Book Summary: The Natural State, in the words of U.G. Krishnamurti (Part 1/3)
“If you shock easily, this may not be for you.”
U.G. never wrote a book in his life, but compilations of his talks throughout the years by dedicated students of his. Here we will dive into U.G.’s teachings in The Nature State, which is edited by Peter Maverick. Another recommended reading is “The Mystique of Enlightenment.”
Some commentaries of the book:
The hundred thousand books of clichéd thoughts on spirituality, psychology and self-help available today offer you ways that are congenial to what you already know. U.G. merely offers to shatter what you know and not to replace it with anything, no new technique, or discipline or way. Are you ready to be shattered, to have your beliefs stripped away and then not be given anything new to hang on to? Then read this book.
If you see how penetrating his analysis of human belief is, you may be forced to drop many of your most cherished ideas about life. This can free you to some extent, and you may find your life becoming simpler not through any effort of yours but simply because you no longer have to carry the burden of so many belief structures. U.G. is not interested in converting you to a new religion or to any belief system whatsoever.
U.G. is a fascinating figure. However, his way of speaking can be abstract, often making it challenging to grasp his ideas as they seem to leap from one point to another and may appear incoherent at first glance. While his opinions may not always be accurate, they are undeniably thought-provoking. He strips away pretense and delusion, revealing the raw and unfiltered essence of things and compelling us to reconsider the assumptions and beliefs we've long taken for granted. U.G.'s messages are concise, often striking directly at the core of an issue, much like the directness found in Zen/Chan teachings.
“I am not in the holy business. I sing my own song. If somebody comes I talk. If nobody comes I go for a walk or look at the birds, look at the trees. So many things are happening. But I don't go out and sit on a platform and talk. I am not cut out for that kind of a thing. I am a simple man. I don't want to complicate things unnecessarily. You see, my position is very simple. I'm always available. I have no private life which I can call my own. Anybody can come at any time. I just see them and say, “Good morning, what can I do for you?” That's all I can do. I have nothing to give, that's all.”
As mentioned in the book, “What you are left with after your encounter with U.G.—either through his words or his actual presence—is the feeling that something different has happened to you, but you can't quite say what it is.” This perfectly captures my experience. When I first read the book aloud, I felt a peculiar sensation, like a subtle, continuous vibration in my head, as if someone were gently tapping it, leading to dizziness.
The effect was even more pronounced for my mother. After reading the book, she began experiencing intense yet subtle vibrations throughout her entire body, similar to the feeling of sitting in an old engine car, the lingering tingling after using a jackhammer, or the sensation of mild electric shock. These vibrations sometimes were so strong that disrupted her sleep. This sensation only began to diminish after a few years.
We still don’t fully understand the cause of the tingling sensation, but suspecting it might be akin to the "explosion" U.G. describes. It’s as if the Qi/Energy in the body becomes stuck, unable to flow freely, and tries to vibrate its way through. Once smooth the flow, the vibrations gradually subsided.
U.G. Krishnamurti grew up in a relatively well-off family with a decent education. However, his burning desire for soul searching has led him to an uneasy journey of life. After he departed with his wife and children, he arrived in London penniless and began roaming the city. For three years, he lived idly in the streets. It is not the easy days, in his view, "no heroic struggle with temptation and worldliness, no soul-wrestling with urges, no poetic climaxes, but just a simple withering away of the will." It took 49 years before he finally arrived at the state of awakening, or the natural state.
The Natural State
U.G. coined the term "natural state," which is a precise description of the state of awakening, compared to terms like Enlightenment. Buddhists described it as “reaching the other shore.” However, there’s no here or there, this or that—only here. As U.G. described, “No, for goodness sake, I am on the same bank. There is no river to cross and no boatman is necessary!”
It's like the Chan/Zen saying: “Dispel the clouds, and the sun reveals itself,” or the water purification process. The pureness of the water is the natural state of the water; you can pollute the water, but you can never truly take away the pureness of the water. The natural state is always there—awakening is simply about removing the impurities and obstructions that prevent you from seeing it. It's not something you received or achieved; it's something you already have.
When I use the term natural state it is not a synonym for enlightenment, freedom or God-realization and so forth, not at all. When the totality of mankind's knowledge and experience loses its stranglehold on the body, the physical organism, then the body is allowed to function in its own harmonious way. Your natural state is a biological, neurological and physical state.
However, it is a paradigm shift, a profound transformation in perception and perspective, which makes this state difficult to articulate. Paradoxically, once you arrive at it, you realize it has nothing to do with what you previously imagined or expected—because you've had to drop all beliefs and expectations to reach this point. The realization dawns that "here" has always been inside of you, yet we were unable to find it since we were busy looking outward.
It's something like you imagine New York. You dream about it. You want to be there. When you are actually there, nothing of it is there. It is a godforsaken place and even the devils have probably forsaken that place. It's not the thing that you had sought after and wanted so much but totally different.
To return to the natural state, we purge everything from our system, much like Chan master Wumen’s saying, “It's like swallowing a hot iron ball—extremely uncomfortable, compelling you to purge everything out of your system.” This process is about clearing out all the accumulated beliefs and delusional thoughts that obstruct our true nature.
This flushing out of everything good and bad, holy and unholy, sacred and profane, has got to happen. Otherwise, your consciousness is still contaminated, still impure. During that time, it goes on and on, there are hundreds and thousands of them. Then, you see, you are put back into that primeval, primordial state of consciousness.
The tremendous peace that is always there within you that is your natural state. Your trying to create a peaceful state of mind is in fact creating disturbance within you. You can only talk of peace, create a state of mind and say to yourself that you are very peaceful, but that is not peace, that is violence. There is no use in practicing peace or reason to cultivate silence. Real silence is explosive. It is not the dead state of mind that spiritual seekers think. That doesn't mean anything at all. This is volcanic in its nature. It's bubbling all the time—the energy, the life—that is its quality.
The natural state is an effortless state. Yet, paradoxically, many attempt to achieve this effortless state through effort. For example, certain forms of Buddhist meditation, such as Zhiguan (止觀) or Samatha-vipassana, seek to replicate the natural state or the state of Chan by focusing attention on the serenity or tranquility of awareness, making a deliberate effort to maintain a meditative state. While this meditation practice may occasionally spark a profound spiritual experience, bringing about what Buddhists call wisdom (Bodhi). Those temporary experiences do not represent the true permanent natural state.
This state is just the functional activity of life. By life I do not mean something abstract but the life of the senses functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive. Thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them and uses them to give continuity to itself.
Your movement of thought interferes with the process of touch just as it does with the other senses. Anything you touch is always translated as hard, soft, warm, cold, wet, dry and so on. Without this thought process there is no body consciousness, there are only isolated points of contact, impulses of touch which are not tied together by thought. So the body is not different from the objects around it. It is a set of sensations like any others. Your body does not belong to you.
Every time a thought is born, you are born. When the thought is gone, you are gone. But the you does not let the thought go and what gives continuity to this you is the thinking. Actually, there is no permanent entity in you, no totality of all your thoughts and experiences. You think that there is somebody who is thinking your thoughts, somebody who is feeling your feelings. That's the illusion. I can say it is an illusion but it is not an illusion to you.
I personally don’t have the sensations as intense as U.G. experienced, but I can relate to the burning and ash part as I went through the spiritual experience in deep meditation a few times. The first time was summer in New York, I left a job and spent about a month and half reading U.G.’s books and meditating on a hammock while enjoying the summer breeze or lying on my bed.
U.G. went to extraordinary lengths in letting go of typical features of the brain, even during his waking hours. Thus, him experiences sensations that are typically only encountered in altered states of consciousness.
Living in the present or full awareness is romantic hogwash
The pursuit of continuous thoughtless, pure awareness or an ever-present focus on the moment is a common misconception. The end of thoughts is the end of life. Striving for a state of thoughtlessness is merely an act of thought repression.
Awakening doesn’t mean the absence of thoughts, but rather freedom from the thoughts that disturb you. Troubling thoughts are often driven by underlying beliefs or emotional states. By dismantling these beliefs or addressing the root causes of unsettling emotions, we free ourselves from self-disrupting thoughts and feelings.
The natural state is not a thoughtless state. That is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated for thousands of years. You will never be without thought. Being able to think is necessary to survive but in this state thought stops choking you. It falls into its natural rhythm.
Some spiritual practices emphasize achieving thoughtlessness, while some focus on maintaining an uninterrupted awareness of the present moment by constantly monitoring every thought and feeling. Mistaken continuous awareness as the meditative state of Chan (禪定) or state of awakening.
When you succeed in your imagination that you have controlled your thoughts and experienced some space between those thoughts, or some state of thoughtlessness, you feel that you are getting somewhere. That is a thought-induced state of thoughtlessness. The fact that you experience the space between two thoughts, the thoughtless state, means that the thought was very much there.
To describe that state as a meditative state full of awareness is romantic hogwash. Awareness—what a fantastic gimmick used to fool themselves and others. You can't be aware of every step. You only become self-conscious and awkward if you try.
A central aspect of certain Buddhist practices is the deliberate effort to sustain a continuous stream of awareness (citta-santāna, 心相續, 念念相續) aimed at preventing delusional thoughts from arising. However, the attempt to exert full control over one's thoughts at every moment can quickly become mentally exhausting.
It is not possible for you to watch your thoughts. It is not possible for you to watch every step you take, it will drive you crazy. You can't walk. That's not what is meant by this idea that you should be aware of everything, watch every thought. How is it possible for you to watch every thought of yours, and for what do you want to watch your thoughts? What for, control?
Chan's text, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, states,
If past, present, and future minds continuously follow one another without interruption—it is called bondage. If the mind does not cling to anything in these thoughts, then there is no bondage
若前念今念後念，念念相續不斷，名為系縛；於諸法上，念念不住，即無縛也。
You may move in and out of a meditative state, but you do not move in and out of the natural state. Once you have crossed that finish line, you are always in the natural state—living in the present effortlessly, even if your mind occasionally drifts into the past or future during daydreams. The natural state is not something you maintain through effort; it is simply your true nature, ever-present and unbound.
There is nothing to be achieved, nothing to accomplish. Here there is no need to sit in special postures and control your breath. Even while my eyes are open, in fact no matter what I am doing, I am in a state of moksha. The knowledge you have about moksha is what is keeping you away from it. Moksha comes after the ending of all you have ever known, at death.
The experience of natural state might be similar to spiritual experience, but spiritual experience is temporary experience. As they come, so do they go, a transient experience. On the contrary, awakening is a permanent state and timeless.
Natural state has no relationship whatsoever with the religious states of bliss and ecstasy.
Bliss, ecstasy, holiness, and unity are thought-induced states of being.
Expansion of consciousness is nothing, but you give so much importance to that. Drugs will make it a lot easier than all these meditations and yogas.
In fact, psychedelics will get you there in no time.
In the Chan teaching from The Platform Sutra:
Non-attachment is called meditation of Chan. Once understood, then walking, standing, sitting, and lying down are all meditation.
不憶一切法，乃名為禪定。若了此言者，行住坐臥皆是禪定。
Non-attachment means letting go of the beliefs that keep you trapped in illusion, yet you still exist within a physical body, thus you’ll continue with preferences, habits, and certain behaviorals patterns. These aspects remain even as you detach from illusion. We’ll explore this further in another article.
Spiritual experiences
Spiritual experiences can be extraordinary, offering profound insights and fresh perspectives on life, but they are ultimately just that—experiences, much like eating ice cream or having sex—fleeting and temporary. In contrast, awakening, or entering the natural state, is a profound and permanent shift, often leading to changes on both cognitive and physiological levels. U.G., for instance, underwent substantial transformations, including a sensation of going through death and a series of physical calamities. And it took three years for his body to fall into a new rhythm of its own.
All kinds of funny things happened to me. I remember when I rubbed my body like this, there was a sparkle, like a phosphorus glow, on the body.
It's an irreversible change. There's no question of you going back. It is like a nuclear explosion. It shatters the whole body. It is not an easy thing. It is the end of the man, such a shattering thing that it blasts every cell, every nerve in your body. I went through terrible physical torture at that moment.
I no longer spend time in reverie, worry, conceptualization and the other kinds of thinking that most people do when they're alone. My mind is only engaged when it's needed, for instance when you ask questions, or when I have to fix the tape-recorder or something like that. My memory is in the background and only comes into play when it's needed, automatically. When it's not needed there is no mind here, there is no thought; there is only life.
Unless there is a demand for knowledge about what I am looking at, there is no separation, no distance from what is there. There is a kind of clarity.