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June 3, 2000
Dear Govert,
Since publication of my article, "What
Really Happened to Krishnamurti" I have been reading
your article "Centennial
Efforts and Counter Efforts of the Millennium"
and I have a few snippets of information which may be of
interest to you and your readers.
I came across one of the main stimuli for your article
- the late John R. Wilkinson (known as Jack to his friends)
- in the twilight of his life here in Perth, Western Australia.
Because of the deep Theosophical interests we had in common,
myself and a lady friend were often invited to dine with
John and his wife Gwen and we had several interesting discussions
about his past. When he was a young man John was taken up
by the Theosophical Gnostic seer and teacher Charles Webster
Leadbeater for encouragement and training as one of his
special young people and was one of two outstanding young
men of the time who resided in Perth who were especially
privileged in this respect. I might add in passing that
whatever is now said about C.W. Leadbeater, he left behind
him many perennial contributions based upon his very real
superphysical insights. On those matters nearer home (rather
perhaps than the canals of Mars) he was often amazingly
accurate. Although it is now fashionable to query whether
C.W.L.'s seership was of a self-deluded variety there are
many anecdotes from people who knew him in Perth and elsewhere
to indicate that in most cases he saw true. This ability
continued for many years of his vastly productive life and
stayed with him right until his death. As evidence of this
another Perth Theosophical identity of my acquaintance,
the late Wing Commander Oswald Gregson O.B.E., told me that
he once knew a lady who nursed C.W. Leadbeater on his deathbed
at St. Omar's hospital (now no longer extant) in Perth.
And she said, "Oh, yes, I remember him, he was a strange
old man, he said he could see his heart beating inside his
chest and described it as being like a large, inflamed,
red tomato." What the nurse obviously took for an hallucination
of a dying man was probably quite an objective even a Socratic
observation, as C.W. Leadbeater was able to focus his higher
sense perceptions on the generalized oedema which was to
cause his death.
At any rate the keynote of John's life was that he was
a great student of Theosophical detail, able to digest massive
amounts of data, even incorporating them in charts and lists,
and with a great seer like C.W. Leadbeater around there
was plenty of data to collect and digest. And John's Theosophist
1930 article which you quoted with your interesting footnotes
and built upon in your own article, was one attempt to systemise
such information into useable form. Unfortunately, that
article must have been pretty close to being John's last
contribution to Theosophical work, at least for many long
years. The fact of the matter was that he was shortly to
become a victim of the Krishnamurti defection from The T.S.
He followed K. away from the Theosophical impulse into his
pathless land. He was not of course the only person to do
so many others, and even distinguished Theosophists of substantial
intellect and inner attainment such as Dr. J.J. van der
Leeuw, also got caught up in the same problem. One of Geoffrey
Hodson's descriptions for this sort of development was enshrined
in Aesop's fable of the dog who seeing his reflection in
the water dropped his bone in order to grasp at the reflection
- dropping the substance as it were for the shadow. Sometimes,
of course we have to make mistakes in order to find ourselves,
that is a normal part of human growth. The central issue
was and ever will be that once a person is sufficiently
awake to understand that the higher reaches of the spiritual
life are linked to the personal acceptance and implementation
of the Path Ideal, such an aspirant should largely have
outgrown the need for new or novel forms of illumination.
Any real technique of yoga or related discipline that may
be needed will automatically be supplied as a result of
the correct implementation of the preceding phase of spiritual
progress - our welfare is well cared for by The Inner Government
of the world in this respect. But because we humans have
a psychological as well as an intellectual component our
development does not always flow in a linear manner and
we often get caught up in eddies in the current.
At the time that I met John he had just returned as a member
of The Theosophical Society and as a priest in The Liberal
Catholic Church, these organisations of course have not
been without their own problems, but they were erected with
inner validity upon The Path Ideal and sincere seekers can
still therefore find the Path Ideal through them. I had
got to know John sufficiently well over the few years that
were left to him to one day ask him the following question,
"Jack, you knew C.W. Leadbeater very well and the level
of insight that he possessed; in all your years studying
Krishnamurti and meeting other devotees, can you ever remember
finding anyone who demonstrated the same degree of insight
to you as CWL?" He thought reflectively for a few seconds
and then in an honest and unemotional way he simply said
"No".
Kindest regards,
Bill Keidan
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