Krishnamurti (1895-1986) - 4 -
Témoignages extraits de :
Evelyne Blau – Krishnamurti : 100 years Krishnaji returned to India in 1947, after the war and an absence of
several years.
In January of 1948, I had gone to see my mother.
There was an old friend of my father’s, Sanjeeva Rao, who had been
connected with Dr. Besant for many years, who at the time was
responsible for organizing Krishnaji’s visit to India. He had come to
see my mother, and when I went there he told me that he was taking my
mother to see Krishnaji.
As a child I had been in the Theosophical girls school in Benares. I
remember seeing Krishnaji for a minute and being overwhelmed by the
extraordinary beauty of Krishnaji as a person.
As I had nothing else to do, I thought I would go with my mother to see
this very beautiful person.
We went to Carmichael Road where he was staying and after a little while
Krishnaji walked in. If you had seen him at the time… it was like a
sudden explosion of a presence, the sudden entrance of a presence unlike
anything that had ever been seen before. He had great beauty, which he
still has, but seeing it for the first time, the impact was total. He
was dressed in Indian clothes.
I remember he used to laugh a lot in those days, and he was laughing
when he came in.
(Pupul Jayakar, author and biographer, India)
There is no way of describing Krishnamurti in words.
You can say he was a world teacher or you can say he was a great
psychologist, philosopher and a great religious teacher and that
wouldn’t convey anything to the other person.
There is no way, in my limited vocabulary, of describing Krishnamurti
other than by reading his teachings.
You get some feeling of it through the films and the video tapes, then
you can get a feeling of Krishnamurti without reading him.
But, I don’t think I could convey it to anybody — not in words.
His presence was very powerful.
(Benjamin Weinninger, psychiatrist, California)
I think Krishnaji changed over the years a great deal.
I first met him in Madras when he came to India in 1947. Of course,
personally speaking, I absolutely fell in love with the teachings, with
him, and it meant a whole lot of change in the direction of my
life.
He was a delight to be with; he would walk with you, he would talk with
you, such fun it was, being with him apart from the seriousness of the
teaching itself.
I would say, perhaps by the end of the fifties this personal factor
gradually started diminishing.
Personally, I observed that he became more severe, very serious, and
from then onwards, there was very little of the personal in him. I could
see that he was deeply concerned with the state of humanity.
(Sunanda Patwardhan, sociologist, India)
In 1955 at Spencer English’s house in Sydney, Australia, six of us
were seated at dinner with Krishnaji. As we were finishing the meal a
violent storm erupted, there was lots of lightning — a real November,
late spring turbulence in the southern hemisphere.
We stopped talking to watch. Krishnamurti pushed back his chair, and
without a word walked out onto the open patio and began to dance in the
rain, joyously leaping in the midst of that tremendous lightning and
thunderstorm.
How beautiful to watch a man dancing spontaneously, wildly, and
gracefully in the midst of nature’s violence !
(Alan Hooker, restauranter, California)
I had never heard Krishnamurti, but something made me go to his talk.
It was in Friends’ House, Euston Road (May 10, 1966), and I found no
sign outside to explain who Krishnamurti was, or what was going to
happen.
Inside I found a hall full of peculiarly silent people and a single
chair on the platform with a microphone in front of it. I thought
probably a chairman would come on to introduce him, but that didn’t
happen.
At exactly seven o’clock a small man came on to the platform, sat down
and began to speak, and at eight o’clock he went off again.
I walked out almost in a daze, without talking to anybody, for I think I
realized even then that that hour was probably one of the most important
experiences of my life.
From the moment he started speaking, I felt personally addressed and the
talk seemed directed at exactly the state of mind I was in at that
time.
He gave an extraordinary impression of authority (in the sense of
someone who knew what he was talking about) and the whole experience
carried a strange feeling of completeness, which I didn’t want to
touch.
I remember I had been to hear Billy Graham the same week. There was a
tremendous build-up — introductory speakers, bands, choirs, and then the
great man himself. He wrung our hearts, but when he invited people to
walk forward for Christ, I walked the other way.
And then the total contrast of that quiet talk in the Euston Road
!
(Alan Rowlands, concert pianist, England)
I became the school doctor [in Rishi Valley] and very soon the
villagers around there discovered that I was a doctor and so they
started coming for treatment. I opened a clinic for the villagers as
well as for the students and staff.
The school had many gardens so I was delighted to do the flowers in his
apartment when Krishnaji arrived. Early in the morning at four, or late
in the afternoon after the sun had gone down I would walk through the
gardens and cut the flowers so they would be fresh. If I cut them at
night, I would put them in buckets of water to keep until the
morning.
My object was to go to his apartment before Krishnaji would wake up and
delight him with fresh flowers. I would tiptoe up the steps with these
buckets of flowers, collect the vases of old flowers from the rooms of
the apartment and bring them to a doorway of the west facing veranda.
There was enough early morning light so I wouldn’t have to turn on a
light. I would sit in the doorway and arrange the flowers. I would set
them all around in different parts of the rooms, and then return to our
cottage, which was next door.
One of those mornings when I was arranging the flowers I heard, as if
from the bedroom. I heard sounds as if someone was getting up, so I
became very quiet. Realizing that that was Krishnaji’s bedroom, and
maybe he was getting up and wouldn’t know I was there, I didn’t want to
startle or disturb him, so I became very quiet and stopped what I was
doing.
Then I heard the wooden slippers that he wore in India. When you walk
with those wooden slippers, you can hear the wood clapping on the floor.
I heard the clap of his steps going towards the bathroom. I said to
myself, “Yes, now he’ll go back to bed.”
But then he walked on and went through the next room, which was like a
reception room where he had meetings and discussions. He went through
that room and then came across the veranda in front of the living room
on the eastern side of the apartment where I sat with the flowers all
around me. I shrank from the lighted area into the shadowed part of the
doorway so that I wouldn’t startle him. I sat quietly as he passed on
his way to the dining room.
What I saw was amazing because it wasn’t the figure of Krishnaji who
passed by. It was an unusually tall luminescent figure that passed. He
looked like the figure of the Buddha, with the same kind of stature.
This figure went towards the kitchen and then came back again in a few
moments. This time, as he passed the living room door, he stopped and
turned and smiled, as if saying, “I know you’re there.”
I just sat there absolutely still. I couldn’t understand this at all.
There was no fear, it was extraordinary. It was something very
beautiful.
It was Krishnamurti, because that was his bedroom. He had come from
there, he walked through his bathroom, across the veranda to the dining
room, kitchen, and then back again. There was no one else in that
apartment.
Krishnaji is a very slender, delicate, small-statured person. This
figure was at least twice his height and bigger. It was as if there was
a light within the body. The face was very peaceful and compassionate
and there seemed to be something over the head.
I sat there very still for some time, then I picked up my things very
quickly and quietly went down the stairs. I was shaking all the way. I
told my husband, Mark, what I had seen and I never told anyone else
about it because it was something so sacred that I didn’t want to
belittle it by talking about it.
(Asha Lee, pediatrician, California)