The year 1972 saw me following, more or less, in Krishnamurti’s footsteps. After attending the two talks at the Libbey Bowl in Ojai at the beginning of April, I traveled to Europe for the Saanen Gatherings in July and August, followed by the Brockwood Park Talks in September. I stayed on at the School as a volunteer worker for about two months, during which time I was able to participate in the meetings Krishnamurti regularly had with staff and students. They were dialogues of great openness and affection, and here more than at any other place I experienced Krishnamurti as a benevolent patriarch.
Not long after he left for India, I also departed for the Asian subcontinent, in November. After a series of talks in New Delhi, it was south again, to Madras. I found out that Krishnamurti was staying at the same house off Greenways Road where I had first listened to him the previous year. Thanks to a number of small coincidences, his graceful hostess, a business woman, extended her hospitality to me, allowing me to stay for one week in the temporary pandal that was being built in the large courtyard of her house. It was a wooden structure with a thatched roof, open on all sides, with a small platform at one end; the grassy area below it was covered with carpets. Krishnamurti was going to give his talks here; and, in addition, several musical performances were going to be staged in his honor. His own room was only forty yards away, on the opposite side of the courtyard. I felt a great thrill, and a sense of privilege, to be able to live so close to him. The tropical night air was pleasant for outdoor sleeping, and the lady of the house not only saw to it that I had the use of a bathroom, but also arranged that her servants served me tea and regular meals in my makeshift habitat.
What I particularly cherished about this temporary situation was that, during the following days and nights, I was able to observe Krishnamurti at close quarters. From my location beneath the pandal, I could clearly see him through the latticed window and open door of his room, as he moved about, sat writing at his desk, came and went. It was inspiring for me to watch him inhabit his personal space, which I somehow imagined to be vaster, freer, emptier than mine, although at the same time I saw the futility of indulging in comparisons of that kind.
I tried to keep a respectful distance, anxious not to bother him in any way, although our hostess certainly had informed him of my presence, and he was well aware of it. Every so often, when he stepped out of his room at dawn, or in the afternoon after his siesta, he welcomed me with a friendly wave of his hand. And I would silently respond with a similar gesture from my end of the courtyard. It did not feel as if there was any distance between us, rather a kind of neighborly togetherness.
*
During the second day of my stay at the house, I was on the point of going for an evening stroll through the neighborhood. The light of dusk was already descending, shrouding the earth in that pervasive glow, peculiar to the tropics. Suddenly I encountered Krishnamurti, who was by himself and just leaving the property.
His gaze quietly took me in before there was a brief flash of recognition, and, holding out his hands, he took mine into both of his, shaking them slightly in western fashion. The smooth, cool touch of his fingers was as delicate as silk.
“Ah, good evening, sir,” he replied. “You have come. How did you get here?” Assuming that he did not care for small talk, I replied, “Excuse me, sir, are you just on your way to take an evening walk? Do you mind if I tag along?”
He gave an affectionate smile. “All right sir, come along. I’m only going for a short walk this evening: to the corner and back.”
Again I experienced the special sense of being taken into a realm of complete openness and clarity, without barriers and yet sheltered and safe, a sensation I often felt in his company.
For some moments we walked in silence along the dusk-shrouded Greenways Road. Auto-rickshaws and cars passed us on either side of the road, noisily blowing their horns. Bullock carts with huge wheels slowly rolled by. And in front of corner tea-stalls, illumined by oil lamps and naked bulbs, men were squatting and chatting with each other, smoking and sipping tea. Everywhere there seemed to be children, scampering about with shrieks of laughter, or plaintively crying and seeking their mother’s comfort.
I started recounting how I had made my way out to India. “Particularly in Europe, I would hitchhike from one city to the next,” I said.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
I gave a brief visual demonstration of my hitchhiking technique by stepping into the road and holding up my thumb. This made him laugh.
“Do you go with any old car that stops?” he asked.
“Of course, it has to go where one intends to go, or at least in that direction. And it must also appear safe to go with the people in the vehicle,” I explained. As I proceeded to tell him in some detail about the 5,000-mile trek from Central Europe to South India via Greece, Asia Minor, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, he appeared impressed by my account of the adventurous journey. He was curious about some of the countries which he had never visited, like Iran and Afghanistan, asking questions which I had to scramble to answer with any degree of accuracy.
As the nocturnal shadows were growing deeper, lights were coming on along the road and in houses. Halting in front of our common residence, Krishnamurti grabbed my arm with one of his characteristic, affectionate gestures.
“Good night, sir,” he said, “see you tomorrow.”
And entering the house, he gently closed the door behind him. “Good night, Krishnaji,” I called after him.
*
Being so close to him not only gave me a chance to observe the course of his daily life; it also imbued my own life with a rhythm of contemplative tranquillity, the like of which I had never known before.
At a certain level, his life seemed to be simplicity itself. He did his morning exercises, yoga and pranayama, and took his meals in the house, often in company; he wrote at his desk what I took to be correspondence and diary, since
he did not prepare his talks but spoke extemporaneously, from the essence of the situation at hand. In the afternoon, he took an after-lunch siesta. An hour or two before sunset he would go for a walk, often with friends, who took him by car to nearby Adyar beach. Apart from giving public talks and dialogues, he had frequent meetings with his associates. The other visitors he received came to pay obeisance, often with a ceremonial offering of flowers and baskets of fruit. It was part of the ancient Indian tradition to seek darshan, the presence of a religious teacher or guru, and be highly devotional toward that person.
I observed an example of this kind of devotion during one of the few musical performances staged in honor of Krishnamurti. One of the most famous South Indian singers, M.S. Subbulakshmi, a woman with an angelic voice, sang devotional songs beneath the pandal in front of a large audience, including Krishnamurti. After the enchanting two-hour performance, the lady descended from the stage and paid homage to him by going down on her knees and touching his feet with her fingertips. Although he did not care for such behavior, he good- naturedly tolerated this public display of devotion, in turn draping a garland of jasmine and plumeria blossoms round her neck.
*
It was the day after the Madras talks. I knew that Krishnamurti was going to depart for Rishi Valley very early in the morning and had steeled myself to rise for the occasion. It was still dark, and I watched from a distance as the Ambassador car pulled up in front of the small fountain and lotus pool, adorned by an iron statue of Shiva Nataraj. Lights were turned on and servants began loading the car with suitcases. There was a slight chill in the air, and when I looked at the bright stars overhead, I could only detect the most minute indication of dawn, a single streak of light in the east. Suddenly all the servants ceremoniously lined up next to the car, and the chauffeur opened the door on the passenger side. I quickly strode over and stood a few feet behind them. Accompanied by his hostess and one of his associates, Krishnamurti walked up to the car and quietly responded in kind to the solemn namaste that we were offering. He looked frail as he got into the car, wrapped in a woolen shawl. As the vehicle pulled out of the courtyard, I felt a strange sense of absence and loss. A week of living in physical proximity to him had enabled me to get glimpses of his simple, radiant life but had also created a form of attachment within me. And now that it was over, I felt both enriched and bereft, even though the next day I was going to follow him to Rishi Valley.
*
At Rishi Valley, and some weeks later at Bangalore, I saw a lot less of Krishnamurti, except on talk days. At Bombay, the teeming metropolis on the Arabian Sea, he lived in a part of the city called Malabar Hill, near the Towers of Silence, the Zoroastrian burial grounds. After locating the house with some difficulty, I rang the bell in the hope of meeting him. His hostess, a powerful, aristocratic lady, received me cordially, and, after offering me some tea, informed me that he was staying in the house but wasn’t seeing anybody. She
revealed, however, that in the late afternoons he usually went for a walk in the nearby Hanging Gardens, and that I might possibly see him there.
This sounded intriguing enough for me to find my way to the public park overlooking the crescent bay, crowded with highrise buildings. The Hanging Gardens turned out to be a topiary garden, whose shrubs were clipped into the ornamental shapes of elephants, tigers and other animals. Just before sunset huge crowds, almost without exception dressed in loose, white clothing, thronged the pathways of the gardens. For a moment I wondered whether they had all come to see Krishnamurti. Discarding this notion as unlikely, I asked myself how I might possibly detect him among this densely packed multitude.
Suddenly I saw him. He was walking extremely fast, almost running, around the central lawn of the gardens. Five or six people were frantically trying to keep pace, without ever quite catching up with him. Under the circumstances, it seemed absurd to even want to greet him, so I simply watched him from a distance. I marveled at his stamina, how, without slowing down, he walked round the lawn again and again for about half an hour, before setting off for home, his companions in tow, while the saffron light of dusk suffused everything with a great stillness.
*
After the Bombay talks, I first traveled to Europe and from there went on to California, since I had learned that Krishnamurti was going to speak in both San Francisco and Ojai. In early March, 1973, he gave four public talks at the Masonic Temple in the City by the Bay. It was a special delight to listen to him in this wonderful metropolis, where I had spent a number of years.
Abundant spring rains had transformed California into a land of lush-green hills and valleys, with carpets of golden poppies and blue lupins along the highways. During the drive south toward Ojai, I thought I had never experienced the earth and its beauty more poignantly.
Turning off the 101 freeway at Ventura, I entered the Ojai Valley on highway 33. The changing colorful panorama in front of me enchanted all my senses. The valley bowl with its undulating contours and geometric patterns of orange groves was bathed in the glow of the setting sun. The crests and folds of the mountains were sharply etched in violet and purple shadows, contrasted by bright patches of yellow and green. An enormous sense of stillness enveloped the earth and the luminous sky. It felt as if I was entering a scene of magic and profound beauty.
On a sun-bright Saturday morning in April, Krishnamurti was giving the first of four talks at the Libbey Bowl in Ojai. A breeze was rustling the sycamore leaves, as a side-door opened and the slender, diminutive figure stepped into the limelight of the amphitheater, the ranks of which were filled with a thousand people or more. He was dressed with modest elegance in dark-grey, sharp- creased trousers, highly-polished, red-brown cordovans, and a long-sleeved knit shirt. I noted that the Bordeaux-red of his shirt matched the color of the one I was wearing. As he stepped forward, I marveled at how complete he appeared in himself and the sense of focused stillness that enveloped him.
Once seated on the chair in the middle of the large stage, a small microphone stand in front of him, he gazed with imperturbable calm at the many faces that were watching him.
When finally he began to speak, he seemed to be addressing each person singly and everyone collectively at the same time. He spoke of thought and the fragmentation it had caused on all levels of existence; he spoke of pleasure and fear, of the beauty of nature, of death, love and meditation, unraveling the whole spectrum of human life. Then, after a concluding interval of silence, he gestured to people to get up, as he found it impolite to get up before they did.
Suddenly I remembered a poem which I had recently written and intended to give to him. I was sitting in the third row and noticed a passageway from the stage to the road, screened off by a wooden enclosure with a door. I quickly walked over there and found the door unlocked. Nobody but myself—in contrast to Saanen and India—appeared to be rushing to seek post-talk contact with the speaker. I quietly slipped through the door and, turning around, found myself face to face with Krishnamurti.
My first sensation was silent shock and a thunderous heartbeat of recognition. Then I instinctively pulled back, afraid that I had intruded into his sphere of privacy. He was by himself, leaning with one arm on a table, as if catching his breath after a marathon run. There was a faint flush across his face, and his eyes had an unusual glow. Yet he seemed neither surprised nor disturbed by my unexpected appearance, but only watched me with quiet detachment.
I had never seen him like that: tremulously fragile and utterly vulnerable. I felt embarrassed by my own massiveness. My gesture of handing him a piece of paper with a poem on it appeared ludicrous in the context of the moment. But I did it anyhow, stammering, “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
He accepted the sheet of paper with trembling hands and looked at it, puzzled, as if unable to decipher it.
“It’s a poem I’ve written for you, sir,” I explained with a voice that sounded rather alien to me.
“All right, sir. I’ll read it later, if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t know what else to say. After an interval of silence that seemed endless he shook my hand, saying, “Thank you, sir. Good-bye.”
I felt immense gratitude and friendship toward him as he turned and walked out to the road.
*
That same year, I was drawn again to the summer talks at Saanen. I helped with the setting-up of the tent by the riverside. One afternoon, several of us were busy finishing off the job, since the talks were to start the following day. I was digging a ditch around the tent overhang. Just then, a Mercedes sedan drove up and rolled to a stop at the side exit. A jolt of excitement shot through me when I recognized Krishnamurti stepping out of the car. The lady who accompanied him, of almost equal height and stature, was dressed with elegant but subdued sophistication. As they walked around the tent, carefully studying the inside and outside details, Krishnamurti greeted each person they encountered. I was inside the tent when
they entered the large geodesic space. Both of them recognized me from our previous encounters, and I felt a wave of joy when Krishnamurti addressed me by my first name. I stammered, “It’s wonderful to see you again, sir. We’re almost finished with getting the tent ready for tomorrow.”
“It’s quite a bit of work, isn’t it?” he remarked.
After exchanging a few words with his companion, he asked me, “Would you mind, sir, going up on that platform and sitting on the chair for a moment?”
“Of course not, sir,” I replied, briefly bewildered by the request. As I walked onto the stage, I felt a little awkward, and conflicting thought signals crossed my mind as to the purpose of the exercise.
“Yes, please, sir, sit down on the chair,” he repeated, when he noticed my slight hesitation.
Lowering myself onto the wooden chair, I was for a moment tempted to assume one of Krishnamurti’s characteristic poses: holding the edge of the seat with both hands and sitting on them. Krishnamurti and the lady walked up the aisle to the far end of the tent, checking the angles of visibility, while I sat there in immobile silence, looking out over the empty ranks of wooden benches.
“Could you please move the chair a bit to the left?” Krishnamurti called out from the back row.
Moving the chair, I watched quietly as they consulted with one another. As I was sitting there on the platform, in the speaker’s place, it occurred to me how inherently contradictory it was to imitate him, or anyone else. Simultaneously, I realized that I did want to be like him, or whatever I imagined him to be like. I wanted to lead a life without conflict, to have a silent mind of compassion and serenity, and yet full of extraordinary energy and liveliness.
While these thoughts were crossing my mind, Krishnamurti waved from the back, calling across the rows of empty benches, “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” I answered and walked off the stage to continue with the preparatory work.