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Truth Is a Pathless Land: A Journey With Krishnamurti (A Quest original)

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Of all the people who ever shared his thoughts on the subject, Krishnamurti always remained adamant about one thing: all following perverts the follower. There is no saviour but oneself. No religions, beliefs or gurus matter, only the truth that you yourself discover. And as usual, a group of weak-minded followers decide to guru-ify Krishnamurti, to the very antithesis of all that he ever had to say. Ingram seems to fins an almost unreal significance in K.'s most trivial activities. In one chapter, he write that he was "delighted" when he discovered K. reading a joke book, rather than "real" literature. I can only imagine what would have happened if Krishnamurti had said something like, "Oh, drat, my shoes are untied". I can just hear Ingram's response: "And then the full force of the true meaning of this statement struck me; this is a perfect exampleof how Krishnaji was always awake to the present moment, and the singinficance of Krishnaji's untied shoes never left me." Jiddu Krishnamurti was a man who basically came up with the philosophy of Zen Buddhism up all on his own, but he excelled at practicing it far more than the Zen monks, who seem to be more rule-bound that most other religious orders. Although unique in that he empahsised that each and everyone of us has to find out for onself, his followers cannot resist turning him into a guru, some sort of god-man, which perverts the most basic ideas that he tried to impart. The man who wrote the book obviously got nothing from K.'s ideas or else he would have regarded him as less a teacher and himself as more the teacher, but he turns everythiung Krishnamurti ever stood for and turns it in its head. On the other hand, it does offer one a glimpse into the personal, informalside of Jiddu Krishnamurti and maybe worth a perusal for that. But the author was as blind as can be . . . don't use this as your guidebook on Krishnamurti's thought, it is completely the antithesis of what Jiddu always tried to get across.

It is the nature of the human mind to have it's thoughts, opinions, and images about nearly everything it comes across, -so doubtless when someone encounters the work of Krishanmurti, their mind begins to have imaginings about him being this angelic sort of being. The next step, of course, is to think that if they are to try to integrate Krishnamurti's insights into their own life, then they should also try to imitate the angelic behaviors that they imagine him having. This line of thought leads to a person putting on a plastic persona because there are these associations they have about how a deeply spiritual person is "supposed" to behave. This book is useful to help demolish these tendencies of imitation and hero worship by showing Krishnamurti's quirky and human side.

To me, it doesn't matter if Ingram Smith ever really "got" Krishnamurti's teachings, or if he was just a "follower". The value of this book is that it contains first hand stories that will be of interest to those who appreciate Krishanamurti's insights. They can always take Smith's commentary or leave it.