Religion: Theosophists

J. Krishnamurti. That was the name on the ship’s register. Clearly eastern; and its bearer conformed to the adjective with an ivory appropriateness. A slender gentleman of, perhaps, 30, he was often seen about the deck, sitting modestly by himself, or talking to a bleak old lady with bobbed hair. Women looked at him. His nose—a little on one side; his clothes—obviously Seville Row; his curved, sensitive lips and frightened eyes were attractive. Women looked at him, learned that he was Jiddu, Christ of the theosophists, whose body the “World Teacher” has once entered, through whose lips God has spoken, and whose coming may establish a new dynasty of hope and love upon the continent of America.

Reporters stepped up. They asked him what he thought of golf and divorce; did he play tennis, read the Bible, respect Jesus Christ, think that girls should use lipstick? His fingers fluttered; distress clouded his dark eyes; he met impertinence with courtesy. He knew that already his coming had been announced in “flippant articles”; the press had referred to him as a “tea-table messiah,” “le chic sheik”; various divines had made caustic appraisals of his godhead.

“Old Hindu doctrines revamped. . . .” (The Reverend Dr. David G. Wylie, New York.) “I only wish Barnum was alive. . . . (The Reverend Dr. John Carson, Brooklyn.) “They do not understand,” said J. Krishnamurti. “I am very happy. . . .” The old woman guided him to a car, and the reporters realized too late—that they should have questioned, not J. Krishnamurti, but Mrs. Besant.

Dr. Annie Besant is 78. A story of her political activities is a story of all the social yeastings of Great Britain from 1874 until the time she left for India. First it was woman suffrage: “The Political Status of Women” her first lecture was called. Then she wrote a book, England, India, and Afghanistan in which she exposed the folly of Disraeli in India. She was elected to the London School board (socialist candidate). But India had caught her; studying its history, she became fascinated by its religions, and in 1891 she went finally East.

Some years earlier a brilliant Russian woman had done much the same thing. She, Helena Petrova Blavatsky, had compounded out of Buddhistic and neoplatonic ideas a new religion “The Theosophy of Wisdom.” This religion with all its tenets—the idea of a “Path” through a series of spiritual progressions, from an outer husk (“Rupa”) to a state of consummation (“Atma”) in which the individual and the universal become one. Some theosophists had grown to look for a hierarch, a consecrated boy through whose lips the secret God should speak and in whose body God should be made manifest. “As soon as I saw Jiddu Krishnamurti,” said Dr. Besant, “I knew he was the one we sought. . . .”

She adopted him, a pretty, tallow-colored stripling, in 1909. She had him educated privately in England and at the Sorbonne in France. Then she took him out among the Theosophists. At Adyar, India, on December 28th, 1925, he was lecturing to a very large audience under the Banyan Tree. He was concluding his lecture by speaking of the World Teacher, with the words, “He comes to those who want, who desire, who long, and—” a contraction passed over his body and a voice of penetrating sweetness rang through his lips. . . . “I come to those who want sympathy, who want happiness, who are longing to be released, who are longing to find happiness. . . .

While in Manhattan, J. Krishnamurti stayed at the Waldorf. After addressing a number of Theosophical gatherings he left, with his lecture manager, for Chicago, to grace a convention of the American Theosophical Society.

At the LaSalle Street station in Chicago, a beaming throng awaited him. They threw roses, asters, lilies, gladioli at him. One devotee heaved a garland of such flowers about his neck.

Serene, undisheveled, he hastened away, to a reception at which he expected to meet fellow theosophists—Craig Biddle of Philadelphia, Mrs. Theus Munds of Manhattan, Major General James Henry McRae, Architect Claude Bragdon—as at Manhattan he had expected to greet Artist James Montgomery Flagg.