Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

One of the great spiritual philosophers of our time, Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in 1895 in Andhra Pradesh, India, to middle-class Brahmin parents. When he was fourteen, members of the Theosophical Society, a Western spiritual movement that combined Eastern and Western religious traditions, found him walking on a beach and became convinced they had found the new World Teacher. Subsequently, theosophist Annie Besant adopted him and raised him in England. By the 1920s he was attracting worldwide press attention and audiences of thousands. In 1929, after an awakening and much self-questioning, he abandoned the Theosophical Society and set out on his own, teaching a philosophy bound by no caste, nationality, religion, or tradition. For more than sixty years, Krishnamurti traveled the world speaking to millions. His talks and writings have been preserved in over seventy books. He died in 1986 in Ojai, California.