Likewise, when I show videos of Krishnamurti talks, the students see an old man speaking painstakingly and with obvious frustration at his audience, trying to communicate difficult material. As their teacher and as one who personally thinks Krishnamurti’s teachings are very significant, I of course gloss these presentations to try to make them more accessible and relevant. But the difficulties in these situations bring up the whole issue of the Krishnamurti “movement” and its often-perceived cultic nature. And so I would like to address this here.

The first issue concerns the identity of Krishnamurti. While Krishnamurti often told his audiences he himself, the deliverer of the teachings, was unimportant — as opposed to the teachings, which were important — Krishnamurti also talked to his friends, privately and publicly, about the nature of his own identity, a nature that was mysterious, unexplainable and special. Because the Theosophy movement had advertised Krishnamurti as the new World Teacher or as the incarnation of Maitreya, Buddha or Christ, he had begun with a reputation as a holy person. Early in his speaking career, he would neither affirm nor deny that he was Christ or Buddha, but he often referred to his own enlightenment. Add to this the worldwide dissemination of his books, association with famous people (Aldous Huxley, Indira Gandhi, Annie Besant, David Bohm, etc.), and the establishment of schools, and you have the makings of a cult figure, in spite of his rejection of Theosophy and conventional religion.

This kind of ambiguous and often perceived holy identity presents problems for the Krishnamurti movement, for those people and institutions dedicated to exploring Krishnamurti’s teachings or insights. It tends to attract followers and believers in the authority of Krishnamurti. We start believing the teachings are true, significant, urgent, etc. because Krishnamurti taught them. Would we take the teachings as seriously if a college professor from the Midwest espoused them?

Krishnamurti’s “authority” not only makes his teachings automatically important and true, but also makes them true verbatim. Because we are not “enlightened,” we probably feel we have no right to rephrase, much less critique, Krishnamurti´s specific expression of the teachings. Hence one hears people in the movement continually talking about “the observer is the observed,” “you are the world,” “truth is a pathless land,” etc.

I personally hate to teach students anything I myself cannot clearly understand. I would never teach the Four Noble Truths or the Three Marks of Existence of Buddhism, for example, unless I could convey something intelligible and relevant. And the same goes for Krishnamurti’s teachings. “The observer is the observed” or “the thinker is the thought” is not an easily understood perception or idea. It has to do with there not being a “self ” observing feelings that are separate or that the thinker is nothing more than another thought and not a reality behind thought. There being no detached consciousness watching and manipulating the contents of consciousness is a very radical notion that flies against the Christian and New Age notion of soul, the Indian notion of Self, the shamanic idea of spirit, and the modern psychological sense of self.

Taking the focus away from false subjectivity and allowing it to become objective awareness is another radical side of this teaching, one that flies against the increasingly subjective turn of the world. The running away from negative feelings and sensations into escapist behaviors is, in fact, facilitated by this subjectivist worldview that posits a self separate from these painful contents of consciousness and that is actually able to dissociate from them.

All teachers develop shorthand communications to convey their teachings. But almost always these shorthand expressions tend to mystify their insights or ideas. Krishnamurti often took time to explain “the observer is the observed” to his audiences, but just as often commented how obvious it was, without further explanation. We who are engaged with the teachings should find our own words and explanations for the insights we understand. We need to make them more ours and less Krishnamurti’s.

I also think that as teachers, parents, administrators and concerned human beings, we need to explore more radically our own responses to Krishnamurti and the teachings. Krishnamurti came out of the Theosophy movement, but also out of India, traditionally a very religious country. That Krishnamurti used such words as “God” and “sacred” shows a certain assumed worldview. But we now live in a world where many people were raised in secular, humanist, and scientific milieus and they cannot relate to such notions. Why, as Krishnamurti would say, are the rivers, mountains, oceans, the earth, life itself, sacred? Why are specific places like India, Varanasi and Rishi Valley sacred? Because Krishnamurti felt so? Krishnamurti’s intention was for us to question everything. So why not the use of the word “sacred”? By using “sacred,” the Krishnamurti movement is vulnerable to religions looking for common ground and to perennialists (different paths to the same Reality) seeing Krishnamurti’s teachings as just another approach to a universal goal. Perhaps the “sacred” is no longer a concept that makes sense.

If Krishnamurti’s teachings are true and truly universal, then they should apply to a world that has never heard of India or the sacred. Is the human predicament not beyond ethnic, religious, and historically accidental bounds? In the West there’s a certain exoticism and awe associated with all things Indian and spiritual. This keeps Westerners from seeing truth directly. In India there’s a certain pride and possessiveness of things Indian and spiritual, which keeps Indians from seeing truth directly. There is no doubt that India has contributed some of the deepest spiritual insights, as well as some of the most persistent spiritual delusions. But these are historical facts that need not color timeless truths. It is the truth we are after, not origins, kudos or national pride.

Krishnamurti’s teachings often ring so true that maybe they should be classified under psychology or science or existential philosophy. In Western thought, understanding fear, anxiety, insecurity, violence, irrationality, and death comes under psychology as much as religion or spirituality. Perhaps we need to create new categories of thought or a new worldview that places concern for deeper matters under more suitable guises than “religion” or “spirituality,” heavily loaded terms that at this point in history may foster confusion more than clarity.

Because of the emergence of intolerant and inflexible Christian, Hindu and Islamic religious fundamentalisms, the association of Krishnamurti with religion or spirituality is problematic. Either he will be dismissed as just another spiritual teacher by those trying to get beyond the irrationalities of religion, or he will be seen as competition for, or even as a threat to, the existing religions. I think this is so because we have, as a civilization, lost concern for the basic concept of truth. As secular moderns we have reduced truth to the content of science and humanism or, as entrenched traditionalists, to a specific religion. This narrow spectrum tends to polarize, leading to the various traditions fighting each other and science in a series of conflicts without resolution.

The beauty of Krishnamurti is that he has tried to resurrect the issue of truth, to explore such related notions as awareness, direct action, negative thinking, and continuous falsification that go beyond the narrow insoluble polarities and attempt a new look at our world and our selves.

So I think the Krishnamurti movement’s focus should be on “truth” rather than on “Krishnamurti.” Krishnamurti has certainly done some of the deepest exploration of truth of any figure in history, and his insights or teachings will obviously play a huge role in any grappling with this concept. But a focus on truth as an issue rather than content might tend to eliminate the view that the Krishnamurti movement is a cult with its own particular truth-as- content created by an “enlightened,” authoritative master.

And, finally, Krishnamurti’s insights are not the only contribution to a theory of truth. This is a much larger field than Krishnamurti’s work, impor tant and crucial though the latter is. David Bohm understood this and used dialogue with Krishnamurti to explore truth in this larger sense. But we must stop relying only on Bohm’s or Krishnamurti’s work and start being original and creative in our own articulation and understanding of these issues.