Concealed and Revealed: Madame Blavatsky’s “Lost Word” Key and Esoteric Eschatology in the Teachings of J. Krishnamurti

Abstract

This study traces the development of the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti through the primary source material of his first writings in 1912 until he left the Theosophical Society in 1930, as well as his post-Society published work until his death on 17 February 1986. Where they are helpful, the primary source materials of the teenage Krishnamurti’s two influential guardians, Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater are also consulted. Since the teachings in which they indoctrinated the young Krishnamurti were a reworked presentation of the impressive macrohistorical worldview of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky co-founder of the Theosophical Society, this study begins with certain fundamental aspects of her work. A crucial aspect of Blavatsky’s mature teaching was the occult potency of the natural order; sights, smells, sounds, words and conversely silence, were all avenues whereby “one feels oneself rebecoming a god”. Further, the potency of the natural order and the gnosis of one’s divinity, were the substance of a Path of Initiation which had been transmitted from earlier human root races and lay hidden in the books of (1) Enoch, Daniel and Revelation. Jesus had held the gnosis of the mysteries of the Path of Initiation, as well as the knowledge of the cycles of time. According to Blavatsky, his three-year public ministry, which began when he was thirty years of age, reflected a “Cycle of Initiation”. While Blavatsky promoted a seven-key hermeneutics, she concealed and revealed in The Secret Doctrine and The Voice of the Silence a “Lost Word” key. That “Lost Word” key was the voluntary holding of the breath while mentally intoning the keynote Fa, in an occult meditative practice of sensory deprivation. When practiced by the disciple on the Path of Initiation, that occult meditation would raise the energy of kundalini, overcome and eradicate karma, and finish (cf. Dan. 12:7; Rev. 10:7) the cycle of incarnations in the crucifixion of the personality (cf. John 19:30) to an awakened god-consciousness: Blavatsky’s “Consummatum Est”. The successful disciple who finished the seven-gated Path of Initiation outlined in The Voice of the Silence, and who renounced Nirvana in order to help suffering humanity, would be the new Bodhisattva for the present historical period. It was Besant, Blavatsky’s friend, confidante and star of her exclusive Inner Group of pupils, who brought to Leadbeater the gnosis that Blavatsky’s “inner purpose” for the Theosophical Society was to proclaim the coming of a new Teacher. Besant and Leadbeater secretly reworked Blavatsky’s “Messianic Cycle” and her 1975 prediction for the coming of the new Teacher, and Besant defied her mentor’s year date by “perhaps half a century”. Krishnamurti became disillusioned by a perceived failure of his mentors to fulfil the perfectionist ideals of the Path of Initiation in which they had indoctrinated him. With a fidelity to certain sacramentally potent words and phrases in The Voice of the Silence, and unreferenced biblical texts which composed the Theosophical discourse of his early training, Krishnamurti in 1922 at Ojai, California, claimed to have finished the Path of Initiation and to have gained all the qualities of the Lord Maitreya the World Teacher. This study shows Krishnamurti’s claimed initiatory status to have been the result of his imagination and practice of Blavatsky’s occult breathless meditation. Since for Blavatsky, Besant, Leadbeater and Krishnamurti the faculty of imagination held a mythopoeic and sacred function in human consciousness, and since Besant and Leadbeater had created their own Fourth Initiation Adept status, they were trumped by Krishnamurti’s claim. Leadbeater left all responsibility for Krishnamurti to Besant. Besant supported Krishnamurti yet decreed he had passed only the Third Initiation. Krishnamurti, in an uneasy alliance with Besant, publicly defied her authority in his published writings and talks by his use of the sacramental vocabulary of his early indoctrination. As the initiate triumphant, Krishnamurti urged his supporters to use their imagination, as he admitted of himself, to conquer karma and time and finish their evolutionary journey towards a god-conscious perfection and be “the few” (cf. Matt. 7:14) who would help him “change the world”. When Krishnamurti at thirty years of age announced himself as the Teacher in 1925, he mimicked Blavatsky’s proposal that Jesus began his ministry at the age of thirty. Besant confirmed the event as Krishnamurti’s “consecration” in a temporary possession by the Lord Maitreya. On 11 January 1927, in a claimed context of involuntary breathlessness, Krishnamurti declared himself to be the Beloved. Besant ratified his declaration as the permanent possession by the World Teacher for three years, as in the three-year ministry of Jesus in Palestine. Following his 1927 breathless declaration, Krishnamurti placed in his talks and writings a number of literary indicators to the efficacy of the state of involuntary breathlessness apart from any formal Path of Initiation. Three years from 11 January 1927, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star in the East, his support organization, and resigned from the Theosophical Society. Apart from a few oblique examples in the 1950s, Krishnamurti did not allow any clear reference to the state of involuntary breathless attention to appear in the public domain until 1960. He did, however, during that long silence and until his death use the phrases “rare moments” and “the key”. In The Voice of the Silence, the words rare and key were highly significant. It is shown herein that when Krishnamurti did recommence reference to the state of involuntary breathless attention, those examples, as also his references to “rare moments” and “the key”, were couched in a similar vocabulary derived from both unreferenced biblical texts and non-biblical Theosophical discourse. Further, it is argued herein that Krishnamurti’s commencement once again to refer to a breathless state of attention, was due to a break with his long-time operations manager and editor Rajagopal. Krishnamurti feared Rajagopal would usurp or undermine his World Teacher status by drawing attention to the significance of the state of spontaneous breathlessness.