EDITED BY MUKUNDA RAO The Penguin U.G. Krishnamurti Reader
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents About the Author Dedication Preface Introduction Throwing Away the Crutches Questioning UG Laughing with UG Sources Footnote Throwing Away the Crutches Acknowledgements Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS THE PENGUIN U.G. KRISHNAMURTI READER
Mukunda Rao teaches English at Dr. Ambedkar Degree College, Bangalore. He is the author of Confessions of a Sannyasi (1988), The Mahatma: A Novel (1992), The Death of an Activist (1997), Babasaheb Ambedkar: Trials with Truth (2000), Rama Revisited and Other Stories (2002), Chinnamani’s World (2003) and The Other Side of Belief: Interpreting U.G. Krishnamurti (2005). He lives with his wife and son in Bangalore. He can be contacted at
[email protected]
For Valentine de Kerven
Preface U.G. Krishnamurti, lovingly called UG by his friends and admirers all over the world, died on 22 March 2007, at 2.30 p.m., at the villa of friends, in Vallecrosia, Italy. A few days before the end, his long-time friend, the noted Indian filmmaker, Mahesh Bhatt, had asked, ‘How should we dispose of your body?’ In the same vein as he had spoken about death and the body over the years, UG replied, ‘Life and death cannot be separated. When the breathing stops and what you call clinical death takes place, the body breaks itself into its constituent elements and that provides the basis for the continuity of life. So, nothing here is lost. In that sense there is no birth and no death for the body. The body is immortal.’ Seven weeks earlier, UG had fallen and this was the second such occurrence in two years. Although he did not suffer a fracture, he did not want such an incident to occur again which would make him further dependent on his friends. He refused medical or o