Osho

batistuta

True, Scando. His Philosophy was a mish-mash of various teachings. Originality was not his forte, I guess.

Scandojazzbuff

You know I met Maurcie Freedman a long time ago. He was the guy that discovered/uncovered the beediwallah, Nishargadutta. Did you ever meet Maurice? He died quite some time ago. I never got to meet Maharaj but by then I had already come in contact with U.G.

batistuta

No, Scando, I could not meet Maurice Frydman. Yes, he translated Maharaj's work from Marathi (Maharaj considered him to be a gnani). So, If i may ask you, As you have met UG, Were Maurice's teachings ( If i can call it that) similar to UG's in any way?

UG shatters many myths and beliefs. Absolutely and unequivocally shatters them.

Scandojazzbuff

I met Maurice through a mutual friend in Bombay. I had been in India for some months and was in bad health. It so happened that Maurice was a Naturopathic doctor. When I called him, he invited me for lunch and we talked a bit about what I was doing in India and about mutual interests such as U.G., Ramana, and, JK. He also mentioned at that time that he stumbled upon Maharaj. Perhaps if I stayed longer, I would have met him. During lunch, I told Maurice of my health problems and he told me to come back the next day and he would take me to his doctor. Maurice was already about 75 years old. His doctor examined me for about 20 seconds and said you have amoebic dyssentery. Take this and you'll be on your way. So, in a way, I owe Maurice for helping me out after consulting many Indian doctors of all persuasions, ayurvedists, homeopathists, herbal hospitals, etc. and none had any clue what was going on.

Maurice told me that day as I was leaving, to go back to America. That there was nothing for me in India and to remember one thing, just breathe. That was the last thing he said to me. I looked him directly in the eye and we smiled. He died soon afterward. That was 38 years ago next month.

batistuta

Scando, Thanks for recollecting that meeting.

Maharaj used to perform pooja to his potrait ( Along with those of other masters), during the morning satsangs.

singsub

who is UG ?

batistuta

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. -UG krishnamurthi


Scando might post a better link.

grikoo

I have not read UG, but he seems an interesting character.

Can you recommend a single book as an overview of his thought?

batistuta

I have not read many books on UG, That said, 'Mind is myth' is a good book, Imho. That book is available here.

Scando might suggest a better book.

grikoo

Thanks B.

I started reading 'No Way Out' from the link, as it seemed a particularly gloomy title- not sure why that was a determining factor......just made sense at the time. I think I was trying to see how nihilistic he might get.

I really like his overall style and find many very similar understandings to my own, particularly his rejection of the typical 'consciousness as the basis of everything' and 'illusori-ness' view that forms the backbone of vedantic thought. Also his placement of the body as primary. And also his emphasis on the direct and non-metaphysical unity of everything.

I'll post a few thoughts once I've read a bit more.

Scandojazzbuff

I've never read any of his books, just bits and pieces, snippets. But, then again I had the benefit of talking to him face to face. All his books are transcripts of chats with people over the years, and, I believe they are all online. He never wrote anything and was totally disinterested in being a teacher. The only honest man I've ever met in my life.

Scandojazzbuff

'We function in a thought sphere and not in our biology. The separative thought structure which is the totality of man's thoughts, feelings, experiences and so on—what we call psyche or soul or self—is creating the disturbance. That is what is responsible for our misery. That's what continues the battle that is going on there all the time. This interloper, the thought sphere, has created your entire value system.

The body is not in the least interested in values, much less a value system. It is only concerned with intelligent, moment to moment survival and nothing else. Spiritual values have no meaning to it. When through some miracle or chance you are freed from the hold of thought and culture you are left with the body's natural functions and nothing else. It then functions without the interference of thought.'

This is taken from a chat with U.G. from a website that gives you an important introduction to who U.G. Krishnamurti was. I think this intro is essential to understanding what happened to U.G. and his 'message' to us all. http://the-natural-state.blogspot.com/2008/02/1.html

grikoo

Yes, this was one of the aspects of him that I found intriguing. It's also the reason I started reading nisargadatta many years ago. I regret that I missed out on meeting either of these characters.


I read a few chapters of 'No way out'. Overall I really like his approach, but was fairly puzzled by a few positions that he holds. Please correct me if I've misinterpreted them.

1) His stance on 'the mind' seems to be that experience is not separable from thought. While I follow him up to the point that he's saying that the 'self' is inherently a function of thought and memory, I'm not exactly sure what's meant by the following: (the next two quotes are actually the editor's)

"U.G. points out that there is nothing like observation or understanding of thought because there is no subject or observer independent of it."

"Even perception and sensation are permeated by thought."

In my experience, it seems the body itself is the seat of perception, and that thought has absolutely nothing to do with sensation. I regularly experience states where not only symbolic thought ceases, but also the function of the mind that underlies the symbolic process, the function that differentiates 'things', which are then named, etc, etc. Indeed, it seems to me that 'pure awareness' is nothing other than the simple sensation of the body, stripped of the conceptualization of the mind.

2)The above stance seems to have led him to the weird conclusion that the symbols that comprise thought are the same as the objects themselves.

"If the word is not the thing what the hell is it? Without the word you have no way of experiencing anything at all. Without the word you are not separate from whatever you are looking at or what is going on inside of you."

I don't follow this logic at all. Even with the word, you're still not separate, and experience/perception/sensation has nothing to do with thought. I get what he's trying to say- that we have no way of acknowledging the 'thing-ness' of something without the word, but that's a bit different than 'experience'. One can certainly experience things in a more direct manner than words. He seems to acknowledge the difference between sensation and thought in some places, then denies them in others.

3)His claim that a thoughtless state does not exist, and that such a state cannot be brought about other than by thought, is incorrect. I am able to make such a judgement simply because I experience such states regularly. It's an odd position to take given that he's not experienced such states. He's claiming knowledge about something he has no knowledge of.

4)Free will and determinism- He seems to be saying that we are deterministically programmed by genetics and/or culture, and that as such we have no free will. While certainly I agree that we're programmed by such things, I don't follow his jump to conclude that we are unable to make decisions outside of those preset conditions. Clearly we are, or the evolution of thought, culture, and even biology would not be possible. While the mind IS a reactionary function, it also reacts to itself, which allows for the development of novel constructs NOT pre-programmed.

5)Causality- He seems to subscribe to the school of thought that supports a-causal phenomena. In other words, the ideas that at least sometimes things happen without cause.

editor- "U.G. rejects causality as a shibboleth. He maintains that events are actually disconnected, and it is thought which connects them by means of the concept of causality. But there is no way of knowing whether there are actually causal relationships in nature. He maintains that the universe has no cause, no beginning, and no end."

If there is know way of knowing whether causal relationships exists, how is he able to conclude that events are actually disconnected?

I agree that discussions concerning the causation of the universe are fairly pointless and speculative, but that doesn't mean that casuation itself is absent. I personally only reject the relevance of causation, but not the existence of it.

It's an irrelevant concept because of the following:

First, in order to demonstrate the 'cause' of something, one must consider everything that exists in relation to it, and all the causal chains thus produced. In other words, if one were to consider how it is that I came to be writing these sentences, one would have to consider the following: How I came about? How every part of the computer came about? How the desk I'm writing on came about? How the coffee mug next to me came about? How every part of the house I'm sitting in came about? How the land it sits on came about? Etc. etc. It's an infinite regress and ultimately shows that everything is the cause of everything else. Thus, the answer to the question is of infinite variation, and includes answers like 'cabbage', 'solar flares', 'Mr. Wright', 'the Koran', 'super novas', and any other thing you care to add.

Second, because 'things' exist only in a conceptual format and lack independence, the statement that 'one thing is caused by another thing' is really only meaningful in a very conventional sense.

This is a bit closer to his meaning, but still does not deny causality.




Please feel free to correct me if I've misinterpreted his teaching, or if you have any other thoughts. I'll keep reading a bit and see if any of these issues become clearer.

grikoo

Yes. I love this story from buddhism:

"A disciple asked the buddha what the main obstacle to enlightenment was. The buddha replied, 'consciousness'.



edit: And thanks for that link, that was MUCH clearer. I don't know about his insistence that 'enlightenment' is only a biological process, but otherwise the blog cleared up several of the above questions.

Seems he's not outright saying that a thoughtless state isn't possible, only that in the 'natural state' thoughts only arise as needed. I'd agree with that.

He also clearly has a good understanding about the relative position of awareness and the body, which is refreshing. I get a little tired of the whole 'cosmic awareness' school of thought. Poppycock, as he would say.

Not sure I understand 'the state beyond experience'. Nisargadatta mentioned the same, and I never could figure out what he was talking about. I mean- How would you even know about such a state? It's beyond experience after all. It's possible that they're both using 'experience' in a different way than we normally would, but I never could understand it.

Scandojazzbuff

Grikoo, forgive me but I'm not about to get into trying to explain what U.G. means by this or that. But, to confuse you even further, he said no understanding was possible. That there is nothing to understand, nothing to realize, and, nothing can be known outside of the realm of thought. A thoughtless state was not what he was talking about and he never talked about enlightenment, that is your word. That no amount of effort on your part could bring about what he called the Natural State. That is why he insisted that what he was saying was outside of all teachings, paths, and, practices. It all had to be flushed out of one's system. This is not the same thing as nihilism as many people think. U.G. is a difficult pill to swallow. I never saw one second of blink in him. Never saw any contradiction in his life. If there is any thing like Darshan, that was it.