The Link #24 - Dear Friends

The time has come to prepare for the next Link. We have been collecting material all year for this new edition, including, of course, quotations from K and photographs; but what comes to mind at the moment are several of the international meetings in which the Link team participated this past year.

The International Trustees Meeting of the four Krishnamurti Foundations took place in a monastery in Segovia, Spain. The KFT, KFI, and KFA were invited by the Fundación Krishnamurti Latinoamericana (FKL), and important decisions were taken concerning the publication work for the Spanish-speaking world. Javier Gómez Rodríguez (one of the Trustees of the Fundación, the editor of The Link, and a former Brockwood student and teacher) attended, as did Raman Patel of The Link team.

The German Committee organized an education conference with the theme “Has modern education failed?” in the Tagore Centre of the Indian Embassy in Berlin. The event was attended by 300 people, and Rajesh Dalal, Trustee of the KFI and Director of the Rajghat Education Centre, was the main speaker. Rajesh went on to speak at meetings in Köln, Göttingen, Saanen and Haus Sonne in Germany.

The Saanen Gathering, attended by the Link team, was held for two weeks at the beginning of August. It now takes place in Schönried, a village a stone’s throw from Saanen. The event – which also includes a week prior to the Gather¬ing for parents with children, and a week afterwards for young adults – is direc¬ted by Gisèle Balleys, a former Brockwood teacher and currently Trustee of the KFT. Themes for the two weeks were “Why are we isolating ourselves, thereby feeding fear, loneliness and nationalism?” and “Can we observe the whole movement of love and death in our lives?” There was also a two-day meeting of the International Committees.

Brockwood Park brought together over 200 former students and staff members for its 35th anniversary Reunion. Several of us attended. At one point, Mary Zimbalist – a Trustee of both the KFT and the KFA, who is in her 90th year – addressed the assembly and bid her goodbyes to Brockwood. She will now stay in Ojai, California, year round. The Reunion was an amazing event that showed just how much Brockwood means to so many people, and how well many of the students do after being at the School. Several of the former students I spoke to are now professors, doctors, musicians and journalists and seem to be caring, balanced human beings.

In other news, Raman Patel and Rabindra Singh helped to develop the growing network of people interested in K in Vietnam (see pg. 54) and in The Philippines. And former Brockwood staff member and Link colleague Nick Short became a Trustee of the KFT.

In addition to attending such events, I visit Brockwood at least twice a year, staying for several weeks at a time. While there, I like to ask guests at the adult study Centre how they came upon K. On the last occasion, two guests (one a teacher), had seen the Hollywood film The Hurricane, in which the lead character is briefly shown reading the K book The Awakening of Intelligence – and it was a very brief shot. But it seems that most guests have been reading K for years; some, however, having heard of the Centre and the School only recently. Increasingly, guests and prospective students and staff members are coming to Brockwood through the Foundation and School websites and through www.kinfonet.org.

Before the Centre was built, I spent quite a bit of time at the School, and I have just remembered a funny story that happened there. As a preamble: when I take photos, it often happens that the sun, which has been hiding behind clouds for what has seemed like forever, suddenly appears at just the right moment for my photograph, and I give thanks to the heavens as if there were a force that arranged it to happen. The funny story is that a man who was camping in the woods near Brockwood during a series of public Talks that K was – ¬giving, one day entered the dining room during lunch. Just at that moment, a staff member rang the bell for quieting the room in order to make an announce¬ment. And as with me and the sun, the man thought that the bell was expressly for him and said a gracious Thank You and began making a speech! We are funny creatures.

One Centre guest told me that he feels that The Link is a bit heavy and needs some humour. So, to continue in this vein I will include one of the many jokes that K used to tell.

Saint Peter is showing God what is happening on Earth and the first thing they see is human beings labouring and toiling away from morning to night. God is amazed and asks Saint Peter: What is the matter with those people down there? Saint Peter replies: Didn’t you tell them that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow? God: But I was only joking! Then they watch another event. People in festive attire are sitting at tables lavishly loaded with food and drink. They are cardinals and bishops. To God’s question as to who these people are, Saint Peter ans¬wers: These, my Lord, are the people who understood that you were only joking.

Many more such stories can be found in The Kitchen Chronicles – 1001 Lunches with J. Krishnamurti, by our dear friend Michael Krohnen, who worked as chef at Oak Grove School and for the KFA from 1975 to 1988. He now verifies transcripts of K’s Talks for the KFA. His book can be ordered through ¬www.pathless.com.

The joke above is also included in my book of remembrances of my time with K, The Beauty of the Mountain. A new edition will be available from the end of 2004 and can be ordered through www.pathless.com or through the K Foundations, with all proceeds benefiting ‘K projects’ (see pg. 62).

Now, I would like to return to a less amusing subject, one that still bothers some people. I do so by reprinting a letter from an old friend, Bill Quinn, who spent a year in the 1940s at Arya Vihara in Ojai, working in the garden. K was living there at that time and they often tended the garden together. Bill worked on the first Krishnamurti Index of subjects that later became the KFT’s three-volume Index of all the audio and videotapes. He died in Ojai in the mid-1990s. Because Bill’s letter addresses the concerns that some people still have after reading a certain book ostensibly about K, I include it here.

April 20th 1993

Dear Friedrich,

Through the years Radha sent her manuscript to various publishers, and by chance the readers of two publishers to whom the book was assigned for evaluation were friends of mine. I deliberately read it once in one continuous effort so as to get an overall impression. I have not read the version published in England, and it’s likely that changes have been made and editing done. What follows is based on my recollection of my first and only reading.

I suspect that Radha is merely the spokesman for her parents. It has always seemed to me most unfortunate she was put in this position. She was not a direct witness to the alleged intimacy between K and R, but was told about it when she was a young woman by her mother. It is understandable that Radha, having been brought up in a seemingly magical world, should have been traumatised and embittered by Rosalind’s claims. It’s notable that early in the story it was K that Radha adored, like a father; yet she later is so condemnatory.

Having lived with the family during the period the affair was supposed to be taking place, I can attest there was a great intimacy between K and Rosalind, and I felt very much a part of a family which included them and Radha, and in which I was in daily close contact. It was an extraordinarily warm and simple life we had, extremely open so far as I could see, and so unconflicted I felt an absolute absence of self-consciousness. Rosalind appeared to me to be utterly generous and loving, and I count her among the dearest friends of my life. I felt less at ease with Raja, somewhat intimidated by his force and brilliance, but he too was warm and outgoing to me. However, he was seldom at Arya Vihara in those years, spending most of his time in Hollywood as he did. With Radha and David, her cousin, children then, I had a simple affectionate rapport. I must point out that I was a very young man at the time.

Since I felt part of this family, its breakup and the alienation of Raja from Rosalind and both from K, and the mystery surrounding it through the years, had disturbed me greatly. I was deeply affected by the book, and among my responses was a grief for everybody involved – so much pain!

It seems to me, however, that one cannot form an opinion on the basis of the book about the allegations of an affair between K and Rosalind. The letters that are said to support this claim are unavailable. It’s hard to see how one can presume to know what goes on between any two people. When a relationship is conflicted, a third person can know only the statements of the two parties, which are inevitably biased.

I feel strongly that it is important to establish the truth about K’s life, and to affirm his humanity. I deplore the widespread efforts to mythologize and deify him, because doing so makes it impossible for people to recognise their kinship with him, and puts him in an abstract sphere, as a sort of icon.

When I read the book it seemed to me possible that there had been such a relationship. Given the un-worldliness of both K and R, their innocence, such a thing could have come about through simple proximity and affection, as such things often do. Honoring the Rosalind I had known in earlier days, I even felt glad for K that he might have had such a relationship. And if there were an affair, the secrecy is understandable, given the social climate of those days. It would not have been K’s concern alone to be either open or discreet: the lives of others were involved: Rosalind, Raja and Radha, Also, they might have felt that it was no one else’s business.

What is lamentable to me about the book is that its motivation seems to be vindictiveness. To me, unfortunately, the book makes Rosalind, not K, to appear shabby and small. In part this is the effect of objectifying and blaming K and not going into Rosalind’s character in depth. I think she was a much larger person, and for a long time I wanted to talk to Radha and try and dissuade her from publication for this reason. But I had not the courage; my old affection for her and her mother made the prospect of such an encounter too painful.

The book seems to me naive in many ways, and to reflect little self-knowledge on the part of the Rajagopals. If there was such an affair in which Rosalind suffered so much, she was certainly also responsible. She was an adult. She was moreover a strong person and rather dominated K, to my mind, when I lived with them. The tone suggests a jilted lover. And through the years after their breakup, I had many hours-long conversations with Rosalind in which she poured out her hurt and rage. She was simply obsessed.

I also talked to K about the breakup, and offered to be an intermediary. He said, however, “No! It is finished.” It seems to me that Rosalind’s story, whether the allegations about K are true or not, is a common and doleful human tragedy, and my response is more com-passionate than anything else. It’s a story of how possessiveness, jealousy, suspicion and self-righteousness can destroy affection and lead to life-long bitterness and a desire for revenge. It not only destroys affection, but the person.

So many people wanted to possess K! I knew well another woman who was remark¬ably close to K, and I happened to be with her during a time when she simply went to pieces and became bedridden for days, raging and torn. She later came to literally hate him for some years, and did some real mischief.

I think that when K went to India in 1947 a new life for him began when he met some wonderful minds, soon to include Pupul Jayakar and her family. Rosalind at that time stayed in California and was fully occupied with the newly formed Happy Valley School. At this time, I suspect, the Rajagopals began to lose control of K. As for the allegations about Nandini, I don’t take them seriously. It’s well known that she and K had an extraordinary affinity, but to assume that this was sexually based seems unwarranted. K moved many people and was capable of a great intimacy with those who were open to him. I’m afraid Rosalind was overcome by suspicion.

Bill Quinn

And finally, two years ago Bill Taylor and Antonio Autor initiated a ‘K class’ at Brockwood. I have had the good fortune to attend it a few times. Bill has recently written a short report about it, and I am including some of this below.

Since Krishnamurti’s death in 1986, the School has explored a number of ways in which to ensure that students have direct contact with his verbatim teachings and with the provocative questions and challenging insights he expresses. We have wrestled with the issue of how to do this without estranging students from the teachings by insisting on participation in K-related activities, so in September 2002, when we started a Krishnamurti Class at Brockwood, it was made optional.

The format for the class was that the students and staff involved would meet once a week for a 45-minute period, during which a text or video extract was looked at together and a dialogue undertaken. Generally the material to be looked at was chosen by the staff, sometimes on a topic suggested by the students, and always with a teenage audience in mind.

The class went very well and the student response was so positive that in September 2003 it was decided to make the class compulsory – with some senior students taking exams exempt. Class size was limited to a maximum of 10 students and we started the year with 5 groups. At the end of the academic year we asked the students to provide us with written feedback on the class and received 31 responses.
Bill Taylor

A few of these responses are reproduced here with permission.

“I have to say I really enjoyed K Time. We are always a funny group of people. What I really found good and challenging is that we questioned a lot of thoughts which are always going on in people’s minds, for example awareness. And it’s not like you have to say yes to everything K said. You can always question everything that we’re talking about. That’s what I think is best, because you get more open-minded.” – Daniel, 19, from Germany

“I like the way we read from the K books and then discuss what it meant afterwards, because I find it really hard to understand what Krishnamurti is saying. I’m not used to this kind of philosophical talk. I like the topics that we talk about, because they usually somehow relate to my current life.” – Suzie, 14, from Australia

“I would like to know about K’s life – how did he spend his free time, what were his hobbies, habits, activities and so on? I think just a few classes of his biography will be enough, and I think most of the students would like it too. Because it is interesting to know the person from the other side, not as a great philosopher but as a human being.” – Vitya, 17, from Russia

“I like discussing (or mostly, for me, thinking) about different topics, such as What Is Love? What Is Intelligence, or Beauty? etc. I ask many more questions of myself since being in this class. I feel like my mind is more open and now I enjoy reading Krishna¬murti books. There was a very good atmosphere in the class. I liked it!” – Lucile, 15, from France

I have been attending these classes and like them too!

Friedrich Grohe, September 2003