Quest Magazine

A Brief Overview of Sacred Time and Space

By Fred Alan Wolf

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Wolf, Fred Alan. "A Brief Overview of Sacred Time and Space." Quest  93.5 (SEPTERMBER-OCTOBER 2005):180-184

The perception of duration itself presupposes a duration of perception. —Edmond Husserl

Theosophical Society - Fred Alan Wolf is a physicist, writer, and lecturer who earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at UCLA in 1963. He continues to write, lecture throughout the world, and conduct research on the relationship of quantum physics to consciousness. He is author of Taking the Quantum Leap which won the National Book Award and stars in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? This article is an except from his most recent bookThe Yoga of Time Travel (Quest Books 2004)To realize the "true self" is a task that may not be easy for a number of reasons. Why should it be so difficult? One cause is that we live "in" space and time. This answer is easy to articulate but hard to appreciate fully. The problem has to do with the reality that, while time and space seem to be "out there" as objective facts, they also turn out to be deeply ingrained in the "in here" world of the mind. We can think of the "out there" world as ordinary or profane and of the "in here" world—although often chiefly concerned with objective events—as a sacred stream of time at its very core. Sometimes this sacred stream does not run at the same "speed" as the clock on the wall ticks.

University of Texas Professor E. C. G. Sudarshan tells the following mythological story from the Vishnu Purana that illustrates this connection. In the Vishnu Purana there is a mythological story about sage Narada asking Lord Vishnu to tell why people are deluded into living in profane time when all along they could function in sacred time. Lord Vishnu offers to do so, but asks Narada, in the meantime, to fetch a cup of water. Narada goes to the nearest house and knocks on the door to ask for the water. A beautiful and attractive young woman opens the door. Narada is completely captivated by her charms, forgets about his fetching a cup of water for the Lord, forgets that he is an avowed celibate; and he woos and wins her hand. They live together in a house after getting married and in due course two beautiful children arrive in successive years. While they are living in contentment, suddenly a flash flood engulfs their neighborhood and even their home. They have to try to escape as the flood waters rise and the current becomes stronger. It becomes so strong that first one child, then the other, and finally his wife are swept away by the raging waters. Narada himself is barely able to maintain a precarious hold on a tree and is feeling terribly shocked by the tragedy that has befallen him. While waiting thus, he hears Lord Vishnu's call asking him "where is the cup of water" because he is still thirsty. Narada suddenly realizes that he was all the while standing on the firm ground and only a few moments had passed! 

Most of us have experienced, at one time or another, the distinct feeling that time has passed too quickly or perhaps too slowly. I know that when I sit down to write a book such as this one, I struggle for several minutes at the beginning, but once I find a rhythm and the words begin to flow, I lose all sense of time. Perhaps hours go by and I have no sense of their passing at all. On the other hand, time seems to go much too slowly if I find myself in an embarrassing situation or when I'm visiting the dentist and experiencing the dentist's drill. Scientists, particularly psychologists, call this relative experience of time "subjective time."

Objective time, by contrast, is that "thing" we believe to be measurable by clocks and in terms of rhythms or frequencies. In fact, all clocks work by comparing rhythms they imply an objective time simply by counting repetitions. Now this may not seem to be a comparison of rhythms, but it is most certainly that. For instance, if you choose to count the number of swings of a pendulum, as Galileo did one morning long ago in a Sunday service watching a swinging chandelier, you are actually comparing the number of swings you see with your own subjective internal rhythm—for example, your heart rate or your eye blink rate or even the rate at which words arise in your mind. Think about it: How do we know that a pendulum makes a "good" clock one that keeps "true" time—except by comparison? (Note how the assessments "good" and "true" subtly enter the picture here.) Certainly we do compare a questionable clock with another that we trust keeps good time. Yet even though we may check our clock with a trusted timepiece, we perhaps most often notice that our mechanical clocks are incorrect through comparison with our inner time sense.

The human mind is capable of discerning the differences among a vast array of rhythms--from the amazingly rapid vibrations of the quartz crystal in a watch to the yearly journey of the earth around the sun--and, based on those differences, constructing an objective "timescape," a vista or expanse of time that all of us see and agree on. To make these comparisons requires an internal, subjective sense of time.

However, as we saw when we examined the five fluctuations of the mind in chapter 1, this time sense may be an illusion causing us to think that something that has happened is happening now, or will happen again. This inner, perhaps illusionary connection given to us by the great God of Time turns out to be the first tether that binds us in time and space and subjects us to time. Without this connection, the vibrations of music and sound could not play a vital role in enchanting us, nor could the sun's rising, the movement of tides, and the changing seasons. Yet despite the fact that these natural rhythms are cyclical, we in the West have interpreted them to mean something quite different. We have learned to map them linearly, implying that even though they repeat, they never repeat themselves in quite the same way. What is it that is changing? This sense that something changes gives us an experience we label "time passing," and we have learned to see that experience in terms of a straight line.

A Line of Time

The notion of linear time is an objective construction of the human mind, one that is particularly ingrained in the Western attitude toward life. We, in the West, give more credence to objective or mechanical clock time than we do to our inner, subjective time sense. We ultimately reduce all subjective senses of time to the merest thread of objective agreement. Yet our inner, subjective sense of time is as real as any sense can be. We think that since we can't measure it, it can't be real. But what could be more real to us than the inner sense of time through which we experience rhythmic variations like music and even the pace of our own thoughts and feelings? We may not be able to compare it with another person's temporal sense, but this shouldn't make it any less real.

We have abandoned our inner sense of time, not because of the Gita's teaching, but to replace it with the commonly accepted outer sense we call clock time. Yet linear clock time doesn't really exist "out there" any more than subjective time does. It, too, is abstract and imaginal. But based on that imagined, objective thread or line of time, we produce an enormous outflow of creative and technological innovation. We construct, for example, the notions of the forty hour work week, the nine to five office, the daily grind, the two or three week vacation, equal employment opportunity, equal hours of work for all employees, overtime, slacking, and so on. As for technological inventions, nearly every one of them implies linear time at its heart. For what are inventions but devices to save time so that we can increase our hourly, daily, and yearly output—or else to help us pass the time that we've saved?

We walk on a temporal tightrope that stretches from the instant of our birth to the last breath we take. This linear notion of time appears to make sense to us, and it certainly seems egalitarian and "real"; nevertheless, it arises ultimately from a subjective perception. Inside our minds lies a sense of time that tells us, even without a watch on our wrists, what takes a long time and what doesn't. We hone this sense of time as we perform any number of daily tasks, from waiting in line at the grocery checkout stand to brushing our teeth before we retire. Clocks and calendars certainly were invented to display this inner sense of time, allowing us to make comparisons. For without comparing clock time with our inner, subjective sense of time, we would have no measure of the difference between our dreams and fantasies and the reality we presently believe we are living in.

Without this inner temporal sense, we would not be able to measure the length of a thumb or the height of a tree or—for more sophisticated examples—the height of a skyscraper, the flying altitude of a modern jetliner, or the distance to the sun and other stars and galaxies. Our inner temporal sense enables us to realize and measure space, simply because it takes time and repetition to do so. It may not seem that you are repeating anything when you use your eyes to measure the length of your thumb with a tape measure, but the light reaching your eyes consists of many frequencies, and these rapid repetitions in turn provide you with a sense of sight.

Many other Western societies have also developed the linear time idea. In fact, one way or another, at times with some difficulty, all civilizations have adopted or formed a concept of linear time—one that shaped their attitudes and enabled them to have a historical perspective and anticipate the future. Professor Sudarshan reminds us that the two great civilizations of Asia, the Chinese and the Indian, have treated time differently from the way Western civilization does. The Chinese kept meticulous chronology, but valued ancestral time more than present time. Immediate ancestors were held in highest regard, and the duty of the individual was to do hard work for the good of society. As long as the people worked hard and kept the ancestors in mind, society would progress and life would be better for all. Indian society, on the other hand, "seems to have the notion that time as experienced depends on the state of awareness of the individual, and hence time functions in a variety of subjective forms. So chronology in India is unreliable, in any linear objective sense, and most events were simply "a long time ago." That is, the Indian mind does not see time as a simple imaginary scaffolding--something projected by the mind "out there" as a skeleton or framework upon which the real business of the world is measured and compared. Instead, time exists integrally and inseparably from space and matter; as a result, it can change in a nonlinear manner.

Cycles and Dreamtime

The Chinese and the Indians aren't the only peoples who look at time differently from the way Westerners do. In a chapter of my book The Dreaming Universe, I write about the ways of the Australian aboriginal peoples. In his book, White Man Got No Dreaming, W. H. Stanner refers to the Dreamtime or the Alcheringa, of the Arunta or Aranda tribe, first introduced to the West by two Englishmen: anthropologist Baldwin Spencer and researcher Frank Gillen. Stanner prefers to call it "the Dreaming" or simply "Dreaming." "Dreamtime" is a curious term. Surprisingly, i­t is not original to the Australian aboriginal people. Rather, it was coined by Gillen in 1896 after his attempt to understand the aboriginal concept of time and was used by Gillen and Spencer in their now classic work of 1899. Even though aborigines think of Alcheringa not so much as Dreamtime but more as the law or the sacred understanding of life, time nevertheless enters into it.

The Dreamtime refers primarily to a time of heroes who lived before nature and humans came to be as they are now. It was a time long ago, as in "Once upon a time, there was ...." That is, neither time nor history, are actually implied in the meaning of Dreaming. Time as an abstract, objective concept does not exist in the aboriginal languages. The Dreaming cannot be understood i­n terms of history either. The Dreaming refers to a complex state that eludes the Western linear description of time and Western logical ways of thinking.

According to Australian scholar W. Love, early Australian aboriginal people, when they arrived in Australia sometime between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago, were faced with flora and fauna very different from what they had known in their own land. These macro fauna, as Love calls them, became in myth and legend the animals of Dreamtime, and their stories became models for human behavior and were enshrined in ceremonial patterns. As Stanner explains, an aborigine may regard his totem, or the place from which his spirit came, as his Dreaming. He may also regard tribal law as his Dreaming.

According to another expert, Ebenezer A. Adejumo, Dreamtime was not just a fantasy of aboriginal people. Instead, it has as much meaning to them as psychologists and psychiatrists place in our dreams of today. The myths of the Dreamtime contain records associated with certain geographic sites, sociological concerns, and personal experiences. Since the aborigines reenact the stories of the Dreamtime through ritual, we can deduce that all of the past, present, and future coexist in the Dreamtime as if in parallel worlds of experience. Together these realms make up a reality in which our sense of present time is merely a small part.

The Dreamtime is eternal and timeless, and so are the spirits of the people who are linked with it: They have existed in the past, they will exist in the future in the hearts and minds of the children yet unborn, and they exist now in the hearts and minds of the people of the land. Aboriginals see both themselves and all human beings this way. There is no pision between time and eternity; all time is essentially present time. To keep this awareness alive, songs must be sung, dances must be performed, and these creative acts become the repeated reincarnation of the spirit reenacted by countless repetition by human forms. By keeping track of the stories and legends, the spirit is in a real sense keeping track of himself—his path and pattern throughout historical time.

This reenactment serves as a solution to the alienation of humans from their own planet. We are all utterly dependent on the earth for survival. The aboriginal culture does not view nature separately as our Western scientific world does, thereby adjusting itself to life on earth through applied science. Instead, it sees itself as part of nature.

Australian aboriginal people today are well versed in linear time, yet they still refer to time in their own original manner. Hence their grammatical constructions in English may seem quaint to Western ears, but I assure you, their use of English is quite correct in terms of their own sense of time. As in a poem one old black "fella" once told Stanner:

White man got no dreaming.
Him go "nother way."
White man, him go different.
Him got road belong himself.

Time for the aboriginal is quite concrete. It is based on the observance of natural rhythms, such as the seasons and the lunar and solar cycles. Thus time is marked, not by points on a line stretching from minus to plus infinity, as in the Newtonian worldview, but on a circle: Time is counted by recurrences of cycles. The timing of daily events is marked by the position of the sun. Natives of central Australia mark time in "sleeps"; they say they will return to a place after so many sleeps, or nights. Durations of time are marked by everyday processes. For example, one hour may be marked by how long it takes to cook a yam. A moment might be the twinkling of a crab's eye. Longer times may be marked by the duration of a particular journey. Thus time tables are not definite. What is important is the concrete time of the "now."

When time is viewed as circular and sacred, it appears to have an imaginal quality. This imaginal quality is not unique to the aborigines. I believe all humans sense the imaginal quality of time. But we in the West tend to dismiss this subjective perception of time in our commitment to a line time view of events. I like to think of time's imaginal quality as a great hoop that rolls along the imagined straight line of our linear time.

Fred Alan Wolf is a physicist, writer, and lecturer who earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at UCLA in 1963. He continues to write, lecture throughout the world, and conduct research on the relationship of quantum physics to consciousness. He is author of Taking the Quantum Leap which won the National Book Award and stars in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? This article is an except from his most recent bookThe Yoga of Time Travel (Quest Books 2004)

Silence

By Mary Anderson

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Anderson, Mary. "Silence." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):186-188.

Theosophical Society - Mary Anderson was International Secretary of the Theosophical Society. She is a former Vice-President of the Society, was for many years Secretary of the European Federation of the TS and lectured widely for the Society in many countries and in several languages. She also contributed many articles to The Theosophist, the international journal of the TS.

We live in an age of noise. There are mechanical noises—the rattle of a computer printer, the roar of a jet, a pneumatic drill; these might be considered useful and even necessary. Then there are sounds which man creates to entertain himself, while sometimes tormenting his neighbors, such as noises emanating from radio or television sets or discos. It is a known fact that loud noises cause deafness, and the deafer one is, the more one calls for amplification. In fact, many young people today are hard of hearing. In addition, propaganda and advertising make use of noise to influence people. Ideas are infiltrated into the subconscious and may cause certain automatic reactions which may even frighten us if we become aware of them.

It is not only mechanical noise which rules our age. The human voice contributes—people sometimes speak too loudly, too much and unnecessarily, perhaps in order to hide their inner dissatisfaction, to overcome their boredom, or to compensate for an inferiority complex by the opposite—a superiority complex.

Aldous Huxley refers, in his Perennial Philosophy, to the fact our words are often unkind, selfish, or foolish. But we are not aware of this when we go on talking without thinking.

It has been said that—in certain circumstances, for example, when we are excited—before we speak we should count to ten. It has also been said that we should ask ourselves whether what we wish to say is true, kind, and useful. The true, the kind, and the useful form a threefold sieve—the sieve of the mind, which should be able to judge what is true, the sieve of the heart (not the emotions), which knows whether something is kind or not, and the sieve of practical reason, which tells us whether what we wish to say is worth mentioning at all.

Sometimes it is asserted that what is true is often not kind but cruel and, vice versa, what is kind is not always true. But if one judges and speaks from a higher point of view, what is said may be kind and true as well. Thus, from a higher point of view, one sees not only the faulty personality but also the inner nature of the other person. There is something admirable in everyone, even if it does not appear on the surface.

The criterion of usefulness is perhaps the most strict. If we always applied it we would speak much less! It is not unimportant to distinguish between what is useless and what is useful, for useless words are a waste of energy. They exhaust not only the speaker but also the listeners. We have surely all experienced this at some time.

Control of the tongue—the "unruly member" —is one of the most difficult things. So control of speech, however difficult, is one of the most fruitful of exercises. This was recognized by Pythagoras who made the beginners among his pupils keep silence for two years. Most modern monks and nuns practice silence for long periods during the day.

Why is it so important to be silent? Why is silence so necessary and so valuable?

First, we should enquire why we often speak at all and about what. It often arises from the need we feel to assert or justify ourselves. And often we speak, directly or indirectly, about ourselves. Let us count how often people—or we ourselves—use the little words "I," "me," and "mine." As a saint once said, "When the I, the me and the mine are gone, the work of the Lord is done." It is no use trying consciously to avoid those words. It is the attitude of self-assertion and possessiveness which they express that makes them a hindrance.

Spontaneous (not enforced) silence is a sign that the little "I" is less predominant. Herein lies, in the first place, the importance of silence in the spiritual life.

Secondly, what is really profound cannot be expressed in words. In Taoism it is said that the Tao which can be named is not the real Tao. The Divine is "unthinkable and unspeakable." Sometimes people try to approach a conception of the Divine by denying everything which the mind can conceive: it is "not this, not this" — neti, neti. In The Light of Asia we read: "Who asks doth err; who answers errs; say naught." The Chinese classic, Monkey, relates how a pious monk set off westwards from China to fetch the Buddhist scriptures and take them back home. When he received them, he was amazed to see that they consisted of empty pages. He complained, and Buddha declared that, in that case, he would give him written pages for his people since they were too stupid to understand the true (blank) scriptures! Great truths cannot be expressed in words. This is clearly stated in The Mahatma Letters: "Most if not all the secrets are incommunicable . . ." It is then pointed out that, if such secrets could be told in so many words, all the Mahatmas would need to do would be to write a textbook so that great truths could be taught to children like grammar in school.

The Mahatma adds that what is necessary, if great truths are to be passed on, is inner readiness on the part of the pupil. Herein lies the third reason for keeping silence. One who speaks continuously does not listen. And one who chatters inwardly, who is constantly mulling over thoughts, imaginings, feelings in his or her head, is not open to anything. Where everything is full, there is no room for anything new. An aspirant went to a Zen master and asked for instruction on the spiritual life. The Zen master first offered him tea. He poured the tea into the aspirant's cup and continued after it was full, so that it overflowed. The aspirant protested, but then perceived the symbolic meaning of this action. If we are still completely oriented towards the earthly—the selfish—there is no room for the spiritual!

"Silence" does not only mean avoiding the spoken word. The seventeenth-century Spanish mystic Molinos spoke of three kinds of silence: silence of the lips, of the mind, and of the will.

By the silence of the lips we avoid waste of energy at the physical level. The silence of the mind can perhaps be compared with chitta vrtti nirodhah, the soothing of the waves of the mind which is Patanjali's definition of Yoga. With what do the waves of our thoughts and feelings busy themselves? With the past and the future, with memories and imaginings. Our consciousness is only seldom in the present, perhaps because the little "I" finds no place in the present—which contains nothing with which it can decorate itself.

Concerning the silence of the will: the chattering of the will (or desire) forms, often unconsciously, the background to the speech of the mind. The silence of the will refers to the ceasing of our longings or desires and our dislikes.

How important it is for us to become conscious of those desires and dislikes! It would be a first step on the way to inner silence, the way to true enlightenment.

Wherein lies human suffering? According to the yogic philosophy of the klesas (that is, of suffering and its causes), as explained in Patanjali's Yoga-sutras, desires and dislikes are part of the chain which binds us, which causes the suffering of humanity and all beings. From ignorance, the first link in the chain, there arises the ego-sense, the feeling of being a separate "I." Ignorance here means illusion in the sense that one sees things and oneself as something other than they are. For example, we consider what is only temporary to be permanent; we may know in theory that something is not lasting but we act as if it were eternal. Thus people collect possessions which they will have to leave behind—at the very latest—when the physical body dies. And the result of this ignorance is the ego-sense, the second link in the chain of klesas. Even if only subconsciously, we also consider that the "I" —our present conscious being—to be something permanent. And that "I" wants certain things for itself and rejects others. Thus there arise from the ego-sense desires and dislikes, the third and fourth links in the chain of suffering.

Molinos, who spoke of the silence of the lips, the mind and the will, was the founder of Quietism, a devotional mysticism. His philosophy was not in line with the dogmas of the Church and he died in a prison of the Inquisition.

But, in fact, Quietism, like all types of faith, contains certain dangers, if it is wrongly interpreted. There is the danger of passivity. If we refer to the three gunas in Indian philosophy, we might say that this danger consists in overcoming rajas or excessive activity (for example exaggerated chatter) by excessive passivity or tamas instead of harmony or sattva.

Complete silence has its place but there are times and places for speech. Nevertheless, we should pause from time to time and realize what our motives are in speaking and filter our words through the threefold sieve of truth, kindness and usefulness.

Silence means, in a way, being empty and open. We must be open before we can receive anything. But openness is not everything and may be dangerous in certain circumstances. A medium is open to illusory and even dangerous influences. Our silence should be based on absolute purity, which is selflessness. Above all we should be open to what is within. This does not mean openness to astral influences, to the influences of our own imaginings, tendencies and dislikes. We must be open to a deeper level of our inner spiritual nature which is our true being. This is very difficult, because our feelings often disguise themselves as higher inspirations and intuitions. We must always be very distrustful of ourselves!

Openness towards what is within is therefore necessary but it must be openness to what is selfless, to the highest, to what is always beyond. Openness towards what is without is also necessary, but it is not a matter of accepting everything which we meet, everything about which people are enthusiastic. It has been said: "Examine all things and keep what is good." For us to know what is good, discrimination is necessary. The greatest hindrance to such discrimination is egocentricity. Our own interests distort our image of things.

Genuine, profound silence is, as we have said, not passivity, not a state of sleep. It is quietness—noiseless and therefore scarcely perceptible to our usual senses and capacities. It is pure consciousness, that is, consciousness without the "I." As Krishnamurti said, where the "I" is not, there "the other" is, meaning the Highest, the Ground of all things; where the "I" is not, there is real love.

Where emptiness or silence in this sense reigns there is energy and tremendous activity. Our strength is no longer wasted through unnecessary words, thoughts, feelings and wishes. A dynamo turns so quickly that its movement is invisible but it is the source of great energy.

This has something in common with the state of pralaya in which everything is contained, but in a latent state. "The Eternal Mother," Space, is present in pralaya, as also is the Great Breath—the constant movement of in-breathing and out-breathing. It is akin to the transcendental Deity, in contrast to the immanent deity corresponding to the manifest universe. This transcendence is the source of immanence, that is, of the manifest universe; it is at the same time its final goal. But it is also its heart. When the outer is silent, we can hear the inner voice of the silence. When the lower is silent, the higher can speak.

Watch It

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty."Watch It." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):124-125.

Theosophical Society - Betty Bland served as President of the Theosophical Society in America and made many important and lasting contributions to the growth and legacy of the TSA.

As soon as the first rays of daylight peep through the edges of our window shades, my cat perches on her viewing table at a particular window of interest. After about fifteen minutes, patience wearing thin, she begins a gentle tapping at the shade, softly at first, but quickly building to a level to compete with any rock band. We of course express our gratitude to her for eliminating any need for an alarm clock, and then drag blearily out of bed in order to accommodate her feline curiosity.

Thus begins the day of watchfulness over the squirrels and birds, which seem to deliberately cavort in that particular spot just to tease her. The intense vigil is punctuated by occasional breaks for food, affection, naps, and frolicking. At her post, however, there is no room for lapses into laziness. Whiskers and ears forward, marking every movement beyond the window, she is poised for that one moment when the glass might disappear, giving her full access to the ground below with all its tantalizing inhabitants.

Living in two worlds at the same time, our cat exemplifies the kind of attitude we might develop through a committed vigil of silence. Anyone familiar with cats knows that they do not in any way neglect their creature comforts. In the fashion of Garfield, they are known for their luxuriating habits. Yet, they become fully alert and ready to pounce at the slightest appearance of a target. They live every moment attuned to their daily needs but always seem to have an inner radar tuned to other possibilities.

We also live in two worlds at the same time, but we mostly live in a state of forgetfulness concerning the world of reality that waits in the inner silence. A world of strength, potentiality, and certainty does exist through the interior window of our being, but we forget to be attuned to it, to have that daily vigil of alert watching. The ordinary activities of our lives, minds, and emotions create a cacophony that drowns out other possibilities. Perhaps we need to consider exploring that inner alertness every morning in order to carry that kind of attunement all day long.

Far more important than the cavorting squirrels, that interior space contains the patterns and causes of the present situation as well as the source of wisdom as to how to work within and through it. Theosophy teaches, and many of us have begun to realize this truth, that things unfold from within outwards—that the world is guided from this inner plane.

The whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes, by a world within it. This inner world is called Astral by some people, and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry; but the stars, as Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give light of themselves. This quality is characteristic of the life which lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. The word star, moreover, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "stir-an," to steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is master of the outer, just as a man's brain guides the movements of his lips.

Mabel Collins, Light on the Path

If we really believed this truism, we would apply the same intensity as the cat to our vigil at the window of our souls. Our distractions are so strong and our watchfulness so tenuous, that the only way we can begin to develop an attunement to this inner knowledge and guide is to deliberately sit ourselves down in an environment of tranquility and silence. With practice, a sense of connection with this alternate reality begins to arise and we are drawn more often to that window—even at unscheduled times when the need arises. Within this wellspring of silence can arise the strength of being to dare and persist, the potentiality of inspiration to solve issues and create a better world, and the certainty of direction to guide us into our higher purpose.

As soon as we realize that these are the grand prizes dancing just beyond our reach through the window, one would think that we would become just as intense in our vigil as the cat, watching to catch the slightest hints from the world beyond the window—the world in which our higher self, our ultimate master, resides.

Something About Annie Besant

By Fritz Kunz

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kunz, Fritz. "Something About Annie Besant." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):190-191.

The typescript for this article—three pages of onionskin joined with a tiny straight pin—arrived in the Theosophical Society Archives with decades of papers from the Kunz family. This particular article was composed between 1914 and 1917, when Fritz Kunz began a three-year term as principal of Ananda College, the Buddhist boys' school in Ceylon founded by H. S. Olcott. His friend, Basil Hodgson-Smith, was serving then as a lieutenant in the trenches of France. Kunz was frequently asked to contribute to and The Theosophist, writing on topics as perse as Shakespeare, the South Seas, Atlantis, and trade unionism. He knew Annie Besant very well, so it is natural that he was invited to write of her. In a footnote, he explained his choice of title: "I like to try to follow editorial desires; and this is exactly what I was asked to write about."

The teenaged Fritz first met Annie Besant at Adyar in 1903, when he and his English friend, Basil, worked as secretaries for C. W. Leadbeater on a world lecture tour. While at the Theosophical Society headquarters in Adyar from 1917 to 1922, Kunz served Mrs. Besant on the staff of her newspaper, New India, and assisted in her efforts for educational reform and Indian independence. Throughout his long career as a Theosophical lecturer and writer, Kunz related admiring affectionate accounts of "the Chief" describing her brilliance, her kindness, and her leadership. This article provides a glimpse of how he viewed her in the early days.

Theosophical Society - Fritz L. Kunz was an American lecturer, educator, editor, and writer associated with the Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India. As a young man he worked with Charles Webster Leadbeater and Annie Besant, and later he was married to Dora van Gelder Kunz, who served as President of the Theosophical Society in America.

It is well known that when Alexander the Great visited Diogenes he asked that worthy philosopher what he, the conqueror of the world, might do to please Diogenes. Whereupon the tub philosopher replied gruffly, without even looking up at the great Alexander: "Stand from between me and the sun!" One who writes about Mrs. Besant should feel as insignificant as Alexander must have felt on that occasion, for the best way to convey some understanding of Mrs. Besant is to remove one's little person from the scene and let the sun shine for itself. And of those who wish to gaze upon the light as it is I cheerfully relinquish any pretense holding the attention. But it sometimes happens that one likes to study the light after it has passed through some medium which analyses it into itself components, even if that medium happens to be. a very imperfect refractor; it is for them I write.

A disingenuous youthful admirer of Mrs. Besant—I should more properly use the Greek term, lover—once innocently revealed in one sentence a most significant fact with regard to her. He was to consult her upon some points which, to his young mind, seemed weighty. When he returned from the interview he said in effect: "Before I come into in the presence of the President I am filled with ideas that seem to me most important, and when I find myself before her these things dwindle into nothing and I see them to be of no moment; and then I think that I have a petty mind."

Now I do not quote this lad to be patronizing, for I find the same thing within myself! Our minds, I have no doubt, are charged with notions that are galvanized into a semblance of vastness and importance by a considerable contribution of egotism and self-importance. We think our ideas are great because we conceived them; we bustle with mental importance; we think that we must lay these great conceptions before someone able to appreciate them; we— I might say here "I"—have a lurking idea somewhere in a dark corner of what I am pleased to call my intellect that Mrs. Besant will be interested in my ideas. And then, in the mere presence of that kind lady these splendid ideas shrivel away, crumble into dust; and there I stand, denuded of that glorious fabric of intellections, insignificant, and wondering at my satisfaction with what I now see to be inventions that were one half pompous self-esteem. My only consolation is that I have got so far as to be able to recognize the truth even at that late stage!

I say "kind lady" with great deliberation, because I want to make emphatic the point that this curious mental denudation has no connection with fear. The young man I mention is as her son in her affections and, for myself, I try to be not far behind him. It is merely that in the presence of a mind that is ablaze with Truth our half-dark minds are momentarily searchingly. illuminated, and we see that what we thought fine, scintillating fabrics are, after all, only dusty cobwebs.

Now and then it happens, however, that one does bring to her an admirable idea in embryo. And then the result. is equally sure and the effect quite as instructive in a different manner. For she throws upon the point the same torrent of true thinking; and the idea suddenly glitters forth in one's mind like a star, and throws off all sorts of new lights from unsuspected facets, as a diamond that is drawn from a dark box out into the light. And then one feels rather pleased with himself—until he carries his diamond away from the sunlight and finds that it does not glow so brilliantly, and that, after all, it was the sunlight that flashed and not the diamond!

When I was very much younger, and before I had come to India, I had a sort of ide fixe that Mrs. Besant exaggerated the importance of India in the scheme of things—(I claim a lenient judgment for myself on the ground of my extreme youth; at any rate, so I thought). And then, about ten years ago, on a certain memorable day I saw Mrs. Besant for the first time—and in India. It was in the octagonal room at Adyar, where I. was with Mr. Leadbeater and Mr. (now Lieutenant) Basil Hodgson-Smith. Mrs. Besant came over to see them there for a moment about some arrangements in our tour. We had all seated ourselves again after her appearance; behind her chair stood one or two Indian gentlemen— I forget who they were and it doesn't matter. I had a very excusable curiosity as to that great person which was before me; I fear that I stared rather rudely. There was mention of my name—that I would make out the timetable for the tour, I believe—and suddenly I found myself looking, not upon Mrs. Besant, that celebrated and interesting lady, but upon an old, old friend. I remember a sudden, radiant smile, incredibly seeing eyes—it was as if, upon the heels of a long and torrential rain there had suddenly blazed out the whole light of the sun as when one sees far, far into the sky and feels for a time, uplifted, freed. And in a moment—I quite understand that this is not logical; but I'm not talking about logic or anything so merely Aristotelian—I understood the inner truth about India; and in ratio to my understanding I saw my old notions as absurd. And as intuitions are only good when put into action, I too do my little mite with my little might for that India that she sees, not alone the "historical" India of parched or steaming plains or fertile river valleys, the India of the millions; but that other India of the Rishi of green hills, that supra-historic India that sings its way through the Himalayas, that India of far off days and forgotten Powers that now, once more, springs into new being.

At this stage I am reminded that my subject is Mrs. Besant, and not myself and not India. The point is well taken, although we should remember that, for the time at least, India and Mrs. Besant are elements that cannot be considered separately. However, let me heed the interruption to this extent; we shall look a little into the second half of our subject, P. T. S.

I have a conceit that T. S. means not only Theosophical Society but also The Service, and, more specifically, Their Service; that we are the body of picked people who serve men and Supermen; that just as the Indian Civil Service is a body of picked men whose business is to be the servants of India, both the lowly and the lordly, so it is our business to serve humanity, those men beneath us and those above us. Truly performed, this is a grand and an arduous task. In simple physical terms it means toil, in the psychic world it means stress; but in the spiritual and super-spiritual worlds it means unfoldment and abiding joy. For in the labour and the strain that comes to those who serve lesser men is at the same time the source of inspiration from the greatest Men; to serve the one is to serve the Other.

And from this it follows that the President of the Theosophical Society is the Head of The Service which labours for men and under the direction of the Masters of men. And we Fellows of The Service recognize, even if we cannot fully comprehend, the burden that this post brings with it, the duty of being Perfectly Their Servant, the hidden meaning in the letters P. T. S. On one day at least in the year we weigh this fact; we take stock of ourselves; we try to see how we can measure a little more closely to the stature of our Chief. And this, I think, is the opportunity that the first day of October brings to us.

F.K.

  1. Everyday Enlightenment
  2. Solitary Retreat Musings of Ani Kunzang
  3. Silence is the Garden of Meditation
  4. The Art of Simply Being

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