Quest Magazine

Riding the Waves of Karma: Memories of Muktananda's Ashram

Printed in the Spring 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Chambers, John."Riding the Waves of Karma: Memories of Muktananda's Ashram" Quest 103.2 (Spring 2015): pg. 61-65.

By John Chambers

The heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there and roam.
-Sri Bhagawan Nityananda

It was like living in a cross between Dante's Purgatory and a Walt Disney animated feature film. A thousand faces filled the semidarkness. The air resounded with titters, groans, and guffaws. People rocked back and forth, assumed strange postures, thrust their arms up in the air. A steady buzzing like a swarm of bees came from the back of the auditorium. Over to one side a high-pitched cackle broke out. It was followed by a loud gurgling noise, and then the words, "Yum! Yum!"

A sock with a foot inside it brushed against my ear. The young man beside me was coming out of his headstand.

A small, dusky-colored man, about seventy years of age, wearing an orange ski cap, dark glasses, and a saffron robe, was advancing calmly through the cacophony. He moved quickly from person to person, stopping briefly to bop each one with a peacock-feather wand. Sometimes he lingered for a moment to pat someone's head as if he were testing the strength of the skull. Then he went on.

This man's name was Paramahansa Muktananda. Everybody called him Baba. He was one of the bestknown of the numerous spiritual teachers who spent time in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the summer of 1979. I was in the meditation hall in Muktananda's ashram in South Fallsburg, high up in the Catskills sixty miles north of New York City. This big, sprawling collection of buildings, limned with fresh gardens and honeycombed with rooms large and small, was the headquarters of Muktananda's Siddha Yoga Dham (or "Home of Siddha Yoga") of America Foundation (SYDA).

I wasn't there for the sake of my soul. I'd come as a journalist covering New Age events. I also hoped to get rid of my smoking habit. I'd been told that if you chanted and meditated in the Siddha Yoga fashion, and especially if you spent time in Baba's ashram, you could expect to burn away bad attitudes and bad habits and make it as if they'd never existed.

This was my first weekend at the ashram. I would be staying for a month. Now I was huddled together with a thousand other attendees in a weekend-long intensive. The auditorium hadn't ceased to reverberate with bizarre and disconcerting sounds. Somebody screamed. Wild laughter broke out everywhere, cascading in merry waves across the hall. There was a sound like a steam whistle going off. Then there was a high-pitched wail. Abruptly the room was plunged in silence.

I fixed my gaze on Muktananda, who was advancing down the row where I was sitting. He was unperturbed as he made his way through this agitated, noisy throng. His peacock-feather wand flicked regularly up and down, while with one hand he reached out regularly to pat somebody's forehead. He strode forward with an oddly loose-jointed gait, shoulders thrust back, belly forward, as if he were a pregnant woman. But it was he who was doing the impregnating. I'd been told that the big circles, or "eyes," on a peacock feather were supposed to possess the power, not only to impregnate peahens from a distance, but also to seed the souls of men and women.

And that was what Baba was doing. He was sowing a seed in each of us. When he stopped and touched a head, it was to make sure the seed had fallen in the right place. In the language of Siddha Yoga, Baba was administering shaktipat; he was awakening the shakti, or "conscious energy," in each of us. That energy was coiled up snakelike at the base of the spine in a configuration called the kundalini. Baba's own kundalini had been brought to full maturity long ago, or so we had been told; by dint of years of meditation and chanting, it had mounted up through his spinal column until it reached his brain and then his soul. The shakti was alive in Baba from head to toe. He had become what is called in Siddha Yoga parlance â"firmly established in the Self"the greater, cosmic part of ourselves that the normal self, which has not known it since birth, seeks to reunite with. Muktananda was a fully realized human being, so brimming over with the bliss-bestowing conscious energy called shakti that he could awaken it in each one of us with a word, with a touch, with a look even with a thought! The peacock-feather fan was a conduit that the fire of Babaâ's shakti flowed through to reignite the guttering lamps of soul within us all.

It was the awakening of the kundalini that was causing all the commotion in the room. When the kundalini woke up, it found itself hemmed in by a mass of psychic debris. The way up the spinal column was only three feet long, but it was lined with psychic scar tissue samskaras, or "impressions" from your previous lifetimes. The kundalini had to fight its way through these samskaras through your bad karma, so to speak and they resisted powerfully and noisily; they liked it where they were, and were loath to cease to exist.

In that first intensive in the meditation hall, we all let off a tremendous amount of psychic steam. The awakening shakti assaulted, broke up, and forced out the hard, resistant, blackened accretions of many a badly lived lifetime. That was the reason for all the giggles, screams, guffaws, all the bizarre and unclassifiable sounds that erupted in the auditorium: people were disgorging "negativities"; they were letting go of bad karma; in the parlance of Siddha Yoga, they were "having kriyas."

I looked up. Baba was standing in front of me. I felt the light tap of his peacock feather. Then he was gone. Fifteen minutes later, Baba ended his rounds and strode resolutely toward the front of the auditorium. He bounded up the steps that led to the stage and strode across to his young, black-haired, undeniably beautiful Hindu translator Malti (who, a few years later, as Gurumayi Chidvilasanda, would become Baba's successor as SYDA's leader). Uttering a few words which his excited audience couldn't hear because it was sending up a tumultuous roar, Baba raised his arms high like a prizefighter who's just won a fight, and then strode, purposeful as always, off the stage and away.

Muktananda Paramahansa was born to wealthy parents in south India in 1908. His father was a rich landowner. His mother was a cultured woman and a devotee of the god Shiva. He broke her heart (as he tells us sadly in his autobiography Play of Consciousness) when he left home at age fifteen in search of nothing less than total Self-realization. She knew he would never return, and he never did, though she saw him again a few times.

Muktananda tells us that he sat at the feet of sixty gurus. Enlarged black-and-white photos of several of them hung on the auditorium walls. They were a vastly eccentric lot by Western standards. One, Zipruanna, spent his time sitting on piles of excrement, and yet exuded a fragrance so psychically exquisite that if you came close enough you found yourself taking a giant step forward on the path to Self-realization. Another, Harigiri Baba, loved to don the clothes of rich men and sometimes wore two hats and three coats, but he, too, gave off such an odor of sanctity that you could not pass near him without evolving significantly as a spiritual being.

Baba scarcely mentioned those gurus in the talks he gave every night. The only guru he liked to talk about was Sri Bhagawan Nityananda (1897—1961). Nityananda had the distinction, so the lore of the ashram went, of being a janma siddha, that is, of having been born fully realized. He was seven feet tall. He dressed sparingly, mostly in only a loincloth. He almost never spoke. Yet he must have been a natural leader of extraordinary power, because for many years multitudes of people flocked to his ashram in Ganeshpuri, India, from every part of the world. A myriad of seeming miracles occurred when he was around, and he put the considerable donations that came to the ashram back into the town of Ganeshpuri.

Nityananda was the leader of the Siddha Yoga movement when Paramahansa Muktananda came to him in 1947, at the age of thirty-nine. In 1956 Nityananda bestowed upon him the "grace-bestowing" power of administering shaktipat, which effectively made Baba the new leader of the movement.

Baba remained at Ganeshpuri for some time. Then he came to the United States and quickly became popular. He was open to all and freely granted interviews. The Siddha Yoga mantra was neither a secret nor was it different for everyone, as was the case with Transcendental Meditation at the time; it was om namah shivaya ("I bow to Shiva"'Shiva being one's own Self), and you were encouraged to chant it on every possible occasion. It was Baba Muktananda's gift to the world. For even while staying in the U.S., Baba traveled the whole world, and in 1974 he began to set up ashrams everywhere. The South Fallsburg center was one of the first and most important.

At the ashram that summer, every evening we were in the presence of Baba at darshan in the auditorium. The guru spoke for two hours, never using notes and never repeating himself. Afterwards we filed down one by one to a throne he sat in just below the stage, and he bopped us with the peacock-feather wand. This was a dramatic experience, somewhat different from that at the intensive: just two or three feet from Baba, most of us, myself included, felt a hot blast of energy strike us as the peacock feather descended. Perhaps this made up for the fact that we saw little of Baba during the day. But, as the reader will soon learn, much was always happening beneath the surface of the ashram day and night.

Along with darshan in the evening, many hours were taken up during the day with chanting and meditation, alone, and in groups, and with classes every morning and afternoon taught by the saffron-clad swamis who lived at the ashram (most of whom were American, and some of them ex—university professors). We also "did seva," which meant carrying out tasks for the ashram for three or four hours a day. These could be anything from planning programs to doing accounts to washing dishes to weeding gardens.

I shared a room with three other ashramites. Talking to them taught me more about Siddha Yoga and the extraordinary culture of the ashram than anything else. But doing seva was almost as instructive as kibitzing, because you were participating in the everyday life of the ashram.

Doing seva was no act of reverence toward Baba. He had made it clear at the intensive that we were not there to honor or worship him, but to honor or worship our Selves. There was a sense in which he, Baba, was not a real physical being, but rather a stand-in for our own Selves. Whenever we did seva' whenever we did any sort of service for the guru'we were actually doing service for our Self, since the guru was the Self. And that meant that every bit of seva we performed pushed us a little further along the path to self-enlightenment.

I did seva in the ashram kitchen, washing knives, forks, spoons, and pots for three hours every morning or evening. One evening I was bent over the sink when an angular, skeletally thin woman of perhaps eighteen entered the huge kitchen (this part of the ashram had been a hotel that could serve 500 people a day). Sadness was written all over her thin and bony face, and especially in her eyes. She made her way slowly across the kitchen floor and disappeared into a cubicle on the other side.

Theosophical Society - Muktananda, born Krishna Rai, was the founder of Siddha Yoga. He was a disciple and the successor of Bhagavan Nityananda. He wrote a number of books on the subjects of Kundalini Shakti, Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism, including a spiritual autobiography entitled The Play of Consciousness.

Swami Muktananda

My workmate Joey whispered in my ear, "See that girl? Her seva is cleaning one pot."

"One pot?" I exclaimed.

"I'll show you."

He led me across the floor to the cubicle door. We peered in. There rose before us a single, dented, silvery pot, monstrously large, four feet high and almost three feet across. The girl was on the other side, bent over so far into the pot that her head was almost lost from sight. She didn't notice us; she was scouring the insides slowly, firmly, evenly, with the utmost concentration.

She didn't notice us. We returned to our dish-laden sink. "She's been doing that for two hours every night for two weeks," Joey said to me. "Now that's seva!"

All of a sudden we heard gasps of surprise and joy just outside the door. We turned; the other ashramites in the kitchen were throwing themselves on the floor in various positions of prostration. And then Baba strode purposefully in, swift as a bullet, as smoothly as if he were rolling on castors. He crossed the floor to the cubicle door, looked in' and then, turning, strode back across the floor and was gone out the door just as suddenly as he had come in.

I hadn't had time to decide whether to prostrate myself or not. But Joey had thrown himself to the floor in a second, and now, scrambling back on his feet, he addressed me: "You see what I mean? That's seva that works!"

"He didn't even speak to her," I protested. "What was supposed to happen?"

"Wait and see," he said, in the tone of absolute certainty I often heard in the ashram.

I went about my business: classes, meditation, chanting, more meditation. It was very calming; but always, wherever you were, you regularly heard kriyas going off like rifle shots, sniffs, pants, shouts, and guffaws accompanying the sudden discharge of samskaras. I washed dishes every morning or evening. The girl scrubbed the pot every night; each time she left it looking as good as new.

On my last day at the ashram (many were leaving; a massive changeover of attendees was about to take place), I was sitting on a bench near the entrance when suddenly the usual signs'gasps of surprise, instant prostrations'signaled that Baba was just outside. There was the flash of an orange robe, a glint of sunglasses, a sudden rush of activity, aides scurrying forward'and then Baba strode swiftly, smoothly, and purposefully through the ashram entrance.

He stopped abruptly and turned in my direction. He strode rapidly towards me. And then I noticed (why hadn't I noticed before?) that my bench was occupied lifeby somebody else: the girl who scrubbed the huge pot every night.

Baba came up to her. He stood before her. She looked up in surprise. He reached down and took her hand. He swiftly removed his sunglasses and gazed down at her intently from eyes that seemed to me enormous.

She stared up timidly.

He held her hand. He spoke Hindi to her. Nobody moved; no translator came.

He gave off heat. Seated not three feet away, I could feel it, just as I could on the darshan line. It was if the door of an oven had been opened.

The girl softened in his gentle grasp. The corners of her mouth began to work. Joy swept across her face. Great round tears rolled down her cheeks, but all the time she was smiling happily.

Then he let go of her hand and was gone, as if his work was done'swiftly, into the depths of the ashram he had created.

Events like this took place at the ashram all the time. They were all we ever talked about. In our classes we learned about Kashmiri Shaivism, which was the philosophy behind Siddha Yoga. But outside class, all our talk was of karma, and especially of our personal karma. It was as if we were living a sort of karmic time in the ashram, not real time at all. Of course, bad karma could not be avoided, it had to be worked through; but we thought that if we truly became involved with Baba and all he stood for, if we meditated and chanted continuously in the ashram, Baba could take on our bad karma and burn it up in the fire of his own perfected being. What had to happen in your lifetime could happen in the ashram in a kind of compressed karmic time.

Or, at least, be launched. Your stay with Baba in the ashram was usually only the start. That period of "being with the guru" put mysterious karmic forces into play that, once you left the ashram, would make your life accelerate faster and faster, sometimes beautifully, often painfully, but in such a way that you would come out the other end a transformed, happier person.

One of my roommates, Ron, now a taxi driver, once a geologist, explained it all to me one night. Leaning back on the bed, scratching his lean, regular features and '50s crew cut, he told me that the year before he'd spent the summer at the ashram. And then:

"My life fell apart after I left the ashram. My wife left me in September. She was having an affair with my best friend. Then I couldn't find a publisher for my geology textbook. Then I lost my job."

"That must have been horrible," I muttered.

"It wasn't horrible at all. Just think what might have happened if I hadn't been at the ashram last summer."

"What might have happened?" I was genuinely puzzled.

He told me that it wasn't unusual for people's lives to fall apart after they'd spent time with Baba in the ashram; this was so their lives could fall back together again in the right way. It was truly amazing how fast everything happened once you got back to real life. "I was up to my ass in bad karma," Ron told me. "I was in a million situations I didn't like and that weren't good for me. If it hadn't been for Baba, my bad karma with my wife and my bad karma about being a scientist would have gone on forever."

Now he was driving a cab in the Bronx, living permanently in the Manhattan ashram, and seeing his eight-year-old son every weekend. "I listen to the Guru Gita," he said. "I drive my cab. I meditate. I get my soul in order."

I heard many stories like this at the ashram. I found them beguiling in their intimation of vaster dimensions in our lives which we can never really grasp but which play decisive roles. I heard stories of reincarnation and of how dipping into your past lives could give you strength in this one, or change it (or even change a past life!), and that being with Baba at the ashram was the catalyst that could make this happen.

A new friend of mine, Jim, a writer I talked to every day, told me that on the first day of class he'd noticed a woman whose luxuriant blond hair was utterly familiar to him. So were her shapely shoulders. So were her huge black eyes. He felt as if he'd known her all his life, though he'd never seen her before.

All this he observed from a distance. After class, he couldn't catch up with her. An hour later, while in a line waiting to get into the cafeteria for lunch, he looked down and there she was, standing beside him, head with its luxuriant growth of blond hair not quite coming up to his chin. She'd noticed him no more than he'd noticed her. Now she glanced up suddenly, stared at him, and said, "You remind me of the first boy I ever went out with."

They spent the afternoon walking and talking in the gardens. They were sure they'd been lovers in a previous lifetime. Nothing happened between them that afternoon, or in any of the days that followed, though both were unhappily married. They seemed to derive tremendous strength from this encounter, which really ended on that day. "It was like coming to an oasis in the desert," Jim told me. "It helped me a whole lot. And I know what to do about my marriage now."

Another of my roommates, Roger, told us one morning that he'd dreamt about us all that night. "We were soldiers in a kind of medieval German army," he said. "We had these strange, distinctive boots on. And we all hated each other. We were in the same army and we had a common enemy but we hated each other. We did awful things to each other."

That was all he could remember. He was sure the shakti had brought us together in this room this summer so we could move beyond that miserable, shared lifetime. And all of us had to admit that we'd felt strangely wary of each other when we'd arrived at the ashram, though now we were feeling much better.

It was these personal dramas'which seem to me to this day to have tapped into unique and unknown parts of the human soul'that gave us all the sense of a heightened life at the ashram. I recall that life more fondly today than I do the (nevertheless estimable) classes in spirituality and metaphysics I took there.

And I had my own personal drama. I'd hoped to leave my smoking habit behind at the ashram. Smoking was forbidden there, so I didn't smoke for four weeks. When I left, I not only no longer craved a smoke; I could hardly remember what a cigarette was. I can still hardly remember.

In early 1982, not long before Baba's death in November, scandal invaded the Siddha Yoga Foundation. Baba was accused of having sexual relations with young women. I didn't hear about this till November 1994, when I read about it in a story in The New Yorker.

At the time of the writing of the New Yorker story, twelve years later, it was still not clear what had really happened. Some argued that what Baba had engaged in wasn't really sex, but a sexualized form of spirituality. But there were those who left the Siddha Yoga Foundation on account of these rumors, and Baba's actions, whatever their true nature, cast doubt on his integrity and that of the movement as a whole, and were certainly counterproductive.

The scandals did not cease with that. The year before he died, Baba had designated, amidst some confusion, two cosuccessors to himself in SYDA: Malti, his interpreter and assistant for ten years, and Subhash, her younger brother, whom Baba renamed Nityananda. For three years, this sharing of the Siddha Yoga leadership seemed to work fairly well. Then, in 1985, Subhash/ Nityananda was cast out, and not without some violence. The New Yorker story provided many details; it seems as if for a while there were severe perturbations in the karmic space-time reality of the Siddha Yoga Dham. After that, Malti/Gurumayi Chitvilasanda assumed full leadership, and the Siddha Yoga Foundation quickly got back on an even keel. It is a great pity that, just before he died, Muktananda (out of generosity, and not a little indecisiveness) bestowed upon two people he loved, Malti and the younger Nityananda, immense power which, in the beginning, they not surprisingly had little idea how to handle properly.

In the summer of 2013, I paid a visit to the Siddha Yoga Center in San Diego, California. Services were conducted as they'd always been. The same portraits of Muktananda and Nityananda as had graced the walls of the auditorium at South Fallsburg in 1979 hung on these walls. A portrait of a strikingly attractive Gurumayi Chitvilasananda was the only addition.

The subject of the foundation's travails in the early 1980s did not come up. It was as if that drama had run its course and now could cease to exist.

For this writer, the moral of these stories of scandal is that gurus, like every other man or woman who attains to some degree of power, can, when they've gotten older, and especially when they're surrounded by adoring disciples, lose for a moment their grip on their better self and fall into the sin and folly and simple mistake-making that all human beings are always precariously near.

Before the scandals overwhelmed Paramahansa Muktananda, he had for many decades been providing essential help to thousands if not tens of thousands of suffering, yearning human beings. This writer is convinced that he was driven all his life by a profound and selfless desire to benefit humanity. In this, he succeeded to a degree matched only by a few, and to an extent that any indiscretions at the end of his life can surely be forgiven.

Beyond all colorful stories in The New Yorker, beyond all cynicism, beyond all irony, it was to mankind's suffering that Muktananda addressed his life. Often, leaving the auditorium stage after darshan in that summer of 1979 in South Fallsburg, he would raise his arms and ringingly repeat the mantric words sadgurunath maharaj kijay, which mean:

All hail the conquering guru.

This writer bows to that.

Sources

Harris, Lis. "O Guru, Guru, Guru." The New Yorker, 70:37 (Nov. 14, 1994), 92—109.
Muktananda, Swami. Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual Autobiography. South Fallsburg, N.Y.: SYDA Foundation, 1978.

John Chambers is the author of a number of books, including Conversations with Eternity: The Forgotten Masterpiece of Victor Hugo, which has been translated into seven languages; Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World: A Literary Genius's Hidden Life; and The Secret Life of Genius: How Twenty-Four Great Men and Women Were Touched by Spiritual Worlds. His latest book, Isaac Newton: Rescuing the Soul of Man, will be published in mid-2015. He lives in Redding, California.

A Teacher of Dancing: The Mahatma Letters and Gurdjieff

Printed in the Spring 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Ginsburg, Seymour B."A Teacher of Dancing: The Mahatma Letters and Gurdjieff" Quest 103.2 (Spring 2015): pg. 58-60.

By Seymour B. Ginsburg

Theosophical Society - Seymour B. (Sy) Ginsburg is author of The Masters Speak: An American Businessman Encounters Ashish and Gurdjieff (Quest Books). He edited Sri Madhava Ashish"s article "Mirtola: A Himalayan Ashram with Theosophical Roots' for the Summer 2012 issue of Quest magazine. There is a little-known story about Maud Hoffman, the owner of the documents known as the Mahatma Letters, and A. Trevor Barker, the transcriber and compiler of the letters. Hoffman and Barker brought the letters to publication in December 1923. While both were ardent Theosophists, they were at the same time pupils of the spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff (1866?—1949). They resided with him at his school in France during much of the fifteen-month period immediately prior to the letters" publication. Hoffman continued as a residential pupil into 1924. This is that story.

On March 30, 1883, Alfred Percy Sinnett, with his wife, Patience, and their son, Dennie, sailed from Madras, India, for Europe, reaching England on April 26, 1883. Sinnett had finished his assignment as editor of a large English-language daily in India, The Pioneer, at which he had been employed since 1872.

During his final years in India from 1880 to 1883, Sinnett engaged in extensive correspondence with two of H.P. Blavatsky"s teachers, whom she called the Master Morya (M.) and the Master Koot Hoomi (K.H.). Almost all of these letters were received in India. Most were sent to Sinnett before he departed for England. The correspondence continued through 1884, with Sinnett receiving several more letters after his arrival in England. Several of those received in England are signed by Blavatsky rather than by M. or K.H., and several more are fragments. The letters, compiled by Barker, are numbered 1 through 145, plus eight that are labeled as subparts of a letter, giving a total of 153 letters. These were collected and stored by Sinnett in two wood and metal boxes. They have become known as the Mahatma Letters.

Patience Sinnett died in 1908, and Dennie, soon after. Sinnett was left without any direct heirs. In 1910, living in England, he met and became friends with Maud Hoffman, an American Shakespearean actress and Theosophist. Hoffman at the time shared an apartment with Mabel Collins, channel for the Theosophical classic: the occultly transmitted Light on the Path.

In April 1919, Sinnett received an honorarium presented to him by Harold Baillie-Weaver, a barrister and prominent member of the Theosophical Society, at a house at 146 Harley Street, London. At that time Hoffman resided at that address along with Dr. Maurice Nicoll and Dr. James Young, who also used the house for their psychiatric practices. The three of them also jointly owned a weekend cottage at Chorley Wood, Buckinghamshire, where Dr. C.G. Jung and Dr. Kenneth Walker stayed as guests. Jung also stayed at 146 Harley Street. Both Nicoll and Walker would later become major exponents of Gurdjieff"s teaching.

In June 1921, Sinnett died in London. Hoffman, who had tended him during his last illness, was named executrix of his estate and his sole legatee. He bequeathed the letters he had accumulated to Hoffman "solely and unconditionally." Hoffman thereby became owner of the Mahatma Letters.

In August 1921, P.D. Ouspensky arrived in London from Constantinople. Ouspensky, a professional journalist and amateur mathematician, had already become well-known in the West through his book Tertium Organum, a speculative treatise on the higher dimensions of time. Ouspensky was Gurdjieff"s most prominent pupil, having met him in Moscow in 1915. In 1917, together with Ouspensky and several other pupils, Gurdjieff fled Russia and the Bolsheviks on a long and harrowing journey over the Caucasus mountains. Gurdjieff wanted to establish a spiritual school and attempted this at several locations including Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and then Constantinople, before going on to Europe.

Lady Rothermere, wife of a British press baron, had an interest in spirituality. She financed Ouspensky"s travel from Constantinople to London, where he began to lecture on Gurdjieff"s teaching at the rooms of the Theosophical Society. In October 1921, Barker, Hoffman, Nicoll, Walker, Young, and others became pupils of Ouspensky after hearing his lectures.

In February 1922, Gurdjieff arrived in London. But unlike Ouspensky, who would make England his home, Gurdjieff stayed in England only temporarily on his way to France. Barker, Hoffman, Nicoll, and Young, among other followers of Ouspensky, heard Gurdjieff speak in the Theosophical Society"s rooms on February 13, 1922, and again in March. Impressed with Gurdjieff, they became his pupils, transferring from Ouspensky. That autumn they would follow Gurdjieff to France, where he had next decided to establish his spiritual school.

In August 1922, Hoffman decided to make the Mahatma Letters public and chose as their transcriber and compiler her friend and fellow Theosophist, Alfred Trevor Barker. Barker would work on the letters over the next fifteen months.

In September 1922, having sent his secretary, Olga de Hartmann, ahead to make arrangements, Gurdjieff leased the ChÃ¢teau du PrieurÃ© des Basses Loges at Fontainebleau-Avon, thirty-five miles south of Paris, as the site for his residential spiritual school. Barker went over to France, and with Young and the wives of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky began to work there to prepare the school to receive pupils. Maud Hoffman arrived soon after. Barker was already working on transcribing and compiling the Mahatma Letters. For much of the time from September 1922 through November 1923, when Barker was transcribing and compiling the letters, both he and Hoffman resided at the PrieurÃ© with their teacher, Gurdjieff.


A. Trevor Barker	G.I. Gurdjieff	Maud Hoffman

In October 1922, Katherine Mansfield, the celebrated young New Zealand writer, came to live at the PrieurÃ©, hoping that Gurdjieff, who was known as a healer among his other talents, could cure her of tuberculosis. This was not to be, and Mansfield died in January 1923. Her letter to John Middleton Murray of November 19, 1922 confirms Barker"s continued residence at the PrieurÃ© during that time, as does the unpublished journal of Ethel Merston, who ran the PrieurÃ© for Gurdjieff as its manager from 1922 to 1927.

In November 1922, Gurdjieff"s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man officially opened its doors at the PrieurÃ©. In that same month Nicoll brought his wife and baby to live with him there. In the summer of 1923, while at Gurdjieff"s school, Hoffman wrote an article for The New York Times describing the activities there: "During this last summer, the inhabitants of Fontainebleau and Avon, in France, and the summer visitors at the hotels, flocked to the old Prieure des Basses Loges to see the Saturday evening demonstrations of the work done there by the pupils of the Gurdieff Institute." This article, a lengthy two-column affair, gives a colorful description of life at Gurdjieff"s school as experienced by Hoffman, Barker, Nicoll, and other pupils during 1923. The article was published on February 10, 1924.

During this period, as previously, Gurdjieff criticized the behavior of Theosophists and the Theosophical Society. His criticisms had mainly to do with the Theosophists" drift toward spiritualism, and several of his criticisms found their way into his published writings going back to 1918.

Barker echoed these criticisms in repeating the Master K.H."s complaints, particularly about spiritualism and psychic phenomena, in which many Theosophists of his time were engaged. In the introduction to the first edition of The Mahatma Letters, Barker emphasizes the dim view that the Master K.H. took of the behavior of some Theosophists in this regard even as early as 1881. He quotes K.H., who expresses his views in letters 45 and 49: "There has been a noticeable tendency also for sections of the Society to drift towards what Master K.H. calls "˜the most insane and fatal of superstitions"”Spiritualism." In another letter K.H. says, "˜A psychic Society is being founded . . . it will grow and develop and expand and finally the Theos. Soc. of London will be swamped in it, and lose first its influence then"”its name"”until Theosophy in its very name becomes a thing of the Past." It is regrettable that these words are as true today [1923] as when they were written" (Barker, xv; emphasis in the original).

Barker would resign his membership in the TS in 1926. One of his last actions was arranging for the depositing in 1939 of the originals of the letters in the British Museum"s Department of Select Manuscripts. After Barker"s death in 1941, Christmas Humphreys and Elsie Benjamin were appointed trustees of the letters.

These events, beginning with the receipt of the first Mahatma Letter by Sinnett in October 1880, his bringing the letters to England in 1883, his subsequent transfer of their ownership to Maud Hoffman at his death in 1921, their transcription and compilation by Trevor Barker in 1922—23, and their publication in December 1923, are now relegated to the annals of history. That Hoffman and Barker were pupils of Gurdjieff, living with him in France for part of 1922, most of 1923, and early 1924, is part of that history.

It is now 2015, more than a hundred years since Gurdjieff emerged from Central Asia and began in Moscow teaching the method of practical work as predicted by HPB in The Secret Doctrine:

In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-Vidya [esoteric or secret science], and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found. (Blavatsky, 1:xxxviii)
These two volumes [of The Secret Doctrine] should form for the student a fitting prelude for Volumes III. and IV. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these volumes are dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood. (Blavatsky 2:797—98)

Modern Theosophy is based upon two sets of core documents: (1) The Stanzas of Dzyan, transmitted occultly to HPB by Morya and Koot Hoomi, and around which she wrote The Secret Doctrine, and (2) The Mahatma Letters. That Gurdjieff was aware of the work of transcribing, compiling, and publishing of these letters by Hoffman and Barker is evidenced by the fact that they were Gurdjieff"s pupils, residing with him at the PrieurÃ© during the months in which their work with the Mahatma Letters was taking place.

Of the connection between Gurdjieff and HPB and her teachers, Walker wrote:

Indeed, in most European circles Gurdjieff was regarded not so much as a philosopher, but as one of the greatest living experts on the sacred dances of the East. What may be of interest to many readers is that in a letter written by Madame Blavatsky to one of the early members of the Theosophical Society, she foretells that the next great teacher of Eastern ideas in Europe will be an instructor in Oriental dancing. (Walker, 152)

Is Gurdjieff, then, one of the group of Masters who constitute the occult hierarchy behind the Theosophical Society? Sri Madhava Ashish and his teacher, Sri Krishna Prem, thought so. Ashish and Prem were knowledgeable Theosophists. They authored two books of commentary on the Stanzas of Dzyan"”Man, The Measure of All Things and Man, Son of Man"” that are widely used by groups studying The Secret Doctrine. Devoted to Theosophical study, they also engaged in practical Theosophical work at their Mirtola ashram in the Indian Himalayas. They honored Gurdjieff as the disciple predicted by HPB who would bring the practical teaching in the twentieth century.

In a letter of December 12, 1988 to this writer, Ashish wrote: "The particular characteristic of the TS is its direct inspiration by the Masters or bodhisattvas. They fielded HPB and stood by her all her life. G was one of them, which is why his teaching is in the same tradition" (in Ginsburg, 129).

Sources

Ashish, Sri Madhava. Man, Son of Man. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1970.
Barker, A.T. The Mahatma Letters. 1st ed. London: Rider, 1923.
Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. Facsimile of the original edition of 1888; two volumes published as one. Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company, 1982.
Ginsburg, Seymour B. The Masters Speak: An American Businessman Encounters Ashish and Gurdjieff. Wheaton: Quest Books, 2010.
Gurdjieff, G.I. Beelzebub"s Tales to His Grandson. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Gurdjieff, G.I. Views from the Real World. New York: Dutton, 1975.
Hoffman, Maud. "Taking the Life Cure in Gurdjieff"s School," New York Times, Feb. 10, 1924.
Korman, Mary E. A Woman"s Work: The Spiritual Life Journey of Ethel Merston. Fairfax, Calif.: Arete, 2009.
Moore, James. "The Blavatsky-Gurdjieff Question: A Footnote on Maude [sic] Hoffman and A.T. Barker," Theosophical History, July 1990.
Pogson, Beryl. Maurice Nicoll: A Portrait. New York: Fourth Way Books, 1987.
Prem, Sri Krishna, and Sri Madhava Ashish. Man, the Measure of All Things. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1969.
Walker, Kenneth. A Study of Gurdjieff "s Teaching. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957.

Seymour B. (Sy) Ginsburg is author of The Masters Speak: An American Businessman Encounters Ashish and Gurdjieff (Quest Books). He edited Sri Madhava Ashish"s article "Mirtola: A Himalayan Ashram with Theosophical Roots' for the Summer 2012 issue of Quest magazine.

Remembering Krishnamrti: An Interview with Radha Burnier

Printed in the Spring 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Krishna, P. "Remembering Krishnamrti: An Interview with Radha Burnier" Quest 103.2 (Spring 2015): pg. 50-55.

P. Krishna

Radha Burnier was the president of the international Theosophical Society from 1980 till her death in 2013. The daughter of N. Sri Ram, who was president of the international Theosophical Society from 1953 to 1973, she was an associate of the great spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti (1895—1986; often called Krishnaji by his friends and admirers) and knew him from early childhood.

This interview with Mrs. Burnier was conducted by P. Krishna on July 21, 2001 in Krishnamurti's room at the Krishnamurti Study Centre at Rajghat, Varanasi, India. It has not previously been published.

This version has been edited for this issue. Professor Krishna includes the full version in his book, A Jewel on a Silver Platter: Remembering Krishnamurti, recently published by lulu.com.

P. Krishna: Radhaji, you knew Krishnaji very closely for a long time. I would like to begin by asking what your earliest memories of him are.

Radha Burnier: I was a very young child when he lived in the Theosophical Society at Adyar in the beautiful second-floor apartment which Annie Besant had got constructed for him. My brother and I used to frequently wander around there. I have vague mixed-up memories of Krishnaji walking there and playing tennis, of my brother and me going to his apartment and playing games with him, of his coming occasionally to our house for a meal. I was really too young then to have a chronological record of what all happened or give a detailed picture about it. But the curious thing is the feeling this contact created of exceptional joyousness, of meeting someone with a special atmosphere around him.

Krishna: When did you first meet him and have a talk with him and where?

Burnier: Around 1960-61, I do not remember the exact year; it was the early period of his Saanen [Switzerland] talks. I had gone there with a couple of my English friends and stayed in a chalet in Gstaad.

On one occasion, I had just left the tent and was walking along when Mme. Scaravelli's car passed by with Krishnaji in it. It passed by me and stopped after going some distance. They were looking back and calling me. I went up there, and Krishnaji said, "How is it you are here?" The way he said it, it sounded as if he knew who I was. I also felt he was not a stranger. He said, "We will meet, I will give you a ring." Later, when I had returned, I received a phone call and was invited to have lunch with him. I spent about one and a half hours with him, and we had lunch.

After that first meeting, whenever I went to Saanen, he would invite me for lunch, and my contact with him continued. I started going to other places to listen to him whenever I could. But my duties as general secretary [of the Indian Section] did not leave me with a lot of time to do so more often. I also continued to feel that just hearing him over and over again was not of much benefit, that one's ability to assimilate what he said was what mattered.

In a sense nobody could really know him. One could know things as memories and spend many days with him, as some people did, but the depth of his consciousness was such that one was not really knowing him. I think everybody knew him a little bit from different angles.

Krishna: Also, there seems to have been a great mystery about him which nobody really understands. In your interacting with him, did you have a feeling that he was like a great scholar or teacher, or was there something dimensionally different?

Burnier: I don't think he was a scholar at all. He frankly said he never read books, which was not strictly accurate, because he obviously had read some books. He certainly knew some of the beautiful phrases in the Bible.

But I have been told by trustworthy people who had clear memories of those days and knew Annie Besant well that [C.W.] Leadbeater made it a point not to inculcate anything into him, because they were so deeply convinced that a greater voice was going to speak through him that they did not want to force any ideas into his head.

There are people who say that Annie Besant said he was the Lord Maitreya and so on, but that is not correct. What Besant said was that the Maitreya consciousness would blend with that of Krishnaji, and his message and influence would pervade and go out to the world through him. So from the very early days, there was a great respect for this vehicle which was being prepared, and perhaps they did not feel that they should tell him what to think. On the other hand, they had to give opportunities for this boy to be prepared.

Krishna: Krishnaji advocates that we should observe each reaction and so on in the mirror of relationship and question it to learn about ourselves and come upon self-knowledge, which in turn brings wisdom, and that transformation comes from within. But if he did not go through this whole process, then how did he come upon all his wisdom?

Burnier: I think wisdom is in every consciousness in a germinal form. Otherwise, even for a man like Krishnaji, to talk to audiences would have no meaning. He himself has accepted that the door is open for every person to become free. He was not a freak. To be free inwardly is to open up the wellspring of wisdom, so I think in his case there was no barrier for this to happen. The outer mind being a pure mind, with almost no trace of selfishness ”which is what Leadbeater noticed when he first saw his aura" created no blockage, and the inner wisdom just came up when the time was ripe.

I remember once sitting outside in this very veranda, with Krishnaji and some others at the breakfast table. There was a talk about his not being interested in anything other than cars and clothes and so on in his boyhood. He said, "Yes, the time was not ripe for anything to well forth" from him. These words may not be exact. Then someone asked, "Who decided when the time was ripe?" He said, "The powers that be."

He was again asked, "Who are the powers that be?" He would not answer that question and just waved his hand. To me it seems he was obviously referring to what he sometimes called the powers of goodness. There are energies at subtler levels, in dimensions of which we have very little or no concept, which are perhaps watching over the world.

You cannot explain the source of things. In the last few years of his life he kept asking, "What is the source of life?" There is a dimension from which something comes down here.

Krishna: So when the Theosophists talked about the Masters, were they supposed to be personifications of this larger intelligence?

Burnier: First of all I must object to this kind of description, which is so much favored by people in the Krishnamurti Foundation. The phrase "what the Theosophists say" has no meaning whatsoever. The Theosophical Society admits almost anybody who accepts the value of the universal brotherhood of humanity. The Theosophical Society has officially said years ago that there is no authority in the Society, not even Mme. Blavatsky. Every person, through his own reflection, purity of life, enquiry, has to discover the truth within. So there are all kinds of people in the Society, with very different opinions and many approaches to the question of wisdom. There is no one voice which you can say is the voice of the Theosophists. Therefore many different things have been said about the Masters.

Krishna: I understand that. But when people ask that question, they generally mean what some of the great Theosophists had to say about this matter.

Burnier: One of the prominent early Theosophists, A.P. Sinnett, received a number of letters from his Masters. They themselves said something about what the Masters are. One is that they are completely unselfish. The qualification for becoming a Master is the daily conquest of the self. In other words, to give up completely the idea of a separate self. In another letter, they say only your evolving spirituality can bring you near to them.

Among the prominent Theosophists, I think this idea was the strongest: that the unfoldment of a human consciousness does not stop with humanity at its present stage. There is much more to which the consciousness can awaken. One of the Masters, in the letters which I just mentioned, says that there is a latent meaning and a hidden purpose in every individual existence, not just human existence. The whole universe is happy, and you wake up to that when the mind gets cleansed of all selfishness, any desire for oneself.

This purification of the self means the practice of what Krishnaji would later have called "attention," which, in the first little book he wrote, At the Feet of the Master, is called "discrimination." It means you are constantly giving attention to what is real and not real, what is important and what is not important, what is essential in life and what is inessential.

That is an important qualification: not to be attached, not to have desire. Not to be possessive is another qualification. So if that kind of quality develops in the consciousness and it becomes capable of embracing all in compassion and love, then that is the state of the Master. The Master is not a physical body, it is a state of consciousness, and that consciousness is everywhere.

Krishna: Would you say that Krishnaji was an individual in contact with the Masters, or would you say he was a Master?


			Radha Burnier, portrait by Ruben Cabigting, 2012. From the collection of the Theosophical Society in America.

Burnier: Both. There was a conversation around 1975 in which Krishnaji himself asked the question, "What is a Master?" I said, "You yourself speak about the possibility of the inner freedom of the human being. From the Theosophical point of view the Master is someone who has come to that state of inner freedom, but out of compassion remains in contact with ignorant humanity, to help them and to teach them, like the bodhisattva. Not all liberated, enlightened people, it is said, take up this work. They may be doing some cosmic work, we don't know. But some of them remain in touch with the earth, and they are called the Masters; others are called the liberated ones, the perfect ones, whatever it is. So the Master is someone who has come to this state of freedom and who teaches people," and I added, "Sir, I believe you are a Master."

That put an end to the whole conversation. There was a period of silence, and then he turned to something else. But I do think that he was in touch with other people, perhaps they were his teachers, perhaps there is, as Edwin Arnold said in The Light of Asia, veil after veil that lifts. Even when there is an awakening, there may be depths, unknown depths, about which we don't know.

Just before Krishnaji died, he said, "I am ready to go, they are waiting for me, but the body has its own program." Who were the "they" waiting for him? I think he was in touch with people who were at that level of consciousness.

On one occasion he said to me also that the mistake that the Theosophists did was to make the Masters into something personal and concrete. They are not that.

Of course, there are lot of people in the Theosophical Society who converted this truth about the Masters into many different things according to their liking.

Krishna: Why did Krishnaji have to leave the Theosophical Society, and how does his message really differ from that of Theosophy?

Burnier: I think he left the TS because there was a lot of folly in the TS at that time. There were many people who imagined, maybe even a few who pretended, that they were in touch with the Masters; they were bringing messages from them; they claimed certain occult positions for themselves, and things like that. Also, instead of regarding Theosophy as the essence of wisdom, they were presenting Theosophy as a set of crystallized beliefs or ideas. Krishnaji rebelled strongly against that.

But I am also wondering whether "the powers that be" intended that he should not be associated or identified with any organization. I think the work was on such a large scale that being part of an organization may have hampered it.

It was Annie Besant who really prepared the ground. When he broke off, he had friends all over the world to organize his talks, etc. In fact she encouraged people to work for him. If she had not done that, he would have been left high and dry.

There was a very deep feeling of love which bound them together. But in Mrs. Besant's last years, I am told, based on some comments by Krishnaji made to my father and others, when her body had somewhat broken down with too much work, her mental powers were not at the same level. She became much more subject to the influence of some people who were close to her, and perhaps at that age her real self was not able to function through her. So it was a shock to her when Krishnaji left, and there was all this commotion of breaking up. If you study her previous life, she never hesitated to break away with something and go along new lines.

Once I asked Krishnaji a question which many people have asked him: "You have been talking for so many years and nobody seems to have undergone this total revolution. Is there anybody you feel who was near it or something like that?" He said, "I think if Amma had been younger, it would have taken place in her." He referred to Annie Besant as Amma.

Krishna: So would it be correct to say that Krishnaji was not against Theosophy, as is commonly maintained by many people, but he was against all crystallized forms of beliefs and speculative theories wherever they were given too much emphasis, whether in the Theosophical Society or outside?

Burnier: And creating authority. If you create an authority in an organization, it becomes corrupt. He was against all that, and the Theosophical Society was in danger of going in that direction at that time.

"Theosophy" is a word which can be interpreted, like the word "Masters," in all sorts of ways, and people did interpret it in many ways. But I think he had a deep feeling for the Theosophical Society. I have been told that somebody had once spoken in a derogatory way about Dr. Besant, Leadbeater, and some of these people in a dialogue. Krishnaji corrected him saying, "You know, they were very serious people." So I think his view is not something which is easy to grasp.

And he contradicted himself. When he looked at certain wrong things, he would make certain kinds of remarks, and at other times he would make other remarks. Once he asked me, "What is going on in the TS? What were the subjects in the convention? Who is going to succeed your father as president?" These questions were repeated every year, but that year I picked up courage and said, "Sir, why do you ask all these things? I thought you had written off the TS." And he answered, saying, "You know, I have a great affection for it."

The fundamental work of the Society"”it is a declared object"”is to establish a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity irrespective of religion, caste, color, etc. Now how can that kind of universal brotherhood come about unless the mind is free of all prejudices and barriers? If the mind is free like that, is it very different from the unconditioned mind that Krishnaji spoke of?

Krishna: I think Krishnaji is saying you have to realize the truth that the other human being is your brother, or yourself, and not merely have a belief that he is your brother.

Burnier: Quite right. As a matter of fact one feels such a friendship not only with people but with every living thing, because we share the process of life, but the mind has to become unconditioned for that. He used the word "unconditioned," which of course suggests many things and gives a depth to the understanding of universal brotherhood, but I see no contradiction.

Krishna: Do you think Krishnaji was just a wise man who had come upon self-knowledge, or was he a divine being like an avatar?

Burnier: There is a very fine book, a set of lectures which Annie Besant gave, published under the title Avatars. The word "avatar" can refer to the descent of divine energies in different ways into our world. They spoke about the partial avatars and the complete avatars, or purna avataras. "Avatar" could mean those forces took actual embodiment and worked through that body and the consciousness which was functioning in that body; then that is a purna avatara. But it could also use someone who had all the right qualities and vibrations"”sensitivity, openness, etc."”to manifest itself. Again and again people have spoken about this vacant mind that Krishnaji talked about.

I am inclined to believe that here was an individual who had been prepared: Leadbeater said Krishnaji had had contact with Masters during many incarnations. Anyhow, he was completely unselfish. There was nothing he desired for himself. We all know that, those who have met him there was no ego sense, and this pure individual was there. He himself was a very advanced soul, if I might use the word "soul." But there seems to be something more, which poured in through him when he gave his public talks, sometimes even when he was explaining profound things in private discussions. There was some kind of an energy which flowed through him, and therefore I am inclined to believe that there were some greater forces which made use of this wonderful person to lift the world to higher levels.

Krishna: We know that he had powers to heal people, and I know at least ten people who were healed by him through these powers, though he told each one of them not to speak about it and he didn't want that known. Do you have firsthand experience of some such healing, and how does it take place?

Burnier: I have some firsthand experience of it. My brother, Vasant, had a lot of problems with his eye. There was retinal detachment. They treated him in a famous hospital in Bombay. He only got worse. He suffered very much. Casually on some occasion I said to Krishnaji, "I can't do such a thing, my brother is here and he has this problem." Krishnaji immediately said, "Bring him to me." I asked, "Would you mind, sir, if he meets you in my house?" He said, "Bring him there." So every evening he used to put his hands near the eyes of my brother, who was and still is a great skeptic. But he had to confess that the other eye, which was also in danger of becoming blind, had begun to steady itself. He said he was seeing light, though he was not seeing details. He admitted he was seeing light, even with the blind eye, and strangely, on the side where the better eye was, even his hair, which was completely grey, began turning a little dark! After that his eye never was in danger any more.

Krishna: Scientists would say that psychological healing is possible, but physical healing is a miracle; it can't take place like this. Whereas Krishnaji is saying the opposite. He is saying, "I can heal you physically of an ailment sometimes, but I can't transform your consciousness; you have to do it yourself."

Burnier: Absolutely. It is common sense, because at the physical or material level everything works mechanically. The cause and effect process is in operation, but at the level of the consciousness it doesn't work that way. So somebody else cannot do it for you.


Portrait of J. Krishnamurti by Genry Schwartz of Oak Park, IL, 1926. From the collection of the Theosophical Society in America.

Krihsna: Can anybody learn this, do you think, or does it require a superior being?

Burnier I don't think just anybody can learn it, because there is some kind of passivity which makes some people allow it to flow through, or they themselves have plenty of it, so there is no obstruction in their own bodies. It is very difficult to explain.

Krishna: The world was shocked to read Radha Sloss's biography of K. [Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti] and learn that he had a sexual affair with her mother [Rosalind Rajagopal]. Did it shock you to know that?

Burnier: I would not say it shocked me, but it took me by surprise. Simply because Krishnaji had said so many times in the presence of so many people, talking about the normal worldly living, "You people, you have gone through all this, but this person has never gone through all that." The impression produced by those words was completely contradicted by this fact.

In fact, I did not want to believe what was in the book, so I rang up Mary Lutyens, and she confirmed that it was a fact. But later on, the more I thought about it, the more I began to feel that his words were absolutely true, because when walking with him on the Adyar beach one evening, I asked him, "You have again and again said, you have never suffered, but this is not factual. Shiva Rao was with you in the cabin when the news of your brother's death came, and he has written that Krishnaji cried and cried for three days. You went through that sorrow of parting, but the fact is that by the time you landed after three days, everybody has said that you were completely at peace and radiant with happiness."

I said, "Sir, how I understand it is that the consciousness which went through that parting is not the consciousness which came out of that." He only said, "That is right." So that explains it. When he says, "I have never gone through this," I take it that this experience was also like that.

Krishna: Still, the question is, does a person who experiences abundant overflowing love ”as he seemed to” does he need to express it through sex?

Burnier: I think that there is much in the concept of karma. You create links with certain things, certain people, and those links bring you into contact with him or her. He must have had some karmic bonds with Rosalind.

So also [her husband D.] Rajagopal. He had the extraordinary privilege of being in intimate contact with Krishnaji for so many years. Something brought him near Krishnaji. It is not necessarily what people would normally call good fortune, but there are deeper connections.

I also sometimes speculated "it is nothing more than that” that when this enormous energy which he mentioned before he died went through the body, it must have caused great strain to that body. Was that why he had to relax with detective stories? Sometimes with stupid little jokes, looking at TV, with all the rubbish it showed? Similarly, people have even made sarcastic comments about women who were with him during the process. Perhaps he needed a gentle person near him who would be like a mother.

Krishna: In some religions, it is said that a truly holy man has no sexual feelings, as the male and female principles fuse within him. From this point of view, would you mean that he was not a truly religious man?

Burnier: I do not think that is correct, because sexual feeling is in the body. The body must feel it for the race to be perpetuated. Then in the human being it affects the mind. Desire arises. So it is only at that level of the conditioned mind and of the body. It has nothing to do with the real, pure consciousness, which is inside. So I think there is the possibility for a liberated soul, free of desire, personal desires and interests, to have any kind of relationship without being contaminated, because that mind is not at work. This is a purely physical thing. By eating, the person doesn't get contaminated, but if you are greedy for food, it makes a difference.

Krishna: Much of what Krishnaji has said is there also in the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. What would you say is so special about his teachings?

Burnier: Well, first of all, all the scriptures are so mixed up that for the average person it is impossible to say what is true and what is not true there. And even for the nonaverage person, since the mind is conditioned, we can't say our idea that this is true is actually true. I think when the teachings come directly, as they did from Krishnaji, that kind of adulteration is not there.

The second thing is that he explained things which were put in epigrammatic terms by other people. Once Krishnaji asked a question which he asked many times, I don't know why: "Has anybody said this before?" I said to him, "Yes," and gave a concrete example.

In the Yogavashista, there is a verse which speaks about a mind which is completely in the present, which never wanders off to the past or to the future. The text says to live in the present is immortality. But it is one short verse. I don't think I would have understood anything of that if I had not heard Krishnaji. Maybe among the ancient teachers there were some who explained it, but it is all gone. Here was somebody authentic.

Krishnaji was speaking of the modern world, and he was giving something which would help humanity to emerge out of the disasters of the modern way of life. So I think the ancient teachings came in a new form, with all the power of personal knowledge.

P. KRISHNA is a Life Member of the TS and a trustee of the Krishnamurti Foundation India. His father was the younger brother of N. Sri Ram.

A Practical Contempt

Printed in the Spring 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim."Viewpoint: A Practical Contempt" Quest 103.2 (Spring 2015): pg. 48-49.

It's a good life, if you just don't weaken.
- Bill Lawrence

Theosophical Society - Tim Boyd was elected the president of the Theosophical Society Adyar in 2014. He succeeded Radha Burnier. What is it about the normal course of living that evokes a sense of struggle? Whether we look to stories and aphorisms from the scriptures of the world, or to the teachings of the modern Theosophical movement, or simply to the common-sense phrases routinely uttered day after day, there is a shared recognition that in this world nothing comes easily.

One story that expresses life's laborious futility is the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was a Greek king and something of a rogue. He was such a clever man that he was able to trick the gods on more than one occasion â€” one time even handcuffing Hades, the lord of the underworld and god of death. Hades' temporary confinement caused great problems up above in the human realm. One of which was that war started to lose some of its satisfaction. Because no one was dying, the situation became so desperate that one king arranged for Hades to be released, so that people could start dying again and he could continue striking fear in the hearts of his enemies in war. In punishment for his numerous crimes against the gods, Sisyphus was condemned to an afterlife of eternal drudgery. For all of eternity he had to spend every moment rolling a heavy boulder to the
top of a mountain, only to watch it roll back down and begin the process all over.

In the Bible the most notable voice for the meaningless hardship of life is found in Ecclesiastes â€” the Preacher. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity" was one of the succinct ways he characterized the human condition. "What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest" was another of the Preacher's sobering observations. This line of thought tracks back to the curse of Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The cycle of struggle for the human being begins with the declaration to Adam that because of his awareness of duality â€” good and evil â€” he is condemned to "painful toil" for "all the days of your life." Eve's lot is no better.

Buddhism also deals with what is seen as the fundamentally unsatisfactory nature of the human condition (or for that matter, of any of the other five realms of existence in Buddhist cosmology). From that point of view, a life lived in the pursuit of normal pleasures â€” knowledge, religion, politics, work, family, etc. â€” ensures that one remains trapped on the cyclic wheel of existence. Samsara is the term for the repetitive cycle of birth, sickness, aging, death, and rebirth in which we are all engaged. This idea is a broader restatement of the Sisyphus myth, but here instead of one individual, all sentient beings are caught up in the cycle.

If these were our only options, life would be bleak. Of course, all of the traditions that give such in-depth portrayals of life's limitations also affirm the possibility of liberation or redemption. Spiritual traditions speak to people at the level of their understanding. For the person whose awareness is rooted in the world of struggle and suffering, they give counsel on how to make things better. This is the level of rules and ceremony, where we are counseled how to behave â€” what foods can be eaten, what clothes we can wear, ways in which we can meet and associate with each other. All religions contain such advice. For the individual who has some awareness of a more expansive consciousness, they show how to deepen it, all the way to what is called "Christ consciousness," moksha, enlightenment, etc.

One of the gifts of the Theosophical worldview is the recognition of the multidimensional nature of the universe and ourselves. The practice of the spiritual life often begins with a consideration of the possibility that we are more than we had previously imagined, and that consciousness is essentially what we are. We are asked to think about it, to try to determine the range and limitations of consciousness. "Think on these things" is what has always been told to the new student. The process begins with thought. Whether one finds that one agrees with these new ideas or not, the mind starts to become accustomed to functioning at formerly unfamiliar levels. We ask ourselves questions and, initially, we search for answers. As we become familiar with the different levels of our being, we soon find ourselves listening for answers. The process becomes more and more internal.

In what is commonly seen as the most important of the letters from the Mahatmas, the Mahachohan's letter, struggle is an important theme. "How . . . are we to deal with the rest of mankind? With that curse known as the struggle for life, which is the real and most prolific parent of most woes and sorrows, and all crimes? Why has that struggle become almost the universal scheme of the universe?" It is an important question to which he provides an answer: "Because no religion . . . has taught a practical contempt for this earthly life; while each of them . . . has through its hells and damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death."

From this point of view, the limits of our vision have intensified the struggle for life. Our fixation on this one life and this one body and the fear of losing them have rooted us in the fight to preserve them at all costs. For most of us this life is the only thing we can be sure of. What comes after is uncertain, and if we accept the afterlife descriptions of the various religions, for most people it will be a very long and very uncomfortable period. We struggle to hold on to what we know, this narrow band of awareness that we accept as life. "Better the devil we know than the one we don't."

How do we break this cycle? In the letter the Mahachohan suggests a way out: "a practical contempt for this earthly life." He urges, "Teach the people to see that life on this earth, even the happiest, is but a burden and an illusion; that it is our own Karma [the cause producing the effect] that is our own judge â€” our Saviour in future lives â€” and the great struggle for life will soon lose its intensity."

A great difficulty for people raised in the West is the seemingly life-negating view of traditional Eastern approaches to spirituality such as Buddhism and Hinduism. I have met many people who, when first introduced to Buddhism, found themselves repelled by its emphasis on life's sufferings and by the nature of its apparent highest goal, nirvana â€” literally a "blowing out" of life's flame like a candle. For the mind formed in the normal Euro-American system of values there is little attraction to suffering, extinction, or "contempt of earthly life."

At the level of first impressions these are not appealing. Those who persevere in the attempt to understand these ideas come to realize that these words are necessarily inadequate attempts to describe a richer, more expansive life and consciousness. The value of the descriptions is that they do not only talk about otherworldly states, but they indicate ways to experience these states. The sincere seeker necessarily becomes a practitioner, one who engages in experimentation in the laboratory of one's own consciousness.

Anyone who has faced life's difficulties and demands can be critical and disdainful. "There must be a better way" is commonly heard, but in the absence of some positive alternative it ends up as complaint and cynicism. Mere contempt for earthly life is easy and is the work of the cynic.

"Practical contempt" is a different matter and is the work of the practitioner. It is the outcome of confirmation by experience. Only those who have by "self-induced and self-devised efforts" won their way to a broader experience of consciousness can judge the struggle of earthly life fairly. The little book Idyll of the White Lotus says, "The soul of man is immortal and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendor has no limit." Those who have had even a momentary glimpse of life from the soul's point of view come away from that experience with a new sense of priorities. The life of struggle and limitation does not go away, but it loses its claim to all-importance. Whether we describe this as contempt or simply seeing clearly, the outcome is the same. Being in the world, but not of it becomes the new way of living.