Page 131 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

Don’t look at me! Test it out!

our current self-model. We will have no choice but to act out the
content of the model. I think that one of the things K was trying
to make people see is that the whole process of creating a teacher-
disciple relationship just creates more identification, an even deeper
form of entanglement and immersion. The same is true of conjur-
ing up the romantic idea of a ‘path’ with an oh-so-serious spiritual
seeker travelling on it, including complicated action policies and a
hallucinated final goal-state. The idea of a ‘path’ creates a new self-
model, a spiritual ego continuously predicting itself into existence.
When I first arrived in Saanen, in the Bernese Oberland of Swit-
zerland, I was a politically radical, critical, and sceptical young
man. I immediately thought K’s hairdo was ridiculous—an obvi-
ous sign of vanity and bodily attachment. But, having listened to
other Indian masters who narcissistically presented themselves
to their devotees in a sea of flowers, often sitting on some huge
sofa all covered in white silk, I was impressed that someone of his
age could actually sit on a simple wooden folding chair, wearing
a plain, clean blue shirt and trousers. He first won me over when,
answering a question about how to live a good life in an insane
society, he dryly said, “If you buy a stamp, you support war”. Here
was someone who was in touch with reality, who saw things clearly.
What really convinced me was when one time he looked at the
crowd in the tent and said something to the effect of, “Am I speak-
ing out of an infinite silence or am I just a confused old man? You
will never know. You are all alone in this world.”
K certainly hurt me. After first encountering him, many of my
old psychosomatic symptoms (which had dissolved after three
or four years of regular meditation practice) came back, and it
took me years to re-stabilize. This old man certainly pulled the
rug out from under my slightly complacent sadhana-feet—and
not just mine. He shocked a lot of us and plunged some people
into crisis. A while ago I had some interesting conversations with
Pathik Wadhwa in Germany and in Ojai, exploring the question of

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