" The cow looks at me with Choiceless Awareness" - UG

JK and UG 

Years before meeting up with UG, somewhere along the line, I stumbled into Jiddu Krishnamurti or JK who stormed into my life though his mesmerising lingo and catchy phrases. 

In a way,  JK  paved the way for UG. UG himself acknowledged this in no uncertain terms and on numerous occasions. 

JK attacked and lobbed grenades at the stronghold of religion and tradition like no one else before him and loosened the tenacious grip of orthodoxy, the beliefs, practices and rituals on our minds with his liberating and mind-shattering observations. Much of the spiritual dross and clutter of ages got rooted out by JK much before UG took over and UG made a clean sweep of even the intellectual clutter left behind by JK!

I was initially spellbound  by JK's revolutionary thinking, a path breaking approach to life! His persuasive and uncanny discourse made religion look like a practical joke!

Unlike UG who proclaimed that he had no message for mankind, JK was a global brand , a salesman par excellence, who offered intellectual gymnastics through what UG described as ' bogus chartered flights.'  Like many JK freaks, I too enjoyed JK's verbal journeys into ' the unchartered seas' and went on my ego trip that lasted for years!

His fabulous repertoire made JK a great 'wordsmith'! JK improvised in amazing ways. JK's stock phrases like 'the first and the last freedom' , 'the flight of the eagle', 'awakening of intelligence', 'choiceless awareness, ' sounded revolutionary and captured the imagination of many educated and thinking minds of the times ! 

Even UG acknowledged JK's innovative expression! UG was of the opinion that JK's proximity to brilliant minds like Aldous Huxley , Carl Jung among others played a key role in forging his unique style of expression, the famous 'JK lingo'

Once I chanced to meet a top ranking marketing executive. On finding his shelf overflowing with JK books, I queried him regarding his JK connection. He was candid, " More than anything, JK has a great intellectual appeal and supplies me with the  verbal ammunition that helps me crack deals in my high-profile marketing job!"

During my college days, I had breathed JK day in and day out! I hungered after his books, had a huge collection of his audios and videos. In the 80's, there were no Indian prints and all titles were imported and they cost a fortune! My pocket money given to me by my middle class dad vanished in a day or two as I shelled out huge amounts to buy endless JK ‘stuff’!

My ambition to meet up with JK wasn't very successful and was hijacked by a well meaning friend ( his grandfather had donated lands to Annie Besant near Madanapalle where the Rishi Valley School later sprang up ) who deliberately lied to me about JK's dates of travel to US to prevent me from bunking my exams to be with him in Rishi Valley. Incidentally that turned out to be his final visit to India!

My brush with JK philosophy made me feel intellectually superior and puffed up my ego even more! Unknowingly, I had started parroting JK's phrases in my day to day conversations.I spent most of my waking hours practicing ‘choiceless awareness’ believing naively that I was on the road to attaining a highly evolved spiritual state! 

UG was to explain later " When I go out, even the cow on the street looks at me with 'choiceless awareness'!" making it abundantly clear that awareness is just a functional aspect of the brain physiology, a pure biological phenomenon! Awareness is being peddled sometimes as a meditative technique, as a tool to help bring about radical transformation and sold to gullible minds! UG pooh poohed the whole idea! 

Like countless souls, I too was completely floored by some of JK's penetrating statements. Particularly the following ones:

" How can you discover God? You could perhaps discover the needle in the proverbial haystack ! But how can you discover something that you really do not know?"

" In order to understand the 'problem', you must be free from the desire for an answer!"

" In order to encounter a live cobra, you must go far, far beyond the city lights into  the darkness and into the bushes !"

It took several years before I could finally flush JK out of my system! 

One fine morning, it suddenly hit me that the much celebrated JK's ' journeys on the unchartered seas were mere fantasies, pure mental gymnastics! My system summarily rejected JK in a single moment of rare clarity that morning! JK's 'intellectual baggage' of years got jettisoned out, once and for all!  

When I met UG for the first time, he supplied the words to my unspoken gut feeling about JK's pointers to the 'door' and his suggestive expression about 'what lies beyond the door' and his constant refrain about the 'unknown'! UG summarily dismissed any such misgivings saying , " There is no oasis situated yonder; you are stuck with the mirage!" 

UG gave the analogy of an airplane on its take off roll to explain the futility of JK's 'bogus chartered flights': 

" Sir, we would all wait in the tent with bated breath as the plane started rolling forward on the runway for take-off! We waited eagerly as it picked up speed and lunged forward. We wondered, 'Now, this is the moment! It will take off NOW! But... no! Nothing would happen....some more precious moments would slip by! Again we hoped that it would take off NOW! Again and again we were disappointed, talk after talk, we ended up with the same feeling of despair .. nothing....nothing ever really happened...and soon we realised that it was just another case of 'aborted' take-off...the plane never took off but only returned back to the gate....it was like that every single time!" 

Unlike JK, UG's uniqueness lay in the simplicity and economy of his expression. For the most part, he stuck to the day to day vocabulary. Sophistry and scholarship found no place in his simple and effective statements. Even children could understand his plain talk and enjoy his tirades and satires immensely. 

Unlike JK, UG was a free man, not bogged down by puritanical inclinations. Unrestrained, UG would resort to slang whenever he needed to throw in a punch line and rubbish some nonsense! And that was quite often! His slang hit the bull’s eye every single time! He pointed out the utilitarian value of slang and referred to Sri Ramakrishna's original Gospel in Bengali that showcased the choicest slang resorted to by the famous sage to drive home the truth!

With UG, knowledge had no place, only pure Life resonated and reverberated there! In his company, one tasted real freedom, felt unburdened and relieved from the clutches of social and cultural tyranny!

In UG's portal, there was no scope for any externalisation or internalisation of thought, no chance for rumination, mentation or ideation. In his presence, there was no scope for any preoccupation! You found yourself flowing along with whatever happened around you - the mirth and laughter, the relentless talk and discussion, the noise and the din of mundane existence - all became part of reality!

UG would metaphorically describe his role as the AK 47, the machine gun that fired away at the slightest stirring of minds around and about him!

UG's whole approach, it appeared, was to spray potent words like bullets that ' silenced the stirrings of our restless minds!' 

In the staccato outburst of his gun fire, our chatter simply got suspended, at least for a while!

"Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones."

- Lao Tzu, Chapter 3, Tao Teh Ching