The Biology of Enlightenment- Unpublished Conversations With UG Krishnamurti After He Came Into The Natural State (1967-71)

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In this book we meet with the modern sage, U.G. Krishnamurti, and listen to his penetrating voice describing life and reality as it is. What is body and what is mind? Is there a soul? Is there a beyond, a God? What is enlightenment? Is there a life after death? Never before have these questions been tackled with such simplicity, candour and clarity. In these unpublished early conversations with friends (1967-71), U.G.discusses in detail his search for the truth and how he underwent radical biological changes in 1967. Preferring to call it the natural state over enlightenment, he insists that whatever transformation he has undergone is within the structure of the human body and not in the mind at all. It is the natural state of being that sages like the Buddha, Jesus and, in modern times, Sri Ramana, stepped into. And U.G.never tires of pointing out that 'this is the way you, stripped of the machinations of thought, are also functioning.'

One day, during a discussion in Madras in 1953, J. Krishnamurti brought up the subject of death. From the year 1947, U.G. Krishnamurti had been listening to JK's talks and had even engaged him in personal discussions on a few occasions. He was there in the room that day, listening to JK talk on a subject on which he himself had, as a theosophy lecturer, given talks not so long ago. Towards the end of the discussion, JK, in his usual style, thrashed the question what is death again and again. UG did not know what happened, but the mind slowed down and he said to himself rather loudly, 'Apart from all the discussions I have heard and my own so-called experience of death in the area of experiencing, apart from all these, I really...' He could not complete the sentence and slumped back as an overwhelming fear of death seized him. He gasped for breath and felt as if 'a vacuum pump was sucking the life out...,' and then he felt invaded by an overpowering current of energy. At the time somebody threw a question at JK and the discussion continued, but now UG was cut off from it. After an hour or so he walked out of the hall, feeling completely out of this world. It was a tremendous experience and, by his admission, from then on his perception of things underwent a radical change.

Eventually, this 'near-death experience' was to lead him to the 'final death' and awakening into the natural state in 1967. It seems the near-death experience is, almost as a rule, a necessary prelude to enlightenment. This seems to have been the pattern in the lives of sages. However, at the time, UG brushed it aside as of no importance and thought that it would fade away over a period of time. But the experience did not fade away; it altered his being and, like fire, kept burning for the next fourteen years, bringing on tremendous physical changes and experiences before culminating in the death of the experiencing structure, the self.

Years before, in 1963, while UG was staying at the Ramakrishna Mission in London, he had experienced the first stirring or awakening of Kundalini or Serpent Power. And then, over the next three years, from 1964 to 1967, there had been clear signs of the approaching changes. For instance, if he rubbed his palms, or any part of his body, there used to be a sparkle, like a phosphorous glow.And when he rolled on his bed with unbearable pain in his head, again there would be sparks. The body had become an electromagnetic field. And he had started suffering from 'terrible pain in the brain'. It was what may be called the period of 'incubation'. It was the preparation of the body, of the cells, to mutate.

Two months before the completion of his forty-ninth year, UG, Valentine and some friends happened to be in Paris and, one evening, at the whim of UG, they all went to Casino de Paris. What happened to UG at the casino was a precursor of the incredible biological changes he would soon undergo. Sitting with his friends and among the fun-lovers, watching the cabaret, UG did not know whether the dancer was dancing on the stage or he himself was doing the dancing. There was a peculiar kind of movement inside of him. A week after this experience, one night, in a hotel room in Geneva, he had a dream. He saw himself bitten by a cobra and dying instantly. He saw his body being carried on a bamboo stretcher arid placed on a funeral pyre at some nameless cremation ground.And, as the pyre and his own body went up in flames, he was awakened.

During the summer in August 1967, JK came to Saanen to give his talks. UG had completed his forty-ninth year and his body was now like rice chaff burning- smouldering inside, slowly and steadily moving in circles towards the outer surface, as it were, preparing the body for the 'metamorphoses' that would challenge the very foundation of human thought built over centuries. After the public talks, JK held discussions on his educational project. Despite his differences with and criticism of JK's ideas, UG attended all these talks and discussions. He was still not finished with JK; rather, he was not finished with himself and his own search for nirvana. On the last three days of the discussion, JK sometimes would, as if it had all been pre-ordained, veer away from the main topic of the discussion and talk of the comparative state of mind, of silence as a movement, as energy, and so on. And UG would feel that JK was describing, supplying words for what was happening to him. 'In that silence there is energy,' JK would say, and UG would feel his body vibrating as if flooded with energy. One day, even before JK started talking of silence, UG found himself in the state of silence. It all seemed strange. Something was going on there and UG couldn't figure out what it was. Finally, on the last day of the gathering, 13 August 1967, at one point, JK started saying: `... in that silence there is no mind; there is action ....'

UG was stunned. Again, it seemed JK was actually describing his state of being! How could that be? But it seemed to be true. So, 'I am in that state!' UG thought to himself. If that was so, then what had he been doing all these thirty-odd years, listening to all these people, struggling, wanting to attain the state of Buddha, of Jesus-when in fact he had already been there! 'So I am in that state'- the self-assertion, along with a sense of huge wonder, continued for a while. And then it suddenly seemed ridiculous to be sitting there, listening to JK's description of his state of being. He got up and walked out of the tent. But he was not finished. The sense of wonder transformed itself into a question: 'How do I know that I am in that state?' The question burned through him like a maddening fury.

On his way back to his chalet, he sat on a little wooden bench under a wild chestnut tree overlooking Saanen with its seven hills and seven valleys bathed in blue light.The question persisted; the whole of his being was possessed by that single question: `How do I know?' It was like a question in a whirlpool. As UG later observed, he had become the question.

There was silence; it was the mind that was aware of the silence, not simple awareness.When Krishnaji said what is is a comparative state of mind, that hit me hard. That was my state: what is. It was not total silence. And I thought: what have I done? Fourteen years back, in 1953, I had experienced the grea(silence and I had not moved an inch from there.

The next day he said that in that silence there is energy and my body was vibrating, it was like a whirlpool of energy. And then on the last day he said that in that silence there is action and it seemed he was supplying words to describe my state. But then I thought that if in that state there is action, I wouldn't know it. How do I know then? Is it the mind that is projecting that state? This kind of questioning went on and on.

If an action has to take place then that silence is action and that action I wouldn't know. So two images were operating at the same time and they were not two different things, they were one and the same, preventing anything from happening. This struck me in a moment and the whole thing stopped all of a sudden. The question disappeared.

**Contents and Sample Pages**