Book Launch of Upanishads and J. Krishnamurti

At the launch of his latest book, The Upanishads and J. Krishnamurti, Sri M sat down for a candid conversation that was by turns philosophical, personal, and disarmingly funny. The book, years in the making, attempts something unusual - not to prove that the Upanishads and Krishnamurti say the same thing, but to invite readers of both to inquire more deeply for themselves.

"I am not trying to bring together Upanishad and Krishnamurti," Sri M was clear. "I am saying go through the Upanishad, go through Krishnamurti and find out for yourself."

A Personal Connection

Sri M's engagement with Krishnamurti was no academic exercise. As Joint Secretary of the Krishnamurti Foundation, he spent the last three years of Krishnamurti's life in close personal proximity, accompanying him, looking after him, and sharing intimate conversations. He also revealed that it was his own Guru, Maheshwarnath Babaji, who first directed him toward Krishnamurti's work. "He said, go to Krishnamurti. He also added, there are some cobwebs which need to be wiped out. This is why I went. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gone."

Did Krishnamurti Read the Upanishads?

Sri M doesn't think so. But rather than treating this as a problem, he turned it into a pointed question. "Before the Upanishads were taught, did the Rishis who gave us the Upanishads read the Upanishads? No. They found it for themselves. In the same way, why is it not possible that Krishnamurti found it by himself?"

He recounted a telling personal exchange. When Krishnamurti publicly declared that scriptures should be thrown into the sea, and then the very next day admitted he had never read them, Sri M confronted him privately: how could he say there was nothing in texts he had never read? Krishnamurti's response was disarming. "You are right, Sir. I should be more careful of my words."

"He could have said, shut up and get out. I was nobody," Sri M reflected. "But the humility of the man - I consider that as a great quality which can come only to a mind that is settled down. If someone has truly touched that supreme reality, a natural humility follows."

The Process and What It Means to Understand Krishnamurti

Sri M drew attention to the documented period in Krishnamurti's life known as the Process - prolonged experiences of intense physical pain in the spine, trance-like states, and what observers described as split personalities. He connects this directly to what yogic literature calls Samadhi. "It was after going through that process that he became Krishnamurti as we know him. And that changed his whole outlook."

His point was sobering: reading Krishnamurti is not the same as understanding him. "We can spout Krishnamurti by reading. We can sit in a club on Sunday and say, I know Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti never touched alcohol, never smoked, practiced yoga every morning, was a vegetarian. It's one thing to say I understood Krishnamurti while chewing steaks." Krishnamurti's lifestyle, Sri M insisted, was not incidental to his teaching. It was inseparable from it.

On Knowledge and the Living Truth

The conversation's most compelling passage concerned the Isha Upanishad's paradox - that those who worship knowledge enter into greater darkness than those who worship ignorance. Sri M credited Krishnamurti with illuminating this, at the direction of Maheshwarnath Babaji who felt Sri M needed to grapple with exactly this verse.

"All knowledge that we have - the process of acquiring it is simple. I don't know something, I study it, I store it in memory, and I recall it effortlessly. That is what we mean by knowing something. But have you ever heard of a memory that is present? All memories are past." The Brahman, is ever present. It cannot be stored, recalled, or filed away. "It's like the flowing river, at every point it's alive. You cannot put it into words and store it and say, I have had the experience of the Brahman."

The consequence, he said, is that a cluttered mind full of books and conclusions may actually be further from truth than a simple, unencumbered one. "I find people who have read a lot are in greater darkness because the mind is cluttered with all the books that you have read and you cannot separate it."

On Gurus and Gurudom

Sri M pushed back firmly against the common reading of Krishnamurti as being anti-Guru. "He was not against a teacher as such. He himself was a teacher. But he was against the paraphernalia of Gurudom." The real warning, he said, was against the laziness that substitutes reverence for the teacher in place of one's own practice. "Have you read the Upanishads? Are you doing your kriya? No, sir. Why? Because you are there, no. This is the laziness that creeps into the system. Krishnamurti was actually warning you against that."

Sri M also cited the exceptional cases of Ramana Maharshi, who had no known Guru, Ramakrishna, whose first spiritual experience came from the sight of white geese flying across black clouds, to make a broader point. "These are born prodigies. Everybody cannot imitate them." For most people, a teacher is necessary.

What matters is keeping the relationship honest - ‘the teaching must always remain more important than the teacher’.

On Self-Realization

On the much-abused idea of self-realization, Sri M was characteristically blunt. "When they said self-realization, they meant to know yourself as you are now, not to project that you are the Atman, the blissful Brahman. One part of the mind doesn't want to admit that it is impure. So it says there is a pure Atman which I am. We have to come face to face with ourselves instead of pretending."

He recounted visiting Nisargadatta Maharaj in his final years, who laughed at the title of his own famous book I Am That and said: "I am not that, I am this." The reminder was the same one Sri M finds across Krishnamurti and the Upanishads alike - know yourself as you actually are, not as you wish to be. "If I do not know myself as I am, how will I change? I will superimpose the idea of the Brahman on me and carry on with life, saying that I am free, but I'm not."

A Warning Against Worship

The conversation closed on a note that was both candid and characteristic. When asked whether the book was a signal to his own shishyas to do more on their own, Sri M didn't hesitate.

"Yeah, of course. They have to do things on their own." He pointed to his worn feet and said, "Before some years back, nobody used to do pranams to me. Because I don't like." The concern is not ceremonial. Sometimes, he added, it goes to a ridiculous extent - people washing his feet and drinking the water. "I tell them, I may be having skin disease, watch out. You might get it."

The laughter in the room did not obscure the point. Organised reverence, however well-intentioned, becomes the very obstacle it claims to dissolve. The teaching is always more important than the teacher. It was Krishnamurti's warning. It was the Upanishad's warning. And this evening, it was Sri M's too.