in Dakshineswar. The lovely atmosphere there inspired me with awe. Everywhere on the steps were crowds of people, queued up and waiting for their turn to offer their obeisance to Ramakrishna and receive his grace. For myself I liked to rest in a quiet place; so I entered one of the small chapels, right in front of the main temple. Inside this nice house of worship, high on the wall, a portrait of Ramakrishna was leaning over. The narrow space thus created behind the gracious smile of the Great Master had become the nice place for a bird's nest! Even the animals seem to share the love of Ramakrishna. When the twilight set in, worships were held in which Ramakrishna in the form of a beautiful huge statue was honored. With the singing of hymns and twinkle of candles my roused emotions recovered from their deprivation lavishly.

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On the New Year's Day, I flew from Calcutta to Bombay. Before returning home I had my last Indian meeting with UG. We talked about one thing or the other and about a ghost who had walked around the house where UG was staying now. It seemed that some years ago a person had been murdered in this house. However, since UG’s influence had filled the atmosphere, the imprisoned ghost of this murdered person seemed to realize the cause of his lingering and thus released himself . . . and the house. Contrary to the meetings in Bangalore in which UG stripped me of all my philosophical faith, here at the end of my journey, he offered me something: a delicious dinner which he himself had prepared. Compared with everything he had taken away from me, this bit of food didn't mean much, of course. But, that he offered it was the important thing. It convinced me of the fact that all his taking away from me actually was a form of offering me something. “It is good to meet this man from time to time,” I said to myself. Two days later, the Air India 707 landed at Schiphol Airport. The whole of Holland was blanketed with a white layer of sparkling snow. After the hot and noisy climate of India, I could not have wished a more refreshing welcome than this one. It was lovely to be back in my calm and spotless little homeland where I could enjoy delicious brown bread with farmhouse cheese and drink fresh water straight from the tap without the worry of getting sick, and where I could live without the nuisance of cockroaches everywhere and the blare of music all day long. It really looked like my gloomy impressions from India were completely played off by the frozen Dutch field and the future seemed rather sunny to me. Apart from UG’s meal and in spite of the burning hot sun of India, I badly needed a real sunbeam now. India had not left me stone cold, to say it all in contradictory terms. That one should never trust paradoxical conclusions became evident soon when my optimism melted away with the last snow and made way for an apathetic somberness. The following months turned out to be a horrible hell to me. The merciless and drastic influence of UG had affected me more than I ever had expected: as a paralyzing poison UG’s desperate teaching had blocked all my attempts to pick up the day-to-day routines. After all the abstractions I had met with in India, I felt like creating great pieces of fine art, but I could not even draw a simple sketch, let alone complete a work. As soon as I entered my studio, a gray discouragement polluted the atmosphere and an agonizing pointlessness reduced my actions to zero. The only deed left was to make myself a pot of coffee! Days and days of trying to get back to work didn't have the expected result. When, at last, I had set myself to sweep the dirty floor of the studio, I suddenly threw away the broom in a flash of temper and took the all but creative decision to exchange my coffee-scene for a coffee-scene at Evert's. His coffee tasted good, the

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chummy diversion of the conversation was nice, but my UG-generated confusion made a ‘plucky stand.’ Unfortunately our perspectives concerning UG’s approach vis-à-vis the traditional philosophies were on different wavelengths that day. A few days and many pots of coffee after that meeting, I visited my friend Paul and his wife, to fetch a book of mine. We had been friends for more than ten years, but when I rang the bell, the door was just opened a crack and my book was handed to me through the crack. They didn't appreciate my company any more because of the strange and strong atmosphere of UG they said I had around me. They preferred the safe and structured path of wisdom the School of Philosophy had laid out. Weeks and weeks of boring despair and frustrated hope made me feel like that slavish dog and his cunning owner: the dog very much likes to eat the sausage, which is dangling right in front of his nose. So, he steps forward to satisfy his hunger; but at the same time, he is pulling the dogcart of his owner and he does this for the very rest of his life! The trick, of course, is that the owner has tied the sausage to the cart. Each inch the dog moves forward to bite the sausage, the sausage has moved forward that very same inch. Most probably the only food the dog will ever eat in his lifetime will be some leftovers dropped by his indolent owner. I felt I was in the same position as this dog: all the serene and divine ‘sausages’ of the School of Philosophy were dangling in front of my nose and I would very much like to consume them. But at the same time I was aware of the fact that these ‘sausages’ too had been connected with my own ‘dogcart’. So, why should I meditate or practice all kinds of sacred disciplines, if the final goal of all these devotions is only to continue the empty flirt at the far horizon, without ever coming closer to it one step? This was the intelligent way of contemplating this dilemma, but then, the next day, the instinctive ‘solution’ took its revenge: scenting the delicious ‘sausage’ of the School of Philosophy at times made me doubt UG’s massive teaching. I felt I was caught between ‘soothed by the sausage’ and ‘triggered by truth,’ or torn between ‘wanting to eat’ and ‘knowing a wiser feat.’ One evil day, when the high walls of my studio and my eternal pot of coffee were boring me past bearing, I decided to have a talk with a sympathetic tutor at the School of Philosophy. Although I was through with that institute, my problem was of a philosophical nature; so, I thought that perhaps this man could help me. I made an appointment to see him the next evening. Ten minutes after entering the school, our conversation was over. Our views regarding the ‘dogcart with the sausage’ were too widely divergent to yield a fruitful conclusion. I had to solve the problem by myself. Months and months of confusion, despair, hope and disillusion passed by. I fancied how in this School for Philosophy I could work hard and become a peaceful and exemplary human being - an alert, attentive man, provided with a powerful

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concentration and a specially trained quality of consciousness. I phantasized how concentration these attributes would enlighten my life tremendously and how happy I would be . . . Well, in short, I was was sniffing at the ‘sausage’ ‘sausage’ and I had been seduced seduced by its alluring smell. I would even have run after it if UG had not roughly shaken me awake by shouting in my ear what the disastrous consequences consequences of ‘eating sausages’ would be: poisoning be: poisoning of of Life! I heard UG emphasizing: “In spite of all your attempts to purify your thought, you will not reach any any result at all; all; on the contrary, contrary, your very search search will take you away away from your goal.” And it echoed in my mind: mind: “To “To strip the whole thing of any trace of religiosity . . .” How could I invest all my energy in this ‘realization of truth,’ knowing that this very action would only only disturb that truth? truth? From where where would I get the enthusiasm enthusiasm to study the Upanishads, the Bible and all the other Holy Scriptures, if I knew that any study will only prevent this self-realization? self-realization? So, I didn't want to waste my effort on these things any more. To make matters worse, Evert seemed to have the right solution to the paradoxical situation of studying at the School for Philosophy and at the same time practicing the wisdom of UG: “You cannot reach ‘It’ by the investment of many actions, nor can you leave all actions undone. Life in all its variegations will impress upon you with the most personal and individual line of study. Your effort to reach your goal against every resistance the world throws up will deliver you a most efficient and specific discipline. If this point is not understood, or if you deny it, you'll miss both the School and UG.” Something like this Evert told me, and theoretically I agreed with it: “All right, maybe this is the way things will develop, but as far as I am concerned, this ‘realization of truth’ step by step, as is prescribed by the School of Philosophy is nonsense. I understood clearly clearly that the only way to realize truth is to take away the very foundation of all all false teachings and disciplines, disciplines, especially the the intellectual devices the School of Philosophy is propagating: “ Padam Padam,, padam padam,, step by step, and little by little we realize Divine Perfection.” . . . Please, give me UG: “The dog dropping the shit there on the street - that will do the trick for you!' No more holy efforts, but one snap of the fingers, one rap on the weak spot - and the solution is simply there. “The dog dropping the shit will do the trick”- that’s the real talk of wise men!


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UG: “All this talk of transformation or mutation means nothing to me; it is just a bag of moonshine." "You mean that there is only a movement going on?" UG: “Yes, and that is the movement of Life. And it is expressing itself with an extraordinary extraordinar y intelligence, which cannot be met by any acquired intellect. And there is nothing to be awakened there; it is already awake. You don’t have to do a thing. You know, what you are doing all the time is “putting it to sleep”, because you can’t stand or take the alertness or the awakening that is there. So you drug yourself with all kinds of systems, techniques and methods. “I tell you, it is the messiahs that are responsible for the mess in this world!"

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4. From the Very Beginning... UG: “My life was strange from the very beginning; it was a very strange life . . .” “Perhaps you have to blame it on your mother. mother. Mothers are always always to be blamed: she made made that pronouncement pronouncement just before before she died." UG’s mother had said on her death bed that her son was born with an extraordinary destiny. "That started the whole circus, hmm? Otherwise your grandfather would have given you to a servant to take care of you, no?" UG: “You see, every mother feels the same way about her child thinking that it will be great - this, that and the other." "Well, my mother didn't say something like that about me!" UG: “Your mother had too many children. I was the only one, and she was dying, so . . ." (smiling) But before UG’s mother pronounced her vision, according to the experts, this view about UG’s high destiny destiny was already already predicted many many hundreds of years years ago by the Kaumara the Kaumara Nadi Nadi astrology. astrology. "So, your grandfather went to that institute in Madras?" UG: “Yes, it happened as the Nadi the Nadi predicted predicted in my case. But its prediction was not accurate in my grandfather’s case." "Why not?" UG: “In the case of my own grandfather many of the Nadi the Nadi predictions predictions were inaccurate. He died in his 84th fourth year, whereas the Nadi the Nadi predicted predicted that his death would occur his 64th year.” "But your grandfather also went to that institute to ask for your chart?" UG: “Yes, that was the same institute." "What kind of chart was that?"

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UG: “The chart was written in an archaic language which nobody can understand except those who are familiar with that kind of language. They translate it into English or simple Tamil. Like this book, The Cloud of Unknowing - it was written originally in archaic 13th century English." "And those people are able to interpret the charts well?" UG: “They just have to translate the text; it has already been interpreted." UG is getting reluctant to answer now; he is not fond of discussing these abstruse subjects. "You have to pay for these charts?" UG: “Yes, everything is money, hmm? It used to be five rupees, now it is 35 or 45 rupees. Those people inherited the manuscripts from their fathers, and they in turn from their fathers and so on." "How did this chart happen to be made? Somebody told me that Bhrigu was their originator. Is that correct?" UG: “No, not Bhrigu but Kumara. Somebody said it was Bhrigu Nadi , but this particular chart is from the Kaumara Nadi ." "That means Kumara is the seer of the visions?" UG: “You see, two persons discuss the chart. Somebody asks a question: 'How can you say that such and such a thing will happen?', 'Well, it is because of this ... ' They, Vashishta and Vishwamitra, dramatize the situation. They discuss the chart as if they were standing before the Goddess Parvati. I have no explanation for it; I can’t brush it aside and say that the whole thing is nonsense; nor do I swear by it and say that there is something to it." "This chart with the translated text was given to you when you were young?" UG: “Yes, I found it in my papers when my grandfather died. It didn't make any sense at that time. It makes sense now, after so many years."

Kaumara Nadi reading: Vashishta and Vishwamitra offer obeisance to Goddess Parvati and discuss the tenth bhava of the native.


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The native's name is Gopala Krishnamurti. Sitaramayya is the name of his father, and the mother's name is Bharati. Then the chart mentions the positions of the planets at the moment of UG’s birth. At this stage Vashishta says that the native will attain moksha in this very life. UG: “I was brought up by my grandparents. My grandfather was a lawyer, a very rich man. He knew Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, and Olcott, and then, later on, the second and third generation Theosophists. They all visited us. My grandfather devoted himself to create a spiritual atmosphere for me and to educate me in the right way. On the one hand, he was orthodox and traditional, and followed Theosophy and the whole thing, on the other hand. He failed to strike a balance between the two. That was the beginning of my problem. Every morning those Theosophists would come and read the Upanishads, Panchadasi , Naishkarmya Siddhi , the commentaries on them and the commentaries on those commentaries - the whole lot from 4 o'clock to 6 o'clock. And this little boy of five, six or seven years had to listen to all that crap. Our house was an open house for every holy man. So, one thing I discovered when I was quite young was that they were all hypocrites: they said something, they believed something, but their lives were shallow, nothing. That was the beginning of my search. “Sometimes my grandfather would say to me: ‘You are in a very lucky situation. Look at your father and his brothers.’ You know, that always irritated me. Yes, he said he was a doing great favor to me, but I didn't want him do it for me. “And then, one time, he hit me. I was seven years-old. And I hit him back. He never thought I would do that. It was a traumatic experience for the old man. I hit him back with a belt, the same belt that he hit me with. I had never touched him before. ‘You are tall, you are 67, I am 7. The difference of 60 years doesn't give you an edge over me!' He never touched me afterwards. “My grandfather used to meditate for one or two hours in a separate meditation room. One day, a two year-old baby started crying for some reason. That chap came down and started beating the child and the child almost turned blue. ‘And this man, hmm, meditating two hours every day. Look! What is this he has done?’ I asked myself, ‘So, is there anything to what they profess - the Buddha, Jesus and all the great teachers? Everybody is talking about moksha, liberation and freedom. What is it? I want to know it for myself!' Then I visited Swami Shivananda Saraswati in those days. Between the age of 14 and 21 I used to go there and meet him very often. And I did everything, all the austerities. I was so young, yet I wanted that moksha. I wanted to prove to myself and to everybody that there cannot be any hypocrisy in such people. So, I practiced yoga. I practiced meditation, studied everything and I experienced every kind of experience that the books talked about - samadhi , super samadhi , nirvikalpa samadhi – everything.


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“Then I said to myself: 'Thought can create any experience you want - bliss, beatitude, ecstasy or melting into nothingness - all those experiences. So this can’t be the thing, because I am the same person, mechanically doing these things. Meditation has no value for me. This is not leading me anywhere'."

Kaumara Nadi continues: Educational attainments must be very high. Endowed with versatility, imagination, intuitive perception and fluency of speech . . . “Endowed with imagination . . . ?” Perhaps UG’s imagination was so rich that in his search for truth he had only finished off with his imaginations about moksha and samadhi but had not dealt with the real moksha or real samadhi ? Also there is this “fluency of speech” of his by means of which he might easily impose upon people? It is not a question of doubting UG’s sincerity, but sometimes a little flicker of suspicion about UG’s behavior does come up even after knowing UG for a long time, as for example, when he suddenly and without any obvious reason went of into a fit of rage about some trifle, or when he forgot, in spite of all his ‘omnipresence,’ to take along with him his little toe while closing a door, thus proving literally that even enlightened blood is thicker than water. . . . He must attain prosperity through personal merit; but there is no steady income, and it will not be proportionate to his name and fame. He will have much more money than ancestral inheritance. Since he is destined to be spiritual minded, he will always be indifferent towards money. One day, the miserly landlord came to inspect the chalet where UG habitually spent his Swiss summers and he was up to creating trouble concerning some minor damages in the house. UG immediately cut through his fuss: “Come on, how much money do you want?” In view of the fact that many garden chairs of the chalet were in such bad condition that one could not even sit on them, it was surprising to see how UG handled the landlord so lightheartedly. Of course, this behavior was not only the result of “indifference towards money,” but also had to do with his aversion for silly and irritating arguments. UG: “Then sex became a tremendous problem for me as a young boy. You see, this is something natural, a biological thing, an urge in the human body. Why do all these people want to deny sex and suppress something very natural, something which is part of the whole thing, in order to get something else? This is more real, more important to


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me than moksha, liberation and all that. This is a reality. I think of g ods and goddesses and I have wet dreams. I have this kind of a thing. Why should I feel guilty? It is something natural. I have no control over such a thing happening. Meditation has not helped me, study has not helped me and my disciplines have not helped me. I never touched salt and I never touched chilies or any spices. “Then one day, I found this man Shivananda eating mango pickles behind closed doors. 'Here is a man who has denied himself everything in the hope of getting something; but this fellow cannot control himself. He is a hypocrite. This kind of life is not for me.’" Sex becomes UG’s ‘meditation’. UG: “I didn't know anything about sex. In those days there were no erotic magazines and all that. So, ‘Why is it that I have all kinds of images of sex?' That was my inquiry, that was my meditation; not sitting in the lotus posture or standing on my head. 'This is something inside, not put in from outside. The outside is stimulating; but there is another kind of stimulation from inside that is more important to me. I can cut out all that external stimulation successfully, but how can I cut this out from inside?' I wanted to find out. “I did not rush to have sex with a woman or anything. I allowed things to develop in their own way. That was a time when I didn't want to marry. My aim was to become an ascetic or a monk, and not to marry. But things happened and I said to myself: 'If it is a question of satisfying your sex urge, why not marry? That is what society is for. Why should you go and have sex with some woman? You can have a natural expression of sex in marriage.’" After some years UG married a young and beautiful Brahmin woman, one of the three his grandmother had selected for him as possible suitable matches. "So tell me UG, didn't you feel you had sold yourself when you decided to get married?" UG: “No." "Come on, with such a strong Brahmin background you must have felt that you were doing something quite horrendous." UG: “No, I never regretted that. I enjoyed it. Sex was all that interested me. Nothing else interested me, you see." "All right, you may have enjoyed it; but did you not feel like 'My God, what am I doing? I have given so much of my life to . . .” UG: “No. Otherwise I wouldn't have lived with my wife for sixteen or eighteen years."

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Apparently UG once said: “I awoke the morning after my wedding night and knew without a doubt that I had made the biggest mistake of my life . . .” "But before marrying you must have thought . . ." UG: “One day they will make a big thing out of it, like the Buddha walking out on his wife. Now they condemn it." "But you must have thought, 'Look, I have been practicing asceticism for so many years. It is part of the very foundation of . . .’” UG: “No, no regrets in my life. You see, I never regretted anything nor did I justify anything. I had this feeling that 'Whatever I am searching for must be possible within this framework of living with a family and carrying the whole burden on my back; otherwise it is not worth it.' I have the same obsession now, in the sense that I am just an ordinary man and not something special, not a spiritual man who gets up on a platform and goes around lecturing on spirituality. “When I was 21, I arrived at a point where I felt very strongly that all the teachers Buddha, Jesus, Sri Ramakrishna - everybody - kidded themselves, deluded themselves and deluded everybody, all their followers. 'What is the state that these people talk about and describe? Their descriptions seem to have no relation to me, to the way I am functioning. Everybody says: 'Don’t get angry,' but I am angry all the time. I am full of brutal thoughts inside. So that is false - what these people are telling me I should be like – that is something false. And because it is false, it will falsify me. I am greedy, and nongreed is what they are talking about. There is something wrong somewhere. This greed is something real, something natural to me; and what they are talking about is unnatural.' So, somehow a revulsion against everything sacred and everything holy crept into my system and I threw everything out: 'No more shlokas, no more religion, no more practices. There isn't anything there, but what is here is something natural. I am a brute, I am a monster, I am full of violence; this is reality. I am full of desire; and desirelessness, non-greed, non-anger - those things have no meaning to me; they are false.' So, I said to myself: ‘I’m finished with the whole business.’ But it is not that simple!" He comes into contact with great men very early in life... says Kaumara Nadi . Indeed, one day somebody came along and invited UG to visit Ramana Maharishi. At first UG didn't want to see him or any other holy man . UG: “If you have seen one, you have seen them all. Everybody tells you: 'Do more and more of the same thing, and you will get it'. What I got were more and more experiences,


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and then those experiences demanded permanence. But there is no such thing as permanence. The holy men are all phonies." So, reluctantly, hesitatingly, unwillingly, UG went to see the sage of Tiruvannamalai, Ramana Maharshi. He was later to say that this encounter was to change the course of his life and put him right back on the track. Arriving at the ashram, UG wondered how this man, who was reading comic strips, cutting vegetables and playing with this, that or the other, could help him. UG: “I looked at him, and he looked at me. 'In his presence you feel silent, your questions disappear, his look will change you'. All that remained a story, fancy stuff to me. I sat there and there were a lot of silly questions inside me. Alright, let me ask him some question, I thought. I said: 'You are supposed to be a liberated man. Can you give me what you have?' He didn't answer, so after some time I repeated that question: 'Whatever you have, can you give it to me?' He said: 'I can give it to you, but can you take it?' Boy! For the first time this fellow says that he has something and that I can’t take it. Nobody before said 'I can give you,' but this man said 'I can give you, but can you take it?' Nobody before had said that. They all said: 'Do sadhana, stand on your head, stand on your shoulders, hang from a tree, deny yourself'. But for the first time this fellow says 'I can give you, but can you take it?' Then I said to myself: 'If there is any individual in this world who can take it, it is me, because I have done so much sadhana, seven years of sadhana, sixteen hours every day! If I can’t take it, who can take it?'" UG didn't stay with Ramana. He asked a few more questions like: “Can one be free sometimes and not free sometimes?” Ramana said: “Either you are free or you are not free at all.” But these questions didn't bother UG. It was this question 'Can you take it?' that bothered him. UG: “Why can’t I take it, whatever it is? What is it that he has? What is that state all those people - the Buddha, Jesus and the whole gang - were in? I must find out what that state is. Nobody can give that state. I am on my own. I have to go on this uncharted sea without a compass, without a boat, with not even a raft to take me." UG never again visited Ramana or any other teacher. UG: “Then my real search began. For some years I studied psychology and also philosophy, Eastern and Western. I started exploring on my own the whole area of human knowledge. The search went on and on and on. And 'What is that state?' was my question, and the question had an intensity of its own. So, I told myself, 'All this knowledge doesn't satisfy me. Why read all this?' I was interested in psychology for the simple reason that the mind had always intrigued me: 'Where is this mind? I want to know something about it. Here, inside of me, I don’t see any mind, but all these books talk of the mind. Come on, let me see what the Western psychologists have to say about the mind'.

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“One day, I asked my professor: 'We are talking about the mind all the time. Do you know for yourself what the mind is? We are studying so many books - books of Freud, Jung, Adler and the whole gang. All that stuff I know. I read the definitions and descriptions that are there in the books; but do you yourself know anything about the mind?' He said: 'Don’t ask such inconvenient questions. They are very dangerous questions. If you want to pass your examination, just take down my notes, memorize them, and repeat them in the answer papers; you will get your degree. ' I replied: ‘But I am not interested in a degree; I am interested in finding out about the mind.’" Breaks in education. Begins professional study in his 23rd year but ends it abruptly. UG’s grandfather died and without completing his degree, UG left the University of Madras. He inherited a fortune of sixty thousand dollars from his grandfather. In 1943 UG married, when he was 25 years-old.

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5. Right Progress on the Wrong Track After the twenty-fifth year he takes up the line of teaching or lecturing connected with an organization which stands for universal brotherhood and essential unity of all religions. That brings him wisdom, friendship with great men, increasing fame and reputation as a great speaker and respect of learned men. The nature of his work is such that he constantly travels and comes into contact with great men of different kinds and gains experience. These centuries-old words of Kaumara Nadi still covered the facts. The organization for universal brotherhood was, of course, the Theosophical Society. UG functioned as a lecturer and eventually he was elected Joint General Secretary of the Society in India. UG: “Seventeen hours, eighteen hours a day I was working. It is not such an easy job to go and lecture everywhere in the world and meet all kinds of audiences, that too in Catholic countries. It is not an easy thing to meet them. You see, you talk to them. You have to work hard; you have to know a lot of things. You can’t just get up on a platform and talk: there are so many people who are trying to challenge you. And then, you are there as a missionary, not just talking. Now I am not a missionary; I just talk and go. Do what you like with it. I am not trying to convince you. But then, it was difficult. I was a very good speaker at that time, a first-class speaker, lecturing everywhere, on every platform. I addressed every university in India. But there was this feeling: ‘This is not something real to me. Anybody who has brains can gather this information and then throw it at people. What am I doing?’" Then, in the late 1940s, towards the end of UG’s time in the Theosophical Society, Jiddu Krishnamurti arrived on the scene. UG got involved with him. He listened to him for some seven years, every time when he came to Madras. Because of the whole ‘World Teacher’ business he never met him personally. But then, after seven years, circumstances brought them together. UG: “My question was the same question: 'What is it that you have? The abstractions you are throwing at me, I am not interested in them. Is there anything behind the abstractions? What is it? Somehow I have a feeling that what is behind the abstractions you are throwing out is what I am interested in. You may not have tasted the sugar, but at least you seem to have looked at the sugar. “I wanted some straight, honest answers from him, which he did not give, for his own reasons. He was very defensive; he was defending something. ‘What is there for you to

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defend? Hang your past, the whole thing, on a tree and leave it to the people.’ And then, towards the end, I insisted: ‘Come on, is there anything behind the abstractions you are throwing at me?' And that chappy said: 'You have no way of knowing it for yourself.’ “Finish! That was the end of our relationship. You see, ‘If I have no way of knowing it and you have no way of communicating it, what the hell are we doing? I have wasted seven years. Goodbye, I don’t want to see you again.’ Then I walked out. “. . . That’s what I have against this ‘old man’ (J. Krishnamurti): he was perpetuating the same stupendous hopes, and he never came out clean. Amongst my contemporaries the most honest man was Ramana Maharshi and the most dishonest one is J. Krishnamurti, sorry to say. But it’s all in the press; so don’t worry. I don’t say anything behind the back of somebody. Ramana was the honest one, very honest. I don’t know anything of those people who lived before my time. On the other hand - it’s very strange - I never liked that fellow, Ramana. I thought I liked this man J. Krishnamurti for some reason. It’s not that I dislike him, but this whole structure of thought he has created for some reason cannot be of any help to anybody. “Regardless of the claims he makes, and regardless of the talk that ‘it is revolutionary, the only revolution' - and he speaks of 'transformation, radical or otherwise, mutation, radical or otherwise’ - what does he mean by that? You see, when he talks of the mutation of the mind, hmm, what is he talking about? Where is the mind he is talking about? What is there to be transformed? And if that transformation he is talking about is within the framework of your psychological field, it is a worthless transformation. What is so radical about it? He has just created a new lingo. Because he was dissatisfied with the traditional approaches, he created a new language, as it were. For what purpose? I don’t know and I don’t care! So, what do they do, those people who listen to him year after year? They pick up that new lingo and begin to think, feel and experience those things through that new structure of thought which he has created, which is as absurd it is as ridiculous as the traditional approaches. It really doesn't matter what language you use, whether it is a simple language or the traditional language, it doesn't make any difference. “I question the very idea of mutation or transformation that he is talking about - the radical change, the urgency of change and all that sentimental toddle. As far as I am concerned, it is missionary work that he is doing. But I am not interested in missionaries - dead or alive - whether they are Christian missionaries or the Hindu missionaries or missionaries of a different kind. “What is he talking about? What does he mean by suggesting that you can use awareness as a means to bring about a change in you? What exactly does he mean when he talks of awareness? Can there be any division in awareness, hmm? So this is a new game that people are playing. There can’t be any division in awareness, you know? Awareness is


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something which cannot be used as a means to bring about any transformation or change, radical or otherwise, in you, much less in the world around you. The talk of ‘affecting the whole of human consciousness through transformation,’ in which all these people are indulging in, is to me just hogwash. Why he does what he does is his own affair. I am not interested in saving the followers of J. Krishnamurti, much less the world. And if they all want to save the world, good luck to them! But it must produce results, you see. You can say that you have listened to some teacher for fifty years, sixty years or a hundred years, but as far as I am concerned, that is of no importance at all.” UG spoke these words of reluctance to save the world and its inhabitants, a long time after he had himself finished his own, scantily motivated mission around the world. The nature of his work is such that he constantly travels . . . This was a fact and remained a fact: UG traveled all over the world, lecturing everywhere. There are only a few countries he had not visited. After the phenomenon of his ‘calamity’, as UG called his arriving at the Natural State, he kept on traveling all over the world. However, his Theosophically-minded mission had been replaced by a vocation with a totally different direction. After thirty-fifth year there is a change in life. Residence in foreign lands. There is an indication of constant and fruitless traveling around the world. Intense inward struggle. But the inner crisis will end up in good. UG: “You see, I went to the USA for the treatment of my son who had polio. My wife, my son and I went to America. Our two daughters stayed in India with my in-laws. We stayed there for seven or eight years. And that was impoverishing us. I spent everything I had. I told the immigration fellow also: 'People come here to make a fortune; I am here and I have spent a fortune here!' I spent all my money - sixty-thousand dollars - on the treatment of my son. Before that, the 'old man' (J. Krishnamurti) tried his healing in India but without result.” In 1961, UG’s money ran out and he started to feel within him a tremendous upheaval which he could not and did not wish to control. It was to last for six years and ended with the ‘calamity’. It was probably about this time that UG was puzzled by the appearance of certain psychic powers. UG said then: 'The moment I saw a person I could see his entire past, present and future, without his telling me anything.' He even had the power to see through people, as if his eyes had Xray vision.

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UG: “Before my forty-ninth year I had so many powers, so many experiences, but I didn't pay any attention to them. I was puzzled. I was wondering: ‘Why do I have this power?’ Sometimes I said things, and they always happened that way. I couldn't figure out the mechanism of that. I didn't play with it. But then it had certain unpleasant consequences and created suffering for some people.” UG went broke in America. He did not have enough funds to continue to pay for the adequate treatment of the polio of his son. He had little interest in working. Then his marriage broke up. UG: “I failed, you see, that’s all. I wanted to change her (my wife), fit her into my framework, and destroy all the relationships she had with others - her family, her mother and her parents. I wanted to uproot her from the whole thing and plant her in a totally alien land, in which effort I failed - that’s all.” “She was Indian, hmm?” UG: “Hundred percent. And she wanted to remain that way. She wanted children, eight, ten children and all the family around.” “Was it because of some disease that she died so young, or was she homesick?” UG: “No, I don’t know. She was in a hospital, mental hospital . . .” “You made her crazy!” UG smiles dimly. This remark was not meant to be impolite - the person who conversed with UG was a friend. Though the subject was tragic, the conversation was a frivolous one. UG: “She was given electric shock treatment.” “Oahww!” UG: “Yes!” “You allowed that?” UG: “She was in India, I was not there. She was not with me in the US.” “You abandoned her?”

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UG: “Well, she abandoned me. I never throw anybody out or make conditions.” “She left? She was fed up with you? You managed to make it unbearable enough?” UG: “. . .not fed up with me.” “She didn't want to live in America?” UG: “No. She never liked America.” “That’s it. So she wanted to go back to her homeland; she was homesick.” homesick.” UG: “You see, our two daughters were in India, growing up. And she had typhoid in the mental hospital; would you believe it?” “Did she die from typhoid in that hospital?” UG: “No, when she returned home she had an accident. She broke her neck. I got the news six months later . . .” UG had put his family on a plane to India and he himself went to London. He arrived there penniless and began roaming the city. For three years he lived idly in the streets. His friends saw him going downhill on a headlong course, but he says that at that time his life seemed perfectly natural to him. Later, religiousminded people were to use the mystics' phrase ‘the dark night of the soul’ to describe those years; but in his view there was “no heroic struggle with temptation and worldliness, no soul-wrestling with urges, no poetic climaxes, but just a simple withering withering away of the will.” will.” But the inner crisis will will end up in good . . . This crisis took place in London. Then UG felt as if he had no head: 'Where is my head? Do I have a head or not? The head seemed to be there. Where do these thoughts come from?' This queer experience introduced a period in which ‘flipping’ and ‘flying’ were vying with each other to get the upper hand. UG: “There was no will to do anything: it was like a leaf blown here, there and everywhere, living a shoddy life. It went on and on and on. Finally, one day, I said to myself: ‘This kind of life is no good.’ I was a bum practically, living on the charity of some people and not knowing anything. There was no will. I didn't know what I was

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doing. I was practically insane. I was in London, wandering in the streets, no place to live, wandering in the streets all night. One day, I was sitting in the Hyde Park. A policeman came and said: ‘You can’t sit here. We are going to throw you out.’ So, ‘Where to go? What to do?’ I think I only had five pence in my pocket. The thought came into my head: ‘Go to the Ramakrishna Mission.’” UG put his scrapbook before the Swami of the Ramakrishna Mission. This scrapbook was about him: his lectures, The New York Times’ comments on his lectures and his background. The Swami said he was looking for a man exactly like UG. He had to bring out the Vivekananda Centenary Centenary number, but his assistant who was doing the editorial work was mentally ill. UG told the Swami that he was a finished man and that he couldn't be of any help in that direction. But the Swami said, ‘No, no, together we can do something.’ So, UG tried to do something, not to his satisfaction, satisfaction, nor to the Swami’s, but somehow somehow together they brought out the issue. issue. UG got five pounds for his his work. He didn't know know what to do with it; he had lost the the sense of the value of money. money. There was a time when he could write a check for a hundred thousand rupees. After some time of not having even a penny in his pocket and now he had five pounds!

UG: “’What am I to do with this?’ I asked myself. So, I decided to see every movie in London with that money. I used to stay at the Mission and do work in the morning, eat there at one o'clock and go off to see a movie. In the London outskirts they used to show three movies for one shilling or something like that. So I exhausted all the movies and spent all that money. “I was sitting there in the meditation room, wondering at these people meditating: ‘Why are they doing all those silly things?’ By this time the whole thing had gone out of my system. But I had a very strange experience in that meditation center: I was sitting doing nothing, looking at all those people, pitying them. ‘Those people are meditating. Why do they want to go in for samadhi ? They are not going to get anything; I have been through all that. They are kidding themselves. What can I do to save them from wasting all their lives doing all that kind of thing? It is not going to lead them anywhere.’ I was sitting there - nothing, blankness - when I felt something very strange: there was some kind of movement inside my body. Suddenly I found something was moving, some energy was coming up from the penis and going through this, my head, as if there was a hole. It was moving like this, in circles, in a clockwise direction, and then in an anti-clockwise direction. It was such a funny thing for me, but I didn't relate this to anything at all. I was a finished man. man. Somebody was feeding feeding me, somebody somebody was taking care of of me, there was no thought of the the morrow. Yet, inside inside of me there was some kind of a thing: ‘It ‘It is a perverse way of living. It is perversity carried to its extremity. This is not anything (special).’ After three months, I said, ‘I am going; I can’t do this kind of thing.’ Toward


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the end of my stay, the Swami gave me some money, forty or fifty pounds. Then I decided. . . “I still had an airline ticket to return to India; so I went to Paris, turned in my ticket and made some money. For three months I lived in Paris in some hotel, wandering in the streets as I had done before. The only difference was that now I had some money in my pocket. After three months I decided I must go back to India, but somehow I didn't want to go to India. Because of my family, my children, I was frightened to return to India; that would complicate matters. All of them would come to me. I didn't want to go at all. I resisted that. “Finally, I had had a bank account in Switzerland for years and years. I thought I still had some money there. The last resort was to go to Switzerlan Switzerland, d, take the money out and then see what would happen. So, I came out of the hotel, got into a taxi and said, ‘Take me to Gare de Lyon.’ But the trains from Paris to Zurich - where I had my account - left from Gare d'Est. I don’t know why I told the taxi driver to take me to the Gare de Lyon. He dropped me off at Gare de Lyon, and I got into a train going to Geneva." The Kaumara Nadi The Kaumara Nadi must must have had a super clear-sighted eye which could even make sense of the French railway guides: He will be helped by a woman woman who will help him to establish establish himself in foreign lands permanently. permanently.

UG met this woman by a strange coincidence. He landed in Geneva with a hundred and fifty francs in his pocket. Here he continued to stay in a hotel, even after he had run out of his money to pay the hotel bill. After two weeks they produced the bill before him: ‘Come on, money! What about the bill?’ UG: “I had no money, so I threw up my hands. The only thing left for me was to go to the Indian Consulate and say, ‘Send me to India. I am finished.’” So, UG went to the Consulate and took out his scrapbook: “One of the most brilliant speakers speakers that India has has ever produced” – it contained contained opinions opinions of Norman Cousins, Radhakrishnan and others about his talents. The Vice-Consul said to UG: “We can’t send you to India at the expense of the Government of India. What do you think? Try and get some money from India, and in the meantime come and stay with me.” There in the Consulate, UG met Valentine de Kerven, 'The woman who will help him to establish himself in foreign lands permanently'. permanently'. She was the translator at


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the Indian Consulate, but that day she happened to be there at the reception desk as the usual receptionist took leave. UG: “We started talking, and then we became close friends. She said: ‘If you want to stay, I can arrange for you to stay in Switzerland. If you don’t want to go to India, don’t go.’ After a month the Consulate sent me away, but we managed. She created a home for me in Switzerland. She gave up her job. She is not rich; she has just a little money, her pension, but we can live on this money.” So, UG and Valentine went to Saanen, Switzerland. That place had some significance to UG, because he had been there in 1953 while traveling through that area. Then he had said to himself: 'This is the place where I must spend the rest of my life.' He had plenty of money then, but his wife didn't want to stay in Switzerland because of the climate there. Now this unfulfilled dream materialized. He and Valentine went to live in Saanen. Then J. Krishnamurti chose Saanen for his meetings every summer. UG: “I lived there. I was not interested in Krishnamurti or anything. I was not interested in anything. For example, Valentine lived with me for a few years before my forty-ninth year. She can tell you that I never talked at all to her about my interest in truth or reality – nothing. I never discussed this subject with her at all, or with anybody else. There was no search in me, no seeking after something. But something funny was going on.” During that time - UG calls it ‘incubation’ - all kinds of things were happening to him inside: headaches, constant headaches, terrible pains in his brain. He swallowed dozens of aspirin pills, but nothing gave him relief. And he drank fifteen to twenty cups of coffee every day to free himself of the headaches. One day, Valentine said: “What! You are drinking fifteen cups of coffee every day. Do you know what that means in terms of money? It is three or four hundred francs per month. What is this?” UG: “All kind of strange things started happening to me. I remember that when I rubbed my body like this there was a sparkle, like a phosphorous glow, on my body. Valentine used to run out of her bedroom to see; she thought there were cars going that way in the middle of the night. Every time I rolled in my bed there was a sparkling of light - it was so funny to me. At first, I thought it was because of my nylon clothes and static electricity; so I stopped wearing nylon. I was a very skeptical heretic, from top to toe. I never believed in anything. Even if I saw a miracle happen before me, I didn't accept it. It never occurred to me that anything of that sort was in the making for me. Very strange things happened, but I never related those things to liberation or freedom or

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moksha, because by that time the whole thing had gone out of my system. I had arrived at a point where I said to myself: ‘The Buddha deluded himself and deluded others. All those teachers and saviors of mankind were damned fools - they fooled themselves. So I am not interested in this kind of thing any more.’ It went on and on in its own way peculiar things - but never did I say to myself, 'Well, I am getting there, I am getting closer to it.’ There is no nearness to it, there is no ‘far-away-ness’ from it, there is no closeness to it. Nobody is nearer to it because he is different or better prepared. There is no readiness for it; it just hits you like a ton of bricks.” Forty-fifth to fifty-fifth year are years of great importance in his life. He will be born again in his forty-ninth year. Becomes an international personality. He will always be on the move. Name goes to the four corners of the world. Blushing honors will be showered upon him. Books will be written on and about him. Great respect everywhere and in all lands. As years go by a great organization with huge properties and a great following grows around him, to spread his teaching. These lines are almost the end of the vision of the Kaumara Nadi . The prediction mentions a chance of an accident and then finishes with a beautiful “promise” to UG from which we might derive great benefit: Fifty-fifth year or so, there is an indication of death under tragic circumstances. Failing which, he lives right up to a ripe old age, preaching all the richness of his personal experiences. Leaves his mark on the world as one of the great teachers of mankind . . . The accident could have happened when the airplane in which UG once traveled would have crashed because two of its engines caught fire. UG: “Then, in April ‘67, I happened to be in Paris when J. Krishnamurti also happened to be there. Some of my friends suggested, ‘Why don’t you go and listen to your old friend? He is here giving a talk.’ ‘All right, I haven’t heard him for so many years almost twenty years. Let me go and listen.’ When we got there they demanded two francs from me. I said, ‘I am not ready to pay two francs to listen to J. Krishnamurti. No, come on, let’s go and do something foolish. Let's go to a striptease joint, the Follies Bergère or the Casino de Paris. Come on, let us go there for twenty francs.’ So, there we were at the Casino de Paris watching a show. I had a very strange experience at that time: I didn't know whether I was the dancer or whether there was some other dancer dancing on the stage. There was no division: there was nobody who was looking at the dancer. This kind of peculiar experience of the absence of division between me and the dancer puzzled me and bothered me for some time. Then we came out.

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“The question ‘What is that state?’ had a tremendous intensity for me, not an emotional intensity. The more I tried to find an answer and the more I failed to find an answer, the more intensity the question had. ‘What is that state? I want it.’ Finished. Krishnamurti said, ‘You have no way,’ but still I want to know what that state is, the state in which the Buddha was, Shankara was, and all those teachers were.’" Then, in July 1967, there arrived another phase. J. Krishnamurti was again in Saanen, giving talks. UG: “My friends dragged me there and said, ‘Now at least it is a free business. Why don’t you come and listen?’ I said, ‘All right, I’ll come and listen.’ When I listened to him, something funny happened: a peculiar feeling that he was describing my state and not his state. Why did I want to know his state? He was describing something, some movements, some awareness, some silence: 'In that silence there is no mind; there is action’ - all kinds of things. 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 somebody else, the Buddha or Jesus? I am in that state. Now I am in that state.’ Then I walked out of the tent and never looked back. “Then - very strange - that question ‘What is that state?’ transformed itself into another question: ‘How do I know that I am in that state, the state of the Buddha, the state I very much wanted and demanded from everybody? I am in that state, but how do I know that?’" The next day – UG’s forty-ninth birthday - he was sitting on a bench under a tree overlooking one of the most beautiful spots in the world, the seven hills and seven valleys of Saanenland. UG: “I was sitting there. Not that the question was there; the whole of my being was the question: ‘How do I know that I am in that state? There is some kind of peculiar division inside of me: there is somebody who knows that he is in that state. The knowledge of that state - what I have read, what I have experienced, what they have talked about - it is this knowledge that is looking at that state; so it is only this knowledge that has projected that state.’ I said to myself: ‘Look here, old chap, after forty years you have not moved one step; you are there in square one. It is the same knowledge that projected your state there when you asked this question. You are in the same situation, asking the same question, ‘How do I know?’ because it is this knowledge, the description of the state by those people, which has created this state for you. You are kidding yourself. You are a damned fool!’ So, nothing. But still there was some kind of peculiar feeling that this was the state.

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“The second question was, ‘How do I know that this is that state?’ I didn’t have any answer for that question. It was like a question in a whirlpool, it went on and on and on. Then suddenly the question disappeared. Nothing happened. The question just disappeared. I didn't say to myself, ‘Oh, my God, now I have found the answer!’ “Even that state disappeared, the state I thought I was in, the state of the Buddha, Jesus, even that state disappeared. The question disappeared. Finished, you see. It was not emptiness. It was not blankness, it was not the void, it was not any of those things. The question disappeared suddenly, and that was all.”

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7. The Disillusionment of Oneness The land where disillusionment is not some disconsolate disappointment but the very perfection of Reality is a very weird land. One cannot reach it by good actions or philosophical effort. In the years I had known UG, it many times happened that visitors meeting UG wanted to discuss their experience of ‘Oneness’. The following conversation is an example. At that time, the discussion dispelled my illusion of oneness, the disenchanting tenor of which word I have just recently understood. The visitor says: “. . . UG, you say you are now without any goal.” UG: “No goal: nothing to be achieved; nothing to be accomplished; nothing to be attained.” “Yes, but before, in your past, you did have a goal?” UG: “Yes, there was a time when I did, I distinctly remember. But the memory of it has no emotional content anymore. I was like anybody, chasing something, searching for something, pursuing something, and putting the whole of my being in that search. I had invested everything in that goal because I wanted to find out for myself that there might not be anything to be achieved. Then I realized that I had spent all my life searching for something that didn’t exist at all. So this understanding, which is not the result of your logical thinking or rational thinking or any such thing, suddenly hits you, as if a lightning hits you. That’s the end of it. You are finished with the whole thing, FOR EVER.” “It was finished for you for good?” UG: “For ever, once and for all. So that’s something which you cannot make happen through any effort or will.” “Do you think this can happen once and disappear again afterwards?” UG: “No, that’s why I use the word lightning: when the lightning hits, the whole thing is burnt to ashes, as it were. Nothing more is left; you can’t put it together anymore.” “Can you explain your enlightenment?”

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UG: “No, . . . I didn't use the word ‘enlightenment’, you are using the word. ‘There is no such thing as enlightenment,’ that was the thing that became obvious to me. I realized that there is no such thing as transformation, no such thing as self-realization. The whole lot, the whole thing, is just a variation of the same. You replace one with the other. But the whole pursuit has no meaning. And that realization releases a tremendous energy. All the energy you always used in that pursuit is suddenly released, and then living becomes very simple; it has no problems anymore.” “So, if someone would say to you that he has been hit once like you said you had been and that it hasn't lasted for ever, . . .” UG: “He doesn't come here.” “No I mean, suppose . . .” UG: “No suppositions here. I don’t want to discuss suppositions.” “No, I tell you, I have been hit.” UG: “That’s not a fact. You wouldn't be here discussing these things. There would be no need for you to talk about these things.” “But . . .” UG: “You wouldn’t be here talking about that at all, because there is nothing to talk about. And comparing notes doesn’t exist at all.” “No, I am not speaking of that. I said: do you believe that one can be hit once and then somehow, as it has happened, it disappears?” UG: “It cannot disappear.” “So it did not disappear for you?” UG: “It cannot. The very nature of it makes it impossible. If it is some experience, propably an extraordinairy experience, then yes, it disappeares again. Not this. The moment it hits you, it puts an end to the experiencing structure. It is something that can never, never be experienced. I was not talking about that state or whatever it may be . . . But when it has been understood that no matter what the experiencing structure experiences - however extraordinairy it may be - it is worthless, then the question for more and more is absent, because it has no meaning. The nature of the experiencing structure is that it demands more and more of one thing and less and less of the other. So I tell you, the demand for experiencing anything is not there anymore. The demand for permanence and the demand for things is not there anymore, except the physical


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needs of food, clothing and shelter. Even if they are denied, it is not much of a problem for this living organism.” “Can I ask another question. . .?” UG: “Yes, please.” “When this was experienced, this state . . .” UG: “You are using the word ‘experience’ . . .’” “Yes, yes, but there was no the feeling at all that it had happened; there was only the fact that it had always been there, and also that it could never leave, because it was one's natural state of oneness. So there was no idea at all at that moment that something had been achieved, so . . .” UG: “Let me interrupt you. The oneness that you are talking about is something which cannot be experienced at all. That there is an integral relationship with everything is something which can never, never be experienced by that experiencing structure. So, to talk of oneness has no meaning.” “But don’t you feel one with all you see?” UG: “Not at all. The separation is not there, but that doesn’t mean there is oneness. What creates the separation is very clear, but what is there when the separation or the division is not there is something nobody can talk about. The divisive movement that comes into being is all that you can understand. When that movement is not there, what is happening in that situation is something that can never be experienced by you; it can never be talked about. It’s not a mysterious, mystifying thing. Don’t call it love, compassion and all that kind of a thing. You cannot talk about it, you cannot experience it, and what it is you will never know.” “When you say that it is something which you cannot experience, do you mean that it is something which one cannot experience as an individual?” UG: “No, the totality of it cannot be experienced. You see, you must have the knowledge about things to experience them. So when there is no knowledge, how can you experience? When you are talking of oneness, that ‘oneness’ is the knowledge.” “To me it is just the fact of not knowing, the fact of living integral knowledge, not the result of any acquired knowledge or information.” UG: “There is no experience at all. The oneness is something which cannot be experienced.”

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“It’s just a way of speaking.” UG: “For all practical purposes there is no integral relationship and there is no oneness at all. What is there is only the division.” “Well, yes, but one could have some feeling about it?” UG: “How can you feel it? Feeling is thought. You have to fix a point; and the moment the point is fixed thought is there.” “That thought is not disturbing the oneness. Why should it disturb that oneness? It belongs to the oneness.” UG: “There is no oneness at all.” “You know, it is not something which as an individual I have experienced. It has nothing to do with that. When the individual, which was believed to exist, ceased to exist, then . . .” UG: “No, no. You see, when the individual ceases to exist, as you put it, the oneness does not come into being. It is the individual that is projecting the oneness. The integral relationship, the oneness of things is something which can not be captured, it cannot be contained.” “I never said it could be captured.” UG: “Otherwise, you can’t experience it.” “Why should you relate ‘experience’ to ‘capturing’?” UG: “Both are the same.” “If somehow this hankering after stages disappeares totally from you and if you are no longer projecting any goal to achieve or to attain, if then the individual which had been created by the goal also disappeares altogether and you feel a total . . .” UG: “Where is the feeling? Where is that feeling if the individual ceases to be?” “It is not your feeling; it is the total feeling of everything there is.” UG: “Where is that feeling felt?” “It is everywhere.”

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UG: “Where?” “Everywhere.” UG: “There is no point; there must be a point.” Here I had to think of some illustration I once used in an essay on visual arts in which I wanted to show that the highest manifestation of art, of forms and of feelings always stays invisible: Imagine that you are standing between two train rails. Just in front of you the distance between the rails is about one and a half metre, but near the horizon this space between them no longer exists: the two rails merge at one point. Now we start to walk to the spot of that horizon. When we arrive there we find that the distance between the two rails is the same distance that we measured in the first position. The rails don’t meet each other at one point. Of course, nobody is really surprised, because everybody knows something about the effect of perspective. But even if our eye produces a so-called true to nature image, and although we dare to travel by train without any fear of derailment, something is wrong. The image is not true; it is not reality. Imagine watching rails from different spots at the same moment. How would they look from such a point of view? Try to imagine you are watching the world in all spots and places at the same moment. What would you see? The principle of perspective would disappear; the rails wouldn't seem to meet at the horizon, because you also are watching from that spot on the horizon. Moreover, you also watch the rails from below, and then the image of two long rails doesn't exist at all. If we would watch from everywhere, from every spot on earth, what would the world look like? Where is the horizon if there is such watching? Where is any form if this watching occurs both inside a form and on its surface? Where is ‘there’ if there is such watching? Where is ‘the other’, if your watching is in him or her? If this watching is truly everywhere, can there still be any meaning to the word ‘everywhere’? If this watching ‘everywhere’ is really in operation, is it still possible to speak of ‘watching’? Because if this watching is everywhere - and everywhere is everywhere - so if even this watching is inside the one who is watching, how can there be watching anymore? And what things could it possibly watch? Then watching as ‘total watching’ has to knock itself off because it occupies the space where the objects of this watching exist. Thus omni- or total-watching in the final analysis means not watching at all. The normal ‘watching’ only shows us our limitedness, narrowness. Beyond this level watching ceases to be . . . UG says: “If this feeling is everywhere, how can you speak of feeling?”

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“It is not your feeling; it is the total feeling of everything there is.” UG: “Where is that feeling felt?” “It is everywhere.” UG: “Where?” “Everywhere!” UG: “There is no point; there must be a point!” “No, there is no point!” UG: “Then there is no feeling.” “There is an endless feeling.” UG: “You see, these are all words. It cannot be felt. You are talking of feeling; where is that feeling?” “It doesn’t belong to someone in particular, because when this is lived - if you don’t like the word ‘feeling’ or ‘experience’ - when this is lived, then . .” UG: “What is there to be lived?” “That non-separation.” UG: “You see, the non-separation you are talking about is a projection of the separate entity. It projects, it creates. When this entity is absent, the opposite is not in operation there at all. And what is in operation you will never know, you will never feel.” “You know, as long as we are using words, of course we have to use words which inevitably have opposites.” UG: “There is no need for this conversation at all.” “If I tell you that I have come here to . . .” UG: “No, there is no need to, no!” “I have come to you for some reason. My friend brought me here. You are supposed to speak whenever people ask you a question, as for example,

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about the subject we are talking about now. It happens that such an egoless conciousness was experienced.” UG: “I don’t know, you see . . . first of all, there is no ego.” “Yes, that was experienced; that was evident.” UG: “That cannot be a fact.” “It was evident at that moment; then it disappeared again.” UG: “No, no, this experience of the non-existence of the ego cannot be an experience at all.” “Use a different word if you don’t like the word.” UG: “All right, yes. Use anything: ‘self’, ‘psyche’ or ‘mind’ - any word you want to use.” “I mean, that accumulation which is always trying to achieve something different from what was there at that moment, that accumulation had disappeared; the urge to achieve anything at all was no longer there. There was no enlightenment to achieve; there was no liberation to achieve - there was nothing to achieve. This was a fact and it was evident at that moment. So, all that which had been accumulated to achieve some goal had disappeared at that moment, since there was nothing to be achieved. There was no need for keeping the individuality which was only there relative to something to be achieved. Both of these disappeared simultaneously.” UG: “Yes, and along with them the feeling of oneness.” “It was not the feeling of being one with something. There was not the feeling of unity with something in particular. There was just the feeling that there was no separation between something and anything else. It was only the idea of achieving something in particular that had created a division. As soon as this hankering to achieve something, or the desire to achieve non-desire, as soon as that had disappeared, there was only . . .” UG: “Can that disappearance be experienced? Can that be felt?” “Don’t use the word . . .” UG: “Can that be felt?” Some other visitor, a woman who had known UG for a long time, interrupted the conversation with a question:

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“Do you mean, UG, that in that state there is a washout of all differentiation, a total blank?” UG: “No, it is not blank, it is not emptiness, it is not fullness. It is not anyone of those things.” “Well, let's say, it is much more like the sea in the sea, there is only the sea and nothing else in contradistinction with the sea?” UG: “All right, you see, the sea does not know anything about its quality or what it is. We have hundreds of these metaphors in India. The three different Vedantic philosophical systems are based upon this metaphor: the raindrop falls into the ocean. And then the three systems of philosophy say: one system, the system of non-duality says that the raindrop falls into the ocean and it loses its identity and has become one with the ocean. The second system, qualified monism, says it has lost its identity, but it’s not the same as the ocean. The third, the dualistic system of philosophy, says the drop emerges and maintains its individuality. So they go on and on and on, philosophising about these raindrops. Let me tell you, all of that is nonsense. All the systems of philosophy are nonsense.” “So you really think that there is no coming back from that state to express it in words.” UG: “Not a word.” “And there is nothing to come back from?” UG: “No.” “And if there is an immersion in something as he might say, and then he says, ‘I have come out of it.’ That means . . .” UG: “. . . Thank God I have discovered something extraordinairy!” "Yes, I am not using those words because I know they would be the wrong words." UG: “Yes, not because they are wrong, but because you cannot say that.” “Any sort of coming back is the very mark of the fact that it was just a dream or an experience?" UG: “There is no experiencing at all.”

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“Right, but at what point do you know that there is no experiencing at all?" UG first starts to formulate an answer, and then, with a smile, says: UG: “Alright, that’s very clever of you! I know that, you see: ‘How do you know that there is nothing to know?’ That question wouldn't be there if you were lucky enough to be in that situation. The question which you are throwing at me wouldn’t be there. Until then you will be asking these questions: ‘How do you know that it is not that?’ You want to know, and that’s how this tricky thing maintains its continuity.” “Yes, but in you how does the idea that ‘There is neither a knower nor knowing’ arise?” UG: “It arises in response to your question. You are asking the question. They are not my questions, ‘How do I know that it is not there?’ or ‘How do I know that this is not also an illusion?’ It is a question that has no answer. You see, that question cannot be there at all.” The first questioner resumes his conversation now: “But are you not in some way limiting the possibility of this, whatever name you give to it? If you say: ‘To me there was no entering, so how could there be any going into or coming back out of that state?’ aren’t you limiting this thing? Because the fact now is that to me it seems that today I am living in total illusion; that I am living in a different state, a different awareness or conciousness than in that state of oneness. And if you say . . .” UG: “You are . . .” “No, please let me finish my question . . . If you say, that it is impossible to come back from that, then somehow, according to me, you are limiting something. Because you are saying that it is impossible and I say it is possible.” UG: “You say it is possible and I say it is not possible, yes. That’s the end of our conversation. There is no such thing as ‘before the wash’ and ‘after the wash’. My shirt is hanging there. So, you are comparing these two points: it was a soiled clothing before and now, after washing, it is a clean clothing. But here there is no ‘before’ and no ‘after’. The line of demarcation between the two is not there anymore.” “You are lucky enough to live it; so there is no feeling that is has happened and also there is no feeling of coming back from it; therefore, it is not going to vanish.”


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UG: “Listen, since I have not achieved anything, gained anything, I cannot lose anything.” “Exactly. And this is what has brought me here, because this I have lived, and while living this state there was the full evidence that it was something that I had not achieved; it had always been there and it will always be there. What I felt at that time was . . .” UG: “No, I think it wasn't there at all. What was there?” “You may say that, but this idea of achieving anything had disappeared altogether. That which was there at that moment was not corresponding to any achievement at all.” UG: “What was there was this movement in the direction of achieving something; that was all that was there. So, then what is there is something which you can’t say. It is something which cannot be experienced, something which cannot be communicated, something which cannot be talked about.” “I agree with that.” UG: “Then . . .?” “My question is . . .” UG: “No, if, as you say, you agree with me, then there is no place for this dialogue. I’m sorry to say this. You and I wouldn’t be sitting here and talking about that; there is no need to talk about it. None of those questions would be there.” “I was lucky enough then, but there was ‘nobody’ to be lucky at that time to share that. I was first surprised that somehow this state was evident for a long time at a stretch and then somehow it disappeared again. In those days, it was evident that everything appeared to me as just a game: people hankering after a goal to achieve, although they were fully bathing in that conciousness or nonexperience or nonknowledge or whatever you like to call it. It was crystal clear. And then, suddenly as miraculously as it had happened, it disappeared and I found myself back again with the same fear, the same feeling of separation. Then the goal of trying to experience or to live again that state which was absent before now began to show up again.” UG: “Wanting that experience again . . .” “Yes, or maybe it is more correct just to say that the proces of experiencing appeared again.”

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UG: “It was there all the time!” “It was not there.” UG: “It was there; otherwise it wouldn’t demand anything. I would humbly submit that it was very much there. You see, this experience strengthened and fortified that. It was very much there. That is the trickiest of all the things. It has millions and millions of years of momentum. It knows all the tricks in the world. It was very much there.” “But there was no experience there and there was no experiencer!” UG: “You can never say that the experiencer was absent; that cannot be an experience. He was very much there. And the silence you experienced was . . .” “It was not silence. You see, thoughts were there, speaking was there, not speaking was there, sleeping was there and not sleeping was there. No separation between all of them. Nothing was rejected and nothing was accepted.” UG: “’There was no separation' - that was the experience. The fact of non-separation is something which cannot be experienced. Separation can be experienced. You see, when I am talking, there is a separation here.” “From my point of view, yes.” UG: “From my point of view too. This conversation between us is possible only when there is a separation there.” “Yes, I am now feeling that there is a separation. Do you also feel like that?” UG: “Listen: how this conversation and your questions are creating the division here, that is all that I am talking about. Even if it is possible for you to be in that undivided state of conciousness or whatever you want to call it, every question you throw in here creates a division at that particular moment. Then it bounces back into its undivided state or whatever you want to call it.” “Yes, from your point of view, but from my point of view . . .” UG: “From your point of view also. Your question has created a division here; otherwise, how can any answer come? It is a reflection of the thing; it is bouncing back. ‘Bouncing back’ implies that there are two. What ‘this’ (UG is pointing at himself) is pointing all the time is, ‘Don’t ask those questions, because those questions have no meaning at all.’

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The very question creates division there. Whether it is temporary or permanent, it doesn't matter at all.” “But does this questioning create a division there?” UG: “When there is a bouncing back of your question, there is a division. Otherwise how can there be two things? Don’t mystify the whole thing. It comes and goes, comes and goes. Otherwise this would be a corpse! It is responding to the stimuli. But what I am trying to say is that it is a unitary movement: there are no two separate things. The stimulus and the response are one unitary movement. So when there is a question like that, it creates a counterthought here, it creates a division, a temporary division, and then it bounces back into one unitary movement. To imagine that it will be a continuous absence of something has no meaning to me.” “To imagine what?” UG: “. . .that it is finished once and for all: the division is there; and then, the division is not there. When it is not there, you wouldn't know, you cannot know. You have no way of knowing whether the division is there or not. And so, the unitary movement is something which cannot be experienced. You can’t talk about that at all. How this division is created - that’s all you can say.” “You are not tired?” UG: “I am not tired, no. Please go on.” “Let us take it from an other aspect. At one moment, there was the desire to achieve something, and then, for some reason, somehow, that desire to achieve something was not there anymore. There were no more desires to achieve anything. Well, this lasted for quiet some time, a few days. There was just perfect enjoyment or whatever at the moment when it was happening - just responding to the situation, rather, the situation responding to itself. There was just the simple joy of being, nothing more.” UG: “How do you experience the joy?” “Because there was nothing to achieve, the joy was flowing naturally.” UG: “You see, the joy you experienced is related to something. It cannot exist in a vacuum. The feeling that you are finished with your search . . . means that the search has not left. It hasn't. If this search really has gone, then there is no joy there, there is no pain, nothing. What is there you will never know. Not only then; from then on you will never know anything. The ‘joy’ is the knowledge, don’t you see?”


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“It is just the simple joy of not knowing anything. There was no knowledge; there was no knowing. It just was the perfect mystery which had not to be understood but which one was. One was not to unravel the mystery but had become the mystery. That was all. One was not hankering after any answer.” UG: “It was not what you are saying it is.” “How strange it is: somehow you are refusing to admit that it could exist.” UG: “No, it is for you to see, not for me. I’m not blaming you or any such thing. But it is for you to see. If it were as you are saying it was, it would operate now in you. The fact that you are sitting here and asking these questions means that it was nothing. I’m sorry to say that, but you will have something more extraordinary than this petty little experience if you can let go that one as a petty little worthless experience as any other experience is.” (Long, dead silence . . .) UG: “You see, it will be something new. I put in the word ‘new’ because you don’t know what it is. It will be yours; it will not be any one of those things; it will be something which you cannot describe it at all. It is an irreversible thing." And that was the end of this conversation. Indeed, it is the end of any conversation, an irreversible end. The visitor stands up, smiles and leaves. UG: “Yes, that experience was very important to him: 'Nothing to reach at, nothing to achieve;’ well, what's the point in going on with this? He himself admits that he is back again. The oneness he experienced, oneness of life; ridiculous!” “But is it possible to experience the oneness?” asks the friend of raindrops’. UG: “Yes, it is possible, but it’s an experience. And through that it gathers momentum.” “Why don’t you accept the fact that there are levels in experience?” UG: “There are no levels.” “No, not in the field of absolutes, but in the field of experience.” UG: “No, the gurus feed you on that kind of a thing. So the hierarchy is there: slowly, step by step and so on. But there are no levels in conciousness.”


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“Well, not really, but . . .” UG: “No; ‘not really’ means: how can there be levels?” That night, just before I fell asleep, a brilliant poem of the mystical poet Kabir whirled through the darkness of my lodging place: He is the true guru, who reveals the form of the formless, to the vision of these eyes . . .’

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15. Still Life Full of Action We may safely conclude that UG has come to destroy, and surely not to redeem or fulfill. One thing we have to realize is what ‘destroying’ means and what ‘redeeming’ or ‘fulfilling’ mean. ‘Destroying’ used in the normal sense has a negative connotation: Destroying a building will no longer provide any home to the inhabitants; destroying a love will no longer give warmth and wonder to the lovers and destroying self-respect will turn someone into a rather worthless person. Destroying a disease, on the contrary, will turn someone into a healthy and vital person again; destroying a mental prison will set a person free again; and destroying someone’s philosophy will turn him or her into a state he or she was in before that conditioning. The ruthless cold winter not only destroys all superfluous material and transforms it into simpler elements, but it especially prepares enormous quantities of food for the diversity of life spring will bring forth. UG is like this winter with its cutting east wind and its bleak frosty nights. He settles the hash of all sultry and romantic summer reveries, or, to use a more concrete metaphor, UG makes us shiver with cold until he is convinced of the fact that we have caught the chill! Visiting UG from time to time, it is a tall order and a provoking frustration to decry again and again that the ‘winter’ hardly has set in! During the after-visits at UG’s there was the feeling in me that now, eventually, I had understood his point of view, his ‘wisdom’. Alas, every image of a new life, colored with fresh, springtide insights and founded on solid rock bottom, was detracted by UG’s fatiguing conclusion that I was, am and ever shall be fumbling after the old-fashioned scraps of an outdated culture. As an artist it was my dearest wish to create that piece of art through which the real and infinite beauty of Life would radiate. This miraculous artwork has to reveal the great secret of existence to any person who would behold it. Once, at UG’s chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, I showed him a color photograph of my latest artwork. To my own opinion this artwork expressed to a certain extent the poetic quality I wanted it to. It presented in a rather stylized way a master and a disciple, both testifying to the Truth. The meditating disciple was in serene surrender in the immaculate awareness of his master. The master embraced with his majestic arms and glorious look the disciple on all sides, radiating a relentless


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love. Master and disciple together formed a beautiful branch of the endless universe, and beyond this splendor, an all-seeing centre was giving strength and form to the harmonious composition. UG looked upon the picture from all quarters, turned it upside down, even had a glimpse of the reverse side of it as if hoping to find some indication there, and for one moment, by coincidence, watched it in the correct position. No reaction! Absent-minded and pretty indifferent, UG returned the photograph to the disappointed artist. He couldn't make head or tail of it! “I’m sorry,” he apologized with a smile. “If this artwork contains any spark of ‘holy’ quality, UG would have noticed it,” I said to myself. Well, anyway, he didn't show any signs in that direction. And to be honest, it is not at all UG’s ‘talent’ to stimulate people in their traditional vision of philosophy, which is based on droopy-eyed disciples and bombastic bhagavans. (By the way, proud as a peacock I’d like to tell the reader that UG in one of his visits to my studio selected a drawing he said he would like to hang on a wall of his house, if he ever owned one, which, as we know now, he never did.) Lately our conversation was on art and science: “Do you appreciate art, UG?” UG: “I don’t care for anything. All the techniques - I’m not interested in them. Yes, I could appreciate art because I have read books on art and I saw modern artworks. But that’s all. I am not interested in it. After all, it’s just a technique, you see, and nothing else. Music is technique, painting is technique; all art is technique. In this technique the artist is trying to be . . . hmm - I don’t like to use the word ‘creative’ - the artist is innovative. He finds new techniques: he is modifying, altering, and so on. Like that fellow, Picasso, for example. He had tremendous guts to break away from the traditional thing; so he created an altogether new school of painting, as one creates a new school of thought in the field of science. “So it is a technique. And I am not very much interested in the technique of anything, whether it is music or some other art. That’s why I don’t go to all these concerts. I do listen to classical music sometimes; but as a rule I don’t like that music, whether Eastern or Western style, because it’s a perfection of technique. They play with excellent technique.” “And there is no heart in it, you mean?” UG: “Nothing! There is nothing there. They can’t be emotional, so modern pop music is moving in the opposite direction, trying to rouse emotions in men.”

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“That is more valuable?” UG: “All music is the same; this is only the modern trend. Why should we bother about classical music, why stick to that? Really, I never go to any of these concerts. Sometimes I listen to music on the television or on the radio if it is playing. “You see, I am not interested in poetry, and not in any technique either.” “No, that’s not your line, poetry. That has become rather clear to me.” UG: “I don’t read novels either. In fiction they preach about psychological problems and all that, and that doesn't interest me. Sometimes I read crime fiction, something where action is going on, that’s all. Even then it takes so many days for me to read a book. The suspense doesn't interest me. Sometimes I see a movie and have some fun. Any movie that has a psychological theme doesn't interest me. “It’s not that I cannot appreciate beauty or anything. But you see, you have to learn the technique in art either through cultivation or through experience. That is to say, by living in a country you cultivate the habits of that country. These are all cultivated tastes and outside this cultivation you have no way of appreciating anything at all.” Every artist is aware of the fact that a certain technique is needed to express an idea. But the artist also knows that art flourishes far beyond technique. UG even dares to dismiss the highest expressions of art and the most sacred manifestations of human culture, calling them simply ‘technique’. UG consigns all spiritual heights and emotional depths of heart in the field of art to the obtuse and dull domain of ‘technique’, as though he refuses to see the distinction between ‘tracing simply after a model’ and “creating under divine inspiration.” I remember the amusing conversation a Mexican painter had one day with UG: “You know, I have been struggling so hard; through painting, through writing I have searched . . . I put my whole life in this art, in trying to express my deepest feelings, my insights and my joys.” UG: “You don’t want to come to grips with this problem, because it is g oing to destroy the whole structure of your artistic ideas!” “This will what? Destroy. . .?” UG: “. . . the whole artistic structure, which you have created for yourself. You will cease to be a painter.” “I insist on being a painter?”

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UG: “You will cease to be a painter. You will stop painting; you won’t be able to paint anymore.” “You know, . . this I will never find in my heart." (Other visitors roar with laughter.)” The reader might arrive at the conclusion that concerning art UG was just a rattlebrain. Far from it, he was rather a genius when it came to the sources of art. The highest inspiration all artists have in their work is the inspiration they directly receive from Heaven, Absolute, Creative-Centre or God Himself. Of this source, this field of inspiration, UG knew the ins and outs; every trick and every method in this area was present in his awareness - reason enough for UG to settle for the shabby term ‘technique’. UG: “I see what is involved in the appreciation of music or poetry. But you don’t have to go to any school to learn how to appreciate the beauty in nature, hmm? Some fellow writes some lines, some poetry, or throws some special paint on canvas, and then I don’t understand it. So, he wants to teach me how to appreciate his painting or poetry. You see, in that sense I mean all art is technique. “You met that man? He was the head of some German school of art. Many students came to see me in Germany when I visited him sometimes. We had known each other for many years. I talked to those students about these things. They were all shocked. “Art is imitation of what there is in nature; to me it is. You may not be conscious of the source of your imitation, but it is similar to what Valentine does: she always picks up a clover with four leafs, always. She says she is not looking for it, but she is looking for a clover of four leafs. So in exactly the same way, you as an artist are always looking for something to imitate from nature. An artist is a good imitator." “In that sense you do not appreciate the art of Zen any more than you do other schools of art, hmm, the desolate mountains, the meditative pictures and all that?” UG: “No, it’s just a school of art; the Chinese school, the Japanese school, the Indian school and the Western school . . .” In those days I read a book on Japanese and Chinese art. Several chapters in the book discussed the relation between the art of painting and the Tao. In those chapters they only gave advice as to how to hold your pencil and how to prepare the ink, and several other technical things. Performed with certain ‘rituals’ this ‘practical wisdom’ should reveal to a person the Tao little by little. In other words: dead tradition, not a grain of Tao-art as I imagined it to be. Real Tao-art one can never learn from a book. To let the Tao-art happen one requires the deepest core of an artist, as well as the deepest core of a true philosopher.

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After several months of very creative conversations my friend Evert and I had about art and philosophy, which to me are inseparable, he had written down at last his final vision concerning this holy subject. He described the artist who himself becomes Art, (with capital ‘A’) . . . ‘A real artist deep down in his soul has some kind of a dream, a talent, which has to be crystallized into the concrete reality of the world. In this process of investing his talents in the world, the artist can realize himself, which means: pouring out his essence all over reality, thus becoming one with that reality. Doing Art is not the creation of a beautiful or ugly painted picture, nor is it earning one's bread and butter, nor is it the creation of some political awakening regarding social abuses. Art is a happening, a process, which is enacting itself in front of the artist. Real art is not something the artist does. Actually the real artist attempts to depict the Absolute Reality, attempts to express Being-Itself, an effort which, when it is undertaken with courage and dignity, results in the realization of ‘Being the Absolute-Reality himself.’ Never had I read a more beautiful and more profound description of art. Realizing this vision would mark the absolute ending of the artist, as he always knew himself to be -- some separate little creature in an immense and impersonal universe - and finally the beginning of Real-Art. Before this moment, creative effort means nothing more than the meaningless rambling of an inadequate ego. Lingering in the inspiring presence of an enlightened man would certainly benefit an artist's growth and manifestation of power ‘expressing the Absolute’. Having the model right in front of you certainly must make it easier to perform than having to distill this miracle from the trees and the flowers. UG: “. . . It’s just a school of art, Chinese, Japanese or Western school of art, each with its own techniques.” "Rembrandt, for example, his paintings are rather concrete . . ." UG: “Listen, that fellow is trying to project his own feelings in them, that’s all; his own knowing. So, that is not an exact copy like the photo. It is also an idea of the model, what that person should look like. But that is not the way the model looks exactly.” “And what do you mean by ‘not exactly like a photograph?’” The reason for my question is my doubting whether UG is still talking about Art. When people compare paintings and others pieces of art with photographs by saying “It very


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much resembles a photograph,” one should have more than a simple doubt about their art education. UG: “Photographs are the same. I see the photographer behind it.” (Thank God!) UG: “And I am also subjective myself: I don’t like certain things: for instance, in photos where there is a smile on my face. To me smiling is so artificial in my case. But people say I am smiling all the time.” "UG, this very moment you are smiling." UG: “I don’t know. I don’t even know that I’m smiling. But they tell me that I am always smiling." "In art it’s the same as in philosophy, hmm?” UG: “Yes, it’s all a structure of thought. It has no meaning to me.” “There is no highest form of art?” UG: “No, it’s still within the field of thinking. There are no absolutes for me.” “UG, I always wanted to create that divine piece of art which would really give people a thrill: ‘Yes, Life is grandiose!’” UG: “You will probably succeed, I don’t know, but not with me. I just look at it and see there are some colors and lines there, regular lines . . . “You see, you want an audience; otherwise there is no point. When you sing you want an audience, somebody to appreciate you. There is a value for that, a marketable value for everything you do. Some people say: 'we are creative, but we don’t care for any audience: we don’t want art shows and so on.’ But this is nonsense. If you show it to somebody, that means you want the appreciation of that person, even if you don’t want to sell it and make money.” "Yes, you want some recognition.” UG: “Yes, even if you don’t want money in return for that.” “So . . . since art and philosophy have nothing to do with what you are talking about, I have the feeling, more than ever, that I can go on being an artist, feeling free to create whatever comes up.”

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UG: “Yes, by all means. I am not saying anything against it.” “Instead of a disillusion, this conversation seems to give me the feeling of freedom, active freedom, because I don’t have the tension of striving to create the ‘topmost artwork’? I can just paint and . . . enjoy the work. High hopes in the field of art and philosophy are losing their hold!” UG: “Yes. But anyway, you have to have a model. You see, you are perfecting all the time, but nature doesn't use anything as a model. That is the only difference between an artist and nature. If you free yourself from the stranglehold of technique - because a model is always used as a model for a technique - when that is destroyed, you will cease to be a painter, in the recognizable sense. That doesn't mean that abstract things are any more creative than the others. They also are created after a model, you see. There is creativity only when a finished product is not modeled after anything.” “Like you? You mean yourself? You don’t have a model and you cannot yourself be a model!” UG: “Yes, you cannot imitate this; it’s finished.” “That’s real creativity?” UG: “Yes, because it is creating all the time something new. Although you say that there is repetition, it is not repetition in that sense. You see the contradictions there, but they are not really contradictions. So, what I said before is now destroyed by the next statement. You don’t have to stick to the logical thinking of people.” And so it happens that we’re always right off the beam the moment we think we can use the things we now have understood: Real creativity does exist, but we can never, never use it for any purpose. Real creativity is part of the Creative Principle, the Absolute. As soon as we, the benevolent little egos, think we are able to enrich the whole of creation by offering heavenly paintings and divine poetry - viewing as it were through this Creative Principle - we make the same silly mistake as the man did in the following quiz: “What is the material a glass eye is made of?” Too much of stupid thinking and guessing makes the quiz master blabs the answer: “…made of glass of course!”

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“Ah! How could I forget that,” exclaims the ingenuous candidate, shaking his clumsy brains. “It’s so evident, hmm, of glass, because you must be able to see through it!” “Let’s take Einstein. If this ‘enlightenment’ had happened to him, do you think it could have made him into an even more brilliant researcher?” UG: “No, he would cease to be a scientist.” “That’s what would happen?” UG: “You see, there are two ways: or else a man is not ambitious, in the sense that he cannot put himself where he would like to be . . .” “In the sense of working at a job?” UG: “Yes, in the sense of fulfilling himself. So, he is either sick or . . .” “. . . or he is in your state, the natural state?” UG: “. . . or he is finished with the whole thing. When he is finished with the whole thing, he wouldn't touch it anymore. He will not become a better painter; he will not become a better artist, a better musician or a better scientist, and he will not all of a sudden have a genius mind, inventing extraordinary things - because anything that comes out of thought is destructive, in the long run. “So all his research has resulted in destruction. And if not Einstein, somebody else would have done that. That’s why I am not a great admirer of Einstein. The Jewish cause was behind his research. You see, there is no such thing as pure research. He was thrown out of his country and he flourished in America. All his work was made possible in the United States. So, he didn't want Germany to win the war. Not that I wanted Germany to win the war, but . . .” “Yes, so when this calamity, this 'enlightenment' would happen to me, it would not make me a better artist or a better driver?” UG: “No. The craving is absent. But I still have my prejudices, my likes and dislikes. They always influence, in the sense that, for example I don’t see a movie. Why? Because I don’t care for that kind of a movie, you understand? “So what I am saying is antisocial, anti culture and anti everything. “You know, the day people succeed in fitting me into their religious framework, that is the end of me.”


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“What do you mean by ‘the end of me’?” UG: “If they understand this within the framework of their religious thinking or materialistic thinking, well, that’s the end.” “Yes, I understand. But what do you mean by ‘the end’?” UG: “If at all there is any usefulness, that usefulness is lost.” Real Art and Real Creativity take place in Absolute Stillness. Even whispering about these miracles of Life is too noisy for their splendor. The question of “How to create?” is itself the devil of Absolute Destruction!

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16. Valentine

Don’t you ever try to tell anyone to lie about UG, because then you’ll have to reckon with Valentine! This is all the more true if one realizes how strange a life Valentine had to live with this enlightened master. As Valentine was an emancipated Western, Swiss lady, it’s a miracle that she managed to live with this rather authoritarian Indian Brahmin man for more than twenty-five years. Even Kaumara Nadi astrologer must have been surprised when he read aloud the predictions concerning UG and Valentine. Valentine supported UG as a truly dedicated ‘Holy Mother’ would and she indeed was ‘holy’ in her own right, and in a Western way. Once I related to UG and Valentine the story I had heard about the opinion that the leader of the School for Philosophy, Mrs. van Oyen, expressed concerning UG: she informed a student of her school (the student was Henk who had introduced me to UG) that she considered UG a handsome man, “but not mature enough yet to function as a teacher.” She pronounced this judgment after having read a short text about UG and seeing a picture of him. When Valentine heard of this ‘immaturity of UG,’ she was infuriated: “This lady and her School for Philosophy are not fit to say anything concerning UG.” Valentine was disconcerted and felt outraged at this painful underestimation of UG’s merits. Her annoyance about this ‘first-rate Scholastic remark’ of Mrs. van Oyen was expressed in such a powerful way that I suspected Valentine of having knowledge concerning UG’s eventual role as ‘one of the great teachers of mankind;’ the conviction I heard in her voice could only come from someone who had already known what would happen in the future.

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I had seen something similar before: sometimes, when UG was shouting his aggressive and depressing damnations at his visitors, Valentine would smile somewhat, as if she wanted to reassure those people: “Don’t be disturbed, everything will turn out to be all right.” However, when UG again drags your attention away from your rather sentimental fantasy, its remaining reliability is immediately rendered null and void. Valentine was the eldest of the three daughters of the famous surgeon Dr. de Kerven. UG: “Her father was a great researcher here. He wrote nineteen or twenty books about surgery; in all American textbooks you find a reference to him under, ‘de Kerven Syndrome’. “Can you explain what the syndrome is?” “I don’t know. They gave me a photocopy of the explanation, but I cannot make head or tail out of it. He was always invited by the most famous clinics in America for major operations. He was very well known. Even the doctor who came to see Valentine yesterday recognized her name, ‘de Kerven’.” Two days earlier, Valentine had stumbled and fallen down on the hard pavement, hurting her face. That evening, along with UG and a friend she went to the Gstaad Cinema, where the three of them enjoyed the film called “First Blood.” Films interested Valentine because she herself had worked in the film industry; and UG was fond of the devilish actions of Sylvester Stallone. When they walked home, as it was dark, Valentine did not notice some steps and she fell. Her face was bleeding and she had pain. A doctor was called in quickly; he agreed to come only upon UG’s insistence. When he came to know of Valentine's family-name, he offered his expensive assistance. “Was de Kerven a brain-surgeon, UG?” "No, his specialty was some gland, here,” said UG, pointing to a place on his neck. UG: “You can see his statue in the hospitals in Bern and Basel. “Between the First and Second World Wars, Valentine was a member of a group of revolutionary artists and film people. She was nineteen then; if they would have arrested her, they would have jailed her because she was distributing all kinds of radical pamphlets. She also had her own film company called “de Kerven-Films” in Paris. She was really a rebel and she was the first woman to wear pants, in Paris, after Marlene Dietrich."


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“Yes, Dietrich and I were the first two persons to wear pants,” confirmed Valentine. “Did you also meet Marlene Dietrich, Valentine?” UG: “She was not there; she was in the North and I was in Paris." Valentine smiles over her far-away memory. “She crossed the Sahara on a motor-bike!” UG swaggered about Valentine’s adventurous past, “Her friend drove. At that time he was not her husband.” Valentine: “He was never really my husband,” Valentine was quick to correct UG. UG: “Oh no, Valentine, come on, we don’t get into that story again!” Valentine: “It was a play, this marriage.” UG: “She never changed her family name after the marriage. When Valentine and her husband divorced they showed to the judge the ‘contract’ they had signed at the time of their marriage. The judge looked at it and said: ‘You call this a marriage? This contract, ‘free to do what she likes, to sleep with whomever she wants . . .’ - you call this a marriage? Well, anyway, you have been separated for so many years; so this marriage is of no significance.’ “And in those times, they were forced to marry. In Switzerland unmarried people could never live together under the same roof. So the police were chasing them; they had to hide and move from place to place. So finally they decided to marry on the conditions of this contract. It was very different in those days, very difficult. I don’t know, maybe I have the copy of that contract somewhere . . .” “UG, this journey across the Sahara - did Valentine do this because of her film work?” UG: “No, she was just going on a vacation. Yes, she made so many documentaries. I don’t know what happened to her films. She gave a lot of them to the Bern University. She made most of them for her father: they were documentaries on medicine and surgery. She also made a documentary on the Gypsies; it was shown all over the world.” “And what was the period of her film-career?” UG: “In the thirties, I think, before the war. Yes, just before the war. And she had this film company until the Second World War broke out. She came from abroad and got

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stuck here in Switzerland; she could not go out. She drove to Switzerland in her Chevrolet.” “She had a Chevrolet then?” UG: “Yes, and during the war she had to keep it in the garage as she had no petrol to drive it. And then, after two, three years - this story is interesting - they wanted her to pay duty, customs-duty or something. Valentine said, ‘I don’t use this car, and the car has been sitting here for more than a year, two years, or even three years.’ She refused to pay: ‘You can do what you like with this car, but I am not going to pay this duty!’ And that was at a time when people were going around collecting nails and any small piece of metal. There was a shortage of everything. And they dumped this car into the lake. It was a big scene.” Valentine: “Oh, it was a scene yes!” UG: “…because she refused to pay the customs duty which amounted to more than what she paid for the car. And the seats in the car were new. They floated in the water and the boys there jumped into the lake and tried to salvage them. But the police made holes in them and destroyed them.” Valentine: “Yes, they were horrible - because they could have taken the car; that was their right. But they brought it to the lake and, pffft, they dropped it into it.” UG: “Stupid, at a time when metal was in shortage and everybody was collecting nails and so on. “Oh yes! Valentine also wanted to fight against Franco in Spain. She obtained a fake passport and I think she probably learned how to shoot and such. Then, in the last minute, her boyfriend backed out, and she didn't want to go alone.” "UG, you said that Valentine was never interested in the process of your Natural State. Is that really true, because I cannot imagine that she would not be interested?" UG: “No, no, she was interested, but she never spoke about it. So many people have tried to draw her into conversation about this point, but I told her, ‘No, don’t talk about it.’” During our journey across the Alps, of which I wrote in the beginning of this book, I asked UG how Valentine reacted to his ‘influence’ and whether she had at times experienced higher levels of consciousness. Of course, this was a risky question, to ask UG about ‘higher levels of consciousness’, but this time he surprised me by answering it in an affirmative way: “Yes, she never talks about it

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with anybody, but it certainly happens that she had experienced higher levels of consciousness. But she has never made these things known to anyone.” Anyway, Valentine never showed a trace of vanity, pride, self-complacency or other egocentric attributes. She really was unselfish and she had a natural charm of her own. She was always interested in the people who came to visit UG and her. Valentine's positive and humorous attitude to life was rather unique, especially when we think of her circumstances in life in relation to her age - she was eighteen years older than UG. But if we realize her busy daily life, her enchantment with UG becomes even more worthy of respect: Living in the sublime company of an enlightened human being is of course the best life one could ever wish, but it might not be so easy. Many people who lived with UG for some time said it was heavy to be in his company for such long time. Spending a few days or weeks with him is nice and interesting, but living with him for many weeks at a stretch can be tiresome. The effect of UG’s Natural State on the ‘Un-natural State’ of people is exhaustion. Our few exhausting weeks compared with Valentine's twenty-five years may show Valentine's traits of patience and endurance. Most people will find that, in the long run, they are deprived of their privacy: there is always the ‘all-seeing eye’ of UG to correct every scrap of egoism. Valentine never had a moment for herself. If her spiritual life with UG was not easygoing, Valentine's material life wasn't easy either nor was it ordinary. During the last twenty years of her life, Valentine was UG’s fellow traveler. In winters they flew to India, where they stayed in Bombay with friends who were prominent in the Indian film industry. A month later, they would go to Bangalore, again seeing many friends and sitting in a room which contained twice as many visitors as the room could comfortably hold - day after day. Next, they would leave the broiling weather of India for the fresh weather of Europe, mostly Rome. Here UG and Valentine would stay for some weeks with their Italian friends, till it was time to travel to Switzerland. In Gstaad they lived in a nice chalet built on a hill at the foot of the Hornberg. The terrace in front of the house offered a beautiful view of the village and of the far-away snow-covered mountains of the Swiss Alps. Of course, Valentine and UG were not the only people who enjoyed this view; many visitors came to see UG and ask him questions, for a hundred tiring days at a stretch. In the mornings, when UG was answering the first questions of this day, Valentine went shopping (she liked walking down the hill), buying something for lunch and diner, and then walking back up the hill.


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At the end of August, they might go to London or Amsterdam. It depended on their airline ticket - whether it permitted them to make a stopover. If a stopover was not possible, they might travel by car, driven by some friend. In later years, in the middle of September, the destination was the United States of America: a few weeks in New York, a few weeks in Mill Valley, a few weeks here and a few weeks there. Next in the itinerary was Brazil, then Australia and New Zealand. And at the end of their travel they would return to Bombay or Bangalore in India where a new round-the-world trip would start. UG and Valentine traveled all over the world. And don’t think that UG because of his Natural State and Valentine's old age brims over with gallantry towards Valentine, no. She always had to squirm to sit in the backseat of a taxi or a friend’s car; UG always wanted to sit in the front seat. Yes, he would always give a hand when Valentine stepped into the car and he always said that she must watch her head when she got into it, but that’s all; and Valentine prefers to agree with her ‘Patron Saint’s’ suggestions. Unfortunately, at the age of eighty-five, Valentine's memory started failing. She seemed to suffer the Alzheimer's disease. After a lifetime of traveling, rebellious initiatives and the courageous enterprises, she now was unable to keep traveling around the world with UG. Truly compassionate friends of UG and Valentine tended her in their house in Bangalore. Although she forgot many events of her life, she still had her Swiss vitality, and at the moment these words were written, her health was extraordinary. Some time ago, one evening in Amsterdam, after UG had had his conversation with visitors, UG and some of his friends were remembering Valentine - her character, her funny remarks, her tragic days and also her mysterious deeds: UG: “I tell you, Valentine was very clever. When she created this fund for my travels she said: ‘This money is only for the purposes of UG’s stay in Switzerland and for his travels. It should not be used for propagating what he says and nothing should be added to the fund.” “You know when she created this fund?” UG: “A few months after she had met me!” “UG, can you say how it is that Valentine created this fund for you, and why she was so convinced about you?” UG: “Don’t ask me, and don’t ask anybody. You see, she never answered that question. One thing she said was: ‘I have found a reason to live, and this man is the reason.’ She was about to commit suicide: she wanted to jump in the river the previous day but she didn't have the courage. This happened the day before she had met me.

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“That day we met we sat there, talking for two hours, and then, within a month she said: ‘I have now a reason to live; everything I have is yours.’ I said to myself, ‘This woman, what can she give me? She is working in a consulate.’ She said to me: ‘I can make it possible for you to live in Europe. I’ll open an account in a bank,’ she said, and the next day she came to me with a receipt, showing that she deposited all her money. This was in 1964. Everything she had - all the diamonds, gold and silver - she sold and she said, 'When the time comes, I will sell my house.’ “They have already made her into a ‘Holy Mother’. You have seen that in that movie. Yes, she is ‘the Mother’, like Aurobindo's Mother; they have made Valentine into that. But she has no illusions; she is not that type. “You see, two things kept us together: one, if you don’t have any physical relationship, it’s a lot easier. And that kind of a thing was absent; and second, Valentine knew all the time that I wouldn’t give a damn for her or for her money, that I would drop her just like that. And she knew that I was not dependent; she was more dependent, psychologically, than I was. “Valentine never shed tears; I never saw her doing that, although Marissa (their Italian friend) says that one day, when I was very harsh and cruel with her, she cried, it seems. ‘It is too much for me, I can’t take it anymore!’ Valentine apparently said to Marissa. I never saw her crying myself. If she had cried, (snaps his fingers), then I would have thrown her out in one minute. You see, I would never tolerate crying. That’s not a thing that will win me over. I used to tell Parveen too (a famous Indian actress who lived with UG and Valentine for half a year): ‘You just get lost! Your crying doesn’t impress me. I don’t know how good an actress you are. Your acting is not going to impress me, Parveen. Be careful! Don’t do such things.’ “In the years we were together, before my calamity, Valentine was interested in helping me write my autobiography: ‘That’s my mission in life; he is an extraordinary man,’ she said. But I never talked to her about enlightenment; by that time it was all finished for me. But she insisted that I should write the story of my life. So, we prepared a book, a four-hundred-page book. When we finished the book, this thing happened, this calamity. “We were writing the chapters on Jiddu Krishnamurti, my encounters with Krishnamurti. So, we went to Paris; we went everywhere to collect material, to get hold of Krishnamurti’s talks, my questions and articles that appeared in the Theosophical magazines and all that. I didn't want to go to Krishnamurti's talks - I was finished with that. But when we were in Montreux, Valentine said: ‘Look here, that man is giving talks here where we are going to stay. Why not we go and listen to him?’ Well, that sounded very reasonable to me, so we went. At the end of the talk Valentine summed up her impressions about Krishnamurti by saying something very interesting: ‘That man, Jiddu Krishnamurti, does not belong to our times; he belongs to the last century. What

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is he saying?’ She elaborated: ‘His analysis is interesting, but what is he saying? He belongs to the last century with all the poetry, romantic stuff and so on.’ Remarkable summing up; nobody ever summed up like that. She was intelligent, a very intelligent woman. “So, she managed this fund until four or five years ago. She was handling the whole thing. However, without my knowledge she never did anything. ‘It’s not mine anymore,’ she would say, ‘My Avis credit-card is enough for me.’ But she knew, and I told her, ‘Any day, anytime you want, Valentine, you may go, and this money is yours.’ I was not in any way dependent on her. And we got along very well.” “But sometimes you also were cruel to her, yes?” UG: “Very." “Yes, but why? . . . Why!” UG: “I don’t believe in all this sentimental nonsense. You see, you will do exactly the opposite. That’s why people are surprised. What I have done, you see, you cannot do such things. That ‘cruelty’ is necessary. Last year, I dragged her with me, you remember? And you were all shocked. She came running and she enjoyed the walking afterwards. But you are all sentimental people. You don’t mean what you say. You are the most vicious people. There is nothing to your sentimentality; there is nothing to your feelings. Sentimentality - there is no reality to that. If everything else fails, you say, ‘I love you darling.’ What the hell are you talking about! ‘You must do this for me darling, because if you love me, you should do it.’ What the hell!” “So a perfect relationship is a relationship of people who do not need each other?” UG: “But you need! You use them; that’s all - nothing wrong with it. And if you put it on that level, then it’s simple, very simple.” “Did Valentine ever say that she loved you, UG?” UG: “No. What is that love you are talking about? She was attached to me; that was obvious. She was psychologically dependent on me. But I didn't exploit it.” "But wasn't this attachment colored by love or tenderness?” UG: “What tenderness? Nothing. I did not have that kind of a thing. She could go!” "Yes, about you we know; you told us already.” UG: “What?”

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“That you don’t have these feelings.” UG: “You see, if I do, whatever I am doing, it is not because I feel for it, but because it has to be done. I don’t do it because I think she is a weak, helpless woman and she has been with me. I don’t do it because she did anything to me; no reciprocity there. She could take her money and go. That was my line always: ‘Valentine, take your money and run!’” (Laughter) “That was your way of shedding tears for her?” UG: “Not my tears. They are disgusting, tears!” “Oh yes, I remember UG, when Valentine was angry at you in Switzerland. Valentine and I were walking arm in arm, and I said to her: ‘Well, you know how they are, men.’ And Valentine said with a touch of pathos in her voice: ‘Yes, I know . . .’” UG: “You know, the most interesting thing was this: we were about to leave for the United States. Parveen Babi also was there. I told Valentine: ‘If you bring any more luggage than what this small suitcase can hold, you are not coming with me. I am leaving you here and I am going.’ She jumped up and down and did all kinds of things. This was four or five years ago. And then Parveen interfered; she said: ‘Don’t listen to UG, I will help you. We will both pack up. … He is horrible, isn't he?’ And then Valentine's answer was very interesting. She said: ‘You know Parveen, I have met lot of men in my life; he is the kindest man I have known in my life. And you can imagine the rest!’ Parveen was flabbergasted: ‘What is this woman saying? – ‘I have known lot of men in my life, but he is the kindest man I have met in my life; you can imagine the rest!’’ Even later when people asked her, ‘Valentine, do you think UG is kind? Is he nice?’ And if you pushed her she would say: ‘Yes, yes, he is very nice, very kind.’”

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17. Omniscience, a Matter of Knack Buddha never answered questions concerning the world. UG’s answer in these matters often sounds like: “I don’t know; I really don’t know!” In philosophical circles people very well know, or at least take it for granted, that realized or enlightened people often have the power of omniscience. This means they have the power to know anything they want to know. Once I read in a book about a sage who, if he had that wish, could come to know the quality of the weather in New York while sitting in his room in Bombay, without using the telephone. Of course, no sage is interested in any weather, but if it should be of any importance, he would have some way of obtaining the knowledge about it. Although we are convinced that this superficial information is not very useful, at the same time, it intrigues us why this strange power has not been used to predict catastrophes or other mundane matters. Why don’t sages use this wonderful quality to solve problems such as famine, incurable diseases, the threat of nuclear war, pollution, worldwide financial crises and all the malicious worldly pleasures? All right, a sage, a real holy man might have this power of omniscience and at the same time, by an invisible law not have the authority to enlighten the whole of mankind. For the time being we will settle for that. But why doesn't he use his power for anything at all? Why does UG, for instance, reply so many times with the words: “I really don’t know?” When a realized man is no longer separated from the One Universal Life, it’s easy to imagine that he is able to know anything merely by wanting it. We, unenlightened people, only have to open our eyes to perceive the whole world around us; we don’t have to create that world, it’s already there. Like in this example, the sage only has to “open” his wish (book) to know and he has the knowledge he asked for. Inviting UG to speak about this all-knowing faculty, someone asks him whether there might be a form of not-knowing as an equivalent of knowing. Listen to why, according to UG, this all-knowing mystery is only a matter of knack: UG: “. . . The statement 'I do not know' is not a logically ascertained conclusion or premise. There is an assumption, as you put it, that the so-called realized men, enlightened men or twice-born men have this all-knowing faculty. But that is one of the

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mistaken assumptions on the part of people who assume in the first place that somebody is a twice-born man. And if any claims are made by those people strongly believe that someone is twice-born, then it is very important for us to understand what exactly is meant by ‘knowing’. You see, they also use ‘all-seeing’. ‘All-knowing’ and ‘allseeing’ are misinterpreted terms. “When you are looking at something, what is there? The object out there is demanding your total attention. That is the one that is demanding your total attention. It is not that you are totally aware of it or that you are trying to see that object out there totally - it is the other way around . . . because whatever is happening there is demanding your total attention. And at the same time everything that is happening there is also distracting your attention. So, everything that is happening is demanding your attention, total attention, at that particular moment in that frame of your seeing. You see, that is all that is there. So it is in that sense the term ‘all-seeing’ means ‘I see whatever is there.’ Because in that situation all that you know about that thing is absent. The knowledge you have about what you are looking at is absent. I don’t know if I make myself clear? “When I say, I don’t know anything beyond that, I mean (what I know is) not any different from what you know about it; (I mean that) you have no way of knowing something other than this knowledge. It’s not that you say to yourself, ‘I don’t know it,’ but there is nothing to know other than what you already know about that particular object out there or about the objects inside of you. (Actually there is no inside or outside.) “So the object out there is a microphone, a tape recorder and a man sitting there - he wears an ochre robe. He is a man and not a woman. That is a woman and she is not a man. And see, when the eyes are focused on the objects out there - I want you to look at it, please look that side - there is a reflection of the light on that watch there. Do you see it? So your whole attention is drawn to, focused on the reflection of that particular object there. Now you are nodding your head, so that movement is now demanding my attention and so my attention has moved away from the previous object. Even if you are looking at an extraordinary sunset, the movement of some red rag somewhere is drawing your attention. It is in that sense one is not involved in any movement of pleasure. If you say, ‘It’s an extraordinarily beautiful object,’ and continue to look at it, and get involved and absorbed in it, it does not mean that there is something beautiful there, because that (your statement) is only an expression of sensual activity. It is a movement of pleasure. You don’t want to look at anything else. You are concentrating on that through your effort and will. I don’t know if I make myself clear? It is very difficult. “Other than this (knowledge) I don’t know anything (else) about it, and there is no way of knowing anything about it! “So, in exactly the same way, you have a certain experience: you feel happy or unhappy. That is also an object there inside of you. If the knowledge you have of those feelings and sensations is absent, what that particular feeling is or what that particular sensation is


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you have no way of knowing. You know that there is some sensation, and you give it a name and call it boredom, happiness or unhappiness - you call it this, that or the other. But when that knowledge is absent, you have no way of knowing what that particular sensation is. In other words, you really don’t know whether you are happy or unhappy. “So, if somebody asks me the question ‘Are you happy?’ that question is a ridiculous question, because I really don’t know what happiness is. If you don’t know what happiness is, there may be a happy feeling there, yet you don’t know what that feeling is because the knowledge that you have about that feeling is absent. Since you really don’t know what that is, you don’t say that you are happy and you don’t say that you are unhappy. “Since you don’t know what happiness is, you will never be unhappy in your life, because the two go together. “It is in that sense that other than what I have been told and what I have experienced through the help of that knowledge I have no way of knowing what that is. It is not that I am ignorant, because when there is a demand for that - for example when you ask me the question ‘What is that?’ - I would immediately say ‘That’s a microphone.’ “The information, the knowledge you have about all that is locked up there in your memory cells. But since there is no demand for that knowledge to be in operation, what is going on is only the sensory perception: the light is falling on that and the reflection of the object throws an image on the retina here - that’s the physiological explanation. So that light is activating the optic nerves here and automatically your memory cells are also activated. But because you are constantly moving from one object to the other, there is no possibility of the memory cells being activated simultaneously with the activation of the optical nerves. “It is not that you are moving from object to object, but the things that are happening out there are constantly making your attention move; not just your attention, your total being is involved in whatever you are looking at. It is not that you are trying to look at it, but that particular thing is demanding (your attention). So, it doesn't matter whether it is the beautiful face of a woman or a beautiful sunset or the ugly thing that is there, that garbage bag. It doesn't matter what it is. Of course, you never say that the beautiful sunset and the ugly garbage can are the same. But in a particular situation your eyes are focused on that garbage can; in another situation your eyes are focused on the sunset; and in a third situation the moving of that tape recorder is demanding your attention. “So, when I say, ‘I really don’t know and I have no way of knowing it,’ I mean that what all you know is all that is there and beyond that you have no way of knowing anything about it, and there is no need for you to know anything. It is in that sense that I say, ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know what that object is.’


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“‘How can you be that dumb?’ you can ask me. It’s not that I am dumb or that I don’t know. All the knowledge I have about things is in the background and there is no demand for that knowledge. If there is a question, automatically the answer comes: ‘That’s a microphone, that’s a tree, that’s an ashtray, that’s a beautiful flower and that is . . .’ whatever the color is, you know. “So, that’s all that is there. ‘All-seeing’, ‘all-knowing’ mean: All that you know is all that is there, and beyond that there is no need for you to know anything. It does not mean that there is something extraordinary to know about the things. “Yesterday, we were discussing the same question: if you want to know the reality of anything, you have no way of knowing it. The only way you can know anything about anything is to use the knowledge you have, and with the help of that knowledge you abstract something and experience it. That is all that you know. “It is in that sense that I say ‘I don’t know.’ That does not mean that it is still in the field of knowledge, but that other than what I know, I have no way of knowing anything about it.” “Is there a stopping of learning?” UG: “No. If I don’t know, I would ask somebody ‘What is that?’ and so I learn. That learning is not in operation all the time. The next moment the knowledge I have about that object is pushed into the background and I really don’t know what I am looking at, because the thought about that or the knowledge about it is not in operation, and you are not separate from what you are looking at. Only when the knowledge comes in there, that knowledge separates you from what you are looking at. “Otherwise, there is no division between these two; there is no space between them. Just the way the reflection of an object in the mirror gives you the feeling that there is depth. When the object is reflected on the retina, it also creates the depth there, but that depth or space, or whatever you want to call it, is something which cannot be experienced by you except through the help of the knowledge. That knowledge is the information you have about those things. It’s not something mystifying or mysterious. That’s all that is there. There is nothing else there other than the knowledge you have about yourself and the knowledge about the things around you. So that is the ‘I’, that is the ‘you’, that is the self, the mind or whatever you want to call it. “Since you have a feeling that there is a totality of all this knowledge, a totality of all these experiences, there is an illusion that there is somebody who is looking at it. “So, the answer I am giving to your question is your answer, it is not my answer. I am not giving any answer to your question. It is not that I am mystifying it, but your answer has activated certain things here and what is coming out of me is not my answer, but the answer out of which your question has arisen. I don’t know if I make myself clear.

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“I am pointing out that the question has no meaning, that the question is irrelevant, because that question is born out of the knowledge you already have about whatever you are asking me about. So, I am not giving any answer to your question at all. What I am trying to say is that there is nobody who is talking here; this is an automaton. You are playing the ‘tape recorder’ yourself, because you are interested in finding out the answers to all those questions. If there is any recording of those answers, in other words, if the knowledge is available there, then it comes out; otherwise, it is an empty tape, it doesn't know what it (the answer) is. It has no record of anything you are asking about. You are playing the tape recorder: you are stopping, you are listening, and you like particular statements and you don’t like other statements that are recorded on the tape. It is your business and I am not in any way involved in it. “There is an instrument here, a highly perfected instrument, a very sensitive instrument, if I may use this metaphor. You come here and you play it. The tune is yours, the lyric is yours, the music is yours - everything is yours. And the instrument that you are playing is not in anyway interested in what you are doing with it or involved with what you are doing. “So there is no need for the knowledge to operate all the time. If the continuity of the knowledge is not there, then the knowledge as you know yourself and as you experience yourself is not there. That means that you are not there. That is a situation which is very frightening to you. That is why you maintain all the time the constant movement of the knowledge you have about yourself and the knowledge you have about the things around you. They are one. “This is not something mysterious. It’s just like a computer, that’s all - an extraordinary computer with an extraordinary sensitivity. You put in this knowledge there and what comes out of it is the printout. If the information is not there, you don’t get any answer. But the answer that comes out of it is really not the answer, because you don’t want an answer to your question. “The answer should put an end to your question which is born out of the answer. This is what I am all the time emphasizing, namely, that ‘You are asking questions for which you already have answers.’ So, if you look at the question which you frame, you already have the answers, the answers given by others. At the same time, my statements are intriguing to you because you ask, ‘How can you say that you don’t know?’ or ‘Is that not part of your knowledge?’ That’s your question. If I say, ‘I have no way of knowing it’ or ‘I really don’t know,’ then that answer is intriguing to you, because you know that within your logical and rational thinking there cannot be any answer like ‘I don’t know’ unless you know that you don’t know. “So you know, and I don’t know (people chuckle). . . . because what there is in that situation is something which cannot be known by me. When the knowledge is absent, what is there, what is happening and what is the activity that is going on there at that


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particular moment are things about which I have no way of knowing. That’s all that I am saying: ‘I really don’t know.’ And I know what this is all about; that’s all that I know. “You ask me the question ‘Is there anything other than that?’ They say that there is something other than that, but I say there is nothing more than that, because when that movement is absent, what there is you will never know. “You cannot accept my statement because it is not part of your experiencing structure. Your question is a legitimate question: ‘How is it possible for that man to say ‘I don’t know’? Where does that statement come from, if the knowledge is absent there?' So (you think that) it (the statement) must necessarily be part of his knowledge. The knowledge is ‘He does not know.’ “I can sit here and talk for two hours, four hours, six hours, but you have no way of knowing anything about this statement for the simple reason that there is no reference point there. And so you have necessarily to reject it; you don’t know what he is talking about. This statement should put you also in a state of not-knowing. Then there wouldn't be any more questions. “If you say ‘I understand,’ all questioning mechanisms should come to an end. Since the questions are continuing, it only means that there is no understanding. “When that questioning mechanism is absent there in you, there is an understanding that such questions have no answers. Not that you understand through the answers given to the question or through asking more and more questions, but when there is an understanding that such questions have no answers and that all questions are born out of the answers you already have, then that is the understanding that I am talking about. It is not something that can be brought about either through questioning or through discussion or through any other means. When that situation is already there, there is nothing to understand. That’s the reason why you are not asking the question, except the questions that you need to ask to communicate, to function in this world. “Have you not noticed a child when he or she asks questions: ‘What is that?’ ‘What is this?’ ‘What is that?’ (You answer by saying, for instance,) ‘That’s a typewriter,’ ‘That’s this,’ and so on. They go on and on and on, and gather all the information. So, every time they see the same object they repeat, ‘That’s a typewriter,’ and so on. “You are also doing that. This is an infantile, immature activity that is going on all the time. “Why do you have to tell yourself that you are happy, that you are not happy, that you are miserable, or that you are bored? Or that this is a tree, that’s a woman, that is this? Or you are thinking about something that happened in the past, or you want to think about something in the future, what is going to be your future. This is going on all the

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time. You have no future at all because there is no present there; you are all the time living in the past. “So, to talk of 'now’, ‘here and now,’ ‘this moment’, ‘you must live in this moment,' all that is absolute rubbish! Because the ‘now’, this present moment is something which can never be experienced by anybody. When there is no present, there can’t be any future. Sure! “So this is the present, hmm? We are all here and at this moment the present is in operation here. So tell me what exactly you mean by ‘now’? “Anything you say about this ‘now’, anything you experience about what you call ‘now’, is the past. What you know about that is the past. The past is in operation, and as long as the past is in operation so long the present is absent. Since there is no present at any time, there can’t be any future. There is future (in the sense that, for example,) tomorrow is Sunday, and probably you go ahead and plan for a walk. But there is no guarantee that I will go for a walk: maybe I will be knocked down by a car. So you have no way of being certain about anything in the future. “What kind of a future does anybody want? ‘I want to be enlightened, I want to understand what this chappie is talking about.’ But you are not going to understand this at all, because you are not here and now. You are all the time thinking of the past. The instrument which you are using to understand is a movement of the past. So what is in operation at this particular moment is the past. The future you are projecting is a fantasy. You don’t have health, so you want to be healthy; you don’t have a job, so you want to get a job; you don’t have money, so you want to have money. This is the extension of the past into the future; that’s all that you are doing all the time. “Therefore you use effort, you use will, and probably you will succeed sometimes, but the instrument which you are using is always the instrument you have been using all the time. There is no 'now' at all. This is not a dogmatic statement, but you can test for yourself how you are functioning at this particular moment here, which is the present, which is the now. That flower that is sitting there in front of you is (in) the present. So look at that and tell me what exactly you mean by 'present'. If you say it is a flower, it’s the past knowledge you have about it that is in operation. So tell me, apart from all you know, is there anything to be known?” After this challenge of UG, there were a couple of minutes of silence. UG, being bombarded by billions and billions of anonymous moments of ‘now’, speaks: UG: “So when the movement of the past is absent, what is happening there is something you will never know. You have no way of knowing it at all. It is in that sense that I say: ‘I don’t know.’ The ‘now can never be experienced by you; much less can you talk about it. You can say that it is bliss, beatitude, love, and all that kind of stuff. But you see, that is poetic, romantic stuff which really doesn't mean anything. The moment you capture that


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within the framework of your experiencing structure, it’s already (in) the past. So you must know what is happening and you must know what is there, because if you don’t know, you are not there. That is you; there is nothing else there but the knowledge you have about yourself. So this knowledge you have built up into a tremendous structure, through years - twenty, fifty years - and this structure is not going to let that happen (to let go the of framework of this knowledge); it is a self-perpetuating mechanism. “If you don’t know what you are looking at, that is a very dangerous situation. So there is a tremendous fear that what you know about yourself is finished. “It (the knowledge) doesn’t go that easily. It’s not something that you can experience as an ecstatic, blissful and pleasant thing. It will have a shattering effect on you. The sudden disappearance of something that has been there all the time - like a car moving with a tremendous speed suddenly stopping - will give a tremendous jolt and breaks everything that is there. It blasts everything, every nerve, every cell you have there in that body. . . . Because it is that that has been controlling everything that is there all these years. So it is not going to let this go, this whole thing. It has to capture that. It must know! “This is why you are asking the question. This movement of knowledge can continue only when you add more and more to it. You want to know. It wants to know ‘What will be that ‘now’ when this movement of the past is absent?' That is why it is asking the question. And through the answer it gathers momentum: ‘Wanting to know!’ “If I say: ‘You have no way of knowing it at all,’ that means this is the end of the whole search, the end of the whole inquiry, the end of the whole questioning mechanism that is interested in this knowing.” “UG, before your calamity, you were once totally clairvoyant and clairaudient, hmm?” UG: “Like an X-ray I could see through the whole of the physical body, as it were. It really doesn't mean anything, because when thought becomes more and more refined, it is like a sensitized medicine. But it’s the same thought that is playing tricks with itself. So like a computer it projects the future, which is a projection of your own thought. It doesn't mean that it is so. It’s just the projection of refined thought into what it calls the future. But basically it is only an extension of the past. “That was a trick, you see. I realized the absurdity of what was going on and I paid no attention to it. It may be your own wishful thinking sometimes, so what value does it have? Even assuming for a moment that there is something to all those things clairvoyance and clairaudience - they are worthless, they are all instincts of human beings. There is nothing spiritual about them. Animals have these tremendous instincts which we have lost. The so-called psychic powers are essential for the survival of the living organism. It is a physical phenomenon which has no spiritual content in it at all.

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“When I walk in the streets, thought is never in operation. I am only guided by my sensory activity. All the senses are extraordinarily sensitive. The eyes are measuring distance without your doing anything (about it). The olfactory nerves are detecting the smells of the fumes. Sounds are measured by the listening mechanism. The sense of touch also measures distance, because the vibration of that object behind you is the same as the vibration of your body. So it (the organism) is in a very mechanically way protecting itself, by measuring all these things without the interference of thought. These instincts are only there for the survival of this living organism, and they have no spiritual value at all. “To look into the future or your future lives or into the past or your past lives is all just fancy stuff, fantasies! “They indulge in such fantasies and make you believe that there is something to them. And you share those fantasies; that’s all.”

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24. A Roaring Peace UG: “. . . Walking from the top of that hill down to your first floor - that’s enough exercise for the body. “Those people had nothing else to do - those yogis meditating and doing all kind of exercises. They were sitting in the woods, fantasizing all kind of things. You know, the spiritual fantasies recorded and passed on from generation to generation, they function just the way these sexual fantasies and different sorts of auto-eroticism do. There is no difference between the two, that’s all that I am saying. These spiritual fantasies don’t make you any more spiritual than other fantasies. Why the hell do you want to walk for four hours? What for? It is a pleasure-movement for you. I am not saying anything against it. But If not that, you will be doing something else; eating. Now they say that all the illnesses come from eating too much. Your overeating is responsible for all your illnesses. You eat more than what the body needs. All the physical illnesses are due to overeating, you know? People are overfed.” UG was at loggerheads with Margreet, who just woke up from an after-dinner nap in the sun on the terrace in front of UG’s chalet. That morning she woke up early to have a long hike on the Wasserngrat Mountain. After four hours of continuous clambering, climbing and clumping she had returned fagged out. Lying down on the grass she had quickly fallen asleep. “Aren't they also overslept?” UG: “Overslept too, so that’s why you dream; you don’t need eight hours of sleep.” “How many hours in general does the body need to regenerate?” UG: “There is no fixed thing; it depends upon how much you use your body. You think it is good, hmm, physically good for you to walk and climb every peak that is there in this valley? Walking fifty miles - what do you want to do that for? The body is not interested. You are pushing it. What for? Why do you want to do yoga, twisting the body and stand on your head . . . What do you want to do it for? If it were good for the body, all the bodies would be walking on their heads, not on their legs.” “Yes, but isn't the body made to run, looking for food?” UG: “What for? What for do you want the body to be in a good condition? You are not doing anything for which you need a special condition.”


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“No, but originally isn't the body created to run and find food?” UG: “How long?” “Well, the whole day?” UG: “The whole day? You see, that fly is wandering, searching for its food everywhere. The fly has to, but since you have organized your life so well, you don’t have to bother.” “Yes, but in earlier days men had to do a lot of work to find something to eat, but nowadays we sit the whole day. So, get a move and feel refreshed again.” UG: “The body is not moving anymore? Look at your hands. Don’t you realize that they are moving all the time? Yes, certainly; and you are nodding your head. It’s not static at all. No doubt you live a very sedentary life; so maybe the body needs a little bit of movement; that’s all. When exercising more movements, it becomes a . . . well, I don’t want to use that word, because you might think I am against it. But I am not against it, I am not against pleasure. But it’s a sensual activity, whatever it is you are doing. You push the food on children. And what do they do? They begin to choke and vomit. ‘This is the right food, this is good food, this is full of vitamins, this is . . . ’ nonsense!” “What's the matter with the shaking of my head?” UG: “Nothing; but that’s enough exercise for you. You don’t have to climb every peak in this valley and prove that you are somebody. What do you do with all the muscles and the strengthened biceps? It will be difficult for the body to go at the end of its life! You see, such people linger on for some time. I warn you, they don’t die easily!" (People chuckle) “Well, I can imagine that.” UG: “Yes, you have seen them, all those people who do a lot of physical exercise. They don’t go easily. They are not really healthy and at the same time they linger on and on. You see, some stroke, some blindness, some infirmity or other - but the body doesn't go. You may think if there is one healthy person, it must be such a person; no! . . . Why are you laughing?” “Mister Universe is in trouble!” laughs a second lady of the company around UG loudly. UG: “Yes, Mister Universe is in trouble! You can teach yoga to make a living; I have nothing against that, you see. Let me be very clear about it. This is your means of livelihood; finished, that’s all. There are some fools in this world who are fascinated by yoga; so do that (kind of) work.”

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“Yes, but you know, when you do some exercises, they make you feel well, because they are natural.” UG: “Yes, you feel good every time and with everything you do. You eat like a pig and you feel good for some time. And then you pay the price afterwards! Everything is good, you know; cookies are good; you eat cakes and you feel good. Otherwise, why do you eat all those chocolates all the time? Once in a while all right, but you are eating them constantly! I am not saying anything against it. But just as you always want to walk, you always want sex – that’s the perversion.” UG is now really exaggerating a bit. Lately he also embellished a story about a rough ride he had had on a primitive motorcycle. In my imagination I already saw UG speeding along on a great Harley-Davidson, his hair waving in the wind. Later on, somebody told me that UG had been sitting for a few seconds on somebody's little moped! UG: “Sex is not intended for your pleasure; it is for procreation. By making it into a pleasure movement it has become possible for you to have sex at any time you want through the help of the thought, you see. That is why man is paying the price for it. I am not saying anything against sex, but it becomes a perversion; it’s violence to the body. Like this, it’s the same with all the other things: you are not satisfied with sex, so you have to read books on a hundred and forty postures, just as there are a hundred and forty Yoga Sutras and fifty yoga postures. And then people have written books such as the Kama Sutra, the Yoga Sutras and the Bhakti Sutras.” “You say you are not against it, but what do you mean by saying this?” UG: “I am telling you: stick to it; don’t do anything else to free yourself from those things. Because otherwise, you will become a neurotic; you'll become a sick person. Don’t condemn what you are doing. Don’t try to change or alter anything there. You'll become a very sick person if you are all the time worried about it: ‘My life should be this way or that way; my relationship should be perfect; I should live a harmonious life. . .’ “You see, there is no harmony there. Your wanting to lead a harmonious life is the very thing that is destroying the harmony. You have an idea of harmony in nature and that idea is responsible for all the ecological problems in the world. Your idea! It has nothing to do with nature. But don’t start an organization now and become its president or vicepresident. It is not going to solve that problem. Things have gone too far. Yes, people can go into the streets and wave some flags and get beaten, ending up in the hospital with a broken skull, fractured ribs and shattered tissues - all kind of things (laughing). That’s all that will happen. Others are interested in polluting and that you cannot stop. So don’t bother about all those things. “You are feeling miserable, hmm?”

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“Yes, because it is so difficult. All our education, from the very moment of birth, has to do with reaching out for something.” UG: “Yes, to achieve something. But you have added something more, and that is the spiritual goal. That’s all that I am pointing out. You see, material goals are acceptable, but why you want to add something more to that, something spiritual? “It is that that has turned man into a neurotic. Not only that, you are turning all the animals into neurotics. Your domestic animals also become neurotics. You are even turning plant lives . . . like this tree . . . Anyway, now it (the plant before him) is recovering a bit, hmm? “Anything you do, any sensual activity, makes you feel good. Stand on your head and you feel good. You know, because it is doing something there, changing the chemistry of the body. The chemical changes produce . . .” “Well, but otherwise I am so bored, if I don’t do anything.” UG: “In spite of all that you are doing? Then you remain bored.” “Yes, but if I don’t do anything anymore, I can’t . . .” UG: “What have you done to free yourself from boredom? Nothing! It is still there. You can’t walk all day! So then? Four hours (of it) is enough; and then what happens? After that you are finished and you lie down here, cursing yourself. That’s the result. Or you eat too much; the fondue is good and you eat five servings of it and then . . . pain the next day!” Dear reader, unfortunately this example of UG is rather autobiographical: a few days earlier, celebrating Valentine's birthday, UG himself had enjoyed a cheese fondue. He and Valentine were invited by a close friend of theirs. Since it really disgusts UG when all people dip their food in the same little pot, he insisted on having his own private pot. Most probably the cook had lost measure of the correct proportions of cheese and sherry, which resulted in a fondue loaded with alcohol. And the next day UG had pain . . . “As long as you like something and you feel refreshed, why not do it?” UG: “But why are you questioning? Why do you want to change it? If you feel like sleeping with a dozen men every day, do it! Don’t turn that into a moral problem. (Laughing) You see, every time a man is there, you are attracted to him. Yes, I am sorry to bring in this personal thing, but I don’t want to deal with it on an abstract level; that has no meaning to me. It is expressing itself in this (manner).”

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“It’s personal to all of us,” said another woman relating to UG’s plain conclusions. UG: “Yes, not just to you. But if you feel hurt, all right, goodbye!” Margreet is making fun of UG’s irritated remark about ‘feeling hurt and his shouting “All right, goodbye to you!” During the last few days, he had used these slogans many times. UG: “I don’t care, I don’t care at all. I am not particularly interested in hurting you. It is not I that is hurting you. What is there in you is hurting you; something there inside of you, that’s what is hurting you. That’s all, not what I’m saying to you.” “But why are you saying all this when you don’t care? You are still saying this!” UG: “Don’t you think that you are dissatisfied with what you are doing?” “No, it is just some compensation.” UG: “What compensation?” “Well, if I don’t do this, the . . .” UG: “You are not satisfied with your life! Obviously, of course, otherwise you wouldn't be looking here and there for something. “‘There must be something more interesting’, you say to yourself, hmm? ‘If I have that,’ you see, whatever it is that you are after, you say, ‘then my problems will be solved.’ No, not at all! You are not going to get that at all. It’s only your hope that keeps you going. That you are not going to get, and wanting that is responsible for your misery. Therefore you can’t even enjoy this, what you have now.” “No, not really; but one makes the day as comfortable as one possibly can. So, I do my best to reach that. When I go for a walk I feel rather comfortable.” UG: “Yes, and pay for it the rest of the day! All right, it’s all right with me.” “And pay for it the rest of the day! Well UG, not always; it was just this time. Don’t exaggerate, please!” UG: “Yes, but then you want to go for a walk tomorrow, hmm?” “Yes, a slow walk.”

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UG: “Just a slow walk, hmm?” “Well, but that has nothing to do with it.” UG: “It has everything to do with it, everything! It is very closely related to what you are searching for: happiness or whatever you are after. Permanent happiness! This is very much related to that.” “Maybe that’s the reason why we speak of death? Because then something might happen which makes us constantly . . . well, like you.” UG: “A person who is not living, who is already dead, is the one that is interested in death, you see? A living person has no time to think of anything else. You are already dead because your ideas are dead, your experiences are dead; everything is dead. There is nothing living there. You are all the time trying to be alive. But let me tell you, you don’t want that awakening, that alertness, not at all. It’s dangerous! (Laughing) “So, if you don’t have a problem, you create one, and from then on you can try to solve the problem. And if you have nothing else to do, you become lazy and go to sleep.” “That’s the life of a man who has not realized, who is not in the natural state. It is always going on like that.” UG: “There is nothing to realize. This is all that is there to realize. ‘There is nothing else there’ - that is the only realization.” "What about you then?" UG: “That’s all I am saying. I have realized that ‘this is all that is there.’” “But you are free from all these things.” UG: “Free from all the ideas like climbing every mountain to prove that you are somebody.” “Yes, you went back hmm, on the Wasserngrat Mountain!” The lady who made the comment on Mister Universe again bursts into laughter with Margreet’s remark. UG: “Hmm? What!” “You went back on the Wasserngrat!”

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UG: “Yes! I didn't find it charming any more to walk on that ridge. Why should I expose myself to danger? What for?” “Danger? Come on UG!” UG: “Yes, certainly; the body is not interested in undertaking any hazardous things.” “Anyway, you are freed from all these things. So why shouldn't that be a very good reason for us to desire your situation?” UG: “What situation? This situation you don’t want! You really don’t want this. And even if you want it, you are not going to get it anyway; that’s for sure!” After some time the conversation continues with the next subject: the difference between the needs of our body and the needs of our mind, our thinking structure . . . UG: “. . . The sensitivity of the sensory-perceptions is destroyed by whatever you are doing to free yourself from whatever you want to be free from. So it is destroying the sensitivity of the nervous system here. The nervous system has to be very alert; for the survival of this living organism it has to be very sensitive. Instead of allowing it to be sensitive, you have invented what is called the sensitivity of your feelings, the sensitivity of your mind, sensitivity towards every living thing around you, or the sensitivity to the feelings of everybody that is there. And this has created a neurological problem. All problems are neurological, not psychological or ethical. That’s the problem of the society. The society is interested in the status quo; it doesn't want to change. The only way it can maintain the status quo or continuity is through this demand, the demand that everybody should fit into this structure, whereas every individual is unique. Physically speaking, he is a unique individual. Nature is creating something unique all the time. It is not interested in a perfect man; it is not interested in a religious man. “So we have placed before man the goal or idea of a perfect man, a truly religious man. But anything you do to reach that goal of perfection is destroying the sensitivity of this body. It is creating violence here. It is not interested in that. So the whole thing is set on the wrong way. The day man experienced whatever he had experienced - his selfawareness, self-consciousness - he sowed the seeds of the total destruction of man. And all those religions have come out of that divisive consciousness in man. Therefore all the teachings of those teachers will inevitably destroy mankind. “There is no point in reviving all those religious things and start revival movements. They are dead, finished! Anything that is born out of this division in your consciousness is destructive. It is violence because it is trying to protect not this living organism, not life, but it is interested in protecting the continuity of thought. And through that it can maintain the status quo of your culture or whatever you want to call this - the society.

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“So the problems are neurological. If you give a chance to the body, it will handle all those problems. But if you try to solve them on a psychological or ethical level, you are not going to succeed.” “What do you mean by ‘giving a chance to the body’?” UG: “Anger, for instance, is here. Where is anger? You feel it in your stomach; you feel it in your base; so it is handling it there. But if you beat your husband or wife or your neighbor or beat the pillows, you are not going to solve that problem. It has already been absorbed. And you are only enriching these therapists who are making money out of that. You see, you hit your wife or your husband, that is all that you can do and nothing else. But still it is the function of the body to handle that and absorb it. It (anger) has arisen here; it is something real here for the body. It doesn't want this anger, because it is destroying the sensitivity of the nervous system; therefore it is absorbing the whole thing. You don’t have to do a thing. Any energy you create through thinking is destructive for this body. That energy cannot be separated from the life here. It is one continues movement. So all the energies you experience as the result of playing with all those things are not of any interest to the functioning, the smooth functioning, of this living organism. It is disturbing the very harmonious functioning of this body. It is a very peaceful thing, this body. “The peace here is not that innate dead silence you experience, but it is like a volcano erupting all the time. That is the silence that is peace. The blood is flowing through your veins, like a river in spate. If you try to magnify the sound of the flow of your blood, you will be surprised: (it’s) like the roar of an ocean! “So, if you put yourself in a soundproof room, you will not survive even for five minutes. You will go crazy because you can’t hear the noises that are there in you; the heartbeat of your heart is something which you cannot take in. Therefore you love to surround yourself with all these sounds, and then you create some funny experience called 'the experience of a silent mind,' which is ridiculous. Absurd! That is the silence, the roar, the roar of an ocean, the roaring of the flow of blood. That is all that this body is interested in - not in your states of mind or the experience of a silent mind. The body is not interested in your practice of virtue, not interested in your practice of silence. The body has no interest in your moral dilemma and moral problems. It is not interested in these things. As long as you practice virtue, so long you will remain a man of vice! They go together. If you are lucky enough to be free from this pursuit of virtue as a goal, along with it vice also goes out of your system. You will not remain a man of vice; you will not remain a man of violence. As long as you follow some idea of becoming a nonviolent, kind, soft and gentle person, so long you will remain the opposite! “A kind man, a man who practices kindness, a man who practices virtue is really a menace; not the violent man.”


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20. This text . . . That Thou Art UG: “Somewhere along the line, culture has put the whole thing on the wrong track by placing before man the ideal of a perfect man, the ideal of a truly religious man, because religious experience is born out of a divisive consciousness and division is not the true nature of consciousness. “Luckily animals don’t have this division in their consciousness except the division that is essential for their survival. Man is worse than the animals! He has no doubt succeeded in putting man on the moon. Probably he will put man on every planet, but that is of no interest to this body. “The survival mechanism of the body is altogether different from the survival mechanism of thought. I say 'altogether', because thought functions in the field of time whereas this natural body functions in the field of eternity, if I may put it that way. “You see, this body is immortal, it has no end; there is no end to life.” “It seems that they are completely separate things.” UG: “Completely.” “And why do they apparently go together?” UG: “They don’t go together at all. That’s why there is a conflict. The survival mechanism of this body is something very strange. You see, it is the cell that is most important in this situation. There is no centrally organized thing in your body at all; each cell is autonomous. There is no center, not even the vertebral structure. This cell knows that its survival depends upon its cooperation with the next cell. So if this cell is in danger, the cell next to it is also in danger. That is why there is a peculiar cooperation amongst them. Not for any other benefit than their survival. So, that is the reason why they function together, not (based on) the idea of cooperation created by your idealism and all that. “You see, this is something extraordinary; the body is something extraordinary. There is tremendous peace is there . . . how do I call this, a tremendous peace.” “So we can say there are two entities, totally different from each other?” UG: “Yes and this is not interested in the activity of your thought. It ignores that. The body relies on its own sensory activity rather than on your thinking.

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“This body is not interested in your hunger . . . after one day, you will be surprised, if you don’t feed the body. . . Feeding the body is your problem; maybe for one day or two days you feel the hunger tantrums." “But if you never eat anymore, you will die!” UG: “So what? The body doesn’t die; it just changes its form, shape; it breaks up into its constituent elements. It is not interested in that (death). For the body there is no death. For your thinking there is death, because it doesn’t want to come to an end; it does not want to face that situation. So it has created the life-after and the lives to come. But this body is immortal in its nature, because it is part of life.” “Even if your body is lying under the ground and disintegrating?” UG: “So what? There are so many other forms of life surviving on that body. It’s of no consolation to you but all those germs will have a high day on your body, a feast day. Big feast! You will be doing them great service.” (Laughing) ‘Big feast’ for the worms and other creatures - that is UG’s teaching when philosophy resorts to reincarnation and transmigration of souls! "UG (a visitor makes a remark), you know what the last issue of the Woman's Magazine had in it? - Three or four interviews with families of young children who remember - now this is all in quotes - their ‘past lives’. They have taken their parents to the spots (where they had been in their previous lives) and in fact in many cases they described before (the visit) what things and situations (they were going to visit) would look like. So, from unrelated sources you get the same sort of things, the same sort of stories. There is the other thing about the auras. Maybe you don’t like the terms in which those stories are put, or . . .” UG: “It doesn't matter what phrase you want to couch them in, but the fact of the matter is that the answer . . .” “The supernatural aspect of it may be a lot of rubbish, but . . .” UG: “No, even the basic thing is questionable. In spite of the fact that all these people say things that conform vaguely . . ., although they say the same sort of thing . . ., if you want an answer for yourself as to whether there is anything to these things, you will not be satisfied unless you find out that there is no death at all. “Death is something which can never be experienced. ‘What is death?’ You see, you just have to die! Then you will get the answers to those questions for yourself and by

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yourself! Otherwise, no matter what anybody says, it will not help you to understand this. “Even my son - this fellow who died recently, you know - when he was three, three anda-half years old, he used to tell stories (of the lives) that he had lived before - that he was in Benares in his previous life, and that he did some things, terrible things to his wife, and so on. My grandmother talked about such things. It is very interesting to find comforting answers to situations in life for which you don’t have any answers.” “I wonder whether there is any form of death where the body or any spirit or soul out of that body will survive and continue to exist.” UG: “Sorry, the continuity you are talking about is not there. The continuity of life is there, so life has no end at all. It has no beginning and it has no end. And you arbitrarily draw a line and say, ‘This is death.’ But as far as the process of life is concerned, you cannot draw a line and say, ‘This is death.’ That is your problem. “Do you think you are alive now? It is your thinking that makes you feel that you are alive, that you are conscious. So, that is possible only when the knowledge you have about the things is in operation there in you. “You know, you have no way of finding out whether you are alive or dead. “In that sense there is no death at all, because you are not alive now. You become conscious of things only when the knowledge is in operation. When the knowledge is absent, whether the person is dead or alive is of no importance to this movement of thought, which comes to an end before what we call ‘death’ takes place. “So it really doesn't matter whether one is alive or dead. Of course, it does matter to the one who considers this as important and to those who are involved with that individual. But you have no way of finding out whether you are alive or dead and whether you are conscious or not. You see, you become conscious only through the help of thought. But unfortunately it (thought) is there all the time. So the suggestion that it is not possible to experience anything makes no sense to you at all because when this movement is absent you have no reference point there. “When this movement of thought is absent, all those questions about consciousness, death and so on are not there. “They can try and spend millions and millions of dollars and do every kind of research to find out the source of human consciousness, but there is no such thing as the source of human consciousness at all. You can try - and they are going to spend billions of dollars - to find it out, but the chances of their succeeding in that (attempt) are slim to none.

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“What there is is thought. Whenever thought takes its birth there, you have created an entity or a point, and in reference to that point you are experiencing things. So, when thought is not there, is it possible for you to experience anything or relate anything to a non-existing thing there? “This means that every time thought is born, you are born. Thought in its very nature is short-lived, and when once it is gone, that’s the end of it (you), you see? So that is what probably people meant when they used these terms, ‘death and birth’ and ‘death and rebirth’; it is not that a particular entity - which is non-existing even while you are alive takes a series of births. “This (reference) point comes into being in response to the demands of the situation. The demands of the situation create this point. You see, the subject does not exist there at all; it is the object that creates the subject. This runs counter to the whole philosophical thinking of people in India. The subject comes and goes, comes and goes, in response to the things that are happening. It is the object that creates the subject and not the subject that creates the object. “This is a simple physiological phenomenon, which can be tested. You see, there is an object there, for example; there is no subject here. What creates the subject is the object. “There is light; if the light is not there, you have no way of looking at anything. The light falls on something and the reflection of that light activates the optic nerves here. That in its turn activates the memory cells. When once the memory cells are activated, all the knowledge you have about it comes into operation. So it is that thing happening there that has created this subject, which is the knowledge you have about that. “You see, the word ‘microphone’ is the ‘I’, the ‘me’. There is nothing there other than the word ‘microphone’. “So, when you reduce it to that, don’t you feel the absurdity of talking about the self, the lower self, the higher self, self-knowing, knowing from moment to moment; it is absolute . . . rubbish, balderdash! “You can indulge in such absolute nonsense and build philosophical theories, but there is no subject here at all, at any time. It is not the subject that creates the object. And not only the eye, but all the physical sensations are involved in this; there is the sound, the olfactory nerves, the smell and the sense of touch; anyone of these sensations in operation necessarily has to bring about the subject. “It is not one continuous subject who is gathering all these experiences and piling them together, adding them up, and says, ‘This is me,’ but every thing (sensation) is a discontinuous, disconnected one. The sound is one, the physical seeing is one, the smelling is one; the sense of touch, the vibration of the sound – they create the subject here. So it (the ‘I’) comes and goes, comes and goes. There is no permanent entity at all.

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What there is is only what you call a first person singular pronoun and nothing else. And if you don’t want to use that ‘I’, to prove that you are a man without the ego, it’s your privilege. But that’s all that is there. “There is no permanent entity there at all. While you are living, the knowledge that is there doesn't belong to you. Then why are you concerned about what will happen after what you call ‘you’ is gone? “The physical body is functioning from moment to moment, because that is the way the sensory-perceptions are. But if you abstract this, instead of describing in (terms of) the pure and simple functioning of the physical living organism, then you create a lot of mischief. You know, you are hooked to that. “It is the sensitivity of sensory perceptions that I am talking about. You talk of sensitivity of your feelings, sensitivity of your understandings, and sensitivity of your relationships. You are lost; this has nothing to do with it. “To talk of 'living from moment to moment,' by creating a thought-induced state of mind, has no meaning to me, except in terms of the physical functioning of the body that is in any case functioning from moment to moment. “When thought is not there all the time, what is happening there is life living from moment to moment."


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21. The Holy Hooker “One burning question: what about love?” UG: “What love?” “Well, people feel . . .” UG: “Do you know about love or are you asking me?” “What do you think about it? People are attracted to one another and feel good when they see someone in particular . . .” UG: “Yes, and if you don’t get what you want out of that relationship, what is there in its place?” “Nothing.” UG: “Oh no! Then there is hate. Sure! And if you don’t want to call that hate, call it indifference or antipathy. So, love and hate go together; they are one and the same. Instead of calling this sex activity ‘love’, leave it alone, you see, and it falls in its rightful place. The sex relationship - why cover it up with high-sounding words like ‘love’? It is always related to something: you love your country, you love your family or you love your neighbor. You know, it is always in relationship to something. When there are no two, there is no love there. “You are interested in creating perfect and loving relationships in this world because all the relationships are terrible, painful. And we superimpose on that the divine love, cosmic love or god knows what. You want the relationship to be permanent, but there is no permanence at all. There is that demand for permanence because of man's sorrow. Permanent pleasure, permanent happiness, permanent bliss, permanent relationships but things are constantly changing. “Somebody asked me the question about some guru who says that ‘Sex is the means of putting yourself into a state of samadhi .’ Neither the man who suggests that technique as a means of putting yourself into a state of samadhi is an enlightened man, nor is the one who is practicing sex as a means to put himself into a state of samadhi going to be enlightened. “As a matter of fact, sex is not necessary for the body; the body can survive without sex, but without food it cannot. I am not saying anything for or against sex. “You see, they have done lots of experiments. Not only the sex act, but the very thought of sex is disturbing the chemistry of the whole body. They have observed how it is

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disturbing the whole chemistry of the body. It is essential for reproduction, to recreate, to carry on life. That’s all. It is not intended for your pleasures. “It has become possible for men through the help of thought to have sex any time they want. But that is not possible for animals. Through the help of thought it has become possible for humans to have sex any time they want it. And it is the very same thing that has created the problem. You know, sex becomes a bore. It’s a bore, so you have to invent thousands and thousands of ways and techniques of having sex, hmm? You turn that into a problem. It is not a problem! For what has sex to do with you? It has a life of its own. What has the heart to do with you? It is functioning in its own way. What do the pancreas and the liver have to do with you? And what have you to do with them?” UG and Margreet were having the next conversation together with some friends around, while I was installing my cassette recorder. The subject was that “Sex is never ‘peaceful.’” UG: “Whenever or wherever there is the sex, the ‘better’ is also part of that situation.” “The what?” UG: “If there is sex, if there is any relationship, a better relationship and a better sex, more kicks and more sex also are part of that situation.” “There is a book called The Happy Hooker. Do you know that book UG?” UG: “The Happy Hooker, yes I have heard of that book. What’s the name of that woman, . . . It begins with 'X'. Yes, I remember, she has written two or three books and ultimately she comes to the idea of living with one person (laughs). After years, at last, she talks of love; and, you see, she has had sex with everybody she could imagine - all the kicks. In the end she says there is some beauty in living with one person. Beautiful relationship!” (Laughing again.) “I know that situation, but when I meet a man for the first time I have a kick, hmm?” UG: “That is natural.” “Yes, that’s natural, and so I am jolly well interested in sex. But I have been living together with my friend now for one and-a-half years already, but I am not so enthusiastic about him every day because he is not such a kick for me anymore. Please, don’t laugh UG! This is serious.” UG: “No, I am not laughing. This is only natural.”

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“Yes, but then I thought: well, it is so easy for a woman in The Happy Hooker - everyday another man, everyday a new fresh kick. So, I am wondering what is more natural - to live with one lover and reach to an ever-deeper relationship with him, or to live the way your impulse seduces you and perhaps live a more superficial life? Actually to me it seems more natural to do what your feeling tells you to do." A very long conversation follows about “What is a more natural, better and healthy thing to do in the field of sexuality and relationships?” One of the conclusions arrived it is that “Anyway, it’s not really a question of sex.” Margreet says in this conversation that she likes to have sex with the nice people she meets, yet, at the same time, she doesn’t want to risk her relationship with me, her boyfriend. The problem concerning sexuality and relationship turns out to be a moral problem. UG: “The fear is the fear of ‘losing what you have’. That is really the fear. You are not sure of the other man you want. There is the fear of ‘losing what you have’, of ‘losing what you know’ and you are uncertain of the situation here. So, it doesn't matter whether you sleep with your own boyfriend or with someone else. “If that morality is absent, then sex goes! When you really can come to a point that it really doesn't matter, then you will not sleep even with this fellow, your own boyfriend, let alone others. But you are still caught up in the moral problem. You can’t say that you are free from the moral structure of the society; not at all! That’s humbug. You see, you can fool yourself; but it’s still a moral problem. The very questioning that is going on there, the discussion within yourself, the dialogue, the pros and cons means that you are still in the moral framework. When that is finished, there is no question of living with him or with anybody. It’s finished once and for all.” “The whole sex?” UG: “The whole thing is finished. Not only sex, everything is finished: looking at sunrise or sunset, climbing the mountains or swimming in the oceans, crossing them on rafters, sitting there and looking at the tree, the flower - all of that is sensual activity, not different from sex. I am not condemning sex, you see, but the whole movement of pleasure is finished for you. And that is not what you really are interested in; so you will be miserable, no matter what you do. Always! You are bound to be miserable. As long as you are caught up in this moral framework, you are still part of it. Don’t tell me that you are above all this morality!” “No, but I also thought that the highest possible way of relating is . . .” UG: “Whether you have sex with one person or ten persons, it really doesn't matter. You are not free from these moral problems. If you are free from the moral problem, you are

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free from sex too - they go together. You can’t separate the two. This is why you are bound to be miserable, no matter what you do.” “Yes, but perhaps we should practice this: first try with one partner, and then two, then three, then ten . . . and so on.” UG: “Like this holy hooker (UG’s Freudian slip of the tongue?) . . . you will come back to the same.” "But I thought that was the highest possible way of relating . . .” UG: “You go and try it; there is no end to it.” “You always say that there is no relationship possible. But I always thought that the highest relationship is not talking about something superficial like that but . . .” UG: “Through sex, hmm?” “Yes, sex, making love. But afterwards I realized, ‘No, that’s not true.’” UG: “It’s not true. What you are saying is not true. It is not the highest.” “Then . . . what is the highest?” UG: “There is no highest.” “There is no highest; yes, but, of course, we mean ‘highest’ in this practical day-to-day life of . . .” UG: “No relationship is the highest. Finished, you see. No relationship at all. You are looking for a perfect relationship, ideal relationship and the highest. Temporarily you feel good. Go ahead, I am not a moralist. But why you are separating sex from the other activities of your life? You are still moralistic. That’s why you want to put sex on a different level. It’s like anything else. Any action of yours, the whole thing, is a series of reactions; you cannot isolate yourself. This is not an isolated action at all.” “But, how do you say we separate sex from the other activities?” UG: “You are discussing sex as if it is something different from other human activities. The society has made it into something special. You are not free; you are still caught up in that moral framework of the society. Yes, you can get away now with free sex - the pill you can take. So the credit goes to the pill. Otherwise, you should bear children, and there are the laws and so many other problems; it is not such a simple thing as you imagine. You should thank those who have invented this birth control thing.’


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“UG, when you were 18 or 16, you said to yourself: ‘Why should I meditate when there is this urge for sex?’ and you had wet dreams and so on.” UG: “I did not rush and have sex.” “No, but later on you did have sex. Did you experience or did you find out what exactly the sex wish is, what it consists of, or where it comes from?” UG: “Sure. Meditation and sex, they go together. As long as you meditate, so long sex is there. So, I was not able to look at it that way in those days. I separated them. Now I know that both are the same. Thought is there, and as long as the thought is there, sex is there. The continuity of thought, the buildup you are talking about - you want to shake hands and then you want to embrace the man, kiss him and then so on and on and on this is the buildup. It’s all bound to end up in bed. Sorry to say that. But what prevents that is your moral problem: you are not free from the moral problem at all. As long as you have this moral problem, so long sex is there. And whether you have sex with one person or with a thousand persons, it really doesn't matter. “So when you are free from that moral problem, once and for all, not only in sexual relationships, but relationships in any human activity, then sex goes. Not only sex, the whole thing: the search, God, Reality, transformation - everything is washed out of your system. “You see, you don’t have the search and at the same time free yourself from sex. The search for something must come to an end. The search for happiness, perfect happiness - that is all you are interested in - perfect relationship or ideal relationship. That doesn't exist at all.” "So the search includes everything?" UG: “The search includes the search for truth and God. God must go, not only the God that people believe in and all the variations of that, but you see, your moksha, your liberation, freedom, mutation, transformation - all that must be thrown out of your system. And not through any volition of yours.” “At this moment I can’t see what it is to live without morality.” UG: “Until then you will have sex in some form or the other. You can suppress it, sublimate it, do what you like; but it’s still there. Your wanting to free yourself from that is sex!” “Even awareness is sex?”

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UG: “Yes, wherever there is awareness, there is sex; wherever there is selfconsciousness, there is sex.” “But I don’t see anything wrong with sex.” A visitor who has just arrived joins in the conversation. UG: “I am not saying there is. It’s their problem. She asked me the question ‘What’s wrong with sleeping with ten men; why should I sleep with one man?’ I said, ‘It’s all right with me.’ But she is afraid of the consequences. You don’t give a damn whether your boyfriend will be happy or unhappy. That’s a fact.” “And he will find other girls as well.” UG: “Yes, he can find other girls and she other boys.” “Yes, I am worrying about that too.” UG: “Oh, already jealous too! You don’t mind going around, but if he does, you are going to object to that. Sure! No doubt about that. Until you are sure of the hold on the other branch, you don’t want to let go of this branch.” “Yes. When I am looking at someone, some woman, and I see she is not a rival, I can look at Robert or her with ease. But if she is a real rival, I feel it in my stomach and I can’t look at that girl.” A third visitor: “Really? Hmm, strange!” “Oh, come on, you are jealous too!” UG: “If you don’t feel that jealousy, there is something wrong; you are sick!” “Well, maybe something is wrong, yes.” UG: “That’s all. If you don’t have jealousy, envy, greed or any of those things, that means something is wrong; you are sick!” “UG, when there is a beautiful woman walking by, and we are sitting at Chez Esther, the restaurant, and Robert has not yet seen her . . .” UG: “What do you mean, ‘He hasn't seen her’?” “Then I quickly start a conversation or I say ‘Look at her,’ or I get shy and I blush."


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UG: “Even before you were looking, he was looking!” “Sometimes not; then I see her first.” UG: “No, no. Perhaps he is looking at some other girl even more beautiful then the one you saw! Anyway, feeling jealous is very natural. There are people who say they never feel jealous; they want to prove that they are something different. That is a sign of sickness. They think that they are spiritual or in some way different from other people; but they are not different.” “Well I am surprised when you say that because I don’t have these reactions of feeling jealous or feeling something in my stomach,” the non jealous lady says in a jealous tone! UG: “Yes, you are a chicken anyway; you don’t even know that, come on!” “Well, I am it; I am jealous one hundred percent!” says Margreet proudly, because she feels UG agrees with her. The non-jealous lady says: “Yes, that could be in a different situation; then I can imagine that . . .” UG: “Not in a different situation! You see, if you had a boyfriend and that boyfriend runs after another girl, boy, that would be the thing! Your spirituality and all that would be finished at once.” “Oh yes, I would kill him,” says Margreet. UG: “Kill him . . . or feel miserable. I know that. I don’t pay any attention to all those people who brag saying 'I am not jealous.' If you are not jealous, you must be sick. Or the situation has not yet arisen where your involvement is at stake. That will be the time!” “You know, I was in an ashram and there they said: ‘When you feel jealous or angry, you have to drink five glasses of water and then it will go away.’” UG: “And then it will come back and you will have to go to the toilet five times an hour. And that is why you don’t have time to be jealous; you will just run to the toilet!” “And once I was in an acupressure centre and there I was very angry at somebody. Then the reaction was: ‘Oh, when you are angry, you just have to push here, and then the anger will go away.’” UG: “You give so much importance to it because the whole approach to the problem is based on false morality, guilt! You have been fed on that kind of thing by these religious


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people all the time. You are being angry and yet you condemn it. That’s the strangest thing and that’s why you are all sick, neurotic. You can’t even look at it without these guilt complexes, guilt feelings. You can’t look at anything.” “Is that only because of our education?” UG: “Education, culture, religion, all of them are responsible. The god men say: ‘You can become a god man only when you free yourself from sex.’ That is not correct: that must go, your search for truth, your search for reality. Your sex and these things, they always go together. You can’t separate the two and put one on a higher level and say the other is something to be avoided. Not at all. Your transformation, mutation or whatever you want to call it is a variation of the same thing. Sex cannot be used as a means. Denial is not the way. You can have sex until the last moment, but still this kind of thing (enlightenment) can happen. That’s why I said they were all furious with me; I said: ‘A murderer, a thief, a con man or a rapist has as much a chance, if not a better chance, as all the spiritual seekers we have in the world put together.’ So, it’s not because of what they do or what they don’t do.” “UG, you never feel jealous? When, for example, I look at Valentine now, you have no problems with it?” (Joking) UG: “What do I care? (Everybody laughs) . . . even if I had a beautiful young wife! But the chances of my having a beautiful wife are none.” “Well, maybe your interest is none, but your chances are very good.” “Oh yes, I remember something from last year, UG. There was a film actress; she was coming here and you kissed her hand!” Margreet shouts out loudly. UG: “Come on! I kissed her hand? Nonsense!” “No, we saw you kissing her hand!” UG: “Not I. She forced herself on me, but I didn't allow her.” “Oh no! She did this . . .” (Makes a sound of kissing.) UG: “Never! She took my hand, she did. I’d never do that.” “No, but then you let it happen?” UG: “I had no choice.”


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“Yes, she was rather aggressive, hmm? Very strong.” UG: “Yes, ‘I am a Mexican,’ she said. Also, once there was a girl in California. She always wanted to hug me, you see. So, she waited, waited and waited, and then, on the last day, just before I got into the car, she came running.” “And she hugged you?” UG: “Yes! I didn’t have a chance; I couldn't get out! Such things do happen. But I don’t care.”

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23 .That One Fine Day Will Never, Never Arrive

Why

is

this

page

not

perfectly

white

?

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. . . Because of the very question written on the page! “UG, why isn’t my life perfectly harmonious?” UG: “Because of this question, engraved in your consciousness.” “UG, what interests me is, why it is that you at this time in history are teaching the things you are actually teaching, because often what happens is that a teacher comes when there is a need for some growth in a certain direction.” UG: “And you believe in that?” “Yes, presently I do.” UG: “If you believe in that, maybe I am the teacher that the world is in need of. Probably that is the need of the world today . . .” Once I enquired UG about his opinion of our younger generation - whether they might arrive at a better world situation: UG: “You see, these people are not really spiritual: it is just the drugs that have destroyed their drive; they cannot use their intelligence at all. They are all very intelligent people, but they would rather do some manual jobs than to use the talents they have.” “Yes, because they are not interested in this society!” UG: “They are sick! Don’t say that they are not interested; they are sick. You see, like the religious people, they are also sick. A successful religious man is an ambitious man. That is why he creates organizations.” “Well, you can see very clearly in the younger people of Western Europe and America that they are . . .” UG: “They are all drug addicts, all of them.” “But a lot of those who don’t take drugs, they are fed up with all these outdated ways of living.”

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UG: “No, that doesn't mean anything. They have not understood that, you see, the uselessness of that. Still they are part of that society.” “It is a reaction to this society.” UG: “Reaction doesn't mean anything. They cannot build anything. Constructively they cannot do anything, because the main problem for them is their survival in this society, hmm?” All our disciplines of spirituality don’t mean a thing to UG. All forced and sick disciplines in the field of nutrition, all the exercises of yoga and meditation and all our so-called sacrifices in the areas of love and virtuousness mean nothing to UG. It’s all rubbish and poppycock. According to him, these things do not really produce the results they claim to produce. UG: “To become harmonious by denying themselves milk products and tonic drinks, what nonsense they talk!” The main staple of UG his nourishment is milk products (cheese and heavy cream) and in the period before arriving at the Natural State, he drank fifteen to twenty cups of coffee every day! UG: “Plastic, you see, is one of those marvellous inventions. But they talk against it, these jokers – ‘back to nature!’ And these Orlon tubes they have, hmm, these things have made it possible for people to become individuals. And I have plastic in my mouth. What nonsense is it that people talk, to talk against plastic! It’s an extraordinary invention.” “I didn't say anything against it!” UG: “No, not you, but these jokers we have, the hippies and ecologists talk about it. They weave artificial arteries with Orlon threads; something extraordinary - if you want to live, that is. If you don’t want to live, then die, it’s all right, fine. They are going to have artificial hearts. Now they are thinking of artificial brains. They are going to succeed, don’t worry about that.” “You always ask the question: ‘How can I look at thought?’ The question ‘how?’ is a thought. The ‘how'’creates time. If the ‘how’ is not there, there is no time there, there is nothing to understand; you have no way of looking at anything. Seeing (then) is not a dualistic process; it’s not a divisive movement. The physical eye doesn't see anything as two. Only when thought interferes and says, ‘That is a man,'’duality comes into being and creates this division. The physical seeing, the physical hearing, the physical touch, the physical smelling and the physical tasting have no division in them. It is one unitary movement.


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“It is the knowledge you have about those sensations that creates the division, and yet at the same time, it wants to create unity. So it is playing an endless game with itself. In this process it is gaining some experience, and those experiences give you the happy feeling that jolly well you are going to reach that goal one fine day. I tell you, that one fine day will never, never arrive! “So, going here and there, learning something from Hinduism, or from this man or that man means nothing. You see, you replace one with the other; instead of Jesus you have somebody else, Sri Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi or Jiddu Krishnamurti or somebody else. You replace, always replace one with another. You are always looking for a new Bible. But anything you touch, you will turn that into the same. “The total absence of all that logical, rational movement that is there, that is the trick!”

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24. Nice Meeting You... "UG, you are not propagating any teaching; you say you don’t have to offer any solution to the world. So, actually your purpose here is just to have a vacation?” UG: “My purpose here is to ask you to go! I’m sorry, ‘Nice meeting you . . . and goodbye.’ It’s not that I am rude or anything, but that’s the reality of the situation. I am no savior of mankind. Who am I? Who has given me the mandate? What I am saying has no social content in it at all. What can I do? I am so helpless, totally helpless. “So, if I see the misery there, I sit and cry with them – it’s not that I literally cry. But, as you said, the world is in a very sorry mess - that’s true. You see, we are going to blow up everything. We have set in motion the forces of destruction that nobody, no teacher, no God walking on this earth and no Bhagawan can stop. “They can make all kinds of plans but they have set in motion and they are progressively pushing the whole thing into the direction of the destruction of everything. It does not mean that I am a prophet and that it is going to happen - not that I see the future or predict it - but it’s moving in that direction. Maybe some miracle will happen and everything will be saved. I don’t know. I think it will continue; it cannot go. Man is not that foolish and stupid to destroy everything he has created with his own hands. But you cannot rely on the wisdom of man, or the wisdom of all the sages, saints and saviors of mankind which we have had and which we still have in the marketplace. That wisdom which they are dishing out cannot be of any help. They are creating more discord, more and more discord. Every teacher says he is the one who has the answer for all the questions. So, but it (the world) seems to be going on. “Nobody has given me the mandate to save mankind. I am not the savior of mankind. Who am I? And first of all, what’s wrong with this world? The world can’t be anything other than what it is. Nobody is really interested in solving the problems. You are always talking of changing the world because there is a drive inside of you to change yourself. When this urge, the demand, the urgency to change yourself into something other than what you are comes to an end, the talk of changing the whole world for your own reasons will also come to an end. They go together. There is nothing to be changed here, so there is nothing to be changed around you. What is wrong with this world? How can it be different? How can it be different, man being what he is? It is not going to be different. “You can talk of love – ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ - and talk of universal love, universal brotherhood. But nothing is going to work. It hasn't worked. It is not that I am pessimistic, but in the very nature of things it cannot work.

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“There are solutions for our problems, but nobody wants those solutions. These are all man-made problems: the starvation, the misery, the wars. You know, as long as you are creating frontiers around you here, so long there will be frontiers there. “If the demand for ‘more’ is absent, then all the goals - including your spiritual goals are finished. There are no goals. There are only needs and the needs you are left with are the needs for physical survival. Finished! “Then the goals and needs become one.”

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25. Compelled by the Third Eye From summer 1967 until the summer of 1983, UG answered all of people's questions most willingly, sometimes even in the middle of the night! “Everybody must be able to see me, whosoever and whenever. It’s not your business to send people away, no matter for what reason!” UG once said to a landlord who had sent away a UG-visitor, explaining that UG was resting for a while. For sixteen years UG exhausted himself talking to thousands and thousands of people who visited him. Since the summer of 1983 he became rather quiet in the verbal expression of his natural state. He still allowed people to visit his place, but “preaching his teaching” had slowed down. UG: “What use is it, hmm? You just read these books about me and then you know everything. I don’t have to say anything more, and I don’t see any point in saying to these people the same things over and over again.” Since the end of summer, 1988, UG had minimized his conversations with visitors. Several video recordings have been made in several countries and by different institutes. Some of them were interviews broadcast by American television stations; another one was the 20 minutes documentary made by members of a Dutch academy of video art. And there are many more these days on UG’s websites and on the YouTube. UG: “If people want to know what I am talking about, they can watch these video recordings.” UG’s life seems to be governed by sequences of seven-year periods. Seven is a sacred number, and seven times seven years makes forty-nine years, the age at which UG was “born again.” Three also is a sacred number, and three times seven years makes twenty-one years. This is the number of years in which UG had been traveling all over the world expressing his natural state. In the year of 1988 he had fulfilled ten periods of seven years. If UG really wanted to cease sharing his paradoxical wisdom, merely his ‘wishing it’ might not be sufficient; his physical attunement should be adjusted: When there were no people around UG or when he could not speak to his friends and answer all their questions, the normal and smooth functioning of his ‘instrument’ seemed to be in trouble. In summer 1983 in Gstaad, Switzerland, after a month of retirement and no people around him, UG told this surprising story:


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UG: “. . . At no time do I make the distinction between outside and inside. It is not that I cannot make the distinction, but, you see, this is very strange. My explanation is, ‘Maybe the eyes are distorting the light.’ When you close your eyes, light is still penetrating through the porous skin, you know? Here, the gland here, if I close this, it is dark. If I don’t close this, there is more light inside than with the eyes opened. If I close my eyes, it is not pitch dark. But if I close this spot on my forehead, the light is completely gone. It’s very strange. I sometimes play with this kind of thing. I haven't found any satisfactory explanation. I asked two or three physiologists, but they really don’t know. This gland, the pineal gland, is the one that is the most painful. It started again! You know, when I don’t talk, when I don’t do anything, the trouble starts. Today I was in bed all day. If I am not active, I have to stay in bed and then go through these horrible pains . . . - miserable situation! I was in my room most of the time today. And then, when I come out, you see, you are like a drunkard, tipsy. What it is, I don’t know. You go off, and then, when you wake up, you feel as if you have walked hundreds of miles: pain in your legs - a horrible situation . . .” Perhaps, if a real teacher cannot teach for some time, because for some reason there are no people around him, his inner energy runs wild. In the same way, a powerful engine may get broken when the tools it has to move or rotate are suddenly disconnected. It seems that UG’s powerful ‘revolutions’ were in trouble when there were no ‘disciples’ near him to be ‘turned round’. This is the traditional reading. However, when UG was asked why he wanted to help people, he exclaimed: UG: “I don’t want to help you. It is your sitting here that creates the motive in me (to ‘help’ you). That’s all.”

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26. Goodbye "'Stop UG, you cannot go out of my house now!'" UG quotes the helpless cry of one of his friends who could not bear the fact that he would have to live a long time without UG and UG’s wisdom. UG: “I went there to say goodbye to him. 'No,' he said, 'I won't let you go out of this house, unless you . . .'" (UG laughs) "What did he want? Did you give it to him?" (Laughing also) UG: “What is there to give? It was a funny scene this morning. . . . I went back because I forgot my pullover. He didn't want to give me back my pullover, you see. I said. 'You can have that pullover and anything else you want; but this is the one thing I can’t give to you. Nobody can give truth to you. Try your luck somewhere else!"

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A Roaring Peace U. G. KRISHNAMURTI

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