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#2643 - Thursday, November 16, 2006
- Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights
In the next couple of issues I'll feature selections from The Other Side of Belief: Interpreting U.G. Krishnamurti, by Mukuna Rao.
Selections also appear in issues 2644 and 2648
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/Books/BookDetail.asp?ID=5947
The Other Side of Belief: Interpreting
U.G. Krishnamurti
by Mukunda Rao. Penguin Books
Contents: Foreword.
I. The way it is: Prelude.
1. No boundaries. 2. Can you take it. 3. Doubt is
the other side of belief. 4. A con game. 5. Cancer treats saints
and sinners in the same way. 6. Have you ever had sex Krishnaji.
7. The end of Samsara. 8. The dark night of the body. 9. The
mystique of Nirvana.
II. Interpreting U.G. Krishnamurti 1. God(s) fear
and ultimate pleasure. 2. Mysticism demystified. 3. Gurus and
holy business. 4. Avatars as ultimate models. 5. Religion in a
secular mode. 6. Theory and practice. 7. Superman debunked. 8.
The two Krishnamurtis. 9. Body mind and soul do they exist. 10.
The enigma of the natural state. 11. The eternal recurrence.
III. Anti teaching 1. Telling it like it is: the
voice of UG.
*
Trapped between a dead past and an unborn future,
the human animal has, since the dawn of time, asked these two
questions— ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I
here?’ These are the questions which propelled the author to
the doors of the most subversive man in human history—U.G.
Krishnamurti. And the outcome of that encounter is this
exceptional book. —From the Foreword by Mahesh Bhatt.
*
Described as the thinker who shuns thought, U.G.
Krishnamurti is the most enigmatic and iconoclastic
‘anti-guru’ of our times. His conviction that doubt is
the other side of belief emerged from an uncompromising negation
of everything that can be expressed, not from a desire for some
‘comfy dialectical thesis’.
The Other Side of Belief: Interpreting
U.G. Krishnamurti is a candid and refreshing chronicle of
UG’s life and the evolution of his radical outlook and
ideas. Tracing the development of UG’s notion of
enlightenment as a series of biological mutations devoid of
mystical or religious connotations, Mukunda Rao weaves a complex
portrait—of a man who doesn’t hesitate to challenge and
demolish society’s most cherished and comforting values and
ideals, but nonetheless commands a most fervent respect and
veneration from multitudes of admirers.
UG has always been adamant that life
must be described in pure and simple physical and physiological
terms so that it is de-psychologized and demystified. He
underwent, in his own words, a ‘calamity’: a series of
bodily metamorphoses that catapulted him into the unique state of
the ‘declutched’ mind. This book gives the reader a
vivid description of UG’s ‘cellular revolution’
and an intensely personal insight into UG’s unflinching and
relentless insistence on freedom from the ‘stranglehold of
thought’.
With a foreword by Mahesh Bhatt, film-maker and lifelong admirer
of UG, The Other Side of Belief offers a searching exploration of
the incredible charisma of a man who has transformed the lives of
people all over the world.
U G Krishnamurti on Enlightenment
There is no such thing as enlightenment. You may say
that every teacher and all the saints and saviours of mankind
have been asserting for centuries upon centuries that there is
enlightenment and that they are enlightened. Throw them all in
one bunch into the river! I don’t care. To realize that
there is no enlightenment at all is enlightenment.
But actually an enlightened man or a free man, if
there is one, is not interested in freeing or enlightening
anybody. This is because he has no way of knowing that he is a
free man, that he is an enlightened man. It is not something that
can be shared with somebody, because it is not in the area of
experience at all.
Does such a thing as enlightenment exist? To me what
does exist is a purely physical process. There is nothing
mystical or spiritual about it. If I close the eyes some light
penetrates through the eyelids. If I cover the eyelids there is
still light inside. There seems to be some kind of a hole in the
forehead which doesn’t show but through which something
penetrates. In
This state is a state of not knowing. You
really don’t know what you are looking at. All there is
inside is wonderment. It is a state of wonder because I just do
not know what I am looking at. The knowledge about it, all that I
have learned, is held in the background unless there is a demand.
When required it comes quickly like an arrow, then I am back in
the state of not knowing, of wonder.
I don’t know if I have made myself clear. The
reason why I am emphasizing the physical aspect is not with the
idea of selling something but to emphasize and express what you
call enlightenment, liberation, transformation, in pure and
simple physical and physiological terms. There is absolutely no
religious content to it, and no mystical overtones or undertones
to the functioning of the body. Unfortunately, for centuries the
whole thing has been interpreted in religious terms and that has
caused misery for us all.
I am not interested in propagating this. This is not something
which you can make happen, nor is it possible for me to create
that hunger which is essential to understand anything. I am
repeating this over and over again but repetition has its own
charm. You are assuming that you are hungering for spiritual
attainments and you are reaching out for your goals. Naturally,
there are so many people in the market place, all these saints,
selling all kinds of shoddy goods. They say it is for the welfare
of mankind and that they do it out of compassion and all that
kind of thing. What I am trying to say is that you are satisfied
with the crumbs they throw at you. They promise that one day they
are going to deliver to you a full loaf of bread. That is just a
promise. They cannot deliver the goods at all. There is no use
waiting for something to happen to satisfy your hunger. The
hunger has to burn itself up. Literally, it has to burn itself
out.
*
The whole mystique of enlightenment is based upon
the idea of transforming yourself. I cannot convey or transmit my
certainty that you, and all the authorities down through the
centuries, are false. They, and the spiritual goods they peddle,
are utterly false.
Just let me warn you that if what you are aiming at,
enlightenment, really happens you will die. There will be a
physical death because there has to be a physical death to be in
that state.
It happens when you touch life at a point where
nobody has touched it before. Nobody can teach you that.
*
When enlightenment comes it wipes out everything.
That is something which cannot be made to happen through your
effort or through the grace of anybody, through the help of even
a god walking on the face of this earth claiming that he has
specially descended from wherever for your sake and for the sake
of mankind. That is just absolute gibberish.
*
People call me an ‘enlightened man’ -- I detest that term -- they can’t find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I’ve searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn’t arise. I don’t give a hoot for a sixth-century-BC Buddha, let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.
~ ~ ~
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/Books/BookDetail.asp?ID=5947
The Other Side of Belief: Interpreting U.G. Krishnamurti
Also availabe through Amazon, AbeBooks