Summing it up

Found this quote by UG on linklady blog and it just about sums it up. I have to repeat it here.

"I am blocking every escape. Each outlet has to be blocked to put you in a corner. You must be choked to death, as it were. Only a real teacher can find that out and tell you, nobody else. Not those people who interpret the texts; all that is totally unrelated. Only such a man can talk. And such a man never encourages you because he knows that if this kind of thing has to happen to somebody, that person will not need the help of anybody. In spite of everything it will happen."

UG Krishnamurti



This helps to understand the many moments around UG when I and others would feel that we were just about to go completely crazy and run out of the room; you felt trapped in a corner which you couldn't protect yourself in. And how you got there was often too ridiculous. UG used any thing at hand to push you. Sometimes it was only the mind-numbing repetition of one of his life stories which would make you want to scream! I once asked him, "UG, why do you tell us this story again after we have heard it hundreds of times?" With a slight smile he answered, "Well, repetition has a charm of its own." You wanted to leap across the table and strangle him, but he was much too delightful to do that.

Being in the corner was too much for anyone. I never met anyone who could stand it for very long. Each person had a well-practiced escape technique, most of us had several. You could sleep, drink coffee, stare at the computer, read, make lunch, try and have a conversation with UG - impossible! "It's a monologue with me, Sir. I'm not listening to you and you are not listening to me." Thanks! The escapes were and are endless and sometimes quite creative.

But, even with all that, being around UG was the most important time of the day - any day.

Surrounded by people

In the last weeks of his life, UG spent his whole day and night sitting or lying on his couch. He had injured his leg in the last days of January and didn't walk after that. A few times, mostly for the enjoyment of friends, with someone holding him steady, he would shuffle a few steps.

Much of the time he was lying down, but often he sat up and chatted with visitors. He did this even as he got weaker, until on March 15 he asked that everyone go away.

Sometimes while sitting in the room I would find myself staring at him. And I wondered, why am I sitting here, he's not talking, nothing is going on, why are we all sitting here staring?

But there was something so compelling and alive in UG, it was like watching a baby or a wild animal, bursting with life. He used to say, "It didn't happen after whatever you think happened to me (his phrase referring to his 'calamity' in 1967), it was always this way. I have been surrounded by people all of my life. I have always been like this."

Blasting on the street corner

In the last few years of his life UG continued his lifelong habit of getting in a car and going for long rides. Since he didn't drive after he left America in the late 1950s, he depended on willing friends to take him around. These drives often lasted for hours, sometimes for days! The most arduous and ridiculous drive was one in 2005, which started in Gstaad and eventually went through Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and back to Switzerland! It lasted for 4 days and involved 3 cars and about 15 people. We all thought it was going to be for a few hours, have a coffee somewhere, then return. Nobody had packed a thing; not a change of clothes, a toothbrush, or a razor! At the end, it seemed that the only reason we had gone on this insane tour was to find out that it could be done.

It was experiences like these which convinced me that I could just not understand UG. He was unhelpful when you pressed him for answers about why, when, and where. He almost seemed to not really know. During these odd journeys, after many hours of sitting in a car, we would find ourselves sitting in a rest-stop cafe for a short break. UG would never eat much and often took along his own simple food. He did have a little coffee with whipped cream to, "keep company with you guys", and then he watched with bemusement as we drank coffee and ate cake, relieved by the chance to get out of the damn cars.

In the middle of the "high tea" as he jokingly called it, he could suddenly start speaking in his 'other voice'. He would use the subject matter close at hand: what someone was eating, who paid the bill, what awful foods we had chosen, what the exchange rate for the dollar was (always sinking, to UG's delight). He could instantly speak with such an astonishing power and clarity and authority. We would all be completely mesmerized and stunned, forgetting all about how or why we had ended up in a little town in Italy, or Switzerland or France.

UG didn't require any special place, schedule or audience. Since the days shortly after his 'calamity' in 1967, when he decided to say what he had to say, he was like an erupting volcano, spewing out rocks and boulders and fiery, smoking lava. It was the most fascinating thing to make your way as close as you could stand and watch this tremendous creation. And of course, when it got so hot that you were in danger of getting burned, you ran away as fast as you could. There were a few who crept up to the edge of the crater, but I never knew anyone who jumped in.

Many years ago after one of these driving tours around the San Francisco area, I was standing on a streetcorner with UG, Mahesh Bhatt and Bob Carr. We were in the famous North Beach area on Columbus Avenue, a busy street. After wandering around the nearby financial district and Union Square shopping area, we stopped in front of a topless nightclub. Amid the noise of cars and the crowded sidewalks, UG suddenly barked at Mahesh, "You don't understand anything! What I am saying runs counter to what everyone has said, thought or experienced in the whole history of mankind! And you have no way of understanding me at all. You might as well go into this bar here and look at the naked girls and go to these restaurants and eat huge piles of food. That's all you are doing, eating and fucking! And I am going to keep on saying these things for the rest of my life. I don't care who says what. If they kill me for saying these things what does it matter to me? This here (pointing at himself) cannot be controlled and it expresses exactly what it is. It doesn't matter if we are standing on the streetcorner. If it doesn't operate here, it doesn't operate anywhere!"

In 1979, UG often stayed in the home of Chandrasekhar on West Anjaneja Temple Road, Bangalore. This is the place where I met him in late October. He had just returned from a trip with his friends Valentine, Mahesh Bhatt and Parveen Babi. This journey - beset by health problems and wild weather - has been chronicled by Chandrasekhar in his book "Stopped in Our Tracks".

I didn't know what to expect when meeting UG. I was only 24 at the time and had no background in Indian culture or philosophy. I only had heard a few comments from new friends in California about what he might be like, since they too had not visited UG in several years.

Terry Newland, who in the 1980's often lent UG his "crow's nest" home in Mill Valley, California, told me, "I haven't seen UG since 1971, but I think about that man every day."
Douglas Rosestone, another friend of UG since meeting him in Switzerland in 1966, said, "UG is from a school of Indian teachers who, when you finally find his abode in a remote place, throws dung at you when you approach."
Bob Carr, my good friend and the person who brought me to India to meet UG, had not seen UG since 1966. He and Douglas and Conrad Keeler had all been in Saanen to spend the summer in the mountains and to attend the talks of J. Krishnamurti. It was then that they met UG, who had been living in Saanen during summer since the early 60's. Bob said,"I haven't seen UG since 1966. It was the next summer that something 'happened to him'. Douglas says that he got into some kind of state; he's not sure what it is. I'll have to see for myself."

When we walked into the house UG was sitting on the floor. There were about fifteen people around the room, some on the floor and the rest on chairs or walking through doing various household tasks. He greeted Bob like an old friend, as if thirteen years had not gone by, even though they had only spent several weeks in acquaintance back then. They chatted about the years since and UG asked about mutual friends in California. He was friendly to me but didn't ask me any questions about my life, or reasons for travelling to India and coming to his place. He soon went back to talking to all the people and I just watched him. In those days he was very strong about J. Krishnamurti and constantly hammered away at the obvious JK influence in his visitors. He would often raise his arm up and swing it down, almost banging the floor with his hand to drive home his point. I immediately liked UG and felt comfortable in his presence. He was harsh and brutal and ruthless in his comments, but somehow likeable and not threatening.

After a few hours there was a short break and some of the people went out for lunch. UG still sat on the floor but there was a lull in the talking. Then, an older Indian gentleman turned to me and began to ask, "So, why have you come to India and what is it you are doing in California?" I started to answer but UG looked over and very forcefully said, "He doesn't have to answer all those questions! Leave him alone."

I really appreciated that! I instantly felt that I could enter this great man's house and not have to impress anyone with any credentials I didn't have. This was a quality I saw in UG from the beginning to the end. He welcomed anyone who had a sincere interest in seeing him. You could be from anywhere, be any age, sex, have any kind of background, even be half-mad or a criminal, and still he would offer a place to sit. No one around him was ever allowed to limit or control access or establish a position. If anyone tried they would be subject to an intense battering. Of course there were old friends who spent years and years with UG, but even they could not have any authority over the latest arrival. This was a constant battle because the desire to maintain a special relationship was in all of us. We all felt that UG was the one person in the world who understood us and really saw us as we were, and we wanted to keep his attention at all times.

Actually, this was impossible, because UG always explained that as soon as you left the room, or even as soon as he turned his head around and couldn't see, you were not there for him. His eyes were totally absorbed by the changing view of movement and light. You could never really understand his explanations, but you could see the practical outcome: there never was an inner circle able to form around him. Nobody could accomplish this, not even those who knew him for decades, or even family members.

You began to get the feeling that maybe there was nobody there at all to form a circle around!

Very often the comment is made by people who never met UG "He seems to be very harsh and negative in his comments. He criticizes everything and doesn't have a good word to say about anyone."

This is often the response of those who only have seen UG in a short video clip on the internet, or who might have met him once or twice.

"I'm not known for my sense of humor, am I?" he would slyly ask.

But, if you hung around for awhile, and you could stand his fierce attacks on everything you held dear, then you would also see his fantastic humor. He would sometimes say about someone, "He's got a tremendous sense of humor!"

But UG never claimed that for himself. He would never tell jokes, and he had trouble even following a long humorous story, but the atmosphere around him was always filled with irreverence and laughter, interspersed with the dread and terror of perhaps losing your mind, too. The humor helped with the utter hopelessness of the situation. Here we sat with perhaps the world's most extraordinary man, awestruck by the freedom and freshness of his being, and we were stuck in our wandering thoughts about money, the future, or relationship.

You had to laugh sometimes.

UG Krishnamurti returned to America in late 1981, his first visit since 1960. He had lived for 5 years with his family in Chicago in the 1950's. For the first few months he would sometimes watch television for a few minutes.

"I'm interested in the advertisements, how they are selling. That's the real creativity. I don't care about the programs, except for Perry Mason."

One day my friend Bob came to visit UG and found him alone in the living room with the TV tuned to an old "I Love Lucy" program. They both sat for several minutes until Bob, bored with the program and puzzled as to UG's apparent interest, asked UG, "UG, could I just ask you something?"
"Yes, Bob."
"Well, you said that the thought process must come to an end before I can really see anything, and I want to know how...."
He never made it to the end of his question because UG had turned to him and was looking at him with his intense and penetrating eyes and waved off his question with a slight but authoritative movement of his hand.
"Bob, your questions are like throwing a pebble into a tranquil pond. The ripple you see is caused by you. Otherwise, nothing is happening here at all."

UG Krishnamurti died a few months ago on March 22, 2007. Although I first met UG in 1979, I spent my most concentrated time around him since Dec. 2003, continuing with only short breaks until he died in Vallecrosia, Italy. During this period I found myself pulled to follow UG's unpredictable migration around the world. We went to India, California, New York, and all over Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany. He stayed regularly in these years in Gstaad, Switzerland, Palm Springs, California and Bangalore, India. But he moved daily from these bases, usually by car, in his life-long habit of wandering. He wasn't interested in travel to see tourist sites or even beauty spots, but seemingly to just be in motion, without a plan, a map, or a destination. The stark uncertainty of this drove most of us around him to real extremes of emotion, interrupted by hours of peace and wonder at the world, and at this extraordinary, unique man.

"Anyone who has been hanging around me for a long time cannot write sentimental shit! Others can write whatever they want, not those around me!" UG, 2006

We'll do the best we can, UG. But we remember him as the man who had the most impact on all of our lives, who we walked with in the streets, all the time amazed that the passersby didn't give a second glance to this great, great man.