Krishnamurti, Jiddu

views updated

KRISHNAMURTI, JIDDU

KRISHNAMURTI, JIDDU (1895–1986), an Indian spiritual leader, attained fame through his presentation of a unique version of Indian philosophy and mysticism in a charismatic, even mesmerizing style of lecturing that attracted large audiences around the world. Although Krishnamurti taught a philosophy that seemed to border on atheism, it is clear in his authorized biography that throughout his life he was subject to a profound spiritual purgation. This purgation came to be called "the Process" and suggested to those who witnessed it that his "higher self" departed from his body and entered into what appeared to be a transcendent state of consciousness. This state was accompanied at times by severe pain in his head and back. The suffering accompanying this experience occurred only under certain circumstances and did not impede his teaching work. In fact, it was understood to contribute to the exalted state in which Krishnamurti knew the oneness with all life and the unconditioned freedom that he tried—through his continual lecturing and the books, tape recordings, and videotapes published by his organization—to convey to thousands of persons under his influence.

Krishnamurti was born in Madanapalle, a small town in what is now the state of Andhra Pradesh, north of Chennai (Madras). He was of brahman caste. His mother, Sanjeevama, died when Krishnamurti was ten years old. His father, Narianiah, cared for Krishnamurti and his brothers until he retired from government service and was granted permission to move to the estate of the Theosophical Society, located at Adyar, just outside Chennai. This move occurred in January 1909, when Annie Besant was the international president of the Theosophical Society. Her close collaborator was Charles W. Leadbeater, whose clairvoyant powers, he claimed, enabled him to recognize Krishnamurti's potential for spiritual greatness when he observed the boy's aura as he was playing on the beach at the seaside edge of the Theosophical Society estate.

Leadbeater and Besant taught that the Lord Maitreya, the World Teacher, would become incarnate in this age in a manner similar to the way Śri Kṛṣṇa (the Hindu deity) and Jesus had appeared in the world in earlier eras. They taught that the Lord Maitreya was a master residing in the Himalayas in a place described by Leadbeater in a metaphorical and symbolic manner. The Lord Maitreya occupied the office of the Christ or the bodhisattva in the occult hierarchy of masters. Leadbeater and Besant expected that a portion of the consciousness of the Lord Maitreya would occupy an appropriate vehicle to present a teaching that would raise humanity's awareness of unity and lead to a "new civilization." Krishnamurti was a likely candidate to become the vehicle for such a manifestation, but it remained for him to be trained and tested before he could actually take on such a role.

Krishnamurti and his brother Nityananda, usually called Nitya, were understood to have been "put on probation" (i.e., rigorously tested and prepared for spiritual leadership) by a master in the occult hierarchy named Kuthumi on August 1, 1909, when Krishnamurti was fourteen years old. From that time onward Krishnamurti was nurtured and financially supported by a circle of upper-class English and American men and women and was under the scrutiny of the larger group of Theosophists who saw him at public gatherings.

Krishnamurti and Nitya left India in 1911 for their first visit to England. After their return to India, Krishnamurti's father allowed Krishnamurti and Nitya to be taken back to England for education by Besant, signing a document to that effect in 1912. By the end of 1912 Narianiah had filed suit against Besant to regain custody, charging that Leadbeater and Krishnamurti were involved in a sexual relationship. In 1914, after a judgment against her in the Indian courts, Besant won an appeal to the Privy Council in London. Both she and Leadbeater were exonerated from the charges brought by Narianiah. Krishnamurti and Nitya remained in England during this period and were prepared by a tutor for university studies. However, Krishnamurti was not able to pass the entrance examinations and never obtained a university degree, although he studied for many years privately and learned English, French, and some Sanskrit.

From about 1920 on, Krishnamurti's extraordinary gifts as a public lecturer and his independent viewpoint on the spiritual quest became evident. He spoke more and more frequently at gatherings of the Theosophical Society in India, the Netherlands, and North America. At some of these meetings he referred to himself in a way that implied he was speaking as the World Teacher. (Krishnamurti's brother, Nityananda, died of tuberculosis in Ojai, California, on November 13, 1925; Krishnamurti's struggle with the ensuing sorrow was formative of his judgment about the "bondages of the mind.") However, the articulation of his own special teachings alienated him from the inner circle of the leadership of the Theosophical Society, including Besant, Leadbeater, George Arundale, and C. Jinarajadasa, each of whom claimed to have received communications from the masters consisting of instructions for the Theosophical Society that were contrary to Krishnamurti's increasingly independent course. In 1926 Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star, built up by Annie Besant, an organization of about thirty thousand members expecting the World Teacher. Besant's death in 1933 ended Krishnamurti's ties to the Theosophical Society. Krishnamurti was repudiated for some time by leading officials of the Theosophical Society. However, Jinarajadasa's successors to the presidency of the Theosophical Society, Nilakanta Sri Ram and Radha Burnier, sought cordial relations with Krishnamurti.

There was no apparent single turning point in the development of Krishnamurti away from and beyond the confines of the role created for him in the Theosophical Society by his early mentors Leadbeater and Besant. It is undoubtedly true that Leadbeater had a dominating and charismatic personality in his own right. Krishnamurti was the center of an extensive circle of young people who faithfully followed Leadbeater in the work of the Co-Masonic Order and the Liberal Catholic Church and other subsidiary organizations, including the Order of the Star, that provided—and mostly continue to provide—a total way of life for members of the Theosophical Society. Krishnamurti had been appointed a further pivotal figure in the formation of one of these groups, the Bharata Samaj, which offers a reformed Hindu ritual, based on Vedic mantras and traditional ceremonies, for Hindu members and others in the Theosophical Society. Under Leadbeater's direction, Krishnamurti had performed the first public rite of the Bharata Samaj, in effect as its first priest. (Priesthood of women is also allowed in the Bharata Samaj.) One can suppose that Krishnamurti's own internal spiritual dynamic had finally profoundly rejected the complex system of organizations and rituals increasingly promoted by Besant, Leadbeater, and other leaders of the Theosophical Society, as they believed, under the guidance of the masters. There is no other apparent explanation than a matter of temperament on Krishnamurti's part to reject these developments.

Ever afterward, Krishnamurti continued to express the emergence of his spirituality from a type of experience beyond all physical and particularly mental forms. It was the offering of that ultimate abstraction from all the inherited limitations of the million-year-old human brain (that he liked to refer to in evolutionary terms) that was the cause he promoted tirelessly until his death in his ninetieth year. To his most committed followers, it was this radical insight that drew them to try to grasp his teachings. To others in the Theosophical Society and elsewhere, his teaching was incomprehensible. In his later years Krishnamurti sometimes made comparisons between what the Buddha had taught and what he taught, and he also accepted such comparisons. But that seemed to be as far as he would go in defining his status. Pupul Jayakar records the context of these extensive discussions and dialogues in Krishnamurti: A Biography (1986).

Krishnamurti's work as an independent teacher eventually combined two approaches. First, he traveled around the world on a schedule of lectures. In India he spoke often in Chennai and Bombay, and occasionally in Delhi and Banaras. He lectured at Saanen in Switzerland, Brockwood Park in England, and New York City and Ojai, California, in the United States. Second, he founded several schools in the United States, Canada, Europe, and India, where students through high school age are instructed in ways to reduce aggression and to aid in acquiring Krishnamurti's universal insight. In his later life he participated in various dialogues with groups or individuals from the scientific community on the possible connection between his teachings and contemporary theories of, for example, physics. One of the last books he published, The Ending of Time (1985), was cowritten with David Bohm, a professor of theoretical physics at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Scattered throughout the Krishnamurti writings and in the various transcripts of discussions and dialogues are reports of the unusual psychic experiences of Krishnamurti when he was in touch with the source, beyond language or thought or the vacillations of the emotions, that convinced him of the correctness of what he taught. The following passage from Jayakar's biography was given in a dialogue in January 1980 in Bombay and speaks of the certitude Krishnamurti had that he was in touch with that which is beyond all limitations. The reader must judge whether Krishnamurti has succeeded in this and other similar statements in portraying the underlying reality or "emptiness" upon which he tried to construct the language to propose his doctrine of an absolute freedom for himself and humanity as a whole. It is on such a judgment that claims made about Krishnamurti as a World Teacher should be based.

Recently, when I was in Rishi Valley [the location of his school in southern India], a peculiar thing happened. For several nights, one actually touched the source of the energy of all things. It was an extraordinary feeling, not from the mind or brain, but from the source itself. And that has been going on, in Madras and here. It is as though one was totally isolated—if one can so use that word without a sense of withdrawal. There was a sense of nothing existing except "that." That source or feeling was a state in which the mind, the brain, was no longer in operation—only that source was in operation. … So I am extremely careful to see that that thing remains pure. The word pure means clear, unspotted, not corrupted. It is like pure water, distilled water, a mountain stream which has never been touched by human mind or hand. (Jayakar, 1986, pp. 392–393)

From 1968 to 1986 Krishnamurti was involved in an increasingly bitter dispute with D. Rajagopal, Rosalind Rajagopal (D. Rajagopal's divorced wife), and other officials and workers in the company called Krishnamurti Writings, Inc., and in other organizations controlled by D. Rajagopal. Rajagopal had been an associate of Krishnamurti's from the early days of their connection with the Theosophical Society. As the World Teacher—however it was understood—Krishnamurti for many years did not take an active role in the management of the groups that gathered monetary contributions and gifts of properties and undertook to publish his many books. Rajagopal was in charge of most of these enterprises to the extent that he even allocated pocket money to Krishnamurti for expenses while traveling.

When the disputes finally erupted openly, from Krishnamurti's point of view, Rajagopal appeared to have mismanaged the work for his personal gain. Krishnamurti instituted legal proceedings in California, England, and India to recover money, property, and even publication rights to his own books. Rajagopal countersued, and approximately four major legal proceedings with various settlements developed. Krishnamurti severed all ties with Rajagopal 's organizations. In their place he established the Krishnamurti Foundation, which in the early twenty-first century is his designated organization to disseminate his teachings.

It is important to note and even study the issues that were raised in the conflict between Krishnamurti and Rajagopal, because they are representative of the difficulties faced by the successors of a spiritual teacher who try to preserve both the integrity of the teaching and some kind of organization that will guarantee the survival of the teacher's charisma for future generations. Various strategies are in operation, but the most viable seems to be the appointment of someone, or of a group of individuals, who can embody and transmit the charisma. The twelve apostles of Jesus Christ are exemplary of this formula. Krishnamurti did not choose that route of succession and transmission. He seemed to believe that under a kind of corporate banner of his own devising—the Krishnamurti Foundation—his work can continue. The theoretical basis for the analysis of these issues in one of the Hindu systems is in Charles S. J. White's article "Structure and the History of Religions: Some Bhakti Examples" (1978).

Bibliography

Mary Lutyens's biographies, Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening (New York, 1975) and Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment (New York, 1983), were, according to Lutyens, read by Krishnamurti prior to their publication, and their factual contents and interpretations were approved by him. Emily Lutyens, Candles in the Sun (London, 1957) (Mary Lutyens's mother) recounts her relationship with Krishnamurti during the time she and others took charge of his welfare in adolescence and early manhood. The bond between them was one of the closest in Krishnamurti's life.

Krishnamurti's own Krishnamurti's Notebook (New York, 1976) contains firsthand descriptions of "the Process." Alcyone [J. Krishnamurti], At the Feet of the Master (Wheaton, Ill., 2001), has run to more than forty editions since it was first published in 1910. It recounts teachings from the Master Kuthumi that Krishnamurti received during astral projection while asleep and under the guidance of Leadbeater. For an analysis of the esoteric side of Krishnamurti's life experience, as against the often-repeated claims that Krishnamurti completely rejected occultism and religion in general, see Aryel Sanat [Miguel de Sanabria], The Inner Life of Krishnamurti: Private Passion and Perennial Wisdom (Wheaton, Ill., 1999).

Radha Rajagopal Sloss, Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti (Reading, Mass., 1991), by D. Rajagopal's daughter, recounts her long association with Krishnamurti but also criticizes Krishnamurti and justifies her parents' actions. To refute Sloss, the Krishnamurti Foundation published Statement by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America about the Radha Sloss Book "Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti" (1995); Mary Lutyens, Krishnamurti and the Rajagopals (1996); and Erna Lilliefelt, History of the KFA: Report on the Formation of Krishnamurti Foundation of America and the Lawsuits Which Took Place between 1968 and 1986 to Recover Assets for Krishnamurti's Work (1995), which contains much legal documentation. Catherine Lowman Wessinger, Annie Besant and Progressive Messianism, Studies in Women and Religion, vol. 26 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1988), discusses the role of Krishnamurti as the World Teacher promoted by Annie Besant. Pupul Jayakar discusses her personal relationship with Krishnamurti and records his ideas extensively and historically in Krishnamurti: A Biography (San Francisco, 1986). As with much else written about Krishnamurti, this work contains little analytical apparatus to help the reader understand its subject. Charles S. J. White, "Structure and the History of Religions: Some Bhakti Examples," History of Religions 18, no. l (1978): 77–94, discusses the issues surrounding a spiritual leader's succession and the transmission of his or her ideas.