Talk:U. G. Krishnamurti

Ultimate Reality or Truth
I had a hard time parsing this [second from top] statement: "Although necessary for day to day functioning of the individual, in terms of the Ultimate Reality or Truth he rejected the very basis of thought and in doing so negated all systems of thought and knowledge in reference to It".

I would substitue: "U.G. asserted that the process of thought, although necessary for day to day functioning of the organism, is, by nature, opposed to life".

That is still not necessarily readable. But perhaps an iteration of improvement.

OTOH: I think the author just left out a comma, so: "Although necessary for day to day functioning of the individual - in terms of the Ultimate Reality or Truth - he rejected the very basis of thought, and in doing so [strove to negate / negated] all systems of thought [and knowledge in reference to It.]" probably is best.

(Just hate to see such a problematic paragraph at the top of what I think is a fairly important page.)

Thanks baxrob (talk) 04:45, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The phrase "the Ultimate Reality or Truth" is at odds with UG. It was added in july 2010. It's a conventional interpretation, pressing UG back into well-established thought-forms. I've undone this addition.  Joshua Jonathan   -  Let's talk!   07:12, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Parveen Babi
The article has no mention of famous Bollywood star Parveen Babi, who was a follower of UG. Parveen Babi was on the cover of Time Magazine. In "Parveen Babi on UG", on Parveen Babi's wikipedia page, she describes UG as a Perfect human being. This must be cited in the Article on UG, as it helps us to understand UG from Babi's perspective. Babi's article sheds light on the life of UG and indirectly on her own.

Original research
I have recently reverted some contributions made by, and reverted again when they reinstated despite me having tried to explain what was going on. CorrectKnowledge added all sorts of statements that appear to be their interpretation of what Krishnamurti meant by things that he said. You cannot do that - it is original research, especially given the high level of thinking that is required in philosophy. In addition, the citations were poor and included many comments such as "Derived from ..." which are simply not how we do things here. It wouldn't matter if CorrectKnwoledge was an expert on philosophy and/or Krishnamurti, we have policies for a reason. - Sitush
 * Link to my revert. - Sitush (talk) 19:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Give me an example from content edited by me other than the one I didn't undo. Again I used the phrase "derived from", but that doesn't mean I interpreted. Besides, my sources and comments on that page are more credible than anyone else. — CorrectKnowledge (talk) 19:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Being "more credible" is insufficient. They have to be reliable and your style of citing was not great (including the "Derived from" stuff - just name that source, with page number etc as appropriate + a quote if you think it necessary). Saying things such as "U.G. denied the existence of an individual mind." and sourcing it to "Derived from the following line in the first chapter of Mind Is a Myth: Disquieting Conversations with the Man Called U.G., "Our mind--and there are no individual minds, only mind--which is the accumulation of the totality of man's knowledge and experience, has created the notion of the psyche and evolution". and "Derived from the following line in Part II of 'Courage to Stand Alone',"There's no such thing as your mind or my mind". is plain wrong in terms of how we operate here. His writings are a primary source and you have interpreted what he meant, presumably by also reading around the subject, which is original research. - Sitush (talk) 19:49, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I understand you have a problem with the phrase "derived from", this can be corrected. But lets looks at this once again. I wrote "U.G. denied the existence of an individual mind." and then referenced it with "Derived from the following line in the first chapter of Mind Is a Myth: Disquieting Conversations with the Man Called U.G., "Our mind--and there are no individual minds, only mind--which is...". Now according to me both the source and the statement are okay, there is no Original Research. From the source it is very clear why I wrote the statement. Now what is your problem with this.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 19:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you actually reading my comments thoroughly? Have you read WP:PRIMARY, an article which I have now linked to twice in messages to which you have responded? Find a secondary source and we'll be ok, but honestly we cannot have people quoting bits directly from philosophers in this manner. Philosophers are high-thinkers who usually develop their ideas over many years and we are not qualified to interpret what they say. - Sitush (talk) 20:00, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * First, I am a student of philosophy. There are no books about books on U.G., all you have is his conversation with various people. Whatever I wrote he emphasized again and again, therefore, I can quote more sources but all of them would still be from his conversations. I have researched him enough. Now can you please undo your edit and I'll get rid of all the 'derived froms' and quote more appropriately according to rules of wikipedia. Btw, I placed those quotes from U.G. there just to make verifying what I wrote easier.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 20:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Being a student of philosophy does not over-ride our policies etc. If there are no independent sources then there should be no statements. - Sitush (talk) 20:14, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Most statements on this page are without any secondary or primary source. In any case wikipedia policy does permit the use of primary sources if they are handled carefully to "make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source". I made sure that my statements were verifiable and straightforward and to this end I also gave quotes herein. Please read my previous message where I have given an example of this and self-revert your edits.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 20:22, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It does require specialist knowledge. It demands knowledge of the entire corpus of Krishnamurti's work in order to ascertain whether, for example, his opinion changed over time. - Sitush (talk) 20:53, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That is why I gave two sources for the statement above. I don't get where you are hung up, read his entire corpus then, I have. A simple statement from him quoted by me has become such an issue when the whole article is either unreferenced or is built on primary references. You are being disingenuous here. The meaning of what he said requires no interpretation, it is as clear as it gets. I have met the wikipedia policy regarding primary sources mentioned above.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 21:02, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Personal knowledge is not a satisfactory measure of verifiablity. If there are other problems with the article then feel free to fix them. That some allegedly exist has no bearing on the contribution that we are discussing. - Sitush (talk) 21:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Where is the question of personal knowledge? I have met the criteria of wikipedia policy for primary sources. Since, U.G's work has no copyright his quotes can be placed here directly if you don't like those in my language. But if you are waiting for a research paper or book that makes an analysis on his work on philosophy of the mind, it might never happen. U.G., luckily for us, did not use high sounding statements. His views were simple and required no previous background in philosophy. So you decide, whether we place direct quotes or my version of those.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 21:14, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyright is not an issue if the thing is quoted, attributed etc and is not of excessive length. No problems there, and so we can agree on something! Everything else that you say is your opinion, which is valid on a talk page in the manner that you express it but makes little difference with regard to our policies. If research papers etc are unlikely to appear then there may in fact be grounds for contesting the notability of U.G., although I for one would not go down that road. We are WP:NOT a dictionary of quotations and therefore you cannot merely quote him. Equally, we are not a repository of original research and do generally require a certain standard of coverage. I think that this debate between the pair of us has pretty much run its course. Feel free to continue it, obviously, but unless others contribute over the next few days I think that it may be necessary for us to seek a third opinion. I may br wrong, after all. - Sitush (talk) 00:23, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This article was filled with a lot of quotes, till an editor(Jac16888) felt there were way too many of them and removed most of them. Most of the content in this article is therefore, just a paraphrase of what U.G. said or a statement based on a primary source. U.G. is noteworthy because he was one of very few original thinkers India produced in 20th century. He of course does not fit into the framework of contemporary philosophy, which is why there will never be any research on him. Nevertheless, he deserves a wikipedia page. I know, we seem to be going around in circles, but I still think you should revert your undo and let other editors judge or improve upon my content and references. The section I added was not only the best referenced part of the page, it was also an important part of U.G.'s philosophy of mind. And he was quite consistent with his statements regarding this throughout his lifetime.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 01:03, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Which part of your comment is in compliance with our policies? He has an article because he is apparently notable - discussed in multiple, independent reliable sources etc - but if those sources do not deal in depth with his philosophy then we cannot make statements about that philosophy. It seems to me rather presumptuous to say that no research will be conducted in future. We are an encyclopedia, not a repository for essays etc. As you have pointed out, it looks like it may need further pruning. The revert is in the history and is linked at the top of this thread - any interested contributor can see the information and comment upon it. - Sitush (talk) 10:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There is no point in discussing whether U.G. is noteworthy or not unless you plan on placing this article for deletion. I would say most of the books mentioned in the article are secondary sources since they contain author's views on U.G., even if for the most part they contain conversations with him. U.G.'s lectures like 'first and last talk...' and 'swan song' are primary sources. However, the books I referred to are not. I am not looking to restore my content as it is, but I think people are justified here in using books such as 'Mind is a myth..' and 'Courage to stand alone' as sources.CorrectKnowledge (talk) 12:16, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Just butting in: this qualifies as original research, lest there was any doubt about it. Drmies (talk) 20:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem described above challenges Wikipedia's policies and maybe the policies simply cannot cope with that challenge. I'm a newbie here (on WP) but having boned up on U G it is awkward to read this comment (above) " but if those sources do not deal in depth with his philosophy then we cannot make statements about that philosophy." I'm sure many would agree that U G had NO set philosophy and certainly not a philosophy that could be examined in depth.  In simple terms, he repeatedly negated common ideas about the value of thought... I don't write that for discussion purposes but because I think the U G page could manage and even capitalise on the above dispute by actually mentioning that discussion about U G's thoughts, ideas, arguments etc. is (or appears to be) inherently destined to produce paradoxical statements and polemical debates, given that many of his thoughts, ideas and arguments dealt with their own hollowness and were mere attempts to highlight illusions stemming from all sorts of human thoughts, ideas and arguments.  There is a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7qLZFWAgQ8) of him describing his conversation (and, one might imagine, all conversation) as the barking of a dog.  The back-and-forth debate on this Talk page in which adversaries try to resolve the value of his words illustrates this barking-dog aspect of human mentation and iteration very well and it is not coincidental that it is on U G's page, IMHO.  I don't intend to flatter or insult anyone here... simply to move forward our understanding (or lack of) U G.  It's for someone else to decide how to add this into the main page. AnotherPath (talk) 10:14, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Usage of first name
Why in this article is he referred to as U.G and not U. G. Krishnamurti? It seems odd. For example, U.G was born on July 9, 1918 or In 1939, at age 21, U.G. met with renowned spiritual teacher blah blah. Why is his first name used in the article instead of U. G. Krishnamurti or Krishnamurti? If you read other articles in Wikipedia it usually uses the full name or last name. For example,in Brad Pitt's article it says While struggling to establish himself in Los Angeles, Pitt took lessons from acting coach blah blah or Pitt's onscreen career began in 1987, with uncredited parts in the films blah blah. It does not use his first name Brad, when describing things. Using the first name only does not seem very encyclopedic. Is there a reason for only using this guys first name?--98.87.89.184 (talk) 19:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * As the lead of the article says "He was unrelated to his contemporary Jiddu Krishnamurti, although the two men had a number of meetings. To avoid confusion he was usually referred to as "U.G"". Besides, Krishnamurti is his first name, Uppaluri Gopala is his surname. The region where U.G. Krishnamurti hails from, surnames are abbreviated and added before first names. Correct Knowledge  «৳alk»  03:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Death
My clear understanding was that, although he was with a few friends 'at the end', he actually died alone, they having left the room for a few minutes.Tinytim0101 (talk) 08:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there a reference that supports your statement? The current content in the section is based upon this article from The Hindu. Correct Knowledge  «৳alk»  08:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Louis Brawley, in his book Goner, basically a recount of his time knowing UG, said that UG asked, or more implied that everyone should leave the room so he could "slip away". I have the book as an Ebook if I should source this somehow. 73.186.32.97 (talk) 22:35, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

UG K and medication
The article mentions that UG never took medication.

But:

“During that time (I call it the 'incubation') all kinds of things were happening to me inside — headaches, constant headaches, terrible pains here in the brain. I swallowed I don't know how many tens of thousands of aspirins”

Excerpt From U. G. Krishnamurti The Mystique Of Enlightenment Dr. Narinder Sharma Azrozet (talk) 17:27, 4 March 2020 (UTC)