KRISHNAMURTI MEETS PRABHAVANANDA

Christopher Isherwood describes a meeting between philosopher and spiritual teacher J.Krishnamurti and Vedanta's Swami Prabhavananda. It took place on October 10, 1944 at the newly-opened Vedanta Center of Southern California at Montecito, just south of Santa Barbara. The Swami had come up from his Hollywood Vedanta Center to conduct a class. The Swami and Krishnamurti had never met before. As it happened, Krishnamurti lived just down the road in Ojai. Isherwood noted that the Swami had always been prejudiced against Krishnamurti because Annie Besant of the Theosophical Society had generated much publicity on Krishnamurti's behalf many years before in India. As a youth, the Swami had been outraged when Mrs. Besant announced that Krishnamurti was an avatar. Later she used to annoy Brahmananda, Head of the chief monastery of the Ramakrishna Order in India, by trying to involve him with the Theosophical Movement. As a monk, the Swami had had standing orders not to admit her to the monastery when Brahmananda was there.

As it happened the 1944 meeting between Krishnamurti and Prabhavananda was a huge success. Krishnamurti sat quietly and modestly at the back of the class. And when the Swami was through, Krishnamurti came over and they greeted each other with the deepest respect, bowing again and again with folded palms. And then they had a long chat, becoming very cheerful and Indian, and laughing like schoolboys, as Isherwood put it. Isherwood went on to say, "Some of Krishnamurti's followers, who had sneaked in, knowing in advance that he was coming there--which we didn't--stood eyeing us (Vedantists) a bit suspiciously. But within fifteen minutes we had begun to fraternize. So a small but useful bridge was build."

It is interesting to return here to Alan Watt's account of his conversation over tea with the Swami some time later, when the subject of Krishnamurti came up. This was at Prabhavananda's Vedanta Center in Hollywood. It began when one of the the sisters (nuns, who were serving the tea) said, rather too innocently, "Oh, Mr. Watts, I'd be so interested to know what you think about Krishnamurti."
"Well," Watts replied, "I must say that I find his work very fascinating, because I think that he is one of the few people who have come to grips with such basic problems of the spiritual life as trying to make oneself unselfish."
"Yes, Krishnamurti is a very fine man," the Swami chipped in. "I don't think any of us can doubt the greatness of his character. But his teaching is very misleading. I mean, he seems to be saying that one can attain realization without any kind of yoga or spiritual method, and of course that isn't true."

The moral of the story is that two people can have decidedly different points of view on spiritual matters, but that is no reason why they cannot be friends, or at least acquaintances. They might even like being neighbors.