If you got anything at all from my books you wouldn't be here.
U.G. Krishnamurti
U.G. Krishnamurti cannot be framed to a philosophy or to any system or Tradition: what he expresses comes from a source whose origin is completely beyond thought.
Reading his books or listening to his videos is a sadhana in itself: his words deeply shake the roots of our culture, our thinking, and ultimately our identity.
Statements such as:"There is no self, there is no I, there is no spirit, that knocks off the whole list, and you have no way of finding out what you are left with";
or
"This state is not in your interest. You are only interested in continuity. You want to continue, probably on a different level, and to function in a different dimension, but you want to continue somehow. You wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. This is going to liquidate what you call "you," all of you - higher self, lower self, soul, atman, conscious, subconscious - all of that." -
literally pull the rug out right from under our feet. His living words put the mind in a corner and burn everything that is false letting emerge what is authentic and primeval.* * *
My spiritual quest began in the mid Nineties, there was an esoteric bookstore in my town where I bought a lot of texts to find an answer to my existential questions.
What was I looking for? I did not even know it myself.
I read a lot of teachings and made several practices, among them Anthroposophy, Theosophy, Rosicrucians, Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen, Vipassana Meditation, Tai Chi, Gnostic Gospels, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and so on.
One day, it was 1999, in a shelf of that bookshop, beside the books of J. Krishnamurti, I saw a text called La Mente è un Mito (Mind is a Myth): what a powerful title! The cover was simple: no pictures on it, it was just blue with the title in white fonts.
I took it and saw that the author was Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti, another Krishnamurti! I thought, "Let's see what he says!"
I browsed it and read the first page quote…
"My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody."
I was astonished! In a world like ours where private property is defended even by the use of force, I had never seen such a detached attitude with absolutely no trace of self-importance.
I started reading frantically: the words of U.G. were devastating, of clarity and power never seen before! He swept away every other teaching and denied everything, including enlightenment! Yet a tangible strength behind his words was the evidence of an enlightenment: the force behind those words was like a primeval intelligence, a spontaneous and natural geniality that flowed like a swollen river and its effect was almost a "correction", a rearrangement of my synapses…
As I read the book I knew from deep inside that THIS was what I was looking for... What I didn't know was that an actual Copernican Revolution was about to take place in my consciousness. Strangely that copy of the book was missing a page so I didn't buy it; I thought that perhaps another copy would come in the bookshop so that I could buy it later. It never happened. Anyway, every time I went back to that bookstore I could not help but read "Mind Is a Myth", and eventually I finished reading the book.
I thought with no doubt that, whatever enlightenment was, this man called U.G. had found it.
In those dialogues he reported that in the past he had been close to the Theosophical Society and to the most famous Jiddu Krishnamurti, but later he had abandoned everything until he remained totally without any reference and support. After leaving behind his family and bonds, he wondered adrift between London and Switzerland. After two weeks in Geneva he was unable to pay his hotel bill, so, penniless and lost he decided it was enough; he went to the Indian consulate to be sent back to India. There he'd met Valentine de Kerven, a Swiss woman who hosted him into her house. Then he lived a whole series of strange experiences that had led him to live what he called a "calamity." Following this calamity U.G. found himself in a state he called "natural state" where there was no ego, all senses worked independently and his actions were spontaneous and instantaneous, without any interference of thought.
His words were pronounced almost with an anger, it was a refreshing fury that wiped away everything and made me feel extremely well. Oddly I imagined U.G. like an angry old man, or maybe a Zen master, a sort of old bald Bodhidharma with a wooden stick in his hands…
A few months later, it was early in 2000, I bought my first Pc with a 56k modem. During my first internet connections I tried to find out if there were websites that spoke of spirituality.
I stumbled into a site with quotes from various authors, and at the bottom of the page there were links to other websites. My eyes fell on the cover of his book "No Way Out", where there's a nice picture of U.G. It was the first time I saw him; I couldn't help but notice the penetrating look of U.G., looking straight into the camera with an enigmatic expression, without any trace of fear. I did not imagine he was so "young"! How magnetic that look was! It was a living expression of an unknown kind of courage. Though it was not a real meeting but just me looking at a simple book cover, in a fraction of a second that look put me completely "naked"! I was puzzled, that picture had had a tremendous echo within me and for a moment I almost got a glimpse of a deep, primeval part of me coming out. Unfortunately it's extremely difficult to express this in words...
Then I discovered his websites and downloaded all his "no-copyright" books. The first one I read was the Italian translation by Pierluigi Piazza of "The Courage To Stand Alone", which I brought with me everywhere: at work, on the subway, I just couldn't stop reading U.G., and while my spiritual practises continued, I began to have many doubts. The doubts were arising from (I should better say thanks to) U.G.'s readings: all my spiritual and philosophical certainties began to collapse one by one and I was left almost completely without any support. There was a kind of Bhagavad Gita within me, where the various teachings fought between each other! In the middle of the battlefield there was U.G. who, like Arjuna, was killing mercilessly all my spiritual "ancestors", all the authorities...
It was a disconcerting feeling; it was really tough to remain unsupported but - as he says - I eventually stood alone, without support, without teachers, without the need of an outer authority. His words liberated me from spiritual conditionings and although I can say that my research is not completely over, I am much more spontaneous and natural.
All the spiritual teachings in the world are based and always answer the question of "how?". That question is a call for the therapists, the sellers and the "saviors of mankind," and eventually is a trap: spiritual seekers loose a lot of energy and money to find the answer to that misleading question. Spiritual seekers desperately look for the solution to their non-existing problemscreated by the misleading answers they sold us for centuries.
A non-existing problem cannot have a real solution.
The saviors sell their answers at a dearly price, we pay them, and in the end is just a carrot hanging on a stick that we keep following until our end; the gurus and the god-men thrive on this situation. U.G. always maintained that there is no way to reach the state he stumbled into, what he called the "natural state". He constantly emphasizes that there is no "how", and little by little the mind surrenders and drops the so-called spiritual commitment. It drops the attachment to meditations and techniques which are always unsuccessful because they're just useless: the goal is only imagined. We cannot want something we don't know - U.G. maintains.
After several hesitations, in 2007 I finally decided to meet him, and when I tried to get in touch, I found out he was dead just few days before... I clearly realized I had "missed the train" and still today the fact that I have not met him personally remains one of my greatest regrets.
If I went back in time it would be the first thing I would do. U.G. has been a sort of "car ride" from the point where I was to where I am now, and the reading his books really helped me a lot.
* * *
I've built this website just for fun: I've always thought it would be nice to have a quotes-roulette with UG's sayings...
In the "Home" section you've got the Web App: the quotes-roulette; in the "All the quotes" section you can read all the quotes that have been used for this website.
The "Links" are also interesting, give it a look! ;)
I hope this website will help you to discover a bit more on U.G.'s world!
Enjoy!
Stefano Esposito