Aimless Wandering

Aimless Wandering

Mario Viggiano / Feb. 1, 2013

MARIO VIGGIANO..............

Mario died last Sunday. How can that be? He was young, just 48. He only got sick last month and now no more? I was just talking to him on the phone from southern California a few weeks ago, yes he was sick but he sounded ok, a little tired maybe.

„I’m not going to Italy now, I’m too weak, but it’s ok. Everybody is coming here to see me.“

„Is there anything you want me to do?“ I asked him. „No, I’m ok. Come here, I would be most happy. Or, don’t come here, I also will be happy.“

This time I didn’t go back to see him. He was always inviting me to go somewhere with him, to Bali or Africa or Italy or Switzerland. Usually I didn’t go. He was so domineering when he traveled, you always had to go at his speed and his direction. Used to drive me nuts! He went fast and had his own ways about eating, or where and when to stop.

It was better when UG was there, who could easily handle Mario when nobody else could. UG would shout at him in the car „MARIO! We aren’t stopping there! Keep going, I don’t want to eat any of your horrible Italian food! Terrible! The Romans are still lurking inside you Italian bastards!“

Mario would drive on with a little smile on his face, as if the insults were the sweetest endearments he had ever heard. „Okay, Boss, we stop later, I know where we can find the best Foccacia, you will like it.“ „Don’t call me Boss. I am not your Boss. And any day the Croissants in France are better than your Italian Foccacia.“ „Okay, Sir.“

Here in Cologne, Mario would call me and suggest lunch or a coffee. „How ‚bout 1 o’clock? We go have a sandwich?“ I would meet him at an Italian cafe near my house. He knew the lady behind the counter and would spezial order his sandwich. Then after he would go behind the counter and make himself 2 Espressos for us. Sometimes he paid and other times not. I could never figure out his arrangement with these people. I think he had done some painting or other work for them and the payments were still being figured out, years later. They were all Italian and I wasn’t part of the clan.

Mario worked long hours in Cologne and as soon as he was free for a few days he hit the road, usually renting a flashy and fast car. He loved to drive long distances at high speed. The German autobahn was great for him since it allowed him to drive up to 240 Km per hour! He would finish work and then drive to Switzerland, to Gstaad to visit UG. After 7 hours of driving he would go straight to UG’s room, pay his respects, then head to his own room to clean up. He spent most of the weekends either sleeping on the floor near UG or driving him around Switzerland or Italy. He never tired of driving UG in the mountains. UG regularly allowed him to stop the car and have a smoke, or pull into a highway stop for a coffee and croissant. He said that he didn’t really listen to UG when the talk was too philosophical. He liked the energy and the movement, the motion and the clatter of all the people riding along. He loved the chaos of it all, the sudden changes in plan, the tearful outbursts, the tensions caused by the UG pressure, the glare of UG’s light.

When we landed in an Italian town for a night or two, Mario disappeared immediately. „Where is  that bastard?“ UG would ask. He had gone shopping of course, to the grocery to load up on supplies. Pasta, tomato sauce, olive oil, cheese, bread, coffee, cream – he packed the refrigerator so full that it was annoying! Nobody could find any space there after Mario went shopping. And he bought too much, a lot went wasted if we had to pack up quickly the next day, if UG decided that enough was enough. But then he would make a pasta and all was forgiven. Everyone felt slightly guilty that Mario had spent too much money again and we had all benefitted, all enjoying the foccacia and the cheese and the Caprese salad with expensive olive oil. He never asked for money and didn’t expect it – we accepted his offerings as payment for the aggravations he had caused us. UG seemed to be oblivious, but of course he knew down to the smallest detail what had happened. „Why are you wasting money on all this Italian shit?“UG would rail at him while picking up a piece of delicious fresh Mozzarella and tearing at a Foccacia. UG had his way of blasting someone for all their neuroses and contradictions without a shred of condemnation or expectation that they would change their habits in the slightest.

I knew Mario for 20 years and never heard him speak of UG in any kind of intellectual or philosophical fashion. He had no interest in that way of thinking. His conversations with UG were always about the mundane details of living, about where and when to eat, or where to stay the night, or which friend should be picked up at an airport. He was the one who arranged the rooms and the flights, the meals and the coffee. He talked to UG about his work, his employees and his girlfriends. „You are a COOLIE! Why do you try to impress ME about your work and your money? Do you think I am impressed? You are nothing but a COOLIE, and a Bastard for not paying your boys more! They are highly educated and only have to work for you because they are from Georgia and have no papers. They are Engineers and Brain Surgeons and you don’t pay them enough. You, a COOLIE!!“

Mario heard this so many times it was like music to him. Eventually, he did pay his guys more. And he made more money for himself, too. He worked hard and made money.

But when I think of UG, especially of UG in Europe, I think of Mario. It’s almost like Mario was UG’s spezial agent in Europe. He didn’t travel to India, and he didn’t like California very much. Once in awhile he liked to visit New York. But Europe was his place. It seemed like he drove UG over every road in Switzerland, Germany and Italy, and further thru France and into England. He loved even to drive thru the hellish streets of Rome, London and Paris!

What sticks in my mind about Mario is him always being there around UG, sleeping on the floor, cooking pasta in some cramped kitchen, and driving a nice car with UG asleep next to him. Mario didn’t engage much in the philosophical chatter, but there wasn’t anybody who was ever closer to UG. He jumped on the train and let it take him away.

Vee with UG

Vee told me the story that when she was 13 her mother took her along to a Transcendental Meditation group in her hometown of Alzenau, Germany. She liked it very much and from that point got the idea in her head that she wanted to be "enlightened".

At 20 she heard about Rajneesh and soon made her way to Pune, India. For the next 20 years or so she was involved in the Osho world. She was very dedicated and worked hard to get enlightened.

When she was 40, about 10 years after Osho died, she was working hard in her career and had 'given up on teachers'. Some friends mentioned a man called UG, who was visiting Köln. "You should meet him, he is very different from Osho."

Reluctantly, she went along one afternoon for the visit. At the top of several flights of stairs in an old building they entered a small apartment. Sitting there in front of about 10 people was a small, older man. She sat down, waited and watched, and listened to the rather uninteresting chat. After an hour she left, feeling slightly disappointed. "Is that it?" she asked her friends.

The next day there was the chance to see UG again, but she was not very enthusiastic. She felt that it was not the time to be searching out another teacher. Finally she decided to visit once more.

She entered the little flat again and this day UG looked up at her and smiled. "But where did you go yesterday? We missed saying good-bye to you!" he said. At this unexpected remark, Vee got tears in her eyes. She had no idea that he had the slightest interest in her presence the day before.

"There was something about UG which was so direct and affecting. He was so casual that you would almost forget that he was such an extraordinary person. But then he would say something which seemed to be only for you, as if you were the only one who could hear it. This would have such a strong effect. There is no real way to describe it, but it would change your whole life."

Vee spent the next 6 years visiting UG whenever she could, in Europe, India and California.
The above photo was taken in Vallecrosia, Italy, not long before UG's death in 2007. Vee also died in 2011. On the table next to her bed in her last days was just one photo, of UG.

What for Bob?

I often run into old friends who also knew UG and ask them what they are doing? We talk for awhile and almost always end up saying we have no idea what we are doing, or what will be our next move. We look around at others and notice that they too seem to have no idea, just that they have a better story line. If you ask, they will come up with something that sounds like a plan or a strategy for getting through the next phase of life, but they really in truth have no real idea.

My old friend Bob, who should know better, often asks me this question of what am I doing. His view of me would probably be that, even when he first met me 30-some years ago, I seemed to be somebody who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. And even now he might have the same impression!
But I would counter by saying that it's not really 'real' for me to think that I know what's happening, now or in the future. I could fake it if you push me into a corner, but otherwise...

UG once suggested that "...maybe there really is no meaning to life. Why should it have a meaning or a purpose?"

Recently I helped Vee go through a long illness and then her death. I was there with her right to the end. She had a tremendous courage all through those days, and even though her body suffered a lot she somehow didn't sink into depression or terrible fear that her life was ending. But I did see that she held on to a few last ideas and images, particularly of herself continuing in some other form. And she had a great drive to finish her book, working on it up to a few weeks before she died while she could barely stay awake. This drive to continue, to keep going as oneself, is so strong that I don't think it leaves us until the very end of life. Which of us ever really gives up anything gracefully?

Whatever state UG was in allowed him to give up all things, especially himself, even to the point back in 1967 when it all collapsed on him and all was taken away. I remember feeling and thinking all those years I knew him that some kind of death lingered always around him, like either he or you were in danger of ending. And even though I was thrilled to spend time with him, there were times when a feeling would come to me that 'I' was struggling to keep myself together. This feeling was so unnerving and frightening that I would always immediately push myself back into the shape I knew as me, I would talk to myself and speed up the thoughts as my way of recovering. I knew then that I, and anybody I knew, would never voluntarily go further than this point. There was such an immense and strong urge to avoid my ending that I would have done anything at that moment.

So, does all this have a meaning and purpose? What about the years and years of spending time with a man like UG? I have often asked myself and others this question. I don't think I want the answer.

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!