A Tribute To Jiddu Krishnamurti

by   EarthStar

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born at 12:30 A.M. , in the early morning of May 12, 1895, in the small hilltown of Madanapalle. As the eight child he was, in accordance with Hindu orthodoxy, called sri Krishna who had himself been an eight child. The child's horoscope was cast the next morning by Kumara Shrowthulu, a well known astrologer of that region. He told Naraniah (Krishnamurti's mother) that this new son would be a very great man. The astrological chart was complex; the child would encounter many obstacles before he grew to be a great Teacher.

In 1909 Krishnamurti was 'discovered by C. W. Leadbeater. He saw the boy on the beach at Adyar and later he was heard to exclaim that K had the most wonderful aura he had ever seen, without a particle of selfishness in it. Leadbeater persisted that Krishnamurti would one day become a spiritual teacher and a great speaker. When asked "How great? As great as Mrs. Bessant?" Leadbeater replied, "Much greater". During the following years until he was in his mid 30's Krishnamurti was prepared by the Theosophists to be the World Maitreya. This is something he became increasingly uncomfortable with, and began to profess to his closests friends that: "No one can lead you to truth but you yourself."

After a series of profund realisations into the nature of truth and the essential freedom necessary for that truth to flower, K dissolved the "Order of the Star", gave back all the money and the property, and walked away from the organisation saying: "You cannot organise Truth." He denied all 'spiritual authority'. The truth is inside you now, is what he told people. End the inner conflict and you will find it.

He announced: "No man from outside can make you free; nor can organised worship, nor can forming yourself into an organisation . . . Again you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the develpment and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity . . ."

Juddu Krishnamurti from that day on gave talks free to the public, in which there was no authority, no organisation, no religious guru, no leader . . . but an enquiry together into the nature of freedom, truth and to find out what is it that causes any disorder inside oneself. For K the answer to all man's problems lay inside each individual human being, and the resolution of all conflict be it personal or worldwide also lay within. This did not mean that he "accepted" what was happening to the world at large. Indeed he was strongly outspoken about the corruption in all areas of life, and the dangerous accumulation of weapons across the whole globe.

The man Krishnamurti was a complex and fascinating character. He spoke against 'Spiritual Authority', but he showed the greatest respect for those in touch with the mystery, and avocated that each human practice the skills they are given at birth to the highest level. These are some accounts of his interactions with the people around him: "One day, on a walk through the pines, he asked me how I met people. I did not know what he meant, and said so. As we passed a Toda patriach and his daughter, he said again, "How do you meet people? Look at those Todas passing us - that old man with his beard, and the young girl with her striped shawl. What is your response to them?"

. . . . . "Surely, if you want to understand them, you do not see them through your thoughts: Why aren't you just aware of them passively, with alertness? Why are you not sensitive to them?" Later, as we were returning home, he turned to me and said with a twinkle in his eye, "Go and make friends with the trees." (Krishnamurti: A Biography, by Pupul Jayakar)

"One night during dinner, there was a violent thunderstorm with lots of lightning - a real November early summer turbulance in the Southern Hemisphere. We stopped talking to watch. Krishnamurti pushed back his chair, and without a word went out onto the open patio and began to dance in the rain, joyously leaping in the midst of that extraordinary lightning and thunderous storm. It was beautiful to watch a man dancing spontaneously, wildly, and gracefully in nature's violence."

(Truth Is A Pathless Land by Ingram Smith)

"Pick up a leaf," he said. "Look at it - look far to the snow-clad peaks and let the seeing flow beyond and then look in the Japanese way," he told them, which Radhika says is to bend the head and look at the world upside down. On one of the walks Asit recollects Krishnaji speaking of the sign of the cross, "The straight line being the 'I' and the vertical bar, the negation of the 'I'." (Krishnamurti: A Biography, by Pupul Jayakar)

"In the 1930s in Italy he had spent time with the army officer in charge of the training of the Italian Alpine troops in skiing and walking quickly over long distances in snow. He had been shown how to conserve energy, the whole body moving in one poised flow, the arms swinging loosely from the shoulders. Even in his ninety-first year, Krishnaji still walked in this free, austere, poised way. He walked as he did everything else, with attentive highly aware precision." (Truth Is A Pathless Land by Ingram Smith)

In his "Letters to the School" K wrote: "Freedom is the essence of thinking together. You must be free from your concept, prejudice and so on. I also must be free and we come together in this freedom. It means dropping all our conditioning. It implies complete attention without any past. The present world crisis demands that we totally abandon our tribal instincts that have become our glorified nationalisms. Thinking together implies that we totally abandon self-interest identified as the British, the Arab, the Russian and so on . . . Then what is a human being to do facing this danger of separatism, of self interest? I refuse the present pattern of social structures, the nonsensical irreligious ways. So I stand alone. As I am not contributing psychologically to the destructive consciousness of man, I am in the stream of that which is goodness, compassion and intelligence. That intelligence is acting, confronting the madness of the present world. That intelligence will be acting wherever the ugly is." (J. Krishnamurti Letters to the Schools Vol 2)

"We are the whole of mankind, we are the rest of mankind, and when there is suffering, suffering is man's suffering. When you realise this then you have a totally different approach to the problem . . . If one human being understands the nature of suffering and goes beyond it, he helps the whole of mankind."   (J Krishnamurti The World of Peace)

Krishnamurti considered Conflict to be at the heart of all human disorder, the obvious outcome of this conflict being seemingly endless wars. He saw the inner conflict and not the outer conflict as being at the heart of our pain, our separation and our sorrow, firing our division and creating psychological as well as physical violence. That when we fail to deal with our own inner conflict then we simply continue the larger division that is happening across the whole world, and that is now destroying this beautiful home of humanity - Planet Earth.

At Brockwood Park near Bramdean in England he said: "One has to find out for oneself. This doesn't mean that you reject what others say but that you enquire without acceptance or denial. An aggressive mind, a mind tethered to a belief, is not free and therefore it is incapable of enquiry. All this demands intensive enquiry, not acceptance."

"You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple, and there is no teacher outside, no saviour, no master; you yourself have to change and, therefore, you have to learn to observe, to know yourself. This learning about yourself is a fascinating and joyous business." (Truth Is A Pathless Land by Ingram Smith)

Jiddu Krishnamurti 1895 to 1986

KFA.org

The author of this tribute to Krishnamurti began at the age of 15 to read his books, and to study his teachings. She was able to attend the yearly talks held at Brockwood Park, the Krishnamurti school in England, from 1977 until K's death in 1986. She worked for a short time at the school as a helper in the garden and in the schools kitchen. She was staying at the school when Krishnamurti died on February 17, 1986 at Pine Cottage, Ojai in California.

"I recall the sadness everyone felt when they were told that nothing could be done to save Krishnaji from the cancer that was ravaging his body. His death was inevitable. Just before his death I woke up from a powerful dream that morning where I saw all of Brockwood Park, the trees, the hills, the house itself as though from above. I could see everything magnified in detail. I saw a man walking gracefully through the paths and fields, saying goodbye to the places he loved before he left. He was free. Then he left. That day we received the news that Krishnamurti had died.

I recall walking out with tears filling my eyes. "He's dead." I thought in my sadness. In that moment the wind moved an outside door back and forth and I heard a question in my mind: "Who is dead?" The tears stopped and I saw an eternal spiral of Light before me. Only joy and Light. It filled my Heart to overflowing. It’s movement was that of the vortex.

The Kingdom of God is indeed Within, if only we would open our own hearts to this Light, for it is we who have the key, and no one else. The ending of one's own inner conflict is the door to freedom. He once said: "I am merely a mirror. When you see yourself clearly you can throw the mirror away. You are free."

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© 2006 by St.Clair