THE WRECK; re-visited 17

Ramesh's plan of leaving her at school during the holidays, and his apparent neglect had cost her many ways. This recollection combined with their long separation was to produce in her a sense of estrangement. So Kamala after her entrance refused to look at Ramesh and kept her eyes fixed on the open door.Her appearance was a surprise to him; he found an astounding change in her. Her face had lost its youthfulness, and her features had become more pronounced and had gained difference. Her face had lost its youthful roundness, and the dark sleekness of her cheeks had given place to a delicate pallor, and her gait and movements were free and unconstrained.

   After her entry Ramesh found her standing erect with head half-averted in front of the open window, her head was bare, her braided tresses, tied with a red ribbon, hung down her back, and her merino robe of a saffron tint was fastened tightly around her half-developed body. Ramesh gazed at her for some moments in silence. Now with its added lustre  it startled him profoundly and found him unprepared to resist her charm.

   "Sit down, Kamala," he bade her. Kamala sat down without a word.

   "How's school ?" he went on.

   "All right," she answered curtly.

   Ramesh offered her something to eat for which she said that she had already had her food before she started from the school. As he started observing her, he found; a beautiful face is like diviner's rod, it draws out any beauty that lurks in its surroundings.  He hurried out and fetched a plateful of apples, pears, and pomegranates.

    "You don't seem to want anything, Kamala," he said, "but I'm hungry and I can't hold out any longer." Kamala smiled, and the light of that unexpected smile dissipated the fog that had come between them. Ramesh took a knife and began to slice an apple, but he was quite devoid of any kind of dexterity. His avid haste and his clumsy attempts to cut the fruit were too much for Kamala, and she burst out laughing. Her unrestrained merriment delighted Ramesh. "I suppose you're laughing because I'm no good at cutting apples," he said.  "All right, just show me how you can do it." Kamala advised him to get a chopper to cut the fruit with   ease.

    When he brought chopper Kamala took off her shoes, sat down, and deftly peeled the apple ; then she began to cut it into slices. Ramesh sat down in front of her and caught the slices on a plate. "You'll have to eat some too," he said.

    "No, thank you," said kamala.

    " Then I shan't have any."

    Kamala looked up at him. " All right ; you have some first, and then I'll have some."

    They started sharing the fruit and set out eating.

    In that instant he saw something that arrested his jaws.  Jogendra and Akshay were standing opposite him outside the door.     

THE WRECK; re-visited 16

       Hemamalini chafed at the suspicious attitude shared by Akshay and Jogendra, and she was reluctant to admit to Jogendra that Ramesh had given her no reason for postponing the wedding. On  the other hand she refused to tell a downright lie.

      "He was prepared to tell me, but I didn't think it necessary," she answered.

     "All right, don't be afraid ; I'll make him disclose his reasons this very day," aloud he said. His heart hardened against Ramesh, and his determination to force him to state his "reasons" became stronger than ever.  Hemamalini caught him by the arm and said, " Promise not to breathe a word of this to Ramesh."

      "Look here, Hem, he may have given you some explanation that you're keeping to yourself, but at present it's more our concern than yours to hear his explanation," so saying Jogendra hurried off to Akshay.

     He straight- away asked "Akshay,can you tell me where Ramesh has gone."

    "Shan't tell you yet," said Akshay. " T'll confront you with him at three this afternoon. I'll tell you the whole story from the start ; most of it will be new to you."

    Ramesh made preparations for Kamala to continue staying in the same lodgings in Darjjipara.He had few hours left before Kamala's arrival from her boarding school. He imagined his future stay in Etawah to hire a bungalow on the outskirts of the town in which he could keep Kamala as company to Hemamalini till he would be able to solve the life problem of Kamala. He had decided to tell Kamala nothing till after the marriage. Then Hemamalini would watch for her opportunity and taking Kamala to her heart would unfold her real life's history to her with loving tenderness-as painlessly as possible would unravel the meshes of intricate net in which Fate had wound her. And thus, far away fro home, cut off from all their acquantance, Kamala would drop into her place in their little household without shock or strain.

     His dreams were interrupted by the noise of wheels of a large vehicle that had driven up to his door and stopped there. It was school omnibus bringing Kamala, and his pulse quickened. To him,  the disturbing questions; how was he to receive Kamala ? what would be her attitude to him ?  He could not face the prospect with equanimity. His two servants waiting at the door brought Kamala into the lodgings along with her trunk.

     "Come in, Kamala," said Ramesh and Kamala, overcoming a momentary impulse of hesitation, entered the room.

THE NATURAL STATE-Miracles Experienced by U.G.Krishnamurti Chapter 1.2

All kinds of funny things happened to me. I remember when I rubbed my body like this, there was a sparkle, like a phosphorous glow, on the body. She [Valentine] used to run out of her bedroom to see—she thought there were cars going that way in the middle of the night. Every time I rolled in my bed there was a sparkling of light [Laughs] and it was so funny for me—"What is this?" It was electricity—that is why I say it is an electromagnetic field. At first I thought it was because of my nylon clothes and static electricity; but then I stopped using nylon. I was a very skeptical heretic, to the tips of my toes, I never believed in anything; even if I saw some miracle happen before me, I didn't accept that at all—such was the make-up of this man. It never occurred to me that anything of that sort was in the making for me.

Very strange things happened to me, but I never related those things to liberation or freedom or moksha, because by that time the whole thing had gone out of my system. I had arrived at a point where I said to myself "Buddha deluded himself and deluded others. All those teachers and saviors of mankind were damned fools—they fooled themselves—so I'm not interested in this kind of thing anymore," so it went out of my system completely. It went on and on in its own way—peculiar things—but never did I say to myself, "Well, [Laughs] I am getting there, I am nearer to that." There is no nearness to that, there is no farawayness from that, there is no closeness to that. Nobody is nearer to that because he is different, he is prepared. There's no readiness for that; it just hits you like a ton of bricks.

The whole thing is finished for me and that's all. The linking gets broken and once it is broken it is finished. Then it is not once that thought explodes—every time a thought arises it explodes. The division cannot stay there, it's a physical impossibility. You don't have to do a thing about it. That is why I say that when this explosion takes place (I use the word explosion because it's like a nuclear explosion) it leaves behind chain-reactions. Every cell in your body has to undergo this change.

It's an irreversible change. There's no question of your going back. It is like a nuclear explosion. It shatters the whole body. It is not an easy thing. It is the end of the man, such a shattering thing that it blasts every cell, every nerve in your body. I went through terrible physical torture at that moment; not that you experience the explosion—you can't experience the explosion—but its after-effects. The fallout is the thing that changes the whole chemistry of your body. The senses are operating now without any coordinator or center, that's all I can say. Unless that alchemy or change in the whole chemistry takes place, there is no way of freeing this organism from thought, from the continuity of thought.

The blinking of the eyes stopped and then there were changes in taste, smell and hearing. I noticed that my skin was soft like silk and had a peculiar kind of glow, a golden color.

I no longer spend time in reverie, worry, conceptualization and the other kinds of thinking that most people do when they're alone. My mind is only engaged when it's needed, for instance when you ask questions, or when I have to fix the tape-recorder or something like that. My memory is in the background and only comes into play when it's needed, automatically. When it's not needed there is no mind here, there is no thought; there is only life.

My body had gone away and it has never come back. The points of contact are all that is there for the body. Nothing else is there for me because the seeing is altogether independent of the sense of touch here. I had discovered that all my senses were without any coordination. I felt the life energy drawing to a focal point from different parts of my body. Even now it happens to me. The hands and feet become cold, the body becomes stiff, the heartbeat slows down, the breathing slows down and then there is a gasping for breath. Up to a point you are there. You breathe your last breath, as it were, and then you are finished.

What happens after that, nobody knows. How long it lasted I don't know. I can't say anything about that because the experiencer was finished. There was nobody to experience that death at all. So that was the end of it. I got up. The things that had astonished me that week had become permanent fixtures. I call all these events a calamity because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful, full of love, ecstasy and all that kind of a thing, this is physical torture. Not a calamity to me but to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen.

It's something like you imagine New York. You dream about it. You want to be there. When you are actually there, nothing of it is there. It is a godforsaken place and even the devils have probably forsaken that place. It's not the thing that you had sought after and wanted so much but totally different.

What is there you really don't know. You have no way of knowing anything about that. There is no image here. Then suddenly, there was an outburst of tremendous energy shaking the whole body, vibrating. It lasted for hours. I couldn't bear it but there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was a total helplessness. This went on and on, day after day. Whenever I sat, it started—this vibration like an epileptic fit or something. Not even an epileptic fit; it went on for days. It was a very painful process because the body has limitations. It has a form, a shape of its own.

So when there is an outburst of energy which is not your energy or my energy but God's (call it by any name you like) it is like a river in spate. The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body. It is not interested. It has its own momentum. It is a very painful thing. It is not ecstatic, blissful and all that rubbish, stuff and nonsense. It is really a painful thing.

Oh I suffered for months before and after that, everybody has—a great cascade; not one but thousands. It went on and on for months. It's a very painful experience, painful in the sense that the energy has a peculiar operation of its own. It is clockwise, counterclockwise, and then it is this way, and then this way, and then this way. Like an atom, it moves inside—not in one part of your body—the whole body. It is as if a wet towel were being wrung to get rid of the water. It is like that—the whole of our body. It's such a painful thing. It goes on even now. You can't invite it. You can't ask it to come. You can't do anything. It gives you the feeling that it is enveloping you, that it is descending on you.

Every time it is new. Very strange, every time it comes in a different way. So you don't know what is happening. You lie down on your bed and suddenly it begins. It begins to move slowly like ants. I'd think there were bugs in my bed, jump out, look, see no bugs, then I'd go back, then again. The hairs are electrified. So it slowly moves. There were pains all over the body. Thought has controlled this body to such an extent that when that loosens, the whole metabolism is agog. The whole thing was changing in its own way without my doing anything. Every cell started changing and it went on and on for six months. In all, it took three years for this body to fall into a new rhythm of its own. I behaved normally, I didn't know what was happening. It was a strange situation.

The state is something natural. Do you see the swellings here? Yesterday was the new moon. The body is affected by everything that is happening around you. It is not separate. Whatever is happening there is also happening here. There is only the physical response. This is affection. Your body is affected by everything that is happening around you, and you can't prevent this for the simple reason that the armor that you have built around yourself is destroyed. So it is very vulnerable to everything that is happening there.

There are certain glands. These ductless glands are located in exactly the same spots where the Hindus speculated the chakras are. They have feelings, extraordinary feelings. There is one gland here which is called the thymus gland. Doctors tell us that is active through childhood until puberty then becomes dormant. In your natural state that gland is reactivated.

[Up and down his torso, neck and head, his friends observed swellings of various shapes and colors which came and went at intervals. On his lower abdomen, the swellings were horizontal, cigar-shaped bands. Above the navel was a hard, almond-shaped swelling. A hard, blue swelling like a large medallion in the middle of his chest was surmounted by another smaller, brownish-red, medallion-shaped swelling at the base of his throat. These were as though suspended from a varicolored, swollen ring—blue, brownish and light yellow—around his neck. His throat was swollen to a shape that made his chin seem to rest on the head of a cobra, as in the traditional images of Shiva. Just above the bridge of the nose was a white, lotus-shaped swelling. All over the head the small blood vessels expanded, forming patterns like the stylized lumps on the heads of Buddha statues. The arteries in his neck expanded and rose, blue and snake-like, into his head.]

THE WRECK; re-visited 15

      Annada Babu vented his feelings on his visitor, "You're too suspicious, Akshay ! When you have no proof    why should you--"

  Akshay had worn out his patience. "Look here, Annada Babu," he burst out, "you're imputing all sorts of vile motives to me ! You insinuate that I bear a grudge against your future son-in-law and that I'm suspecting an innocent man. I'm not clever enough to teach ladies philosophy, and I can't boast of any ability to  discuss poetry with them; but I've always been fond of and devoted to you and your family. Though I can't vie with Ramesh Babu in any other respect, I pride myself on never having had any thing to conceal from you. You'll know to-marrow what I mean." Akshay left out angrily.

     Night had fallen before Ramesh had dispatched all the letters informing the postponement of the marriage. That night appeared to him of having the eternal peace of the infinite on one hand, on the other the  eternal conflict of the world ! Now he beheld Love in-contact with the world trampled and tossed about in the press of life. Which was the true vision and which was illusion ?

  Jogendra returned from up-country by the morning train next day. It was Saturday, and Sunday was to be Hemamalini's wedding-day ;yet as he approached the house he observed none of the signs of festivity that he had anticipated. He dreaded to hear some untoward thing to have taken place. But as he hurried indoors there was no such thing he found. A meal was ready for him, and Annada Babu sat at the table reading the news paper.

  "Is Hem all right ?"exclaimed Jogendra as he entered the room.

   "She is quite well," replied Annada Babu. Then Jogendra extracted the reasons for the wedding to have postponed to the Sunday after next. Telling that it was postponed at the instance of Ramesh, Annada Babu said, "you had better ask your friend about that urgent business and that the wedding couldn't take place on Sunday."

    Jogendra inwardly cursed his father's supineness. "When I'm not here you people make an awful muddle of every thing, dad," he said. "What important business could he have ? He's his own master. He has no relations that count. If he has got into a mess over some business matter I don't see what there was to hinder him from telling you  all about it. Why did you let it rest at that ?"

    "After all, he hasn't run away ! You had better go and ask him yourself."

    Jogendra swallowed a cup of tea and dashed off. He rushed into the next house and stamped upstairs, but found no sign of Ramesh there. After hunting high and low he found the bearer only to be informed him that Ramesh had taken a supply of clothes with him and had said that he might not be back for four or five days ; but where he had gone is not told.

   Jogendra wore a preoccupied air as he resumed his seat at the break-fast table after reaching home. He vent out his suspicion of Ramesh saying: " Here's a man who is about to marry your daughter, and you take no interest in his actions and his movements ; and that though he lives next door !

   In the face of this tirade Annada Babu was obliged to grapple with the situation.

   "What's the meaning of it all, then ?" he asked, assuming the expression of gravity that the occasion seemed to demand.

  Knowing that Hemamalini had her tea earlier and gone upstairs without even facing Jogendra , he supposed that she's thoroughly ashamed of Ramesh's extraordinary conduct and could not face him. He went upstairs to comfort his sister. When she heard Jogendra's step she hurriedly picked up a book and made a pretence  of reading it. She laid the book down as he entered and greeted him cheerfully :

  "Hullo, when did you come in ? You're not looking as well as you should be."

   "I've heard all about it, Hem. However don't you worry ; it's only because I wasn't here such a thing happened. I'll put things right again ! By the way, Hem, did Ramesh not give you any reasons ?" he asked showing his concern about the affair.   

THE NATURAL STATE-Initial Life of U.G.K; Chapter 1.1

       

I was brought up in a very religious atmosphere. My grandfather was a very cultured man. He knew Blavatsky [the founder of the Theosophical Society] and Olcott, and then, later on, the second and third generations of Theosophists. They all visited our house. He was a great lawyer, a very rich man, a very cultured man and, very strangely, a very orthodox man. He was a sort of mixed-up kid: orthodoxy, tradition on one side and then the opposite, Theosophy and the whole thing on the other side. He failed to establish a balance. That was the beginning of my problem.

[U.G. was often told that his mother had said, just before she died, that he "was born to a destiny immeasurably high." His grandfather took this very seriously and gave up his law practice to devote himself to U.G.'s upbringing and education. His grandparents and their friends were convinced that he was a yoga bhrashta, one who had come within inches of enlightenment in his past life.]

He had learned men on his payroll and he dedicated himself for some reason—I don't want to go into the whole business—to create a profound atmosphere for me and to educate me in the right way, inspired by the Theosophists and the whole lot. And so, every morning those fellows would come and read the Upanishads, Panchadasi, Nyshkarmya Siddhi, the commentaries, the commentaries on commentaries, the whole lot, from four o'clock to six o'clock, and this little boy of five, six or seven years—I don't know—had to listen to all that crap. So much so that by the time I reached my seventh year I could repeat most of those things, the passages from the Panchadasi, Nyshkarmya Siddhi and this, that and the other.

So many holy men visited my house—the Ramakrishna Order and the others; you name it, and those fellows had somehow visited that house—that was an open house for every holy man. So, one thing I discovered when I was quite young was that they were all hypocrites: they said something, they believed something, and their lives were shallow, nothing. I lived in the midst of people who talked of these things everlastingly—everybody was false, I can tell you. So somehow, what you call existentialist nausea—revulsion against everything sacred and everything holy—crept into my system and threw everything out

That was the beginning of my search. I did everything, all the austerities. I was so young but I was determined to find out if there was any such thing as enlightenment. I wanted that very much. Otherwise, I wouldn't have given my life. Then my real search began. All my religious background was there in me. Then I started exploring. For some years I studied psychology and also philosophy, Eastern and Western, mysticism, all the modern sciences, everything. The whole area of human knowledge I started exploring on my own.

Before my forty-ninth year I had so many powers, so many experiences, but I didn't pay any attention to them. The moment I saw someone I could see their entire past, present and future without their telling me anything. I didn't use them. I was wondering, puzzled, you see, "Why do I have this power?" Sometimes I said things and they always happened. I couldn't figure out the mechanism of that. I tried to. They always happened. I didn't play with it. Then it had certain unpleasant consequences and created suffering for some people.

[U.G. was travelling all over the world, still lecturing. In 1955, leaving his daughters in India, he and his wife moved to the United States in search of treatment for his son Vasant's polio. By 1961 his money was finished, and he felt beginning within him a tremendous upheaval which he could not and did not wish to control, and which was to last six years and end with the 'calamity'. His marriage broke up. He put his wife and sons—a second, Kumar, had been born in Chicago—on a plane to India, and he went to London. He arrived penniless and began roaming the city. For three years he lived idly in the streets. His friends saw him as heading on a headlong course downhill, but he says that at the time his life seemed perfectly natural to him. Later, religious-minded people were to use the mystics' phrase 'the dark night of the soul' to describe those years, but in his view there was "no heroic struggle with temptation and worldliness, no soul-wrestling with urges, no poetic climaxes, but just a simple withering away of the will."]

   

THE WRECK; re-visited 14

          Annada Babu looked up anxiously as Ramesh re-entered the room. Ramesh requested Annada Babu to give him the list of guests invited for the marriage so that he could write them all about the change of date of the marriage and also assured that he could bear all the expenses for the marriage apart from  he himself  making the required arrangements. Annada Babu looked bit pacified . Having handed over the list of invitees to Ramesh, "Have you decided where to practise  after you're married, Ramesh ? Not in Calcutta, I suppose ?", he asked.

    "No, I want to find some suitable place up-country."
 
   "Up-country ? That's is a sound idea. Etawah isn't a bad place at all. The climate suits one's digestion very well. You see, lad, she's my only daughter, and we should never be happy apart. That's why I want you to choose a healthy place," he added.

   Ramesh having offended him, Annada Babu took the opportunity to press certain of his own somewhat exacting demands   . In his present frame of mind Ramesh would have readily agreed to migrate to Cherra Punjior the Garo Hills, or any such mist-drenched mountain-top, if Annada Babu had suggested it instead of Etawah.

      "Very good," he said, "I will join Etawah bar," and departed after undertaking to countermand the invitation.

      No sooner had he gone than Akshay appeared and learned that Ramesh had postponed his wedding for a week. Akshay  assumed an air of portentous gravity, and his mind began to work. At length he went on :

      "When you think you've found a good husband for Hemamalini you shut your eyes to all possibilities. Everything should be ascertained about the man a daughter is to be entrusted to for life. It appears that he has not given sufficient reason even for the postponement of marriage.After all, when a person clearly indicates that he does not want to give his reasons one can hardly question him further. If it had been anything that he could divulge, Ramesh would have told you of his own accord."

       Hemamalini flushed angrily. "I don't want to hear third parties' opinions on the subject. Personally, I am quite satisfied with things as they are," and she hurried out of the room they had assembled in.

      Akshay turned green, but he forced a smile. "That's the way of the world-try to do a friend a service and a scolding is your reward. I consider it my duty, as a good friend of Jogendra, to express my suspicions of Ramesh. I can't rest easy when I see any trouble threatening you. However,  Jogendra will be here to-marrow. If after he has heard the whole story,  he has no anxiety on his sister's account, then I won't say another word."

    Annada Babu fully realised that this was the psychological moment for asking Akshay what Ramesh's conduct really meant; but he who probes a mystery may let loose a whirlwind, and the old gentleman was constitutionally averse to such an operation.

U.G.Krishnamurti; (July 9, 1918 – March 22, 2007)

               
                             Born : Machilipatnam, (A.P), India. Occupation: Philosopher.


       Although necessary for day to day functioning of the individual, in terms of the Ultimate Reality or Truth he rejected the very basis of thought and in doing so negated all systems of thought and knowledge in reference to It.


      

Philosophy

"I have no teaching. There is nothing to preserve. Teaching implies something that can be used to bring about change. Sorry, there is no teaching here, just disjointed, disconnected sentences. What is there is only your interpretation, nothing else. For this reason there is not now nor will there ever be any kind of copyright for whatever I am saying. I have no claims"

"I am forced by the nature of your listening to always negate the first statement with another statement. Then the second statement is negated by a third and so on. My aim is not some comfy dialectical thesis but the total negation of everything that can be expressed."

         U.G. emphasized the impossibility and non-necessity of any human change, radical or mundane. These assertions, he stated, cannot be considered as a "teaching", that is, something intended to be used to bring about a change. He insisted that the body and its actions are already perfect, and he considered attempts to change or mold the body as violations of the peace and the harmony that is already there. The psyche or self or mind, an entity which he denied as having any being, is composed of nothing but the "demand" to bring about change in the world, in itself, or in both. Furthermore, human self-consciousness  is not a thing, but a movement, one characterized by "perpetual malcontent" and a " fascist insistence" on its own importance and survival

       "Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don't need anybody's help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary goals."


     "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."

Biography

Early life and India

He was born on July 9, 1918 in Machilipatnam, a town in coastal Andhra Pradesh, India, and raised in the nearby town of Gudivada. His mother died seven days after he was born, and he was brought up by his maternal grandfather, a wealthyBrahmin lawyer, who was also involved in the Theosophical Society.  U.G. also became a member of the Theosophical Society during his teenage years.

During the same period of his life, U.G. reportedly practiced all kinds of austerities and apparently sought moksha or spiritual enlightenment. To that end, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, he undertook all kinds of spiritual exercise, determined to find out whether moksha was possible. Wanting to achieve that state, he had also resolved to prove that if there were people who have thus "realized" themselves, they could not be hypocritical As part of this endeavor, he searched for a person who was an embodiment of such "realization".

He spent seven summers in the Himalayas with Swami Sivananda studying yoga and practicing meditation.  During his twenties, U.G. began attending the University of Madras,  studying psychology, philosophy, mysticism, and the sciences, but never completed a degree, having determined that the answers of the West – to what he considered were essential questions – were no better than those of the East

Calamity

 U.G. was pondering the question "How do I know I am in that state?" with no answer forthcoming. He later recounted that on suddenly realizing the question had no answer, there was an unexpected physical, as well as psychological, reaction. It seemed to him like "a sudden explosion inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body." Afterwards, he started experiencing what he called "the calamity", a series of bizarre physiological transformations that took place over the course of a week, affecting each one of his senses, and finally resulting in a deathlike experience. He described it this way:

I call it calamity because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen. 

Upon the eighth day:

Then, on the eighth day I was sitting on the sofa and suddenly there was an outburst of tremendous energy – tremendous energy shaking the whole body, and along with the body, the sofa, the chalet and the whole universe, as it were – shaking, vibrating. You can't create that movement at all. It was sudden. Whether it was coming from outside or inside, from below or above, I don't know – I couldn't locate the spot; it was all over. It lasted for hours and hours. I couldn't bear it but there was nothing I could do to stop it; there was a total helplessness. This went on and on, day after day, day after day.

The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body; it is not interested; it has its own momentum. It is a very painful thing. It is not that ecstatic, blissful beatitude and all that rubbish – stuff and nonsense! – it is really a painful thing