Theos-Talk Archives (June 2001 Message tt00078)

In recent The Link Newsletter, there are two interesting reviews of the 
recent book on K. The reviews are by Anne Ruth Frank-Strauss and Javier 
Gomez Rodriguez.

Quotes from Anne's Review:

Anne highlights the fact that the 2/3rds of the book deals with K's life 
till 1929 (when he made his Truth is a Pathless Land) and only 1/3 with 
that of the rest of more than 50 years. It is interesting to to note that 
Vernon maintains that a direct connection exists between the life and work 
of HPB and that of K as K was "one of the fist and most widely publicized 
figures to present eastern spirituality in a context comprehensible to 
those conditioned by western theological and philosophical traditions."

Roland, who is quite young - born in 1961 who never met K, seems to have 
done an excellent job. He confesses in the author's note "There is no 
immunity from his (K's) demand that a reader probe and question the deepest 
reaches of his or her accepted world view, and one cannot but emerge at the 
other end of a journey such as this with a readjusted perspective of life 
and living."

Roland also points out that K's contempt for organized religion, 
nationalism, nine-to-five jobs and bourgeois respectability fell on fertile 
ground, though his point that "the only revolution" had to take place in 
the mind of the individual was often missed.

In the last chapter he states "The greatest achievement of his life was not 
that he rejected the throne that was Christ's (because it is questionable 
that he ever did) but that he succeeded in stepping out of his robes, 
adorned as he was with every sacred trapping short of a halo, and sat down 
instead with ordinary human beings, to thrash out the practicalities of 
living a religious life in a modern secular society".

Quotes from Javier's review:

Javier states that "... many of these questions remain necessarily 
unanswered. Was K the Messiah, an avatar or simply an ordinary mystic 
catapulted by historical forces out of his contemplative retreat and into 
the limelight of a global mission? Was his a unique phenomenon, and 
therefore doubtful in its value to humanity, or was he a trailblazer like 
Columbus or Edison making it easier for others to navigate the great waters 
and turn on the light? Was K the herald of a new age or merely the restorer 
of the ancient wisdom? Were his teachings original in content or only in 
their adaptation to our more secular idiom? Will his message become the 
seed of a new culture or, since truth cannot be organized, never rise to 
the level of the world religions?"

Javier adds "the book does not really answer whether K's messianic label 
was a mere invention. What seems clear is that K managed to demystify the 
whole esoteric world by devolving the responsibility for transformation to 
each individual and downplaying the role of institutions and the importance 
of experience. None of these were ends but by-products. The end was rather 
to dissolve the illusory sense of a psychological self and thus opening the 
door to immensity. K succeeded in removing the historical trappings of 
religion and in bringing man to a realization of his essential 
responsibility and solitude in relation to the evident and immanent 
spectrum of truth, dismantling the priestly conceptual edifice in favor of 
the mystic's immediacy of perception. This approach as the author indicates 
at the conclusion of his narrative, is the unchartered way of spirituality 
in our time, of which K's teachings are the timely beacons."


____MKR_____