IDEAS OF KRISHNAMURTI

Taranaki Daily News, 15 September 1934, Page 14 (Supplement)

IDEAS OF KRISHNAMURTI

MILD RUSSIA COMMUNISM. A pamphlet labelled "Krishnamurti, ’ issued by the Star Publishing Trust Incorporated in Holland and printed in California on poor paper, without a named price, gives a verbatim report of the addresses given by Krishnamurti at Auckland in March and April of this year. The proceedings comprise two public meetings at the town hall, three talks in the Vasanta School gardens, one talk to the Auckland theophists and a talk to Auckland business men. One can assume that the pamphlet gives a fair exposition of his ideas. Because of the extreme vagueness of his ideas arid the confusion of thought and verbal expressions, it is extremely difficult to gather exactly what it is all about. This impression of insolidity,. of having no definite, idea to grapple with, is intensified when we come to the answers to the questions put to him at the end of his talks and arising out of them. His rifairi thesis appears to be that our minds and intelligence are “caged” because of the preconceptions we have as the result of the religious beliefs and the traditional , notions ,we have about the various social religious and economic problems with which we are faced. He is opposed to all. systems and places himself in opposition to established religions • whether it be Christian, Hindu or Mahommedan. He appears to be against Fascism, Communism and indeed any concept of social system whereby the world is managed at the present time. He specifically disclaims on being a teacher or a reformer or philosopher because no ordinary term fits in with his own particular view. It is a pure negation and he wishes to impress on his hearers that they must cast aside all their present notions and allow themselves untrammelled thought. Through all his talk runs a vein of extreme egoism. This is particularly in evidence when he is finding a difficulty in answering a plain question. He repeatedly makes a remark such as, “This is very difficult the discovery of truth demands great intelligence.” The impression conveyed is that his audience have not that great intelligence. He is asked directly Are you the Messiah?” and he answers, “Does it matter greatly,” and continues it long explanation without attempting to meet the question, but getting, his audience and his explanation lost in a maze of words. That he does not deny the title is sufficient evidence that he plays with the idea that he is really someone very exceptional. % A second idea which runs through all his discourse is that the world is suffering mostly from “exploitation, ’ and indeed the only persistent positive impression that the perusal of the pamphlet gives is that he is preaching a diluted sort of Communism as we understand the term. His teaching if anything is destructive. Away with all tradition and belief, he says, and start afresh, drifting to whatever point your mind takes you. This is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley with his doctrine of do what you will. The whole weakness of the doctrine is

that he teaches that the individual point of view is all important and that each one has to be a law to himself. We gather that he considers the thoughts of anyone —and this would include a mental defective—are the only guide one should have. It appears to be a doctrine of Bolshevism. That he greatly admires Lenin is evidenced by the fact that he specifies in the same category Christ, Buddha and Lenin. To him there are no standards and all problems will be solved if everyone can be induced to think on the lmes he indicates. When we reflect that he was bom in 1891 of Hindu parents, and was brought up by Dr. and Mrs. Besant, who chose him as being a Messiah, it is easy to understand that his whole life has been spent in an environment which could not help giving him the highest ideas of his own eminence. He has a background of Oriental mysticism, and seeks a Niroana, a forgetfulness of the. fact that life on this earth is an affair of action rather than of thought. He Is not without disingenuousness when, steeped as he must be in the teaching of theosophy, he disclaims all knowledge of the ideas of Madame Blavatsky. To sum up, the pamphlet, if it teaches anything, is a mild text book of Russian Communism and because of its extreme tenuity, hardly repays the reader in attempting to wade through and understand its 85 pages.