A Biography by Pupul Jayakar

Krishnamurti A Biography By Pupul Jayakar book #9.08

This substantial book (hardback, 516 pages) was published in the year of Krishnamurti's death, 1986. As is written in the front piece:

"From her unique vantage in Indian society – as recognised philosopher, cultural leader, and close associate of Krishnamurti himself – Pupul Jayakar has written a major biographical interpretation of one of the greatest spiritual sages of our times."

Jayakar draws from her long years of friendship with Krishnamurti, and sources never before published, including her own diaries and Krishnamurti's letters and conversations. She reveals the full story of his early years as a child-teacher-saviour and media darling and offers behind the scenes insights into his later years as an influential and unique teacher and thinker".

The biography can be considered as complementary to the set of biographies by Mary Lutyens. It focuses on his life in India, although not exclusively so.

There are quite a few dialogues between K and friends included not published elsewhere. For example:

• Is it possible to keep the brain very young?

• Negation and the ancient mind.

• Doubt as the essence of the religious enquiry.

• The nature of God.

• The meaning of death.

• How far can one travel?

An excerpt:

In mid-February of 1948 I went to see him again. He asked me whether I had noticed anything different in my thinking process. I said I was not getting as many thoughts as I did before. My mind was not as restless as it used to be.

He said, "If you have been experimenting with self-knowing, you will notice that your thinking process has slowed down, that your mind. is not restlessly wandering!' For a time he was silent; I waited for him to continue. "Try working out each thought to its completion, carry it right through to the end. You will find that this is very difficult, for no sooner does one thought come into being than it is pursued by another thought. The mind refuses to complete a thought. It escapes from thought to thought. . .

.

"If you follow each thought to its completion, you will see that at the end of it there is silence. From that there is renewal. Thought that arises from this silence no longer has desire as its motive force; it emerges from a state that is not clogged with memory.

"But if again the thought that so arises is not completed, it leaves a residue. Then there is no renewal and the mind is caught again in a consciousness which is memory, bound by the past, by yesterday. Each thought, then to the next, is the yesterday-that which has no reality.

"The new approach is to bring time to an end," Krishnaji concluded. I did not understand then, but came away with the words alive within me.