Lives in the Shadow With J. Krishnamurti
by Radha Sloss

Radha Rajagopal Sloss was born in July, 1931 to Rosalind Rajagopal wife of Krishamurti's secretary and editor - personal manager may be the closest description. She was brought up in Arya Vihara the home of Krishnamurti where her mother was the house-keeper and very close friend of Krishnamurti. No other biographies of Krishnamurti disagree with the importance of Rosalind and Radha Rajagopal in the life of Krishnamurti but only this one is written by an observer who grew up as a pampered "daughter" of Krishnamurti and was privy to famliy secrets.

Both the older Rajagopals and Krishnamurti had grown up in the hot-house atmosphere of the Theosophical Society and it's ideas about the new world messiah that Krishnamurti was to be. Rajagopal himself was a boy protegé of Leadbeater and was the "reincarnation" of St Bernard of Clairveaux, he was a brilliant student and at the insistence of the Theosphical hierarchy took over the role of Krishnamurti's factotum after Krishnamurti's younger brother, Nitya, after Nitya's death in 1925.

The Rajagopal's sexual relationship ended after the Radha's birth at his request, the reasons for this are never gone into, understandably enough this is not a topic a child usually wants to investigate. Krishnamurti and Rosalind began a secret, sexual relationship in the spring of 1932 at his instigation and this continued until the 1950's when it petered out in a welter of long-term recrimination over Rosalind's suspicions about Krishnamurti's infatuation for Nandini Mehta and their general growing-apart and aging.

Rosalind Rajagopal was a very warm and compassionate person who's information and veracity on this subject could not be questioned. She was held in high esteem by most who came in contact with Krishnamurti. She was so liked by the Huxley's that she was present at the death of Aldous Huxley.

This book reveals the other day-to-day side of Krishnamurti's life and as such would be enough to highlight the discrepancies between the public portrayal of Krishnamurti as the idealised, enlightened, chaste being and his all too human pettinesses. For most of us in the 1990's his long term monogamous, sexual relationship with the woman whom he was acknowledged as closest to, would not be considered particularly negative, indeed many would consider it, at worst, morally neutral. The secrecy of the relationship could even be rationalised as a bow to the conventional societal/sexual hypocrisy of the times - a harmless deception to prevent scandal preventing people appreciating the purity of the teaching.

But not many would be able to accept the three secret, illegal (and therefore dangerous) abortions that Rosalind had of three children of Krishnamurti and the lies, recriminations and emotional trauma that all of the protagonists endured in the 1950's. It will be extremely difficult for anybody interested in Krishnamurti's teachings to see them as coming from an authentic source who has transcended any of the worst of the human condition and without the "authentification" of Krishnamurti's supposed enlightenment and the romantic glamour of his idealised portrayal, they are just another set of utopian concepts.

Willie Weidemann was the brother-in-law of Rosalind Rajagopal and manager of the farm and orange orchard at which Krishnamurti lived.

"Although he was at the core of all our lives, Willie never had any interest in the philosophical side of life around Krinsh. He helped in all the financial and practical matters, the mailing lists, the books, even sitting behind the table to sell the publications at the talks. He told me once many years later, after he had retired, that the reason he had no interest in what Krinsh had to say was because he had witnessed early on the discrepancy between what Krinsh said and what he did. Willie never commented on this to anyone as he did not consider it his business but quietly made up his mind that he would find his own path, as he always had - and indeed as Krinsh himself publicly recommended."

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