Years of Awakening

I've been reading several of Krishnamurti's books before reading this biography of his early years, through age 38, and definitely consider this must reading for anyone who has been studying his philosophy. Here in the earlier stages of his life, one can see the elements that shaped the man and his philosophy.Mary Luytens, the author of this biography, was a close friend of his and she refers to herself in the third person several times through the book. Her mother was active in the Theosophical Society directed by Mrs. Besant during J. Krishnamurti's childhood and young adult years.As the eighth son born to a family of the Brahmin caste in India, he was automatically given the name of Krishnamurti. A horoscope was immediately cast for him by an Indian astrologer, and needless to say, it predicted that he would be a singularly important spiritual influence.This is a fascinating account of those early years, and of how the Theosophical Society gained control of his upbringing, and cast him in the role of the great world spiritual leader whose advent the society predicted. The author details events of this period and the reader will see how Krishnamurti, although under the tutelage of this group, developed an independent spirit and an independent philosophy, and eventually stepped out of the role created for him.The emphasis throughout the book is on the biographical events and not on the eventual philosophy. For this reason, I feel that the person familiar with the philosophy will get more from this book than will one who hasn't read this man's writings.I believe anyone who is spiritually attuned will gain a tremendous insight through this book.

This is a remarkable and strange story, told by a person close to Krishnamurti. A young man is taken from his family in India (seemingly at random) and trained to be a "world teacher" of Theosophy. After several years of traveling around the world, having fun with his friends, meditating, and developing doubts, he has an intense and torturous mystical experience. He comes to the conclusion that the only salvation is that we find within ourselves, and strikes out on his own. I can see why the Dalai Lama likes Krishnamurti. His own autobiography tells a story that is similiar in many respects -- a lonely young god-king who finds himself, but also shows an attractively human side along the way. (In the D. L.'s case, he tinkered with watches rather than cars.)The author knew Krishnamurti when both were young, and she was in love with him. She's evidently still in love, yet manages to tell Krishnamurti's story in an honest manner, including faults and errors as well as a bit of hero-worship. While I sympathized with him and found him an attractive human being in some ways, I can't say I came away admiring K quite as much as the author clearly does. As a youth, he seemed to me (being bourgois at heart) like a lonely and mixed up young man who needed a real job and a real family more than anything. After a long, slow build-up, K's mystic experience is described in painful detail. Like Mohammed gurus like Muktananda and Sai Baba, it was a painful and bizarre experience that even the principles thought might involve evil spirits. But then the story takes an unexpected twist. Rather than launching jihad, or founding an ashram with himself as God, K sets out to teach the world that God -- or "life" -- is no more (or not much more) his monopoly than that of anyone else. Given Occam's razor, where should we slice? The author gives little reason to assume that K's grand pronouncements at this stage are true. She points out, for example, that after his experience, he was still capable of accusing her, falsely, of having an affair with a married man. Nor do the "un-dogmas" given in this book, at least, strike me as extraordinarily deep. Truth is "unconditioned" and "pathless," organized creeds are "crystalized" and "dead." "There is neither good nor evil. Good is that of which you are afraid; evil is that of which you are not afraid." These are cliches in some circles, and strike me as the kind of sophism that is just iconoclastic enough to seem profound to mild intellectual rebels. One can only be called bold for questioning one's own dogmas, not those of someone else. Many of K's ideas given here appear to me to have been influenced by the Dharmapada and Zen Buddhism. People couldn't live with such an individual self-help form of Buddhism 2600 years ago. The author seems to show (see what happens to the other characters in the book) that they can't live with it today, either. (Even if self-salvation "works" -- or is the highest goal -

The first of two books about the man groomed for messiahship by those who took him for the reincarnated World Teacher, the man who later dissolved the Order of the Star, gave back the wealth he'd been given, and told the world it was all bunk: "Truth is a pathless land..."