Star in the East - Roland Vernon

'Discovered' as a young boy in the early years of the twentieth century, Krishnamurti was proclaimed a new World Leader by members of the Theosophical Society, and by the 1920s was attracting worldwide press attention. Idealists, spiritual adventurers, progressive politicians, intellectuals and philosophers alike flocked to his talks in their thousands, drawn to the idea of a new golden age, and an esoteric eastern saviour.
Later Krishnamurti experienced a mysterious conversion, rejected the Theosophical Society that had moulded his identity, and began to teach as a secular philosopher of a spiritual nature, but with no affiliation to any sect. He himself rejected any claims to being a Messiah, and indeed proved himself as capable of human weakness as any in the six decades of his career, which gave rise to sexual scandal and accusations of chicanery.
Krishnamurti died in 1986, having founded seven schools, published fifty books and toured the world talking and teaching.