You are affected by everything around you

UG Krishnamurti

There are certain glands. This I have discussed so many times with doctors who are doing research into the ductless glands. Those glands are what the Hindus call 'chakras'.

These ductless glands are located in exactly the same spots where the Hindus speculated the chakras are. There is one gland here which is called the 'thymus gland'. That is very active when you are a child -very active -they have feelings, extraordinary feelings. When you reach the age of puberty it becomes dormant -that's what they say.

When again this kind of a thing happens, when you are reborn again, that gland is automatically activated, so all the feelings are there. Feelings are not thoughts, not emotions; you feel for somebody. If somebody hurts himself there, that hurt is felt here -not as a pain, but there is a feeling, you see -you automatically say ‘Ah!’

This actually happened to me when I was staying in a coffee plantation: a mother started beating a child, a little child, you know. She was mad, hopping mad, and she hit the child so hard, the child almost turned blue. And somebody asked me 'Why did you not interfere and stop her?' I was standing there -I was so puzzled, you see. 'Who should I take pity on, the mother or the child?' -that was my answer -'Who is responsible?'

Both were in a ridiculous situation: the mother could not control her anger, and the child was so helpless and innocent. This went on -it was moving from one to the other -and then I found all those things (marks) on my back. So I was also part of that. (I am not saying this just to claim something.) That is possible because consciousness cannot be divided. Anything that is happening there is affecting you -this is affection, you understand?

There is no question of your sitting in judgment on anybody; the situation happens to be that, so you are affected by that. You are affected by everything that is happening there.

Q: In the entire universe?

UG: That is too big, you see. Anything that is happening within your field of consciousness. Consciousness is, of course, not limited. If he is hurt there, you also are hurt here. If you are hurt, there is an immediate response there. I can't say about the universe, the whole universe, but in your field of consciousness, in the limited field in which you are operating at that particular moment, you are responding -not that you are responding.

And all the other glands also here There are so many glands here; for example, the pituitary -'third eye', 'ajna chakra' they call it. When once the interference of thought is finished, it is taken over by this gland: it is this gland that gives the instructions or orders to the body; not thought any more; thought cannot interfere. (That is why they call it that, probably. The literal meaning of ajna is command. I'm not interpreting or any such thing; perhaps this gives you an idea.)

But you have built an amour, created an amour with this thought, and you don't allow yourself to be affected by things, since there is nobody who uses this thought as a self-protective mechanism, it burns itself up. Thought undergoes combustion, ionization (if I may use your scientific term). Thought is, after all, vibration. So, when this kind of ionization of thought takes place, it throws out, sometimes it covers the whole body with, an ash-like substance.

Your body is covered with that when there is no need for thought at all. When you don't use it, what happens to that thought? It burns itself out -that is the energy -it's a combustion. The body gets heated, you know. There is tremendous heat in the body as a result of this, and so the skin is covered -your face, your feet, everything -with this ash-like substance.

That's one of the reasons why I express it in pure and simple physical and physiological terms. It has no psychological content at all, it has no mystical content, it has no religious overtones at all, as I see it. I am bound to say that, and I don't care whether you -accept it or not; it is of no importance to me.

This kind of a thing must have happened to so many people. I say this happens to one in a billion, and you are that one in that billion. It is not something that one is specially prepared for. There are no purificatory methods necessary, there is no sadhana necessary for this kind of a thing to happen -no preparation of any kind. The consciousness is so pure that whatever you are doing in the direction of purifying that consciousness is adding impurity to it.

Consciousness has to flush itself out: it has to purge itself of every trace of holiness, every" trace of unholiness, everything. Even what you consider 'sacred and holy' is a contamination in that consciousness. It is not through any volition of yours; when once the frontiers are broken -not through any effort of yours, not through any volition of yours -then the floodgates are open and everything goes out. In that process of flushing out, you have all these visions.

It's not a vision outside there or inside of you; suddenly you yourself, the whole consciousness, takes the shape of Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Mohammed, Socrates -only those people who have come into this state; not great men, not the leaders of mankind -it is very strange -but only those people to whom this kind of a thing happened.

One of them was a colored man (not exactly a colored man), and during that time I could tell people how he looked. Then some woman with breasts, flowing hair -naked. I was told that there were two saints here in India -Akkamahadevi and Lalleswari - they were women, naked women. Suddenly you have these two breasts, the flowing hair -even the organs change into female organs.

But still there is a division there -you, and the form the consciousness has assumed, the form of Buddha, say, or Jesus Christ or God knows what -the same situation: 'How do I know I am in that state?' But that division cannot stay long; it disappears and something else comes. Hundreds of people -probably something happened to so many hundreds of people.

This is part of history - so many rishis, some Westerners, monks, so many women, and sometimes very strange things. You see, all that people have experienced before you is part of your consciousness. I use the expression 'the saints go marching out'; in Christianity they have a hymn 'When the Saints Go Marching In'. They run out of your consciousness because they cannot stay there any more, because all that is impurity, a contamination there.

You can say (I can't make any definite statement) probably it is because of the impact on the human consciousness of the 'explosions' of all those saints, sages and saviors of mankind that there is this dissatisfaction in you, that whatever is there is all the time trying to burst out, as it were. Maybe that is so -I can't say anything about it.

You can say that they are there because they are pushing you to this point, and once the purpose is achieved they have finished their job and they go away -that is only speculation on my part.

Excerpted from The Mystique of Enlightenment