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On Krishnamurti Books 

By Reza Ganjavi

As I gradually downsize my physical life and possessions, I go through almost a hundred books I studied by J. Krishnamurti. Study is the key point. I am not his follower and I do not "believe" in anything he says and I think some of the statements he said were wrong (as you can see below). He provides pointers and insights, some of which are very profound. He also says certain statements that are not true or I disagree with, but he even said himself, "don't follow me". He said this statement many times. He also said it to me directly, when we met -- he also gave me a flower - and we had beautiful profound exchanges (shaking hands, talking, walking). 

I'm going through the markings I made in the books, to select some statements, and keep them as a summary and then give away or dispose of the book.  Some like Think on These Things, or Commentaries on Living, have so many markings that I might as well keep the whole book. It's interesting to see, after years of first reading these books, what still resonates, what is a part of me, what seems insignificant, and what is so profound. 

The books listed below, I am working on the ones with many quotes offline, and may update with commentaries - I don't feel right printing 20 quotes from a book since it might step out of fair use act. 

As the River Joins the Ocean

G. Narayan's book reminds me of the biographies which try to make K into a god. He puts a lot of focus on idolizing K. The book has some questionable parts. Not a valuable book, in my view. 

Four Dialogues at CSUSB University

One of the books I came across was FOUR DIALOGUES WITH MR. J. KRISHNAMURTI and High School and University students and teachers, organize by my old friend Dr. Brij B. Khare with whom I've lost touch for many years (if you're reading this Brij, please contact me).  Professor Khare taught at California State University San Bernardino, California 92407.

Many of the participants are not very familiar with K's work apparently, so he covers many of the basics, which are interesting. I studied this book deeply, as with most of his other books, and made underlines and side notes, and editorial corrections, challenges to the ideas, and filled out extensive evaluation sheets of each of the four dialogues. 

The Presence That Stays

The book contains testimonies by people who knew K. It was published by the JK center in Hyderabad. It has many interesting writings by 

• Dear physicist/philosopher friend, Professor P. Krishna

• An old friend Ms. Ahalya Chari whom I visited in Chennai (Madras) and went to her home which was on the grounds of the Theosophical Society, across from The School run by dear friend Mr. G. Gautama. 

• Old friend Friedrich Grohe whose contributions backfired, in my opinion -- he went from being a benevolent benefactor, to a negative influence, in the view of myself and several close friends of Krishnamurti, because of the repercussions of the influence mongering of his "Gang" / big money on the foundations. Years ago Friedrich and I did many walks together in the mountains, and I've stayed at his house many times. He taught me yoga, pranayama, eye exercises, etc. which Krishnamurti taught him. He is in his 90's now (in 2023). I wish him well. I published a major report on his organization some years ago that's on my website's writings section www.rezamusic.com , called the Fifth Foundation, and a major report on KFT/Brockwood's mismanagement where Friedrich and his Gang emerged as a central figures. 

• Mrs. Radhika Herzberger, a serious scholar of K's work, and former principle of Rishi Valley School, and daughter of Pupul Jayakar. I've had profound email exchanges with Mrs. Herzberger.

• Mark Lee, with whom I was friends until I realized he was behind some strange things such as reportedly giving green light, together with James Paul, both of whom were trustees of KFA, to Michael Krohnen to attack me at a public even held in the K library which was K's own home where Mary Zimbalist lived, and I visited Mary many times.  I also had the impression that Mark Lee was double faced and weak as he was run over by the Grohe Gang influence but always managed to stay in the foundation as a trustee. He may have been a good administrator at some point, but I and some friends of K believe he is somehow clueless about K's teachings. He's on record for telling fictitious stories about K, so I don't trust his recollections, and unfortunately don't trust his editorial works either. But I wish him well. I was at his house many times, and know and like his dear wife Asha. 

• Dear friend Evelyne Blau with whom we organized video showings in Los Angeles, and I've been to her house several times.

• Dear friend, Donald Ingram Smith, who dated a mutual friend who was 18 while he was 80, and they were very good together, despite the judgements of others who are so caught on what proper age difference should be. I've gone through the same pain!

• Dear friend, Vikram Parchure, whom I met in Thailand. Dr. Parchure's son. I met Dr. Parchure at Brockwood Park, and he taught me some exercises. Dr. Parchure had an affair with a mutual female friend and former student of K schools, again, much younger than him (no problem).

And others. Some of the writings were ridiculous and tried to make a god out of K. And distortions such as appear in some biographies. 

Mr. Krishna Nath and Others' Disrespect for K's Wish Regarding Early Works

K made it clear on a number of occasions, that the early works should be ignored. 

In his book: On The Teachings, Mr. Krishna Nath whom I met in a Swiss summer gathering, disrespected that and published a number of material, which are so NOT Krishnamurti, and K knew it and so he expressly asked that that work be ignored, yet years later that simple wish is disrespected and the material is published. Anyone who reads that material, gets a totally wrong idea of what K and his teachings is about. K had a significant awakening after which he totally discarded some of the things he said earlier. 

Garbage Book: Star in the East by Roland Vernon

In my big pile of K books - stored in a big luggage that's now found its way to the surface to be processed, I came across several terrible books that I had marked as garbage -- such as Roland Vernon's preposterous, horrible, incompetent, biased biography of Krishnamurti, "Star in the East".

Seven Master One Path - by John Selby

About Krishnamurti (chapter 7 - Called Experiencing Bliss)

Review by Reza Ganjavi

The author continually pointed towards the simplicity of the spiritual path once we put aside the confusing clutter of the judging mind. 

This is a typical distortion in interpretation. It shows the author had not really studied K's work. 

Spiritual path is not something which K talks about or assesses as simple or difficult. 

K also does not promote suppressing anything. He suggested understanding, bringing order, and action which comes from understanding.

He refers to K's "followers" but in reality K did not want to have followers. He made it very clear, He even told some of us directly in person that he did not want to have followers. How odd that is for the traditional mind!

Reading more of the authors writing demonstrates how little he has studied K's work before venturing to write about him.

He refers to K's audience calming down and focusing and that he would close his eyes and concentrate.

K spoke a lot about the distinction between awareness, attention and concentration, which implies exclusion etc. but the author is clearly speaking using conventional terms

Garbage Book: Two Birds on One Tree by Ravindra

Another garbage book is Ravi Ravindra's Two Birds on One Tree. He really illustrates how clueless he is about K's teachings. Yet, he is invited as a speaker by Mark Lee and some others at the Krishnamurti Foundation America who are also clueless about core teachings of K which are meaningless unless you live the truth they point to (which have nothing to do with K anymore as truth is truth -- for example, the importance of speaking truth and living noble values like integrity, compassion, etc.). 

My opinion on some at KFA being clueless about K's teachings is based on observing how its leaders have behaved which are so contrary to K's teachings. I've written about that, and still have a major publication to make about the disastrous mismanagement of KFA by Jaap Sluijter and company. 

See: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/about-ravi-ravindras-garbage-ideas-tabloid-book-kfa

See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yza0e98peEU

See my notes about promotion of Ravindra's garbage book by Friedrich Grohe's Gang: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/the-fifth-foundation

The Theme Books

The Theme books that Mark Lee and company put together after K's death was a disaster. They started specializing K's books by themes,  which made them boring and dull. Compare a boring book in the series "On..." to the general books like Freedom From The Known, or many other books of his, it's evident that these series was a disaster. And such an emphasis was put on the man -- with a big picture of him on the cover (which was not the case in many of the older books including his best-seller "Think on These Things" which had no picture of him - and the first book of his which I read -- I suppose because people like Mark Lee never grasped the depth of what K was talking about -- so they focused on the person instead of the message -- and Mr. Lee went on to promote himself as Mr. Everything Krishnamurti, after K's death, which led to the horrendous situations where he would just make up fake stories in order to sizzle up interest in himself I guess. That's my opinion based on factually incorrect, fictitious nonsense Mark Less has promoted about K. 

But he was not the only one. Other people in that circle were also largely missing the point -- people like Michael Krohnen, who cooked for K.  Just because some people were in K's vicinity doesn't make them philosophers or even good students of K as the real studying is of one's own self, reactions, which in these isolated, protected, small environments of the Foundations, is less present that people living their daily lives who study themselves in the mirror of relationship, earnestly, without direction or motive except to find out and inquire into what-is. 

The ultimate disaster in these foundations, in my opinion, are people like Friedrich Grohe's Gang including Raman Patel, Rabindra Singh, and the people they instated at the foundations such as Jaap Sluijter, the disastrous Executive Director of KFA, Nasser Shamim and Mina Masoumian KFT / Brockwood Park, whom in my view, based on many facts, fast tracked these organizations down a path Krishnamurti dreaded and unfortunately predicted. 

Biographies

I did a lot of underlining and marking of the biographies, all of which I read with interest. But at this stage in life I find the content uninteresting. I know all about Krishnamurti's development since childhood and don't think it's relevant, as he pointed out himself too, to some of the key challenges and pointers he offered which are very helpful in healing minds and hearts. 

Pupul Jayakar and Mary Lutyens biographies are reportedly distorted, as per opinion of people I respect. One of the books is deemed as fiction than a biography. However, they contain some interesting and important quotes by K, which I underlined when I read them way back when, and will retain those quotes. Mrs. Pupul Jayakar's book has many valuable letters from K, and lots of fun anecdotal stories -- their validity is not known. She also has a lot of herself in the book, which is valuable if we keep in mind that she's expressing her subjective impressions - some of her personal stories with K are quite interesting. But I must also say that as we see in some videos, K was very frustrated in some talks with Pupulji because she didn't seem to grasp some key points, so it was like pulling teeth. 

Trustee Meetings 

I have a number of artifacts which are not published as books, which contain discussions K had with trustees of various foundations, schools, international committees, etc. -- I took the important quotes. What stands out is his dislike for organizations including his own. 

Exploration Into Insight

29 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS 

• Complete harmony is the foundation for the purity of silence.

Education and Significance of Life

15 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS 

• Virtue comes with freedom, it comes when there is an understanding of what is.

On Education

12 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS 

• You have to learn never to accept anything which you yourself do not see clearly, never to repeat what another has said.

TALKS WITH AMERICAN STUDENTS

Without having great energy and therefore great passion and intensity, life must inevitably be, as it is now, a thing of pleasure, entertainment and the accumulation of knowledge or things.

BEYOND VIOLENCE 

• The word `individuality' means `indivisible', not fragmented. Individuality means a totality, the whole, and the word `whole'

• what you see is much more important than what you `should do' from what you see. The moment you see very clearly, there is action from that clarity.

• what you are is a living thing, and when you condemn what you see in yourself, you are condemning it with a memory which is dead, which is the past. Therefore there is a contradiction between the living and the past. To understand the living, the past must go, so that you can look.

• If you follow anybody you are destroying yourself and the other. 

• rid yourself of the idea of `if'. Do not live somewhere in the future; the future is what you project now. The now is the past; that is what you are when you say, `I am living now'. You are living in the past, because the past is directing and shaping you; memories of the past are making you act this way or that way. So `to live' is to be free of time; and when you say `if', you are introducing time. And time is the greatest sorrow.

• Is there not immediate action? - action that is intelligence; the seeing of the danger and acting; intelligence in which there is no division between seeing and acting. In the very perception is action. When one does not act, insanity begins, imbalance takes place;

The Flight Of The Eagle

25 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS 

• ‘Image forming’ arises from inattention; when there is attention there is no building up of any concept.

First And Last Freedom

5 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS

• The understanding of oneself is not a result, a culmination; it is seeing oneself from moment to moment in the mirror of relationship—one’s relationship to property, to things, to people and to ideas.

Education and the significance of life

• at least we can bring about, in the world of our everyday relationships, a fundamental change which will have its own effect. Individual enlightenment does affect large groups of people, but only if one is not eager for results. If one thinks in terms of gain and effect, right transformation of oneself is not possible.

• Our many problems can be understood and resolved only when we are aware of ourselves as a total process, that is, when we understand our whole psychological make-up; and no religious or political leader can give us the key to that understanding. 

• To understand ourselves, we must be aware of our relationship, not only with people, but also with property, with ideas and with nature. If we are to bring about a true revolution in human relationship, which is the basis of all society, there must be a fundamental change in our own values and outlook; but we avoid the necessary and fundamental transformation of ourselves, and try to bring about political revolutions in the world, which always leads to bloodshed and disaster.

THE IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION

9 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS

• You cannot be whole if you do not know what love is.

VARIOUS 

120 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS

• Contentment is the understanding of what is, and what is is never static. A mind that is interpreting, translating what is, is caught in its own prejudice of satisfaction. Interpretation is not understanding.

Life Ahead

18 QUOTES - IN PROGRESS

• Contentment is not satisfaction. Contentment is something very vital. It is a state of creativeness in which there is the understanding of what actually is. Begin to understand what you actually are from moment to moment, from day to day, you will find that out of this understanding there comes an extraordinary feeling of vastness, limitless comprehension.

AND MANY MORE...