Jiddu Krishnamurti, world teacher

Born a poor Brahmin boy in Southern India, Krishnamurti was saved from bad teachers, ill health and probably death by C.W. Leadbeater. Leadbeater, the then famous theosophical clairvoyant, saw Krishnamurti and his brother playing on the Adyar beach (near Madras). He saw something special in the boy and asked to be allowed to raise them. Since the father was poor and a working member of the Theosophical Society, he readily consented to his boys getting a decent English style education.

He was raised by Leadbeater, Annie Besant and other theosophists to see himself as a spiritual teacher. In 1929 Krishnamurti ended 'The Order of the Star of the East', which had been founded with the specific purpose of helping 'the world teacher'.

After this, Krishnamurti went his own way and the Theosophical Society another. Krishnamurti would lecture all over the world.

Krishnamurti was on the one hand very compassionate. On the other quite critical.

His view of relationships was that they were often more based on memory, then on the actual people in it now. He challenged people in relationships to forget about the past and look at each other afresh.

He stressed that most marriages come about because the biological urge to get kids is very strong. This isn't love, it's desire. Only a few relationships passed his test of being so real that they can't be broken by anything. In those cases marriage itself isn't necessary. On other hand most relationships are based on habit, sexual urges and in it people find out how very different they are... how little they have in common.

Krishnamurti on marriage, love and psychological problems

Krishnamurti on Love, relationships and marriage

Love is one of the most basics spiritual concerns people have. Krishnamurti stressed how most of our concern with love is really concern about emotional security. We want to get love, consistently. We are not usually concerned about giving love. The very search for security kills real, spontaneous compassion.

As on many topics, Krishnamurti's discussions on love centre around questions:

Can love be divided into the sacred and the profane, the human and the divine, or is there only love? Is love of the one and not of the many? If I say,`I love you', does that exclude the love of the other? Is love personal or impersonal? Moral or immoral? Family or non-family? If you love mankind can you love the particular? Is love sentiment? Is love emotion? Is love pleasure and desire?

He stressed that to really find out what love is about, we have to let go of the words other people have taught us about love. We have to look afresh and find out for ourselves. The flame of love is something that can't be experienced through words, concepts or clichés.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on love

Jiddu Krishnamurti wasn't just a teacher, he started schools as well. His unique vision on education is closest to Maria Montessori (a theosophist). Usually Krishnamurti schools are also Montessori schools.

"Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or the in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort - this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in."

Jiddu Krishnamurti as a teacher, on education

" Loneliness, with its fear and ache, is isolation, the inevitable action of the self. This process of isolation, whether expansive or narrow, is productive of confusion, conflict and sorrow. Isolation can never give birth to aloneness; the one has to cease for the other to be. Aloneness is indivisible and loneliness is separation. That which is alone is pliable and so enduring. Only the alone can commune with that which is causeless, the immeasurable. To the alone, life is eternal; to the alone there is no death. The alone can never cease to be. "

from commentaries on living, first series, chapter 5

More from Jiddu Krishnamurti on Aloneness and Being Alone

One of the hardest things to deal with in Jiddu Krishnamurti's teachings is his refusal to accept that people will interpret his teachings. He was vehement in warning against this tendency.

As a teacher myself, I have trouble accepting this attitude of his - I feel that one of the things that makes us human is our willingness to share and learn from each other. But this lens is about Krishnamurti, not Katinka Hesselink - so here is his opinion about interpretation, in his words:

If you need a mediator, an interpreter, then you are not seeking truth; what you want is comfort, gratification, and you might just as well take a pill.

(13 Jan 1957 Colombo)

I want to make people .. question the very things they hold most dear and precious ... Examine [what I say] impartially, logically; dissect, tear it to pieces; but do not listen to anyone, listen to your own minds and your own hearts"

(Jan 1930 Star Bulletin p.6)

You seek guides, masters, systems, because you hope that by following them, obeying them, imitating them you will have peace [and] comfort. They are the tricksters who become priests, exploiters, preachers, mediators, swamis and yogis.

(24th Jan 1934 Ojai)

To be capable of learning, the mind must put aside all that it has learnt, which is extraordinarily difficult ... We are in a state of freedom when we want to find out, to understand or discover. That freedom is destroyed the moment we begin to interpret what we discover in terms of our conditioning, our established morality, environmental influences, and so on.

(8th Feb 1959 New Delhi)

When writing about the teachings, can you not state that you are only investigating them? Both you and your readers are going on a voyage of discovery together. Neither of you is exactly sure what exactly K meant by a certain statement. It is good to use words like 'perhaps' and 'probably' because they introduce an element of doubt in the mind of the reader. Sir, if you do that you will not run the risk of becoming a misinterpreter.

(Krishnamurti's advice to authors, as reported in S.Weeraperuma, Krishnamurti as I Knew Him, 1988 p.103)

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