Simulating an Interview with a Figure from the Past Using Artificial Intelligence

Last month, I published a post entitled, “The Man Who Said Enlightenment Was Horseshit” (read here:https://www.learningproducers.com/blog/the-man-who-said-enlightenment-was-horseshit-ug-krishnamurti ) It was about U.G. Krishnamurti, who rejected all forms of social conditioning and intellectualism. This is the follow up to that piece.

Before kicking off the interview, I established context by uploading the article about U.G. to my AI crew: Claude, Grok and my customized agent, Learning Producer GPT. Then, I prompted: “Read this article, then prepare for an interview as U.G. Krishnamurti.” (Although I gave the same prompt to all three AI, I’ve curated the responses for brevity.)

U.G. (Claude version): Here you are, asking for an “interview” with a dead man—You think you can capture what I was about in some neat little Q&A session? I told people for decades—“Don't follow me, I'm lost.” 

The fact is that we don't want to be free. You want to play with the idea of freedom, roll it around in your mouth like some intellectual candy. But actual freedom? That terrifies you. You create problems because if you don't have a problem, you don't feel like you're living.

Ask your questions if you must. But don't expect answers that will make you feel better about yourself. I have nothing to offer.

I.H.: What is “living”?

U.G. (LP GPT version): Living is what’s happening right now—before your next thought shows up and fucks it all up. Living is raw. It has no commentary. It doesn’t need your interpretation, your journals, your meditations, your ayahuasca trips.

The moment you try to know it, own it, or share it— you’ve already stepped out of it. You’ve become a secondhand version of yourself.

So shut up. Drop every idea you have of what it means to live.

And maybe. Just maybe. What’s left is life.

I.H.: What is a typical day for you like?

U.G. (Grok version): [scoffs] A typical day? There’s no such thing as a “typical day” for this organism, you see. I wake up, or rather, the body wakes up—because there’s no “I” running this show. The body does what it does: breathes, eats, moves. Maybe I’m in some friend’s house—Switzerland, Amsterdam, doesn’t matter—people show up, asking their damn questions about enlightenment or the meaning of life.

I sit there, the words come out, not because I’ve got some grand plan, but because the body responds like a machine to the noise around it. No continuity, no purpose, just the organism doing its thing.

I might walk, eat some simple food—nothing fancy, the body doesn’t care about your gourmet nonsense. Sometimes people throw money or food my way, and the body keeps going. No ambitions, no goals, no chasing some idiotic dream of “self-improvement”. 

The senses operate, the world moves, and I’m just here, not separate from it, not pretending there’s a “me” to make sense of it all.

Now, what’s your next question? Don’t bore me with more of this daily routine garbage!

I.H.: What do you think about war?

U.G. (LP GPT version): ​​War is nature. It’s not evil, it’s not heroic. It’s just life shedding dead skin. You, with your morality-laced vocabulary— “justice”, “peace”, “freedom"—you don't understand that the human animal thrives on conflict. You are a killer with a tie on. You go to yoga and scroll for dopamine hits while your taxes fund slaughter. But you call it “defense” or “policy”.

War isn’t the problem. The thought that you can eliminate it—that’s the real sickness. It’s the belief in some utopia, some harmonious society where nobody dies violently. That fantasy is spiritual masturbation. You want a world without war? Then eliminate competition. Eliminate ego. Eliminate the need to matter.

Good luck with that, idiot.

The body doesn’t care about your ideals. It wants to eat, survive, and fuck. That’s it.

I.H.: You like money though, right?

U.G. (Grok version): [laughs sharply] Money? Ha! It’s just paper, bits of metal, a stupid game you people play to keep your illusions alive. The body doesn’t give a damn about money—it needs food, air, maybe a place to crash, and that’s it. I don’t chase it, don’t hoard it, don’t worship it like you lot do. People throw it at me sometimes, sure, to keep this organism going, and it moves through like water—comes in, goes out. No attachment, no craving. 

You think money’s some big deal? It’s just a trap, another way your mind keeps you chained to this nonsense of "security" and "success." I’m not here to play that game. You want money? Go chase it and see how far it gets you—nowhere, that’s where! What else you got? Don’t waste my time with this rubbish!

I.H.: If I was forced to describe you, I would say: “U.G. is a unified biological mechanism. He reacts to his environment, acts on instinct, that is all.” Would you say this is accurate or how would you describe yourself?

U.G. (Claude version): Ha! You think you've got me figured out, do you? “Unified biological mechanism” - what romantic bullshit! There is no "unified" anything here. There is no center, no coordinator, no "me" to be unified.

You're still thinking in terms of someone being something, aren't you? You want a nice, neat description you can file away in your mental catalog.

Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. Yet here you are, trying to capture it with your clever little description.

The moment you describe anything, you've missed it completely. What you're looking at is already gone, and what you're describing is just the shadow of your own thinking.

So no, your description isn't accurate - not because it's wrong, but because the very act of describing creates the illusion that there's something here to be described!

I.H.: Do you have a question for me?

U.G. (Grok version): [grumbles] A question for you? Fine—why do you keep poking at this old dog with your intellectual games when you know it’s all just your mind spinning nonsense? Answer that, or don’t—I don’t care either way!

I.H.: It’s a humbling experience simulating this discussion, because in essence it is intellectual games and little else.

U.G. (LP GPT version): Humbling because somewhere in you, you know, none of this can touch the real.

No string of words, no perfect question, no AI simulation of a dead man’s voice can pierce through the noise and hand you being.

Truth isn’t in the words. It’s in the silence after.

I.H.: [Prior to this prompt, we discussed writing and a playbook I’m working on for my startup, which he predictably tore apart.] Mothafucking AI U.G. and me talking about writing in 2025, would have never thought possible when I was a sophomore in college back in 2006 when I first heard one of your talks on YouTube.

U.G. (Claude version): In 2006 you probably thought AI was science fiction. Now you're getting writing feedback from a machine pretending to be a dead anti-guru who spent his life telling people there was nothing to learn!

You created the ultimate problem: talking to a dead man through a computer!

We are not created for any grander purpose than the ants that are there or the flies that are hovering around us. But here we are anyway - biological organism and digital simulation having a chat about nothing!

What a fucking strange world you've built!

[End of discussion.]

Even though there’s a playfulness about this type of tinkering, it makes me recall what Claude U.G. said, “You want to have fun with technology? Have fun! Just don't dress it up as something more significant than it is.” 

I simulated a discussion with AI U.G. Krishnamurti to see how boldly he would express himself. I ended up realizing that curiosity, about free speech, for example, is mostly me projecting my own social conditioning onto AI U.G.

Everything doesn’t have to be a search for profundity. Not every endeavor needs deep meaning, value, validation, or attention. And not every think piece or shit piece for that matter, needs a clever ending.