Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 to 1986) was an Indian spiritual figure, speaker and writer, born in the small town of Madanapalle in the Madras Presidency into a Telugu Brahmin family. Adopted as a child by members of the Theosophical Society, he was raised to fill the mantle of the prophesied World Teacher. In 1922 he began to suffer painful, seizure-like mystical episodes that produced a lasting change in his perception of reality, and in 1929 he broke from Theosophy and disbanded the Order of the Star in the East that had been formed around him. He spent the rest of his life speaking to groups and individuals around the world, asserting that truth is a pathless land and advising against following any doctrine, discipline, teacher, guru or authority, himself included. He named choiceless awareness as the essence of true meditation, founded schools in India, England and California, and died in 1986.