Krishnamurti’s father gave his consent for the Theosophists to begin teaching and preparing Jiddu for a great mission. Immediately after this, the 14-year-old boy, who was the future Teacher, fell under serious pressure. On the one hand, he was revered as a Messiah, but on the other, he was prescribed a rather rigid regimen and strict teaching. Krishnamurti was kept on a diet, forced to perform yoga exercises and practice meditation; in addition, he was taught to read and write. The program of preparation included subjects of the school program, which were taught by the Theosophists themselves, and it was they who caused Krishnamurti the greatest difficulties. He had been absent-minded from his earliest childhood, could not concentrate at all, and had a poor memory. Even before Krishnamurti fell under the power of the Theosophists, local school teachers expressed the opinion that perhaps he was retarded. The future Messiah’s absent-mindedness and dullness irritated the new teachers as well, and Leadbetter even once somehow struck him, angered over his ward’s poor acumen. Even so, Krishnamurti demonstrated good capabilities for studying languages and an interest in the construction of complicated mechanisms. On the whole, he was a complicated student, who had moreover found himself in a situation of predetermined fate – for example, he was forbidden on principle to fall in love and get married, since that didn’t correspond with the notions the Theosophists had about how the World Teacher should live. The strict regimen and the renunciation of the secular – that was what was offered to the young Krishnamurti as payment for the high mission which essentially was imposed on him.
Training always contains within it elements of force regarding a child. He is refused the gratification of simple wishes and forced to do what doesn’t give him any pleasure and induces boredom; he is habituated to a regimen and a certain order of life. Even if the child isn’t punished, the forcing of him to perform certain concrete actions is always present, because without it, no upbringing is feasible. Teaching a child against his wish is also a form of violence to his psyche, and it is familiar to everyone who has attended middle school. This is compulsory violence, programmed by society, without which a person, after he has grown up somewhat, cannot fit into the socium and find his place in it. The force used against Krishnamurti had a somewhat different meaning and purpose. It was applied so that the plans and ambitions could come to pass of a small group of people who thought that the final Truth was known to them. Krishnamurti became a hostage to their ideas and an object of experiment to attract a higher being to a previously-prepared body. Therefore, particular attention was paid to the body, although the remaining components of spiritual training and teaching – of course, subordinate to the ideas in which the Theosophists believed – were attached in full measure.
To what extent it is permissible to raise a child in one’s beliefs is a pointless question, because all parents are involved precisely in transmitting their beliefs, along with convictions and prejudices, to their children. Spiritual upbringing in this case differs little from ordinary upbringing, only the violence in it at times becomes even greater. If the parents themselves are subject to spiritual ideas, for example, of purification then they begin to impose its principles on their children, instilling in them the need to follow vegetarianism, condemn their “bad” thoughts and even practicing celibacy. I know people who have passed through such an upbringing, and all of them to one extent or another are traumatized by it. It is one thing when an adult person by his own will imposes on himself certain restrictions and puts efforts into performing spiritual practices, and quite another when a child is subjected to such restrictions and demands. Everyone knows that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but everyone also for some reason thinks that precisely their own good intentions will lead directly to heaven for the people to whom they are directed.
Krishnamurti’s life had to be placed on the altar of service to humankind – at least that’s what the Theosophists believed. It seemed to them that nothing could be higher than this and that every sensible individual could only dream of such a mission. Understandably, all the teachings of Theosophy, with its Teachers of Wisdom, theory of evolution of the races and the reincarnation of beings – was and remains essentially a teaching without God. It was the latest teaching, very characteristic of the early 20th century on the appearance of a race of super-people, for whom the Lord in fact was not particularly needed; after all, they themselves could bring his new incarnation on Earth. The expectation of the appearance of a new, sixth race on our planet which would possess entirely superhuman qualities exists to this day, and the Teachers who transmitted the dictations have been preserved as well, although they moved beyond the bounds of the Solar System. The ideas created by the Theosophists are alive to this day, although the form of their presentation have somewhat changed. But just as in Theosophy itself there had never been God, so even now, in the new messages from nowhere, He is absent.
At first, Leadbetter accompanied Krishnamurti each night on an astral journey to the Teacher Koot Hoomi. That is, Krishnamurti would go to bed, but during the night, his astral body left his physical body, and headed to Tibet for instructive conversations. In the morning, of course he could not remember his journey, but the very fact of this teaching – in Leadbetter’s logic – was not changed. To maintain the legend about the existence of the Teachers and the increase in the authority of Krishnamurti himself, a book was written and published, At the Feet of the Master, in which the meetings of Jiddu with Koot Hoomi were described and his instructions transmitted. Many noticed the similarity in style of the young Krishnamurti with the style in which Leadbetter wrote his books but that did not bother much either the Theosophists or the readers of this work. As is known, we can believe (or not believe) in anything, and both the Theosophists and their successors constantly demonstrated such a belief. Krishnamurti himself in fact subsequently denied the existence of the Great Teachers, delicately evading the questions of his youth and meetings with them. He said that he didn’t remember anything about that period of his life, and here further continuation of this topic became pointless and tactless. Perhaps, he really did not remember his youth; after all, even then, he was not noted for having a good memory.