Rob Couteau
The Cantankerous Krishnamurti
In the spring of 1983, my friend Jonathan invited me to a lecture by Jiddu Krishnamurti, the author of numerous tracts on spirituality such as the First and Last Freedom and The Only Revolution. Although Jiddu was widely published, I knew of his writing only secondhand, as it were, through the lavish praise that Henry Miller had bestowed in an essay published in The Books in My Life:
There is a name I have withheld which stands out in contrast to all that is secret, suspect, confusing, bookish and enslaving:
Krishnamurti….
Out of a perversity deeper than all Satan’s wiles, man refuses to acknowledge his own God-given rights: he demands deliverance
or salvation by and through an intermediary; he seeks guides, counselors, leaders, systems, rituals. He looks for solutions which
are in his own breast….
It must be revolting at times to answer all the petty, stupid questions which people are forever putting to him. Emancipate yourself!
he urges. No one else will, because no one else can. This voice from the wilderness is, of course, the voice of a leader. But
Krishnamurti has renounced that role too.
We entered the Felt Forum and slipped into a pair of seats about a hundred feet to the left of the stage. Jonathan explained that, unlike many other gurus past and present, Krishnamurti disavowed allegiance to any particular religion, philosophy, or nationality. Instead, he devoted himself to his writing, to his travels, and to cultivating audiences both large and small.
“At the age of twelve,” he continued, “Jiddu was raised by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, prominent figures in the Theosophist movement. They were convinced that he was fated to become their next leader, an avatar of the Lord Maitreya. But about twenty years later, Krishnamurti turned the tables on them and he set out on his own.” Jonathan added that he regarded Jiddu as a sort of spiritual anarchist.
While absorbing all this, I couldn’t help but wonder if Jiddu maintained any lingering resentment over having sacrificed those precious years of adolescence, which were ripped away by his “mentors” who’d insisted upon initiating him during such an impressionable age.
Glancing around the theater, which was filling to its capacity of five thousand, I was impressed by how markedly different the scene was from certain rock ‘n’ roll shows that we’d attended in this same venue a decade before, when we were still teenagers. Instead of marijuana streaming back and forth and a buzz of youthful restlessness filling the air, thousands of well-wishers were patiently awaiting their guru with a respectful, reverential silence.
At the precise stroke of the hour, Krishnamurti slowly approached the stage. Instead of a flamboyant spectacle of rock stars prancing under flashing strobe-lights, there was only the slightly stooped but regal silhouette of a diminutive elderly man dressed in a three-piece suit. He slowly ambled toward center stage as a thunderous applause echoed across the cavernous space.
Krishnamurti momentarily paused to survey the scene. I was struck by his arching black eyebrows and the crown of snow-white hair that was brushed back from a large forehead. His hooked nose and pursed lips, shaped into an expression of disdain, lent him the appearance of an eagle swiveling its head before diving down and ripping the heart from its prey. Yet, even at the ripe age of eighty-seven, there remained something childlike about his open regard and beaming, dreamy eyes despite a series of deeply engraved lines that etched his wizened façade and marked him with the imprint of a weary knowledge. Thus, upon first impression, he effused an intriguing combination of distinctive contrasts.
An Indian physician named Deepak Chopra was also seated in the audience that day. Three decades later, in a memoir titled Brotherhood, he made special note of the confrontational quality of Krishnamurti’s talk. As Deepak recalls, Jiddu’s opening gambit was: “Who are you clapping for? Perhaps for yourselves?” And he remarks that, throughout this lecture, his belligerent tone “was challenging to the point of being abrasive.”
But in my recollection, it was even more intensely heated than that. For over the next two hours, every word uttered by Krishnamurti was laced with molten anger and shaped by a bubbling rage: one that only barely managed not to fully erupt. It was as if he were holding out a palmful of diamonds wrapped in a silk handkerchief; but before carefully selecting one and handing it over, he wanted to remind the recipient that these jewels had been plucked as the result of an enormous labor. They were a product not only of blood and sweat but also of hunger, malnutrition, and death.
“Here, look closely,” he seemed to be saying. “Although I can appraise this for you, once I hand it over, no matter what I say, you’ll never know it’s true value, because you yourself weren’t down there in that mine, risking life and limb, knee-deep in muck and slime, and forced to carry on while your comrades were falling like flies all around you. Here, take it. But don’t forget: you’re a worthless little fool who doesn’t deserve the handkerchief that it’s wrapped in. But that’s my job: to hand over treasures to morons like you. So, there’s nothing I can do about it – except to surrender it with a sneer of contempt.” In keeping with his style of seemingly incongruous opposites, this scathing diatribe was also delivered in a sonorous, melodic timbre: one resembling a reed instrument oscillating playfully in a warm Indian breeze. Jiddu’s presentation encompassed everything from man’s relationship to God to the loneliness of the spiritual desert, and all of it articulated in the most precisely worded, carefully considered, somber and serious manner. Then he glanced at a pocket watch that dangled from a chain in his suit, and he opened the floor to questions.
The first “seeker” in the audience was foolish enough to shout out: What is the meaning of life? Without a pause, Krishnamurti unloaded his full artillery. Twisting his face into an even darker, grumpier mask, he evinced the hauteur of an irate English barrister. With an impeccable British accent, Jiddu castigated this lost lemming, harshly bellowing: “What an idiotic question! Why should I have to sit here and listen to such ridiculous blabber?” With a vehement huff, he added: “Don’t you realize that I have better things to do than respond to such nonsense?”
Jonathan and I turned to each other and burst out laughing. Thanks to our sardonic sense of humor, we found it hilarious and au point. But the rest of the audience just sat there in mute silence, shocked and stunned by Jiddu’s flinty style.
But besides appreciating this “school of hard knocks” approach, I could also feel Krishnamurti’s pain. I imagined that his was the discontent of an intelligent man surrounded by nincompoops. As Henry Miller so presciently remarked, “It must be revolting to answer all the petty, stupid questions that people are forever putting to him.” Perhaps, we were also witnessing the festering rancor of a young boy who hadn’t felt strong enough to escape the Theosophical yoke that had been forged to bind him when he was only twelve. But once he escaped, I’m sure that Jiddu never again let his guard down. He would have done well for himself on the hardscrabble streets in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn; and I’m certain that, had he been raised there, he would have experienced far more joie de vivre. Maybe this explains the palpable anger that crested so beautifully that afternoon, just three years before his death.
Krishnamurti was living proof that the ego must not only be “transcended.” It must also be defended daily: from the inane onslaught of meaninglessness that’s so often embodied in lost souls who gravitate around a bright light and seek – often inadvertently – to extinguish it. Maybe that’s what he was referring to when, moments before he died, he proclaimed that no one had understood his true message and that the fireball of spiritual energy that had gathered round him and had fueled his quest would be dissipated upon his passing, thus preventing the possibility of imposters usurping the throne. The most that anyone could hope for, he added, was to merely “live the teaching”: to gain a certain limited proximity to this force and to an inkling of the truth it had engendered.
Despite harboring such a remarkably elevated assessment of himself, nothing that Jiddu said that day left any lingering impression of profundity upon me. When he finished his lecture, I realized that I’d gained far more spiritual wisdom from contemplating a work of art than from anything a guru had ever uttered in my presence. Perhaps what they were after simply wasn’t amenable to words; or maybe they intentionally cloaked their message or watered it down for the inchoate masses. But at least Krishnamurti had kindled a fire in his belly – or a big enough pebble in his shoe – and had succeeded in upending everyone’s expectations.
There is a name I have withheld which stands out in contrast to all that is secret, suspect, confusing, bookish and enslaving:
Krishnamurti….
Out of a perversity deeper than all Satan’s wiles, man refuses to acknowledge his own God-given rights: he demands deliverance
or salvation by and through an intermediary; he seeks guides, counselors, leaders, systems, rituals. He looks for solutions which
are in his own breast….
It must be revolting at times to answer all the petty, stupid questions which people are forever putting to him. Emancipate yourself!
he urges. No one else will, because no one else can. This voice from the wilderness is, of course, the voice of a leader. But
Krishnamurti has renounced that role too.
We entered the Felt Forum and slipped into a pair of seats about a hundred feet to the left of the stage. Jonathan explained that, unlike many other gurus past and present, Krishnamurti disavowed allegiance to any particular religion, philosophy, or nationality. Instead, he devoted himself to his writing, to his travels, and to cultivating audiences both large and small.
“At the age of twelve,” he continued, “Jiddu was raised by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, prominent figures in the Theosophist movement. They were convinced that he was fated to become their next leader, an avatar of the Lord Maitreya. But about twenty years later, Krishnamurti turned the tables on them and he set out on his own.” Jonathan added that he regarded Jiddu as a sort of spiritual anarchist.
While absorbing all this, I couldn’t help but wonder if Jiddu maintained any lingering resentment over having sacrificed those precious years of adolescence, which were ripped away by his “mentors” who’d insisted upon initiating him during such an impressionable age.
Glancing around the theater, which was filling to its capacity of five thousand, I was impressed by how markedly different the scene was from certain rock ‘n’ roll shows that we’d attended in this same venue a decade before, when we were still teenagers. Instead of marijuana streaming back and forth and a buzz of youthful restlessness filling the air, thousands of well-wishers were patiently awaiting their guru with a respectful, reverential silence.
At the precise stroke of the hour, Krishnamurti slowly approached the stage. Instead of a flamboyant spectacle of rock stars prancing under flashing strobe-lights, there was only the slightly stooped but regal silhouette of a diminutive elderly man dressed in a three-piece suit. He slowly ambled toward center stage as a thunderous applause echoed across the cavernous space.
Krishnamurti momentarily paused to survey the scene. I was struck by his arching black eyebrows and the crown of snow-white hair that was brushed back from a large forehead. His hooked nose and pursed lips, shaped into an expression of disdain, lent him the appearance of an eagle swiveling its head before diving down and ripping the heart from its prey. Yet, even at the ripe age of eighty-seven, there remained something childlike about his open regard and beaming, dreamy eyes despite a series of deeply engraved lines that etched his wizened façade and marked him with the imprint of a weary knowledge. Thus, upon first impression, he effused an intriguing combination of distinctive contrasts.
An Indian physician named Deepak Chopra was also seated in the audience that day. Three decades later, in a memoir titled Brotherhood, he made special note of the confrontational quality of Krishnamurti’s talk. As Deepak recalls, Jiddu’s opening gambit was: “Who are you clapping for? Perhaps for yourselves?” And he remarks that, throughout this lecture, his belligerent tone “was challenging to the point of being abrasive.”
But in my recollection, it was even more intensely heated than that. For over the next two hours, every word uttered by Krishnamurti was laced with molten anger and shaped by a bubbling rage: one that only barely managed not to fully erupt. It was as if he were holding out a palmful of diamonds wrapped in a silk handkerchief; but before carefully selecting one and handing it over, he wanted to remind the recipient that these jewels had been plucked as the result of an enormous labor. They were a product not only of blood and sweat but also of hunger, malnutrition, and death.
“Here, look closely,” he seemed to be saying. “Although I can appraise this for you, once I hand it over, no matter what I say, you’ll never know it’s true value, because you yourself weren’t down there in that mine, risking life and limb, knee-deep in muck and slime, and forced to carry on while your comrades were falling like flies all around you. Here, take it. But don’t forget: you’re a worthless little fool who doesn’t deserve the handkerchief that it’s wrapped in. But that’s my job: to hand over treasures to morons like you. So, there’s nothing I can do about it – except to surrender it with a sneer of contempt.” In keeping with his style of seemingly incongruous opposites, this scathing diatribe was also delivered in a sonorous, melodic timbre: one resembling a reed instrument oscillating playfully in a warm Indian breeze. Jiddu’s presentation encompassed everything from man’s relationship to God to the loneliness of the spiritual desert, and all of it articulated in the most precisely worded, carefully considered, somber and serious manner. Then he glanced at a pocket watch that dangled from a chain in his suit, and he opened the floor to questions.
The first “seeker” in the audience was foolish enough to shout out: What is the meaning of life? Without a pause, Krishnamurti unloaded his full artillery. Twisting his face into an even darker, grumpier mask, he evinced the hauteur of an irate English barrister. With an impeccable British accent, Jiddu castigated this lost lemming, harshly bellowing: “What an idiotic question! Why should I have to sit here and listen to such ridiculous blabber?” With a vehement huff, he added: “Don’t you realize that I have better things to do than respond to such nonsense?”
Jonathan and I turned to each other and burst out laughing. Thanks to our sardonic sense of humor, we found it hilarious and au point. But the rest of the audience just sat there in mute silence, shocked and stunned by Jiddu’s flinty style.
But besides appreciating this “school of hard knocks” approach, I could also feel Krishnamurti’s pain. I imagined that his was the discontent of an intelligent man surrounded by nincompoops. As Henry Miller so presciently remarked, “It must be revolting to answer all the petty, stupid questions that people are forever putting to him.” Perhaps, we were also witnessing the festering rancor of a young boy who hadn’t felt strong enough to escape the Theosophical yoke that had been forged to bind him when he was only twelve. But once he escaped, I’m sure that Jiddu never again let his guard down. He would have done well for himself on the hardscrabble streets in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn; and I’m certain that, had he been raised there, he would have experienced far more joie de vivre. Maybe this explains the palpable anger that crested so beautifully that afternoon, just three years before his death.
Krishnamurti was living proof that the ego must not only be “transcended.” It must also be defended daily: from the inane onslaught of meaninglessness that’s so often embodied in lost souls who gravitate around a bright light and seek – often inadvertently – to extinguish it. Maybe that’s what he was referring to when, moments before he died, he proclaimed that no one had understood his true message and that the fireball of spiritual energy that had gathered round him and had fueled his quest would be dissipated upon his passing, thus preventing the possibility of imposters usurping the throne. The most that anyone could hope for, he added, was to merely “live the teaching”: to gain a certain limited proximity to this force and to an inkling of the truth it had engendered.
Despite harboring such a remarkably elevated assessment of himself, nothing that Jiddu said that day left any lingering impression of profundity upon me. When he finished his lecture, I realized that I’d gained far more spiritual wisdom from contemplating a work of art than from anything a guru had ever uttered in my presence. Perhaps what they were after simply wasn’t amenable to words; or maybe they intentionally cloaked their message or watered it down for the inchoate masses. But at least Krishnamurti had kindled a fire in his belly – or a big enough pebble in his shoe – and had succeeded in upending everyone’s expectations.
