![Banyan tree with sunlight on the trunk and through the branches](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-07/iStock-2217817171.jpg?itok=tF6IUcgy) # Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Out-of-Body Initiation July 01, 2026 [ Camden Roy ](https://profiles.rice.edu/student/camden-roy) Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was an Indian writer and spiritual leader. During his youth, Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, and Charles W. Leadbeater, a leader in the organization, identified Krishnamurti as a vehicle for the spiritual entity Lord Maitreya, who had previously incarnated as Krishna and Jesus. The Theosophical Society’s founder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, had briefly referred to the coming of a World Teacher before her death in 1891; Besant and Leadbeater revived this idea in the first decade of the 20th century with the young Krishnamurti, popularizing him through publications such as “Rents in the Veil of Time,” a series of articles in *The Theosophist*. In 1909, at only 14 years old, Krishnamurti was appointed the leader of the newly founded Order of the Star in the East, a branch of the Theosophical Society located in Benares, India. Krishnamurti’s relationship with Theosophy was tumultuous from early adulthood on, and he ultimately disbanded the Order of the Star in a public address in 1929. Although he continued to write about spiritual topics and achieved recognition later in life, he would do so outside of any relation to the Theosophical Society. Krishnamurti’s relationship with the Society began in 1909 when Leadbeater, a self-professed clairvoyant, was impressed by Krishnamurti’s aura when he saw him bathing outside the compound of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, a neighborhood in Chennai. Krishnamurti and his five siblings had come to the Society when their father, Jiddu Narianiah, began working as Besant’s secretary for the Esoteric Section of the organization. Besant and Leadbeater quickly identified Krishnamurti as a potential World Teacher and took the child into their care, taking responsibility for his education and rearing with the initial support of Narianiah. In 1909, Leadbeater was told by Theosophical Master Kuthumi, one of several spiritual teachers who directed the Society’s leaders through communication primarily in the astral plane, that Krishnamurti was to enter probation—the preparatory period for initiation into the Great White Brotherhood of Masters, a group of highly evolved spiritual beings. From that point forward, Leadbeater and Krishnamurti visited Kuthumi on the astral plane during sleep so that Krishnamurti could receive instruction. Only five months later, on December 31, 1909, Kuthumi told Leadbeater that Krishnamurti was ready for initiation. The initiation itself constituted an event in Adyar. A room was appointed for Krishnamurti and Leadbeater to sleep in while other Theosophists kept vigil outside. Besant, in England at the time, was instructed to meet the initiand on the astral plane at an appointed time. Krishnamurti and Leadbeater slept from the evening of January 10 until the morning of January 12, waking only occasionally to handle their bodily functions. When Krishnamurti awoke, Leadbeater instructed him to write down all he had experienced during his slumber. This report was sent to Besant and included below. It represents a firsthand account of Theosophical initiation from a prominent spiritual teacher. Krishnamurti’s status as an initiate and the vehicle of Lord Maitreya quickly accorded him social and spiritual benefits. Shortly after the initiation, he reported that everyone around him was treating him differently. At a gathering of Theosophists the same year, Krishnamurti identified five members and asked Besant if he could prepare them for initiation. He was permitted to do so, and created notes for the task based on his own lessons in the astral plane from Kuthumi and his initiation experience. Besant and Leadbeater arranged these notes and used them as the basis for *At the Feet of the Master*, a book attributed to Krishnamurti under the name of Alcyone. For Theosophists within Krishnamurti’s circle, the initiation process took place on the astral plane during sleep. Questions of authority on the physical plane became operative in the confirmation of these initiation processes. Krishnamurti’s companions looked to him for verification of their own initiations. In his youth, he was able to verify initiations without contest. However, as he reached maturity and began to seek independence, Leadbeater denied the initiatory progress of associates whom he considered a negative influence on Krishnamurti. One of these associates, Lady Emily Lutyens, was Krishnamurti’s longtime parental figure and a supporter of his later break from the Theosophical Society. In his young adulthood, Krishnamurti was uncomfortable with both his role as Maitreya’s vehicle and the role of personality within the Theosophical Society at large. Members of the Society and his close friends began to expect him to “bring through” messages from the Masters and were disappointed when he could not do so on command. He vacillated on the validity of Besant and Leadbeater’s teachings. Although he sometimes joined Besant as a public speaker at meetings of the Order of the Star, he privately chafed at the politics of the Order’s members and strove to develop his own philosophy, which more and more frequently used non-Theosophical terms. In 1929, when he disbanded the Order of the Star in the East, he stated that “truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” The charismatic authority Krishnamurti developed while he was with the Society continued after his departure. He continued to teach internationally but no longer publicly identified as a World Teacher, although he never denied he was one, and Besant privately maintained he was until her death. He achieved wide recognition as a philosopher, especially after his 1954 book *The First and Last Freedom* was published. Krishnamurti’s post-Theosophical career has influenced Buddhist and Vedantic movements. ## Source After his initiation experience in 1910, Leadbeater advised Krishnamurti to record his recollection of the event and send it to Besant. The letter, dated January 12, 1910 \[1\], provides one of the most detailed accounts of Theosophical initiation as it was understood and experienced in Besant and Leadbeater’s circle: > When I left my body the first night, I went at once to the Master’s house and found Him there with the Master Morya and the Master Djwal Kul. The Master talked to me very kindly for a long time, and told me all about the Initiation, and what I should have to do. Then we all went together to the house of the Lord Maitreya, where I had been once before, and there we found many of the Masters—the Venetian Master, the Master Jesus, the Master the Count, the Master Serapis, the Master Hilarion and the two Masters Morya and K.H. \[Kuthumi\]. The Lord Maitreya sat in the middle, and the others stood round Him in a semicircle like this \[diagram\]. > > Then the Master \[Kuthumi\] took my right hand, and the Master Djwal Kul my left, and they led me in front of the Lord Maitreya, you and Uncle \[Leadbeater\] standing close behind me. The Lord smiled at me, but He said to the Master:— > > “Who is this that you thus bring before me?” And the Master answered: > > “This is a candidate who seeks admission to the Great Brotherhood.” Then the Lord asked:— > > “Do you vouch for him as worthy of admission?” The Master replied:— > > “I do.” The Lord continued:— > > “Will you undertake to guide his steps along the Path which he desires to enter?” And the Master answered:— > > “I will.” Then the Lord asked:— > > “Our rule requires that two of the higher Brethren shall vouch for every candidate; is any higher Brother prepared to support his application?” > > The Master Djwal Kul said:— > > “I am prepared to do so.” Then the Lord said:— > > “The body of the candidate is very young. If he should be admitted, are any members of the Brotherhood who still live in the outer world ready to take charge of him and to help him on his upward way?” Then you and uncle came forward and bowed and said:— > > “We are ready to take charge of him.” The Lord continued:— > > “Are your hearts full of love for him, so that such guidance will be easy?” And you both replied:— > > “They are full of love, brought over from many lives in the past.” > > Then the Lord spoke to me for the first time:— > > “Do you on your part love these two Brethren, so that you will gladly submit yourself to their guidance?” And of course, I answered:— > > “Indeed I do love them with all my heart.” > > He asked:— > > “You desire then to join the Brotherhood which exists from eternity unto eternity?” And I said:— > > “I wish to join when I am fit to do so.” > > He asked:— > > “Do you know the object of this Brotherhood?” I replied:— > > “To do the work of the Logos by helping the world.” > > Then he replied:— > > “Will you pledge yourself to devote all your life and all your strength henceforth to this work, forgetting yourself absolutely for the good of the world, making your life all love, even as He is all love?” > > And I answered:— > > “I will, with the Master’s help.” He continued:— > > “Do you promise to keep secret those things which you are told to keep secret?” And I said:— > > “I do promise.” Then He showed me many astral objects and I had to tell Him what they were. I had to distinguish between the astral bodies of a living man and a dead man, between a real person and a thought-image of a person, and between an imitation Master and a real one. Then He showed me many cases, and asked how I would help in each, and I answered as well as I could. Then He showed me an image of my worst enemy, a cruel man whom I had hated, because he had often tortured my younger brother and me; and He said:— > > “Will you help even this creature, if he needs your help?” But there can be no hatred in the Master’s presence, so I replied:— > > “Surely I will.” At the end He smiled and said that the answers were very satisfactory, and then He asked all the other Masters:— > > “Do all present agree to the reception of this candidate into our company?” And all said that They did. > > Then the Lord turned away from me and called towards Shamballa:— > > “Do I this, O Lord of Life and Light, in Thy Name and for Thee?” And at once the great Silver Star flashed out over His head, and on each side of it in the air there stood a figure—one of Lord Gautama Buddha and the other the Mahachohan. And the Lord Maitreya turned and called me by the true name of the Ego and laid His hand upon my head and said:— > > “In the name of the One Initiator, whose Star shines above us, I receive you into the Brotherhood of Eternal Life; see to it that you are a worthy and useful member of it. You are now safe forever, for you have entered upon the stream; may you soon attain the further shore!” > > Then He gave me the Key of Knowledge and showed me how I might always and anywhere recognize any member of the Great White Brotherhood when I met Him; but these things, He said, I must not repeat. > > Then He spoke to my two sponsors and asked them to take charge of the necessary buddhic experiences. Then all the Masters, one by one, touched my head and spoke kindly to me and congratulated me, and the Lord Maitreya gave me His blessing. Then the Star disappeared and we all came away, and I awoke feeling wonderfully happy and safe. ## Notes \[1\] Mary Lutyens, *Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening* (John Murray, 1975), 37–40. ## Bibliography Alcyone \[Jiddu Krishnamurti\]. *At the Feet of the Master.* 3rd ed. Adyar: The Theosophist Office, 1912. Leadbeater, Charles W. “Rents in the Veil of Time.” *The Theosophist*, April 1910–February 1911. Lutyens, Mary. *Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening.* New York: Avon Books, 1975. Persico, Tomer. “A Pathless Land: Krishnamurti and the Tradition of No Tradition.” In *Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions*, edited by Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss, 115–33. Be'er Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016. Werner, Karel. “Past Buddhas, the Future Buddha Maitreya and His ‘Descents’: With Reference to the Role of Theosophy and Krishnamurti.” *International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture* 27, no. 2 (December 2016): 11–33. Wessinger, Katherine. “The Second Generation Leaders of the Theosophical Society (Adyar).” In *Handbook of the Theosophical Current*, edited by Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, 33–50. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Camden Roy is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Rice University specializing in early Christianity, esotericism, and the history of religions. His dissertation is titled “Theosophical Constructions of Esoteric Christianity (1875–1925)” and focuses on the religious imaginaries developed by those within the Theosophical milieu as they (re-)approached Christian history and texts in light of Theosophical concepts and visionary experiences. He is a book review editor at *Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism* and a copyeditor at *Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies*. ![Camden Roy smiling into the camera](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/Screenshot%202026-07-01%20164900.png?itok=8J0eIlh_) See also:- [ Archive of Mystical Experiences ](/topic-tags/archive-mystical-experiences) - [ India ](/topic-tags/india)