The Years of Fulfilment (eBook)

J Krishnamurti (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022
198 Seiten
Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Uk (Verlag)
978-1-911124-14-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was an independent spiritual teacher for the rest of his life, writing many books such as Krishnamurti Reader: No. 1, You are the World, Commentaries on living;: First series, from the notebooks of J. Krishnamurti.
Mary Lutyens (1908-1999) was a British author best known for her three-volume biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti; the other volumes in this series are Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment and Krishnamurti: The Open Door. She wrote in the Foreword to this 1975 book, 'This account of the life of the first thirty-eight years of Krishnamurti's life has been written at his suggestion and with all the help he has been able to give me. it shows the circumstances of the unfolding of Krishnamurti's teaching and demonstrates his extraordinary achievement in freeing himself from the many hands that clutched at him in an endeavour to force him into the role of traditional Messiah.'
He told his audience, 'I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect... I do not want to belong to any organization of a spiritual kind; please understand this.'
Lutyens' sympathetic, yet detailed and critical biography is 'must reading' for anyone wanting to know more about Krishnamurti.

Textauszug

2

The Completeness of Life

No one has ever taken the place of Nitya in K’s life and heart, but after Nitya’s death in November 1925 an Indian friend, D. Rajagopalacharya, became his most constant companion. Rajagopal, as he was called, was a South Indian Brahmin born in 1901. He had been a protégé of Leadbeater’s and had been sent to England in 1920 to go to Cambridge. Rajagopal met K in the autumn of that year and asked whether he might work for him when he had taken his degree. K liked him and agreed. Rajagopal spent the summers with him and a party of friends in France, Austria and Italy in 1922, ’23 and ’24; he went twice to Ojai, once to help look after K when his ‘process’ was at its most intense in 1923–24, for which he took a year off Cambridge, and again in the summer of 1925, after taking his degree in History, to help in nursing Nitya in his last illness.

Rajagopal returned to England with K in the autumn of ’25 and went with him and Mrs Besant to India. Travelling with them was a pretty American girl of twenty-two, Rosalind Williams, whom K and Nitya had met when they first went to Ojai and who had also helped to take care of Nitya at the end. Rosalind and Rajagopal were thrown much together after Nitya’s death and in October 1927, with Mrs Besant’s full approval, they were married in London. Thereafter, they made their home at Ojai, an arrangement that suited K very well. He continued to sleep at his cottage (now called Pine Cottage) but took his meals at Arya Vihara where the Rajagopals lived. Rosalind kept house for him.

Since Rajagopal was with K at the time of Nitya’s death he stepped quite naturally into Nitya’s shoes—shoes that never quite fitted him—and K appointed him Organising Secretary of the O.S.E. in Nitya’s place and made him International Treasurer of the Order, a new appointment.

Rajagopal, though slim and tall with beautiful hands, was a very different physical type from K and Nitya, being curly-haired and rather snub-nosed. He was far more Western than Eastern in temperament—practical, highly efficient and tidy almost to the point of obsession. K’s vagueness irritated him almost as much as his bossy pernicketyness irritated K. As well as affection and a good deal of laughter there were frequent clashes between them; nevertheless, K was content to leave all practical matters, which bored him, especially financial matters, in Rajagopal’s undoubtedly capable hands.

After the dissolution of the Order there was no falling off in the audiences attending K’s talks; new people took the place of those who abandoned him and donations towards his work continued to pour in. K’s only personal source of income was the £500 a year settled on him by Miss Dodge; all other income came from donations and the sale of his books. From 1926, for nearly forty years, Rajagopal organised K’s tours and talks, arranged for the publication of his books and acted as his secretary-courier. For several years K helped Rajagopal to correct the talks for publication. His early books, most of them consisting of poems, were published by the Star Publishing Trust which K had set up at Castle Eerde, its chief centre, Hollywood, London and Madras, though the books were printed in India. They were sold at meetings and through a mailing list.

The sole function of the Publishing Trust was the dissemination of K’s teaching. Rajagopal was also chief editor of the monthly Star Review which had agencies and representatives in eighteen different countries and was translated into as many languages. There was an International Star Bulletin as well.

Rajagopal had no money of his own, yet there was no question of his being offered a salary. It would not have occurred to K that he might have wanted financial independence, especially after his marriage to a girl who had nothing of her own either. All his needs were provided for as Nitya’s had been, and K treated him with the same generosity, the same sense of sharing everything (K’s and Nitya’s shirts, handkerchiefs and socks had been marked with their joint initials); besides, now that Rajagopal held the purse strings it was for him to decide what his and K’s needs were. It was an arrangement that worked perfectly so long as there was complete mutual trust.

In physical appearance K had by the thirties reached a maturity of beauty; with his straight black glossy hair, smooth brown skin, great luminous black eyes with long, long lashes, flat ears, ideally proportioned nose and mouth, a supple athletic slim figure and slender hands and feet, he was as perfectly formed as a human being could be. Numberless women had been, and still were, in love with him, and he had been in love with two or three girls, a fact he has completely forgotten now and dismisses as of no importance. He was not of more than average height, yet an erect carriage gave him presence. A natural thoughtfulness for others, a self-effacingness, would have ensured good manners even if he had not been trained in the politenesses of good English society. Moreover, he was extremely elegant.

K has often been criticised for dressing so well. Many people are conditioned to think that ‘a holy man’ should not care for appearances; they expect to see a swami in a loin cloth with wild hair and beard. K, on the contrary, believes in caring for the body in every way—seeing that it has the right food, the right amount of exercise and rest, keeping it scrupulously groomed, and dressing it not only well but appropriately. Thus in Europe and America he wears European clothes—suits and ties in towns and informal clothes in the country—and changes into Indian dress as soon as he arrives in India. His good taste in clothes, as in all things, is natural to him. He has always been to the best tailors and shirt-makers and had his shoes made to measure—a necessity owing to the extreme narrowness of his feet. He looks after his clothes as he does his body, hanging up his suits as soon as he takes them off, never failing to put trees in his shoes (he always wears brown shoes) which he polishes himself so that they shine like horse-chestnuts. Taxi drivers in London invariably stop for him, taking him for a prince or a millionaire.

With all this, I have never known anyone so completely detached from his body as K is. He looks after it because it has to serve him for his work. He cares for it as he does a motor-car. It is unthinkable that he would go out in a car of his own that had not been washed and polished. On going to see him one always endeavours to look one’s best, for he notices everything, not in a critical or disapproving spirit but from his habit of keen observation.

This tidiness in appearance and excessive care of the body may seem incompatible with K’s dreamy, vague nature as may his lifelong interest in machinery. A Pathek-Philippe watch, left to him many years ago, is the only possession he really seems to cherish, yet even that he would be capable of giving away. He would give away all his clothes to someone in need. He once gave away his only overcoat. Emerson has said, ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.’ If in nothing else, the inconsistencies in K’s character would make him a great soul.

From the time K was ‘discovered’ he had never yet travelled alone, and after Nitya’s death it was Rajagopal who usually travelled with him. When they went to India Rosalind remained at Ojai, though she did sometimes go to Europe with them. After the dissolution of the Order, the annual camps were open to the public, thus attracting new people. These camps became expertly organised under Rajagopal’s direction; attendance was limited to 3,000 people apart from those who came for the day. In 1931 Castle Eerde and most of the land was returned to Baron van Pallandt by a deed of transfer. Only 400 acres on which the camp was held were retained. Thereafter a moderate-sized house called Heenan, near Ommen village, became the headquarters from which Rajagopal and his Dutch helpers ran the Star Publishing Trust, edited the Star Review, organised the camps and transacted other business. Many people who regularly attended the camps had now built huts at their own expense on the Star land. The building of these huts, unobtrusively erected among the pine trees, was strictly controlled. K himself had his own quite luxurious hut and Rajagopal had another.

Since 1929 an annual camp had also been held in the spring at Ojai. This was on land some eight miles from Arya Vihara at the western, lower end of the valley bought for K’s work with funds raised as a result of an appeal by Mrs Besant in 1927. When the weather permitted, K gave his talks there out of doors in a grove of holm oaks or ilexes, the so-called Oak Grove.

Despite their loyalty in attending the camps, several of K’s old devotees were unable to follow him into what seemed to them mists of abstraction. One of these was Lady Emily Lutyens who had been his follower for some twenty years and to whom he had revealed as to no one else his innermost feelings in regular long letters. Old enough to be his mother, she had for love of him neglected her husband and five children (of whom I was the youngest)—had, indeed, been ready to forsake them altogether at a word from him—a word she longed for. She had given all her energy, first to preparing the way for the coming of the World Teacher...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.9.2022
• Reihe/Serie: A Biography of J Krishnamurti
• Reihe/Serie: A Biography of J Krishnamurti
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Sammeln / Sammlerkataloge
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Schlagworte: Analysis • clarity • Emotional Clarity • freedom • India • KFA • learning • Logic • Meaning • Mind • Philosophy • Self Help • Teach • Teachings • Thought • Truth
• ISBN-10: 1-911124-14-5 / 1911124145
• ISBN-13: 978-1-911124-14-6 / 9781911124146