One of the most interesting and important persons I have ever met or of whom I read books is Krishnamurti. He is not a therapist, but many aspects of him makes one  think about many things that has to do with the mind, such as thinking, feeling, intuition, aggression, fear, grief, communication and relation, religion, gurus, etc. As far as I, as a trained psychologist and therapist, can see, he has a total different approach to hundreds of different aspects of life than any other teacher, guru, priest, psychologist or psychiatrist. I try to apply some of his teachings in my work as a psychotherapist. In this article I will write how I discovered Krishnamurti.

When I was a student I was interested in paranormal subjects, like auras, chakras and past lives. I heard about the Theosophical Society (T.S.) and that they had a nice library with lot of books about these subjects. In that library I came to know that the T.S. was founded by a Russian woman, Mrs. H. P. Blavatsky around 1875. As a child she was clairvoyant, saw spirits around her, knew what other peop1e were thinking, knew sometimes when a person was going to die and sometimes saw an Indian person around her. Many years later she was walking in Hyde Park in London and saw a group of Indian people, who were there to talk with the English government. One of them was a man whom she had seen many times when she was a child and used to live in Russia. She went to him and told that she bas seen him many times. He said that she was right and invited her to come to India (Kashmir), which she did. She learned a lot about Indian philosophy, but also about other cultures, like the old Egyptian culture and wrote several books about that. A very famous book is ‘Secret doctrine’.  Around 1875 she founded the T.S. with the headquarter in Madras, India and started to write books and articles about the many things she had learned from the ‘Masters’.

One of her followers was an American - Colonel Olcott. He became the president of the T.S. after Blavatsky. The president after him was Mrs. Annie Besant.  Around 1900 she was well known in England. She was fighting for more rights for women. Before her political activities, women were not allowed to vote for members of the parliament. Because of Annie Besant the English women were allowed to vote. She heard of the theories of Blavatsky and the T.S., and started to study their books, became a member of the society and started to give lectures about Theosophy. Blavatsky was convinced that a new religious teacher was coming very soon, a person like Buddha or Christ and that the T.S. was going to play an important role in his life.

Discovery of Krishnamurti by Leadbeater

One of the leaders of the T.S. was Mr. Leadbeater, who said that he was clairvoyant and could see auras and chakras and wrote several books about these subjects. One time Mr. Leadbeater was walking on the beach of Madras, near the headquarter of the T.S. and saw some boys playing on the beach and swimming in the ocean. He saw the auras of these boys and saw that one of these boys, a boy of 11 years, had an aura very big and very beautiful, so big and beautiful he had never seen before. Most people have an aura which is one meter big, the colours of most aura' s are rather dun. This boy had an aura, which was very big with bright colours. He went to the boy, talked with him and asked him some questions and was very impressed by the answers. He discovered that the father of the boy was working on the office of the T.S. and lived in a small house in the grounds of the T.S. This boy was Krishnamurti.  

Private education in England, France and Italy

Leadbeater talked with the father and said that he had the feeling that the boy was intelligent and needed special training and that he, Leadbeater, wanted to be this boy's guide. The boy Krishnamurti had two brothers. He was very fond of the younger brother, Nitya. So this younger brother also went to Leadbeater's house and both received special schooling. Krishnamurti's mother died when he was about 10 years old. Leadbeater was more and more convinced that Krishnamurti was the person that he and Mrs. Besant were looking for. After some years K and his brother were sent to a rich and noble family in England where they received private lessons from a private teacher. After 2-3 years Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya were sent to another noble family in France and after some years to another family in Italy. That is the reason that K spoke English, French and Italian fluently.