U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

It was as if there was no head for me after that: "Where is my head? Do I have a head or not? The head seems to be there. Where do these thoughts come from?" — this was my question. The head was absent, and only this part was moving around. There was no will to do anything: it was like a leaf blown here, there and everywhere, living a shoddy life. It went on and on and on. Finally — I don't know what happened — one day I said to myself "This kind of life is no good." I was a bum practically, living on the charity of some people and not knowing anything. There was no will — I didn't know what I was doing — I was practically insane. I was in London, wandering in the streets — no place to live — wandering in the streets all night. The policemen always stopped me: "Don't you have a place? We will put you in the nick." So, that was the kind of life I led. Daytimes I would go and sit in the British Museum — I could get a ticket. What to read in the British Museum? I was not interested in reading at all — no books interested me — but to pretend that I was there to read something, I used to pick up a thesaurus of underground slang — the underground men, the criminals — all kinds of slang. I was reading that for some time to spend the day; at night I'd go somewhere. It went on and on and on.

One day I was sitting in Hyde Park. The policeman came and said "You can't stay here. We are going to throw you out." Where to go? What to do? No money — I think I only had five pence in my pocket. The thought came into my head: "Go to the Ramakrishna Mission." That's all, just that thought out of nowhere — maybe it was all my own projection. There was no way for me except wandering in the streets, and that fellow was after me, so I took the tube up to a point until I couldn't go any further. From there I walked to the Mission to meet the Swami. They said "You can't see him now. It is ten o'clock in the night. He won't see you; he won't see anybody at all." I told the secretary I had to see him. Somehow he came. Then I put this scrapbook before him — this was me: my lectures, The New York Times' comments on my lectures, my background. Somehow I had kept that book with me, the scrapbook which my manager had prepared in America. "This was me, and is me now. " Then he said "What do you want?" I said "I want to go into the meditation room and sit there all night." He said "That you can't do. We have a policy not to let anybody use the meditation room after eight o'clock." I said "Then I have no place to go." He said "I'll fix up a room for you. Stay in the hotel tonight, and come back." So I stayed in the hotel. Next day I went there at twelve o'clock, tired. They were eating. They gave me lunch. For the first time I had a real meal. I had lost even the appetite for food; I didn't know what hunger was or what thirst was.

After lunch the Swami called me and said "I am looking for a man exactly like you. My assistant who was doing the editorial work is mentally ill — he has ended up in the hospital. I have to bring out this Vivekananda Centenary number. You are the right man for me to have at this time. You can help me." I said "I can't write anything. Maybe I did editing in those days, but now I can't do anything. I'm a finished man. I can't be of any help in that direction." He said "No, no, no, together we can do something." He was very badly in need of someone with a background in Indian philosophy and everything. He could have had anybody he wanted, but he said "No, no, no, it is all right. Rest for some time, stay here, I'll take care of you." I said "I don't want to do literary work. Give me a room, and I will wash your dishes or do something, but that kind of work I am singularly incapable of." He said "No, no, no, I want that." So I tried to do something; not to my satisfaction, not to his satisfaction, but somehow together we brought out the issue.

He was also giving me money, five pounds, like all the other swamis. For the first time I had five pounds to spend, so, "What to do with this?" I had lost the sense of the value of money because I'd had no money. There was a time when I could write a cheque for one hundred thousand rupees; after some time, not even one paisa in my pocket; now five pounds. "What am I to do with this?" — so, I decided to see every movie in London with that money. I used to stay at the mission and do work in the morning, eat there at one o'clock and go off to a movie. There came a time when I could not find any movie to see. In the London outskirts they used to show three movies for one shilling, or something like that, so I exhausted all the movies and spent all that money.

I used to sit there in the meditation room, wondering at these people meditating: "Why are they doing all those silly things?" By this time the whole thing had gone out of my system. But I had a very strange experience in that meditation center. Whatever it was — my own projection or something — the facts are there: for the first time I felt some peculiar.... I was sitting, doing nothing, looking at all those people, pitying them: "These people are meditating. Why do they want to go in for samadhi? They are not going to get anything — I have been through all that — they are kidding themselves. What can I do to save them from wasting all their lives doing all that kind of thing? It is not going to lead them anywhere." I was sitting there — nothing, blankness — when I felt something very strange: there was some kind of a movement inside of my body. Suddenly I found something was moving: some energy was coming out from the penis and through this (head) as if there was a hole. It was moving like this (in circles) in the clockwise direction, and then in the anticlockwise direction. it was like the Wills cigarette advertisement at the airport. It was such a funny thing for me, but I didn't relate this to anything at all. I was a finished man. Somebody was feeding me, somebody was taking care of me, there was no thought of the morrow, yet inside of me there was some kind of a thing: "It is a perverse way of living. It is perversity carried to its extremity. This is not anything." But yet, the head was missing — what could I do? It went on and on and on. After three months I said "I'm going. I can't do this kind of thing." Towards the end the Swami gave me some money, forty or fifty pounds. Then I decided....

You see, I still had an airline ticket to return to India, so I went to Paris, turned in the ticket and made some money because it was paid in dollars. With this thirty-five pounds I think I had about a hundred and fifty pounds. For three months I lived in Paris in some hotel, wandering in the streets as I had done before. The only difference was that now I had some money in my pocket. But slowly this money disappeared. After three months I decided I must go, but I resisted returning to India. Somehow I didn't want to go to India. Because of my family, the children, I was frightened of returning to India — that would complicate matters — all of them would come to me. I didn't want to go at all; I resisted that. Finally.... I had had a bank account in Switzerland for years and years — I thought I still had some money there. The last resort was to go to Switzerland and take the money out and then see what happened. So I came out of the hotel and got into a taxi and said "Take me to the Gare de Lyon." But the trains from Paris to Zurich (where I had my account) go from the Gare de l'Est, so I don't know why I told him to take me to the Gare de Lyon. So, he dropped me at the Gare de Lyon, and I got into the train going to Geneva.

I landed in Geneva with a hundred and fifty francs, or something to spend. I continued to stay in a hotel though I had no money to pay the bill. After two weeks they produced the bill: "Come on, money! What about the bill?" I had no money. I threw up my hands. The only thing left to me was to go to the Indian Consulate and say "Send me to India. I am finished, you see." So, the resistance to returning to India was finished, and I went to the Consulate and took out the scrapbook: "One of the most brilliant speakers that India has ever produced," with the opinions of Norman Cousins and Radhakrishnan about my talents. The Vice-Consul said "We can't send this kind of man to India at the expense of the Government of India. What do you think? Try and get some money from India, and in the meantime come and stay with me." So, you see, it went on and on and on. There I met this Swiss lady (Valentine de Kerven). She was the translator at the Indian Consulate, but that day she happened to be there at the reception desk because the receptionist was absent or something. We started talking, and then we became close friends. She said "If you want to stay, I can arrange for you to stay in Switzerland. If you don't want to go to India, don't go." After one month the Consulate sent me away, but we managed — she created a home for me in Switzerland. She gave up her job. She is not rich; she has just a little money, her pension, but we can live on this money.