In the Presence of Krishnamurti: The Memoirs of Mary Zimbalist

In The Presence of Krishnamurti is a project to present Mary Zimbalists memoirs of her time with J. Krishnamurti as recounted to
me, Scott H. Forbes. The material will be available as a subscription service from www.inthepresenceofk.org.
Mary rst met Krishnamurti in 1944, and then not again until 1963. In 1964, she started to do small things for him, and eventually
became his assistant, his condante, and his closest friend; the closest, it has been said, since Nitya (Krishnamurtis brother), who
died in 1925. For most of the last twenty-two years of Krishnamurtis life, Mary traveled with him, helping to arrange his talks and
public appearances, arranging his interviews, helping oversee the publishing of his work, and taking care of all the small things
needed for daily life. During this period of Krishnamurtis life, the only exception to Marys constant accompaniment was on some
of his trips to India. Krishnamurti felt India was not healthy for Mary, so he asked her to accompany him only every other year.
One of the many blessings of Mary being the person closest to Krishnamurti is that she kept daily diaries. In fact, she kept two kinds
of diaries: one was a small daily diary that she would ll in every night before going to sleep; and the second was a larger diary that
she would write in whenever there was something she felt needed greater exposition and detail than her daily diary would allow. As
these contain many details that were personal to her life, to Krishnamurtis life, and to the lives of members of her family and others,
Mary left instruction that her diaries be burned after her death. She later amended that request to specify that her diaries be burned
after her memoirs were completed.
Krishnamurti asked Mary many times, and especially at the end of his life, to write about what it was like to be with him. And, after
working on this project for many years now, I can see the wisdom of that request. While there are several people who have written
biographies of Krishnamurti, there is no one who has known the minute detail of daily life with him, no one who was as close to
Krishnamurti and was so much his condante, and no one who had recorded those details every day. Marys presentation, while not
covering the whole of his ninety years, still manages to capture more of him, or more of his presence, than any other word picture
available to us. To be in Krishnamurtis presence for even a few minutes gave one a better sense of him than any of his biographies
(as good as several of them are). Similarly, the details Mary observed, and the strange esoteric events of his existence that he related
to her, give us a sense of Krishnamurti that is unparalleled.
Soon after Krishnamurti died on February 17, 1986 (in the house Mary had renovated and modied for him, and where they both
lived when they were in Ojai, California), Mary started writing the book Krishnamurti had asked her to write. She worked on it for
the rest of her life.
In 1994, after eight years of watching Mary work very diligently and carefully on her manuscript, I began to get worried. She was
then seventy-nine years old, had had several health issues, and had only covered a fraction of her material. I was the principal of the
Brockwood Park Krishnamurti Educational Centre at the time, and Mary continued to come to Brockwood from May until
November, keeping to much the same schedule she had when Krishnamurti was alive. Mary had always been very dear to me, so it
was only natural that I would want to do something to help her with her monumental task. I suggested to her the only thing I could
think of that might help: that we sit down with an audio recorder and discuss our memories of Krishnamurti.
What followed astonished and delighted me. At rst she would discuss her memories, usually with her diaries open in front of her.
This she soon changed to actually reading out her diary entries, and I would ask questions. As I knew so many of the places where
she and Krishnamurti regularly traveled, I could ask fairly informed questions, and she would answer. It became almost a game
between us, with me asking the most detailed questions I could think of, and Mary trying to pull the answers to them from her
excellent memory. And, of course, we delighted in telling each other our stories of Krishnamurti. The person who has done most of
the transcribing of these recordings has repeated to me several times that there is a great deal of joy and laughter in these discussions.
Some of the reason the recordings took so long to complete is that Mary and I were initially not in the same country for more than
ve or six months of the year. But, there is also the simple truth that Mary and I were not in any hurry to complete our exchanges
we so delighted in reliving our moments with Krishnamurti. When she was at Brockwood and I was at Oxford, I would come to
Brockwood for many of the weekends. When we were both living in California, I would drive down to Ojai from northern
California, spending several days at a time to continue the project. Later, when I moved to Oregon, I would y down to California to
see her about once a month. These recorded discussions with Mary continued until 2007, less than a year before Mary died. There are
approximately 120 tapes of between one-and-a-half to two hours in lengthsomewhere between 200 and 225 hours of recordings.
Although there is still much transcribing to be done, there are already 5,000 pages of materialthe equivalent of twenty 250 page
books.
Over the years of these recordings, it became clear that Mary was relieved knowing that all she had to say about what it was like to
be with K was not going to be lost, and that she was keeping her promise to Krishnamurti to present her experiences of him to the
world. I eventually had these audio tapes transcribed by someone I knew I could trust, but who had only volunteer time to give to the
project.
This project is called In the Presence of Krishnamurti because that was the title Mary wanted to give to the book she was writing.
The original thought was to edit all the material down from these discussions to around 250 pagesa reasonable book length.
However, as I came to realize that the nal page count for all the transcribing would be over 5,000 pages, it troubled me that a
normal sized book would mean losing at least ninety-four percent of the material. Losing so much unique material doesnt seem
correct.
For some people, many of the small details of Krishnamurtis life will reveal things that are important to their understanding of both
him and his teachings, because he actually lived his teachings, and the living of those teachings is revealed in the details.
Many other people who were part of Krishnamurtis life, or who had loved ones who were part of his life, will enjoy the details, and
see themselves or their loved ones anew in their relationships with Krishnamurti. Almost every time Krishnamurti had an interview
with someone, or had lunch with someone, or went on a walk with someone, Mary recorded his or her name. So, this is the most
detailed and intimate historic record we have of any period of Krishnamurtis life.
Also, for some, it would be a pity to have only the written word. Marys voice conveys more than the mere content of the words. Her
wonderful voice, with all its passion, dedication, and integrity communicates the joy, inspiration, and awe she felt while in the
presence of Krishnamurti. People should have a chance to hear some of this if they so desire.
Many people would also like to see what there is of the manuscript she worked on for so many years. It is indeed only a rst rough
draft, and it only covers part of her time with Krishnamurti, but she writes beautifully and with great intensity. This should not just
sit in some archives.
Would anyone who is really interested in Krishnamurti not want all of this? Of course, a normal book-sized version must eventually
be produced, but can something else be done for all those passionate inquirers who want to know, as much as possible, what it was
like to be with K?
This project attempts to give any who want it the fullest possible version of this material. It will run as a subscription service. Every
week (initially, every two weeks), subscribers will be given access to between twenty and thirty pages of these interviews with Mary.
Each subscription will generally contain links to audio clips of the actual recordings of Mary when there is something particularly
moving, or where her telling of it seems especially poignant. There will eventually be other links to give subscribers access to the
manuscript that Mary wrote, but never completed.
There are several reasons to make this project a subscription service:
1. A subscription allows the time needed to nish all the transcribing, proong, and light editing that the transcripts require. Of
course, I could just wait until all the work is completed before making this material available to the public, but it has already been
nineteen years since this project started, and I get regular requests for it. Several old friends have passed on, sadly, not seeing a word
of this material that so interested them.
2. A subscription allows people the opportunity to start with this material, and cancel if it turns out not to be what they want.
3. There is no doubt that I will get a great deal of feedback on ways to improve this project, and Im sure some of this feedback will
be useful. A subscription allows the project to improve as it moves forward.
A minimum of material will be edited out, but it seems right to be explicit about such editing. Mary wanted to avoid hurting people,
so any material that might do that will be removed. Also, Mary and I often told each other the same story multiple times, and one
telling of each story should be sufcient.
Finally, people should know that the money raised from the subscriptions will go toward funding a larger research project on
Krishnamurtis work on education.
March 1, 2013 will be the start date for the online subscription service. Subscribers will have the exibility to order one or multiple
issues, and then to read her memoirs and listen to audio clips through a secure site (with a unique user-id and password). Money
raised from subscriptions to In the Presence of Krishnamurti: The Memoirs of Mary Zimbalist will fund Holistic Education, Inc.s (a
501(c)3 organization) Krishnamurti Education Research Project.
Please visit www.inthepresenceofk.org to sign up for our email list, which will give updates about the website, detailed information
on how to subscribe to In the Presence of Krishnamurti: The Memoirs of Mary Zimbalist, and more information about the
Krishnamurti Education Research Project.
If you are interested in receiving a more detailed description of the In the Presence of Krishnamurti: The Memoirs of Mary Zimbalist
project, would like to learn more about Holistic Educations Krishnamurti Education Research Project, or would like to make a
one-time tax-deductible donation to our work, please email us at inthepresenceofk@gmail.com.
Scott H. Forbes and the In the Presence of Krishnamurti team
Holistic Education, Inc.
February 13, 2013
(Marys ninety-eighth birthday)