Truth Is a Pathless Land
1925 – 1934
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land and cannot be approached by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. Truth being limitless, unconditioned, cannot be organized, nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path.
“One was awakened this morning with a living feeling of joy. It wasn’t a thing in the past. It was actually taking place. It was coming, this ecstasy, from outside, not self induced, it was being pushed through the system, flowing through the organism, with great energy and volume. The brain was not taking part in it, but only registering it, not as a remembrance but as an actual fact which was taking place. There was, it seemed, immense strength and vitality behind this ecstasy, it wasn’t sentimental or a feeling, an emotion, but as solid and real as that stream crashing down the mountain-side or that solitary pine on the green mountain slope.”
J. Krishnamurti
Nitya dies in Ojai
Krishnamurti meets Besant and travels to India for Jubilee Convention
Krishnamurti finds land in India in Rishi Valley
Besant announces names of apostles in Huizen; Krishnamurti skeptical
Charlie Chaplin films
“The Gold Rush”
F. Scott Fitzgerald writes
The Great Gatsby
Eisenstein films
“The Battleship Potemkin”
The Charleston dance
Scopes trial: found guilty
teaching evolution
Nashville: Grand Ole Opry
country music on radio
The Harlem Renaissance
Sun Yat Sen dies
Darwinian theory published
Besant buys land in Ojai for Krishnamurti’s work
Byrd flies to North Pole
Werner Heisenberg
publishes quantum theory
NBC creates first radio network
Gertrude Ederle first woman
to swim English Channel
Houdini dies
Tunney defeats Dempsey
Film: the first talkie
“The Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson
AA Milne writes
Winnie The Pooh
Military coup in Poland
Ibn Saud becomes King of
Saudi Arabia
“After that amazing experience Krishnamurti was perfectly happy to go on with his role of being trained as a vehicle for the Lord Maitreya. But then quite suddenly Nitya had a very bad relapse and was very, very ill again. And Mrs. Besant wanted Krishna to go to Adyar for the Jubilee Convention of 1925, because it was important that he should be there. And he didn’t want to go because Nitya was so ill. But he was promised by all the leaders, including Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant, that Nitya was much too valuable to die and that Nitya would not die, he would recover. And because of that promise, which he believed, Krishna agreed to go to India, leaving Nitya very ill, well looked after, but very ill in Ojai.
And on the voyage, when he got as far as Port Said, he had a telegram saying Nitya had died. This was an absolutely shattering blow to him. He never believed it could happen. And it destroyed his faith, very largely, in the Masters who were part of the hierarchy of Theosophy who promised this through the clairvoyant people like Leadbeater, and he was absolutely distraught.
And he said that he had now suffered, he now knew what death was and he knew now that there was a love that transcended death and it was no longer to be feared.
Interview
Krishnamurti
Historical Film of the Ommen Camp, 1926
“When the brother died, you know, I was here and we left, and I didn’t know he was going to die. When I got to England, they said, ‘We are the disciples. If you accept us, your brother will live.’ And when he died I said, ‘What a joke this is.’ That is the phrase K used.”
Interview
J. Krishnamurti
As late as 1927 Mrs. Besant declared in America to the press, the World Teacher is here. But it was after 1927 that Krishnamurti gradually began to feel that none of this was true or right, that he had to go his own way but he had to go very gently so as not to hurt Mrs. Besant, because he loved her dearly. So it was a very, very difficult time in his life, because he knew that all the leaders, everyone was against him.
In 1929, in Holland at one of these big annual camps he used to hold and had for several years, he announced at the meeting that he was the head of the Order of the Star and he was going to dissolve it. He said that it was quite unnecessary to have such an order, such an organization.
He said that it was ridiculous – I mean, that is the gist of what he said, I’m not quoting him at all – to be told how spiritual you were; only you knew whether you were corrupt or not corrupt inside, nobody could tell you. His only object in life from then on would be to set men absolutely free to discover truth for themselves and not to be told what truth was, or be led in any way; they had to find it, if they wanted to find it, for themselves, and he was going to help them to be free.
Interview
Mary Lutyens
Krishnamurti’s biographer
Krishnamurti to London to celebrate Besant’s 80th birthday
In Paris, Krishnamurti says ‘Masters only incidents’
Lindbergh crosses Atlantic
(33 1/2 hours)
Stalin takes control of USSR
Josephine Baker in Paris
Oil discovered in Iraq
The foxtrot is in vogue
Fritz Lang films “Metropolis”
Abel Ganz: “Napoleon”
Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs
for Yankees
Sacco and Vanzetti found guilty
L.B. Mayer founds Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Chiang Kai-Shek breaks
with Communists
Television invented
Commercial transatlantic
radio/telephone service begins
Trotsky expelled from
Communist Party
Krishnamurti to London, first public Talk at Friends Meeting House, then to Paris
Land acquired at Rajghat and Benares for schools
Krishnamurti founds Rishi Valley school
Krishnamurti speaks at Hollywood Bowl before 16,000
Amelia Earhart flies the Atlantic
Fleming discovers penicillin
Chiang Kai-Shek controls China
Ravel composes “Bolero”
Disney films first Mickey Mouse,
“Plane Crazy”
Carl Dreyer:
“The Passion of Joan of Arc”
Five Year Plan in Soviet Union
Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
August 3, 1929, at the Ommen Camp, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star.
From Krishnamurti’s address
dissolving the Order of the Star
“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land and cannot be approached by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. Truth being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized, nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you do, it becomes a creed, a religion to be imposed on others….
No man from outside can make you free. Therefore, I am not concerning myself with the founding of religions, or new sects, or the establishment of new theories and philosophies. On the contrary, I am concerning myself with only one essential thing, the true freedom of man. My desire is that man should be unconditionally free. To make the mind and the heart of man free from limitation, free from corruption, is happiness, liberation and Truth.”
Krishnamurti – Short interview in New York City, 1928
Krishnamurti returns to India – Camp at Benares
Theosophical Society convention at Adyar, Leadbeater says “Coming gone wrong” – turns against Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti dissolves Order of the Star in the East
Krishnamurti writes to E. Lutyens saying he will resign from Theosophical Society
Stock market crash:
Wall Street Black Friday
The Depression
Eric Maria Remarque:
All Quiet on the Western Front
Martha Graham debut
Stalin enforces
“Forced Collectivization”
Rioting in Palestine
A Vision of Life
Krishnamurti speaks in Tiruchi, Rajahmundry, and Madras [Chennai], India; Trieste, Italy; Eerde, Holland; in the US in New York, Boston, Santa Barbara, Ojai, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Oakland, Eddington, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Strasbourg, Austria; Geneva and Montreux, Switzerland
His life is threatened in Bucharest by angry Catholic students
Experience and Conduct, The Purpose of Education and Pathless Reality are published
The Great Depression
30% unemployment in U.S.
Chrysler Building built, New York
Noel Coward: “Private Lives”
Grant Wood: “American Gothic”
Frank Wittle patents jet engine
Weekly movie ticket sales
in USA $100,000
Gandhi leads revolt in India
Japan attacks Shanghai
Flash bulb invented
Krishnamurti reading a version of Truth is a Pathless Land – Ojai, 1930
During travels to India, Europe, and America Krishnamurti felt growing antagonism toward his rebellion against all forms and rules. He wrote:
“I was in revolt against Theosophists with all their jargon, their theories, their meetings and their explanations of life.… I questioned everything because I wanted to find out for myself.” He felt ill and weak, newspapers spoke of a widening rift between him and Dr. Besant. In despair he said: “There have been many thousands of people at these Camps, and what could they not do in the world if they all understood? They could change the face of the world tomorrow.”
Interview
Krishnamurti
Last gatherings at Eerde are held; castle returned to van Pallandt, talks given at Ommen, the Hague, Holland; London, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Germany; and Vienna, Austria
Manchuria invaded by Japan
Empire State Building completed
King Alfonzo
leaves Spanish throne
Rockefeller Center completed in
New York
Salvador Dali:
“The Persistence of Memory”
Art Deco style popular
Cyclotron invented
Pearl S. Buck: The Good Earth
Charlie Chaplin: “City Lights”
“When you are as nothing, you are all things.”
London, March 9, 1931
Krishnamurti returns to California and speaks every Sunday in the Oak Grove, Ojai
In the US talks are given in Hollywood, Portland, Seattle, Auburndale, St. Paul, Eddington, Rochester, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, San Antonio, Texas, Birmingham, Atlanta, Massachusetts and New York; in Calgary, Montreal, Westmount, Victoria, Vancouver, and Toronto, Canada; and Madras [Chennai], India to say goodbye to Annie Besant, who had lost her memory
“Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”
Bonus March
Lindbergh baby kidnapped
Ibn Saud becomes King
of Saudi Arabia
Roosevelt landslide: New Deal
Famines in USSR, 5 million die
Aldous Huxley writes
Brave New World
Jean Cocteau films
“The Blood of a Poet”
Henry Miller writes
Tropic of Cancer
Doolittle seizes speed record
Eamon deValera:
President of Ireland
Amehia Earhart flies solo
across Atlantic
Annie Besant dies
Krishnamurti’s “mature teachings” begin
Speaks in Madras [Chennai], Ahmedabad, Karachi, [Pakistan] Lahore, [Pakistan], Allahabad, Indore, Sangli, Bangalore, Benares [Varanasi], India; Kastri, Athens, Greece; Stresa, Alpino, Italy; Ommen, Holland; Oslo, Norway, Frognerseteren, Norway
Reichstag Fire – Nazis burn books
Hitler becomes German chancellor
Prohibition repealed in USA
Germany: ‘degenerate’ art
suppressed
Louis Comfort Tiffany dies
Germany withdraws from
League of Nations
Film: “King Kong” released
Mae West: “She Done Him Wrong”
Mussolini invades Abyssinia
Dachau established
Japan leaves League of Nations
Hoover Dam built
Philo Farnsworth invents
electronic television
Annie Besant died in September of 1933. The great love for the woman he called Amma – Mother, never left him. Despite the pain he caused by his disavowal of the Order of the Star and the Theosophical Society she, too, was constant in her love and support.
Newsreel of Krishnamurti in Sydney, 1934
A Vision of Life and Tradition Which Has Lost Its Soul are published
George Bernard Shaw found it scandalous that Krishnamurti was not allowed to speak on the radio “because he is anti-religious.” Shaw said “He is the most beautiful human being I have ever seen”
Talks in Madras [Chennai], Ernakulam, India; Colombo, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand, Ojai, California
C.W. Leadbeater dies
Oswald Mosley addresses
fascist meetings in Britain
Dillinger slain in Chicago
Swing: Benny Goodman,
Glenn Miller, Dorsey Bros.
“Take the A Train”
Churchill warns Parliament
of German airpower
Marie Curie dies
USA: the Dust Bowl
Cole Porter: “Anything Goes”
Dionne quintuplets born
Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert:
“It Happened One Night”
King of Yugoslavia assassinated
Dollfuss assassinated in Austria
Sergei Kirov shot:
Stalin begins purges
Mao begins “Long March”