Quest Magazine

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.

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 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.

 

 

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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

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 — 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 — 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. — 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 — 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 — our Saviour in future lives — 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 — 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.

 

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 VOLUME 103, NUMBER 2

 Contents

Remembering Krishnamurti: An Interview with Radha Burnier
P. Krishna

A Teacher of Dancing: The Mahatma Letters and Gurdjieff
Seymour B. Ginsburg

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

Edgar Cayce: Ordinary Man, Extraordinary Messenger
Mitch Horowitz

From the Editor's Desk
Richard Smoley

Viewpoint: A Practical Contempt
Tim Boyd

President's Diary

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Printed in the Winter 2015 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim,"Doing Time: Notes on the Prison Outreach Program" Quest 103.1 (Winter 2015): pg. 34-35.

For those of you who couldn't get away this summer, this diary entry will do you good. The months of July, August, and September found me traveling from the U.S. to France, the Netherlands, India, and back again. Here is how it happened.

The month of July tends to be our busiest time at Olcott. Every year it is when we have one of our board of directors meetings, followed by the Summer National Convention (SNC). This year we added four new members to the board of directors: Judith Clewell from Florida, representing our Eastern district; Doug Keene from New Hampshire, also representing the East; Kathleen Neuman from Milwaukee, representing the Central district; and a (sort of) new board member, Nancy Secrest, from Oregon, representing the West. Nancy, of course, is no newcomer to board matters, having served as both national secretary and national treasurer at different times in her career.

Later in the month was the time for our annual meeting, whose theme was "Science and the Experience of Consciousness". It was a high-quality event and quite well-attended. One of our featured presenters was Dr. Eben Alexander of Proof of Heaven fame (see interview on page 10 of this issue). Our conference started with him giving a public talk. We had arranged for a hall at the nearby College of DuPage. Five hundred people showed up. He was generous with his time. In addition to the public talk he gave a talk to members and participated in a panel with quantum physicist and Quest author Dr. Amit Goswami and with Dr. Dean Radin, senior researcher for the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). This year we tried something a little different. Dr. Radin's travel schedule is so extensive that he could not attend physically. He ended up doing both the panel and his own presentation by Skype. It was well received. Russell Targ, quantum physicist and founder of the CIA's remote viewing project, also joined us. Vic Hao Chin from the Philippines also was on hand. For videos of the talks visit https://www.theosophical.org/programs/online-programs/recent-webcasts/3374-science-and-the-experience-of-consciousness.

Marcos Resende (from Brazil) at the ITC with Janet Lee (from the U.K.) and Kim-Dieu (from France).

Following right on the heels of the SNC was a special conference, "Education for a New Humanity". This meeting drew together representatives from a number of educational streams that have roots in Theosophy. They included longtime educators from the Waldorf schools (founded by Rudolf Steiner), Krishnamurti schools, Montessori, Golden Link College (Philippines), the Raja Yoga method (Point Loma TS), and Education for Life. There were also presentations by Tom Ockerse from the Rhode Island School of Design, and by the Prairie School of DuPage. Around fifty parents and educators attended.

Two days later my wife, Lily, and I were off to Paris for the European Federation of the Theosophical Society (EFTS) Congress. These meetings take place every three years and involve TS Sections from all over Europe. More than two hundred were on hand for the sessions. A year before I had been invited by Kim-Dieu, president of the French section and the EFTS, to present at the meeting. At that time I was coming as TSA president. Given the intervening events, it became an opportunity for members to meet with their new international president.

During the meeting I had a chance to speak to the group on three occasions, which included an hour-long question and answer session. I enjoyed the interaction immensely and felt that the participants responded. It was a chance to talk openly about ideas and issues facing the TS worldwide. Most of the people were meeting me for the first time. During the recent election in the spring, people did their research. In this Internet age it sometimes feels as if everything one does finds it way online. So members seemed to be acquainted with articles I had written, talks, events, and family photos. Although a sizable majority of the TS voted for me in the recent election, having never met me, or heard me speak, or asked the questions that they needed answered, they were voting on a feeling or an intuition. For many this was a chance to confirm it. We connected quite well.

Tim Boyd on the steps of the French TS with members of the group from Spain.

As conferences go, a person could do a lot worse than attending a meeting in Paris, the City of Light. The event was held at the French headquarters, which is a most impressive location. Literally a five-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower, it is a series of buildings on Avenue Rapp, a cul-de-sac in the sixth arrondissement. The complex was built specifically for the TS and originally comprised a number of multistory buildings. Over the years some of the buildings were sold, but it still includes the headquarters building with its Theosophically inspired architecture and appointments, the adjacent theater, where daily meetings of the congress were held, and a block of apartments. An interesting little story is that during the Nazi occupation of Paris the TS emblem had to be removed from the front of the building. Even though the swastika (the reverse of the version that was the symbol of the Nazi party) was a part of the emblem, the Seal of Solomon, most frequently identified as the Star of David, put the society at risk.

From gay Paris we took the TGV (train de grande vitesse - high-speed train) to Amsterdam, where we were met by friends from the very active Point Loma Theosophical group centered in The Hague, the Netherlands. At the invitation of Herman and Johanna Vermeulen, we stayed for three days in the lovely North Sea village of Schoorl. We stayed at a center used by the group for meetings and retreats. It was completely renovated, from roof to garden, by the members themselves.

From our restful, responsibility-free days in Schoorl we were transported south to the outskirts of the old fortress town of Naarden, to the International Theosophical Center (ITC). This is where it may get a little confusing. I had come to the ITC in Naarden to take part in the ITC (International Theosophy Conferences), a completely different organization. I'll say more about it in a minute.

Tim Boyd with the current general secetary of TS Netherlands, Els Rijneker (on his left), along with four past general secretaries for the Netherlands.

After I was elected as international president, Els Rijneker, president of the Dutch Section, thought it would be a good idea to schedule a special time for the Dutch members to meet with their new president. Two days prior to the ITC meeting she scheduled "Dutch Day" to take place at the ITC in Naarden. Even though it was in the month of August, when most people have left for vacation, more than one hundred members came and spent the day. My part consisted of an informal address and an hour-long question and answer session. Again, the sense of connection and aliveness was a joy for me.

The Naarden ITC is a TS Adyar center with a rich and storied history. It was donated to Annie Besant in 1925 for the Masters' work. Over the years it has evolved into the TS's European headquarters.

The ITC meeting was a gathering of the various Theosophical groups that have grown up since the founding of the Society in 1875. The common ground for the meetings has been the shared sense of value of the teachings of HPB and the Mahatmas, and the desire for those teachings to impact the world. This year's was a working conference. The idea was to cooperatively develop a statement of purpose suitable to the individual groups that could be a basis for further development and common projects. There were a number of short talks on science, religion, and philosophy. I had been asked to deliver the keynote address. At the end, the work of the conference was distilled into the "Naarden Declaration".

After the conference we spent a couple of days in Amsterdam. We were supposed to be connecting with Betty and David Bland, but had not been able to contact each other. Just when we had given up hope, standing in front of a Van Gogh at the Rijksmuseum, in the middle of hundreds of people, I noticed something familiar about the man in front of me. It was David.

From Amsterdam I flew to Chennai, India, where our Adyar international headquarters is located. I spent a week of meetings preparing for the December convention and addressing a range of other matters, and it was back to the Midwest for the onset of fall.

Tim Boyd

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