Khan 2017near by The Harker School Libraries

2016-17 JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient “Truth is a Pathless Land”: Examining the Influence of Theosophy on Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Philosophy Soham Khan, Class of 2017

“Truth is a Pathless Land”: Examining the Influence of Theosophy on Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Philosophy

Soham Khan 2017 John Near Scholar Mentors: Dr. Ruth Meyer, Ms. Sue Smith April 12, 2017

Khan 2 Theosophy: A Historical Narrative Historians have long commented on the proliferation of new religious movements during the countercultural 1960’s. This fervid inquiry into spiritual ideals flourished even in the hermetic Soviet Union, where “new sacral objects and rituals” energized underground expressions of theology.1 Far from arising in a vacuum, however, the spiritually inflected ideals that sustained the New Age derive from a rich historical wellspring that encompasses millenniaold spiritual heterodoxies in both Western and Eastern religious traditions. As Robert Ellwood, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Southern California, observes in his synoptic text Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the Wisdom of the Ages, “the spiritual tradition which is theosophy is universal in the deepest sense,” suggesting that thinkers the world over have grappled with the fundamental questions of human existence.2 Theosophical thought transcends the insularity of institutionalized religion and seeks to plumb “new vistas of wonder…by looking deep within to discover our own nature.”3 As a spiritually inclusive ideology, theosophy affirms an experiential spiritual realm, removed from codified beliefs and strictures, which confers meaning to the human condition. Nevertheless, models of theosophical inquiry appear most distinctly in “Platonism and Neoplatonism in the West and in Vedanta and Buddhism in the East.”4 As a mystical, inward path, theosophy can easily be accommodated within other religious movements, both ancient and more recent.

Tchepournaya, Olga. "The Hidden Sphere of Religious Searches in the Soviet Union: Independent Religious Communities in Leningrad from the 1960s to the 1970s." Sociology of Religion 64, no. 3 (2003): 378. http://puffin.harker.org:2076/stable/3712491. 2

Robert Ellwood, Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the Wisdom of the Ages (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1994), 5, digital file. 3

Ibid., 3.

Ibid., 5.

Khan 3 In 1875, Helena Blavatsky, a Russian academic and mystic, harmonized different mystical traditions in order to construct an idiosyncratic ideology that continues to undergird the Theosophical Society today. She sought to reconcile scientific advances in geology and evolutionary biology that refuted traditional Christian cosmogonic topoi, such as the Fall and creationism, respectively.5 Although Blavatsky reinforced the ecumenical nature of the Theosophical Society by asserting apophatically that her ideas “belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean, nor the Egyptian religion, neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, nor Christianity exclusively,” she integrated the theosophical teachings found therein to substantiate the philosophical doctrines articulated in her magnum opus The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Spirituality.6 In fact, her Theosophical ideas derived from ancient religious dicta and assimilated the esoteric and intellectual counterpoints to “the skeptical enlightenment of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.”7 Although Theosophy originates from the spiritual dimensions of both Judeo-Christian and Eastern religious movements, Blavatsky also syncretized the mystical traditions arising in response to the rationalist worldviews espoused by Enlightenment thinkers. Hence, Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 to promulgate her ideals regarding “experimentally, whatever was possible about man, his intelligence, and his place in

Mark Bevir, "The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62, no. 3 (October 1994): 753, accessed April 12, 2017, http://puffin.harker.org:2076/stable/1465212. 6

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Cosmogenesis, vol. 1, The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (London, United Kingdom: Theosophical Publishing House, 1888; Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 2014), viii, PDF e-book. 7

Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, Albany, 1994, xi, digital file.

Khan 4 nature.”8 By employing an ostensibly Western, empirical approach to clarify the spiritual verities that sustained the East in a “reconciliation of opposites,” Blavatsky sought to construct an integrative space conducive to the realization and appraisal of spiritual truths.9 Nevertheless, conflict soon beset the Theosophical Society, with diverse schisms espousing, to a variable degree, distinctive interpretations of theosophy.10 Nevertheless, the Theosophical Society (Adyar), a Theosophical denomination directly established by Blavatsky, mediated the metaphysical development of Jiddu Krishnamurti, a South Indian Brahmin youth whose aura bespoke Blavatsky’s prophecy of a “new Saviour of Humanity” whose epochal import would inspire a spiritual revolution.11 As the culminating figure of Blavatsky’s theory of root-races, a Theosophical vision of evolution that this paper shall investigate shortly, Krishnamurti was poised to assume the mantle of the World Teacher, until he defected from the Theosophists. This paper will examine the extent to which the spiritual and philosophical positions espoused by the Theosophical Society influenced the schismatic development of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s own ideals. A deeply introspective philosopher who ultimately disavowed his messianic role as the World Teacher in the Order of the Star in the East, a subsidiary Theosophical body, Krishnamurti repudiated the doctrinal tenets espoused by Theosophy or, indeed, any religion. His famous dictum—“Truth is a pathless land”—articulates the free spirit of inquiry Krishnamurti cherished to the end of his life.12 Nevertheless, Krishnamurti interiorized his mystical worldview 8

Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves: The True Story of the Theosophical Society (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam, 1895), 140. 9

Joy Dixon, Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 23, digital file. 10 Ellwood, Theosophy: A Modern, 215. 11

Blavatsky, Cosmogenesis, 470.

Joscelyn, The Theosophical Enlightenment, 367.

Khan 5 by assimilating such similar Theosophical techniques as phenomenological exegeses of kundalini and fohat encounters, as well as a meditative technique of objective inner analysis, in order to perceive reality more effectively by liberating the mind from its self-limiting delusions.13 Theosophy and the Theosophical Society However, theosophy and the Theosophical Society are not synonymous. While Blavatsky integrated various theosophical teachings into a holistic spiritual framework that encompassed the spiritual legacies of many cultures, the Theosophical Society remains a polemical subset of theosophical thought, largely because non-Theosophists believe Blavatsky fabricated many details of her life, especially those pertaining to her spiritual development.14 To illustrate, Blavatsky’s Stanza of Dzyan, a predecessor to The Secret Doctrine, was “reputedly found in Tibet and translated from the forgotten language of Senzar with assistance from the spirits Morya and Koot Hoomi” whom Blavatsky channeled to convey her mystical insights.15 However, there is no evidence that Blavatsky had even visited Tibet, as she had claimed, and her biographer Meade reinforces “the surprisingly uneven nature of H.P.B.’s memory, as well as of her habit of rearranging her past to suit present convenience.”16 Although Blavatsky herself acknowledged that Theosophists occasionally fabricated the existence of the Masters, she asseverated the mortal, rather than supernatural, characteristics of

Krishnamurti, Jiddu. The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1995, 22, digital file. 14

Meade, Marion. Madame Blavatsky: The Woman behind the Myth. ([Newburyport?], MA: Open Road Media, 2014), Preface, digital file. 15

George Robb, "Race Motherhood: Moral Eugenics vs Progressive Eugenics, 1880–1920," 1997, in Maternal Instincts: Visions of Motherhood and Sexuality in Britain: 1875-1925, ed. Claudia Nelson and Ann Sumner Holmes (Basingstoke, United Kingdom: MacMillan, 1997), 66. 16

Meade, Madame Blavatsky, Chapter 2.

Khan 6 the Masters.17 Regardless of the veracity of the Masters’ existence, she appropriated the cachet of such arguably fictive Ascended Masters as Morya and Koot Hoomi in order to buttress the mythos that would ultimately disenchant Krishnamurti, heir apparent to the World Teacher postulated in the Order of the Star of the East, from the teachings of the Theosophical Society.18 Krishnamurti: Youth and Initiation Born in Madanapalle, a village in southern India, on May 11, 1895, Jiddu Krishnamurti was raised in a conservative, caste-conscious Brahmin family.19 From an early age, however, Krishnamurti evinced a deep capacity for spiritual contemplation and compassionate action. An anecdote relates that he freely donated his school supplies to his classmates and returned home empty-handed.20 However, his parents did not regard their quixotic son too highly. In fact, Mary Lutyens, a friend and biographer who penned multiple seminal texts on Krishnamurti, indicated that when “the baby’s horoscope was cast,” a traditional Hindu practice, “[the astrologer] was able to assure Narianiah [Krishnamurti’s father] that his son was to be a very great man indeed. For many years it seemed most unlikely that this prediction would be fulfilled,” especially since Krishnamurti responded poorly to pedagogical instruction.21 Nevertheless, he was endowed with

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (London: Theosophical Publication House, 1889; Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 2007), Section 14, accessed April 12, 2017, http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-hp.htm. 18

Mary Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti: A Life, omnibus ed. (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books, 2005), 212, digital file.

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 7.

Ibid., 10.

Ibid., 8.

Khan 7 certain spiritual gifts, such as clairvoyance, as was his mother, and was capable of discerning his deceased relatives’ ghosts as well as the auras of other extant individuals.22 Distressed at the unanticipated deaths of his wife and daughter, Narianiah moved to Adyar, where he secured employment as a clerk in the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. There, Charles Leadbeater, one of the founding members of the Society, perceived “the most wonderful aura” enveloping Krishnamurti.23 As Blavatsky observed in The Secret Doctrine, auras can convey a “transcendentally objective substance” otherwise concealed from materialistic empiricism.24 Like Krishnamurti, Leadbeater too possessed this spiritual faculty, with which he persuaded the other Theosophical members that Krishnamurti was, in fact, a channel for the World Teacher, a Maitreya from the seventh root race who would kindle the spiritual evolution of humanity.25 Thus, Krishnamurti might be considered a guru, whose intercession enlightens humanity from its erstwhile ignorance. In fact, Blavatsky maintained that Brahmanaspati, a Vedic deity, mediated human prayers and served in the capacity of guru to a panoply of other Vedic-era deities, suggesting that gurus were not constrained to the terrestrial realm.26 Despite the seeming implausibility of Leadbeater’s claim, especially since Krishnamurti was only thirteen when he was recognized as the World Teacher, guru-disciple relationships comprise the nucleus of Indian spirituality. In fact, Paramhansa Yogananda, a contemporaneous Indian spiritual guide who also relocated to the West, proclaimed in his classic Autobiography of 22

Ibid., 11-12.

Ibid., 27.

Blavatsky, Cosmogenesis, 514.

Ibid., 27.

Blavatsky, Anthropogenesis, 45.

Khan 8 a Yogi, “The characteristic features of Indian culture have long been a search for ultimate verities and the concomitant disciple-guru relationship.”27 Even as a self-realized avatar, Yogananda remained beholden to his guru, Sri Yukteswar, for commissioning him to travel to the West to exalt the “ineradicable patterns of spiritual living” which Krishnamurti similarly sought to plumb.28 Barely an adolescent, therefore, Krishnamurti was installed as the head of the Order of the Star of the East, a Theosophist organization designed to disseminate his teachings. Annie Besant, another member of the Theosophical Society, eventually adopted Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya, and relocated to England, where the two were inculcated in European cultural and social mores.29 She reinforced the legitimacy of the Order of the Star in the East by claiming that “Madame Blavatsky had ‘regarded it as the mission of the T.S. [Theosophical Society] to prepare the world for the coming of the next Great Teacher.’”30 Nevertheless, Krishnamurti’s newfound position factionalized the Theosophical Society between members who concurred with the legitimacy of Blavatsky’s claim and members who repudiated Krishnamurti’s salvific role.31 A prominent schism arose when Rudolf Steiner, a Theosophist polymath, disavowed Krishnamurti’s divinely ordained mission and defected from the Theosophical Society.32 Unlike Krishnamurti, Steiner proposed specific ideals to substantiate his ideal of Geisteswissenschaft, which he envisioned as a multidisciplinary scientific approach

Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi (Nevada City, CA: Crystal Clarity Publishers, 2015), Chapter 5, digital file. 28

Ibid., Chapter 1.

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 55.

Ibid., 52.

Ibid.

Khan 9 toward spiritual endeavors.33 He subsequently founded the Anthroposophical Society as well as a distinctive Waldorf model of education steeped in a “pantheistic and angelological outlook” that reflected the spiritually-charged cosmos he had cultivated as a Theosophist.34 In addition, since Steiner sought to extrapolate Geisteswissenschaft to the diverse spheres of human activity, he established biodynamic agriculture to harmonize cosmic forces more effectively with agronomic practice. In “achieving a balance in the working of inner and outer planetary forces,” however, biodynamic agriculture exemplifies the formalistic attitudes that had disillusioned Krishnamurti from the Theosophical Society.35 To illustrate, a requirement of biodynamic agriculture includes burying the bladder of a stag stuffed with fodder beet seed in order to imbue the soil with “influences that come from the outer cosmos.”36 As such, Krishnamurti, who opposed “prejudices, whether religious or spiritual, psychological or scientific” subscribed to a radically different vision than the ritualized mysticism characterizing Steiner’s Anthroposophical Society.37 Before Krishnamurti dissolved his relationship with Theosophy, however, he strove to assimilate to Western norms of culture and conduct. Because his Theosophist caretakers required Krishnamurti to wear his hair long in emulation of the Buddha, he was forced to endure

Olav Hammer, Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (Leiden, Germany: Brill, 2001), 228. 34

Uhrmacher, P. Bruce. "Uncommon Schooling: A Historical Look at Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Waldorf Education." Curriculum Inquiry 25, no. 4 (1995): 382. doi:10.2307/1180016. 35 R. T. Smith, Cosmos, Earth and Nutrition: The Biodynamic Approach to Agriculture (Forest Row, United Kingdom: Sophia Books, 2009), 55, digital file. 36

Adalbert Keyserlingk and A. R. Meuss, Developing Biodynamic Agriculture: Reflections on Early Research (London, United Kingdom: Temple Lodge, 1999), 32, digital file. 37

Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 1997), 19, digital file.

Khan 10 onlookers’ mockery as he navigated the streets of London.38 However, he was most devastated at the sudden death of his younger brother Nitya, especially since he and Nitya were being mutually groomed to bear the momentous position of the World Teacher.39 However, Krishnamurti’s apostasy did not arise from his cultural dislocation; rather, his dissension with the Theosophical Society evinced his disillusionment with several aspects of Theosophy that this paper shall examine in greater depth. Theosophical Divergence: Root Races Since Krishnamurti denounced religious dogma as an impediment to inner verities, he naturally resisted the unusual cosmological mythos that sustained the Theosophical Society. In particular, Blavatsky had developed a theory of root races that she clarified in The Secret Doctrine. She elaborated the earlier theory of racial evolution posited by A.P. Sinnett in his work Esoteric Buddhism by suggesting that human beings possessed a tripartite nature comprising “a divine spark, an astral or fluidic inner body, and a physical body.”40 As such, she deemed Darwin’s theory of evolution “puerile” and natural selection a “pure myth,” since it failed to accommodate the spiritual transformation that inhered within successive root races and would ultimately result in Krishnamurti’s appointment as a redemptive World Teacher of the seventh root race.41

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 56.

Ibid., 38

Bevir, Mark. "The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition." 753. 41

Blavatsky, H. P. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. London: Theosophical Pub. House. 1928, 299.

Khan 11 Initially, Blavatsky asserted, the first root race comprised “astral doubles…from a preceding though lower sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon.”42 She alluded to esoteric Roman lore to substantiate her claim that “it was the Moon (Omoroka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings.”43 Other root races followed, endowed with distinctive characteristics. The second root race, for example, reproduced like “the Amoeba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale” and eventually subsumed the first root race.44 The third root race hailed from Lemuria, and Blavatsky adopts a distinctly racialist tone in favor of the Aryan race and its purported intellectual and spiritual attainments over the descendants of the Lemurian root race. In fact, Dan Edelstein, the chair of the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages at Stanford University, posits that Blavatsky’s ideology “provided the Nazis with the mythical precedent and pretense necessary both to found their ideological platform…and to pursue their genocidal programs.”45 Far from an innocuous, if eccentric, topos in service of an idiosyncratic spiritual epic, Blavatsky’s racial denigration of Lemurian descendants contextualized within an Orientalist theory of root races serves to “authorize some of the vilest Eurocentric ideologies, in particular Nazism.”46 However, Blavatsky strove to foster an inclusive spirit of inquiry, at least within the auspices of the Theosophical Society, whose motto claims “to form the nucleus of a Universal

Ibid., 115.

Ibid.

Ibid., 116.

Dan Edelstein. "Hyperborean Atlantis: Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Madame Blavatsky, and the Nazi Myth." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35, no. 1 (2006): 268 https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed February 22, 2017). 46

Ibid.

Khan 12 Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, colour, or creed.”47 To that end, James Santucci, a professor of comparative religion at Ohio State University, argues that Blavatsky’s use of root races differs from coeval assumptions of race in that root races encompass the “various stages experienced by the reincarnating soul or ‘monad’ along an incredibly lengthy series of cyclic progressions—demarcated by root races and sub-races as the major divisions— before reaching the state of a ‘perfect septenary being.’”48 As a figure from the seventh root race, this Maitreya-inspired World Teacher would organize a spiritual renaissance “to resurrect to a new life and start anew with the coming stronger along the path of a new cycle.”49 As a young child, Krishnamurti hailed from a humble Tamil family and appeared an unlikely candidate for this cataclysmic role. In fact, he was considered a “sickly, vacant-eyed, developmentally delayed Brahmin boy,”50 although his biographer Lutyens noted his “close observation of nature” among other introspective, thoughtful qualities.51 That Leadbeater would perceive such a distinctive aura surrounding Krishnamurti corroborates with the egalitarian ethos Blavatsky expounds in The Key to Theosophy, in which she asserts that “all men have spiritually and physically the same origin, which is the fundamental teaching of Theosophy.”52 His appointment to the septenary World Teacher bears no connection to his racial or even physical status and reinforces the convolutions of Blavatsky’s teachings on root races. 47

Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, Section 3.

Santucci, James A. "The Notion of Race in Theosophy." Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 11, no. 3 (2008): 38. doi:10.1525/nr.2008.11.3.37. 49

Sinnett, A. P., A. Trevor Barker, and Vicente Hao Chin. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. & K.H. Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House. 2003, 150, digital file. 50

Vernon, Roland. "Star in the East: Krishnamurti, the Invention of a Messiah." Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 10, no. 1 (2006): 131. doi:10.1525/nr.2006.10.1.131. 51

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 10.

Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, Section 3.

Khan 13 Notwithstanding the latent racialism present in Blavatsky’s root races, Krishnamurti abjured this messianic role in favor of a free inquiry into inner values that would liberate humanity “from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself.”53 Not surprisingly, therefore, Krishnamurti’s apophatic appraisal of inner enlightenment contradicted the mythic and essentially fictive motifs intrinsic to Theological cosmogony. His overarching disdain for the systemic dogmas espoused by the Theosophists rather than the racialist ideology of the root races—coupled with his unusual phenomenological experiences during what he would term “the process” and the “otherness,” respectively—would culminate in the following speech: 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 organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path.54 “The Process” This eponymous experience was one of two abnormal phenomena that beset Krishnamurti after he disavowed the Theosophical Society. As Lutyen observes, “‘the process’ was a physical phenomenon, not to be confused with the state of consciousness that Krishnamurti variously refers to in the notebooks as the ‘benediction,’ the ‘otherness,’

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 279.

Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. 367.

Khan 14 ‘immensity’.”55 In Krishnamurti’s Notebook, the philosopher recounts his own experience as follows: Woke up about two and there was a peculiar pressure and the pain was more acute, more in the centre of the head. It lasted over an hour and one woke up several times with the intensity of the pressure. Each time there was great expanding ecstasy; this joy continued.—Again, sitting in the dentist’s chair, waiting, suddenly the pressure began. The brain became very quiet; quivering, fully alive; every sense was alert; the eyes were seeing the bee on the window, the spider, the birds and the violet mountains in the distance. They were seeing but the brain was not recording them. One could feel the quivering brain, something tremendously alive, vibrant and so not merely recording. The pressure and the pain was great and the body must have gone off into a doze.56 Although Krishnamurti urges individuals to engage in objective inner analysis, to “look at themselves, particularly in their relationships to other people, things, and activities,” the phenomenology of “the process” cannot be easily reconciled with the introspective approach Krishnamurti so cherished.57 However, as William James, the Harvard professor who helped pioneer the field of psychology, observes in his foundational text The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, any mystical experience encompasses “depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect” and cannot be adequately articulated or even

Krishnamurti, Jiddu. Krishnamurti's Notebook. Ojai, CA: Krishnamurti Publications of America, 2003, foreword, digital file. 56 57

Ibid., 2.

Jiddu Krishnamurti and Raymond Martin, Krishnamurti: Reflections on the Self (Open Court, 2004), xiv, digital file.

Khan 15 apprehended.58 Thus, the numinous state of consciousness alluded in Krishnamurti’s Notebook retains “ineffability” and a “noetic quality.”59 Although the phenomenology of “the process” conferred wisdom conflated with an expansive sense of bliss, its ontology transcends the realm of rational disquisition. Similarly, the self-abnegating absorption wrought by Krishnamurti’s visionary insight suggests that the “inner richness and importance” of his spiritual experience was predicated on the dissolution of his egoic identity.60 Since Lutyens affirms that Krishnamurti had “not so much as drunk tea or coffee…all this is stated so that no reader should imagine that Krishnamurti’s states of consciousness are, or ever have been, induced by drugs or fasting,” it remains plausible that “the process” arose from the activation of his kundalini energy. 61 A Sanskrit term, kundalini alludes to “a spiritual or cosmic energy at the base of the spine which moves upward through the chakras to the head where the union of Siva and Sakti takes place.”62 Although kundalini was first formally postulated in Hindu religious texts, accounts of spiritual experiences in such diverse settings as St. Teresa of Ávila’s “mystic fire” of divine union as well as the !Kung people’s healing dance, share similarities with kundalini-type phenomena.63 In addition, James opined that the mystic’s “own will were in abeyance, and

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 371. 59

Ibid.

Ibid., 372.

Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti's Notebook. Foreword.

Valanciute, A., and L. A. Thampy. "Physio Kundalini Syndrome and Mental Health." Mental Health, Religion and Culture 14, no. 8 (October 2011): 839-42. doi:10.1080/13674676.2010.530648. 63

South, Margaret. "The Mystic Fire of Teresa of Avila: A Comparative Study of Mysticism and the Kundalini Phenomenon." PhD diss.

Khan 16 indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power,” reinforcing the transcendent reality of kundalini-charged experiences, regardless of religious context.64 To that end, Krishnamurti perceived that “there is another kind of protection which is not mine…I’ve always felt the protection,” which empowered him to perceive and articulate his spiritual ideology.65 Far from merely devising his own theories, Krishnamurti surrendered to this mystic agency to exhume truth, although he never conveyed the ontological foundation of “the process.” According to Aryel Sanat in his text The Inner Life of Krishnamurti: Private Passion and Perennial Wisdom, this lacuna in Krishnamurti’s discourse emphasizes the “presuppositionlessness” that undergirded his teachings “by not allowing something he might say to be corrupted as merely his opinion in the opinion of his teachers.”66 As a channel, therefore, Krishnamurti transmuted the transcendence of his metaphysical encounters into a spiritual blueprint for inner freedom. As an essentially irrational experience foisted on Krishnamurti without his volition, “the process” suggests Blavatsky’s similarly experiential encounters with Ascended Masters, such as Morya and Koot Hoomi, who inspired her revelations. Similarly, Lutyens maintains that Krishnamurti “is being used and has been used since 1922 by something from outside…His consciousness is as permeated with this other thing as a sponge with water.”67 Not only did Blavatsky and Krishnamurti yoke their personal consciousness with a loftier universal one, but they also contextualized their experiences similarly. In fact, Blavatsky postulated the existence of 64

James, The Varieties, 372.

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 540.

Aryel Sanat, The Inner Life of Krishnamurti: Private Passion and Perennial Wisdom (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1999), Chapter 7. 67

Lutyens, J. Krishnamurti, 542.

Khan 17 fohat, “the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation.”68 Like kundalini, fohat induces spiritual experiences that illuminate humanity’s perception of mystical phenomena.69 More tellingly, however, Blavatsky depicted fohat as a “serpent” that “‘hisses as he glides hither and thither,’” evoking a remarkably analogous symbol of kundalini as a coiled serpent positioned at the base of the spine.70 It is deeply interesting that Krishnamurti would experience a kundalini awakening during what he termed “the process,” especially since “the yogic awakening and spiritual maturation” that accompany a kundalini awakening phenomenologically resemble the influence of the fohat that inspired Blavatsky’s cosmogonic theories.71 The exegetical processes undertaken by both Krishnamurti and Blavatsky to contextualize their energetic experiences within a wider narrative of philosophical inquiry indicate that this Theosophical vestige influenced the genesis of Krishnamurti’s own doctrines. In fact, this kundalini-inspired state of consciousness conferred an “incalculable expanding state of mind” that illuminated Krishnamurti’s antinomian worldview.72 Objective Inner Analysis However, Krishnamurti refused to indulge in his kundalini experiences, as he indicated as follows:

Blavatsky, Cosmogenesis, 16.

Snell, Merwin-Marie. "Modern Theosophy in Its Relation to Hinduism and Buddhism. I." The Biblical World 5, no. 3 (1895): 203. http://puffin.harker.org:2076/stable/3135389. 70

Blavatsky, Cosmogenesis, 76.

Snell, Merwin-Marie. "Modern Theosophy in Its Relation to Hinduism and Buddhism. I." 203.

Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti's Notebook. 2.

Khan 18 The self must cease through awareness of its own limitation, the falseness of its own existence. However deep, wide, and extensive it may become, the self is always limited, and until it is abandoned, the mind can never be free. The mere perception of that fact is the ending of the self, and only then is it possible for that which is the real to come into being.73 As such, the kenotic ethic espoused by Krishnamurti results not from subsumption to a deity but rather reflects his commitment to an objective inner analysis that encompasses selfknowledge mediated by the “extraordinary mirror of relationship, which does not distort.”74 He advocated an astute observation of the mind in relationship to other things, people and constructs in order to decondition the mind and attain freedom.75 He spurned the mechanistic practice of meditation and reinforced “the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased” most effectively envisioned in a state of awareness.76 In effect, he sought to achieve an unencumbered state of “total self-abandonment” wherein the strictures of the mind were liberated from meditation itself.77 Ultimately, the fruits of meditation ipso facto afford “a peace that has order, beauty and intensity” conducive to boundless love and insight.78 Similarly, Blavatsky criticized the traditional technique of meditation as a “tedious and useless practice of the counting of inhalations and exhalations as a means to produce absolute 73

Krishnamurti, J. Choiceless Awareness: A Selection of Passages for the Study of the Teachings of J. Krishnamurti. Ojai, Calif: Krishnamurti Foundation of America. 2001, 64. 74

Krishnamurti, Jiddu. The Book of Life, 31, digital file.

Ibid.

Krishnamurti, J. 2010. Freedom from the Known. London: Rider. 2010, 115.

Ibid., 94.

Jiddu Krishnamurti and Evelyne Blau, Meditations (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2002), 10, digital file.

Khan 19 tranquillity of mind or meditation,”79 and she affirmed the importance of transcending the mechanistic practice of meditation in order to plumb more deeply into “esoteric truths,” illuminated by the “light of the inner divine man.”80 Her disenchantment with outer forms in favor of an inward communion with the higher self appears to have influenced Krishnamurti’s own technique of introspective analysis. By positing an experiential model of divinity, Blavatsky inspired Krishnamurti to adopt a similar methodology that would yield inner freedom. Truth and Love Although Krishnamurti disdained the doctrinal excesses of Theosophy, exemplified by Blavatsky’s theory of root races, his phenomenological encounters, influenced by such energetic forces as kundalini and fohat, evoke Blavatsky’s theory of channeling Ascended Masters, such as Morya and Koot Hoomi. In addition, Krishnamurti and Blavatsky both cherished an inward technique of objective inner analysis that would instill insight into the human experience and ultimately liberate individuals from their self-limiting conceptions. Ultimately, the New Age—a “deeply individualistic and decentralized phenomenon” that proliferated during the 1960s and continues to shape the Western cultural matrix—assimilated the spiritually expansive credo espoused by both figures.81 Despite the multiple schisms that have assailed the Theosophical Society from its genesis in 1875, the Society, along with its disaffected members, continues to promulgate an alternative mystical worldview informed by an individualized quest for truth. As Hugh Urban, a professor of religious studies at Ohio State University, claims in his text New Age, Neopagan, and New 79

Blavatsky, Cosmogenesis, 16.

Ibid., 490.

Hugh B. Urban, New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), 223.

Khan 20 Religious Movements, “the New Age has no clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders and no real organization.”82 Perhaps the motto of the Theosophical Society—“there is no Religion higher than Truth” embodies the spirit of inquiry that harmonizes the ostensibly irreconcilable differences between Blavatsky and Krishnamurti’s convictions. Furthermore, love remains intrinsic to Krishnamurti’s interrogation of spiritual principles. Far from sterile philosophical exercises, his techniques of inner analysis, such as meditation, are grounded in an acute awareness of love, as the following excerpt from Krishnamurti’s Meditations reveals: Love was the death of every minute and each death was the renewing of love. It was not attachment, it had no roots; it flowered without cause and it was a flame that burned away the borders, the carefully built fences of consciousness. It was beauty beyond thought and feeling; it was not put together on canvas, in words or in marble. Meditation was joy and with it came a benediction.83 Ultimately, therefore, Krishnamurti’s meticulous deconstruction of dogma reflects his loftier conception of universal love, unfettered from the delusions of the mind. Blavatsky’s fohat, derived from “the Divine Will…the prototype of Eros,” similarly evokes the ideal of divine love that sustains the spiritual path.84 Despite the divergent ideological positions asserted by Krishnamurti and Blavatsky, they both envisaged an ever-expanding vision of love capable of uplifting an increasingly fraught world.

Ibid., 221.

Krishnamurti and Blau, Meditations, 42.

Blavatsky, Anthropogenesis, 65.

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