The Process Intensifies
1945 – 1954
The whole process has been going on all day – the pressure, the strain and the pain at the back of the head; woke up shouting several times, and even during the day there was involuntary groaning and shouting. Last night that sacred feeling filled the room and the other felt it also.
“There’s a sacredness which is not of thought, nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought. Thought cannot formulate it. But there’s a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact.”
J. Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti remained in Ojai through 1946
Yalta Conference: Rossevelt, Churchill
and Stalin meet
Roosevelt dies
Truman becomes President
V-Day: World War II ends
35 million war dead
10 million in concentration camps
Hitler commits suicide
Nag Hammadi: Gnostic
Scrolls found in upper Egypt
General Charles de Gaulle
President of France;
provisional government
Atom bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
150,000 killed outright
George Orwell: 1984
Mussolini killed in Italy
Pierre Laval sentenced to
death in France
Quisling sentenced to
death in Norway
Vietnam: war begins
between French colonialists
and Vietnamese
Auschwitz liberated
Bombing of Dresden
Eugene O’Neill:
“The Iceman Cometh”
London: first session of United
Nations General Assembly
Churchill gives “Iron Curtain” speech
Nurenberg Trial: Ribbentrop,
Goering and ten others
sentenced to death
Gertrude Stein dies
Benjamin Spock, M.D.:
Baby and Child Care
Aldous Huxley:
The Perennial Philosophy
Cocteau: “La Belle et la Bête”
Republican government in Italy
Greeks vote return of monarchy
Chinese Civil War
Philippines Republic inauguration
Vietnamese resist Iron Curtain
“It is important to understand the significance of right relationship. There can be no existence in isolation. To be is to be related. And without relationship there is no existence.”
All-India broadcast, 1948
With the end of the war in 1945 and Indian independence from Britain in 1947, Krishnamurti was free to travel. He gave 12 public talks in Bombay attended by over 3000 people.
Israel declared a state
by United Nations
India gains independence
McCarthy era: Hollywood black list
Dead Sea scrolls found, dating from 22 BCE
Jackie Robinson
first African American to sign
with Brooklyn Dodgers
Tennessee Williams:
“A Streetcar Named Desire”
Flying saucers seen in USA
Truman Doctrine
India and Pakistan partition
Revolt against French rule
in Madagascar
Partition of Palestine
Taft-Hartley Act
Yaeger breaks sound barrier
Howard Hughes flies Spruce Goose
Women gain right to vote in Italy
The Diary of Anne Frank is published
Silent Footage of Krishnamurti Arrival/Departure in Sri Lanka
During the 19 months he spent in India the ‘process’ returned with full force. He spoke in Bombay [Mumbai], Madras [Chennai], Bangalore, Pune, and New Delhi, India
Mohandas K. Gandhi assassinated
The Marshall Plan provides $17
billion in aid to Europe
Communist coup in Czechoslovakia
Berlin blockaded
Soviets recall advisors from
Yugoslavia
Nationalist defeat in Manchuria
Berlin airlift
Polaroid camera invented
Quantum Dynamics Theory
Soviets introduce Mig-15 Fighter
‘Citation’: Eddie Arcaro up wins
Belmont, Preakness and
Kentucky Derby
14th – The whole process has been going on all day – the pressure, the strain and the pain at the back of the head; woke up shouting several times, and even during the day there was involuntary groaning and shouting. Last night that sacred feeling filled the room and the other felt it also.
…
15th – The whole process was bad last night; it has left one rather tired and sleepless.
Woke up in the middle of the night, with a sense of immense and measureless strength. It was not the strength that will or desire has put together but the strength that is there in a river, in a mountain, in a tree. It is in man when every form of desire and will have completely ceased.
…
16th – The whole process went on most of the night; it was rather intense. How much can the body stand! The whole body was quivering and, this morning, woke up with the head shaking.
There was, this morning that peculiar sacredness, filling the room. It had great penetrating power, entering into every corner of one’s being, filling, cleansing, making everything of itself. The other felt it too. It’s the thing that every human being craves for and because they crave for it, it eludes them.
Excerpts from Krishnamurti’s Notebook
The decade concluded with talks in Bombay [Mumbai], Rajahmundry, Madras [Chennai], India; Colombo, Ceylon [Sri Lanka]; Ojai, California; and London, England
Mao Tse Tung Chairman of
Peoples’ Republic of China
Soviets explode nuclear bomb:
the Cold War begins
Apartheid: official policy of
South Africa
Rogers and Hammerstein:
“South Pacific”
Federal Republic of Germany
Ireland wins independence
NATO, North Atlantic Treaty
signed in Washington
First around the world flight
Pancho Gonzalez wins U.S.
lawn tennis men’s singles
The First and Last Freedom
A sixteen-month retreat began in Ojai and continued in India at Vasanta Vihar; in Madras [Chennai] resulted in months of public silence
USA builds hydrogen bomb
North Korea invades South
Korea; captures Seoul
USA invades Korea with
United Nations troops:
Korean war begins
Thor Heyerdahl: Kon-Tiki raft
China invades Tibet
George Bernard Shaw dies
USSR and China sign
a thirty-year pact
Joseph McCarthy warns Truman:
“State Department is infiltrated by
Communists”
Univac: first commercial computer
Carl Sandburg: Pulitzer prize for
Complete Poems
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher
in the Rye
William Randolph Hearst dies
Mies Van der Rohe – architect,
Chicago, Lake Shore Drive
Peron reelected
President of Argentina
Color television introduced in U.S.
“When we train our children according to a system of thought or a particular discipline, when we teach them to think within departmental divisions, we prevent them from growing into integrated men and women, and therefore they are incapable of thinking intelligently, which is to meet life as whole. The highest function of education is to bring about an integrated individual who is capable of dealing with life as a whole….”
“Let us not think in terms of principles and ideals, but be concerned with things as they are; for it is the consideration of what is that awakens intelligence, and the intelligence of the educator is far more important than his knowledge of a new method of education.”
Education and Significance in Life
Talks were held in Madras [Chennai], Bombay [Mumbai], Rishi Valley and Benares [Varanasi] India; London, England; and Ojai, California
Mau Mau uprising in Kenya
Big Bang Theory
Norman Vincent Peale:
The Power of Positive Thinking
Rocky Marciano:
boxing champion
Christian Dior “haute coûture”
King Farouk abdicates
Truman: seizure of steel illegal
Revolt in Bolivia
New immigration quotas
King George VI dies
Gene Kelly: “Singin’ in the Rain”
USA explodes hydrogen bomb
at Eniwetok Atoll
North Korea bombed by U.S. planes
Krishnamurti’s interest in and position on education was made clear in his first commercially published book Education and the Significance of Life
A long-standing association with Rajagopal, who looked after the more practical side of the work, was drawing to a close
Samuel Beckett:
“Waiting for Godot”
Stalin dies after twenty-nine year rule
Double helix: structure of DNA
Soviet gulags: slave labor
of 1.7 million
Supreme Court hears
school desegregation argument
Korean War ends
Elizabeth II crowned Queen
Kinsey Report published
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay conquer Mt. Everest
The Rosenbergs executed
Shah of Iran deposed
Korean Armistice
France grants Laos
independence
Yugoslavia: Marshal Tito
becomes President
The First and Last Freedom, with a lengthy introduction by Aldous Huxley, was published, attracting greater numbers to Krishnamurti’s talks
J. Robert Oppenheimer
suspended as head of
Atomic Energy Commission
Jonas Salk develops polio
vaccine
J.R.R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
McCarthy hearings underway
Marlon Brando films
“On the Waterfront”
Elvis Presley: first commercial
record – “That’s All Right Mama”
Brown vs. Board of Education:
school segregation banned
Francoise Sagan:
Bonjour Tristesse
France forced out of
Dien Bien Phu
Fellini: “La Strada”
Four Power meeting in Berlin
Geneva Accords
Revolt breaks out in Algeria
Nautilus submarine launched
US backed coup in Guatemala
Boeing unveils the 707 aircraft
First kidney transplant
