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Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Choice-less Awareness.
Hope you all had a great time during New Year.
Let’s begin 2023 with one of the most interesting case study ever. I was first inclined to write about the Horoscope of Jiddu Krishnamurti but upon research, I found that there are lots of discrepancies and confusions around his birth details.
Wikipedia shows him as born on 12th May, 1895 at Madanapalle, India but then there are various other sources which claim different birth details and some of them even quote a different year of birth. These discrepancies can be found here - https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Krishnamurti,_Jiddu under Source Notes section.
Under these circumstances, I am unable to rely on any given data and I won’t talk about Krishnamurti’s chart. But still I would like to write about couple of interesting aspects of his life.
1. First interesting thing about J Krishnamurti is that he was groomed to be the new world teacher, an advanced spiritual position in the theosophical tradition, by leaders of Theosophical Movement; i.e. Charles Leadbutter and Annie Besant.
2. The story goes like this – “In April 1909, Krishnamurti first met Charles Webster Leadbeater, who claimed clairvoyance. Leadbeater had noticed Krishnamurti on the Society's beach on the Adyar river, and was amazed by the "most wonderful aura he had ever seen, without a particle of selfishness in it."Ernest Wood, an adjutant of Leadbeater's at the time, who helped Krishnamurti with his homework, considered him to be "particularly dim-witted". Leadbeater was convinced that the boy would become a spiritual teacher and a great orator; the likely "vehicle for the Lord Maitreya" in Theosophical doctrine, an advanced spiritual entity periodically appearing on Earth as a World Teacher to guide the evolution of humankind.
“Krishnamurti was nurtured by the Theosophical Society in Adyar. Leadbeater and a small number of trusted associates undertook the task of educating, protecting, and generally preparing Krishnamurti as the "vehicle" of the expected World Teacher. Krishnamurti (often later called Krishnaji)[17] and his younger brother Nityananda (Nitya) were privately tutored at the Theosophical compound in Madras, and later exposed to an opulent life among a segment of European high society as they continued their education abroad. Despite his history of problems with schoolwork and concerns about his capacities and physical condition, the 14-year-old Krishnamurti was able to speak and write competently in English within six months. Lutyens says that later in life Krishnamurti came to view his "discovery" as a life-saving event. When he was asked in later life what he thought would have happened to him if he had not been 'discovered' by Leadbeater he unhesitatingly replied "I would have died.
“During this time Krishnamurti had developed a strong bond with Annie Besant and came to view her as a surrogate mother. His father, who had initially assented to Besant's legal guardianship of Krishnamurti was pushed into the background by the swirl of attention around his son. In 1912 he sued Besant to annul the guardianship agreement. After a protracted legal battle, Besant took custody of Krishnamurti and Nitya. As a result of this separation from family and home Krishnamurti and his brother (whose relationship had always been very close) became more dependent on each other, and in the following years often travelled together.
“In 1911 the Theosophical Society established the Order of the Star in the East (OSE) to prepare the world for the expected appearance of the World Teacher. Krishnamurti was named as its head, with senior Theosophists assigned various other positions. Membership was open to anybody who accepted the doctrine of the Coming of the World Teacher. Controversy soon erupted, both within the Theosophical Society and outside it, in Hindu circles and the Indian press”.
Later, “Krishnamurti dissolved the Order during the annual Star Camp at Ommen, the Netherlands, on 3 August 1929. He stated that he had made his decision after "careful consideration" during the previous two years, and that:
“I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path. ... This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.”
3. Now, this is so interesting that J Krishnamurti was groomed to be the next world teacher or we can say in popular terms that J Krishnamurti was groomed to be an Enlightened One. Common understanding is that such experiments are bound to fail because we can’t even teach someone the most generic things if he doesn’t want to be taught. So, we can forget about grooming or conditioning someone to be enlightened.
4. But the thing is that this experiment proved to be successful. J Krishnamurti actually became world teacher and many people including Osho accepted him as an enlightened one.
5. What this shows that this unique experiment was done on the right person. J Krishnamurti was anyways spiritually evolved and may be would have become a world teacher anyways. Charles Leadbutter and Annie Besant had just become the vehicles or mediums for him. If not them, then any other person would have become the vehicle for J Krishnamurti.
6. But then what eventually happened was bound to happen with any enlightened one. You cannot keep them under cages, no matter how beautiful that cage is. No matter how beautiful you name it or present it, J Krishnamurti – as an awakened one – was bound to dissolve the Order of the Star in the East (OSE) because an enlightened one is not run by any Order and he doesn’t belong to East or West, rather he belongs to the whole existence.
7. Another point which is very interesting from the lives of J Krishnamurti and Osho is that they both admired each other and still criticized each other. It just shows that how strong is an enlightened one. We regularly see that how often and easily people or even so-called Gurus get offended by little bit of criticism of their ways/methods/teachings etc. It is a sign of weak person. An enlightened one will never be offended by anything. As Osho says – “If your sentiments get hurt by my words then it only proves that you have weak sentiments. Only a weak thing gets hurt so easily.”
8. Finally, I will end this post with Osho’s quotation “….truth cannot be organized, love cannot be organized- it is not politics."
Hope this helps. Thanks,
SPB
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