A pivotal lesson for me, and a clarification of my impulse:

The Renunciation of Jiddu Krishnamurti

As he began to distance himself from Theosophical teachings, he predicted that, “Everyone will give me up.” He began to call his experiences of the Masters “incidents” and described the rites of initiation as completely irrelevant to the search for Truth. “If you would seek the Truth you must go out, far away from the limitations of the human mind and heart and there discover it — and that Truth is within yourself. Is it not much simpler to make Life itself the goal … than to have mediators, gurus, who must inevitably step down the Truth, and hence betray it?”

In 1929 he dissolved the Order of the Star. At this point it numbered 60,000 members, managed huge sums of money, and owned tracts of land throughout the world, many designated for K’s future work. He was 34 years old.

Excerpts from his final speech follow:

“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect…. I do not want to belong to any organization of a spiritual kind; please understand this … If an organization be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth….

“This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth…. For 18 years you have been preparing for this event, for the Coming of the World Teacher. For 18 years you have organized, you have looked for someone who would give a new delight to your hearts and minds … who would set you free — and now look what is happening! Consider, reason with yourselves, and discover in what way that belief has made you different … in what way are you freer, greater, more dangerous to every society which is based on the false and the unessential?…

“You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else…. You have been accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible?… I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free … from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself…. You can form other organizations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.”
Few there were who could grasp this freedom, and, sadly, those who had warned the world for years that the coming of the Christ would challenge all existing systems seemed themselves unable to encompass that challenge when it came. The Theosophical Society was left in total bewilderment.

Krishnamurti never looked back. What he did he did with love and no trace of bitterness. The Truth that was growing in him was his only concern; the Presence that filled his being was his only guide. From that Truth came compassion for every living thing. From that guidance would emerge a teaching that cut to the root of the attachments that have crippled humanity for thousands of years.

K would live another 56 years. During all of these years he would teach — through his lectures, through his books, and through the schools he founded. Surprisingly, though most of his old friends fell away just as he had predicted, attendance at his talks did not diminish. In practically every year of his life, he toured the world. Rather than lecture he would “enter into inquiry” with his audiences, warning them not to blindly accept what he said but to look deep into their own hearts and discover the truth of their own being.  — from The pathless journey of Jiddu Krishnamurti by Bette Stockbauer, Share International Archives, http://www.shareintl.org/archives/Krishnamurti/k_bs-pathlessjourney.htm