Knocking at the Open Door: My Years with J. Krishnamurti by R. E. Mark Lee

Author:R. E. Mark Lee
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hay House, Inc.
Published: 2016-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

California has a long summer season from late May to late October, and many days in Ojai in September are insufferably hot but dry. Schools traditionally start a new academic year just after Labor Day, and so the opening of a new Krishnamurti school in America was targeted for mid-September 1975. (In the USA, Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday of September.) The Vietnam War, which lasted for more than a decade, had already ended in the spring, and the remainder of the year was free of war and social unrest, and blessedly quiet.

The establishment of the school was wholly Krishnamurti’s as he midwifed it from conception in March, April, and June of 1973, when he started speaking with trustees of the foundation about his idea that there should be a school in America based on his Teachings, and the gestation over two years. Two KFA trustees realized the importance of Krishnamurti’s wish, surrogate foster parents Albion Patterson and Ruth Tettemer. The other founding trustees at the time, Erna and Theodore Lilliefelt, Alan Kishbaugh, Evelyne Blau, and Mary Zimbalist, were fully involved in the first of three court cases against Desikachar Rajagopal (an associate of Krishnamurti) and his Krishnamurti Writings Inc. to restore the property, assets, and copyrights to Krishnamurti after decades of mismanagement and the exclusion of Krishnamurti from his own organization.

These complicated law cases pre-empted the time and attention of the trustees, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees – to say nothing of the enormous psychological toll the litigation extracted from the few trustees dedicated to getting back for Krishnamurti what had taken more than fifty years to put together. There was also the mystery of millions of dollars in donations and archives of book manuscripts and writings that were unavailable for Krishnamurti, which had prompted the legal action.

In these difficult times, the foundation, which had been set up only in February 1969, had a lot of work to do, and the trustees felt they did not have the resources or the time to work on starting a school. It was left to Patterson and Tettemer to begin the local movement by interacting with young people who came to the valley in search of Krishnamurti and some place they could ‘crash’ and talk with serious people about the Teachings.

Patterson and Tettemer had positive attitudes and saw the importance of cultivating youth for a new school and for foundation work generally. They met a few people for tea, watched televised basketball (only Los Angeles Laker games) with them, went for walks, and generally made them feel comfortable. Many of these men and women thought Ojai would be a good place to live, and because they thought themselves serious, they assumed the foundation would look after them and provide them with room and board. Over time, they all left the valley for less exacting patrons.

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