Brockwood Park...

I spent yesterday morning in the library of the Krishnamurti Centre, at Brockwood Park, in Hampshire. I am one of a dwindling band of people who saw him - and heard him talk - in a big marquee in the grounds. The year? It might have been 1976 (or 1977, or 1978, or 1979). I’m very glad I made the effort (I think Joy and I attended the Brockwood Park talks two summers in a row, but I may be mistaken). What I do remember, with great clarity, is Krishnamurti walking onto the improvised stage, sitting down on a stiff-backed wooden chair, smiling, and taking a minute or so to look around the audience. He sat very still: such presence, such composure! When he started talking - always without notes - he was mesmerising. According to what I read yesterday, he often didn’t know, even minutes beforehand, what he would be talking about.

Way back in 1929, having been groomed by the Theosophists as the World Teacher, he disbanded, with one stunning speech, the organisation that had been built up around him. His stated aim, from that moment on, was to help “set man unconditionally free”. “Truth”, he insisted, “is a pathless land” (a sentence more profound than anything to be found in either the Bible or the Koran). He was as good as his word: spending the rest of his long life speaking to groups of people around the world. I knew I was in the presence of someone very special, though he emphasised that he was not a guru and he didn’t need followers. His message to the world included the conviction that we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Instead of defaulting to what some authority tells us - and especially some divine authority - we should think things out for ourselves. Krishnamurti died in 1986, aged 90...