One of the most interesting moments in U.G. Krishnamurti’s early spiritual search came in 1939, when the 21-year-old U.G. met Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvannamalai.
U.G. asked him a very bold question:
“Can you give me enlightenment?”
Ramana Maharshi’s response was:
“I can give it, but can you take it?”
U.G. later remembered the answer as arrogant.
But when I read those words, I am not convinced that arrogance is the only way to understand them.
Ramana may simply have been turning the question back on U.G.:
Are you actually ready for what you are asking for?
That changes the tone completely.
Instead of sounding like:
“I possess enlightenment and can hand it to you.”
the response can be understood more like:
“The real question is not whether it can be given, but whether you are capable of receiving it.”
And then the story becomes even more interesting.
U.G. later recalled thinking to himself:
“If there is anybody in this world who can receive it, it is I.”
That makes the exchange almost ironic.
"U.G. interpreted Ramana’s response as arrogant, yet his own inner reaction was extraordinarily self-assured."
Perhaps Ramana’s response was doing exactly what a good spiritual question often does.
It did not simply provide an answer.
It turned the attention back toward the person asking.
Maybe the real subject of that meeting was not enlightenment at all.
Maybe it was certainty.
And perhaps Ramana’s simple response quietly revealed just how certain the young U.G. already was about himself.
Source Note :
U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) was an Indian thinker known for his radical rejection of gurus, spiritual methods, enlightenment-seeking and organised systems of self-transformation. Although he spent many years searching among teachers and traditions, he later became deeply critical of the entire spiritual search itself.
This exchange is recounted in U.G. Krishnamurti’s later recollections of his meeting with Ramana Maharshi in 1939, when U.G. was 21. The wording varies slightly across retellings, so it is best understood as U.G.’s remembered account rather than a verbatim transcript of the original conversation.
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