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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very interesting story., November 22, 2001
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 -- which I doubt, especially the latter.) Tell myself, "I am one of the strong ones. I can save myself." Or is that my pride speaking? Which means, I am most lost of all? K himself seemed to entertain similar doubts, at least early on. His mystic experience may have assured him, while I, frankly, was left wondering why. This book is mainly the story of K's early life, not his teachings, however. It is a well-told and touching story. It gives an inside view of the Theosophy society, and portrays the main characters with sympathy and, most the time, kindness. (Sometimes to the point of naivitee.) author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
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