When you are in danger and you are facing life, you are for the first time in contact with your soul. The soul is not cheap. You have to put everything at stake. That’s why I say even an organized religion can be a positive thing. Buddha was born as a Hindu. Hinduism became the prison. He tried hard to get out of it, and he succeeded. Krishnamurti was trained in a certain discipline, was an inmate of a prison called theosophy — but he tried hard, broke out of it, became free of it.
If you ask me I will say one thing: if there had been no theosophical imprisonment for him in his childhood, it would have been difficult for him to become a free man. Annie Besant and Leadbeater and other theosophists created the whole situation — unknowingly, of course, they were not meaning it. They were trying to do something else. They were creating a dogma around him, a cult around him. And they were so hard upon him that it became really impossible to live in it. He Had to get out of it.
The credit goes to those people — Leadbeater and Annie Besant. If the prison had been a little more comfortable, if the prison had not been so hard and if the discipline imposed had not been so arduous, if the ideals had not been so superhuman, if he had not been asked to play a role so unnatural to him, he might have relaxed, he might have accepted it. That’s what has happened to you. A Christian remains a Christian because Christianity is no longer a great pressure. On Sunday you can go to the church — it is a formality. It remains the life of a non-Christian.
You go on fulfilling the formalities of being a Christian. Your Christianity is not even skin-deep, and the church does not demand much. The church says, “You just come on particular days to the church: when your child is born come to the church for the baptism; when somebody dies, come to the church; when there is marriage, come to the church — these three things will do and you will remain a Christian. Sometimes on Sundays come and participate in the ritual.”
Nothing much is asked. The prison is not much of a prison. It is almost as if you are free, only on Sundays you go to the jail and sit there for one hour and come home and you are again free. Who bothers? Who will fight against it? It is so convenient and comfortable. That’s why so many people are Hindus and Mohammedans and Jains — nobody is asking. These religions are just formal rituals; they don’t challenge you. Nothing is at stake. Very difficult to get out of them — because the prison is very lukewarm. You have become adjusted to it.
It is so convenient and comfortable that you have become adjusted to it. It looks almost like a good policy, a good compromise. Krishnamurti fell into the hands of a very fanatical group — theosophists. It was a new religion. Whenever a religion is new, it is very fanatical. By and by, it relaxes and compromises and becomes just a social phenomenon; then it is no more religion. Theosophy was just in its beginning, and Krishnamurti was only nine years old when he fell into the hands of those fanatics. They tried hard.
They wouldn’t allow Krishnamurti to meet and mix with ordinary children — no — because they had a goal that he had to become the world Teacher, JAGADGURU. He had to become the coming-Buddha; he had to become the incarnation of Maitreya. He was not allowed to move with any girl, because he might have fallen in love and the whole dream of the theosophists would have been shattered. He was constantly guarded. He was not allowed to move alone; somebody was always with him, watching him.
And he was forced to follow very strict rules: three o’clock in the morning he had to get up and take a cold bath; and then he had to learn Sanskrit and he had to learn French and he had to learn English and he had to learn Latin and Greek — because a World Teacher should be well cultured, sophisticated. Just a nine-year-old child! When he was twelve years old, they started forcing him to write a book. Now what can a twelve-year-old child write? In fact, the teacher, Leadbeater, he was writing in his name.
Krishnamurti would write and Leadbeater would correct it and make it perfect. The book still exists. A beautiful book, but you cannot expect it of a boy just twelve years old. It is not from him. Even Krishnamurti cannot remember it. When he has been asked he has said, “I don’t remember when I wrote it — I don’t remember at all how it came into being.” And they were talking nonsense — esoteric nonsense: “In his dreams he goes to the seventh heaven, and there God Himself is teaching him.”
And just a twelve-year-old child — very vulnerable, soft, receptive; he would trust. And these people were world-famous; they had great names. And the movement was really big and worldwide; thousands and thousands of lodges were opened all over the world. Just a twelve-year-old boy had become a world-famous personality. Wherever he was going, thousands of people would gather just to see him. If you look at those pictures, you feel pity for him, compassion. He was continuously in a cage.
And it was natural, I think it would have happened to anybody — it had nothing to do with Krishnamurti. Anybody in his place, if he had any spirit left, would have renounced this whole nonsense, and would have come out of it. It was too much of a prison. He could not write letters to anybody because he might have made some relationship through the letters. A World Teacher needs to be completely unattached. He started feeling a little love for a woman who was old enough to be his mother, but even that was stopped.
It was nothing to do with sexuality or anything; he just started feeling love from the woman. The woman was already a mother of three children — but the theosophists wouldn’t allow it. They stopped it. He was completely in seclusion, never allowed to move into the outside world. He was not allowed to enter in any school, in any college, because there he would meet ordinary people and he would become ordinary.
Special teachers were appointed; he was taught specially. And all around him, just a nine-year-old boy, all around him such big talk — of Masters, Master K.H. sending messages, letters falling from the roof. They were all managed! Theosophists were caught later on — they were all managed: the roof was specially made and a letter would drop suddenly, and it was for Krishnamurti — a message had come from the unknown. Just think of a small boy…. No freedom allowed became a great urge to be free.
One day — nobody was expecting it, that he would renounce it — the theosophists had gathered from all over the world for the first declaration in which Krishnamurti was expected to declare that he was the World Teacher and that God had entered into him. Suddenly, without saying anything to anybody…. He could not sleep the whole night.
He brooded over it: he has become a slave, and they are all do-gooders; they have made you a slave because they want to do good to you; and they love you and their love became nauseating; and their well-wishing became poisonous. The whole night he brooded: what is he to do? Whether he has to continue and become part of this nonsense, or get out of it?
And blessed he is that in the morning when they had gathered and they were waiting for God to descend in him and to declare that he is now no more Krishnamurti but Lord Maitreya — Buddha has entered in him — he suddenly declined and he said, “It is all nonsense. Nobody is descending in me. I am simply Krishnamurti and I am nobody’s Master. And I am not a Jagadguru, not a World Teacher. And I dissolve this nonsense and this organization and the whole thing that has been made around me.”
They were shocked! They could not believe it: “Has he gone mad, crazy?” They had put much hope in him, much money; it was a great investment, years of training. But it was going to be so. If he had been absolutely a dead man, then only would he have accepted it. He was alive. They could not kill his life, that aliveness exploded. If he had been a dull, mediocre mind, maybe he would have accepted — but he has an intelligence, a tremendous awareness. He got out of it. That whole movement and the whole organized thing functioned as a positive challenge.
As far as I see, nothing can hold you. If you are alert, you will use organized religion as a challenge. If you are not alert, then organized religion or no organized religion, wherever you are you will create an imprisonment around you. You carry it around you — in your cowardice, in your fear, in your urge to be secure and comfortable.
Source: from book “The Discipline of Transcendence, Volume 3” by Osho
