No Way Out. U. G. Krishnamurti
us, Sir. [Referring to U.G.] [Laughter]
UG: No, no. Let's not indulge in that sort of thing. You will have no use for it. You cannot fit me into a value system at all. A value system has no use for me, and there is no question of my setting up a holy business. I have no way of telling myself that I am different from you. As I said, you have to take my word for it. If you still say, "No, we don't accept it," it is just fine with me. What can I do?
Q4: We have come across the one who is sitting before us, Sir. But the understanding of their thought processes and all those things which you have come across can help us.
UG: I didn't understand a thing. I am telling you. There is no process to go through to reach anywhere. It looks like I went through some process. No. I did not. I wasted so many years of my life in pursuit of the goals that I had set for myself. If it had dawned on me during the early stages of my life that there is nothing to understand, I wouldn't have wasted forty-nine years of my life and denied myself everything. I was born with a silver spoon, sleeping on a luxurious bed. Do you think if I had known all this I would go there and lie down in a cave repeating things which I did not know? I was repeating things and reading books which I did not understand when I was fourteen. It is too silly. Looking back I would say I wasted all that time. But any way I don't see any way of comparing what I did with what I stumbled into. I have no way of saying "This is it," and then "I was like that." There is no point [of reference] here. Since there is no point here, there is no way I can look back and say that was the point. You may very well ask me the question, "How come you are saying that despite all you did you have stumbled into whatever you have stumbled into?" But I have to put it that way — "despite", "in spite of" — or whatever words you want to use. All that did not lead me to this. "How do you know that it did not lead you there?" you might ask. What I went through is not part of that knowing mechanism. "Why do you say that it is a state of not-knowing?" you may ask. "How can you talk of that state of not-knowing in terms of the known?" you may ask. You are only pushing me to give an answer. To answer your question, your demand, your persistence to know what that state is, I say that it is a state of not-knowing; not that there is something which cannot be known. I am not talking of the unknowable, the inexpressible, the inexperienceable. I am not talking of any of those things. That still keeps the movement going. What there is is only the known. There is no such thing, for instance, as the fear of the unknown. You can't be afraid of the unknown, because the unknown, as you say, is the unknown. The fear that you are talking about is the fear of the known coming to an end. That seems to be the problem. When I use this phrase — "the state of unknowing" — it is not a synonymous term for transformation, moksha, liberation, God-realization, self-realization, and what have you.
Q2: When I visited a place where people who are mentally different are kept....
UG: Mentally different or sick or ill or....
Q2: I would prefer to call them mentally different because they think we are mentally different and vice versa.
UG: That is true.
Q2: The dividing line is very thin. They may be looking at us as victims. Really we don't know who is different. But biologically both of us are functioning.
UG: ....exactly the same way.
Q2: ....the same way. What could be the basis for calling them mentally different?
UG: Because we have established the so-called normal man.
Q2: That's what I am hinting at.
UG: Some people who are in the All India Institute of Mental Health at Bangalore visited me. One of them is a top neurosurgeon. I asked him the same question, "Who is normal? Who is sane and who is insane?" He said, "Statistically speaking, we are sane." That was quite satisfactory to me. And then I asked him, "Why are you putting all of them there and treating them? How much help do you give them?" He said, "Not even two percent of them are helped. We send them back to their homes, but they keep coming back." "Then why are you running this show?" I asked him. He said, "The government pays the money and the families don't want to keep those people in their homes."
So, we now move on from there to the basic question, "Who is sane and who is insane?" I have lots of them coming to see me. Even this Institute sometimes sends people to me. Even people who are hardcore cases come to me. But the line of demarcation between them and me is very thin. The difference seems to be that they have given up, whereas I am not in conflict with the society. I take it. That's all the difference. There is nothing that prevents me from fitting into the framework of society. I am not in conflict with the society. When once you are, I don't like to use the word, freed from, or are not trapped in, this duality of right and wrong, good and bad, you can never do anything bad. As long as you are caught up in wanting to do only good, you will always do bad. Because the `good' you seek is only in the future. You will be good some other time and until then you remain a bad person. So, the so-called insane have given up, and we are doing them the greatest harm and disservice by pushing them to fit themselves into this framework of ours which is rotten. [Laughter] I don't just say it is rotten, but it is.
I don't fight society. I am not in conflict with it. I am not even interested in changing it. The demand to bring about a change in myself isn't there any more. So, the demand to change this framework or the world at large isn't there. It is not that I am indifferent to the suffering man. I suffer with the suffering man and am happy with the happy man. You seem to get pleasure out of the suffering of somebody. But why don't you get the same pleasure when you see a rich man throwing his weight around? They are the same. This you call pleasure and that you call jealousy or envy. But I don't see any difference between the two. I see suffering. Individually, there isn't a anything that I can do. And at the same time I don't want to use this [suffering] for my self-aggrandizement, my self-fulfillment. The problem is there, and we are individually responsible for it. Yet we don't want to accept the responsibility for creating the problems. The problems are not created by nature. It is we who have created the problems. There is plenty, there is bounty in nature; but we take away what rightfully belongs to everybody and then say that you should give charity. That's too absurd!
The practice of charity, started by the religious man, is what refuses to deal with the problems squarely. I may give something to a poor man because he is suffering. But unless I have something more than he has, there is no way I can help. What do I do if I don't have the means to help him? What do I do in a situation where I am totally helpless? That helplessness only makes me sit with him and cry.
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