J. Krishnamurthi dissolved the very establishment that he was groomed to take over and asked its followers to chart their own path and make that discovery.
His own pain had given him this insight. Nita's death was the crucible in which his inner freedom was forged and Krishnamurthi never turned back. He walked away from the "Order of the Star". He walked away from the very stage that had been built for him in 1929. He stood before thousands and said "Truth is a pathless land." He dissolved the order that had once crowned him its leader. People wept. Others were shocked but for Krishnamurthi it was the most natural step. He had seen too deeply to play the game of spiritual leadership. From that moment onward he refused to be anyone's guru. He would say "If you follow me you are following no one. I have no teaching. I have no followers." His message was subtle and profound. He pointed to attention, to choiceless awareness, to the understanding of the self not through suppression but through observation. He spoke of fear not as something to conquer but as something to understand. He spoke of love not as desire, not as attachment but as that which is only possible when the self is not and always he returned to one truth - the need for inner revolution. Not political. Not social. Not ideological but psychological revolution - a total ending of the old patterns - the conditioned mind, the known. He would say "To transform the world you must begin with yourself but not as an isolated individual. You're the world. Your consciousness is not separate from that of humanity."
The man who had once been prepared to be a spiritual messiah now began to speak not as a guru but as a mirror. He had no doctrine, no dogma, no path to follow. He said "I am not leading you to something. I'm only pointing out what is you must be - a light to yourself." He traveled, he spoke not to convert, not to persuade but to awaken. Again and again he would return to the same essential point that truth cannot be organized, that any belief no matter how noble becomes a prison when accepted blindly. He saw how the mind in its fear creates illusions. We seek comfort in beliefs, in religious identity, in spiritual authority but that comfort is dangerous. It dulls the mind. It prevents direct perception. He said, "When you're no longer seeking comfort but are capable of facing fear, insecurity, loneliness, then there is a possibility of going beyond."
This radical vision was too much for many. Some left. Others remained confused. But a few stayed and listened not to worship but to inquire. As the years passed his presence became quieter, more distilled. He would walk in silence for hours. He would listen to birds, to wind, to the stillness of a morning sky. He carried with him a deep intensity but without weight, without identity. He had no name for what he had become. He was not a Hindu, not a Buddhist, not a philosopher, not a mystic. He was simply a human being completely awake and all of it, every word, every silence, every truth was born from that single shattering loss the death of his brother for in that death Krishnamurthi had discovered the nature of all illusion and in the breaking of that illusion something vast and sacred had opened up within him - not something supernatural but something profoundly human that which remains when there is no fear, no belief, no image - just clarity, just awareness, just love.
When I grew up I joined the army. However my desire for God-experience grew so strong that after some years I resigned and decided to devote my life to sadhana. I wanted to become a sannyasin but could not because I had a wife and children to look after. I started visiting Swamis and asked each one point blank: “Have you seen God and can you show me God?” I would allow no hedging. If they began to talk around it I said: “Please give me a straight yes or no.” I found no one who could answer ‘yes’ and returned to my home in the Punjab feeling very depressed.One day my wife was just serving my midday meal when a sadhu came and stood in the doorway. I invited him in and told her to serve him food too and then asked him whether he could direct me to a Swami who could show me God. He told me that I could find what I was looking for from Ramana Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai. It was the first time that I had heard of the Maharshi or of Tiruvannamalai, so I wrote down both names. But how was I to get there? It was right down in the South, and my funds were almost exhausted. However, the next day I saw an advertisement in the paper for an ex-army man to run a canteen in Madras. I applied and was at once given the post and my fare paid. When I got to Madras I said that I must first pay a visit to Tiruvannamalai before taking up my duties. Arriving there, I dumped my bedding in the Ashram dormitory and went into the meditation hall; and who should I see there on the couch but the sadhu who had visited me at my home in the Punjab! I decided that he was a fraud. He had been travelling about India boosting himself and had then taken a train back and arrived before me. So I got up and left the hall. I got my bedding and was just putting it back on the horse-cart that had brought me from the station when a devotee asked me why I was leaving so soon. I told him and he said: “It must be a mistake, because the Maharshi has never left this place since he first came nearly fifty years ago. Either it was someone else you saw or he appeared to you by supernatural power.” So I was back to the hall.As soon as I had an opportunity to see Bhagavan alone I asked him my usual question. I added: “It's a bargain. I am willing to pay any price, even my life, but your part of the bargain is to enable me to see God.” At first he sat silent, but I said “That's no good; I don't understand silence. Please give me a straight answer.” Then he said: “I can enable you rather to be God than to see God.” A few days later, I went for a walk in the rough country at the foot of the north slope of Arunachala and fell into a state of ecstasy during which I again had a vision of Sri Krishna. When I got back, I told Bhagavan. He asked me: “Can you see Krishna now?” I said, “No; only when I have a vision.” So he said: “What is the use of a God who comes and goes? If he is a real God he should be with you always.”
If initially we are brought up to see God as an entity residing outside in the form of paintings and statues, the true guru comes to point us to God who resides within. Tavayogi, who stepped into my home for the very first time, blasted me, telling me that I was living in Maya and disillusioned, seeing him as God in the garb and guise of a Sadhu, Samiyar, Turavi, mendicant, hermit, and sage. He told me that he was nobody and that I should look within. The light that resides within can go by any name, but he chose to call it Agathiyar. Taking hold of his words, I embarked on a new journey of discovering God within me. The rituals he taught me bridged both worlds, and the Siddhas came visiting us. Just as I expressed my love and happiness at having Tavayogi over at my home, I expressed the same to Agathiyar. He, like Tavayogi, snubbed me, telling me that I should even forget him. Asking him how I was to forget him when he was my world now, he asked me, "How else shall we become One?"