Michael Krohnen

For four long years World War II had been raging around the globe and the tide was gradually beginning to turn against the aggressors when I was born in Arnstein, a small town near Frankfurt/Main in Germany, in the fall of 1943.

Growing up in the aftermath of the war, nature and its beauty assumed a deep meaning for me. Fields of tall golden grass dancing in the sunlight, white clouds across the blue sky, the wind in the trees, and the brilliant stars at night were like discoveries of another, more peaceful dimension, different from the world that man had created. As far back as I can remember, I harbored a burning curiosity for what lay beyond appearances, for ultimate causes, for the sacred. The biblical stories fascinated me, especially the Creation in Genesis. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic priests were only too willing to inculcate my young, gullible mind with rituals, prayers and dogmas. Before long, I believed I wanted to become a missionary to save ignorant souls from hell.

But, thank God, sin intervened, and I started to experience the power of nature within me, with its accompanying questions and doubts. The female form, girls, suddenly became mysteriously enchanting and seductive. The pleasures and pains of my awakening sexual drive were strange forces that I could neither control nor understand. Traditional explanations didn’t shed any light on the matter but only added more to my confusion, with their moral threats, fear and guilt.

At the more intellectual level, history was teaching me a lesson at the same time—the lesson of our recent collective past. It was strange to realize that I and my peers were the offspring of the generation that had embraced Adolf Hitler and his insane schemes. When I saw with my own eyes moving pictures of the horrors of the concentration camps, the shock and the tears penetrated my whole being. The once proud culture and society that I had been growing up in had done this, and my fellow countrymen had been at least silent accomplices. The shame and guilt I felt were inconsolable: pain for Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka, sorrow for humankind that inflicted so much suffering upon itself.

The goals and ideals defined by society, by the culture, by religion were suddenly meaningless to me. Reading books, writing poetry, drawing pictures, playing flute, traveling to distant countries and discovering new cultures—these were activities that still held value for me.

Once I had earned my baccalaureate, I emigrated to ‘the land of opportunity and golden dreams’, which since childhood had fascinated me with its films, cartoons and Wild West tales. Settling in Southern California and attending college opened the door to a new life, simultaneously kindling my interest in the quest for truth. As I began to explore humanity’s various religious expressions, I discovered Zen with its empty space landscapes and sudden awakenings. From Zen it was less than a step to the Buddha and his noble, liberating insights into the universality of suffering. He pointed to the other shore beyond the stream of craving and becoming.

More elusive was the concept of the Tao which, as soon as it was expressed or named, ceased to be the true Tao. Acting without effort, watching without judgment, being undivided from the flow of events was to be in harmony with the hidden law of the universe. The I Ching, the ancient, oracular Book of Changes, expressed the laws of constant change in simple linear symbols. By thus offering a key to decipher the code of heaven and earth, it pointed toward self-knowledge and right action.

From India came the Vedic and Upanishadic wisdom that the individual and the cosmic mind were one and the same. Realization of this fact was liberation from Maya, the universal veil of illusion.

As I went on reading and studying the texts of the human quest for the sacred—the Judaic tradition, the Sufis, the Pharaonic Egyptians, the Christian Mystics, and others—I was intrigued by the similarities between these different expressions. But I was also skeptical. They all appeared to be based on an original insight into the mystery of life, conveying it in the images and language of their respective historical time. Yet at the same time, something essential seemed to be missing. Perhaps it had to do with the passage of time, with the enormous gap of time that separated me, living in the twentieth century, from the Buddha, from Socrates, Pythagoras, Confucius and Meister Eckhart. Even if in essence they were hinting at the same thing, each one of them had spoken at his own time, from his own cultural setting, in his own tongue, talking to human beings of his period. None of them knew anything about World Wars, concentration camps, or moon-landings, nor about telephones, airplanes, cars, television, computers, e-mail and the many other technological devices that define modern life and its enormous complexities.

One fateful morning in San Diego, California, in 1966, I came upon a book not by, but about a man called J. Krishnamurti and his philosophy of the silent mind. Intrigued, I studied it and was less captivated by the interpretation of his philosophy than by the verbatim quotes. His words struck a deep, enduring chord in my mind. Soon I found several books written by him and at once realized that here was a voice of reason, of penetrating insight into the human condition, such as I had never heard before. Without offering a system of belief, a method or an interpretation, he accurately described the global situation of humanity in clear and simple language, demonstrating the destructiveness of religious and national organizations. He urged everyone to find out truth by and for oneself, and he denied any form of spiritual or religious authority, including his own.

Besides providing a new and holistic outlook, he put into precise words what I had been vaguely sensing and wondering about. To come upon his writings was like discovering a precious jewel, and what he said electrified me so completely that I resolved to find out all I could about this man and, if he was still alive, to seek him out and meet him.

I discovered that he was still alive and gave talks in various parts of the world. But it wasn’t until December, 1970, that I was able to pinpoint his whereabouts. I had traveled to India to see my old friend Sunyata, who lived within sight of the Himalayan snow peaks in Almora, Uttar Pradesh, near the Tibetan-Nepali border. When I enthusiastically mentioned Krishnamurti, he told me about his own encounter with him, many years earlier in Lahore. My excitement mounted as he produced a notice he had recently received from the Krishnamurti Foundation of India, which specified Krishnamurti’s speaking schedule in his native land. When I saw that his next series of talks was going to be in Madras, there was no holding me back. Arriving in New Delhi after a twelve-hour bus ride, I still had a sixty-hour train journey to Madras ahead of me. I only hoped to get there in time to hear him speak.

Upon arrival at Madras on January 14, 1971, I swiftly found my way to Greenways Road, where I had learned that Krishnamurti was speaking. The lady who received me told me with regret that I had just missed the third and last talk the previous day. For a moment I was crushed. Then she quietly suggested that, if I wanted, I could come the following day and participate in a dialogue that Krishnamurti was going to have with a small group of young people. I was elated. My heart soared.

The next morning, I went by auto-rickshaw to the house off Greenways Road, eagerly looking forward to meeting the man who I felt proclaimed the most extraordinary message of freedom for modern-day human beings.

==adapted from the author's prologue===