Brotherhood Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream (29 page)

One can read accounts going back to 1850 of a local yogi who has been buried in a box underground without oxygen and emerged unharmed. To endure such a trial, a person would need the ability to slow down respiration and heartbeat quite drastically—in effect, the yogi goes into a state of hibernation. (As reported in a 1998 article in the journal
Physiology,
a seventy-year-old yogi survived for eight days in a sealed box underground. He was connected to monitoring devices, which revealed, quite astonishingly, that “his heart rate was below the measurable sensitivity of the recording instruments.”) On medical grounds I became fascinated by the prospect that the mind-body connection had profound implications. Claims about meditation leading to a reduced metabolic rate seemed natural to me, and probably only the tip of the iceberg.

I also had begun to wonder about the mind-body connection in a way that some might call metaphysical. Before I met Maharishi, a small announcement had appeared in the
New York Times
saying that J. Krishnamurti was giving a talk at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden. Immediately my interest was piqued, because a remarkable figure was just then emerging from obscurity.

Krishnamurti was nearing the end of a long life—he died in 1986 at the age of ninety—but the most astonishing events had swirled around him in his youth. One day in 1909 he was playing on the beach of the Adyar River near Madras (now Chennai) on the east coast of India. He was the eighth of eleven children, five of whom died in childhood; his mother also died when he was ten. Among high-caste Brahmins who strictly observed their obligations, the eighth child was customarily named after Lord Krishna.

The family lived a nearly impoverished existence in a small crowded cottage without sanitation. Krishnamurti was sickly as the
result of untreated malaria; he was considered dreamy and vague, perhaps mentally impaired. He looked unkempt without a mother’s care, and like his brothers, he was infested with lice.

The conditions were totally unlikely considering what happened next. A former English clergyman in his fifties, who was also at the beach, suddenly focused on the boy. He started making excited claims about the boy’s “perfect aura.” Using his power of clairvoyance, the man declared that the next world teacher had been discovered. Krishnamurti had no idea what any of this meant, but he was soon swept up in one of the twentieth century’s most vertiginous spiritual journeys. The ex-clergyman, named Charles W. Leadbeater, took major control over the bewildered boy’s existence. As “the vehicle for Lord Maitreya,” young Krishnamurti was told that he had a destiny to fulfill, one that might change life on earth.

A good deal of exotic background needs to be filled in. Not all Westerners disdained and ignored Indian spirituality. Some became immersed in its mysteries. Books were written about living masters in the Himalayas who rivaled Christ in their wisdom, holiness, and miraculous powers. The most prominent group who announced such wonders was the Theosophical Society, founded in New York City in 1875. They were at the forefront of the late-Victorian craze for the occult. An intricate belief system arose around theosophy, a quasi religion that reached out along many avenues of mysticism, from ancient Egypt and the Jewish cabala to table-rapping séances and communication with the dead. Its peak of popularity may have passed, but the Theosophical Society still exists and has matured into a sophisticated center for many spiritual pursuits. Mysticism is very much welcomed.

Krishnamurti’s father, Jiddu Narianiah (the family name was Jiddu) worked as a clerk for the Theosophical Society in India, which was how his children came to play on the beach at Adyar. He was astonished that one of his sons, who had always seemed the least likely to make his way, suddenly became the focus of wild excitement. It resembled nothing that an orthodox Hindu like him believed in. Theosophy was awash in esoteric knowledge. It taught about the existence
of higher beings known as Ascended Masters, spiritual luminaries who had passed from a human lifetime to an exalted station in the other world.

Leadbeater, who was coleader of the Society’s international headquarters in Adyar, claimed to be in touch with the other world. He expected the imminent arrival of someone who would be the vehicle (physical embodiment) of the next world teacher, known as Lord Maitreya, successor to the last Ascended Master, the Buddha. I knew little of this lore at the time, and I’ve barely hinted at its occult complexity. (Looking back seventy-five years later, Krishnamurti only remembers a willingness to do whatever he was told, to the point of subservience.) But I knew that for a time the young Krishnamurti had been groomed as the world teacher and unabashedly worshipped. A sect was formed around him known as the Order of the Star in the East.

Who could resist such a tale? The general public had long forgotten Krishnamurti, but with a sudden resurgence of interest he now gathered large crowds. Rita and I decided to drive down to New York to hear him talk. Krishnamurti grew up to be strikingly handsome—it was said that he was one of the most photographed celebrities of the century—and as he climbed the steps to the stage of Felt Forum, he remained a striking figure with white hair, an aquiline profile, and the trappings of an English gentleman in a three-piece flannel suit with a pocket watch.

Loud applause broke out. Krishnamurti, who had a sharp glance, turned it on the audience.

“Who are you clapping for? Perhaps for yourselves?” he said.

Quiet descended, and he made his way to a simple wooden chair in the center of the stage. For the next two hours he talked, and it was such talk as I had never heard before. Nothing occult or mystical was touched upon. You became aware of a mind that had gone beyond anything in your own experience. Krishnamurti asked deep questions—Where does thought come from? What does it mean to be free? Why do we talk about finding God but never reach God?—and then he spun out a line of reasoning that led to strange answers.

Where does thought come from? No fixed answer is valid. Each person must go inside and follow the trail that begins with a thought. The trail leads into unexplored territory, back to your very source. Only when you arrive there will you know, with total certainty, where thought comes from.

What does it mean to be free? Freedom isn’t a goal you can pursue. Freedom comes first, not last. It comes when you realize that the only way to be free is to become timeless. As long as you are imprisoned by time, freedom is an illusion.

Why do we talk about finding God but never reach God? Because we are trapped inside our limited minds. The God we seek is merely a projection of thought. There is no reality in such projections; when talking about God, we are just talking about trifling ideas, a kind of religious gossip that keeps being repeated generation after generation.

Krishnamurti’s tone was challenging to the point of being abrasive. He radiated total seriousness. He made spirituality seem like the most sober calling a person could follow. When the two hours were up, after glancing at his pocket watch and apologizing for going a few minutes over time, Krishnamurti left an elusive presence in his wake. He wasn’t a conventional guru. Every other minute he would pause and say, “Look into this for yourselves. Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to any teacher.” He was that rare thing, a leader with thousands of followers who told them all to go away.

Poring over his life, one discovers that Krishnamurti renounced his destiny as the world teacher in 1929, dashing the hopes of the theosophists. His motivation wasn’t simple disillusionment. Seven years earlier he had had a profound spiritual awakening, and it entailed considerable physical agony. He called it the process, and although worried spectators witnessed a young man in delirious spasms racked with pain, Krishnamurti reported a profound experience of unity. After days of undergoing “the process,” he would return to consciousness with a sense of extraordinary sensitivity to the tiniest things around him: “The blade of grass was astonishingly green;
that one blade of grass contained the whole spectrum of color; it was intense, dazzling and such a small thing, so easy to destroy.”

It was a moving story. I was touched by Krishnamurti’s suffering and isolation. A part of me longed for a different ending. What if a world teacher had come before the rise of Nazism and the horrors of the Bomb? Would humanity have stopped on its self-destructive course? (In his early days in America Maharishi knew that the odds were against him. He used to say that if a modern person met Jesus on the street, he would politely say, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stop right now. I’m on my way to the movies. I’ll be happy to listen to you later.”)

On and off during his entire life Krishnamurti never escaped “the process,” and it transformed him into something no one quite understood, including himself. He would end a talk in a lovely natural setting and wander in the woods, he recounts, wanting nothing more than never to return again. “Ninety-nine percent of the people have no idea what I’m saying, and the one percent who do are already ninety-nine percent there.” In the end Krishnamurti wondered aloud if he was some kind of biological anomaly.

I was betting that he wasn’t. After being struck by his presence, I needed a way to start “the process” for myself, although I didn’t know what it actually entailed. I only knew that in India the way is always open for inner transformation. The first time I sat in a room with Maharishi, more than the blessing of darshan emanated from him. He had arrived. His journey was almost the reverse of Krishnamurti’s. He rose to public attention when he was around forty, already a monk, or
Brahmachari,
who had served his spiritual master until the master’s death in 1953. He had followed a classic discipleship, renouncing the world and taking a vow of celibacy. Maharishi also took literally the classic notion that complete dedication to spirituality is a second birth; therefore, even the most basic facts about his actual birth are vague.

He was born around 1917, as a best guess, and his given name was Mahesh. The family name was either Varma or Srivastava—he had relatives with both names. His father’s occupation is given as civil
servant, either in the Indian tax department or its forestry service. At times Maharishi welcomed his family into the inner circle; over time I met two nephews, a niece, and a cousin, as I remember. What struck me about his past was that Maharishi was born in Jabalpur (most likely), the same place my father had been stationed, and he graduated from University of Allahabad in 1942 after studying physics. The scientific bent of TM had deep personal roots.

Having any past seemed irrelevant when you met Maharishi, because he embodied what a second birth means. No one could have been more like an enlightened sage. He presented a jolly face to the world (the media dubbed him the giggling guru), but in private he could converse on any subject with experts in the field. When he brought in a spiritual perspective, one felt his total authority, as if a rishi from the ancient Upanishads had stepped out of history. When he first decided to leave his Himalayan retreat in 1955, the younger Maharishi made a profound impression speaking around India, a land that is used to its fair share of saints, real or assumed. He left no doubt that he was a master, although he could be quite humble. His motto was that you should let others make you great, not proclaim your own greatness. Maharishi also declared that once a person becomes enlightened, everything he says and does is dictated for the good of humanity; there is no longer a personal self—God has burnt it away—and therefore no personal desires.

Before he arrived in San Francisco in 1959, Maharishi found himself standing on a platform at a spiritual conference in south India declaring, without forethought, that he was going to lead a movement to regenerate the world. This hypothetical organization became known as the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. Only later did Transcendental Meditation and TM become brand names. The early American followers considered themselves to be part of the world’s spiritual transformation. That ambition never left Maharishi; it was evident from the first time he came out of India.

This brings us to a fork in the road. Viewed as an enlightened master, Maharishi pursued his huge project without ulterior motives.
He was a selfless teacher who embodied higher consciousness; he had only the good of humanity at heart. But viewed as the head of a profitable multinational organization that focused everything on a charismatic celebrity from India, he was a kind of spiritual entrepreneur. He was taking advantage of the exotic impression he made on Westerners, giving them diluted knowledge that couldn’t compare with the real thing.

To me the first view was right and the second one jaded and cynical. Whatever the goal of enlightenment is, I sensed that this small man with a rose in his hand and a wise smile on his face had walked the pathless path, as it is known in India. The year I met him was the same year that Krishnamurti died. I couldn’t help thinking that the pathless path, which was thousands of years old, resembled something Krishnamurti had imparted to his theosophical followers in 1929 when he told them to go away: “I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to it absolutely and unconditionally.”

The only difference was that Maharishi didn’t want me to go away. He wanted me to stay close and learn everything he had to teach.

Inner circles are like families. The one around Maharishi had existed for many years. It was bound by various feelings—devotion, ambition, the need for approval, shared ideals, and more. The family members came from everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of Westerners had casually picked up TM in its heyday, mostly college students attracted by the media glare surrounding the Beatles. The vast majority stopped meditating after a time, usually brief—as I was reminded, meditation is meant for a lifetime, but it only takes a day to quit. For a core of TM meditators, however, the practice was profound enough that they devoted themselves to it completely. After leaving India and appearing in California in the late Fifties, Maharishi picked up a retinue. Since I arrived late on the scene, the original followers were now mostly old and no longer active publicly. They seemed to be
composed of spiritual seekers who were ready to accept an unknown Indian monk as a guru. They were not as congenial to the later guise of TM as a brand name marketed to a wide, largely naïve public.