U. G. Krishnamurti
| Date of Birth | : | 09 Jul, 1918 |
| Date of Death | : | 22 Mar, 2007 |
| Place of Birth | : | Machilipatnam, India |
| Profession | : | Author, Philosopher |
| Nationality | : | Indian |
Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti was a philosopher who questioned the state of spiritual liberation. Having pursued a religious path in his youth and eventually rejecting it, U.G. claimed to have experienced a devastating biological transformation on his 49th birthday, an event he refers to as "the calamity".
Biography
Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti, famous around the world as simply U. G Krishnamurti, gave the world a unique perspective about enlightenment. According to Krishnamurti, there is no such thing as philosophical enlightenment. There are no philosophical questions to be asked and no intellectual answers to be given to those questions.
This enlightenment-negating thinker was born in India, on July 9, 1918. For him, the concept of seeking the ultimate truth is absurd, as he thinks there is nothing to seek. Nature will provide individuals with the solutions of all their problems; one just needs to embrace it in its entirety.
Many people also tried to regard him amongst the ‘enlightened ones’, but he insisted that he simply exists in what he called the ‘natural state’. For him, the puzzling notions and ideas that people involve themselves into in the name of enlightenment are the only hindrance between them and being enlightened-if there is such a thing.
For Krishnamurti, the need to constantly change, to evolve, is not just impossible, but also a futile exercise. He emphasized on the body and the soul being perfect the way they are. To try to alter bodily actions is considered by him as a breach in the purity, peace and harmony of the body.
His concept of the mind and the psyche is only one of a kind. He believed that the psyche, or the mind, does not exist as a being, but rather it is a demand of the self to bring about a change in this world, or in itself. Self-consciousness for Krishnamurthi is a fascist force, one which only emphasizes on its own importance.
According to Krishnamurti, the business of gurus and spiritual healers is booming because of people who are in search of answers to their pseudo questions of enlightenment and salvation. The quest for these answers is instilled into them through an artificially created cultural environment. The culture demands from people to conform while at the same time it asks them to be unique and special in their own way, infusing in people a constant need for so-called enlightenment which would bring out their exclusive character. The gurus take advantage of this situation and promise of a way towards salvation, a journey by the end of which the puzzled individual will find answers to all his spiritual questions, leading him to the ultimate truth.
For him, the goal of enlightenment is unapproachable, and self realization is futile, because there are no goals and there is nothing to discover in the self. Whatever is happening in the world is just happening; there are no divine interventions and spiritual, mysterious connections behind the happenings of the world. He liked to call himself ‘unrational’, as he totally negated the idea of employing rationality to answer questions of enlightenment. He believed that humans are too busy trying to find the meaning behind things when there is none to be found.
With his talks and words, he tried to wipe off from the minds of his followers previous concepts and cherished truths of history and society. He asked them to start anew, forgetting what has been taught to them all their lives. He denied the existence of spirituality in India, or of communism in Russia, or liberty in America. Instead, he asked his fellows to relate nothing to nowhere.
Death
U.G. Krishnamurti died on March 22, 2007. All his life he worked towards completely erasing of the idea of questioning ones’ self, so that nothing stays behind but a smoothly operational biological mechanism, working with all its natural harmony and balance.
Quotes
This question haunted me all my life and suddenly it hit me: 'There is no self to realize. What the hell have I been doing all this time?' You see, that hits you like lightning. Once that hits you, the whole mechanism of the body that is controlled by this thought is shattered. What is left is the tremendous living organism with an intelligence of its own. What you are left with is the pulse, the beat and the throb of life.
You think when you don't want to do anything. Thinking is a poor alternative to acting. Your thinking is consuming all your energy. Act, don't think!
Everything you stand for, believe in, experience and aspire to is the result of thought. And thought is destructive because it is nothing more than a protective mechanism, programmed to protect its own interests at all costs.
Food, clothing and shelter — these are the basic needs. Beyond that, if you want anything, it is the beginning of self-deception.
You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up. A complete and total 'surrender'. It is a state of hopelessness which says that there is no way out. Any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, is taking you away from yourself.
The plain fact is that if you don't have a problem, you create one. If you don't have a problem you don't feel that you are living.
I am not anti-rational, just unrational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine.
My interest is to point out to you that you can walk, and please throw away all those crutches. If you are really handicapped, I wouldn’t advise you to do any such thing. But you are made to feel by other people that you are handicapped so that they could sell you those crutches. Throw them away and you can walk. That’s all that I can say. ‘If I fall....’ - that is your fear. Put the crutches away, and you are not going to fall.
If anyone thinks he can help you, he will inevitably mislead you, and the less phony he is; the more powerful he is, the more enlightened he is, the more misery and mischief he will create for you.
Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, travelling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.
