Krishnamurti: Truly a Brilliant Mind
We, Occidentals tend to believe that the greatest minds of our time are precisely Occidental, but that is not necessarily so. Take for example the man who is central to this article: Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), an Indian philosopher who was called "World Teacher". His unassuming appearance was exceptionally deceiving: testimonies of those who met him usually mention there was something about Krishnamurti´s presence that inspired respect but also great peace.
Early in his life he bagan spreading his vision of the world and the fundamental problems that overwhelm mankind. One of his messages was that in order to follow the Truth we should not follow anyone because then we were not truly following the Truth but that person instead. He called for an elimination of Fear as one of the primary purposes of men if we wanted to grow in any manner. Krishnamurti had in his philosophy several recurring themes and one of them was "being creative". He claimed that only true creativity could lead us into the reinvention of our culture and to a successful quest for happiness.
Kishnamurti offered several speeches around the world and also wrote several books explaining his ideas. For all this soon he had a legion of followers that first gave him the title "World Teacher". Too modest for that Krishnamurti refused to be called that way (which makes sense according to what he taught), and as he did not like that he also did not like the idea to have successors. Clearly he did not want any of his teachings to be distorted in any way.
Krishnamurti remained active until the very last year of his life before he died of cancer. His philosophy and his ideas had endured though and the sum of all those contents is compared to those of great Occidental thinkers such as Ortega y Gasset, Kierkegaard or Descartes.
I have known of Krishnamurti for some time and planned to write about him some day, but came one of my former students, Marlon Sánchez, who brought him to my attention. As you can see, Krishnamurti's message is as alive as ever.
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