Krishnamurti: His Life and Death

by Mary Lutyens

Offers an overview of the life and teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who believed that the concepts of religion, class, nationality, and traditions are barriers to truth

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Philosophy

235 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Mary Lutyens (31 July 1908 – 9 April 1999) was a British author who is principally known for her biographical works on the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Reviews

[Andrew H · Rating 3 out of 5]

A biased biography. The later parts are stronger as they touch the author's life. Her mother, Lady Emily, was a major supporter of Krishnamurti and Theosophy. As a child, Krishna was forced by his Theosophy guardians to conform. From one side of the mirror, he was delivered into culture, From the other side, he was subject to Colonial expectations. Lutyens avoids such contradictory elements. This seems to be a shortened version of Lutyens' three volume biography. And Lutyens isn't clear about the difference between homosexual and pedophile -- C.W.Leadbetter was an ambivalent and predatory character. All in all, this is a general biography without much exploration.

[Pradnya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Lutyens got acquainted with Krishnamurti at the early age and was associated with him till his last moment. It's an account of her about life of Krishnamurti. I had read few of his teachings (don't know if it's right word because he refused any convention of master and disciple) a long back ago and was impressed with them. Since I read Indira, I wanted to know more about him.
I came across a stall of Krishnamurti foundation in a book fair and picked few of them. This was suggested by the owner to begin with. This is the right book if anyone wants to know who is J D Krishnamurti.

It covers life of K (as he called himself) from his birth, his journey of Theosophical society, and afterwards when he separated himself from the society and renounced his role. The book, though biography, is quite interesting. I kept rest three books aside and read it, looking forward eagerly to what happens. Throughout the last two weeks since I'm reading it, I felt quite peaceful, not that it's because of the book only but certainly it helped.
Apart from the mysterious process, I find it very rational and essential read. His personality was charismatic and without much of study of any science, doctrine, philosophy, his messages are very deep, full of meaning, driving the listener towards peace. The only other teachings I remember on the same line are of Buddha's.
It's a must read book if anyone wants to know about J D Krishnamurti from someone who has authority to write it.

[Janardhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard of J Krishnamurthy since very long because of the Rishi valley school.But never read or listened to his videos.He is a very intellectual person and he preaches pure jnana marg.I was simply taken a back after listening to few of his videos and the content he speaks .....which was so accurate and much ahead of its time.

The book written by Mary,who travelled a long life journey alongside K(as he like to be called) and reveals many instances in K life including the very mysterious process which took place with K.
The book covers K ‘s minutes on many crucial topics on liberation,truth having a path less land,his childhood which itself is a great epic,on sorrow,on meditation,on education and ultimately on his life mission to free man from all prejudices,desires and ego.

This was my first Krishnamurti book and am very much satisfied as It strictly condemns the traditional understandings and explains that thought is a thing of the past.
K uses intellectual dissection and I found him similar to ramana Maharshi expect the latter brings about a god worship where as k uses truth in place of god.
I would love to read other works of him and I admired his constant duty to give talks around globe and his contribution to education by his schools.

[Searchingthemeaningoflife Greece · Rating 5 out of 5]

Η αλήθεια είναι μία χώρα χωρίς κανένα δρόμο προς αυτήν.


👂 Σίγουρα η δημιουργία μπορεί να έρθει μόνο όταν η σκέψη είναι σιωπηλή...


👂 Η γνώση έχει τη δική της περιορισμένη εσωτερική αντίληψη, τη δική της περιορισμένη δημιουργία, αυτό όμως φέρνει σύγκρουση. Μιλάμε για ολιστική αντίληψη, στην οποία το εγώ, η προσωπικότητά, δεν υπεισέρχεται καθόλου. Μόνο τότε υπάρχει αυτό που ονομάζουμε δημιουργικότητα. Αυτό είναι.

[Gaurav Mathur · Rating 3 out of 5]

While K's own words are always healing and helpful, this book told me about how troubled his life was.

[Paulo Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests, we are presented to the Life and Death of Jiddu Krishnamurti through the eyes of Mary Lutyens, a friend from childhood.
Beforehand one should point out that if you don't know the work of Krishnamurti (K.) you should stay away from this book, completely. His work already asks for things that many people don't want to get into, after reading this book, many might want to stay even further from it - and from personal experience, well, you shouldn't.
Despite having liked the book, very easy-reading, well written, clear and somewhat insightful, the book starts out by playing a little trick on you. Mary Lutyens had to start from facts, and she did. The poor dreamy child, from a brahmin family, that lacked self-importance, that couldn't care less about school, that wondered easily, endured punishments, so on and so forth, had a great bond with one of his brothers, Nitya, and both would eventually meet one of the leaders of the Theosophical Society, Charles Webster Leadbeater.
Leadbeater was impressed with the child and chose him, above a previous choice, to be the new Messiah, a World Teacher, that would change man, his ways and avoid self-destruction. I must stop here and say, that these things, sound very foolish to me, the word Messiah, and even world Teacher, are pigeonholes, that usually are used by lunatics/fanatics and most ofter than not, by very silly simple-minded individuals. And in fact, this is the idea that I have of Mr. Leadbeater and the whole Theosofical Society, despite their obvious good intentions (which, actually seem pretty real and honest), the whole thing, for me, is utter nonsense.
What attracted me to the work of K. was exactly the opposite, a clear, insightful approach to facts, no theories, no practices, no mumbo-jumbo, just a way to deal with the whole process of living. But he was taught in a completely different school, but there are few surprises to be found.
You see, Krishnamurti, must have been a very easy target, because he endured everything, no judgements, no reactions, he just bared everything that was happening but eventually he would start to develop a certain insight that would lead him to understand the facts.
Mary Lutyens doesn't interfere here, at all, she just points out what people said that they witnessed, and little by little she started to underline what was close to her own recognition of K and what probably wasn't. I liked this fact very much, it is sane and it also leads the reader to understand where Mrs. Lutyens was regarding the whole thing.
What happened next is bond to alienate most readers, even someone like me that is in touch with the work of K., for more than 2 years now, felt the necessity to stay away. Because all the explanations that are presented by the witnesses are too mystical, silly and clearly there wasn't much rationality here. But after having spent sometime reflecting I came to a conclusion on my own.
But prepare yourself, I am going to give you the nonsense fairy tale first. Leadbeater trained K. to be open to receive the great Lord Maitreya, a Bodhisattva, a powerful spiritual entity that inhabits the Tusita Heaven - right... I mean, I told you so.
Now I am going to write something that Mary Lutyens never did, this process of being open to something is nothing more than a practice of meditation, something that K. would reject later on, the whole process of practicing something. So try and bare with me through this whole thing, that will sound very silly at times, and believe me, it is, in the way that it is presented (not trying to offend anyone, but one must be sane and rational, the work of K., kind of deserves this, one doesn't have to point out that scientists from all over the world, that even shared theories with Einstein talked with K. in the last 20 years of his life... just to give a little humpf to this whole thing...it was needed.)
So if you have survived that sentence (it was hard on me too), you then start to catch up with testimonials that will lead you to at least understand what happened in a sane way. According to history, this process, that was even referred to as "The Process", led K. to greater states of consciousness, where he would gradually become more attentive to the things he had to do with his body/brain to see the dangers of thought, something, that actually he talked about for more than 50 years, with great coherence and never ever referring to this mumbo-jumbo. He didn't had to.
In fact this whole story was a great problem for K., because all of his teachings are for a common man, to understand his own prison, illusions of thoughts, by simply becoming attentive, understanding by watching, your notions of pleasure and pain, where fear comes from. Every sane and rational person should do this, I used to do it even before I knew K. existed, clearly I had my ways, but I strongly believe every human being is in contact with these things, even the ones that are very dreamy about the whole process of living. But knowing this story, K. was a freak of nature. K. was someone special. This couldn't be it. Sanely enough, he was very open about this with people who were around him, and the book exposes this very well. And I am very glad that it did. Krishnamurti had this amazing quality, there were no taboos, he was always clear and responsible, he always said, even in the presence of David Bohm, "I can be insane, I can be totally wrong.", which is a responsible way, the only way, but Bohm always replied with great honesty too, something along these lines "You have to understand that crazy people might have moments of lucidity and promote great conclusions, but by the end of the day they also promote a lot of nonsense, and you on the other hand, have great energy, you are always attentive, and your insights are constantly right" - this coming from a man that spent more than 20 years with him, plus his public talks and private talks, show the same.
So what was happening? Well... Lutyens mentions something that K. used to write on his journals also, that he used to wake-up in this meditative state, fully attentive, in this state he used to receive a lot of physical pain, something that David Bohm actually acknowledged as an excessive accumulation of energy in the spine that could lead the nerves to a halt... it makes sense to me, since all the work of K. led to saving brain energy, not spending it on useless thoughts and blabber - one has to acknowledge that, probably, K. had no image about himself, therefore he must have had a lot of mental space, therefore more energy.
As someone that practiced "meditation" for eight years, I can understand this, because despite my practice, the mind had more space, most probably because, later on, my own thoughts were processing the mantras which led the brain to not have a reaction, there was no content to react to - meaning, the mantras were the content being processed, but the mantras have no meaning for a brain that doesn't know their meaning, which means it is a process of self-hypnosis.
But as I found out, even with the help of K. teachings, these types of meditations lead our own consciousness to be entrapped in itself. Throughout the years your brain will become even more mechanical, and you can see this by watching the eyes of people that meditate, their eyes are very, very still, almost dead eyes, which leads to the assumption that they are not only attentive, but have very little activity. If you look at the eyes of Krishnamurti, they were lively, even on his last weeks of existence, except when he shared the moments of silence, by this I mean, that I am under the impression that real attention can't be trained it must only be understood by the mind, it is a reflection of a certain insight.
But there is a curve-ball here, what K. never wrote about, and Lutyens presents us here, is that K. used to "went-off", he dismayed and started to have, something that could be envisioned as some sort of epileptic episode, but with the nuance that he would talk. Which is something very interesting, I will come back to this in a bit.
You see, while under the guard of Leadbeater, K. spent much time with Nitya, the brother he was so found of, and Nitya, seen through the teachings of K, was an illusion of K's thoughts, he had an image about himself then and clearly that image, that ego, had a great longing for his own brother. Then something awful happens, very unfortunately, his brother Nitya (Jiddu Nityananda) dies of tuberculosis. This has a huge impact on K., that is well documented, he was silent and was under tremendous suffering for 7 days or more. After this episode, K. starts to see a major crack and gains a certain insight about pain (psychologically, of course), he starts to understand many things, that the Order of The Star(A group within the Theosophical Society) should be dissolved and that, above many things, "The Observer is the Observed", when K. found this out, his own self-image, was finished. This is something that can be shown to everybody, no mumbo-jumbo.
Now the plot thickens a little bit, because this part I already had some facts checked by myself, way before I even read this book. It all made sense to me, I just didn't knew that he had the so called "process" before the death of Nitya. But now, after the death of Nitya, K. when he "goes-off" he starts to talk about Nitya to the people that are around him, while laying on the floor, and talking again about some "them", that are going and coming back and all that confusion.
So one wonders... and you can find out something very interesting, even Lutyens aludes to this, with a lot of respect, but nevertheless, one can't overlook this... what if K. had a major division in his own consciousness ? A division sustained by the illusion of this old process of meditation that was suppose to join him with this so called entity. It is quite plausible for me, actually. That the dream child probably didn't survived it all, but that whole story helped him to achieve a certain state of awareness and consciousness which led his mind to gain the proper insight to his own teachings. What K. couldn't face was the fact that the only way his consciousness was organized to avoid such horrendous pain was to sustain the wall in his consciousness, a wall that fulled him, ironically, just like normal meditators do, but in this case, most probably, a more organic one, where the brain found true safety, but there were still interior movements of the mind that were needed to sustain his state.
This is, for me, much more plausible than believing in a bogus entity that rules behind the curtains of reality and is interfering with our consciousness.
I felt that Lutyens thought about this too, but in regard for her friend, she only gave small clues to like minded people.
There are many things in here, that support this, even coming from K., one thing that K. never told people publicly is that he was unable to have thoughts on his own, I mean, on the platform, interviews, private discussions he had them, but they all had to be related to his teachings, he never had the other types of thoughts, ever. He claimed this and it is quoted in the book, "I couldn't have them even if I wanted to"...which supports my theory, this man clearly knew, had a profound insight that memory was also a physical thing (not through belief or knowledge, by physical knowing), that it is like a cliff.. you don't ignore that it is there, you avoid it. He avoided using his memory in a certain way. I had an insight about this when he talked with David Bohm and he had read the first book released by Lutyens that talks about his time on the Theosophical Society and the death of Nitya, and "The Process", a book that I haven't read myself, but you can clearly hear K. saying "I must go out now, I am too nervous, I must calm down", which would imply that this talk led him to access that part of memory, if it would start to get triggered he would have to undergo a certain state all over again, which he didn't want to. This is the wall that I am talking about.
Then in the end of the book you get and insight about his later years, there are very interesting things to read, and If you have survived all the things that I have written, maybe you should read them.
This helped me cleanse a little the image I had of K., because inevitably there is one when you spend so much time hearing someone talk and so on. It helped to see the human being, the common man.
He was right about many, many, many things. "If consciousness was seen as a container it would be the container and the content of it" (not in the book), this means, that you are what you gather inside of you. The major problem is how you organize certain things.
We are trapped in the physicality of this world, we need to accept it and look very closely to our own actions and how they affect everything around us. It is true, we are the world, we are what we are making of it. we should dare to look, by facing ourselves and stop using others to achieve psychological safety. Krishnamurti was right about this, the rest is just the life of a very unique individual that had a very unusual life and promoted very interesting insights into our human nature.
We shouldn't try to understand Krishnamurti, we must understand ourselves. I am glad with what I found out, because it helps me to understand how deep and serious it all is. Don't glorify the achievements nor the life of anyone, who the hell cares about stuff that can't be proved, who cares about mumbo-jumbo, please just stay with the facts. In this, K. was right, we must, or else we are going to destroy ourselves. This is very clear, I hope.

[Phil Calandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Krishnamjurti's philosophy is similar to that of Advaita Vedenta but may be described as enigmatic, vague and difficult to digest. Krishnamurti was discovered by Charles Webster Leadbeater, a clairvoyant, and Krishnamurti was touted to be the next "Great Teacher" of the World Religion" and was eventually made the titular head of the Theosophical Society. Krishnamurti, at this time, had various visions and contacts with the "Masters" including Lord Maitreya, Buddhi, Krishna and others. During his association with the Theosophical Society, Krishnamurti never explained the nature of these communications with these so called "Masters". In 1929, at the age of 34, Krishnamurti severed himself from the Theosophical Society after a spiritual experience that changed his life. Krishnamurti was to say that the "Masters" were unnecessary and it was in the power of the individual to attain liberation. Unfortunately, in my view, Krishnamurti failed to explain his philosophy to the reader and one is left with more questions than answers. Krishnamurti's followers characterize him as dynamic and a charismatic spiritual leader who captivated his audiences; however, his written work leaves one quite unsettled with little hope of achieving what Krishnamurti characterizes in his books as the "silence". Notwithstanding the foregoing, one should read his work to get one's own prospective

[Akshat Tewari · Rating 3 out of 5]

One wanting to understand Krishnamurti should read this book... it simplifies his simple yet complicated approch to life

[Chris Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know the story of Krishnamurti's life quite well so there weren't really any surprises here. What was nice though was the author's personal recollections of life around him. I also liked the honesty - there were a few points on which she was uncertain and she openly admitted this.

Worth reading.

[Anveshak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been reading the teachings of krishnamurti for sometime now but this book is completely different. a lot of mystery is there whereas his teachings (what he himself spoke) are not mysterious. this book of his personal life show how his upbringing was taken care by something that's beyond understanding of common mind. are such people chosen? or is there possibility of every individual being able to attain such mind? uncertainty...
anyways...
"Change, then see what happens" - J.krishnamurti

[Shailesh Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mery collect wonderful facts on J. Krishnamurti from various sources and references. I'm surprised that One English, One American and One Australian decided to adopt a special child who became J. Krishnamurti, they groomed the child, educated him and try to use him to get prosperity. But the J's inner sense understand the situation and make unable them to succeed. J's widest thoughts expressed actual mind state of people, he didn't advised but feel which experienced personally. This book may vary against the another autobiography wrote by another author. I hope both the author could be wrong at either points !!!

[Ganesh Kudva · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I am very inspired by teachings by Krishmurti, I was curious to read about his life. Mary Lutyens is from K's inner circle - and I believe had K's blessings to write this book. However, many parts of the book is not necessarily in agreement with K's explanation of his life. For e.g., he contradicts the "Process" here: https://youtu.be/cLVn0Rg9gIU (Discussion happens at around 40 minutes into this video). As per the book, Krishnamurti goes through a process to get enlightened - but, as per K's conversation with Dr. Bhom, this is not accurate.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of the life of Jiddu Krishnamurti, overall. It drug a little at times, with some unnecessary excerpts from other works.

I was disappointed that while many of Krishnamurti's ideas are intriguing, his personal life included lots of bull * that he never got away from. Even dissolving the Order of the Star didn't cause him to denounce the thosophical *, and even to the end he claimed many mystical things. Too bad.

[Eganesha.In · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book - to be read by one and all. I usually like biographies and this one is really good. Right from a young age, K as Krishnamurti prefers to call himself, shows signs and goes through the process of revealing himself to be a world teacher.
Very well written.

[Chandar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting! And quite a revelation about the early days of Theosophical Society and Krishnamurti.

[Martin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank you Mary for writing this book, beautiful account of K's life

[Vipul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pranam

J Krishnamurthy jee is the one who has attained sambodhi .
This book uncovers several chapters of his life.
Thanks to Amazon for making this available.