Get Lost and Stay Lost
On the Road with UG Krishnamurti
by Julie Thayer
Julie Thayer traveled extensively with UG from
1989 till his passing in 2007, through many of those years she kept a
vigilant Journal giving Insight to the extraordinary state of UG
Krishnamurti and the powerful changes affecting those he came in contact
with.
Preface
I met U.G. Krishnamurti in California in 1989. By happenstance, a book
by U.G., or rather a book about him, Mind is a Myth, was in the window
of a Carmel bookstore, Pilgrim's Way, the very day I went looking for a
copy of The Mystique of Enlightenment, an earlier collection of U.G.’s
conversations, a book I had come across and been astonished by a few
months earlier.
I raced into the store, opened Mind is a Myth, and found a card tucked
into it, as if a bookmark. It was a note by Dr. Narayana Moorty, a
philosophy professor from Monterey Community College. He gave his
telephone number in case the reader was interested in knowing more about
U.G.
I called Dr. Moorty right away, and he invited me over to his house to
talk and to borrow some audio tapes. U.G., he said, might appear in
Seaside any day and he would let me know if he heard from him.
Sure enough, the next day the phone rang and Moorty told me U.G. had
called from Mill Valley. He had just arrived in the Bay Area, and he
would be in Seaside in ten days time for a "flying visit."
Moorty asked me if I would like to meet U.G.; without hesitation, I
said yes! And so it came to pass that on April 30, 1989 I went to
lunch at Moorty's house in Seaside, California along with ten or fifteen
others, and made the acquaintance of the man who was to play the most
remarkable role in my life from that moment on.
My first impression of U.G. was of a small catlike man with a completely
disarming way about him, utterly lacking in pretension or guile. And
yet a power emanated from him that turned my brain to slush. As he
talked I heard him as from a great distance, as though my mind was
operating in slow motion. The only thing I could remember thinking was
"I want to spend more time with him."
He told me, when I said I was from New York, that it was his favorite
city, that he particularly liked the intense energy around Times
Square. I went to see him a few times in Mill Valley and broke all ties
with my spiritual teacher after the first visit. When U.G. said
surrendering to a teacher was surrendering your self-reliance, and that
not one of them had anything to give, it resonated.
I returned to the East Coast and spent the summer in Maine; from there I
phoned U.G. in Switzerland and offered him the use of my apartment in
New York if he should come in the fall.
At first he said no thank you. But on his arrival in New York in
September, amazingly enough, his rented apartment having fallen through,
he took me up on the offer, insisting only that I not move out (which I
had intended to do), and that I give him the maid's room (my office) to
sleep in as he only felt comfortable in small spaces.
It was my 49th birthday. Strangely, it did not strike me as unusual
that he would arrive at my door with his small bag and minimal
possessions and simply move in with someone he barely knew. In fact
there was something about him that made me feel I had known him for a
long time.
I began keeping a journal from the first day. Somehow I felt his visit was going to be interesting, epic, and I wanted to remember details as they presented themselves.
Excerpt from Travels with UG Journal:
New York
September 18, 1989
The first thing U.G. said when he entered my apartment in New York was
that he had come to stay for forty days and forty nights. (It had been
raining heavily for several days and the air is still humid and
overcast.)
~ ~
U.G. told me that he had been pickpocketed outside his hotel and someone
took $95 out of his front pocket. He didn't seem upset, only impressed
by the finesse of the thief, he wondered if the thief had x-ray eyes to
see where the money was. He said it was the oddest sensation to feel a
hand in his pocket, then look down at his own two hands and ask himself
whose hand was in his pocket. He said the thief needed the money more
than he did and he wished he could have taken him to lunch at a
five-star restaurant to express his admiration. He said he likes people
to use their talents and that the thief was a master at thieving and
deserved what he got.
U.G. says, "Steal, but don't get caught!"
~ ~
U.G. asked me about the noise he had heard from his room and I said it
was the air-conditioner across the courtyard. I asked if its
intermittent going off and on bothered him and he said not at all. All
sound is the same for him. For U.G., the droning of the air-conditioner
is the same as Beethoven's "Ninth." Sound is not outside of him, but
within.
At night he curls up in a fetal position and goes into a deep sleep, and
then awakens a few minutes later; this pattern repeats itself all
night. He sleeps very little and goes into a deep deathlike state once a
day,
which is particularly intense on the full and new moon.
He went on to say there would be no starvation in the world if people
who had money only kept what they needed and didn't hoard the rest.
To read entire version of Journal ONE Click HERE
To Download the UG Cookbook Click HERE
Notes and Comments Click HERE
Contact: Julie@TravelswithUG.Com
