Jiddu Krishnamurti 1895-1986
Biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti
The teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti can be found in books, films, university courses, workshops, progressive schools that he started, and a dynamic foundation that bears his name. As of 1990, his works have been translated into forty-seven languages, including Swahili; through them his influence is felt worldwide. His ideas, which revolved around the centrality of individual consciousness free from the programmed filters of religion and culture, attracted people as varied as George Bernard Shaw, Greta Garbo, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Albert Einstein, Alan Watts, Jackson Pollock, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Christopher Isherwood and Charlie Chaplin.
Krishnamurti saw a world that was rapidly degenerating and disintegrating, where there is no sense of morality, where nothing is sacred, and where people do not respect each other. He sought to explain the nature of thought that created this condition. In his book The Network of Thought, Krishnamurti pointed to the continuing threats of war and ecological destruction and stated:
"You cannot any more think as Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Moslems. We are facing a tremendous crisis which the politicians can never solve because they are programmed to think in a particular way. Nor can scientists understand or solve the crisis; nor yet the business world, the world of money. The turning point, the perceptive decision, the challenge, is not in politics, in religion, in the scientific world. It is in our consciousness."
Krishnamurti was born in May 1895 in a small town in South India near Madras. As the eighth child of a Brahmin family and a boy, he was called Krishnamurti in honor of Sri Krishna, a Hindu divinity who was also born an eighth child. Krishnamurti's father, a civil servant, later moved to Madras with his four sons.
At the age of eleven, the young Krishnamurti was "discovered" on a beach by C.W. Leadbeater of the Theosophical Society. Popular in the early 1900s, this was an international organization concerned with the betterment of mankind through study of the world's various metaphysical, religious and philosophical teachings. It was led by Annie Besant, a noted English parliamentarian, writer, and promoter of Indian emancipation. Because he was perceived to possess extraordinary spiritual qualities (his physical beauty didn't hurt either), Krishnamurti was chosen to be the “vehicle of the Lord” Maitreya, who, according to Buddhist tradition, comes to earth every 2000 years as the "World Teacher". In 1911 the Theosophical Society brought the fifteen-year-old to England, where he was privately educated under the guidance of Annie Besant in preparation for the "Coming". But his life took a different turn.
In 1922, Krishnamurti established his lifelong home in California's Ojai Valley. Under a tree in an oak grove there, he would talk informally with people who were drawn by his ideas. As the years went by, thousands would assemble on the annually designated May weekend for his outdoor talks. These gatherings have continued after his death.
In 1929 Krishnamurti made a dramatic break with the organization which had sponsored him and began to emerge as one of the 20th century's most iconoclastic and influential teachers. He repudiated not only all connections with organized religions and ideology, but denied his own spiritual authority as well. Travelling constantly, he also rejected ties to any country, nationality or culture. Although he wrote and lectured widely, he accepted no fees for his talks, nor royalties on his books and recordings.
"Truth is a pathless land", he proclaimed, and set out to offer his vision of love, spiritual integrity and perfect freedom."The speaker", as he called himself, also questioned the pre-eminence of thought in today's technological world, emphasizing unencumbered observation and questioning as the keys to perception and problem solving. This quality of attention to "what is", to the actual thing itself, is at the core of his work.
Krishnamurti's aim was to set humanity free. He maintained that the individual is freed by becoming aware of his/her own psychological conditioning, and that this awakening will enable him/her to give love to another. "If you want to spread these teachings", he went on to say, "live them, and by your life you will be spreading them".
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