On Jan 24, 2013 12:11 PM Wry wrote:
“Just sent this to a Gurdjieff list where participants have started talking about Krishnamurti, and people here might like to see it. What I wrote may sound to some like I am anti-Krishnamurti and pro Gurdjieff, but that is not really true on either end, nor am I pro neither:-)– that would kind of make no sense in that we are dealing with concepts here, not icons, and so the enquiry goes on. To those who are on the same K lists I am on and so are getting multiple copies of this, sorry….wry
Commentaries on Living: First Series
J. Krishnamurti Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 47 `The Spiritual Leader’
“He said that his guru was too great a man to be described, and that he had been a pupil of his for many years. This teacher, he went on, imparted his teachings through brutal shocks, through foul language, through insults and actions that were contradictory; and he added that many important people were among the followers. The very crudeness of the procedure forced people to think, it made them sit up and take notice, which was considered necessary because most people were asleep and needed to be shaken. This teacher said the most awful things about God, and it seemed that his pupils had to drink a great deal, as the teacher himself drank heavily at most meals. The teachings, however, were profound; they had been kept secret at one time, but now they were being made available to all…”.
And from the last paragraph:
“…It is an odd fact that followers like to be bullied and directed, whether softly or harshly. They think the harsh treatment is part of their training – training in spiritual success. The desire to be hurt, to be rudely shaken, is part of the pleasure of hurting; and this mutual degradation of the leader and the follower is the outcome of the desire for sensation. It is because you want greater sensation that you follow and so create a leader, a guru; and for this new gratification you will sacrifice, put up with discomforts, insults and discouragements. All this is part of mutual exploitation, it has nothing whatever to do with reality and will never lead to happiness….”
You can read this entire fascinating piece here:
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/print.php?tid=25&chid=61641
Krishnamurti wove a story out of his own limited context with the deliberate aim to present material from his own particular, and, in my opinion, limited point of view, and so in this respect he spoke as an authority in that he really did not know. Is there some truth in what he wrote? Yes, but the black and white way he worked with material so as to create a certain affect or state—be it of what he called “meditation” or whatever is not really the truth. Moreover, if a person says ‘the truth’ is not the truth (such as his famous quote “Truth is a pathless land,” this also is not the truth.
For those here who do not know, I have been very interested in Krishnamurti for well over forty years, have heard him speak, led Krishnamurti inquiries in my home, and at one time left the Gurdjieff teaching because of him, but then later went back to it. It is also interesting to note that at the end of his life Krishnamurti said that not one person understood what he was saying. Some people consider this comment to be allegorical, but I have evidence (in some biographical material I read in which, when asked if anyone got his message, he mentioned one girl he spoke to once who he thought really did understand him) that he meant this literally.”
(I wrote the above four years ago, and since then have there has arisen some kind of question in my mind as to whether he really did exactly mean his dying words to be taken literally.)
Deconstructing Krishnamurti 