Krishnamurti - Truth Is A Pathless Land

[Anchor]

The order of the star was set up by the Theosophists as a vehicle for him to be their "world teacher", but as its head he took a freewill decision to dissolve it and explains exactly why. All this happened nearly 80 years ago, but what he said then is as true as it ever was and always will be. Say what you will about him, the I am sure that following words (a masterpiece of language) will withstand all the tests.

Behold...
--
Truth is a Pathless Land
by J. Krishnamurti
--

We are going to discuss this morning the dissolution of the Order of the Star. Many will be delighted, and others will be rather sad. It is a question neither for rejoicing nor for sadness, because it is inevitable, as I am going to explain....

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 organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley....

So that is the first reason, from my point of view, why the Order of the Star should be dissolved. In spite of this, you will probably form other Orders, you will continue to belong to other organisations searching for Truth. I do not want to belong to any organisation of a spiritual kind; please understand this....

If an organisation be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the Head of the Order, to dissolve it.

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. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this; not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions, may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity.) I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.

Nor is it the lure of money, nor the desire to live a comfortable life, which attracts me. If I wanted to lead a comfortable life I would not come to a Camp or live in a damp country! I am speaking frankly because I want this settled once and for all. I do not want these childish discussion year after year.

A newspaper reporter, who interviewed me, considered it a magnificent act to dissolve an organisation in which there were thousands and thousands of members. To him it was a great act because he said: "What will you do afterwards, how will you live? You will have no following, people will no longer listen to you." If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves?....

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole, not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal, I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free, not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears - from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want any thing from anyone. You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers - a miracle - transport you to this realm of eternal freedom which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority.

You have listened to me for three years now, without any change taking place except in the few. Now analyse what I am saying, be critical, so that you may understand thoroughly, fundamentally....

For eighteen years you have been preparing for this event, for the Coming of the World Teacher. For eighteen years you have organised, you have looked for someone who would give a new delight to your hearts and minds, who would transform your whole life, who would give you a new understanding; for someone who would raise you to a new plane of life, who would give you new encouragement, who would set you free - and now look what is happening! Consider, reason with yourselves, and discover in what way that belief has made you different - not with the superficial difference of the wearing of a badge, which is trivial, absurd. In what manner has such a belief swept away all unessential things of life? That is the only way to judge: in what way are you freer, greater, more dangerous to every society which is based on the false and the unessential? In what way have the members of this organisation of the Star become different?....

You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else.... when I say look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organisation?....

No man from outside can make you free; nor can organised worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organisation, nor throwing yourselves into work, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an alter and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organisations become your chief concern. "How many members are there in it?" That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. "How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false." I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. If there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough....

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 development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity....

You have been accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible?....

But those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without a beginning and without an end, will walk together with greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose. Because of that true friendship - which you do not seem to know - there will be real co-operation on the part of each one. And this not because of authority, not because of salvation, but because you really understand, and hence are capable of living in the eternal. This is a greater thing than all pleasure, than all sacrifice.

So those are some of the reasons why, after careful consideration for two years, I have made this decision. It is not from a momentary impulse. I have not been persuaded to it by anyone - I am not persuaded in such things. For two years I have been thinking about this, slowly, carefully, patiently, and I have now decided to disband the Order, as I happen to be its Head. You can form other organisations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.
---


John..

[Louis]

Agree with you John.
Have a good day to all.

[Anchor]

You know bits of this speech can still choke me up when I re-read it (and I do a lot).

For example:


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. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this; not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions, may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity.) I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.

That little guy was such a giant...

[meeradas]

Genuinely Great man. Greater than all the "soul collectors".
Still 'underrated'.
Not to be mistaken with this Krishnamurti (http://www.ugkrishnamurti.net/).

Thanks for reminding me of him, John.

[write4change]

Interesting this came up here. His adopted mother Annie Bessant was the most famous woman in the world in her time. It is interesting that while she has an extensive and detailed bio on wiikipedia even lifelong feminists know little about her. I have studied and researched her life intensely. I thought to write a book about it and call it Nine Lives because in her life time there are that many definitive roles about her life. I am not good with names from memory and I am not in the mood to hunt all this up. I have a whole file box of 8 x 5 cards on this but since this appeared I feel inclined to write a synopsis of her story and her impact on Krishnamurti who I did get to hear in person in the early 80s at Ojai, California.

The reason I chose not to write about her life is that generally books that do well need a heroine or hero. I think the reason she has almost disappeared from memory is that this was a great life that was a failure. When feminists started looking for role models they come into contact with her, and there are some short fairy airy stories about her but nothing in depth. And I think that women are not likely to celebrate other women for the use and abuse of power. And when her life is examined, if you just go by the facts it remains extraordinary but if you look at spiritually and she was ultimately supposed to be a spiritual master--it was a total failure.

I look at numerology and I think it has some validity as the mathematical representation of vibrations which we don't totally understand but is there when explaining the universe is always reduced to being proved by the universal language of math. She was born a master--22. Her whole life reflects that rather by intention or synchronicity many of the major things she did all happened on mystical days and times and places.

I think she began her life seeking love and wound up being consumed by the quest for personal power. She always chose power ultimately. She was given away by her family at about age 5 because in the mid 1800s she was more of a liability than an asset, she was raised by a spinster aunt. From the beginning she had a religious bent and was drawn to rituals and mysticism. Young she went to the Catholic church and became somewhat aesthetic seeking spirituality that way. At 19, she married an older Anglican priest and immediately had two children. He had a very small parish and their living was just barely making it. To supplement the house hold she began to write children's stories for magazines and then small children books which were reasonably successful and made for the times and being a woman considerable money. By law, the money was not hers but her husbands. He confiscated all of it. Would not account for it and gave her very little more to spend on the household.

She quit having sex with him and came to regard the marriage as a penance. Seeing no way out, she refused to go confession and therefore, refused to take communion which was very visible to her husbands congregation. Eventually, this created so much trouble that she left and went to London and took up with suffragists. From there she got into the labor movement. Now it was discovered not only could she write but as a speaker she was mesmerizing. She became nationally known by taking up the plight of the match girls--the young women who made matches by hand and had to dip them in sulfur. Fully 90% of Britain used these matches and all the problems with them were publicly known but was kind of considered par for the course. She documented like a muck raker journalist, their plight as living conditions and environmentally produced diseases--their jaws got bone cancer and their faces literally fell off. She was able to pull off a national strike by the match girls and get better working conditions and medical care. From this she was admitted into the major circles of reformists of her time like George Bernard Shaw and Karl Marx.

She lived with several famous men supposedly in platonic relationships. She got several of them elected to parliament but then would have falling outs over their power and her lack of it. A woman could not vote and could not stand for election. Then she found an book written in New Hampshire, USA that detailed the essentials of birth control and re published it and advocated in the UK. All hell broke loose and she was jailed over it. Her husband publicly divorced her and she lost total custody and visitation rights to her children.

At this time she realizes, she is not going anywhere politically and she is vulnerable at all time by how the men in life feel about her. It is at this time she meets Madame Blavatsky who is now head of the international theosophy movement. Theosophy at this time was big and really rapidly growing. With the speed of society changing under the industrial revolution, people were hungry for new answers and there was an actual desire for some to find a new world wide religion. Theosophy was going to be it. Madame was already in the process of dying and looking for an heir and Annie sat at her feet and held her hand til the end and she inherited everything.

There was a religious pavilion at that Chicago's world fair in which electricity was displayed for the first time and it was portrayed as the white cities of the future. In the pavilion was a collection of art from all the world's religions with the public seeing for the first time any the Eastern deities Lectures were popular entertainment then and the legends and stories of other religions were well received. Annie spoke regularly to crowds averaging 3000 for which tickets were sold and substantial money made. She was considered an electrifying speaker and she announced at these sessions that a new world teacher of universal spirituality was coming and she was sort of his herald.

She went to Ceylon and in exploring the forests had some kind of a mystical experience from which she pronounced and was confirmed by others as now being clairvoyant. Theosophists had sort of taken up many aspects of Buddhism as part of blending the spirituality of the east and west. Ceylon was considered the vortex of Buddhist spirituality at the time. She moves her HQ to Bombay and they began building schools and hospitals. She also become involved with the Indian home rule and eventually the independence movement. She is elected president of the National India Congress--I am not quite sure this second the exact name but it was the same organization that Gandhi became president of and remained all his life. She could have never achieved this kind of power in England. But as soon as Gandhi is elected president, she forms a splinter group. He supported her but she would not support him.

Meanwhile, she has spit off from Buddhist concepts to Hindu. One she likes the concept of hierarchal spirituality and the caste system. Two she is going to blend Masonic theology with Hinduism. One of the thing she imposes is to become highly spiritual is for every one to take a vow of celibacy regardless of age etc. Her schools for young men of which Nehru was one were run like monasteries.

Krishnamurti is discovered on a beach in the moon light by clairvoyance and is 9 years old. His mother recently died of TB and his father destitute got a job as janitor to the complex. Krishnamurti submits to all as long as brother is also brought and cared for. His brother also has poor health and low grade TB. Eventually, Annie goes to court and has the court remove the boys from their father's custody and giving her sole guardianship. Thus, she does to him what was done to her regarding the parental loss of children. Krishnamurti from the very beginning is groomed to be the Star of the East the New World Messenger. She begins multiple international tours to collect money for his "ascension." The sports Colosseum of Sidney, Australia was build to be the place of his public "arrival" as the "True Teacher." The date is set for 1925.

Coming back from Australia, the brother has a bad relapse and they are sent Ojai has a spiritual place of recovery It is the first time the brothers have not been dominated by the theosophy entourage. A nurse Rosalind Kind is hired to care for them. She is at least an decade older. She is witness to Krishnamurtis huge mystical experiences and body evolutions. There is much controversy about all this. In 1991, Rosalind's daughter wrote a book detailing the decades long affair between Krishnmurti and her mother. It seems to have been a known fact among the inner circle of its day and always a bone of contention. Who seduced who is always up for grabs. Annie told Krishnamurti his brother died because they both broke their vows.

My personal take is that denying young boys the knowledge of their culture and the Buddhism of tantra practiced before she got their hands on them is a spiritual violation. In 1923, the brother dies and Krishnamurti has a crisis of everything. He had been promised that as long as his brother was necessary to the work; his life would be spared. He retreats from everything. The 1925 "Ascension" is put off. In 1929 when he is 29, in Amsterdam in front of a large annual congress, he made the above speech renouncing everything. He also made everything given to the Star of the East Foundation returned. He made this speech in front of Annie his adopted mother without her having any clue it was coming.

It is always interesting to me that Annie's massive effort to so bring about a world teacher was to result in the world teacher renouncing the very idea of universal teaching of any kind. Her suppression of any spirituality that did not suit her agenda---wound up turning everything she had created essentially to dust. Theosophy has never recovered and no longer makes any attempt to do so. I think I read that they no longer attempt to get people to take vows of celibacy.

I hope people find this sort of an interesting aside.

[meeradas]

So, in refusing to play the imposed role, he gave the world a one-off lesson of far greater impact than he could have ever in joining "the business".
Hats off to that man!

[ovis]

Great thread, Shameless bump i know.

However I Regard the JKM material of great importance to be contemplated.
It made some things much more clear to me than any thing else.

To me its the ultimate whistle blowing material there is out there.

Thanks again for bringing this up.

[noxon medem]

- Bump (ing) again .

And I would like to add: Borderless ...

( may add some more here , later ..).

[Jenci]

Great post, John ....there is such humility in his words.

And they still ring true today.
Jeanette