theos-talk.com

[MASTER INDEX] [DATE INDEX] [THREAD INDEX] [SUBJECT INDEX] [AUTHOR INDEX]

[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: Theos-World Krishnamurti on who are you

Apr 26, 2009 10:30 AM
by Govert Schuller


Dear Sampsa,

Thanks for your perspective. I'll concentrate on one issue. The others are important too, except Osho's view as it is riddled with inaccuracies about K's age and self-perception. 

K imo did not save or reform Adyar with his negation of Theosophy. He threw out the baby with the bath water and inspired others to do likewise. 

Both Scott and Hodson made some perceptive observations on the effect of K's teachings on Theosophists. Both are worth quoting: 

Scott:

Within the last year or two Mr. Krishnamurti, now of world-wide reputation, has been preaching a form of philosophy in which he has depreciated the value of the Masters as Teachers and Guides.(1) The result is that many erstwhile devotees are no longer such, and have, as they imagine, embraced Mr. Krishnamurti's philosophy while all the time they have not been in a position to comprehend it. Although Mr. Krishnamurti himself is fully persuaded that he has attained Liberation and consequently unconditional Joy, many of his devotees show all too clearly by their mien and other insignia that they have failed to follow his example. In fact they were much more at peace when they believed in the Masters than they are now ; for a miscomprehension of a philosophy is almost worse than no philosophy at all.

Through the Eyes of the Masters: Meditations and Portraits, Introduction, pp. 17-18
http://alpheus.org/html/source_materials/scott_anrias/scottintro.html

Hodson:

Against one error I would strongly warn all who listen to Krishnamurti - that is the error of the dog in Aesop's Fable: He let the substance fall in the hope of grasping the shadow.

During the seven or more years of Krishnamurti's later mission I have seen many promising lives rendered tragically fruitless, many hopes destroyed, and many good servants of humanity lost to that service. Under Krishnamurti's influence they have thrown overboard the whole of life's experiences, life's illuminations, and life's understanding. Religion, philosophy, ethics, and even morals - on all these they have turned a scornful back. They have done this in the utterly vain belief that by so doing they will gain some mysterious enlightenment hitherto hidden from them.

I have seen noble-hearted, pure-minded men and women, both young and old, throw over their previous moral restraint, cast aside that discipline of life without which there can be no happiness. I have watched them cease from a service to those less fortunate than themselves, which hitherto had made their lives noble and fruitful. 

All this they do, as they suppose, at the bidding of Krishnamurti.

Krishnamurti may be performing one useful function in the world. By his abuse, his denials, his condemnations, he may force us to put our own knowledge again to the test. But when he publicly declares that the Ancient Wisdom is invalid, poisonous, pernicious; when he affirms that he and he alone is showing to the world the way to truth, then I for one must part company with him.

Krishnamurti and the Search for Light. pp. 38-39
http://alpheus.org/html/source_materials/theosophy/hodson1d.html


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: sampsakuukasjarvi 
  To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 5:18 PM
  Subject: Re: Theos-World Krishnamurti on who are you


  This is indeed a good and important conversation, and we don't have 
  to agree with everything with each other.

  Govert wrote:

  > 2) I agree that K's 'Beloved' can be construed as his higher self, 
  but also as Maitreya's or any other Self, realized like a Master or 
  not realized like ourselves. My understanding is that K had to get to 
  that level to be able to be overshadowed. 

  I think that Aryel Sanat says in his famous book "The Inner Life of 
  Krishnamurti" that theosophists had the problem that they made the 
  Masters too concrete. So sometimes the Masters may be archtypes, 
  sometimes the higher self, sometimes mere astral views. Also Ernest 
  Wood thinks like this in his book "Is This Theosophy?".

  Of course, sometimes the Masters can be real, too. Personally I 
  believe that the Masters were behind J. Krishnamurti, but often not 
  in the manner how theosophists believed. I tend to interpretate like 
  Radha that it was JK's mission through negation to save the TS Adyar 
  from make-believe theosophy. So maybe eventually things went like 
  they were meant to be. The 14 years old boy were lifted to a becoming 
  messiah, and theosophists were attached to outer authorities... This 
  was so crazy and untheosophical that it is hard to believe! I think 
  JK didn't fail at all; he did what he had to do.

  Govert also wrote:

  > 5) Actually another 'entity' involved in K's psychic life was 
  something he called the 'tyrant' or something similar and then in 
  Latin. I have been waiting for 10 years for the collected early works 
  of K to come out to do more research on this, but the project has 
  stalled. Anyway, there is some writing by K in which he described to 
  be egged on by something interior that drove him into full 
  independence. This was not his Beloved and I'm not sure in what time 
  period it was written, though it was around the crucial year of 1927. 
  This might have been his residual lower self that came popping up 
  again and asserted itself against Maitreya and Theosophy and tricked 
  K's soul into re-interpreting and re-calibrating the WT project to 
  its own desires evenwhile convincing others there was no ego left. 
  From that perspective it's either breath-takingly cunning or 
  perplexingly naive how K pulled that off.

  Might this "egging tyrant entity" just be the mental pressure of 
  expectations around him? Osho has some interesting comments. You guys 
  probably know that Osho was pretty critical towards JK's ideas, but 
  he said that JK did very well because he walked out from his cult. 
  Osho said that the imprisonment made JK independent and alert. Osho 
  has got several so called "Krishnamurti Talks".

  "If you ask me I will say one thing: if there had been no 
  theosophical imprisonment for him in his childhood, it would have 
  been difficult for him to become a free man. Annie Besant and 
  Leadbeater and other theosophists created the whole situation -- 
  unknowingly, of course, they were not meaning it. They were trying to 
  do something else. They were creating a dogma around him, a cult 
  around him. And they were so hard upon him that it became really 
  impossible to live in it. He had to get out of it. 

  The credit goes to those people -- Leadbeater and Annie Besant. If 
  the prison had been a little more comfortable, if the prison had not 
  been so hard and if the discipline imposed had not been so arduous, 
  if the ideals had not been so superhuman, if he had not been asked to 
  play a role so unnatural to him, he might have relaxed, he might have 
  accepted it. That's what has happened to you. A Christian remains a 
  Christian because Christianity is no longer a great pressure. On 
  Sunday you can go to the church -- it is a formality. It remains the 
  life of a non-Christian."

  (SNIP HERE)

  "It is so convenient and comfortable that you have become adjusted to 
  it. It looks almost like a good policy, a good compromise. 
  Krishnamurti fell into the hands of a very fanatical group -- 
  theosophists. It was a new religion. Whenever a religion is new, it 
  is very fanatical. By and by, it relaxes and compromises and becomes 
  just a social phenomenon; then it is no more religion. Theosophy was 
  just in its beginning, and Krishnamurti was only nine years old when 
  he fell into the hands of those fanatics. They tried hard. 

  They wouldn't allow Krishnamurti to meet and mix with ordinary 
  children -- no -- because they had a goal that he had to become the 
  world Teacher, JAGADGURU. He had to become the coming-Buddha; he had 
  to become the incarnation of Maitreya. He was not allowed to move 
  with any girl, because he might have fallen in love and the whole 
  dream of the theosophists would have been shattered. He was 
  constantly guarded. He was not allowed to move alone; somebody was 
  always with him, watching him. 

  And he was forced to follow very strict rules: three o'clock in the 
  morning he had to get up and take a cold bath; and then he had to 
  learn Sanskrit and he had to learn French and he had to learn English 
  and he had to learn Latin and Greek -- because a World Teacher should 
  be well cultured, sophisticated. Just a nine-year-old child!

  When he was twelve years old, they started forcing him to write a 
  book. Now what can a twelve-year-old child write? In fact, the 
  teacher, Leadbeater, he was writing in his name. 

  Krishnamurti would write and Leadbeater would correct it and make it 
  perfect. The book still exists. A beautiful book, but you cannot 
  expect it of a boy just twelve years old. It is not from him. Even 
  Krishnamurti cannot remember it. When he has been asked he has 
  said, "I don't remember when I wrote it -- I don't remember at all 
  how it came into being." And they were talking nonsense -- esoteric 
  nonsense: "In his dreams he goes to the seventh heaven, and there God 
  Himself is teaching him.""

  (SNIP HERE)

  He brooded over it: he has become a slave, and they are all do-
  gooders; they have made you a slave because they want to do good to 
  you; and they love you and their love became nauseating; and their 
  well-wishing became poisonous. The whole night he brooded: what is he 
  to do? Whether he has to continue and become part of this nonsense, 
  or get out of it? 

  And blessed he is that in the morning when they had gathered and they 
  were waiting for God to descend in him and to declare that he is now 
  no more Krishnamurti but Lord Maitreya -- Buddha has entered in him --
  he suddenly declined and he said, "It is all nonsense. Nobody is 
  descending in me. I am simply Krishnamurti and I am nobody's Master. 
  And I am not a Jagadguru, not a World Teacher. And I dissolve this 
  nonsense and this organization and the whole thing that has been made 
  around me."

  They were shocked! They could not believe it: "Has he gone mad, 
  crazy?" They had put much hope in him, much money; it was a great 
  investment, years of training. But it was going to be so. If he had 
  been absolutely a dead man, then only would he have accepted it. He 
  was alive. They could not kill his life, that aliveness exploded.
  If he had been a dull, mediocre mind, maybe he would have accepted -- 
  but he has an intelligence, a tremendous awareness. He got out of it. 
  That whole movement and the whole organized thing functioned as a 
  positive challenge.

  As far as I see, nothing can hold you. If you are alert, you will use 
  organized religion as a challenge. If you are not alert, then 
  organized religion or no organized religion, wherever you are you 
  will create an imprisonment around you. You carry it around you -- in 
  your cowardice, in your fear, in your urge to be secure and 
  comfortable."

  Source: from book "The Discipline of Transcendence, Volume 3" by Osho

  http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Life_of_Masters/Jiddu/reason_for_dis
  solving_title_of_jagadguru.htm

  Sorry for long quotes. I just like to add that in spite of all 
  criticism towards them, I think that sometimes CWL and AB are also 
  very useful teachers.

  Sampsa



  

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


           

[Back to Top]


Theosophy World: Dedicated to the Theosophical Philosophy and its Practical Application