
Sydney School of Arts & Humanities

KRISHNAMURTI IN AUSTRALIA
Philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti was a boy aged 9 when he was spotted by an Englishman who proclaimed him as the next ‘World Messiah’. As an adult he rejected this as religious mythology, declaring freedom from dogma as a goal and spiritual truth a ‘pathless land’. By the time Krishna visited Australia in 1922, he was world renowned. Then in 1970, a crowd of 3,000 members of the public packed into Sydney Town Hall, keen to hear his words of wisdom. And all Krishnamurti ever did was tell people to follow their own sense of divinity – not to accept what others told them.
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“I would ask you to look at what I am saying, not emotionally, not sentimentally, not mesmerised by words, but with your minds, not to be carried away by mass hypnotism, not to act as one of crowd, but to use your minds individually and think the problem out for yourselves.”
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This book tells the story of Krishnamurti’s visits to Australia and New Zealand over a period of 50 years.