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
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