At The Feet of The Master - Authorship Debate

Authorship Debate

The identity of the author has been the subject of debate. It has been proposed that Charles Webster Leadbeater, one of Krishnamurti's mentors, was the actual producer of the work; Leadbeater had assigned him the pseudonym (Alcyone). Krishnamurti's statements on the matter of authorship have been changeable and open to interpretation; his final position (decades after the original publication) was that he had no memory of writing it, although he did not discount the possibility.

The following is stated in the book's "Foreword": "These are not my words; they are the words of the Master who taught me." This statement is apparently related to Leadbeater's claim that the so-called Master Kuthumi, a postulated embodied spiritual entity, was "releasing" (through a mystical process) the spiritual instruction that makes up the work to young Krishnamurti while the latter was asleep. Upon waking, Krishnamurti "with great laboriousness" put the instructions into notes; these were spell-and-grammar-checked, and then arranged and typed by Leadbeater.

The original notes by Krishnamurti are missing; the extent of any differences with the typescript and the original published edition is not clear. The debate regarding the role of Krishnamurti in the production and promotion of this work persisted, a century after its original publication.