The lives of sages and thinkers are seemingly inexhaustible; one can excavate new meaning in their words and actions, and draw fresh insights from re-readings of commentaries of their work. Their writing, lectures and recorded interactions become an unending source of interpretation and exploration for devotees, skeptics and scholars alike, even where the motivations and impulses for undertaking such study may be completely different.
There is no dearth of literature produced around the life and work of Jiddu Krishnamurti, the “star of the east”, as he was dubbed by the Theosophists who saw in him the messaiah, the great teacher. And then there is the work by the man himself, scores of volumes asking perplexing questions such as ‘‘what are the limits of thought?’’ or ‘‘how does one achieve freedom from fear?’’ JK, or Krishnaji, as many addressed and thought of him, authored over 100 of these. Scores of his talks are available on YouTube, and as for commentaries on his life, one is spoilt for choice, from the popular biography by Pupul Jayakar to the anecdotes mined by Michael Krohnen. So, one might ask, what can yet another book purporting to be a different sort of memoir, bring to our understanding of this “great mystic” of the past century?
Padmanabhan Krishna’s collection of loosely organised conversations and interpretative essays is an insider’s account of Krishnamurti’s ideas and slices of his life from the 1950s until his death in 1986. The author’s association with JK began when he was just 19, a student at Delhi University, and deepened over the years as he became more and more closely involved with the Krishnamurti Foundation and its various activities. In late 1985, just a year before he passed away, JK invited Krishna to take over as Rector of the Rajghat Education Centre in Varanasi—he offered it to him, by his own description, like a “jewel on a silver platter”. Krishna was at the time on the faculty of Banaras Hindu University while his wife was a gynaecologist at the university hospital. The move to Rajghat, which was not without misgivings, marked a major shift both personally and professionally, creating the opportunity to spend much more time with JK in the months preceding his death.
Krishna also served as the Principal of the Rajghat Besant School at the Centre. In the intervening years, Krishna met JK several times, and exchanged a regular correspondence with him, discussing matters both mundane and spiritual, and the book is an outcome of these interactions. The book also draws on the recollections of many others who were close to JK, including Achyut Patwardhan, Vimala Thakar and Mark Lee.
The first part of the book, ‘About Krishnamurti’, draws from these memories and recorded conversations, with some chapters reproducing verbatim exchanges between JK, Krishna and others—for instance, a chapter titled ‘A dialogue between Krishnamurti and three scientists’ while others distil anecdotes from across his life. The second part of the book presents a series of ‘Investigations of Krishnamurti’s Teachings’, drawing from the many talks he gave in the 1980s across locations in India and abroad.
Through the volume, Krishna’s deep affection for and devotion to JK is evident. Even as he tries to examine JK’s material existence honestly and dispassionately, he is overwhelmed by the spiritual presence, the “quality of consciousness” that distinguished him. It is this consciousness that he attempts to reveal.
The book is perhaps intended for those already familiar with Krishnamurti, his thoughts, and the large network of institutions that grew around his ideas. It does not set itself up as a biography, nor an analysis of his life, and perhaps for that there are other sources one can go to.
But it does give the reader a sense of JK as he probably was, in his everyday conversations with those around him, his irritability and his humour, his questions about the life of the mind, and—to some extent—his answers.