Discovered on the Beach
1905 - 1914
Strolling on the beach at Adyar, C.W. Leadbeater saw the young Krishnamurti. He immediately perceived an aura so radiant that he declared the fourteen year old was to be the vehicle for the World Teacher prophesied by Theosophists.
“Meditation is the ending of thought, not by the meditator, for the meditator is the meditation. If there is no meditation, then you are like a blind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour. Wander by the seashore and let this meditative quality come upon you. If it does, don’t pursue it. What you pursue will be the memory of what it was – and what was is the death of what is. Or when you wander among the hills, let everything tell you the beauty and the pain of life, so that you awaken to your own sorrow and to the ending of it.”
J. Krishnamurti
Sanjeevama,
Krishnamurti’s mother, dies
Bloody Sunday Revolt
against Czar in St. Petersburg
Japan captures Port Arthur
and crushes Russian army
at Mukden
Paris: at Salon d’Automne
critic calls Matisse and others
“Les Fauves”
Sinn Fein begins in Dublin
Albert Einstein: Special Theory of Relativity


Narayaniah, Krishnamurti’s father, had become a member of the Theosophical Society. He wrote to Annie Besant requesting permission to move his family to Adyar. In 1909 his request was granted.




Nitya, Hubert Van Hook and Krishnamurti
C.W. Leadbeater resigns
from Theosophical Society
San Francisco earthquake
kills 700
Death of Paul Cezanne
Dreyfus Affair ends
All India Moslem League
established by Aga Khan
France and Spain control Morocco
Upton Sinclair exposes
stockyard conditions in Chicago
First helicopter flies




Strolling on the beach at Adyar, C.W. Leadbeater saw the young Krishnamurti. He immediately perceived an aura so radiant that he declared the fourteen year old was to be the vehicle for the World Teacher prophesied by Theosophists.


When Annie Besant returned to Adyar, she also intuited that the boy had rare spiritual qualities.
Besant made president
of Theosophical Society
Famine in Russia: 20 million die
Sigmund Freud meets Carl Jung
Picasso: “Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon”
First Cubist exhibit
The French occupy Morocco
Rasputin gains influence
over Tsar Nicolas II and family
New Zealand becomes Dominion
Baden-Powell founds the
Boy Scout movement
Chinese Democratic Republic
announced by Sun Yat-sen
“Krishnamurti was born in 1895, the eighth child of a Brahmin family, the highest caste at a time when the system was rigidly observed. He was very close indeed to his mother who before he was born said she had a premonition that he would be in some way remarkable. She died when Krishnamurti was ten years old and the family moved to Adyar, near Madras. It was here living in extreme poverty that he was spotted by Charles Webster Leadbeater, a leading figure in the Theosophical Society. Theosophy was a world movement which embraced all religions. They believed that following on Buddha, Krishna and Christ the world was ready for the next incarnation of the Messiah. Its president, Annie Besant was a flamboyant figure who fought uncompromisingly for a whole range of social reforms in Britain and India.
Krishnamurti must have looked an unlikely candidate; undernourished, with crooked teeth and a vacant expression. But Leadbeater said the child had an aura of unselfishness; he was the chosen one. Mrs Besant adopted him and began grooming him for his future role by bringing him to England.”
Excerpt From The Role of a Flower documentary


C. W. Leadbeater, Krishnamurti, Annie Besant and Nityananda. Adyar 1911


Krishnamurti undergoes his first initiation, his brother Nitya was also accepted.
C.W. Leadbeater reinstated
in Theosophical Society
Frank Lloyd Wright designs
Robie House, Chicago
Fountain pen invented
Kenneth Graham:
The Wind in the Willows
Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette, jailed
Vacuum cleaner patented
Marconi sends first radio message
Austria annexes Bosnia
and Herzegovina
Congo becomes Belgian Congo
Oil discovered in Persia
E. M. Forster: A Room with
a View
“Mrs. Annie Besant became the President of the Theosophical Society and started looking very seriously, with her colleague C. W. Leadbeater, for a vehicle who they thought would be suitable for the World Teacher. The boy who was eventually chosen to be the Messiah was an Indian boy from South India called Jiddu Krishnamurti. He and his brother and other boys used to play on the beach every afternoon, because Adyar is on the sea.
And one day Leadbeater saw this boy on the beach and he was tremendously struck by his aura, which he said had not one trace of selfishness in it, and he immediately felt that this was the boy.”
Interview
Mary Lutyens
Krishnamurti’s biographer
“I arrived in Adyar in 1909, in August, and within a few days of my arrival I met C.W. Leadbeater. And almost immediately he introduced me to two Indian boys, J. Krishnamurti and his little brother Nityananda.
Krishnamurti was shy, reserved, mystically inclined, seemingly outwardly to be rather dull and not quick on the uptake, whereas his little brother sparkled with intelligence. They were in poor condition, very poor condition. And Leadbeater said, ‘We have a task and when Annie Besant arrives in India, she will help’.”
Interview
Russell Balfour Clarke
Krishnamurti’s first English tutor
Leadbeater sees
Krishnamurti on beach at Adyar
Besant meets Krishnamurti
for the first time
Collapse of Ottoman Empire
First Model T Ford sold
Diagilev’s Ballet Russe wows Paris
W.E.B. duBois
helps found NAACP
Women admitted to German
universities
London hairdresser introduces
“the permanent wave”
Martial Law in Spain
Revolution in Persia
U.S. intervenes in Nicaragua
Civil War in Honduras
Newsreel shown in theater
English Channel crossed
Gustav Mahler:
9th Symphony – begins
atonal music
Robert E. Peary reaches
the North Pole


Historical Film Rolls from 1920s | Part 1


At the Feet of the Master
At the Feet of the Master published
Initiation of Krishnamurti into ‘Brotherhood’
Narayaniah gives guardianship of Krishnamurti and Nitya to Besant
Mexican Revolution begins
Korea annexed by Japan
Caruso broadcasts on radio
China grants Britain
control of Tibet
Tolstoy and Mark Twain die
Blues popular in Harlem
Chinese invade Lhasa
Dalai Lama flees to India
Slavery abolished in China
Revolution in Portugal
Union of South Africa
Tango popular in U.S.
and Europe
“CWL and Dr. Besant were corresponding about the older boy, K. By then they had taken the boys to the Master and the Master apparently, according to them, said, ‘That is the boy.’ They had received, they said, instructions from their respective Masters that K was going to be the vehicle for the World Teacher. And so Leadbeater, CWL, took charge of training these two boys.
Nobody was to touch anything that K touched. If they said they liked oranges, for the rest of the year they had oranges. If they said they liked porridge, they had porridge every morning for the rest of the year. If they said they wanted to go on a bicycle ride right, you went on a bicycle ride for the rest of the year, every morning from seven to eight. So the boys never said after that they liked anything.”
Interview
Krishnamurti






At age 15 Krishnamurti wrote a letter to Annie Besant describing meeting the Masters.


Theosophy was a world movement which embraced all religions. They believed that following on Buddha, Krishna and Christ the world was ready for the next incarnation of the Messiah. Its president, Annie Besant was a flamboyant figure who fought uncompromisingly for a whole range of social reforms in Britain and India. Krishnamurti must have looked an unlikely candidate; undernourished, with crooked teeth and a vacant expression. But Leadbeater said the child had an aura of unselfishness; he was the chosen one. Mrs Besant adopted him and began grooming him for his future role by bringing him to England.
Excerpt from The Role of a Flower documentary


Krishnamurti to London for the first time: meets Emily Lutyens
“Order of the Star in the East” begun by Besant
Sun Yat Sen leads
Chinese Revolution
R. Amundsen reaches South Pole
Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire
Irving Berlin:
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
Richard Strauss:
“Der Rosenkavalier”
War between Italy and Turkey
Italy first to use aircraft for bombing
First aircraft landing on ship
First U.S. coast-to-coast flight
Marie Curie: Nobel Prize
for chemistry




The book At the Feet of the Master, purportedly the teachings given to Krishnamurti by his Master, was published in 1910. Although many doubt that Krishnamurti was the actual author, the book, translated into some forty languages, elicited great interest and continues to do so.


Narayaniah files suit against Besant for custody of boys
Krishnamurti, Nitya and Leadbeater at Taormina, Sicily
F.W. Woolworth’s founded
Keystone Comedies
Carl Jung publishes
Psychology of the Unconscious
War in the Balkans
Marines intervene in Nicaragua
First home electric refrigerator
U.S. senators elected directly
S. S. Titanic collides with
iceberg: 1,513 killed
Poet Rabindranath Tagore:
Gitanjali


“I have written in my earlier writing an account of his initiation and of the meeting with the Master and so on which were all told me by Mr. Leadbeater and by Krishnamurti himself.
I was told that he had been put on probation by the Master along with his little brother, on a certain date. And then it was that Krishna used to sit in the early morning and write something very laboriously in his early English, which turned out to be the little book At the Feet of the Master. And the writing in the book was in pencil and Krishnaji used to ponder and then write and then ponder. And Leadbeater told me that he was bringing back into his physical brain in the morning what he had experienced and learned and heard during the night before from the Master Kuthumi. I never looked at the details of that little book but I did see the book and I saw Krishnaji writing.”
Interview
Russell B. Clarke
Krishnamurti’s first English tutor


Stravinsky: “The Rite of Spring”
Riots at opening in Paris
Rudolph Steiner:
Anthroposophical Society founded
Suffragettes demonstrate in London
Niels Bohr:
Theory of Atomic Structure
Albert Schweitzer opens hospital
in Lambarene, French Congo
Second Balkan War
Gandhi arrested
U.S. Federal Reserve Act
Ford creates the assembly line
Thomas Mann: Death in Venice
Abolitionist Harriet Tubman dies




Besant wins guardianship of Krishnamurti
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria
assassinated
World War I begins:
10 million die, 20 million wounded
W.C. Handy: “St. Louis Blues”
Pearl White: “The Perils of Pauline”
Austria declares war on Serbia
Germany invades Belgium
Japan declares war on Germany
US intervenes in Mexico
Germany invades Luxembourg
Russians invade Prussia
British troops land in France