Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti, was a world renowned figure both in the West and in the East. He was born on May 11, 1895 and died on February 17, 1986. He remains today one of the most important philosophical and spiritual thinkers of the 20th century. In the West he is most commonly classified as a philosopher and an educator. Yet in a very real sense he is not easy to categorize as his unique work is truly trans disciplinary and is not grounded in any particular tradition or school of thought. His singular probing work into the nature and limits of thought and knowledge would touch many fields fromphilosophy to quantum physics to religion. In terms of philosophical questions proper he would have important contributions to make all the way from religion to ethics and even aspects of philosophy of mind. Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in Madanapalle, India on May 11th 1895. Even though “Krishnamurti” is his first name, it is the designation he is most known as. Moreover, he himself would come to refer to himself simply as “K”, which many who read him would come to do too.

çis internationally considered as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He did not subscribe to any school of political, religious, spiritual or philosophical ideology. Jiddu Krishnamurti would point out time and again that we are all human beings first and not reduced to nationality or creed. Jiddu Krishnamurti presented himself not as an authority or expert or guru, but more as a friend. His work is not grounded on intellectual knowledge and as such it does not follow any tradition. His contributions would come from his own free of tradition observations into the human condition and the human mind. Scholars from various fields including science and religion found that his words brought new and valuable understanding on traditional concepts such as truth, freedom, knowledge etc. Jiddu Krishnamurti would face the challenge of engaging with modern scientists as well as psychologists, turning confrontational debates into open-ended dialogues, going with them step by step, discussed their theories and would typically enable them to discern the limitations of those theories.

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born into a very poor family of Brahmins, which however are part of the highest Hindu priesthood caste. Jiddu Krishnamurti was undernourished when by chance he was found and adopted at the age of thirteen by the then widely respected Theosophical Society. They would take over his education and bring him to England to do so. It is in 1909 that he had stumble across CW Leadbeater, one of the heads of the organization, on the private beach of the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, Chennai, India. His father, Jiddu Narianiah, was an official of the British colonial administration and lived with his family in a building next to the base of the Theosophical Society. K’s parents were second cousins, had eleven children in total, of which only six survived. His mother had died when he was only ten years old. Krishnamurti would subsequently be raised under the tutelage of both Annie Besant and CW Leadbeater, leaders of the Theosofical Society at that time, and who saw him as the “vehicle” of “the World Teacher,” whom they had been expecting.

Jiddu Krishnamurti would become a prolific author and a well-known speaker on fundamental philosophical and spiritual subjects but on his way there he would actually publicly renounce to the fame and messiah status that he had earned by being proclaimed the new incarnation of Maitreya Buddha by the Theosophical Society. He would do so as a young man at the age of 34. Indeed, he would disavow all notions of sect, following, method and thus of world teacher and would in this way dissolve the global organization (the Order of the Star in the East) that had been established to support him in that role by the Theosophical Society by making him its head. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s dissolution speech came as a big surprise to many. He had been given a rich and easy life but nonetheless decided to give it all back and proclaim the now famous dictum that “Truth is a pathless land”.

Jiddu Krishnamurti would spend the rest of his life traveling around the world by explaining to people the need to transform themselves through self-knowledge and not relie on any outer authority, including his. He wanted people to existentially question all claims and find out truth for themselves. Jiddu Krishnamurti would always forcefully refuse to play the role of guru, urging instead his readers and listeners to observe the fundamental questions of existence with honesty, persistence and openness. He argued that a fundamental change in society could emerge only through a radical change in the individual and their relationship to the world, since according to him society is the product of interactions between individuals. Indeed, he would also become famous for his proclamation that “We are the world” or “You are the world and the world is you”. Although he was highly sensitive to contemporary issues throughout the sixty years during which he was active and would travel the world extensively, his arguments were rooted in a vision of life and truth beyond the zeitgeist. As such, he would always attempt to transcend all artificial boundaries of religion, nationality, ideology, and sectarian thinking.

Jiddu Krishnamurti would use his time being more of a speaker than a writer, addressing audiences both large and small. It has been approximated that Jiddu Krishnamurti spoke to a greater number of people than any other known figure in recorded history. Indeed, on top of the numerous private meetings with individuals and intellectuals, his public talks would typically include several thousand people, which he held during six decades. He would also, however, be the author of many books, including The First and Last Freedom, with a forward by Aldous Huxley who had encouraged Jiddu Krishnamurti to write, but also The Only Revolution, and The Journal. In addition, a large collection of his lectures and discussions have been published as books and they in fact regularly still are. At the age of 91 he addressed the UN on the issue of peace and consciousness, and was awarded the 1984 United Nations Medal of Peace where upon reception of the prize right after his talk he walked away apparently refusing the award. Jiddu Krishnamurti's last public lecture was held in Madras in India in January 1986, just a month before his death at his home in Ojai, California where he had also founded one of his schools.

The central insight Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy gravitates around is contained within the deceptively contradictory and complex dictum that “the observer is the observed”. What Jiddu Krishnamurti is arguing is that there is ultimately no separation, psychologically speaking, between the observer and the observed but that because of the way we think, we entertain such divisive separation. Indeed, for him there is no observer, only observation. The issue Jiddu Krishnamurti is trying to address is not only that the observer pointlessly attempts to affect what it observes when it takes itself to be fundamentally different from what it observes, hence creating dangerous and problematic distortions, but for Jiddu Krishnamurti there exists an actual possibility of free, liberating perception of the observed when the illusion of the image – the observer – is gone. Such realization would lead him to assert that “To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” It is important to note that serious figures from various fields would become interested in this notion of free perception. David Bohm, renowned quantum physicist, for example, would find such interesting parallels between his own work and Jiddu Krishnamurti’s point that he would seek to meet with him to discuss things further, which they would do during the course of many recorded dialogues over 20 years. David Bohm would state:

What particularly aroused my interest was his deep insight into the question of the observer and the observed. This question has long been close to the centre of my own work, as a theoretical physicist, who was primarily interested in the meaning of the quantum theory. In this theory, for the first time in the development of physics, the notion that these two cannot be separated has been put forth as necessary for the understanding of the fundamental laws of matter in general.

David Bohm would also helpfully comment on Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy and compare it to science itself in its methodology:

Krishnamurti's work is permeated by what may be called the essence of this scientific approach, when this is considered in its very highest and purest form. Thus, he begins from a fact, this fact about the nature of our thought processes. This fact is established through close attention, involving careful listening to the process of consciousness, and observing it assiduously. In this, one is constantly learning, and out of this learning comes insight, into the overall or general nature of the process of thought. This insight is then tested. First, one sees whether it holds together in a rational order. And then one sees whether it leads to order and coherence, on what flows out of it in life as a whole.

Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy ultimately wants to bring about a real transformation in human beings. However, for him this can only be achieved when they free themselves of all authority. Such a change he argued could only happen through a fundamental transformation of what he sometimes referred to as “the conditioned brain”. Indeed according to him neither religions nor atheism or any political ideologies could bring about such a change because they actually perpetuate the conditioning.

According to the analytic philosophy professor Raymond Martin, Jiddu Krishnamurti's thought is quite different from academic philosophy, especially in the analytical tradition. There are, however, at least clear similarities with the Socratic method and the original teaching of Gautama Siddhārtha (the Buddha). According to Raymond Martin, Jiddu Krishnamurti's approach is more like a “guided meditation” than academic philosophy. More importantly in terms of the subject, there is at least one major point of similarity with many thinkers in continental philosophy which remains to be explored more fully. Indeed, both want to question the existence and nature of the subject, while the analytical school of thought needs it for its treatment of ethics. This is not to imply that the analytic approach does not write much about ethics, it does, but it generally does so from concepts of universality and human nature. Analytical philosophers need the subject to anchor their normative ethical conventions, while continental philosophers generally seek to critique such norms and affirm an ethics that comes from deconstructing them in the subject.

Personalities from all fields and persuasions, moreover, report having been influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti: Joseph Campbell, Van Morrison, Bruce Lee, the Dalai Lama would describe him as “one of the greatest thinkers of the age,” and more recently Eckart Tolle and Deepak Chopra as well many others have shown to be inspired by Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy. The famous American novelist and painter Henri Miller would write the following about Jiddu Krishnamurti’s thought and language:

[Krishnamurti’s] language is naked, revelatory and inspiring. It pierces the clouds of philosophy which confound our thought and restores the springs of action. ... He initiated no new faith or dogma, questioned everything, cultivated doubt and perseverance, freed himself of illusion and enchantment of pride, vanity, and every subtle form of domination over others. ... I know of no other living man whose thought is more inspiring.

Not long before Jiddu Krishnamurti died at the age of 91 on February 17 1986 of pancreatic cancer he would ask that no one be designated as his representative and that nobody should be encouraged to claim to be able to speak in his name. Additionally, he asked that his different places of residence do not become places of pilgrimage and that no worship should be developed around his public persona. Jiddu Krishnamurti would leave a large body of literature in the form of audio and video recorded public talks, over one hundred books, discussions with teachers and students, with scientists and religious figures, conversations with individuals, television and radio interviews, as well as letters.