I have personally participated in a few different Krishnamurti based discussion groups over the years. From my perspective, any insights garnered from participation in these groups have happened by critiquing K as opposed to agreeing with him or defending him. As I wrote in the introductory statement for this blog, there is something missing from K’s explanations about the dynamics of consciousness that is preventing a clear explanation of “transformation” (as he puts it). Occasionally he seems to come closer to a cogent explication of the two truths as they relate to consciousness, yet he always ends up dancing around points that have been made much more clearly by certain Buddhists and Buddhist scholars.
It’s been touched upon here that people have different propensities and capacities for processing metaphysical explanations, whether from K or anyone. This situation is even described in Buddhism as “turning the wheel three times” for people of different propensities; doing this of course requires that the speaker/Buddha has the highest understanding.
Maybe we should face up to the possibility that K was not of the highest understanding, but in fact represents one of the lower rungs. Certain people will definitely get something from Krishnamurti, but for others, he will not suffice and could even be leading them astray. David Bohm may have been one of these people and David Moody could be another. Maybe these individuals wasted years with Krishnamurti when they could have received clearer explanations from studying Tibetan Buddhism. Krishnamurti did seem to be under the impression that his realization was of the highest order, and this is why he encouraged people not to read other sources. He was functioning as THE authority, no matter how much he denied it.
The sense of futility (of running around in circles) and conflict found on Krishnamurti discussion groups is probably in fact a kind of war between propensities. If there were no David Bohm or David Moody types in these groups, perhaps the conflicts would be greatly reduced and there would actually be some kind of consensus about what K was communicating. But for some people, K apparently can never be adequate, which is very interesting. When Krishnamurti urged people to question the teachings as a matter of principle, what if he was all along modeling as “seeing together”, is actually a lesser realization? In other words, the questions and answers of some individuals will always be outside of his frame.
Deconstructing Krishnamurti 