UG: You see, the search takes you away from yourself — it is in the opposite direction — it has absolutely no relation.

Q: In spite of it, it has happened, not because of it?

UG: In spite of it — yes, that’s the word. All that you do makes it impossible for what already is there to express itself. That is why I call this ‘your natural state’. You’re always in that state. What prevents what is there from expressing itself in its own way is the search. The search is always in the wrong direction, so all that you consider very profound, all that you consider sacred, is a contamination in that consciousness. You may not (Laughs) like the word ‘contamination’, but all that you consider sacred, holy and profound is a contamination.

So, there’s nothing that you can do. It’s not in your hands. I don’t like to use the word ‘grace’, because if you use the word ‘grace’, the grace of whom? You are not a specially chosen individual; you deserve this, I don’t know why.

If it were possible for me, I would be able to help somebody. This is something which I can’t give, because you have it. Why should I give it to you? It is ridiculous to ask for a thing which you already have.

Q: But I don’t feel it, and you do.

UG: No, it is not a question of feeling it, it is not a question of knowing it; you will never know. You have no way of knowing that at all for yourself; it begins to express itself. There is no conscious…. You see, I don’t know how to put it. Never does the thought that I am different from anybody come into my consciousness.

Q: Has it been so from the beginning, ever since you became conscious of yourself?

UG: No, I can’t say that. I was after something — like anybody else brought up in the religious atmosphere — searching for something, pursuing something. So, to answer that question is not easy, because I’ll have to go into the whole background. Maybe it comes, I don’t know. (Laughs)

The two biographers who are interested in writing my biography have two different approaches. One says that what I did — the sadhana (spiritual exercises), education, the whole background — put me there. I say it was in spite of all that. (Laughter) The other biographer isn’t much interested in my statement ‘in spite of’, because there isn’t much material for him to write a big volume. (Laughter) They are more interest in that. The publishers too are interested in that kind of thing. That is very natural because you are operating in a field where the cause and effect relationship always operates — that is why you are interested in finding out the cause, how this kind of a thing happened. So, we are back where we started, square number one: we are still concerned with ‘how’.

My background is worthless: it can’t be a model for anybody, because your background is unique. Every event in your life is something unique in its own way. Your conditions, your environment, your background — the whole thing is different. Every event in your life is different.

Q: I don’t seek a model to give to the rest of the world — I’m not asking from that angle. We see a star, we see the sun, we see the moon — it is like that; not that I would like to imitate you. It may be relevant, who knows? That is why I said I am Nachiketa here: I don’t want to leave without knowing the truth from you.

UG: You need a Yama Dharmaraja to answer your questions.

Q: If you don’t mind, you be Yama Dharmaraja.

UG: I don’t mind. Help me. You see, I’m helpless, I don’t know where to begin. Where to end, I know. (Laughter) I think I will have to tell the whole story of my life.

Q: We don’t mind listening.

UG: It doesn’t come.

Q: You need to be inspired.

UG: I am not inspired, and I am the last person to inspire anybody. I will have to tell you, to satisfy your curiosity, the other side, the shoddy side of my life.

(He was born 9 July 1918 in South India into an upper-middle-class Brahmin family. The family name being Uppaluri, he was given the name Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti. His mother died soon after his birth, and he was brought up by his maternal grandparents in the small town of Gudivada near Masulipatam.)

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 generation 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.

(UG 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 UG’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 pay-roll, 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. That was the beginning of my search.

My grandfather used to meditate. (He is dead, and I don’t want to say anything bad about him.) He used to meditate for one or two hours in a separate meditation room. One day a little baby, one and a half or two years old, started crying for some reason. That chap came down and started beating the child, and the child almost turned blue — and this man, you see, meditating two hours every day. “Look! What is this he has done?” That posed a sort of (I don’t want to use the psychological term, but there is no escape from it) a traumatic experience — “There must be something funny about the whole business of meditation. Their lives are shallow, empty. They talk marvelously, express things in a very beautiful way, but what about their lives? There is this neurotic fear in their lives: they say something, but it doesn’t operate in their lives. What is wrong with them?” — not that I sat in judgement over those people.

Things went on and on and on, so I got involved with these things: “Is there anything to what they profess — the Buddha, Jesus, the great teachers? Everybody is talking about moksha, liberation, freedom. What is that? I want to know for myself. These are all useless fellows, yet there must be some person in this world who is an embodiment and apostle of all those things. If there is one, I want to find out for myself.”

Then so many things happened. There was one man called Sivananda Saraswati in those days — he was the evangelist of Hinduism. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty- one (I am skipping many of the unnecessary events) I used to go there and meet him very often, and I did everything, all the austerities. I was so young, but I was determined to find out if there was any such thing as moksha, and I wanted that moksha for myself. I wanted to prove to myself and to everybody that there cannot be any hypocrisy in such people — “These are all hypocrites” — so I practiced yoga, I practiced meditation, studied everything. I experienced every kind of experience that the books talked about — samadhi, super-samadhi, nirvikalpa samadhi, everything. Then I said to myself “Thought can create any experience you want — bliss, beatitude, ecstasy, melting away into nothingness — all those experiences. So, this can’t be the thing, because I’m the same person, mechanically doing these things. Meditations have no value for me. This is not leading me anywhere.”

Then, you see, sex became a tremendous problem for me, a young human boy: “This is something natural, a biological thing, an urge in the human body. Why do these people all want to deny this sex and suppress something very natural, something which is part of the whole thing, in order to get something else? This is more real, more important to me than moksha and liberation and all that. This is a reality — I think of gods and goddesses and I have wet-dreams — I have this kind of a thing. Why should I feel guilty? It’s something natural; I have no control over this kind of thing happening. Meditation has not helped me, study has not helped me, my disciplines have not helped me. I never touch salt, I never touch chilies or any spices.” Then one day I found this man Sivananada eating mango pickles behind closed doors — “Here is a man who has denied himself everything in the hope of getting something, but that fellow cannot control himself. He is a hypocrite” — I don’t want to say anything bad about him — “This kind of life is not for me.”

I didn’t stay with him, I didn’t read any of his books, so I asked him a few more questions: “Can one be free sometimes and not free sometimes?” He said “Either you are free, or you are not free at all.” There was another question which I don’t remember. He answered in a very strange way: “There are no steps leading you to that.” But I ignored all these things. These questions didn’t matter to me — the answers didn’t interest me at all.

But this question “Can you take it?” … “How arrogant he is!” — that was my feeling. “Why can’t I take it, whatever it is? What is it that he has?” — that was my question, a natural question. So, the question formulated itself: “What is that state that all those people - - Buddha, Jesus and the whole gang — were in? Ramana is in that state — supposed to be, I don’t know — but that chap is like me, a human being. How is he different from me? What others say or what he is saying is of no importance to me; anybody can do what he is doing. What is there? He can’t be very much different from me. He was also born from parents. He has his own particular ideas about the whole business. Some people say something happened to him, but how is he different from me? What is there: What is that state?” — that was my fundamental question, the basic question — that went on and on and on. “I must find out what that state is. Nobody can give that state; I am on my own. I have to go on this uncharted sea without a compass, without a boat, with not even a raft to take me. I am going to find out for myself what the state is in which that man is.” I wanted that very much, otherwise I wouldn’t have given my life.

Then (in the late 1940’s, towards the end of UG’s time with the Theosophical Society) J. Krishnamurti arrived on the scene. He had just returned from the United States and started his new kind of….

Q: Are your related to Krishnamurti?

UG ‘Krishnamurti’ is only a given name, not a family name. His family name is Jiddu — ‘Krishnamurti’ is quite a common name — Jiddu Krishnamurti.

I got involved with him. I listened to him for some seven years, every time he came. I never met him personally, because the whole ‘World Teacher’ business and all that created some kind of a distance. “How can a World Teacher be created? World Teachers are born, not made” — that was my kind of make-up. I knew the whole background, the whole business. I was not part of the inner circle; I was always on the periphery, I never wanted to involve myself. There was the same hypocrisy there too, in the sense that there was nothing in their lives; they were shallow — the scholars, master-minds and remarkable people. “What is this? What is there behind?”

Then Krishnamurti came along and, after seven years, circumstances brought us together. I met him every day — we discussed the whole thing. I was not interested in his abstractions at all. His teaching did not interest me at all. I told him once “You have picked up the psychological jargon of the day, and you are trying to express something through this jargon. You adopt analysis and arrive at the point that analysis is not it. This kind of analysis is only paralyzing people; it is not helping people. It is paralyzing me.” My question was the same question: “What is it that you have? The abstractions that you are throwing at me, I am not interested in. Is there anything behind the abstractions? What is that? Somehow I have a feeling — I can’t say why — that what is behind the abstractions you are throwing out is what I am interested in. For some reason I have a feeling — it may be my own projection — you (to give a familiar, traditional simile) may not have tasted the sugar, but at lest you seem to have looked at the sugar. The way you are describing things gives me the feeling that you have at least seen the sugar, but I am not certain that you have tasted the sugar.”

So, we struggled for years and years. (Laughs) There were some personal differences between us. I wanted some straight, honest answers from him, which he did not give, for his own reasons. He was very defensive — he was defending something. “What is there for you to defend? Hang your past, the whole thing on a tree and leave it to the people. Why do you want to defend yourself?” I wanted some straight, honest answers about his background, which he didn’t give me in a satisfactory way. And then, towards the end, I insisted, “Come on, is there anything behind the abstractions which you are throwing at me?” And that chappie said “You have no way of knowing it for yourself.” Finish — that was the end of our relationship, you see — “If I have no way of knowing it, you have no way of communicating it. What the hell are we doing? I’ve wasted seven years. Goodbye, I don’t want to see you again.” Then I walked out.

(It was probably about this time that UG was puzzled by the appearance of certain psychic powers.)

Before my forty-ninth ear I had so many powers, so many experiences, but I didn’t pay any attention to them. The moment I saw a man, I could see the entire past, present and future of that man without his 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 — “How is it possible for me to say something like that?” They always happened. I didn’t play with it. Then it had certain unpleasant consequences and created suffering for some people.

He was also giving me money, five pounds, like all the other swamis. Fort the first time I had five pounds to spend, so, “What to do with this?” I had lost the sense of the value of money because I’d had no money. There was a time when I could write a cheque for one hundred thousand rupees; after some time, not even one paisa in my pocket; now five pounds. “What am I to do with this?” — so, I decided to see every movie in London with that money. I used to stay at the mission and do work in the morning, eat there at one o’clock and go off to a movie. There came a time when I could not find any movie to see. In the London outskirts they used to show three movies for one shilling, or something like that, so I exhausted all the movies and spent all that money.

I used to sit there in the meditation room, wondering at these people meditating: “Why are they doing all those silly things?” By this time the whole thing had gone out of my system. But I had a very strange experience in that meditation center. Whatever it was — my own projection or something — the facts are there: for the first time I felt some peculiar…. I was sitting, doing nothing, looking at all those people, pitying them: “These people are meditating. Why do they want to go in for samadhi? They are not going to get anything — I have been through all that — they are kidding themselves. What can I do to save them from wasting all their lives doing all that kind of thing? It is not going to lead them anywhere.” I was sitting there — nothing, blankness — when I felt something very strange: there was some kind of a movement inside of my body. Suddenly I found something was moving: some energy was coming out from the penis and through this (head) as if there was a hole. It was moving like this (in circles) in the clockwise direction, and then in the anticlockwise direction. it was like the Wills cigarette advertisement at the airport. It was such a funny thing for me, but I didn’t relate this to anything at all. I was a finished man. Somebody was feeding me, somebody was taking care of me, there was no thought of the morrow, yet inside of me there was some kind of a thing: “It is a perverse way of living. It is perversity carried to its extremity. This is not anything.” But yet, the head was missing — what could I do? It went on and on and on. After three months I said “I’m going. I can’t do this kind of thing.” Towards the end the Swami gave me some money, forty or fifty pounds. Then I decided….

You see, I still had an airline ticket to return to India, so I went to Paris, turned in the ticket and made some money because it was paid in dollars. With this thirty-five pounds I think I had about a hundred and fifty pounds. For three months I lived in Paris in some hotel, wandering in the streets as I had done before. The only difference was that now I had some money in my pocket. But slowly this money disappeared. After three months I decided I must go, but I resisted returning to India. Somehow I didn’t want to go to India. Because of my family, the children, I was frightened of returning to India — that would complicate matters — all of them would come to me. I didn’t want to go at all; I resisted that. Finally…. I had had a bank account in Switzerland for years and years — I thought I still had some money there. The last resort was to go to Switzerland and take the money out and then see what happened. So I came out of the hotel and got into a taxi and said “Take me to the Gare de Lyon.” But the trains from Paris to Zurich (where I had my account) go from the Gare de l’Est, so I don’t know why I told him to take me to the Gare de Lyon. So, he dropped me at the Gare de Lyon, and I got into the train going to Geneva.

I landed in Geneva with a hundred and fifty francs, or something to spend. I continued to stay in a hotel though I had no money to pay the bill. After two weeks they produced the bill: “Come on, money! What about the bill?” I had no money. I threw up my hands. The only thing left to me was to go to the Indian Consulate and say “Send me to India. I am finished, you see.” So, the resistance to returning to India was finished, and I went to the Consulate and took out the scrapbook: “One of the most brilliant speakers that India has ever produced,” with the opinions of Norman Cousins and Radhakrishnan about my talents. The Vice-Consul said “We can’t send this kind of man to India at the expense of the Government of India. What do you think? Try and get some money from India, and in the meantime come and stay with me.” So, you see, it went on and on and on. There I met this Swiss lady (Valentine de Kerven). She was the translator at the Indian Consulate, but that day she happened to be there at the reception desk because the receptionist was absent or something. We started talking, and then we became close friends. She said “If you want to stay, I can arrange for you to stay in Switzerland. If you don’t want to go to India, don’t go.” After one month the Consulate sent me away, but we managed — she created a home for me in Switzerland. She gave up her job. She is not rich; she has just a little money, her pension, but we can live on this money.

So, we went to Saanen. That place has some significance to me. I had been there in ‘53 while travelling through that area, and when I saw this place, Saanen, something in me said “Get off the train and spend some time here,” so I spent one week there. I said to myself “This is the place where I must spend the rest of my life.” I had plenty of money then, but my wife didn’t want to stay in Switzerland, because of the climate, and so many other things happened, and we went to America. So this unfulfilled dream materialized. We went to Saanen because I had always wanted to live there, so I continue to live there. Then J. Krishnamurti chose Saanen, for some reason or the other, for his meetings every summer — this chap started coming to Saanen. I lived there; I was not interested in Krishnamurti or anything. I was not interested in anything. For example, Valentine lived with me for a few years before my forty-ninth year. She can tell you that I never talked of this at all to her — my interest in truth, reality — nothing. I never discussed this subject with her at all, nor with anybody else. There was no search in me, no seeking after something, but something funny was going on.

During that time (I call it the ‘incubation’) all kinds of things were happening to me inside — headaches, constant headaches, terrible pains here in the brain. I swallowed I don’t know how many tens of thousands of aspirins. Nothing gave me relief. It was not migraine or any of those known headaches, but tremendous headaches. Those aspirin pills and fifteen to twenty cups of coffee every day to free myself! One day Valentine said “What! You are taking fifteen cups of coffee every day. Do you know what it means in terms of money? It is three or four hundred francs per month. What is this?” Anyway, it was such a terrible thing for me.

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 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.

Then (April 1967) I happened to be in Paris when J. Krishnamurti also happened to be there. Some of my friends suggested “Why don’t you go and listen to your old friend? He is here giving a talk.” “All right, I haven’t heard him for so many years — almost twenty years — let me go and listen.” When I got there they demanded two francs from me. I said “I am not ready to pay two francs to listen to J. Krishnamurti. No, come on, let us go and do something foolish. Let’s go to a strip-tease joint, the ‘Folies Bergere’ or the ‘Casino de Paris’. Come on, let us go there for twenty francs.” So, there we were at the “Casino de Paris” watching the show. I had a very strange experience at that time: I didn’t know whether I was the dancer or whether there was some other dancer dancing on the stage. A very strange experience for me: a peculiar kind of movement here, inside of me. (This is now something natural for me.) There was no division: there was nobody who was looking at the dancer. The question of whether I was the dancer, or whether there was a dancer out there on the stage, puzzled me. This kind of peculiar experience of the absence of division between me and the dancer, puzzled me and bothered me for some time — then we came out.

The question “What is that state?” had a tremendous intensity for me — not an emotional intensity — the more I tried to find an answer, the more I failed to find an answer, the more intensity the question had. It’s like (I always give this simile) rice chaff. If a heap of rice chaff is ignited, it continues burning inside; you don’t see any fire outside, but when you touch it, it burns you of course. In exactly the same way the question was going on and on and on: “What is that state? I want it. Finished. Krishnamurti said “You have no way,” but still I want to know what that state is, the state in which Buddha was, Sankara was, and all those teachers were.”

Then (July 1967) there arrived another phase. Krishnamurti was again there in Saanen giving talks. My friends dragged me there and said “Now at least it is a free business. Why don’t you come and listen?” I said “All right, I’ll come and listen.” When I Iistened to him, something funny happened to me — a peculiar kind of feeling that he was describing my state and not his state. Why did I want to know his state? He was describing something, some movements, some awareness, some silence — “In that silence there is no mind; there is action” — all kinds of things. So, “I am in that state. What the hell have I been doing these thirty or forty years, listening to all these people and struggling, wanting to understand his state or the state of somebody else, Buddha or Jesus? I am in that state. Now I am in that state.” So, then I walked out of the tent and never looked back.

Then — very strange — that question “What is that state?” transformed itself into another question “How do I know that I am in that state, the state of Buddha, the state I very much wanted and demanded from everybody? I am in that state, but how do I know?

The next day (UG’s forty-ninth birthday) I was sitting on a bench under a tree overlooking one of the most beautiful spots in the whole world, the seven hills and seven valleys (of Saanenland). I was sitting there. Not that the question was there; the whole of my being was that question: “How do I know that I am in that state? There is some kind of peculiar division inside of me: there is somebody who knows that he is in that state. The knowledge of that state — what I have read, what I have experienced, what they have talked about — it is this knowledge that is looking at that state, so it is only this knowledge that has projected that state.” I said to myself “Look here, old chap, after forty years you have not moved one step; you are there in square number one. It is the same knowledge that projected your mind there when you asked this question. You are in the same situation asking the same question, “How do I know?” because it is this knowledge, the description of the state by those people, that has created this state for you. You are kidding yourself. You are a damned fool.” So, nothing. But still there was some kind of a peculiar feeling that this was the state.

The second question “How do I know that this is the state?” — I didn’t have any answer for that question — it was like a question in a whirlpool — it went on and on and on. Then suddenly the question disappeared. Nothing happened; the question just disappeared. I didn’t say to myself “Oh, my God! Now I have found the answer.” Even that state disappeared — the state I thought I was in, the state of Buddha, Jesus — even that has disappeared. The question has disappeared. The whole thing is finished for me, and that’s all, you see. From then on, never did I say to myself “Now I have the answer to all those questions.” That state of which I had said “This is the state” — that state disappeared. The question disappeared. Finished, you see. It is not emptiness, it is not blankness, it is not the void, it is not any of those things; the question disappeared suddenly, and that is all.

It is like a nuclear explosion, you see — 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 it’s after-effects, the ‘fall-out’, is the thing that changes the whole chemistry of your body.

Q: You said that tremendous chemical changes have taken place in you. How do you know this? Were you ever examined, or is this an inference?

UG: The after-effects of that (‘explosion’), the way the senses are operating now without any co-ordinator or center — that’s all I can say. Another thing: the chemistry has changed — I can say that because 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. So, since there is no continuity of thought, you can very easily say that something has happened, but what actually has happened? I have no way of experiencing this at all.

Q: It may be that the mind is playing games and that I merely think I am an “exploded man.”

UG: I am not trying to sell anything here. It is impossible for you to simulate this. This is a thing that has happened outside the field, the area, in which I expected, dreamed and wanted change, so I don’t call this a ‘change’. I really don’t know what has happened to me. What I am telling you is the way I am functioning. There seems to be some difference between the way you are functioning and the way I am functioning, but basically there can’t be any difference. How can there be any difference between you and me? There can’t be; but from the way we are trying to express ourselves, there seems to be. I have the feeling that there is some difference, and what that difference is is all that I am trying to understand. So, this is the way I am functioning.

(On the third day) some friends invited themselves over for dinner, and I said “All right, I’ll prepare something.” But somehow I couldn’t smell or taste properly. I became gradually aware that these two senses had been transformed. Every time some odor entered my nostrils it irritated my olfactory center in just about the same way — whether it came from the most expensive scent or from cow dung, it was the same irritation. And then, every time I tasted something, I tasted the dominant ingredient only — the taste of the other ingredients came slowly after. From that moment perfume made no sense to me, and spicy food had no appeal for me. I could taste only the dominant spice, the chili or whatever it was.

(On the fourth day) something happened to the eyes. We were sitting in the ‘Rialto’ restaurant, and I became aware of a tremendous sort of ‘vistavision’, like a concave mirror. Things coming towards me, moved into me, as it were; and things going away from me, seemed to move from inside me. It was such a puzzle to me — it was as if my eyes were a gigantic camera, changing focus without my doing anything. Now I am used to the puzzle. Nowadays that is how I see. When you drive me around in your Mini, I am like a cameraman dollying along, and the cars in the other direction go into me, and the cars that pass us come out of me, and when my eyes fix on something they fix on it with total attention, like a camera. Another thing about my eyes: when we came back from the restaurant I came home and looked in the mirror to see what was odd about my eyes, to see how they were ‘fixed’. I looked in the mirror for a long time, and then I observed that my eyelids were not blinking. For half an hour or forty-five minutes I looked into the mirror — still no blinking of the eyes. Instinctive blinking was over for me, and it still is.

(On the fifth day) I noticed a change in hearing. When I heard the barking of a dog, the barking originated inside me. And the same with the mooing of the cow, the whistle of the train — suddenly all sounds originated inside me, as it were - coming from within, and not from outside — they still do.

Five senses changed in five days, and on the sixth day I was lying down on a sofa — Valentine was there in the kitchen — and suddenly my body disappeared. There was no body there. I looked at my hand. (Crazy thing — you would certainly put me in the mental hospital.) I looked at it — “Is this my hand?” There was no questioning here, but the whole situation was like that - that is all I am describing. So I touched this body — nothing – I didn’t feel there was anything there except the touch, you see, the point of contact. Then I called Valentine: “Do you see my body on this sofa? Nothing inside of me says that this is my body.” She touched it — “This is your body.” And yet that assurance didn’t give me any comfort or satisfaction — “What is this funny business? My body is missing.” 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. So it is not possible for me to create a complete image of my body even, because where there’s no sense of touch there are missing points here in the consciousness.

On the seventh day I was again lying on the same sofa, relaxing, enjoying the ‘declutched state’. Valentine would come in, I would recognize her as Valentine; she would go out of the room — finish, blank, no Valentine — “What is this? I can’t even imagine what Valentine looks like.” I would listen to the sounds coming from inside me?” I could not relate. I had discovered that all my senses were without any coordinating thing inside: the co- ordinator was missing.

I felt something happening inside of me: the life energy drawing to a focal point from different parts of my body. I said to myself “Now you have come to the end of your life. You are going to die.” Then I called Valentine and said “I am going to die, Valentine, and you will have to do something with this body. Hand it over to the doctors — maybe they will use it. I don’t believe in burning or burial or any of those things. In your own interest you have to dispose of this body — one day it will stink — so, why not give it away?” She said “You are a foreigner. The Swiss government won’t take your body. Forget about it,” then she went away. And then this whole business of the frightening movement of the life force coming to a point, as it were. I was lying down on the sofa. Her bed was empty, so I moved over to that bed and stretched myself, getting ready. She ignored me and went away. She said “One day you say this thing has changed, another day this thing has changed, a third day this thing has changed. What is this whole business?” She was not interested in any of those things — never was she interested in any of these religious matters — never heard of those things. “You say you are going to die. You are not going to die. You are all right, hale and healthy.” She went away. Then I stretched myself, and this was going on and on and on. The whole life energy was moving to some focal point — where it was, I don’t know. Then a point arrived where the whole thing looked as if the aperture of a camera was trying to close itself. (It is the only simile that I can think of. The way I am describing this is quite different from the way things happened at that time, because there was nobody there thinking in such terms. All this was part of my experience, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk about it.) So, the aperture was trying to close itself, and something was there trying to keep it open. Then after a while there was no will to do anything, not even to prevent the aperture closing itself. Suddenly, as it were, it closed. I don’t know what happened after that.

This process lasted for forty-nine minutes — this process of dying. It was like a physical death, you see. Even now it happens to me: the hands and feet become so 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.

When I came out of that, somebody said there was a telephone call for me. I came out and went downstairs to answer it. I was in a daze. I didn’t know what had happened. It was a physical death. What brought me back to life, I don’t know. 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.

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. And then the movement of the hands changed. Usually your hands turn this way. (UG demonstrates.) Here, this wrist joint had terrible pains for six months until it turned itself, and all the movements are now like this. That is why they say my movements are mudras (mystical gestures). The movements of the hands are quite different now than before. Then there were pains in the marrow of the bones. Every cell started changing, and it went on and on for six months.

And then the sex hormones started changing. I didn’t know whether I was a man or a woman — What is this business?” — suddenly there was a breast on the left-hand side. All kinds of things — I don’t want to go into details — there is a complete record of all these things. It went on and on and on. It took three years for this body to fall into a new rhythm of its own.

And all the other glands also here…. There are so many glands here; for example, the pituitary — ‘third eye’, ‘ajña chakra‘, they call it. When once the interference of thought is finished, it is taken over by this gland: it is this gland that gives the instructions or orders to the body; not thought any more; thought cannot interfere. (That is why they call it that*, probably. I’m not interpreting or any such thing; perhaps this gives you an idea.) But you have built an armour created an armour with this thought, and you don’t allow yourself to be affected by things.

_______

* The literal meaning “ajña” is “command.”
______________

Since there is nobody who uses this thought as a self-protective mechanism, it burns itself up. Thought undergoes combustion, ionization (if I may use your scientific term). Thought is, after all, vibration. So, when this kind of ionization of thought takes place, it throws out, sometimes it covers the whole body with, an ash-like substance. Your body is covered with that when there is no need for thought at all. When you don’t use it, what happens to that thought? It burns itself out — that is the energy — it’s a combustion. The body gets heated, you know. There is tremendous heat in the body as a result of this, and so the skin is covered — your face, your feet, everything — with this ash-like substance.

That’s one of the reasons why I express it in pure and simple physical and physiological terms. It has no psychological content at all, it has no mystical content, it has no religious overtones at all, as I see it. I am bound to say that, and I don’t care whether you accept it or not, it is of no importance to me.

You can say (I can’t make any definite statement) probably it is because of the impact on the human consciousness of the ‘explosions’ of all those saints, sages and saviours of mankind that there is this dissatisfaction in you, that whatever is there is all the time trying to burst out, as it were. Maybe that is so — I can’t say anything about it. You can say that they are there because they are pushing you to this point, and once the purpose is achieved they have finished their job and they go way — that is only speculation on my part. But this flushing out of everything good and bad, holy and unholy, sacred and profane has got to happen, otherwise your consciousness is still contaminated, still impure. During that time it goes on and on and on — there are hundreds and thousands of them — then, you see, you are put back into that primeval, primordial state of consciousness. Once it has become pure, of and by itself, then nothing can touch it, nothing can contaminate that any more. All the past up to that point is there, but it cannot influence your actions any more.

All these visions and everything were happening for three years after the “calamity.” Now the whole thing is finished. The divided state of consciousness cannot function at all any more; it is always in the undivided state of consciousness — nothing can touch that. Anything can happen — the thought can be a good thought, a bad thought, the telephone number of a London prostitute…. During my wanderings in London, I used to look at those telephone numbers fixed to the trees. I was not interested in going to the prostitute, but those things, the numbers, interested me. I had nothing else to do, no books to read, nothing to do but look at those numbers. One number gets fixed in there, it comes there, it repeats itself. It doesn’t matter what comes there — good, bad, holy, unholy. Who is there to say “This is good; that is bad?” — the whole thing is finished. That is why I have to use the phrase ‘religious experience’ (not in the sense in which you use the word ‘religion’): it puts you back to the source. You are back in that primeval, primordial, pure state of consciousness –call it ‘awareness’ or whatever you like. In that state things are happening, and there is nobody who is interested, nobody who is looking at them. They come and go in their own way, like the Ganges water flowing: the sewerage water comes in, half-burnt corpses, both good things and bad things — everything — but that water is always pure.

Q: Although everyone who is supposed to have undergone this ‘explosion’ is unique, in the sense that each one is expressing his own background, there do seem to be some common characteristics.

UG: That is not my concern; it seems to be yours. I never compare myself to somebody else.