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Krishnamurti and the Search for Light

By Geoffrey Hodson
(Sydney: St Alban Press, n.d. [ca. 1939])

 

CONTENTS.


PREFACE.

INTRODUCTION.

PREFACE.


In this book Mr. Hodson discusses the utterances of Mr. J. Krishnamurti. When he is able to assent to them he does so. When he dissents he gives his reasons.

The book should be welcomed by all students of Theosophy; for here at last a fellow-student replies to Mr. Krishnamurti's long-continued condemnations of the Ancient Wisdom, The Theosophical Society, its founders inner and outer, its prominent workers and its members throughout the world.

 

LAWRENCE W. BURT.

 

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INTRODUCTION.

Krishnamurti has undoubtedly brought a measure of life and light to the world. He achieves this largely by concentrating upon one aspect of life and light. He is obviously inspired with a passion for original thought and a scorn for the repetition of accepted formula. For him, tradition is anathema, the wisdom of the ages a delusion and a snare. He sees truly that humanity will never be wise, and therefore happy, until the individual thinks for himself, stands upon his own intellectual, emotional and physical feet. His message would appear to be "discover truth for yourself and by yourself." He seems either to be unaware of or deliberately to ignore the fact that without detailed guidance the majority of men are totally incapable of self-illumination.

Krishnamurti himself is uniquely individual in his views. He delves deep into his own consciousness in search of the solution of life's problems. He refuses to be guided, apparently in order to preserve the clarity of his own perception. He is an apostle of the virgin mind, the white mental sheet, the new beginning. He advocates a ruthless cutting adrift from the past. He tells us to ignore the future and be acutely focussed in the present. He wants us to live our own lives to the full, making the very most of every moment. We are to accept life's experiences, give ourselves fully yet impersonally over to them, and so realise their sublime significance.

Krishnamurti is the personification of simplemindedness. He is sincerity incarnate, and is clearly inspired with a selfless desire to lead humanity to its own light. He concentrates on individual self-knowledge, individual perfection and enlightenment. Up to now he has seemed

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to ignore, even to deny, the value of the path of action, of deliberate self-training, study and ministration to the world.

Unfortunately, he proclaims his to be the only way and the equally certain and most glorious path of selfless service an illusion, a way of cowardice, of escape from reality. In him, singleness of purpose has developed into intolerance. Unique individuality has become a fetish, worship of which produces narrow-mindedness and causes him to display distinct signs of intellectual arrogance. He alone is right. Everyone else, from the Lord Buddha down to the latest teacher of the Law, is wrong, criminally wrong.

Thus it would appear that Krishnamurti is human, though in some respects above the majority of men. He has achieved the heights, and this makes the more injurious his descents into the vale. Perceiving the altitudes, those whom he influences do not always discriminate between them and the valleys, between truth and error. This is unfortunate, for one of the marked characteristics of his teaching is its unevenness, its variability.

Let us be inspired with the hope that Krishnamurti will ascend to even greater heights as a teacher and remain thereon. For he is a great man with a great message as yet but partially delivered. We are in a most critical period of world-history. We need Krishnamurti who possesses that genius, those rare qualities which make a leader and a saviour of the world.

In this series of articles I comment upon Krishnamurti's teachings. I pay homage to the truth which I have been able to perceive in them. I challenge those utterances which appear to be erroneous, and on occasion I advance certain theosophical ideas.

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