Re: Theos-World Blavatsky & Krishnamurti
Feb 06, 2009 00:12 AM
by Morten Nymann Olesen
Dear Pedro and friends
My views are:
Bear with my use of words in the below. I am merely seeking to point out various
problems, so that the readers might learn.
I have insereted comments in the below within the article you wrote Pedro.
I will await - and I think others as well - what TS Adyar will do to come clean on the mess it is presently promoting or allowing to unfold.
Here we go:
- - -
(The article below is a contribution to a debate that started
sometime in 1909 - or before - and still continues. It was published
in The Theosophist, September 2008. PO)
Blavatsky and Krishnamurti: A Timeless Dialogue
Pedro Oliveira
All true spiritual teachers are unique. They have all shared with
each other, throughout the ages of human evolution on this globe, a
capacity to provoke thinking and to unsettle conditioned minds from
their spiritual slumber. This may explain why many of them were
profoundly misunderstood by their contemporaries. The orthodox
religious mindset prevailing in both India and Judea, for example,
rejected the message of both the Buddha and Jesus Christ. Their
teaching was simply too radical and too disturbing to the
psychological comfort zone of most people in their times.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
Yes. When we talk about true Spiritual teachers. But not all who call themselves
"true" spiritual teacher are such. Not even if they in front of the masters
and initiates dare call themselves theosophical and all.
Like HPB's theosophical teaching rejects the Spiritists and their dangerous
teachings and thoughtpatterns, it most certainly also will reject any other
teaching, which distorts and falsifies the theosophical teachings
and its truths. - Yet at the same time respecting them for their value.
But HPB's theosophical teaching is not prepared to
call something theosophical, which it is NOT. Not even if it calls it self
theosophical and claim to be from the masters or even higher masters
than HPB's, when it is clearly proven to be non-theosophical in its teachings!
***
Genuine spirituality is not concerned with acceptance of beliefs,
explanations, descriptions of the world or presumed spiritual
authority. Its core concern is true spiritual transformation through
the contact with that which is uncreated, timeless and eternal. Such
a transformation, when it is real and not imaginary, brings about a
complete openness of mind and heart that endows every relationship
with a quality of love and understanding that never fades away.
The personalities of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Jiddu Krishnamurti
were quite different. She was born in 1831 to a Russian aristocratic
family, had a fiery temperament and loved adventure and travels. He
was a shy, vacant-looking Telugu-speaking boy born in 1895 to a
Brahmin family in South India. While she went on to found the
Theosophical Society in 1875 and left behind a body of teachings
which became the historical and metaphysical foundations of modern
theosophical literature, he shook the Theosophical Society to its
very core in 1929 when he dissolved the Order of the Star in the East
and ceased his association with the TS and with a role he had not
chosen.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
I would rather say that he, J. Krishnamurti, shock the theosophical teacher and the Masters
when he allowed himself to be discovered singlehandedly by no other than CWL,
who only three years earlier was thrown out of the TS, because of
admitted phaedophile beahviour. And when J. Krishnamurti allowed
himself to be called the Messiah and called himself Messiah and World Teacher
for years. And this without showing any real signs on creating
fruits on a level comparable to such a lofty compassionate level, - the level of the Avatar.
***
In spite of the abovementioned differences, there are profound
similarities between some aspects of HPB's and Krishnaji's teachings
on self-knowledge, the nature of the mind, newness, the self,
understanding, true seeing and the timeless experience, among others.
This article, however, is not an attempt to reconcile the views of
such profoundly different individuals nor to justify why they
differed. It is based on the premise that those who found wisdom
share a perception of life which is fundamentally similar in its
essential aspects for, as it was said of wisdom, `being but one, she
can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things
new'.(1)
***
M. Sufilight comments:
There are similarites between J. Krishnamurti's and HPB's teachings
no doubt. There are also GREAT and HUGE differences, which
are just as important to raise peoples awareness about.
***
Perhaps students of both HPB's and Krishnaji's teachings may find
this present attempt pointless. Some students of HPB's works seem to
see Krishnamurti as a messianic invention by both Annie Besant and C.
W. Leadbeater. On the other hand, some Krishnamurti students tend to
look at the Theosophical Society as if it was `frozen' in the 1920s
while apparently ignoring the fact that it emerged from that
turbulent period reinvigorated by its refusal to ascribe authority to
any person or any teaching, and by insisting that its members are
free to explore the significance of life through their own enquiry.
It is possible that wisdom-teachings from different epochs and
cultures are indeed in dialogue with each other for they embody
aspects of a perennial insight into life's unfathomable depths. The
words of the wise may differ but their language is one.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
Ascribing authority to - one person - is the same a creating a sect.
While Ascribing authority to a teaching or the TRUTH -
There is no Religion Higher than Truth - is what theoosphical teachings is all about.
The truth being, that we shall know them on their fruits and not on
their emotionally oriented creeds level of cunningness.
The Divine is within you and not outside of you is theosophical teaching.
Theosophical teachings never promotes the doctrine of an Avatar in the flesh,
predicting the flesh whiel the await for the spåirit of the Avatar to arrive.
Avatars never arrive like that, even if they want people to believe it.
This aspect of the above teaching by CWL and J. Krishnamurti is and was not theosophical to promote.
Theosophical teaching rather teaches about the Avatar within each individal.
***
Self-knowledge
"The first necessity for obtaining self-knowledge is to become
profoundly conscious of ignorance; to feel with every fibre of the
heart that one is ceaselessly self-deceived."(2)
"To know oneself as one is requires an extraordinary alertness of
mind, because what is is constantly undergoing transformation,
change, and to follow it the mind must not be tethered to any
particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action."(3)
The present age has been hailed as the `information age' and never
than before human beings have a colossal amount of information and
knowledge at their fingertips. Yet, and not surprisingly, self-
knowledge remains elusive and very rare. Both HPB and K suggested
that without alertness and awareness one cannot see through the
deceptions that mental activity creates. Several traditions have
insisted that in order to know oneself there must be impersonal
attention to what happens both within and without. Such attention not
only sees through the machinations and illusions to which we have
become accustomed to call `me' but also brings them to an end. Self-
knowledge is the beginning of transformation.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
This they both told about in true terms and that was good.
But while HPB sought comparative promote studies, J. Krishnamurti sought
to avoid them or at least never encouraged them. The consequences of
such a teaching we all know about. The establisment of a creed or a sect is almost inevitable.
And the wisdom teachings about that each major religion, except a few,
contains the wisdom teaching within their core or original founders teachings.
It is this core, which J. Krishnamurti (and CWL) sought to remove
from the surface of the planet and transplant with J. Krishnamurti's teachings.
Dugpas have a very well developed causal body, you know. Some
are conscious Dugpas others are wellmeaning initiates, who temorarily fall on the path.
They become in part prey to dugpa schemes on one level or the other.
This view is at least just as valid as the view that neither CWL or J. Krishnamurti fell
on the path.
***
The Learning Mind
"He must endeavor as much as possible to free his mind, while
studying or trying to carry out that which is given him, from all the
ideas which he may have derived by heredity, from education, from
surroundings, or from other teachers. His mind should be made
perfectly free from all other thoughts, so that the inner meaning of
the instructions may be impressed upon him apart from the words in
which they are clothed."(4)
"Reality is not as thing which is knowable by the mind, because the
mind is the result of the known, of the past; therefore the mind must
understand itself and its functioning, its truth, and only then is it
possible for the unknown to be."(5)
In order to learn the mind needs to educate itself. The word
education comes from the Latin educere, `lead out'. Fresh
understanding and insight are not possible if the mind is
constantly `crowded' with opinions, second hand knowledge and
reactions. They have to emerge from a deeper source within. The mind
that truly learns is the one that pays attention to what is before
it - the `book of life' - and has an understanding which is both
sensitive and compassionate, which are qualities that can only unfold
in the present moment.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
Compassion will never flourish, when one seeks to promote a teaching
which avoid promoting comparative stuides. Avoiding to do this
is not theoosphical teaching as it was given by HPB.
And I understand that there are extremely few and even rare books
comparing J. Krishnamurtis teachings with other major religions
and HPB's teahcings etc etc.
***
Newness
"Every such attempt as the Theosophical Society has hitherto ended in
failure, because, sooner or later, it has degenerated into a sect,
set up hard-and-fast dogmas of its own, and so lost by imperceptible
degrees that vitality which living truth alone can impart. You must
remember that all our members have been bred and born in some creed
or religion, that all are more or less of their generation both
physically and mentally, and consequently that their judgment is but
too likely to be warped and unconsciously biased by some or all of
these influences. If, then, they cannot be freed from such inherent
bias, or at least taught to recognise it instantly and so avoid being
led away by it, the result can only be that the Society will drift
off on to some sandbank of thought or another, and there remain a
stranded carcass to moulder and die."(6)
***
M. Sufilight comments:
There are carcasses even stemming from people born in India, who
thinks that their own childhood-religon is more important than theosophical
teachings as they were given by HPB, the Masters and other Initiates
like Ammoniuos Saccas etc. etc.
***
"Only when there is no residue of memory can there be newness and
there is residue when experience is not finished, concluded, ended;
that is when the understanding of experience is incomplete. When the
experience is complete, there is no residue - that is the beauty of
life. Love is not residue, love is not experience, it is a state of
being. Love is eternally new."(7)
The world bears ample testimony that mindless identification with an
ideology - religious, political, intellectual, institutional - begets
separateness, aggressiveness, violence and bitter division. It has
been said that the reason why people so identify themselves is
because it gives them a sense of security. But this, alas, is only
one aspect of the problem. The unconscious desire for power and
authority is a very deep undercurrent in the human mind and it has
the capacity to warp and twist our understanding and judgment, thus
preventing us from knowing what newness truly is. Only contact with
what is eternal, beyond time, what HPB referred to as `living truth',
can make newness possible. Such a contact takes place only when there
is the ending of all `residue' - the debris of unfinished experience
which generate conditioning in its many forms.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
And that is why a teaching like J. Krishnamurtis - Messiah-thing - being fostered by
an alleged "former" phaedophile CWL and if true also J. Krishnamurti himself, never will create something
helpful. Instead is is merely an obstacle to the theosophical teachings
as they were given by HPB and the Masters.
***
[E-mail - Cut short, by M. Sufilight]
HPB and Krishnaji never met each other but the essence of what they
taught was perhaps part of a timeless dialogue. For as she co-founded
the Theosophical Society and left a legacy of profound wisdom and
insight, he helped us to realize that the word - the teaching - is
not the thing and that the fragrance of sacredness is to be found in
a life untouched by the self and its pretty concerns.
***
M. Sufilight comments:
No did he?
Most people in public and beginner-seekers just consider him another fraud Messiah of which there are hundreds
to choose from. A fraud Messiah, who never honestly promoted comparative study.
A fraud Messiah who was quoted saying:
And we have Theosophist Magazine September 1932-December 1932
"I presume the T.S. accepts it as its duty to promulgate Theosophy and not to spread or air of other philosophies; if the
former why does it undertake propaganda for the teachings of Krishnamurti? If the latter, why call itself the Theosophical
Society? This is sailing under false colours and is dishonest to humanity. The facts are, that one cannot go to any T.S.
Lodge meeting without hearing about, seeing the books of Krishnamurti. What service is that to mankind- what service is
rendered to Theosophy? It can only do one thing and that is to help fog and cloud the student and help to make his efforts
to learn Theosophy a hundred times more difficult. Kirshnamurti himself is absolutely honest....
In the Star Bulletin August 1931, Page 7 - J. Krishnamurti says:
" So I have made it prefectly clear that what is generally believed by the Christian, the Theosophist, the Hindu, the
Buddhist to be Truth, has nothing in common with what I say"
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tq8aS-ZDu_IC&pg=RA2-PA379&lpg=RA2-PA379&dq=%22Star+Bulletin%22+1931+Krishnamurti&source=w
eb&ots=StjngNWK0k&sig=yBGu2frkW1eUSqpsDYFDftGSKe4#PRA2-PA379,M1
And not to talk about the requirements of people being members of the Order of the Star in the East
if they wanted TS membership. No wonder a number of Seekers broke with the TS back in the old days.
- - -
The leadership in TS Adyar have for years remianed silent about these issues.
No real effort to show that truth about the acivtities and explaining the confusion
a great number of people felt and feel today have been dealt with in an compassionate manner.
And we all wonder why?
***
References:
***
Will TS Adyar explain itself or will we continue to hear a silence so deep
as it would be able to awake the so very "humble" sleeping friar in his Liberal Church.
We know that silence SPEAKS!
M. Sufilight
----- Original Message -----
From: Pedro Oliveira
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 5:12 AM
Subject: Theos-World Blavatsky & Krishnamurti
(The article below is a contribution to a debate that started
sometime in 1909 - or before - and still continues. It was published
in The Theosophist, September 2008. PO)
Blavatsky and Krishnamurti: A Timeless Dialogue
Pedro Oliveira
All true spiritual teachers are unique. They have all shared with
each other, throughout the ages of human evolution on this globe, a
capacity to provoke thinking and to unsettle conditioned minds from
their spiritual slumber. This may explain why many of them were
profoundly misunderstood by their contemporaries. The orthodox
religious mindset prevailing in both India and Judea, for example,
rejected the message of both the Buddha and Jesus Christ. Their
teaching was simply too radical and too disturbing to the
psychological comfort zone of most people in their times.
Genuine spirituality is not concerned with acceptance of beliefs,
explanations, descriptions of the world or presumed spiritual
authority. Its core concern is true spiritual transformation through
the contact with that which is uncreated, timeless and eternal. Such
a transformation, when it is real and not imaginary, brings about a
complete openness of mind and heart that endows every relationship
with a quality of love and understanding that never fades away.
The personalities of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Jiddu Krishnamurti
were quite different. She was born in 1831 to a Russian aristocratic
family, had a fiery temperament and loved adventure and travels. He
was a shy, vacant-looking Telugu-speaking boy born in 1895 to a
Brahmin family in South India. While she went on to found the
Theosophical Society in 1875 and left behind a body of teachings
which became the historical and metaphysical foundations of modern
theosophical literature, he shook the Theosophical Society to its
very core in 1929 when he dissolved the Order of the Star in the East
and ceased his association with the TS and with a role he had not
chosen.
In spite of the abovementioned differences, there are profound
similarities between some aspects of HPB's and Krishnaji's teachings
on self-knowledge, the nature of the mind, newness, the self,
understanding, true seeing and the timeless experience, among others.
This article, however, is not an attempt to reconcile the views of
such profoundly different individuals nor to justify why they
differed. It is based on the premise that those who found wisdom
share a perception of life which is fundamentally similar in its
essential aspects for, as it was said of wisdom, `being but one, she
can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things
new'.(1)
Perhaps students of both HPB's and Krishnaji's teachings may find
this present attempt pointless. Some students of HPB's works seem to
see Krishnamurti as a messianic invention by both Annie Besant and C.
W. Leadbeater. On the other hand, some Krishnamurti students tend to
look at the Theosophical Society as if it was `frozen' in the 1920s
while apparently ignoring the fact that it emerged from that
turbulent period reinvigorated by its refusal to ascribe authority to
any person or any teaching, and by insisting that its members are
free to explore the significance of life through their own enquiry.
It is possible that wisdom-teachings from different epochs and
cultures are indeed in dialogue with each other for they embody
aspects of a perennial insight into life's unfathomable depths. The
words of the wise may differ but their language is one.
Self-knowledge
"The first necessity for obtaining self-knowledge is to become
profoundly conscious of ignorance; to feel with every fibre of the
heart that one is ceaselessly self-deceived."(2)
"To know oneself as one is requires an extraordinary alertness of
mind, because what is is constantly undergoing transformation,
change, and to follow it the mind must not be tethered to any
particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action."(3)
The present age has been hailed as the `information age' and never
than before human beings have a colossal amount of information and
knowledge at their fingertips. Yet, and not surprisingly, self-
knowledge remains elusive and very rare. Both HPB and K suggested
that without alertness and awareness one cannot see through the
deceptions that mental activity creates. Several traditions have
insisted that in order to know oneself there must be impersonal
attention to what happens both within and without. Such attention not
only sees through the machinations and illusions to which we have
become accustomed to call `me' but also brings them to an end. Self-
knowledge is the beginning of transformation.
The Learning Mind
"He must endeavor as much as possible to free his mind, while
studying or trying to carry out that which is given him, from all the
ideas which he may have derived by heredity, from education, from
surroundings, or from other teachers. His mind should be made
perfectly free from all other thoughts, so that the inner meaning of
the instructions may be impressed upon him apart from the words in
which they are clothed."(4)
"Reality is not as thing which is knowable by the mind, because the
mind is the result of the known, of the past; therefore the mind must
understand itself and its functioning, its truth, and only then is it
possible for the unknown to be."(5)
In order to learn the mind needs to educate itself. The word
education comes from the Latin educere, `lead out'. Fresh
understanding and insight are not possible if the mind is
constantly `crowded' with opinions, second hand knowledge and
reactions. They have to emerge from a deeper source within. The mind
that truly learns is the one that pays attention to what is before
it - the `book of life' - and has an understanding which is both
sensitive and compassionate, which are qualities that can only unfold
in the present moment.
Newness
"Every such attempt as the Theosophical Society has hitherto ended in
failure, because, sooner or later, it has degenerated into a sect,
set up hard-and-fast dogmas of its own, and so lost by imperceptible
degrees that vitality which living truth alone can impart. You must
remember that all our members have been bred and born in some creed
or religion, that all are more or less of their generation both
physically and mentally, and consequently that their judgment is but
too likely to be warped and unconsciously biased by some or all of
these influences. If, then, they cannot be freed from such inherent
bias, or at least taught to recognise it instantly and so avoid being
led away by it, the result can only be that the Society will drift
off on to some sandbank of thought or another, and there remain a
stranded carcass to moulder and die."(6)
"Only when there is no residue of memory can there be newness and
there is residue when experience is not finished, concluded, ended;
that is when the understanding of experience is incomplete. When the
experience is complete, there is no residue - that is the beauty of
life. Love is not residue, love is not experience, it is a state of
being. Love is eternally new."(7)
The world bears ample testimony that mindless identification with an
ideology - religious, political, intellectual, institutional - begets
separateness, aggressiveness, violence and bitter division. It has
been said that the reason why people so identify themselves is
because it gives them a sense of security. But this, alas, is only
one aspect of the problem. The unconscious desire for power and
authority is a very deep undercurrent in the human mind and it has
the capacity to warp and twist our understanding and judgment, thus
preventing us from knowing what newness truly is. Only contact with
what is eternal, beyond time, what HPB referred to as `living truth',
can make newness possible. Such a contact takes place only when there
is the ending of all `residue' - the debris of unfinished experience
which generate conditioning in its many forms.
No Self-seeking
"The Book of the Golden Precepts - some of which are pre-Buddhistic
while others belong to a later date - contains about ninety distinct
little treatises. Of these I learnt thirty-nine by heart, years ago.
To translate the rest, I should have to resort to notes scattered
among a too large number of papers and memoranda collected for the
last twenty years and never put in order, to make of it by any means
an easy task. Nor could they be all translated and given to a world
too selfish and too much attached to objects of sense to be in any
way prepared to receive such exalted ethics in the right spirit. For,
unless a man perseveres seriously in the pursuit of self-knowledge,
he will never lend a willing ear to advice of this nature."(8)
"Therefore there is no method for self-knowledge. Seeking a method
invariably implies the desire to attain some result - and that is
what we all want. We follow authority - if not that of a person, then
of a system, of an ideology - because we want a result which will be
satisfactory, which will give us security. We really do not want to
understand ourselves, our impulses and reactions, the whole process
of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would
rather pursue a system which assures us of a result. But the pursuit
of a system is invariably the outcome of our desire for security, for
certainty, and the result is obviously not the understanding of
oneself."(9)
One of the interesting phenomena in the world today is the `self-
help' industry. It is a big business world wide, commanding millions
of dollars and involving the production of many books, DVDs,
seminars, workshops, etc. A pattern that pervades this industry is
that it offers people what they want - fulfillment, wealth, pleasure,
recognition, personal power, psychic abilities, kundalini awakening,
among many other things. Invariably, in such industry questioning the
patterns of self-seeking is not encouraged as the aim is to enhance
the capacities and powers of the personal self. And yet, the advice
of the wise ones throughout the ages has been always the same: be
aware of your motives, learn to look at yourself impersonally, be
alert to the trappings created by self-interest. Self-seeking goes in
the opposite direction of self-knowledge. The former imprisons us
more and more in illusion and frustration; the latter opens the
gateway to true spiritual freedom.
Activity of the Mind
"The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.
Let the Disciple slay the Slayer."(10)
"Now what is the mind as it is functioning? It is actually a process
of isolation, is it not? Fundamentally that is what the process of
thought is. It is thinking in an isolated form, yet remaining
collective. When you observe your own thinking, you will see it as an
isolated, fragmentary process. You are thinking according to your
reactions, the reactions of your memory, of your experience, of your
knowledge, of your belief."(11)
In the above passages, both HPB and Krishnaji point out one of the
essential features of the activity of the mind: its self-created
separation from Reality. Our minds, under the sway of self-centered
activity, prevent us from having a true and complete relationship
with life in all its splendour. Unless we actually see for ourselves
the continuous process of isolation created by the personal mind it
is of no use anybody telling us about it. In the strongly
metaphorical language of The Voice of the Silence, one has to `slay
the Slayer', which may mean looking at all mental activity -
thoughts, memories, emotions, reactions - without automatically
identifying with it.
What is the Self?
"The Self of matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meet.
One of the twain must disappear; there is no place for both."(12)
"Where you are, the other is not."(13)
Evolution is a vast process, stretching to almost unimaginable
periods of time. Throughout this process consciousness unfolds many
capacities and at the human stage it is centred in the mind and its
activities. Even emotional responses are dependent upon and
conditioned by mental activity. Thus the mind becomes the centre of
our individuality, which has at its core a strong, resistant and
resilient sense of self. It is like a fortress in which self-image
and self-importance are the protecting walls.
A close consideration and study reveal that such sense of
individuality and self are not natural developments of the
evolutionary movement. They are acquired and are the mind's response
to the process of experience. When the experience is pleasant there
is identification and attachment. When it is unpleasant, there is
repulsion and avoidance. But the wise ones have taught that we do not
need to remain in such a state of bondage, that freedom is possible
and that that freedom is within, for it is what we really are: the
Other, the One without a second, the Self of all things, the
uncreated Order.
Dying to the Past
"Long and weary is the way before thee, O Disciple. One single thought
about the past that thou hast left behind, will drag thee down and
thou wilt have to start the climb anew."(14)
"Kill in thyself all memory of past experiences. Look not behind or
thou art lost."(15)
"When the mind is agitated, questioning, worrying, dissecting,
analyzing, there is no understanding. When there is the intensity to
understand, the mind is obviously tranquil."(16)
Past impressions have a strong pull on the mind and condition its
activity. Perhaps one of the reasons why we dwell such much on the
memory of past experiences is because of our profound attachment to
and identification with our self-image. This intense process causes a
serious drainage of energy and in order to know ourselves we need the
energy of attention and wakefulness. Life only happens in the present
and continuous attention to the present is necessary for the mind to
gain that capacity of seeing things clearly. There is no light in
past experiences.
Learning to Listen and to See
"Unless thou hearest, thou canst not see.
Unless thou seest thou canst not hear."(17)
"To understand a problem obviously requires a certain intelligence,
and that intelligence cannot be derived from or cultivated through
specialization. It comes only when we are passively aware of the
whole process of our consciousness, which is to be aware of ourselves
without choice, without choosing what is right and what is
wrong."(18)
Most people seem to have no difficulty in hearing and seeing what is
happening around them. In scientific work, the capacity for hearing
and seeing has been developed to a great degree and we now have, for
example, potent telescopes that send images from the farthest reaches
of the universe that one can see in one's home computer! But it is
quite another matter to hear and see what is actually happening
within oneself. In the US recently an astronaut, highly trained
scientifically and intellectually, was charged with attempting to
assault another fellow astronaut who apparently got in the way of her
romantic interest. To truly learn how to see and listen to what
happens within one's consciousness requires a quiet objectivity and
dispassion, an awareness that comes into being when one realizes that
the honest confrontation of oneself is the only sane alternative.
Looking Without Images
"For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects. It
needs the gentle breezes of Soul-Wisdom to brush away the dust of our
illusions. Seek O Beginner, to blend thy Mind and Soul."(19)
"To look is important. We look to immediate things and out of
immediate necessities to the future, coloured by the past. Our seeing
is very limited and our eyes are accustomed to near things. Our look
is as bound by time-space as our brain. We never look, we never see
beyond this limitation; we do not know how to look through and beyond
these fragmentary frontiers. But the eyes have to see beyond them,
penetrating deeply and widely, without choosing, without shelter;
they have to wander beyond man-made frontiers of ideas and values and
to feel beyond love."(20)
In both above-mentioned statements one aspect of the mind's
conditioning is highlighted. As St Paul wrote, `now we see through a
glass, darkly' (1Cor.13:12). Whatever we see - Nature, other people,
ourselves - we see it through the dark glass of our conditioning, our
psychological memory, the accumulated impressions of many
experiences, reactions, predilections as well as inherited responses.
These become inbuilt in the very process of perception. On the other
hand, when there is the glimmering of wisdom within there is a new
perception that reveals the intrinsic nature of everything. As C.
Jinarajadasa wrote, `even a wayside flower throbs with the message of
the cosmos'. For the unaware a wayside flower is just another little
flower like all others; for someone who is learning to look without
images, it is an embodiment of timeless beauty, order and grace.
Love is the Only Real Relationship
"To reach Nirvana one must reach Self-Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge
is of loving deeds the child."(21)
"There can be true relationship only when there is love but love is
not the search for gratification. Love exists only when there is self-
forgetfulness, when there is complete communion, not between one or
two, but communion with the highest; and that can only take place
when the self is forgotten."(22)
HPB's statement quoted above is nothing short of revolutionary. There
will be some for whom self-knowledge is a private, individual affair,
and who tend to shun relationships as `obstacles' on their way to
knowing themselves. But her words clearly indicate that it is only
through love that Self-knowledge comes, almost as if suggesting that
loving deeds helps us to gain access to a much deeper dimension
within ourselves. Krishnaji's statement that love exists only where
there is self-forgetfulness equally implies that genuine love is free
from the entanglements that arise from self-centered activity. In a
fundamental sense, there is no difference between self-knowledge and
love in their true meaning.
Freedom from Oneself
"The way to final freedom is within thy SELF.
That way begins and ends outside of Self."(23)
"The fundamental understanding of oneself does not come through
knowledge or through accumulation of experiences, which is merely the
cultivation of memory. The understanding of oneself is from moment to
moment; if we merely accumulate knowledge of the self, that very
knowledge prevents further understanding, because accumulated
knowledge and experience becomes the centre through which thought
focuses and has its being."(24)
The word `paradox' has a very interesting etymology. It is a Greek
composite word: para, `beyond', and doxa, `opinion'. A paradox,
therefore, is an expression or a teaching that challenges, perturbs
and unsettles accepted opinions on a given subject. The passage from
The Voice of the Silence quoted above is a paradox: freedom is within
us but the way to it begins and ends outside of self. The ample
canvas of human experience throughout the ages attests to the fact
that any self-based endeavour sooner or later ends in frustration. As
the well-known saying affirms, `the path of Occultism [or Self-
Knowledge] is strewn with wrecks'. Illustrating the insidious ways of
the personal self, the Buddha, in one of his sermons, compared the
self to a stranger that comes in the dead of night to a household,
asks for food and shelter, gets liked by all the family in the
household, and eventually kills the householder and takes over his
entire property and family. Unless one is self-aware, from moment to
moment, as suggested by Krishnaji, inner freedom remains elusive.
Another paradox: in order to know oneself one has to be free from
oneself as a product of past experiences.
Undying Life
"He standeth now like a white pillar to the west, upon whose face the
rising Sun of thought eternal poureth forth its first most glorious
waves. His mind, like a becalmed and boundless ocean, spreadeth out
in shoreless space. He holdeth life and death in his strong
hand."(25)
"Life is always the active present; time always belongs to the past
and so to the future. And death to time is life in the present. It is
this life that is immortal, not life in consciousness. Time is
thought in consciousness and consciousness is held within its frame.
There is always fear and sorrow within the network of thought and
feeling. The ending of sorrow is the ending of time."(26)
The word 'samsâra' means, among other things, going or wandering
through the circuit of mundane existence, the world, worldly
illusion. It is described in ancient scriptures as a wheel that
imprisons the soul or mind in birth, death and rebirth. One of the
strongest currents in the mighty stream of samsâra is 'avidyâ', the
primordial or beginningless ignorance or unawareness. Great seers
have maintained that it is ignorance that attaches us to life and
makes us afraid of death; such a pattern has dominated human life on
earth for millennia.
But in every age there have been those few who have walked into the
wilderness, through uncharted territory, and discovered the truth
about the human condition. One of their fundamental discoveries is
that life and death are not opposites that we should fear or become
attached to. They are simply two aspects of the same existence. It is
our perception of them that makes them appear separate and distinct,
but they are one.
There is life in death, and death in life. To die to all experiences,
all attachments, all projected images of oneself and of others is to
discover uncreated, immortal life. And to live without accumulating
experiences but understanding them as they arise and to be completely
free from the tyranny of time which breaks the unbreakable Whole into
past, present and future, is to welcome renewal. In such a
consciousness suffering comes to an end, naturally, effortlessly.
HPB and Krishnaji never met each other but the essence of what they
taught was perhaps part of a timeless dialogue. For as she co-founded
the Theosophical Society and left a legacy of profound wisdom and
insight, he helped us to realize that the word - the teaching - is
not the thing and that the fragrance of sacredness is to be found in
a life untouched by the self and its pretty concerns.
References:
1. Wisdom of Solomon, 7:27
2. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. VIII, edited by Boris de
Zirkoff, Theosophical Publishing House: Madras, 1960, p. 109.
3. Krishnamurti, J. First and Last Freedom, Victor Gollancz: London,
1961, p. 44.
4. Collected Writings, op. cit. vol. XII, p. 493.
5. Krishnamurti, op.cit., p. 98.
6. Blavatsky, H. P. The Key to Theosophy, Theosophical Publishing
House: London, 1968, Conclusion.
7. Krishnamurti, op.cit., p. 247.
8. Blavatsky, H. P. The Voice of the Silence, The Theosophical
Publishing House: Chennai, 1998, Preface.
9. Krishnamurti, op.cit., p. 47.
10.Blavatsky, op. cit., I, 4-5.
11.Krishnamurti, op.cit., p. 115-116.
12.Blavatsky, op. cit., I, 56.
13.Within the Mind - On J. Krishnamurti published by Krishnamurti
Foundation India: Madras, 1983, p. 13.
14.Blavatsky, op. cit., I, 74.
15.op. cit., I, 75.
16.Krishnamurti, op.cit., p. 242.
17.Blavatsky, op. cit., I, 82-83.
18.Krishnamurti, op.cit., p. 96.
19.Blavatsky, op. cit., II, 115.
20.Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti's Notebook Krishnamurti Foundation
India: Chennai, 2003, p. 34.
21.Blavatsky, op. cit., II, 136.
22.Krishnamurti, J. First and Last Freedom, pp. 180-181.
23.Blavatsky, op. cit., II, 169-170.
24.Krishnamurti, op. cit., p. 46.
25.Blavatsky, op. cit., III, 282.
26.Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti's Notebook, p. 143.
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