J Krishnamurti and the Upanishads

I am still with Mary Lutyen’s beautiful book, Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening.

So far as I know, J Krishnamurti never taught the Upanishads, never gave a lecture on the Upanishads. He did not believe in scriptures or teachers, did not believe in traditions or paths. And yet while going through Mary Lutyens’s book, I was once again reminded of how amazingly close his personal experiences and teachings are to those of the Upanishad seers.

Here is one of the profound, life altering experiences from his early life described in the book. This happened in August 1923, when Krishnamurti was twenty-eight years old. He describes the experience in a letter he wrote to Mrs Annie Besant, his adopted mother, two days after the experience happened.

“Then, on the 17th August, I felt acute pain at the nape of my neck and I had to cut down my meditation to fifteen minutes. The pain instead of getting better as I had hoped grew worse. The climax was reached on the 19th. I could not think, nor was I able to do anything, and I was forced by friends here to retire to bed. Then I became almost unconscious, though I was well aware of what was happening around me. I came to myself at about noon each day. On the first day while I was in that state and more conscious of the things around me, I had the first most extraordinary experience. There was a man mending the road; that man was myself; the pickaxe he held was myself; the very stone which he was breaking up was a part of me; the tender blade of grass was my very being, and the tree beside the man was myself. I almost could feel and think like the roadmender, and I could feel the wind passing through the tree, and the little ant on the blade of grass I could feel. The birds, the dust, and the very noise were a part of me. Just then there was a car passing by at some distance; I was the driver, the engine, and the tires; as the car went further away from me, I was going away from myself. I was in everything, or rather everything was in me, inanimate and animate, the mountain, the worm, and all breathing things. “

This oneness with the universe, in which we see ourselves in all beings and all beings in ourselves, is precisely the experience of the Upanishadic seers, which they give words to in numerous Upanishads.

The sage of the Taittiriya Upanishad, for instance sings out in the moment of self-realization:

“Hāa vu! Hāa vu! Hāa vu!
Aham annam aham annam aham annam!
Aham annādo’ham annādo’ham annādah!
Aha’m ślokakrt aha’m ślokakrt aha’m ślokakrt!
Aham asmi prathamajā rtāasya!
Poorvam devebhyo’mrtasya nāabhāayī!
Yo mā dadāti sa ideva māavāh!
Aham annam aham annam adantam āadmi!
Aham viśwam bhuvanam abhyabhavāam!
Suvarnajyotīh!”

I have quoted the words of the seer in Sanskrit because of the ecstasy that pulsates in every word he utters. He is not making a statement, but singing out full throated, as the ‘āa’s appearing throughout shows. [These are the extra long vowels of Vedic Sanskrit, which does not exist in classical Sanskrit. The short vowels [hrasva] are one mātrā long, the long vowels [dīrgha] two mātrās long, and these, called plutas, three mātrās long.

Here is a translation of the seer’s song.

Hāa vu! Hāa vu! Hāa vu! [Sounds of his ecstasy] I am the food, I am the food, I am the food! I am the eater of the food, I am the eater of the food, I am the eater of the food! I am the maker of verses [poet], I am the maker of verses, I am the maker of verses! I am the first born of this world, the manifestation of truth as the formed and the formless! I existed before the gods! I am the centre of immortality! He who offers food, it is this me he protects! I am food, I am food and I am the one who eats up the eater of food! It is I that has become the entire universe! I am the golden light!

The seer of the Shwetashwatara Upanishad expresses the same idea – the only difference being that his expression is in the third person. Here it is ‘He’ the sage sees in everything, rather than ‘I’ – but for him the He and I are one and the same. Here is what he says:

“tvam strī tvam pumān asi tvam kumāra uta vā kumārī tvam jīrno dandena vañcasi tvam jāto bhavasi viśvatomukhah
nīlah patango harito lohitākshhas tadidgarbha rtavah samudrāhanādimat tvam vibhutvena vartase yato jātāni bhuvanāni viśvā”

“Thou art the woman, Thou art the man. Thou art the youth and the maiden too. Thou art the old man who totters along, leaning on the staff. Thou art born with faces turned in all directions. Thou art the dark blue butterfly, and the green parrot with red eyes. Thou art the thunder-cloud, the seasons and the oceans. Thou art without beginning, and beyond all time and space. Thou art He from whom all the worlds are born.”

The Upanishad seer might as well have sung: “I am the man, I am the woman. I am the youth and the maiden too. I am born with faces turned in all directions. I am the old man who totters along, leaning of the staff. I am the dark blue butterfly, and the green parrot with red eyes. I am the thunder-cloud, the seasons and the oceans. I am without beginning and beyond all time and space. I am He from whom all the worlds are born.’ Strangely, this sounds somehow more correct!

It is the sage of the Kaivalya Upanishad who says this:

“mayyeva sakalam jātam, mayi sarvam pratishthitam
mayi sarvam layam yāti tadbrahmādvayam asmyaham.”

“Everything is born in me, all things have their existence in me and everything merges back into me. I am that Brahman, the one without a second.”

The Kaivalya Upanishad rishi is very clear that there is only one way to attain the Vast and no other – by knowing oneself as existing in all beings and all beings as existing in oneself:

“sarvabhootastham atmanam, sarvabhootani chatmani
sampashyan brahma paramam yati nanyena hetuna.”

[I had an interesting experience while thinking about this mantra. The mantra came to my mind as I thought about such mantras in the Upanishads, but couldn’t recall from which Upanishad it is. I closed my eyes and I saw my teacher sitting majestically in our ashram temple, where he frequently taught us, sitting in the special teacher’s seat that was placed there. Tall and fair, he looked every inch a royal sage, as he always did. I heard him chanting this mantra in his deep, resonant voice, his body swinging with it, his eyes intoxicated with the power of the mantra. The words I heard were chanted in his unique accent and then suddenly I knew from which Upanishad the mantra came – Kaivalya Upanishad.]

O0O

Vagambhrini [Vak Ambhrini - Vak, the daughter of sage Ambhrina] is one of the several wisdom-intoxicated female seers [rishikas] of the Rig Veda. She too had the experience and this is how she sings about it:

Aham rudrebhir vasubhiś charāmyaham ādityair uta viśvadevaih
Aham mitrā varunobhā bibharmyaham indrāgnee aham aśvinobhā. [1]

I move with the Rudras and also with the Vasus, I wander with the Adityas and the Vishwadevas. I hold aloft both Mitra and Varuna, and also Indra and Agni and the twin Ashvins.

Aham somam āhanasam bibharmi aham tvashtāram uta pūshanam bhagam
Aham dadhāmi dravinam havishmate suprāvye yajamānāya sunvate. [2]

I uphold Soma the exuberant; I uphold Tvasta, Pushan, and Bhaga. I endow with wealth the offerer of oblation, the worshipper and the pious presser of the Soma.

Aham rāshtrī sangamanī vasūnām chikitushee prathamā yajniyānām
Tām mā devā vyadadhuh puritrā bhūristhātrām bhooryāveśayantīm. [3]

I am the ruling Queen, the amasser of treasures, full of wisdom, first of those who are worthy of worship. That me the Gods have installed in all places, with many homes for me to enter and dwell in.

Mayā so annamatti yo vipaśyati yah prāniti ya ī śrnotyuktam
Āmantavo mām ta upa kshiyanti śrudhi śruta śraddhivam te vadāmi. [4]

Through me alone all eat the food that helps them see, breathe and hear the spoken word. He is not aware of me, yet he dwells in me alone. Listen, you who know! You must trust the words I speak to you.

Ahameva svayam idam vadāmi jushtam devebhir uta mānushebhih
Yam kāmaye tam tam ugram krnomi tam brahmānam tam rshim tam sumedhām [5]

It is I who announces the tidings that the gods and men alike rejoice to hear. The man I love, I make mighty in strength. I make him a priest, a sage, or a learned scholar, as I please.

Aham rudrāya dhanurā tanomi brahmadvishe śarave hantavā u
Aham janāya samadam krnomi aham dyāvā prthivee ā viveśa. [6]

I bend the bow for Rudra that his arrow may slay the hater of the words of sacred wisdom. I rouse the people, and make them strive. I have entered the Earth and Heaven, filling everything.

Aham suve pitaram asya mūrdhan mama yonir apsu antah samudre
Tato vi tishthe bhuvanānu viśvotāmūm dyām varshmanopa sprśāmi [7]

I give birth to the creator in the heavens atop the world and my own origin is deep in the ocean, in the cosmic waters. From there I permeate all existing worlds, and even touch yonder heavens with my forehead.

Ahameva vāta iva pra vāmi ārabhamānā bhuvanāni vishvā
Paro divā para enā prthivī etavatī mahinā sam babhūva [8]

It is my breath that blows as the mighty wind, while I hold together all the worlds.
Beyond the heavens and above the earth I tower, such am I in my might and splendour.

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Like the Upanishad seers, Krishnamurti too believes that Truth is a pathless land. His words while dissolving the Order of the Star, the organization that was created to make the world ready for the World Teacher [Krishnamurti] and of which he was the head, sound like they are taken straight from the Upanishads. Those words have the same quality – the same fearlessness, the same directness, the same clarity and the same lightning power of the truth.

“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 organized; 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 organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

“That 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….

“No man from outside can make you free; nor can an organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into work, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief concern….

“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.”

One of my all time favourite verses in Sanskrit is the first one in the Bhagavata Mahatmya:

yam pravrajantam anupetam apetakrtyam
dvaipayano virahakātara ājuhāva
putreti tanmayatayā taravobhineduh
tam sarvabhootahrdayam munim ānatosmi

The verse describes how once Shuka, the son of sage Vyasa, was going away from him, while he was still very young, while his Upanayana was yet to be performed. Shuka was leaving his father to wander the earth as a pravrajaka – a lifelong wanderer. A tormented Vyasa calls him back with a father’s natural agony, calling out “Oh son!” And the trees and plants around answer Vyasa, for Shuka had already become one with the whole creation and was in the heart of every being.

Here is a precious parting thought from Krishnamurti: “Meditation is the flowering of goodness; it is not the cultivation of goodness.”

O0O

J Krishnamurti: The Reluctant Messiah

Recently I was looking for a book that was handy to take with me for reading in the train. I debated between Mahashweta Devi’s Five Plays and Mary Lutyens’ Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. I do not know what eventually made me decide – perhaps the fact that I had already read two of the five plays – but it was an old copy of Kkrishnamurti that has been with me for several years now that I eventually picked up. I am back from the journey now, and I am only half way through Lutyens’s fascinating biography of one of the most original teachers the world has ever seen. I just finished reading the chapter entitled In Love, which, among other things, deals with Krishnamurti’s falling in love with an American girl called Helen Knothe. I had to stop reading here because my eyes wouldn’t allow me to continue.

As a genre I am not particularly fond of biographies and autobiographies, though one of my all time favourite books is an autobiography: The Sky Dancer, by Keith Dowman. Dowman is actually the translator of The Sky Dancer, which is, as the subtitle says, “The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel.” The book is what Tibetans call a ‘terma’, a book written for the future and kept psychically hidden until its time came. Yeshe Tsogyel was the chief consort of Bodhisattva Padmasambhava, Tibet’s greatest Buddhist guru. He is the Tibetan Buddha held by the followers of Vajrayana Buddhism as an equal to the Buddha himself, and sometimes even greater. Yeshe Tsogyel practiced tantric sadhanas with Padmasambhava and became an enlightened master and Tibet’s greatest yogini, or dakini, as Tibetan tantric yoginis are called. The book is a tour de force and reading it, depending on how receptive you are to it, could be a life transforming experience. It was, to me.

Mary Lutyens’s wonderful book covers the first thirty-eight years of Krishnamurti’s life. The book, as the author’s Foreword says, was written at Krishnamurti’s own suggestion and with help from the master himself. Describing the book, Mary Lutyens says: “It is a very personal account, recording his strange upbringing and the many phases he went through in growing to maturity – his difficulties, doubts, unhappiness, personal relationships and spiritual awakening, which was followed by years of intense physical suffering.”

Mary Lutyens is the daughter of Edwin Lutyens, the architect who designed New Delhi, and her maternal grandfather was a viceroy of India. She knew Krishnamurti from 1911, when she was three years old, and her mother was a major influence on Krishnamurti in his early years. She is a part of many of the experiences described in the book, particularly in the very crucial years between 1922 and 1929. Mary, however, appears as a character in the biography, rather than as the narrator. Much of the early part of the book is revealed through Krishnamurti’s letters to Mary’s mother, Lady Emily, whom he addressed in these letters as his ‘dear mother’.

I wouldn’t attempt to introduce Krishnamurti here – I assume he should be known to you. Well, if you really do not know, just this much: at one time he was accepted by much of the world as the new messiah that many religions have been waiting for – the new Christ, the new Buddha. And he had the courage to stand up and declare to the world one day that he was no messiah but an ordinary man like anyone of us, and what he is, is something anyone could become through inner awakening.

Richard Bach, of the Janathan Livingston Seagull fame, in the introductory chapter of his Illusions, narrates this tale.

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.
The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom.”

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle!

A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.”

But they cried the more, “Saviour!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.

J. Krishnamurti is the messiah who was reluctant to don the robes of a messiah and showed the courage to tell the world he was like anyone of us and not special, and what he was, is something anyone of us could become, if only we would let go.

I once met J Krishnamurti. Met in the sense that I attended one of his sessions in the Krishnamurti Gardens [I am not sure if that is the official name] in Chennai, then called Madras in English [Chennai is not a new name – it was Chennai in Tamil even then.]. Perhaps saw is the right word – saw and heard. Mary Luytens’s book on him was published in 1975, and it is in that year that I heard him, or maybe in 1976. We were a small group, maybe around sixty people, and Krishnamurti was then eighty-two years old – he was born on May 11, 1895 [His zodiac sign is the Taurus, like mine!]. What I remember, above everything else, is the way he walked. At eighty-two, he was as sprightly as an eighteen-year old boy! In fact, I do not think a young boy of eighteen would have been able to keep up with him for long – he was so fast, energetic and agile.

He came before us and then, with the same nimbleness with which he had walked, ‘leapt’ onto the cement platform under a tree in the Gardens. And the next moment he was speaking to us, cool and relaxed, as poised as the tree under which he sat, and equally serene. His words had an elemental quality to them, and his speech, like his walk and his posture, was not that of an old man but of a youth. It was not an oration – neither in his gestures, nor in his words or facial expressions was there anything oratorical. He spoke to us in simple, everyday words, and he spoke to us as though he has known us all our life.
His talk was short and I do not remember a single word of what he told us in that talk – all I retain in me is the memory of his stillness, his serenity and his energy. That memory will remain with me forever.

For those who have not read any of his books, I recommend the small Freedom from the Known to begin with. It is a book one could read in a single sitting, but should never. Books like Freedom from the Known are not to be read in a single sitting. They are to be read slowly, relishing each phrase and each image. I read the book when I was passing through a personal crisis. A Swiss friend of mine who was at that time studying with me lent me the book asking me to read it, seeing how troubled I was. My indebtedness to her remains to this day. Incidentally, I believe that was the first Krishnamurti book I ever read, and it had to come from a European girl!

I have a close friend who worked for the Krishnamurti Foundation for several years – he frequently shares with me many lesser known incidents from JK’s life, including some about his final moments, which are shrouded in mystery.

In one of my recent blogs here [Yatra Yatra Mano Yati: Sri Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti and Samadhi] I wrote about some of J Krishnamurti’s beautiful spiritual experiences. His Notebooks are full of such wonderful experiences, which used to happen to him on an every day basis. Here is one I have not covered in that article.

The moon was quite young yet it gave enough light for shadows; there were plenty of shadows and they were very still. Along that narrow path, every shadow seemed to be alive, whispering amongst themselves, every shadowy leaf chattering to its neighbour. The shape of the leaf and the heavy trunk were clear on the ground and the river down below was of silver; it was wide, silent and there was a deep current which left no mark on the surface. Even the afternoon breeze had died and there were no clouds to gather around the setting sun; higher up in the sky, there was a solitary rose-coloured whisper of a cloud that remained motionless till it disappeared into the night. Every tamarind and mango was withdrawing for the night and all the birds were silent, taking shelter, deep among the leaves. A little owl was sitting on the telegraph wire and just when you were below it, it flew off on those extraordinary silent wings. After delivering milk, the cycles were coming back, the empty tins rattling; there were so many of them, single or in groups, but for all their chatter and noise that peculiar silence of the open country and immense sky remained. That evening nothing could disturb it, not even a goods train crossing the steel bridge.

There is a little path to the right wandering among the green fields and as you walk on it, far away from everything, from faces, tears, suddenly, you are aware that something is taking place. You know it is not imagination, desire, taking to some fancy or to some forgotten experience or the revival of some pleasure and hope; you know well it is none of these things; you have been through this examination before and you brush all these aside, swiftly with a gesture and you are aware something is taking place. It is as unexpected as that big bull that comes through the darkening evening; it is there with insistency and immensity, that otherness, which no word or symbol can catch; it is there filling the sky and the earth and every little thing in it. You and that little villager who without a word, passes you by, are of it. At that timeless time, only there is that immensity, neither thought nor feeling and the brain utterly quiet. All meditative sensitivity is over, only that incredible purity is there. It is the purity of strength, impenetrable and unapproachable but it was there. Everything stood still, there was no movement, no stir and even the sound of the whistle of the train was in the stillness. It accompanied you as you walked back to your room and it was there, too, for it had never left you.

I wonder if the letters Krishnamurti wrote to Lady Emily are available in book form! At one stage in his life, those letters were written practically every day. I do not think any other master of Krishnamurti’s level has revealed his inner struggles in such intimate details through correspondence as Krishnamurti does in these letters. St Augustine’s name does come to mind, but then his Confessions are very different in nature and style.

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