Q-2: Coming back to your earlier statement — what is it that you did in pursuance of your goal?
UG: You give me a list of all the saints, sages, and saviors of mankind. Then, look at their lives and look at what they did. I did everything they did. Nothing happened. I knew what it was all about. I was interested in finding out whether there was anything to all those teachers, from the very beginning of our times. I found out that they conned themselves and conned every one of us. Was there anything to their experience which they wanted to share with the world?
Q: What do you think?
UG: Nothing. They were all phonies. Don't ask me, "Could they all be phonies?" and "Why did they last for so long?" The Ivory soap or Pears soap in the United States is celebrating its 100th year. The fact that it lasted for a hundred years does not mean that there is anything to it. This certainty that they were all false, and that their teachings falsified me, is something which I cannot transmit to anyone. It is your problem. As I said this morning, I had this hunger, I had this thirst. Nothing satisfied my hunger and nothing satisfied my quest. You know, the old man [J. Krishnamurti] and I thrashed out everything for thirty days, whenever he could find time. We used to go for walks. I met him toward the end of my association with the Theosophical Society.
Q2: For some years he was close to you.
UG: No, no. I wanted to find out whether there was anything to him. He was saying something on the platform. Toward the end I asked him a question, "What do you have behind all the abstractions you are throwing at me and others? Is there anything?" (That was my way of dealing with problems.) I listened to him every time he came to Madras. But I didn't swallow any of his words. Then the encounter came about in a very strange way. We thrashed it out. I told him, "Look here, as far as thought is concerned, it has reached its acme in India. You can't even hold a candle before those mighty thinkers that India has produced. What is it that you have? I want an answer." But then we didn't get along. I said to myself, "You are nowhere. What the hell are you doing here?" I didn't want to waste my time. So I told the old man, "You can give your time to anyone who you think will be helped by you." And that finished the whole thing. That was in 1953. I never saw him afterwards.
Q2: Sir, does all this [U.G.'s search and his `calamity'] mean that there was a certain programming?
UG: If there is one, you have to rule out all such things as mutation, and radical transformation. I ruled those out because I didn't find anything there to be transformed. There was no question of mutation of mind, radical or otherwise. It is all hogwash. But it is difficult for you to throw all this stuff out of your system. You can also deny it and brush it aside, but this, "May be there is something to it" lasts for a long time. When once you stumble into a situation that you can call `courage' you can throw the entire past out of yourself. I don't know how this has happened. What has happened is something which cannot but be called an act of courage, because everything, not only this or that particular teacher you had been involved with, but everything that every man, every person, thought, felt, and experienced before you, is completely flushed out of your system. What you are left with is the simple thing — the body with its extraordinary intelligence of its own.
When I went to school I studied everything, including Advaita Vedanta. Vedanta was my special subject for my Masters in philosophy. Very early during my studies I arrived at the conclusion that there is no such a thing as mind at all.
There was a well-known professor of psychology at the University of Madras, Dr. Bose. Just a month before my final examinations, I went to him and asked him the question, "We have studied all these six schools of psychology, this, that, and the other, exhaustively, but I don't see in all this a place for the `mind' at all." (At that time I used to say that "Freud is the stupendous fraud of the Twentieth Century." The fact that he has lasted for a hundred years does not mean anything.) So my problem was that I did not see any mind. So I asked my professor, "Is there a mind?" The only honest fellow that I have met in my life was not any of those holy men but that professor. He said that if I wanted my Master's degree I should not ask such uncomfortable questions. He said, "You would be in trouble. If you want your postgraduate degree, repeat what you have memorized and you will get a degree. If you don't want it, you explore the subject on your own." So I said, "Goodbye." I did not take my examination. I was lucky because at that time I had a lot of money, and I told him that I had four times the income of what he had as professor of psychology. I told him that I could survive with all this money and walked out of the whole business.
But my suspicion [about the mind] persisted for a long time. You see, you cannot be free from all this so easily. You get a feeling, "May be the chap [whoever is talking about the mind] knows what he is talking about. He must have something." Looking back, the whole thing was a stupendous hoax. I told J. Krishnamurti that he was a stupendous hoax of the twentieth century along with Freud. I told him, "You see, you have not freed yourself from this whole idea of messiahs and Theosophy." He could not come out clean from the whole thing.
If you think that he is the greatest teacher of the Twentieth Century, all right, go ahead, good luck to you. You are not going to have all these transformations, radical or otherwise. Not because I know your future, but because there is nothing there to be transformed, really nothing. If you think there is, and think that plum will fall into your stretched palm, good luck to you. What is the point of my telling you?
There is no such thing as enlightenment. So whether Rajneesh is enlightened or some other joker is enlightened is irrelevant. It is you who assumes that somebody is, whoever he is. Good luck to you! Somebody coming and telling me, "That I am" is a big joke. There is nothing to this whole nonsense. I have heard that there is a course in the United States: if you want enlightenment in twenty-four hours they charge you one thousand dollars and if you want it within a week, five hundred dollars, and so on.
Q2: Why did you talk about Krishnamurti?
UG: It came up, you know. I looked at him, this J.K. freak, sitting here.
Q2: It seems not relevant.
UG: What is relevant? Tell me. Are you a Krishnamurti freak or what?
Q2: Not exactly.
UG: Then it is no problem. What does it matter, whether I discuss the prime minister of India or J. Krishnamurti? You know, I express what I think of that man.
Q1: Why don't you keep quiet?
UG: Here with all these people around me? Noisy people and noisy things going on around me...?
Q1: Can you feel the thoughts of people?
UG: Just the way you feel humidity. [Laughter] I cannot decode and translate everything. If I could, you would be in trouble. I am ready to discuss any subject you want. I have opinions on everything from disease to divinity. So I can discuss any subject. In America I always start with health food. That is the obsession there. When you don't have faith in anything, food becomes your obsession in life. So what do we do?
Q1: So you say that the mind doesn't exist. What does exist?
UG: This [pointing to himself] is just a computer.
Q1: What difference does it make whether you call it a computer or the mind?
UG: If you want to use that word, it is fine with me. The mind is (not that I am giving a new definition) the totality of man's experiences, thoughts, and feelings. There is no such thing as your mind or my mind. I have no objection if you want to call that totality of man's thoughts, feelings, and experiences by the name `mind'. But how they are transmitted to us from generation to generation is the question. Is it through the medium of knowledge or is there any other way by which they are transmitted