The Seed of a Million Years- Talks in Madras 1979-80

WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT THIS BOOK, and what does its title mean?

For nearly six decades Krishnamurti addressed vast audiences in several parts of the world and, over the years, his 'Public Talks', as they were called, were made available to readers in various books. Almost up to the end of the 1960s, a 'Talks series' would consist of even twelve talks spread over three or four weeks, and these were sometimes interspersed with meetings at which he answered questions from the listeners. In the seventies and eighties, with advancing age and a tighter schedule, he reduced the series to six or sometimes to four or even two talks. Whatever be the number of talks in a series, Krishnamurti covered the whole gamut of existence, taking his listeners step by step from an observation of the gross outer world to an examination of the subtle world of the human psyche and from there to an exposition of the world that lay beyond both. He explained the rationale for this sequence: it was important to see clearly first the outer world, as otherwise there would be no criterion for understanding the inner. And after putting one's inner house in order, one could turn to questions such as the meaning of meditation and the nature of a truly religious life; for this reason, he said, he dealt with these themes only at the end of a series of talks.

There were, however, occasional exceptions to this usual format-as seen in this present series of six talks Krishnamurti gave in Madras between 22 December 1979 and 6 January 1980. Striking a most solemn note in the very first talk, he points out that throughout history all civilizations were born out of religion, that is, out of man's quest to find something beyond his life of misery and meaninglessness. He then goes on to speak lyrically of 'the seed of a million years', 'the seed of religiosity', `that seed moving all through mankind'-phrases

that he was using perhaps for the first time and found in the first, second, third, and sixth talk in this series:

Man. . . must have asked a million years ago, from the beginning of time, if there is a reality, if there is a truth, if there is something timeless, something that cannot be measured by man. And that inquiry, that seed, is still with us. . . And during these talks we are going to find out whether it is possible for that seed to grow and flower, multiply and cover the earth. That is the function, the necessity of every man.

The feeling of sanctity, the sense of otherness, which suffuses these talks does not seem to be a random occurrence. It had perhaps to do with the experience he went through before coming to Madras for his talks that year. That he must have regarded it as something extremely profound is borne out by the fact that he himself gave a detailed account of it in the form of a dictation. In her biography The Life and Death of Krishnamurti', Mary Lutyens reproduces this dictation, prefacing it with her words: 'Before the year was out, K was to undergo another psychic experience, while he was in India. On 21 February 1980, at Ojai, he dictated an account of it. . . referring to himself in the third person':

K went from Brockwood to India on 1 November 1979. He went after a few days in Madras straight to Rishi Valley. For a long time he had been awakening in the middle of the night with that peculiar medication which has been pursuing him for very many years. This has been a normal thing in his life. It is not a conscious, deliberate pursuit of meditation or an unconscious desire to achieve something. It is very clearly uninvited and unsought. He has been adroitly watchful of thought making a memory of these meditations.

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