Quest Magazine

Sweet Synchronicity: Finding Annie Besant, Discovering Krishnamurti

Elizabeth Spring
N.p.: Archeon Press, 2015. 287 pp., paper, $18.86.

The early leaders of the Theosophical Society continue to inspire literature of all kinds. One of the latest additions is Elizabeth Spring’s Sweet Synchronicity. The title refers to a deep connection the author has felt to Annie Besant, partly because they were born exactly 100 years apart (Besant: October 1, 1847; Spring, October 1, 1947). This connection, in the author’s view, has been reinforced by many coincidences, or synchronicities, over the years.

The book interweaves a biography of Besant loosely interwoven with the author’s own personal experiences. Throughout it Spring emphasizes her link to Besant. She even suggests that she might be Besant’s reincarnation: “Could I have been her mother? Could I have been her? . . . I’m not sure there is a knowable answer to these questions; I think much is meant to remain a mystery.”

If Elizabeth Spring is indeed the reincarnation of Annie Besant, her memory has suffered severe damage in the passage between worlds, because the book is full of errors and distortions. It is far from clear how many of these were deliberate, even though Spring says at the outset, “although the basis of the story is true as told, there are some changes that modify the story to put it in a literary form. There are also disagreements over the nature of some of the people and events as noted in conflicting histories.”

In fact Sweet Synchronicity goes far past mere literary modifications. Sometimes the mistakes are small. While Spring makes much of an interview she had in 1988 with Rosalind Rajagopal, the longtime lover of J. Krishnamurti, she is unable even to decide on the spelling of her name: it appears repeatedly as both “Rosalind” and “Roselind.”

Other errors are both more substantial and more comical. One scene depicts a reunion between Besant and her long-estranged daughter Mabel, here described as a “young woman.” But the scene is set in 1929, and Mabel Besant was born in 1870, so she would have been fifty-nine on the supposed date of this reconciliation.

Probably the most amusing distortion appears in Spring’s account of Krishnamurti’s climactic renunciation of his role as the World Teacher, which also occurred in 1929. When he and Besant arrive at the event at which he is supposed to take on the mantle, they are “greeted immediately by Colonel Olcott.” But it would have been difficult for Henry Steel Olcott to attend this gathering, because at that point he had been dead for twenty-two years.

A more serious problem comes with Spring’s portrayal of the relations between C.W. Leadbeater and Krishnamurti. At one point Besant catches Leadbeater in an intimate moment with Krishnamurti. Outraged, she sends Leadbeater away.

In all probability nothing of this sort ever happened. It is reasonably certain that Leadbeater never approached Krishnamurti in this way: years later Krishnamurti himself denied that he had. Even in Gregory Tillett’s book The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater — which many Theosophists regard as hostile to its subject — the author concedes that Leadbeater “had no sexual relations with Krishnamurti.” In any event, Besant did not break with Leadbeater for this or any other reason. She was one of his staunchest defenders throughout later years.

Much of Sweet Synchronicity, particularly the second half, appears to be based on a screenplay by Spring that won a 1988 contest, complete with a $5000 prize. Her account of this event is peculiar. After winning, she is approached by a Hollywood producer who wants to option the script. But it turns out that this producer, with true Hollywood sensationalism, wants to include the story of Krishnamurti’s affair with Rosalind Rajagopal in the film. The indignant Spring refuses and tears up the check.

So on the one hand, we have Spring high-mindedly refusing to put into her screenplay something that did happen — the affair between Krishnmurti and Rosalind — but on the other hand creating a much more scurrilous scene between Leadbeater and Krishmamurti that did not happen. This is a strange sort of integrity.

In short, Sweet Synchronicity is a book that knowledgeable Theosophists are likely to find either hilarious or infuriating. While it does loosely replicate the events of Besant’s life, it does so with so many distortions that it cannot be called a biography in any meaningful sense. It could be most charitably described as an imaginative engagement with the life of Besant, although it is not an intelligent or responsible engagement.

Some are likely to see this book as an embarrassment to Theosophy. That may or may not be the case, but it certainly ought to be an embarrassment to the author.

Richard Smoley

A Most Unusual Life: Dora Van Gelder Kunz: Clairvoyant, Theosophist, Healer

KIRSTEN VAN GELDER and FRANK CHESLEY
Wheaton: Quest, 2015. 352 pp., paper, $24.95.

This lively biography of Dora van Gelder, clairvoyant, healer, and late president of the Theosophical Society in America, arose from an unusual collaboration. Its core is drawn from taped interviews of Dora by journalist Frank Chesley. Unfortunately, Chesley died before he could finish the manuscript. Kirsten Van Gelder, wife of Dora’s nephew, continued interviewing. She also drew on papers of Dora’s husband Fritz Kunz and on interviews with her coworkers to complete this work.

Dora Van Gelder was born in 1904, in Java, then in the Dutch East Indies, to a family of sugar planters. Even in her childhood she had natural clairvoyant abilities and was able to see nature spirits in the garden and woods around the house. These abilities were taken seriously at home, as her grandmother and mother had similar ones. And because the belief in nature spirits is widespread in Java — an island with a mixture of Chinese, Hindu, and Muslim cultures — people working on the plantation did not find the ability strange either. Her mother taught her meditation techniques at an early age and encouraged daily meditation practice.

Dora’s parents were leaders in the Theosophical Society and were in active contact with Theosophists living in Asia, especially India, and Australia. With the outbreak of the First World War, C.W. Leadbeater, a close coworker with Annie Besant at the Adyar headquarters of the TS, decided to stay in Australia, where he had been visiting, and open a small school to train boys both in academic studies and in spiritual abilities. Leadbeater was also a clairvoyant, and he was interested in having Dora among his eight students — the only girl. She went to Australia at the age of twelve and never lived extensively in Java again. In fact, her parents moved to Australia.

During the First World War and again during the 1930s, there were efforts to develop Theosophical communities based on common work, sharing of revenue, and common study. Dora’s parents were leaders of such a community, and Theosophists from different countries would spend time at the Manor, as the Australian community was called.

Thus she met Fritz Kunz, an American educator who had also been a student of Leadbeater’s and was working at Adyar. Despite a sixteen-year difference in age, young Dora married Fritz. He encouraged her to go with him to the U.S., where he became a popular speaker at Theosophical centers. For many years Dora devoted her life to helping him in his educational activities and raising their son, John.

In 1940, Fritz founded the journal Main Currents in Modern Thought, devoted to the concept of integrated education — a way in which science and spirituality could cooperate and share the results of their collaboration in schools and universities. Through Main Currents Dora met a good number of leading educators, but she did not speak often of her clairvoyant abilities, except to a small circle of friends.

With Fritz’s death in 1972, Main Currents ended publication and Dora could focus on her own interests. Her clairvoyant abilities had already been investigated by Shafica Karagulla, a British-trained professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York, for Karagulla’s book Breakthrough to Creativity (1967), but Dora’s name was only given as “DVK.”

Once Dora could act on her own, she and Karagulla teamed up to write The Chakras and the Human Energy Fields. Long before, Leadbeater had written books along these lines called The Chakras and Man Visible and Invisible, and Dora knew of his work from her years of training with him. Leadbeater had clairvoyant abilities, but he also had a strong imagination. He was not interested in a scientific approach, and a reader of his books cannot make a distinction between what he saw and what he imagined. Thus Dora had to start over in the study of subtle energies, but she would do so in the spirit of Main Currents rather than of “CWL,” as she called Leadbeater.

The analysis of the nature of the chakras and the alignment of their harmonious flow of energies led naturally to work with healing. With Dolores Krieger, a professor of nursing at New York University, Dora developed a technique of healing based on the universal energy as a way of to restoring order and wholeness within the patient. This marked the development of what is now known as Therapeutic Touch. Therapeutic Touch is increasingly taught to nurses and other health professionals and is widely used well beyond the TS membership.

From 1975 to 1987, Dora was president of the Theosophical Society in America and lived much of the time at its Wheaton headquarters. She had known many of the members of the second generation of the TS — Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Rukmini Devi Arundale, Krishnamurti — and so served as a kind of living memory of the organization and its activities. She published The Real World of Fairies based on her earlier clairvoyant observations. She also remained interested in the educational ideas exemplified by Main Currents. Still, her keenest interest was in the healing process. After leaving the presidency of the TS, she lived in Seattle, near her son and other relatives. She died in 1999 at age ninety-five.

René Wadlow

René Wadlow is president of the Association of World Citizens and a representative to the United Nations, Geneva, on its behalf. With a long interest in education in Africa and Asia, he collaborated with Fritz Kunz and his journal Main Currents in Modern Thought.

Prophet for Our Times: The Life and Teachings of Peter Deunov

DAVID LORIMER
Foreword by Wayne Dyer
Carlsbad, Calif.: Hay House, 2015. 272 pp., paper, $18.99.

This is a welcome new edition of the book published more than twenty-five years ago about the great spiritual teacher Peter Deunov. Master Deunov (1864–1944), a great luminary emerging from the Western tradition, deserves to be much more known than he is. His life and teachings have been little-known, perhaps because of the communist rule which was imposed on his native country, Bulgaria, for decades. In the West, he is best-known through the teachings of his disciple Omraam Mikhaël Aïvhanov.

The editor, David Lorimer, presents the teachings of Deunov succinctly and with clarity and insight. Lorimer came in contact with the teachings of the Bulgarian Master more than thirty years ago and has been actively involved in his work ever since. Lorimer, who is familiar with the world’s spiritual heritage, recognizes the quality of the teaching brought by Master Deunov.

Peter Deunov — his spiritual name was Beinsa Douno — was a great and inspiring teacher of eternal wisdom, embodying tremendous profundity and great simplicity. His teachings provide practical aids for living in harmony with the earth, with our fellow human beings, and with God. He looked at life through what he called Divine Love, the love that never changes and never varies. He also emphasized the mystical meaning of esoteric Christianity, not simply believing this or that, but actually living the teachings of Christ through a subtle gnosis, emphasizing loving God, loving fellow human beings and one’s enemies.

It is a historical fact that the official keepers of a religious tradition are often at odds with those who wish to fulfill the tradition. The more organized a religion is, the greater is this tension. Christ himself was accused of destroying the tradition, whereas, as he said, he came to fulfill it. Deunov too was persecuted by the Bulgarian clergy and was treated as a traitor to the church. He said, “They stir the people against me and say that I am defiling the name of God, that I am undermining the authority of the Holy Church. My question is: Where is your God? Where is the Son? The Son of God is the son of love. Where is your love? I can see no trace of love anywhere.”

To underscore the profundity of Deunov’s teaching, let me quote two of his remarks:

If anyone asks me, “Why do you love and serve God?’ I shall say, “Because God loves me.” Service and work are always the way to respond to love. Love works.

We preach the Christ of Love, which supports and fills every heart; we preach the Christ of Wisdom, which illuminates every mind; we preach the Christ of Truth, which liberates and elevates the world.

David Lorimer deserves our gratitude for bringing the teaching of Master Peter Deunov to a wider public. The world would be a better place if more of us could follow his teachings.

Ravi Ravindra

The reviewer is the author of many books, including The Pilgrim Soul: A Path to the Sacred Transcending World Religions (Quest Books).

Art, Science, Religion, Spirituality: Seeking Wisdom and Harmony for a Fulfilling Life

DAVID V. WHITE
Knoxville, Tenn.: Meaningful Life Books, 2015. 347 pp., paper, $16.95.

Skeptico: What about people like me, who feel they have no artistic talent, for singing or anything else?

Wisdom Seeker: Everyone can sing!

Coming back from a divine music concert where I felt almost one with the music, I was thinking about David White’s book and the Venn diagram of art, science, religion, and spirituality. Where do these four aspects of life intersect? We tend to live separately in each of them, White says, and the people who live harmonious, fulfilling lives live in a place where they all meet. That is the central idea of this book. White wants us not only to see the possibility of a fulfilling life but to experience the reality ourselves.

White retired at the age of thirty-five (may all beings receive that blessing!) to reflect on what is important. He worked for many years in business, politics, and education but then spent several years studying spiritual practices. The insights in the book arose out of White’s extensive dedication to exploring the inner self. He saw how we compartmentalize our lives, and he also discovered the living edge where life happens and the separate currents mingle and merge.

The core motivation for a human being hasn’t changed throughout the centuries. It has always been to find happiness, joy, and harmony. The wise have pointed the way, whether through art, science, religion, or spiritual living. Listening to music, one forgets oneself. The way of science teaches one to dedicate one’s whole being to discovery. Religions point the way to practices that enrich our inner being and our relationships with others. The spiritual way embraces exploration of the deeper recesses of our minds through meditation. The challenge is how to practice these things in such a way that they all come together with a moment-to-moment clarity in our lives.

White presents his ideas in a unique way. He introduces us to a friend named Skeptico, who has dialogues with a “Wisdom Seeker.” These dialogues are inspired by what White calls “thought experiments.” The Wisdom Seeker is meticulous and thorough in his answers to the Skeptico. When the Skeptico asks, how do I decide what is meaningful?, the Wisdom Seeker mentions three ways: follow the meanings given to you when you were growing up; join a group and follow its guidance; or set off in a search of a personal experience of what is meaningful. The Wisdom Seeker follows this answer with a profound discussion of the advantages to each approach and how one should choose.

The discussion on science versus religion leads to a thought experiment: think of a time you felt like you just knew the answer to a problem or something you should do — or should not do. Kind of like a time you “just knew” something. Here is that intersection among the times when the scientist “just knows” the solution, a physician has quick insight into what is wrong with a patient, an artist creates a work of art from a vision, and a mystic has a profound spiritual awakening.

The Wisdom Seeker is patient with Skeptico in answering his unending questions, but he is also firm and direct. When Skeptico asks about a claim that consciousness could be completely explained by brain activity, the Wisdom Seeker is quick to say that the claim is not only mistaken but is devoid of evidence and based on only assumptions and assertions. The frankness is refreshing.

The chapter titled “Summing Up” begins with this quote from Vaclav Havel: “I have always thought that feeling empty and losing touch with the meaning of life are in essence only a challenge to seek new things to fill one’s life, a new meaning for one’s existence. Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in one’s life without first experiencing its absurdity.” It is a thought for awakening. Finding fulfillment is not easy. It requires many acts of faith and many mistakes as well. It requires difficult honesty with oneself and sincere dedication. Giving up is never an option.

White’s book makes us think. These discussions between Skeptico and the Wisdom Seeker make compelling reading. I had an insight while reading them: Skeptico and Wisdom Seeker are not two but one. We ask questions, and our wisdom answers them. We move from one to another within ourselves. White’s book highlights that inner travel towards a fulfilling destiny.

Dhananjay Joshi

The reviewer, a professor of statistics, has studied Hindu, Zen, and vipassana meditation for the past forty-five years. He is a regular contributor to the Indian periodical Lokmat.