Theos-Talk Archives (May 2000 Message tt00012)

In a message dated 4/23/00 2:59:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mas.jag@iprolink.co.nz writes:
 
 Thank you very much. I was thrilled to read this post, partly for the
 history, but more so for the insights, which I felt very in tune with. More
 darn words (meaning mine) ... :)
 
 Please say more.
 
 Murray
 
 >To M.K. Ramadoss:
 >Briefly, I first learned of K in 1963, in the Spanish Branch of the 
 >Theosophical Society in New York, where I became a member.  
 > [snip]
 >Nevertheless, I made what was, much by far, the 
 >most "impossible" of all journeys:  I went to India, for his last talks 
 >before he died.  Every one had the same opinion:  I was nuts.
 >The e-mail got too long.  Sorry.  I hope that is what you asked for.  I can 
 >say more, if you wish.
 >Blessings,
 >Aryel >>

Dear Murray,

Thanks for your interest.  Darn words ARE a huge stumbling block, & realizing 
that is an enormous step.
I suppose the "more" I could say relates to what happened after K died.  As I 
said before, I had given up on speaking, discussing, writing, or 
communicating anything having to do with "deeper" things, seeing that all of 
those could be distractions from the moment-to-moment transformational 
processes, which is after all the only thing that truly matters in life.
But in 1985, something "new" happened.  After going to the K talks in Ojai, 
to which I had gone because of my certainty that he was about to die, I began 
to feel completely differently.  I realized that, once K was gone, those of 
us left behind had an enormous responsibility, apart from the daily 
transformative processes.  There is a side to this work that calls for mutual 
sharing of insights, to help bring about transformation in a social, global 
setting.  After all, individual transformation that implies global 
transformation has always been THE centerpiece of all perennial work.  
Perhaps one does need to deal with the personal "stuff" & be "by oneself" for 
a period.  But the time comes when there has to be an opening to the wider 
work, with all its tremendous difficulties & unfairnesses, mostly stemming 
from expectations & fears based on conditioning.
So I began to write down material I had been working on since 1963, & which I 
had laid temporarily aside, during my six-year silence.  It began, at the 
time, with two projects I worked on, simultaneously.  The first one was a 
Commentary on The Stanzas of Dzyan.  You might think that odd, coming from 
someone so deeply impacted by K's work.  But what I had seen in the Stanzas, 
almost from the first time I read them, was a PSYCHOLOGICAL work of 
transformation, not a METAPHYSICAL work of concepts.  Later, I was able to 
confirm that this was indeed the intention of HPB's teachers, in giving this 
ancient sacred text to the world.  I think I wrote about 500 pages of 
commentary, all of it written quite fast, & therefore much in need of editing.
Eventually, I gave up on that project, & thought it'd be better to write a 
separate work, which I called The Stanzas of Zen.  Rather than a commentary, 
this consisted of providing documentation for the fact that The Stanzas of 
Dzyan are indeed a very ancient sacred text of transformation, with very 
intimate connections to the Maitreya-Nagarjuna-Aryasanga "tradition" -- and 
to K.  This way, rather than "accept" my own commentary, readers would be 
able to make up their own minds about how they see all this, once they had at 
their disposal all the facts I give there.
The other project I began working on in 1985 was Krishnamurti's Astrological 
Chart.  I had earned a living as an astrologer for a few years, & had been 
fascinated by many intriguing things I discovered in the astrology of K's 
life, which goes beyond his personal chart.  Unfortunately, this work was 
left incomplete at the time, because I got involved in other work.  I do 
intend to get back to it, though, because, as I say, there is a great deal of 
fascinating material in that research, quite poignant.
After K's death in February, 1986, I went to the Gathering that had been 
organized by the KFA for what would have been his next Ojai talks.  There I 
met Albion Patterson, who had been entrusted by K in 1972 with the project of 
creating a Master Index & Guide to K's Works (Albion was then a Trustee of 
the KFA).  The first step was the creation of an indexing style.  This was 
far more difficult than one might think.  The reason:  The Index had to meet 
simultaneously two different sets of criteria, and the two were mutually 
exclusive & incompatible.
For 14 years, Albion had tried 9 times, with a different team of editors & 
indexers each time, to come up with a style that would be acceptable to the 
two approaches:  One was the standard library approach that scholars use; the 
other would be an approach that would be sensitive to the flowing, 
non-concept-bound nature of K's work.  For instance, in discussing beauty, K 
might also discuss love, death, "what is," & a number of other issues, which 
a conventional indexing approach would miss altogether, since the connections 
would not be reflected correctly.  Also, if one indexes K in the "standard" 
way, one is thereby misrepresenting his work, since there are no fixed 
concepts at all in any of it -- & the "standard" approach REQUIRES specific 
concepts. So the "standard" indexing, far from helping, would itself stand 
for a gross misrepresentation of what K said.  This was like solving a koan.
So I & another person (an editor friend) got involved as the 10th team to 
attempt this, which all the others had failed at achieving.  We had six 
months in which to do it, & we both gave up our jobs in order to work at it 
full-time.  In December, 1986, the style we devised was approved by both an 
expert librarian (who had been hired specifically for this purpose) and by 
the team of "K experts" who had been, appropriately, unhappy with the 
mistreatment of K's work that a standard format subjected it to.
Unfortunately, all was for naught.  Even though, after all those years of 
trying, the solution was finally found, the KFA had no money to proceed with 
the project!  So it was shelved.  Has been, ever since.  I made myself the 
promise, to myself, that if & when I could put together the funding & the 
team to do this, I would go back to it, & get it done, "the way God 
commanded."  It is unlikely that the KFA will go back to this project at this 
point, given that all of K's work is on CD ROM, & that perhaps there is not 
the understanding of why getting this done would be important.
So I went back to working on books, of which I've now written a dozen, mostly 
on the nature of theosophy, K's place in history, & the reality and 
theosophical sources of the perennial renaissance.  I also have 4 projects 
that deal simultaneously with academic philosophy, & K's paramount importance 
in the leading edge of philosophy, as we speak.
With affection,
Aryel

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