Life is whole, not just one part. If you give importance to the whole then sex becomes more or less unimportant. The monks and all those who have denied sex have turned their energy to god but the thing is boiling in them, nature cannot be suppressed. But when you give that thing all-importance, then you are corrupt. — Jiddu Krishnamurti. 30th question from Questions & Answers Saanen, 3rd Q & A Meeting, July 25th, 1980. ‘Sex.’
She disagreed with what I had to say about “enlightenment,” that tricky devil of a word, because it can’t possibly work in the way I describe. This, she could not know, as nothing like it has happened in her life and it was clear from what she wrote about it that she didn’t actually understand what I was saying. But to tell her she didn’t understand what I was saying was offensive to her. She felt belittled.
On and on she went, writing out the same arguments as if there was an argument to be had. I had had enough and said goodbye. That made her angrier. It seemed nothing but acquiescence would appease her. She tried another tactic: to discredit the nudger of my own wakeup, Jiddu Krishnamurti. She said he had been a lech, having had a secret affair with a married woman for years. This was something I knew nothing about. I blew it off.
For years after, she would stalk blogs wherever my name was mentioned and try to defame me. None of it stuck, of course, because after a while people saw that she was obsessed with getting me and her criticisms didn’t match the man she was besmirching.
As for Krishnamurti’s sex life? Turns out it was an open secret. He had a 25-year affair with a woman in his inner circle whom he had known for just about ever. By the time the affair began, she was married in name only to the man who handled Krishnamurti’s finances. She was in a terrible marriage and physically estranged from him after the birth of their daughter. This fact is not in question, even by the daughter who is the one who exposed the affair after Krishnamurti’s death in a tell-all book. The book has the stink of revenge, as Krishnamurti had lost confidence in her father’s honesty and integrity, and went on to win numerous court battles against him.
But what of chastity and spirituality per se?
Krishnamurti always maintained that one needed to be chaste of mind but that sex had nothing to do with chastity. Looking around online at all the disappointed followers who expected him to be sexless his entire life, it was clear they were projecting. His line on sex had always been, “Why do we make such a big deal out of it?” Then again, his line on being a follower was, Don’t be.
I find no hypocrisy in the man. What I find is people who will do anything to ignore what he actually said because Truth enrages us and, for some of us, not understanding a subject also enrages us, so it must not be our problem. It’s his. It’s mine. It’s everyone else’s. Beyond that, and in the same vein as “Truth enrages us,” I see this as an excuse for complacency by trying to shoehorn him into the category of gurus gone bad. This way we can ignore anyone speaking Truth the way we ignore politicians with the brush stroke, “Everyone knows they can’t be trusted.”
To paraphrase Krishnamurti: Maybe we can; maybe we can’t. How will you know? Find out for yourself. Never trust the speaker.
Never trust, not because they are all equally untrustworthy, but because Truth must be within you. Truth cannot come from an outside source, so hear the deep questions and claims of others, but then put them to yourself. Never make a leader of a person, including yourself. Simply be with the questions, fully immersed in their wonder, as a child with a toy. When answers come, don’t end there. Follow them. Be a detective. Ask more of the answers. See if the internal Q & A doesn’t strip you away to the centerless space hiding in your personal onion.
***
While the source of information is important, so is watching our prejudices leading us to believe one version over another when such things are not clear. In some cases they are clear. In others, not. Here is a man, in Krishnamurti, who dedicated his life to speaking Truth. Do you not know it when you hear it?
Unconsciously, you do. Truth causes conflict, makes you irritable when you aren’t ready to hear it because it is the end of you. This is why those of us who claim to be seekers of Truth blow it off when we hear it. Watch the irritation in yourself. It indicates just how misleading the term “seeker” is. The goal of the seeker is not to find, it is to seek in perpetuity. That is how we remain intact, those of us who suspect there is more to life than meets the eye. We develop an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and then stalk the internet, the libraries, the conference halls, like hungry ghosts. But our appetite is insatiable because to feed it actual Truth is like feeding antidote to poison. It kills it. And you are that.
But when that is killed, you are health. You are Truth. And the problem with saying this out loud, as Krishnamurti himself refused to do directly, is that it leads to another goal, another thing for you to seek. Answers that lead you on another wild goose chase lead to misery. Understanding the entire movement of seeker and sought, questioner and conclusion… that has its own living answer.