Jiddu's Journey: Truth is a Pathless Land

By Deborah Richards

In 1909 Charles Leadbeater, the leading member of the Theosophical Society, came across a young Brahmin boy on a beach in Adyar in Tamil Nadu. The elderly British cleric believed that the boy was special and would become the next avatar, the new messiah, who'll lead humanity into a new age. Jiddu was fourteen then. On 3 August 1929, Jiddu Krishnamurti was to be proclaimed the Head of an organisation formed in 1911 named the Order of the Star in the East… …Also the day when he was to give the world the words that were to reverberate through time. Truth is a pathless land. It cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. Jiddu's Journey is a penetrating prelude to the life of the most eloquent philosopher of our times-his compelling aphorism, his timeless vision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wisdom Tree Publishers
• Release date: Apr 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9788183283144

Deborah Richards

Deborah Richards has degrees in Psychology, Fine Art and Business Studies and lives on the east coast of the UK with her family. In the past she has visited India on many occasions when her husband worked out of Bangalore. And, she says, she became captivated by its magic. When not writing, Debbie spends her time painting nature and (occasional) portraits. Jiddu's Journey is her interpretation of the legend's life story.

Book preview

The world has been touched by the magical philosophy of two luminaries by the same name Krishnamurti—Jiddu and UG. Though Jiddu was Krishnamurti’s family name, we have chosen to call the book Jiddu’s Journey to elucidate the fact that this book captures the evolution of a phenomenon that the world came to know as Jiddu Krishnamurti.

© Deborah Richards, 2012

Cover and page x, photograph courtesy: www.j-krishnamurti.org/

Copyright for original letters: p30 Mary Lutyens, The Years of Awakening, London: John Murray, 1975.

p51-52 Archives of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai, original letter K & R Archives, Ojai, California.

p84-85 Judgement by Justice Blackwell of the High Court of Madras 1913, ref. Pupul Jayakar, J. Krishnamurti: A Biography, London: Arkana, 1986.

p85 Archives of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai. Original K & R Archives, Ojai, California.

First published 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior permission of the author and the publisher.

ISBN: 978-81-8328-314-4

Published by

Wisdom Tree

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Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002

Ph.: 23247966/67/68

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Printed in India

Contents

Preface

1. Jiddu Krishnamurti

2. Pilgrimage

3. The Beach

4. Mrs Annie Besant

5. Vampires

6. The Coronation

7. Twin Lakes

8. The Great War

9. Love in Paris

10. Kundalini

11. The Final Initiation

12. The Storm

13. Truth is a Pathless Land

Postscript

Preface

Idiscovered Jiddu Krishnamurti when I was doing research in meditation. This book tells the story of what happened to Krishnamurti during his formative years as a child and teenager. It ends just after his most famous speech ‘Truth is a Pathless Land’ which sets out the main principles of his religious and philosophical beliefs which he never strayed far from throughout the rest of his life. As such I hope this book gives some insight into how Krishnamurti’s belief structure developed.

I am a practising Catholic and appreciate the mystic tradition of the Christian church. Mysticism resonates with me because I see visions, mostly religious, and I often wonder about all the fuss that surrounds the visions of the saints because I see them too. I had a vision of an angel about six years ago—a swirling cloud of tiny white lights that surrounded me and sang to me in a high voice like music—but I didn’t understand what it was saying. I talked to a medium who thought the best way to discover its meaning was to learn to meditate. So I did and I found the answer.

Meditation opened the passage between my subconscious and my conscious mind and the visions continued with full-blown experiences, containing more than one sense coming at a rate of about two a year with many smaller incidences in between. They are like lucid dreams which I am capable of experiencing when I am wide awake and standing in church, but sometimes they offer insight which I hope comes from the Divine. I also became sensitive, seeing shadows, flat lights and other things that I now dismiss as ‘astral wildlife’ because I don‘t believe they were ever human. Some are tiny and some are massive, all impossible to communicate with. But I digress.

I commenced researching meditation and eastern religions to get some answers to questions about ghosts, spirits and the afterlife that the Catholic Church assiduously avoids talking about but is perfectly well aware of. I researched the subject intensely and this led me to the prolific writings of Charles Leadbeater which are available online. He was a leading member of the Theosophical Society in the early twentieth century in India. The Society had an esoteric wing which promoted occult beliefs in the existence of the astral plains and evolved beings, who they believed ran the universe. The Society still exists.

In 1909 Charles Leadbeater saw Krishnamurti playing on a beach at Adyar with his brother and on looking at his aura—as Charles was a medium—he was astonished to see that it had no selfishness. Charles believed the boy was special and would become the next avatar, the new messiah.

Charles Leadbeater mentioned Krishnamurti in several places in his writings and how the boy was being trained by the Theosophical Society for his coming role as a leader of a new world religion, but I could see that it entailed Krishnamurti giving up his body to be possessed by an evolved spirit which they called Lord Maitreya. Part of Krishnamurti’s training was a western education and the gradual erosion of his Brahmin culture. I couldn’t believe what they were doing to this boy. I knew I was reading it out of context, with twenty-first century sensibilities, plus a healthy dislike of colonialism, but I am a mother of five children and the thought of grooming a child to give up his body to be possessed by another spirit was abhorrent to me. Krishnamurti seemed to accept it as a great honour, but what was supposed to happen to his consciousness I wondered? Surely the child would be terrified of the process. I had to find out what happened to him.

Krishnamurti was an especially sensitive and spiritual child, who grew in courage and integrity and eventually did become a world teacher, as his mother had always believed he would, but as a philosopher rather than a messiah. This is his story, as I see it.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

(1895-1986)

1

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The lizard had definitely disappeared down the hole. The boy crouched on the dry riverbed and poked a long stick down it. The soil was baked hard and only crumbled when he wiggled the stick vigorously. It was going to be a long job, he decided, settling on his haunches. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the lizard once he caught it. Perhaps just feel its tiny feet on the palm of his hand as its tail hung down his wrist. He’d seen a lizard’s tail poking out of his big brother Sandeep’s mouth when he’d eaten one alive. It was horrible, especially when he crunched it. Or had he fooled everyone by pretending that he did?

No, he’d put this one in his pocket and take it home and keep it in a box in his bedroom. He kept digging, and shifted his weight to one leg to help him peer down the hole better. It was hard to make out a pale brown lizard in a pale brown hole on the side of a pale brown riverbank. It definitely belonged here because it matched. Brahma must have made it at the same time that He made the riverbank. The boy looked at his own arm. It was darker than the pale soil, so perhaps he wasn’t made at the same time.

There was a blinding flash of white light.

The boy looked up. The rocky riverbed led upwards to red sculptured hills all around and, behind them, a charcoal sky with a faint, yellow tinge. There were some wild tamarind trees and a few gulmohar trees by the houses, but not much else at this time of the year when water could only be found at the bottom of deep wells. Two months ago, the trees had been flame red with flowers, but now they were quiet like the earth that was holding its breath, waiting.

He squinted upwards with one eye, the lizard forgotten, to just catch sight of lightning as it ricocheted across the top of the hills. Bang, noise exploded all around him. The first few drops fell, big and wet. They plopped on the ground, sending up little clouds of dust. Krishna stood up and watched them, amazed by the sight of puffs of dust. The drops were falling so hard that when he tipped his head back and opened his mouth they stung his tongue.

The rain had become intense and he was getting very wet but it was warm wet so he didn’t care. He couldn’t go home yet because they’d realise he hadn’t been to school. An orange dog whistled past him, scared of the thunder. It stopped momentarily under a bush and looked back at him with black and white eyes, then ran off.

The water ran down his legs in rivulets, went between his toes and vanished into the pale brown soil, making it dark. The soil was baked so hard that the water ran off the top in rivulets and trickled until it met the cracks and disappeared down them. The rain poured down and water covered everything, leaving no boundary between sky and earth, where the mud melted. Tiny ants sat on a leaf to get away from the water. They spun along a rivulet on their little green boat while a snake twined itself around a tree trunk.

A gush of water came down the hill along the riverbed. The boy watched as it reached his ankles and decided to go home, his clothes transparent with wetness, sticking uncomfortably to him as he walked. He kept his long stick to poke things with and swipe at the dark sky on the way. The neighbours had herded their cattle on to the rooftops.

Reaching the village, he avoided being seen by climbing over the low stone wall and dodged past the great tamarind tree where he’d seen the ghost of his sister sitting on a branch, watching him. She had swung her legs and smiled at him, causing him to nearly faint with fright. He’d run to his mother and clung on to her, burying his face in her soft, warm back, all solid and real, a thick black plait of hair falling down the middle. She’d smelled of spices from the food she’d been preparing.

His mother, Sanjeevamma, had seen her daughter’s ghost too and wasn’t at all afraid. In fact, it comforted her to know the little girl was still around and she would deliberately go and sit in the courtyard opposite the tree in the hope of catching sight of her. His mother was much more psychic than Krishna. She had visions and could see the colours in people’s auras. It gave her a vacant, distant look at times.

Even though their house was very small, Sanjeevamma kept one room holy, the puja room, filled with coloured statues of household gods and flowers and burning incense. It filled the house with the scent of sandalwood.

Krishna’s mother was very conscientious about ritual purification. If a meat-eating British official of Her Majesty’s Government came into the house on business to talk to his father, the diminutive woman would scrub the house from top to bottom and bathe all fourteen children. This was odd really, since there was a photograph of a white woman in the puja room: Mrs Annie Besant, resplendent in Indian clothes, who sat cross-legged on a tiger skin despite her Victorian upbringing. She was a founding member of the Theosophical Society which both Krishna’s mother and father were part of. They even had meetings at their house sometimes. Krishna wondered if she didn’t count because she was vegetarian.

As Krishna slipped through the back door, his little brother saw him.

‘Mamma is very ill today, Krishna. She’s been calling out to you. You’d better go and see her.’

‘Hi, Nitya.’ Krishna wondered what to do with the stick he’d brought back. ‘Here, keep this stick,’ he said to Nitya. Then, he dripped through the house to his mother’s bed. She held out her hand to him.

‘Where have you been all day, Krishna? You really mustn’t miss anymore school—you’ve had so much time off already, and you haven’t had a convulsion for weeks now.’

‘You know I don’t like school, Mamma. The lessons are too hard for me and when I get the answers wrong, the teacher hits me with a leather strap. He says I’m stupid.’ Krishna thought for a minute. ‘The big boys beat me