Sunday, December 26, 2010

My Criticism of U.G Krishnmurti


I studied U.G Krishnamurti directly after being exposed to Jiddu Krishnamurti’s work. The two complement each other well, and U.G’s work helped to be pull away from the mystique that I had created around Jiddu Krishnamurti. U.G helped me to start to be able to think critically for myself without always relating everything back o j. Krishnamurti’s philosophy, as I had thought I had found an all-encompassing philosophical body of work. U.G’s teaching is more rough, rugged, and dirty. He often tells people off who cannot learn, tells them to go away, gets angry and all the rest of it. A total opposite style from Jiddu Krishnamurti who is always very polite, collected and mindful of the listener. U.G. is like the dog of enlightenment. He reminded me a lot of the stories of Diogenes, who existed in the time of Plato and Socrates. U.G. is useful because his teaching causes you to move away from your dependence on the teacher, and not to create an idol over him. However, U.G is often so extreme that his body of work is often difficult to make sense of. He contradicts himself, and doesn't try to correct or elaborate, and he tends to condemn and reject every other body of thought in order to get the student to think for themselves, but this technique causes the student to be heavily dependent on his language as well. He also rejects that anyone else has ever understood enlightenment, which simply isn’t true, and one never knows his motivation for deceiving the student in such a way. U.G is just as dismissive and contemptuous towards empirical science and empirical thinking as Jiddu Krishnamurti, and I don’t believe it is necessary. They could have just stated that science can be helpful, but wisdom should be primary.



Instead, U.G was notorious for becoming irate at even the mention of someone such as Einstein or even Jiddu Krishnamurti. Those close to him admit that he harbored an unnatural hatred, jealousy and resentment towards Jiddu Krishnmurti for much of his life. Apparently, U.G behaved differently around people who he believed had no potential for enlightenment, and this caused problems in deciphering his exact body of work because some of it wasn’t met for ears who could think for themselves. As a result, it is difficult to judge his entire body of work as a whole because everything was recorded. Also, he did very immature things to people who had very little potential such as making up wild lies and claims such as the story of his physical transformation, and many other wild tales. One has to question his decision to do this, as it illustrates a certain lack of responsibility. At root, I don’t think U.G thought deeply about the negative karma that could be left behind from his work. He also choose to become very rude to people who showed no potential for enlightenment, which caused them to become even more dependent and in awe of him. And then he feed that image by wearing anti-guru type clothes, and all the rest of it. However, when he spoke seriously, his speech was often bang on of what I would consider the principles of enlightenment. When U.G joked with the audience that he stated was just a dog barking, in many ways, he was correct, although it was confusing because sometimes he sounded like a mature sage, and other times a immature child. Such a technique for teaching wisdom is questionable at best. I enjoyed U.G the most when he was serious or playful, yet respectful. When he started putting on his anti-guru act, and became screaming at people to get lost, I wanted to find the remote control, and change the channel.

6 comments:

  1. I believe that any serious student of philosophy and/or of enlightenment must become acquainted with U. G. Krishnamurti, who was his own best advocate and his own worst enemy. I greatly appreciated the above "My Criticism of U. G. Krishnamurti" under the banner "In Defense of Reason," for it is an excellent piece of writing, honest and respectful.

    The best advice I ever received with respect to the study of philosophy came from one of my professors who said, "Never criticize the philosophy of anyone until you have first understood it completely; and when you have done that, you just might not have anything to criticize." Personally, I don;t think I will ever get to the point where I am in a position to criticize U. G.

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  2. Yes he is repulsively rude to people. yes, some things that he said are hard to believe. But his claim that 'enlightenment' is not what it's made out to be...Is radical and brave.
    I had hoped that your critique would question the basic principles of his teaching and not superficial things like morality and his conduct

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  3. What about "Just live your own life"?
    I've never been to Hawaii, for example. THAT would be interesting

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  4. Lol U.G krishnamurti said in one of his interviews that he was a damn fool to talk about psychological and physical mutations of the body and blamed the people who were throwing j.kirshanmurti 's philosophy in his door. This man did not care whether you listened to him or not and what you fail to understand is that there is nothing to understand .You are fooling yourself by thinking you can understand anything because the moment you think you begin to understand , you are still thinking. And this is all that there is there. Thinking and Thinking. He even stated the fact that he has an illusion that you can understand but you will never understand no matter how clearly he can explain to you. This seems like a contradiction but what you fail to realize is that a contradiction is thought.

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  5. what was UGs opinion on einstein

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