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20. SCOTT AND ANRIAS: WOOD AND THE
BLIND RISHI
This is perhaps a moment at which we may pause in the story
to consider sallies against Krishnamurti by two anonymously
and pseudonymously publishing authors, who knew each other,
and whose books, which achieved wide popularity in the 1930's
are cited still. First, there is The Initiate in the
Dark Cycle, last of a trilogy of Initiate books
and the only one that need concern us here. Originally published
as By His Pupil, Cyril Scott later acknowledged authorship
of them. The storyteller tells of meeting in worldly London
a man of strikingly original ideas, who seems as other men
until he passes through a solid wall - so he must be an
Initiate. Through him the author meets Viola, whom he marries
- the change of flower-name thinly veiling Scott's wife,
Rose. It is in the third book that she and the author fall
to talking with their friends about Krishnamurti. They query
whether one could call a Teacher a man who maintained that
nobody, however exalted, could teach anyone anything at
all. They liken Krishnamurti to a World-Piano-Teacher come
to tell us "all piano professors were so many obstacles
to our ever learning the piano." (1)
The quip is unfair, because Krishnamurti has always excepted
from his remarks, here somewhat misunderstood, those things
- skills - which require for their acquisition time and
practice, such as learning to speak a foreign language or
play a musical instrument. If someone had told him he wanted
to learn to play the piano, Krishnamurti would certainly
have said he should go to a piano teacher.
Scott may not have known that Krishnamurti had already founded
two schools for children in India; later he would found
ones in the west. Though the object was to create a spiritually
favourable ambience, the teachers employed had all to have
proper qualifications in their subjects.
Then Viola says of the theosophists: (2)
They've
been taught, too that the Masters are their Elder Brothers,
lovingly trying to guide them . . . Krishnamurti comes along
and tells them that Masters are only crutches.
He did not say the Masters were only crutches, but that
an intermediary was only a crutch. What he was getting at
was dependence on persons professing to transmit messages
from Masters. If there is a universal telepathy, an aspiration
of the mind must draw a response (Blavatsky would say through
the pineal gland) which will be direct, as when the answer
to a question just comes to one. [165]
Viola continues: (3)
They're floundering
hopelessly in the void, poor things . . . They're wondering
if what they were taught before was only a lovely fiction
. . .
Yes, many were, and it must be conceded he was taking them
through his own dark night of the soul. She says:
He's taken everything
from them - reincarnation survival, meetings with their
loved ones after death.
Yet, when he knew that Rosalind had had a child, his immediate
hope was that it might be Nitya come back - so very close
to him that he could tend her cradle.
Viola says that for her, Krishnamurti is "simply the
Apostle of Negation".4 Actually, we shall later find
him saying he proceeds by negation of the false - because
the most holy things can never be defined affirmatively.
If one tries to say what love is, one can never find a definition
of it that does not in some way fall short. But one can
very well say what it is not: it is not desire to achieve
domination over, to possess and exhibit. . . When one has
seen these urges for what they are, there is the chance
for the real thing, love, to come through. Viola continues:
(4)
We're told we
can't reach the goal through worship, or art or beauty .
. . Why on earth not?
I think the trick phrase here is "reach the goal through".
As soon as one does something with an ulterior end in view,
even if a spiritual one, it ceases to be pure. Many a painter,
composer or poet must have felt at times that something
was coming through that he did not know he had in him, but
to set about his work with the intention of becoming more
spiritually advanced through it would be self-defeating.
Shelley says, even the greatest poet cannot say "I
will compose poetry", for "some invisible influence"
is "an inconstant wind" (5) - Krishnamurti would
add, "which cannot be summoned by will; it comes, or
not, as it will."
Scott and his wife and friends discuss whether Krishnamurti
is teaching Advaita, a total monism in which people
have no existence, Scott quotes from one of his Star
bulletins:
The "I"
is the limitation of separateness . . . remove this wall
of limitation.
When Krishnamurti attributes a bad sense to the words "I"
and "me", he has in mind the competitive sense
and illusion that "my" good can be obtained at
the expense of "yours". I really do not think
he is saying we do not exist. Consciousness needs its vehicle,
be that only a single cell of the finest matter, but the
cells' walls are permeable, permitting a universal telepathy.
The waves of life pass through it so that we are never separated.
St. Paul says it beautifully, "We are members one of
another." (6) The meaning is [166] not that we do not
exist. If I may quote from my paper on Scott an image that
came to me while I was writing it: if I look at a rose,
loving the depths of its colour, the shape into which its
petals curl, its perfume, that is one thing; but if 1 see
myself looking at the rose, there is no more the rose, but
only me. While I was looking at the rose, there was only
it and I was not. (7)
Later in the story, the Initiate takes the author to a hidden
house in the country and introduces him to a mysterious
Sir Thomas, whom it is implied is a Master. The author asks
him about Krishnamurti, and is told that since he took the
Arhat initiation he ceased to be the medium of the Lord
Maitreya:
"Better if he had retired from public life to meditate
in seclusion, as Arhats did in bygone days." (8)
No, Krishnamurti took but a poor view of retiring to meditate
in seclusion, which seemed to him a denial of life and human
relationship, and he took his mission to be, precisely,
to travel round and round the world and teach, since he
had accepted his role as World Teacher.
Then the supposed Master is made to say a most malicious
and unworthy thing: (9)
Like the proverbial
manservant who knows he's about to be given notice, he
gave notice first.
No, he did not give notice. He accepted the job. Sir Thomas
went on:
"In other
words, he cut himself adrift from the White Lodge, and repudiated
all of us."
But, no. He had taken on the job. Scott makes Sir Thomas
go on:
"Also instead
of giving forth the new Teaching so badly needed, he escaped
from the responsibilities of his office ... by reverting
to a past incarnation, and an ancient philosophy of his
own race ... which is useless for the Western World in the
present Cycle."
No. The ancient philosophy of his race, the philosophy of
the Vedas seeks moksha, liberation from life
in physical form, as indeed does Buddhism: incarnation is
regarded as a misery to be escaped from. It is Krishnamurti
who asks why this end should be sought; who constantly returns
one to the everyday life of this world that we are in, which
we do not have to make a misery of living in. It has beauties
enough to offer. A life of spiritual integrity can be lived
here. And that should be more useful to the Western World.
David Anrias appears in this book as a character whom the
author and his wife have just met. Viola says Krishnamurti's
philosophy is no use to her: (10)
"Naturally"
David replied. "It's not much use to any woman.
In fact, only those who have practised Raja Yoga as men
in past incarnations, like H. P. B. and A. B. can get anything
out of it at all. [167]
But this is just not true. Some of those quickest at grasping
what Krishnamurti is talking about have been women. Some
of them have appeared in this story already; more will appear
as it progresses.
And what has Raja Yoga to do with it? The name, Kingly Yoga,
suggests control over the lower by the higher. But Krishnamurti
shifts the emphasis from control to perception, and the
whole beauty of his teaching is that it can be understood
by anybody, without preparation; or at least, preparation
gives no advantage.
Sir Thomas says: "Guru not allowed by Krishnamurti"
but "long-continued meditation" without the protection
of a Master had its dangers. (11)
Here there are two misunderstandings. Krishnamurti never
allowed or disallowed anything. One may learn from many
things and many people, including sometimes from a guru.
Formal meditation, in the sense of sitting with lowered
eyelids, he had given up and did not encourage others to
practise. Serious thought about anything was meditation,
but could be done on the wing, as it were, while walking
down a street ... To set aside a particular time for it
had come to seem to him a little pseudo, getting oneself
into a "state" without necessarily becoming kinder,
wiser or more insightful.
Finally, Sir Thomas pats his dog, and says, "My friend,
if even the King told you your Master was superfluous, I
don't think you'd believe him, eh?" (12)
The analogy is false, because the dog's relationship with
his master is direct and true, his affection without arrière
pensée. There is no corrupting thought such as
that by going about with the master he is going up the ladder,
making spiritual progress - though in fact this is so.
I would not like it to be thought that I dislike Scott;
I enjoy playing his music and as an observer of life he
has many perceptive and interesting things to say. But the
story told in the Initiate trilogy is fictitious,
and I have tried in my paper on him to show the partial
models amongst his acquaintance from whom the characters
in the books are made up; but neither he nor his wife could
understand Krishnamurti. Perhaps they do now. The wife,
at any rate, was beginning to have glimmerings as appear
in her own later books, she too being an author.
In the same year, 1932, appeared Through the Eyes of
the Masters, Meditations and Portraits, by David Anrias.
I wrote to Adyar to ask what they could tell me about him
and had a reply from Pedro R. M. Oliveira, International
Secretary, saying that according to their records his name
was Brian Ross. He did not appear to have become a member
of the Society but stayed there for two years before going
back to England. According to the 'Introduction by the Author
of The Initiate etc', he returned to England in 1927,
so we have 1925-27 as the approximate time of his being
out there.
His first chapter is on 'The Rishi of the Nilgiri Hills',
the Adept he claims as his own particular Master, but who
is the only one of whom he does not [168] provide a portrait
'unexplained'. I will consider later the question of the
possible relationship of Anrias with this venerable Hindu,
but here cite only the reason ascribed to him for the Masters
to be allowing their portraits to be drawn - for the restoration
of the faith in them destroyed by Krishnamurti, who "depreciated
the value of the Masters as Teachers and Guides." (13)
Here is the old misunderstanding. Krishnamurti never depreciated
the Masters -real ones, though he felt that a lot of people
had illusionary conceptualizations of them. I do not feel
that this was a mistake which this Rishi would have made.
Anrias has him say some (14)
like Krishnamurti,
who have been inspired by Devas associated with the new
forces to assume the role of Shiva, the Destroyer, have
lost touch with their original ray . . .
I simply do not believe this. The author's idea of the Master
Rakoczy as the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary who shot
himself is, I am sure, inspired by a film called Mayerling,
not by that Master - who fought for an independent Hungary
against Austria. Anrias seems to have true perceptions about
some things, but is not to be relied on. He has the Maitreya
say to him: (15)
In order to co-operate
more completely with the Devas, Krishnamurti took initiations
along their line of evolution. The essential nature of these
Devas, used as agents of the Great Law, being perforce impersonal
and detached, it came by degrees to influence his whole
point of view, making him appear unsympathetic and even
inhuman.
I have heard some serious theosophists express themselves
impressed by this as an explanation, yet it seems to me
to rest on a misconception. The word bdeva is Tibetan,
the initial b being silent, and means shining one,
and it applies to a whole range of entities that do not
have bodies denser than the etheric - the whole realm of
what we would call the kingdom of faerie and upwards through
all the grades to the highest angels. But the distinguishing
characteristic of the devas is their specialization; they
do only one thing; they tend the growth of plants, they
live in and so inspire music, they tend women in childbirth,
or a shrine, blessing those who come to worship at it; but
only the one thing. The deva at the shrine does not accompany
the worshipper back to his home or take any interest in
his activities other than worshipping at that shrine. A
human, on the other hand, does many things: lives perhaps
in a family, has perhaps a spouse and children and is concerned
with them, has a professional occupation, for the earning
of a living, and perhaps a leisure-time occupation as well,
reads books . . . so many things. Krishnamurti was not a
narrow specialist and indeed disliked specialization, preferring
open involvement, and he could change a baby's nappies and
hose out a cow-shed as well as drive a car. Roles so specialized
as those of the devas must render them impersonal, but Krishnamurti,
if his platform manner [169] was cool, had relationships
that were very personal, some of them very warm, and one
would have expected the Maitreya to know that.
I am in doubt as to the relationship ofAnrias with the adept
he claims as his special teacher. Scott in his Introduction
says: (16)
After years of
effort he succeeded in establishing a rapport with the Adept
known as the Rishi of the Nilgiri Hills, to whom he acquired
the capacity of mentally "tuning in". This venerable
Sage specialises in Astrology and it is to his tuition Anrias
owes . . .
But in his book, The Initiate in the Dark Cycle,
Scott said:(17)
he told us . .
. he used to retire for months at a time to a place in the
Nilgiri Hills, where he practised meditation under the tuition
of the Master whom Madame Blavatsky referred to as the Old
Gentleman of the Nilgiri Hills. This master specialises
in astrology in relation to cosmic forces.
In this version he was instructed by the master on the physical
plane, in the other not.
Now this is the yogi of whom Olcott reproduces in his Old
Diary Leaves, the portrait made for him by Madame Blavatsky.(18)
He thought she called him Tiravala, though he imagined she
meant Tiruvalluvar; a Southern Indian, a landed proprietor,
living in the Nilgiri Hills; he of the "pencils"
(19) and "Old Horse" (20) incidents who studied
"the relationship of cosmic cycles with fixed points
in stellar constellations".(21) Quoting from Madame
Blavatsky's diary, he refers to him as "N-" but
in her diary we read "Narayan".(22) Leadbeater,
when writing The Lives of Alcyone, gave him the star
name "Jupiter", and it is as such he refers to
him in The Masters and the Path.(23)
But it is Ernest Wood who gives us the most intimate portrait
of the ascetic. One reached him by the Madras-Mysore railway
line, getting off at Tiruvallam (on my atlas Tiruvallar)
from which one walked across some fields and ridges of earth
that bordered cultivated plots, to his cottage. He was slight
of stature, had a white beard and wore only a loin-cloth.(24)
He was a Tamil speaker and his name was Nagaratnaswami,
though the locals called him the Kurruttu Paradeshi, blind
wanderer. Though poor, he was proprietor of some land, and
though blind he got about between villages in the Nilgiri
Hills by bullock-cart, the mystery to Wood being how the
little bullock knew which turnings he had to take, his driver
being blind. Wood stayed with him for a week at a time.
The sage told him a mistake (25) had been made by theosophists
in describing him as the Master of Madame Blavatsky's Master.
What he had told someone who came out from Adyar to see
him was that she and he had the same Master, who was also
Wood's Master. His name was Sitaram Bhavaji and he had been
in London since 1850.(26) Now this accords with what Madame
Blavatsky always said, that it was in London, in 1850, she
first met Morya, when he came over in the train of the Prime
Minister of Nepaul and rode in [170] the Procession through
Hyde Park. The name Morya, by which he allowed her to call
him in her writings, is surely derived from that of the
great southern Indian dynasty of Mauryas or Moryas, founded
by the Emperor Chandragupta Maurya or Morya, a contemporary
of Alexander the Great, grandfather of the Emperor Asoka
who reigned 272-32 B. C. They were a Kshattriya dynasty,
hence foe to the Brahmins and protector of the Buddhists
against the Brahmins, so our Morya, a Rajput Kshattriya,
probably meant by this choice of a pseudonym to signify
his inheritance or continuance of Chandragupta's intent
to break up the caste system.
Nagaratnaswami told Wood he met this great Mahatma when
the latter visited southern India. Working with him there
was a Kashmiri Master, "a younger man who had been
educated at Oxford." This obviously is Koot Hoomi,
who Blavatsky said was at an English University and whom
she styles "a Northern Brahmin" and Subba Rao
and Leadbeater give as a Kashmiri Brahmin. While researching
for my Blavatsky I noticed that Olcott, in relating
his visit with her to the Golden Temple, said he noticed
amongst the guardians a Master described in terms he normally
reserved for Koot Hoomi. I did not see how anyone could
figure amongst the guardians of the Golden Temple, if only
for the moment, unless a Sikh: and this brought me to the
considerations I expressed in the chapter, "The Sikhs:
Morya and Koot Hoomi" in my biography of Blavatsky.
Yet there is not necessarily a dichotomy involved. One can
only be born a Brahmin but one can become a Sikh. The five
original Sikhs were of the four castes plus one outcaste,
who vowed to end the caste system. Many Rajputs became Sikhs
and so there is no impossibility in a Kashmiri Brahmin's
having done likewise. Both Morya and Koot Hoomi insisted
that Brahmins joining the Theosophical Society and wishing
to become their pupils must break caste, as Damodar did
- and of course Krishna and Nitya did.
The name Koot Hoomi has caused great perplexity, meaning
nothing in any known language. The Vishnu Purana,
however, refers (in H. H. Wilson's translation, book III,
p.60) to a Kuthumi who was one of the original transmitters
of the Vedas, and it occurred to me that Madame Blavatsky
might have decided to spell the name Koot Hoomi in order
to prevent English people from pronouncing the th
as in "thumb". I suggested that in a letter to
the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University
of London and received a reply from their C. Shackle, Head
of lndiology and of the Modem Languages and Literature of
South Asia, saying my letter had been seen by his colleagues
and "none of us can come up with a better explanation
than the one you suggest." Leadbeater writes the name
Kuthumi, and English people do, in consequence, pronounce
the th as in "thumb" instead of separately,
as should be as in cart-horse or out-house.
Thus, I think we may regard the Master whom Leadbeater taught
the boy Krishna to regard as his own Master (under the Maitreya
and the Buddha) as [171] a Kashmir Brahmin who had broken
caste and become a Sikh. The Sikhs have always had good
relations with the Buddhists, as well as with the Sufis.
One could say they are somewhat eclectic.
So was it Koot Hoomi who supplied that bit of Shankara which
Ernest Wood detected in the booklet At the Feet of the
Master which Krishna apparently brought out of his sleep?
We shall never know.
Nagaratnaswami knew that a great teacher was coming and
told Wood that he (Wood) would not leave India until after
the coming of Nanjunda (Maitreya), the One who was to be
Expected. Wood would be the teacher of the one who was to
be his teacher.(27) Wood remembered this when he was detailed
to give lessons in English, Sanskrit and arithmetic to Krishna.
Was Nagaratnaswami still living when Anrias came, roughly
in the late 1920s? The astrology of Anrias is western. He
casts his charts in what is known as the Tropical (meaning
Turning) Zodiac, in which 0 Aries is by definition the intersection
of the ecliptic and the equator at the vernal equinox. As
this precedes the solar year by a tiny fraction, it comes
by the precession of the equinoxes a little further back
amongst the stars every year, creating the complete cycle
in 26,000 years. Hindu astrology, on the other hand, uses
a zodiac starting from a fixed place among the stars. From
what Olcott says of Nagaratnaswami's studying "the
relationship of cosmic cycles with fixed points in stellar
zodiac", he must have been watching the changing relations
between the two, and expecting, with the regression of the
first degree of Aries of the Turning into the last degree
of Aquarius of the Fixed, to see the One who was to come,
whose tutor, then pupil, Wood was to be.
It is impossible to me to believe that this great sage uttered
the nonsense attributed to him about Krishnamurti's turning
into a Deva.
Again, what age was Nagaratnaswami? The portrait of him
Blavatsky made for Olcott, while they were in New York together
in the 1870s, shows him as she remembered seeing him in
India, which throws the date back to the late 1850s, and
it shows a blind man no longer young; by the time Wood met
him, in 1909-10, he must at the very least have been in
his late nineties if he had not passed his century. When
Wood returned to India after an absence of a few years and
went out to Tiruvallar again and picked his way to the cottage,
he was told the old man had died. Wood does not give -perhaps
was not supplied with - the date, but I think it would have
been before the arrival of Anrias in the mid 1920s. [172]
References
1. The Initiate in the Dark Cycle, by his Pupil [Cyril
Scott] (London, Routledge, 1932) p.25
2. Ibid., p.69
3. Ibid., p.71
4. Ibid., p.66
5. A Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley, written
1822 (London, Oilier, 1840); Shelley, Selected Poetry,
Prose and Letters, (London, Nonesuch, 1951) p.1050;
Shelley, A Biography, Jean Overton Fuller, (London,
Cape, 1968) p.273
6. The Bible, Romans: xii, 5
7. Cyril Scott and a Hidden School, or Towards the Peeling
of an Onion, Jean Overton Fuller (Fullerton, California,
Theosophical History, 1998) p.2
8. Scott, ibid., p.135
9. Ibid., p.136
10. Ibid., p.97
11. Ibid., pp.138-9
12. Ibid., p.140
13. Through the Eyes of the Masters, David Anrias
(London, Routledge, 1932) pp.17-8
14. Ibid., p.27
15. Ibid., p.66
16. Ibid., p.16
17. Scott, ibid., p.89
18. Old Diary Leaves, Henry Steele Olcott (New York,
Putnam, 1895) facing p.368
19. Ibid., p.245
20. Ibid., p.247
21. Ibid., p.248
22. Collected Writings, I, H. P. Blavatsky, The Diaries
of H.P. Blavatsky, passim.
23. The Masters and the Path, C. W. Leadbeater (Adyar,
TPH, 1925) p. 11
24. Is This Theosophy . . .?, Ernest Wood (London,
Rider, 1936) p. 168
25. Ibid., p. 166. The mistake referred to by Narayan
occurs in Initiations Human and Solar, Alice A. Bailey
(New York, Lucis, 1922) pp.52-3, 57
26. Wood, ibid., p.172
27. Ibid., p.167
[173]
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