Here are some more detailed excerpts from LEENA SARABHAI's booklet

J. KRISHHNAMURTI : LEAVES FROM A DIARY (1933-34)

In 1933, J. Krishnamurti first came to Ahmedabad and stayed at ‘The Retreat’, Shahibaug, in our home, with my parents Shri Ambalal Sarabhai and Smt. Sarladevi Sarabhai and our family of five sisters and three brothers. Extracts from my diary of 1933- 1934 have been reproduced in this book. A major part of the book consists of dialogues with J. Krishnamurti - Krishnaji as he was called by those who knew him. These were originally recorded by me in both Gujarati and English and included in the book of my pen-sketches of some eminent persons, including the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the artists Abenindranath Tagore , and Nandalal Bose, and the teacher Karunashankar Bhatt, which originally appeared in 1955, in the the Gujarati publication Vyakti Chitro.

Krishnaji came on 23.1.33. Yesterday, that is on the 26th,That afternoon, at lunch time, he started telling me his story with great earnestness and fullness of heart, without considering me young and insignificant. As always, there was a smile on his face. While we were talking, the rest of the company could only see his gestures. These created so much interest that everyone expressed a great eagerness to hear him. He then spoke to us all. I do not remember all his words, but those that I remember I have recorded. While he was speaking, we were moved to tears.

I asked Krishnaji, “ How were you brought up and educated?” Krishnaji said : “ I hardly remember anything of the incidents of my childhood or youth. Whatever I relate to you, is what I have heard from others, the way a child does. My memory is very bad. If you were to ask me what my brother looked like, I would not be able to tell you, because I do not remember. “ My father had thirteen children; just imagine ! My father was poor. What was he?” At this, he tried to think and his two companions had to remind him. “ Oh! he was a clerk. You know, some rot! Out of all us children, only two are alive. A third one is alive too but he is not right in the head.”

(Later I heard that this second brother, who is older than Krishnaji, is a doctor in Madras).

“ My mother died when I was five years old. She was extremely orthodox. I was her eighth child. Our father used to beat us. He was getting only fifty rupees as salary. We lived in utter poverty, in starvation and dirt, and were miserable in every respect. My father was a Theosophist, and sometimes we used to go to Adyar. “ There, Dr. Annie Besant saw us - me and my brother, Nitya, who was a year younger than me. At that time I was ten or eleven years old. She formed some hopes for us. She promised us nice clothes and enough good food if we would stay with her. We were children, and what else could we desire? We welcomed her suggestion and Dr. Annie Besant took us in her charge. She sent us both away abroad. At this time Dr. Besant used to teach us herself and she had also engaged a few learned tutors for us. Most of the time, she used to read to us from Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, etc. For a long time, we never read ourselves but preferred always to listen to someone else reading.

At that time and even now, I hate ( Walter) Scott. In those days, our hair was long and came down to our shoulders. An English newspaper remarked, ‘Dr. Besant has come with her two black monkeys’. “ In the meanwhile, some antagonists of Dr. Besant instigated my father against her and financed legal proceeding against us. A search was made for us; so we wandered through the whole of Europe in hiding with Jinarajadasa and Dr. Arundale. During that time, we were not able to come out openly. We read a great deal, saw a great deal. We saw paintings in museums. We enquired about who’s who. We went to Sicily. There, a golf instructor told me, ‘If you will learn golf for three months, I will get you +2.' 1 did as he told me and attained it. In England, we were living with aristocrats and came into close touch with them. We were very intimate with the family of Lady Willingdon’s sister, Lady De La Warr. Five years passed. “ My father took the case to the Privy Council, but Dr. Besant won the case and we were placed in her charge. So, for the first time we were sent to a school. Although we had been leading a rich and unsettled life, we did not find it difficult to settle down in that school in Kent; but it took us about a week to get accustomed to other boys eating meat at the same table. I used to hate algebra and geometry, but I liked Latin and French. But more than anything else, I liked to sit for hours in a comer by myself. I used to look at the sky and think. You know, I was very dreamy. My brother was clever. If he went through a book once, he could secure first class marks in it. In Latin, he secured 100% marks, which is unheard of.

We studied for four years in that school, after which it occurred to Dr.Besant all of a sudden that we should get admitted to Balliol College at Oxford. The authorities said, 'For God’s sake and for the sake of these boys, don’t send them here. We do not want Gods here. They will be ragged to death. ’ Through Lord Curzon, Dr. Annie Besant tried to influence Lord......; he tried to bring pressure to bear on the authorities concerned; but nothing could be done. “

At this period I had been proclaimed as the World Teacher. In consequence, we had to suffer very much. Those who did not accept me as their Teacher made fun of us. Those that believed in me made such a fuss that we felt shy to meet them. ‘ ‘In the beginning, I used to play with the boys in our school, but then I used to creep out of their company. I did not like their ways; spitting on one another, throwing mud. English children play such dirty tricks! They used to call us black devils, brownies and blackies, but we too bullied them. In this way we managed to get on well with each other. “ In the school, we got to learn something; but we learned more on our vacations. We used to go to Lady De La Warr’s with her. We went to her big house in London. There, amongst butlers, many servants, fine linen and silver plates, we lived lavishly. We met people in political circles and had occasion to know Labour leaders McDonald, Lansbury and others, and hear their discussions. I belonged to the Labour party. They would ask us our opinions, but we could not express them; yet when I and my brother were alone, we criticized them all thoroughly and tore them to pieces.

We started to attend Labour meetings and to canvass for their Party. We met members of the guards and the most fashionable folks. Most of them were aristocrats - people of fine breeding - good company, but no brains. “ In this way our school days eventually came to an end. We had to appear for our examination. I could repeat very well all the words that I had learnt with my master; but when I went for the examination I became vague, I was thoroughly nervous, and my paper was left blank. But my brother would go to the Lincoln’s Inn, read a book half an hour before the examination, and secure first class honours in law. In this way, I tried to pass three examinations respectively - London Matric, Senior Cambridge and Responsions, but I failed in all these. I gave up my studies. My brother was very keen to go to college; but he gave up the idea because of me and we went to Lady De La Warr’s. “ Now, we started to criticize and censure everyone openly.

We did not even spare Dr. Besant. We quarrelled with Dr. Arundale, also a lawyer. One Mr. W-----was made our guardian. He led a very loose life; but when he became our guardian, he gave up everything. He was very fond of us. He supplied us with money whenever we were in trouble. “ The war broke out and in its excitement we joined the Red Cross. We lived at Lady De La Warr’s and as we were short of servants and men, we boys and girls milked the cows and made hay. There, we came in contact with Lord Curzon’s daughter, Lady Cynthia Morley, and some persons related to Lord Lytton and Lady Emily. “ Most of our acquaintances got irritated by our views. One day Lady De La Warr said to us, ‘If you want to say such things and hold such opinions you can’t stay here. So we left the house.

Many efforts were made to bring us back but we chose to live on our own in Piccadally in great style. “ We were exceedingly fond of fine clothes. We rejected a suit after we had worn it twice during one week. Our tailors told us that we were the best dressed men in London. We were so fastidious about our shoes that to give them a particular shine we used to polish them with our own hands. We had an allowance of only £ 700 lent to us; we ran short of it. We could have got more if we had asked for it but we did not like to do so. The best way and the easiest was to reduce our diet. All our money was spent on attending opening nights at the theatres and at fashionable resorts. As we had no money for our food, we managed to get invitations for lunch or dinner with our friends. “ Due to undernourishment my brother developed T.B. and began to spit blood. We were young and inexperienced and did not understand many words, yet I used to repeat the sense of what I had heard in another way. “ My brother’s health worsened and it caused us all anxiety.

A friend said, ‘Why don’t you come over to California?’ So we left India with Rama Rau. We were not sure if we would reach California safely. At each port I had to dress up my brother and stand in a line for the medical examination. When the doctor came to us I stepped forward and attracted all the attention so that my brother’s illness should not be noticed. I had to nurse my brother, wash him and do all that was necessary for a sick man. I just did it. I never thought that it was either a burden or a pleasure thrust on me.

“ All this time I was very pulled down and my brother was like a stick. We used to look each other and only weep. We were so miserable that we could not speak. At last we reached California. There we lived in a small log hut, in Ojai, about 70 miles from Hollywood. We rarely saw anyone. There we ruminated upon all our past experiences, thought and became more mature. It was like butter which comes up and floats when whey is churned. You might wonder why we did not form any vices in this life of enjoyment. I can’t say why we had an aversion to wine, smoking and anything that was morally wrong. Some people used to rag us. They tried to pour wine in our mouths by force, but we hated it. My brother was a perfect intellectual. He gave me the intellectual side and to him I gave the emotional and thus we were together one perfect being. He did fall in love but he gave it up for my sake and once I too fell in love and I gave it up for him. The other reason was that I did not want to be tied down to anything for all my life. Nitya considered me as his Teacher. He did not look upon me as his brother; he adored me and worshipped me. Please do not misunderstand me, as you want to know all the facts I am relating them to you. “ I was at that time made an offer to join the movies as an actor on $ 2000 a week. But I had no craving for money. What would I do with all that money? So I refused the offer. It has become a regular practice with the producers now to offer that job to me whenever I go to America. “ As I was announced as the World Teacher, many people came to see me. I felt nervous to meet them. So I asked my brother to see them and he sent them away. We used to hold camps. My brother wrote for me and I repeated his words in my talks. “ From this time I was set to thinking as to what I should do.

I had not yet found the medium for my expression. I had started to write poems and articles. But these were not satisfying. Whatever I did, I wanted to do it first class. I tried painting, sculpture, music, dancing and many such things. I had started ballroom dancing but I did not like to go round and round with my arms around a lady’s waist. I even tried politics. Whatever we did we used to think, ‘By doing this what have we done? What have we achieved?’ We were discontented. It was this discontentment that lead us forward. I started to make experiments on spiritual growth. I had heard about ‘kundalini' so I tried to develop that condition and read about it in a book called The Serpent Power. I slept on the ground. I began to fast. The first day I felt hungry, the second it was unbearable but on the third day hunger died out and I felt at peace. But it made me very weak. I used to faint. 1 could prolong my fast for three weeks. Now I feel that there was no point in that. I have not developed by it. Nitya and I did all our own work, cooking, sweeping etc., as it is very expensive to have servants in America. A servant costs $100. “ While I was doing these experiments, my brother’s illness was worsening. One day, he vomited a glass full of blood. I felt very nervous and I sent for the doctor. When he came I was shivering all over and I said,‘My brother has a haemorrhage.’ He said, ‘Oh! I thought Indians never minded death.’ Then I was set thinking for the first time in my life; I said ‘ My God’ and I did some deep thinking. Many a time I felt like committing suicide.

Many people tried to console me with ideas of reincarnation; but I found no consolation. “ When I came to India, I found everything was wrong. I spoke to Mrs. Besant and clearly put before her my point of view. In the beginning she objected; but then she said, T consider you my Guru. I shall do as you wish.’ The Order of the Star was dissolved. “As a result of my experiments over the last six or seven years to awaken the kundalini, it was released from the chakra at the base of the spinal cord. I felt unbearable pain. One day in Vienna I fainted 17 times.” (Rama Rau told us afterwards that to awaken the kundalini, Krishnaji went alone in a room fitted with cushions. People outside heard him weep. In Ooty, he once had a vision of Lord Maitreya.) “Then I went to America. On my arrival, reporters surrounded me. They had interviewed many renowned people and they had a way of asking quick and abrupt questions and of making nervous the person whom they cross-examined. One reporter asked me, ‘Are you married?’ I said, ‘No’. He said, ‘What do you do then?’ Another said, ‘If you are Christ, why don’t you walk on the sea?’ In America, many women and heiresses said to me, ‘Won’t you marry me?’ Oh! I felt such a fool!

“ I was invited to Romania. On my arrival, our host gave me a huge packet of letters signed in blood. In these letters, I was threatened. I was told that if I entered their country or talked I would be shot. I was kept under police protection, and when I lectured, the police had to search the people who came to hear me. These people were excited with me because they were told that my mother was a Hindu and my father a Jew.”

(Leena's note;) This is what we heard afterwards: Krishnaji’s food was poisoned one night in the hotel. He felt very uneasy and he fell sick. For three or four weeks he was put in a sanatorium. From then on, his digestion was ruined and he had to be very particular about his food.)

“ When I was in Chicago, I was warned not to go out alone as they were afraid that I would be kidnapped by gangsters. Now I go wherever people call me. One friend gives me £ 200 every year and this is more than enough for my personal expenses. I only spend a small amount from it, and the remainder I give to charity. I have so many clothes which belonged to Nitya and me, that I have them altered and I wear them. For a long time to come I shall need no new clothes.” (Krishnaji had a large collection of clothes which belonged to him and Nitya - fine ties, handkerchiefs and shirts. He gave these away to porters in the hotels and on railway stations and his suits to his friends and poor people. Now he has only a limited wardrobe). “ If I am invited for talks, the people of that place give me my travelling and other expenses. If I am not invited, I am not worried because I am happy alone. I have been often invited to China and Japan but they do not send me any money and so I am unable to go. I am invited over and over again to Europe, America, Australia and India.

“ Recently I wanted to go to America. So I went to the American Consul for my visa. He said to me,‘You are a dangerous person, I can’t allow you to go there.’ I said ,‘I will get it from the Ambassador of America in England.’ ‘I will see to all that. If I say no, you shall not go.’ ‘If you do not, I don’t care. If a person does not want me in his house, I can’t force myself in. I shall go somewhere else.’ Then he said,‘I shall let you go.’ He gave me the visa.” Then we asked Krishnaji, “ Do you like Europe, America or India? Suppose you were told that you would be interned in one of these, which would be your choice?” He said: “ I would choose to be in India. I have nothing which belongs to me. I am poor. How would I then be able to live in America or in any other country? Do you know what poverty means in these countries? Cold, misery, disease and all that which follows it. There, money is everything. People care for riches and if you haven’t got it you are shut out and driven from everything. This is why I would like to stay in India. I don’t think I am a patriot but that India adores poverty. For a homeless, poor man like me, it would be easy to live here. In this country, a man who puts on a loin cloth, travels in third class, eats but little, and has no home, is worshipped. My elder sister Bharati said, ‘You look very young.’ “You know I am just thirty five but I look younger because I have not wasted myself on sex as most young people do.” Referring to his daily routine, he said, “ I get up early in the morning. Usually I sleep nine hours at night and one hour in the afternoon. I run for an hour. For 20 minutes I do shirshasan and Muller’s physical exercises, The rest of my time, I spend in thinking - really what I do I cannot tell. Sometimes I write down my thoughts. I do not like to read, but if I do, I like to read the works of Bernard Shaw, Galsworthy and other such authors. I am always in a state of joy. I do not have other emotions like that of anger and jealousy.” “ Neither do I recollect faces nor do I remember the names of people in general. I have no preferences in my affection. To me, my followers, or people who understand me, or the man on the street, are all the same. This feeling has not been with me from the beginning, but it has grown gradually. I have not tried to cultivate it.”

Krishnaji addressed every one as ‘Sir’. One day B addressed him as ‘Sir’. With a gesture as ifhe was dizzy, he said, ‘Oh! I shall faint’. B said, “ But you call everyone ‘Sir’!” To this he replied, “ Yes, Ido, but that is because I always forget names. The easiest way is to call people in that way. Then I haven’t to remember all those complicated things.” If Krishnaji’s attendant was referred to as a servant, he did not like it. Like a child he would plead, “ He is not my servant, he is my friend. Velu is my companion.” As far as possible he did his work with his own hands. He carried his own baggage. When a servant entered his room carrying something, he would press his hands as if to relieve him of his fatigue. Ifhe saw a piece of paper or any rubbish thrown carelessly around, he picked it up and put it away in its proper place. Krishnaji bowed to every man, irrespective of his status, before the other bowed. The day before he left Ahmedabad, a reception was given in his honour by some citizens. Some girls sang and danced before him. The programme was long, uninteresting and tedious. Sometimes, it was even ridiculous, and we could not help laughing. We were sitting behind. Krishnaji and my younger sister Geeta were sitting in the front on a gadi, a mattress. Krishnaji asked Geeta, “ Do you like it?’’ She replied: “ Not very much. It is boring” . After a little while she said, “ Do you?” ‘ ‘Yes, I enjoy it, because the performers seem to,” he replied.

We asked Krishnaji if he was the son of God. He said to us, “ What good is it to you to know that? What will you do with this knowledge? If you want to know, I shall tell you alone.” When we asked him about his supernatural powers, he seemed to hesitate. We gave up making such queries, thinking them too personal. Some people say that some years ago, while he was lecturing he fainted for some minutes and spoke something in verse (this has been recorded). The audience saw him transformed into the figure of Christ or Krishna. It is for certain that he can heal. A man with a spine broken in the last war was healed by his very touch. A blind woman in America who was operated upon several times was healed by him and she could see. My mother had fever; her temperature came down due to his healing her. I asked him, “ How do you heal? Did you learn it from someone?” He told me: “ I had this power since I was a child. I don’t know how I do it. I did not learn it from any one.” “ Could you heal yourself?” “ I don’t think so.” We asked Krishnaji why Dr. Besant had chosen him. He said, “ They say that some Masters who live in the Himalayas told Dr. Besant that I was an avatara (an incarnation). Lord Choudhan and some other Gurus direct this world through Lord Maitreya and other Masters.”

Once, while we were driving in our car, he said, “ Of course everyone has to tell conventional lies. My brother and I were very clever at it. Once we were invited, as chief guests to a party in London along with Dr. Besant. You know, she is very particular about keeping appointments in time, but we were thirty minutes late! She was there before us. ‘Why have you come late?’ she asked. We tried to look very disturbed. ‘We had a terrific accident with a motor bus’, we said. She caught hold of our hands and said, very sadly and kindly,‘My dears! are you hurt?’ You know, how sorry we felt to have told that lie?” On the way, Krishnaji recited Sanskrit shlokas (verses). He has a resonant voice and sings with great emotion. Krishnaji knew many indoor and outdoor games. One night, after dinner, he was very keen to play some games with us. We preferred to talk to him and did not wish to play. He suggested about a dozen games to us but we did not know a single one. He said jokingly, “ I see you are lacking in your education. Y ou must know games. You have missed much in your childhood.” Then he recalled what fun he had as a boy when he played hockey and other games.

Krishnaji used to relate funny anecdotes. An English boy asked Sir Edwin Lutyens, ‘Why did God make the black and white man?’ Sir Edwin said, ‘To play chess with.’ A four year old boy was told by his mother, ‘Tomorrow you shall have castor oil.’ The boy created an awful fuss and cried, but the mother was adamant. The next day the boy was not to be found. After a great search, he was found in a street nine miles away!

He found our countryside very arid and he wondered why Gandhiji chose such a place for his ashram. He liked the monkeys very much. He said in fun, ‘‘They look like my brothers." We said, “ Surely you do not mean that.” “ Of course, I mean it. I say they look like my brothers.” Krishnaji was fond of animals. He liked movies with animal casts. Here in our home he used to play with my birds for hours together. He was often seen gazing at the swans in our pond. “ I used to chase them in Holland. Great fun! ' he used to say. In the morning he ran along the path near our garden wall. When he saw a bird or came to the aviary, he paused. Wherever he was seen, running or strolling, there was a constant smile on his face. Krishnaji was also fond of dogs. Our little Pekingese dog, Remus, went up to him. Krishnaji stretched out his hand towards him. We said, ‘‘Be careful, he bites.” But Remus was friendly with him and Krishnaji fondled him a little. ‘ ‘ It must have been teased by someone, ” he said. When we were boys, we had Poms in London. We pampered and teased them so much that they developed an awful temper.” One day we went to the river. He stood in the sand and threw pebbles to encourage our Alsatian, Belle, to run after them and bring them back to him. Belle was slow in running and did not care to bring them back. Krishnaji shouted in great excitement, “ You lazy thing! Go on! Bring it!”

Though he had a very poor memory for most things, he knew the make of every car and remembered the names of their owners and the occasions when he had motored at great speed. On the 29th, that is on the day of his departure, we went to the riverside for a drive and our car got stuck in the sand. He pushed it with boyish excitement. He sat at the wheel and tried to accelerate it. He dug the sand in which the wheels were sunk. Krishnaji cannot bear heat or dust, but he forgot all about these in the attempt to rescue the car. The place was full of thorns. We were bruised and he must have been hurt also. We suggested that we should return by some other car, but he was so excited that he would not rest till the car moved. He told us that when he was young he liked K assemble motor cars. On the same evening, before going to the railway station my father gave him a cheque of Rs. 2000. My father said, “ Please do not consider this as arrogance of the rich. I offer this to you as friendship in the same way as you have given us your books. I hope you will accept this.’’ Krishnaji said, “ What shall I do with it, Sir?” My father insisted. Krishnaji asked, “ Sir, would you like it in charity?” My father replied, “ We would be very much happy if you would utilize it for your own self.” Before he left our house he went to every servant and bowed to him with regard. Some of them were standing behind the doors. He searched for them and brought them out from every nook and comer. One servant said to my father afterwards, “ Many people have come and gone but only today did we feel that someone has gone away from our home.”

This was our first meeting. The second time after a few months we met on 26th October 1933, on the HM.S. Victoria at Genoa. We had very eagerly awaited his arrival on the boat that afternoon at half past three. When we saw him, we went up to him. He greeted us with affection and said, “ Where are your parents?” I said, “ My mother is unwell and they could not come” . “ La-la. great Scott! It will be fun. I will take care of you. Will you dine with us?” At four, our steamer sailed and we had tea on the deck.

As we were vegetarians, Krishnaji was busy ordering our menu and fixing up the table. He did not allow us to do anything. The sea was rough. My two younger brothers and sisters felt sick and they went straightaway to bed. I took my bath and sat down to meditate. My sister Geeta, who was in the adjoining cabin, was in bed. Krishnaji came in. I did not recognize his voice. He said, “ My child, you are not feeling well. You are lonely. My brother also got seasick. I used to look after him. Let me take care of you. ’ ’ He sat down and he saw me through the slit of the curtain and he said to Geeta, “ Is she meditating?” Then he said, “ You will feel better with a hot water bottle; where is it?” Geeta said, “ It is in one of my three suitcases. You won’t find it.” But Krishnaji said, “ Don’t worry, I shall look in all the three bags and tidy them afterwards.” He went to the bath and filled the bottle with hot water. I heard the sound of the running tap and I got up, but he would not let me do anything.

Then we went to my brother’s cabin and talked for an hour. He wanted to know what we had done in Europe and what plays we had seen. He was a little surprised to hear that we had had late evenings and had seen a play every night and that we had even been to Folies Bergere and Moulin Rouge, but he did not show his disapproval. He ordered our dinner and closed the port holes, and said, “ Call me if you need me at night.” We arrived in Naples the next morning and went around the place together.

The next day, after we left Naples, I said to him, ‘ ‘I want to tell you what happened to me after you left Ahmedabad. When you came to our place I heard you intently and meditated on your words thoughtfully. There was a great chaos, a struggle, a conflict, and there was a real revolution in me after a long period of stagnation.” “ What is your age?” He asked with surprise. “ I am eighteen, Krishnaji, can there be a definite age to think about certain things? I cannot help thinking about these things just now. Some people tell me I am too young and that these questions about life should be thought out at the age of fifty.” “ No, no, that is wrong. Then the mind gets old and does not function intelligently. At that age, matters get so entangled that it is impossible to be free. I asked you your age because if you think very seriously it may harm your growth. You know, you are yet but growing.” I was a little nervous when I started to relate my experiences. He said, “ You are nervous.”

After a little while, I started again, little by little: “ I saw that I was unhappy. There was a great disharmony in my life. Knowing not the true values of life, I was petty. I lived in a state of constant fear of public opinion, etc. In the name of affection, I brought misery to myself and others. I was not self-sufficient nor self-reliant. I was wasting my energies on unimportant things and thus I had no leisure. As I thought, I went deep into the cause of all these and they vanished like a cloud, and sunshine came to me. My manners, my speech, my life, everything in me was changed. People saw this remarkable change and thought that I had disciplined myself, but all this had come so spontaneously and so naturally that I myself do not know how the change has come about. “ And as I sat thinking, I felt something stirring in me. Something that made me weep and smile and thrill with joy. When I was a child, I used to worship dead images and offer flowers and lamps to them. As I grew up, I questioned worship and even the very existence of God. No one could give me the right answer to my questions. I could not worship as before without understanding what I was doing. I could not believe in a God high above us in heaven, who mercilessly punished and rewarded. So I came to a stand-still. This was the most miserable time for me. I was lost.

At this time, you came. I think I have a glimpse of that something which is eternal behind the transient; infinite behind the finite, the true self and the essence of everything. I have been exceedingly happy and sometimes I am almost in a state of ecstasy. The glimpse of that is only possible when my mind and heart are in complete harmony. The harmony only exists when thefe is perfection. By the perfection of the mind, I mean a mind that is balanced in all circumstances at all times. By the perfection of the body I mean a body that is healthy and beautiful. “ My constant desire has been to find that something which I have felt but not seen. It is like a hidden flower whose scent I have known, but know not what it is like. I have a great longing for it. That thirst can only be quenched when I am perfect. I have tried to lead my foot steps on that path to perfection which leads to the realization of my true self.’’ It was lunch time, and a fellow-passenger interrupted. We were too often interrupted, so the next day we went to the cabin and I asked, “

When you were in Ahmedabad you said, “ I have realized.’’ What is it that you have realized? What was the process and what were the stages of your realization?’’ He replied, “ I have realized. If you were to ask what it is that I have realized, I cannot describe it as I would describe any solid object. Can I give you any idea of the beauty of the sunset or the sweetness of sugar if you have not experienced what beauty is, what sweetness is?” “ Is it then something which is your own self or something which exists apart from you?” I asked. “ It is and it is not. I am sorry to answer you like this. But I cannot say anything else,” Krishnaji said. In reply to the second half of my question, he said, “ I have not followed any process. Since I was a very young boy, I was tremendously dissatisfied with everything. I used to criticize everything. I criticized Dr. Besant and all my friends. You know what this criticism means? It is devoid of all personal prejudices. It is not merely an intellectual game but it is for true understanding. It is where intellect and emotion are linked. When I criticized others, I criticized myself; and acted accordingly. “ I experienced everything actually or experienced it intellectually. I tried everything and saw the futility of it. In this way, I went on - 1 went on giving up things that did not satisfy me. At last, I came to that realization of Immortality- God-Nirvana, whatever you may call it.”

“ Didn’t Dr. Besant and others try to teach you spiritual practices and force certain ideas on you?”

“ Thank God! They did not. If they did I took no notice of them.”

“ But you did say that you tried certain practices for the kundalini, that you fasted, and read books on these things. You did go through a stem life of an ascetic.”

“ Yes, someone said, ‘Try this’ I tried it for sometime and left it. Just as some women came along in my path, they fell in love with me, but I stepped aside. They got angry with me and they left me. I do not think those spiritual practices helped me in any way. If they did, I do not know. My process was of negation. This can be the only way.” I said, “ It is true that you knew the futility of those things and you abandoned them. But what about those of us who have no such knowledge? Is it then wrong to practise these things?” “ No one can stop you from doing what you wish. But I sa\ that to grow out of childhood into youth, it is not necessary to have measles, chickenpox or smallpox, to gain knowledge. It is n necessary to go through the process of Yoga, dogma or any sue practices. I had no goal. I had no definite ideas of the Ultimate by following a certain prescribed path, dogma, theory or religioi belief, you narrow your vision of truth. How then can you realise the Whole?” It was time for dinner and so our conversation ceased.

Krishnaji’s last sentence was like a heavy blow. What had I done? I was in darkness before and a lamp had been lit; I saw my path in its light. Then I had started to build walls around me and the light was obscured. I was lost, and fool that I was, I did not know it. I had come out of one bondage, to be tied in another. I had seen the light but blindness had come upon me. I had thought for a short while, and then started to read and branded my power of thinking. I had read Vivekananda, the great thinker and interpreter of the Vedanta in the last century, and jumped at the idea of Non-Duality. I did not even have the glimpse of truth, and I had made myself believe that Non-Duality was the truth, because all such beliefs give one a sense of comfort and cosiness. I had been building great edifices on these false premises and a mild breath brought my whole structure to the ground. I was again lost. I was miserable and uneasy. I felt that I could do nothing with my limited outlook. There was no need to go into the controversy of Duality and Non-Duality. If realization had to come, it would come on its own. I had to know life - I had to know the present.

Next morning, Krishnaji said to me, “ What was the effect of my talk?” “ l am extremely miserable. I am again lost. I feel very small. ’ ’ Then I told him all that had passed since yesterday. “ I have to begin again. I am very dissatified with myself and everything about me.”

From that day onwards, I could not do the mala (the beads), nor could I name the omkar, nor meditate on any particular idea. I saw that when I turned a few beads of my mala my mind could no longer attach itself to it. Only the hand was functioning mechanically. I was reciting the Gayatri Mantra but the mind was wandering far away, as if I wanted to have it all over, as if everything in me was eager to finish with it. By forcing one’s mind and emotions to such forms, they are destroyed. It is true that there are moments when in joy one feels like reciting the Gayatri, but one should not do anything with obstinacy. Every morning I see the sun rise and and I feel such joy that I want to say the Gayatri. In that, there is life. There is no motive in it. I will do nothing out of convention or rigidity. I shall not do it with desire. I shall not force myself to meditate on Soham, or Satchidananda.

This is what is natural to me: (1) To sit relaxed and feast my eyes on the beauty of my surroundings. (2) To watch the movements of my mind and allow them to work themselves out. (3) There are moments when I feel submerged in something inexplicable. These moments should be allowed to come but not be pursued. This is how one could observe the moments in one’s self, but not kill or control. This is how one regains one's well-being. By the vow of silence, I find peace of mind. In that case. I shall keep to it. It is good to live on fruits for one day in a fortnight. I shall continue to do so. My experience has been that reading too many books on religion and on schools of philosphy obscures one’s capacity to think. It makes one’s mind narrow and dogmatic. One starts to judge things with preconceived ideas and with false values. Having realized this, I have no mind to read such books for some time.

The next day I said to Krishnaji, “ You said there is only one way, then what about other people who have realized or at least claim to have done so? Are they hypocrites?” “ If you give me some concrete examples I shall tell you what I think about them.”

“ I mean the thousands of sanyasins who practise a certain Yoga and become enlightened.”

‘ I call them lunatics. A lunatic means a person who is always thinking about the same idea. These sanyasins catch hold of one idea, go on thinking of it all the time, and mesmerize and kill their minds completely. They imagine a thing for such a long time that it becomes a reality to their destroyed minds - this they call self-realization.”

“ Do you know then, anyone whom you would call enlightened?”

“ There must be, I do not know.”

On another occasion, he said with great anguish, “ Everyone is seeking personal immortality and self-preservation. That is what is wrong with this world.” I said to him, “ I know no one who seeks anything else but these two objectives.” I asked, “ If someone were to hit you, would you not hit him in return?” “ I do not think so,” he replied.

One day I said, “ You travel so much and feel worn out. You must rest.”

“ I like my work very much. Two more years and then I would like to live in seclusion for some years - maybe in the Himalayas. Before that, if I die, I die; it can’t be helped.” Krishnaji, as before, had pain in the head. For this reason, he stayed all by himself in Holland for a month. I said to him, “ Since you have such pain, why don’t you consult some doctors?” He said, “ It is not pain. It is an inexplicable joy. ’ ’ Often, he exclaimed, “ What a world! Oh, what a world! ' ’ So one day I said to him, ‘ ‘Krishnaji, don’t you feel sorry to see the inequality in this world between man and man? Quite often I feel that we have millions to waste upon ourselves, whilst there are many who have not even the barest necessities of life. Sometimes, one feels like giving up all one’s possessions.” “ Yes,” he said, “ one feels pain to see this inequality. One man’s attempt to give up his possessions will not improve the world. On the contrary there will be one more pauper on this earth.”

“ Does it then mean that the individual must make no eltort as long as the world has not changed? How can the world change, if the individual does not change?” I asked.

“ If you pity a poor man and give up your wealth, that is not going to help him. I suppose you know the story of the American millionaire. Some communists went to him and said, ‘Thousand of poor people are starving. Your money is wasted, give it to us’. The millionaire said,‘Rightly so. How many dollars do you think I have?’ ‘$ 100,000,000’ ‘ And how many people do you think there are in this country? ’

‘100,000,000’.

‘Well then, take all that I have and give each one a dollar’.’’ “ Then,’’ I asked, I suppose you do not approve of Gandhiji’s vow of poverty and travelling in third class?’’ “ If he does so to improve the condition of the poor it will not be to any avail. He has been travelling third class for so many years but has this improved the condition of the poor people?” “ Before, people were ashamed to be poor and travel third class, but Gandhiji gave them dignity. If everyone were to follow suit and were to become poor and travel by third class, there should be no rich, and there would be no class distinction.” “ It is impossible that such a thing should happen. If it does it is because they feel Gandhiji does this thing and so we shall also. There is no change of heart. The attitude has not changed. One may change his outward behaviour but the differentiation in the mind still remains. Attitude is very important. You may travel first class or third class, you may be rich or poor, that is of little consequence” .

‘Then why don’t you have property?”
“ People value property and money not because these are valuable but these are means to possess other things that one holds valuable. I have no greed to possess other things, therefore I attach no value to property and money. What need have I for money? There is greater happiness in a beggar’s life. With such an attitude it is right not to have possessions but it is not right to pity someone and give up your possessions.”

After this conversation, we went up to the dining room and saw many rich Maharajas and business magnats. I said, “ Something must be done. What a contrast between the rich and the poor.” Krishnaji replied, “ The rich must be heavily taxed by the Government.” Once again he said to me, ‘ ‘A beggar’s life is the best.” I said, “ How can everyone become a beggar? Who would feed them?” He put his hand on his forehead. “ To become a beggar you must have real intelligence.” I said, “ Looking to the past history of the world and the present, man seems not to have changed at all. It is true that he has changed his mode of living and his manners and customs, but his emotions and instincts and his concepts have not changed fundamentally. Man is the same brute as he was.”

“ It is true,” he said, “ but he must change or I do not know what ruin will come upon this world.”

“ Do you think that everyone would accept the life you talk about, and that the world would become ideal?”

“ I know everyone would not like to be as I say, but if some people were to become the image of perfection, they will form the nucleus of that ideal world.” On another occasion I said, ‘ ‘People say that no human being can be perfect because to them perfection means a condition where nothing remains to be achieved. They believe that man is weak and sinful and has all the limitations of the body, and so he cannot be perfect.” “ In technique, there is always something to achieve. Science can always go on developing new things; but the mind is different. Let me ask you, what is perfection?”

“ I have no clear idea. Perhaps perfection of mind shows perfect balance in all conditions at all times.”

“ No, I will answer you. To me, perfection consists in a really critical, intelligent and alert mind. Imagine a goat or a donkey tied to a rope which is fixed to a point. The goat runs only up to a certain point, goes round about and inside the circumference. Its freedom is limited. But consider a goat that is not tied to a point. Then its flight is unlimited and free. Such is perfection. Perfection is a plane without a radius and without a fixed centre.” I said to him, “ Suppose I do something and I know harms me, but still I do not know it so well. I desire it and I cannot abandon it. It takes me some time to realize fully what harm it does to me. In that circumstance, should I control myself and resist my desire till I fully understand and give it up through know ledge?” ‘ ‘That is exactly what ought to be. To know the falsehood well is to get rid of it at once and spontaneously. That requires true intelligence. If you do not possess it, you must control yourself.

I was glad that he corrected me, and I said to him, ” wnenever we make any mistakes or appear funny in our manners, speech or behaviour you must correct us.” He said, ‘‘You should use simple and unostentatious words in English, like jewels for ornaments. Indians are in the habit of using long and pompous words which are quite out of use. Do not use the word ‘costly’, instead ‘expensive’ and ‘dear’ sound better.”

Often in fun he said, ‘‘I wish I could be your tutor.” On the back of a menu-card, Mr. Patwardhan, a barrister, wrote down the terms of a contract in which was stated that Krishnaji promised to be our tutor in English for sixty years on a salary of £10,000. Krishnaji, Patwardhan and I signed it, and it became a real legal document! We asked him to teach us correct eating habits and table manners. He said, ‘‘Keep your plate neat. Drink water half an hour before and after the meal but not in between. ’ ’ He showed us three or four amusing ways in which people eat. Some of us were eating that way. We were very amused to see how ridiculous we looked.

For instance, long before the morsel reached our mouths, as if in eagerness to swallow it, we sat gaping at it.

Krishnaji’s secretaries Raj Gopal and Patwardhan were with him on this trip. Raj Gopal asked us one day, ‘‘What would you think if Krishnaji marries?”

“ Nothing, but people would talk about it.”

Then we asked Krishnaji, “ Why don’t you marry?”

Krishnaji replied, “ I feel no need for it. When one is not self-sufficent, one needs someone to complement one’s physical, economical and other needs. I feel no such insufficiency in myself and so the question of marriage does not arise at all.” Many passengers on the boat thought that we were Krishnaji’s children, or at least that my ten-year-old younger sister Gira was his son, since she always wore boy’s clothes. Krishnaji used to call her ‘‘my adopted mother” . Sometimes at the dinner table he would say to us in fun, ‘‘I wish I could marry you ladies.” We retorted, “ That shows you have a special liking for us.” “ Then let me correct myself. I wish I could marry you all.” Then we said, “ You are even greater that Lord Krishna.” Then often we teased him, reminding him of the past lives of ‘Alcyone’ (a book published by the Theosophical Society on the past lives of Krishnaji), and he felt very bashful.

We had a grand time with Mr. Patwardhan. We asked many questions and he furnished us with a great many detailed and interesting facts about Krishnaji. When he was young, four or five young boys of his age promised to dedicate their lives and serve him unto death. In the beginning Nitya and Yadunandan Prasad were amongst these, and now Raj Gopal had been his constant companion. The first two died and now Krishnaji and Raj Gopal stayed together like two brothers. Every evening, we stood with Krishnaji on the game-deck and searched the sky for Venus, the evening star. Whoever spotted it first showed it to the rest. In Aden, we had great fun looking down from the deck at the Bora pedlars in small boats selling cheap, vulgar silk garments. For hours together, the passengers of our boat and the pedlars for Rs.60 to start with were brought down to the price of Rs.10! All these transactions were carried out by shouting and by means of baskets tied to ropes. The pedlars after each sentence shouted at the top of their voices: “ I say! Last price, how much I say.” Krishnaji, for a long time afterwards, recalled this scene, and we had a hearty laugh over it.

We reached Bombay and we stayed there for a week. The next day, on our arrival we went to the house of Mr. Ratansi Morarjee, who was his host. Khan Saheb Abdul Karim Khan was giving a special concert for Krishnaji. Abdul Karim’s voice was like a flute. Krishnaji was very fond of his music and so each time he was in Bombay, Khansaheb came to sing to him. Krishnaji’s favourite tunes are in the ‘Todi’, ‘Bhairavi’, ‘Jaunpuri’ and ‘Bageshree’ ragas, musical modes characteristic of Indian classical music.

Then on the third day we went to Krishnaji’s talk. He seemed to have a greater command on his language, on his thoughts, on his expression and delivery . This time I could understand him with greater ease. On the fourth day a discussion was arranged where a great many people had assembled. They interrupted Krishnaji very often. They didn’t even allow him to explain, since they simultaneously formed smaller groups and discussed points amongst themselves. Krishnaji did not seem to mind it because their behaviour reflected their understanding. He said to one with mild reproach. ‘ ‘Now J, how often, perhaps in every talk, you and others have listened to me and I am sure you have not understood a word. ’ ’ In the evening, we went to Juhu with him. There, we drank coconut water, ran and walked along the beach. The sun was setting and the sky was red. The wet sandy beach was also coloured red. The beach is crescent-shaped and beautiful with the coconut palms. Two girls were dancing on the verge of the water, with their feet lapped by the waves rolling forward and receding. Krishnaji saw them and he started to dance. He flung up his hands and ran. We thought he would fly away like a bird. Then we held competitions as to who could run the fastest and throw the coconuts farthest.

That night, with my brothers and sisters I went home to Ahmedabad. For a second time, Krishnaji came to Ahmedabad soon afterwards. Every morning I saw him for a moment and then went to study. At 10 or 10-30 a.m. I returned and then we met in the sitting room, where everyone came one by one until we formed quite a large circle. Krishnaji was in high spirits and talked with great zest. He had been to Greece recently and spoke about it with deep ecstasy. “ No one has reached the perfection of Greece, barring of course ancient India. Even today we go to them for inspiration.”

After lunch we sat talking for one or two hours. We rested in the afternoon, had tea together and then walked briskly around the garden wall, completing four or five rounds, which came to about four to five miles. Then we went for a drive, or stayed at home and talked. Some afternoons he read the Bible to us. He was particularly fond of the book of Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and some of the Hymns. He said, “ Lady Emily reads the Bible everyday When we were young boys, she read some parts of it to us. I liked it so much that I made it a point to read two chapters of it everyday.” Then he added, “ I do not agree with the thought, but I think that the language is beautiful. Each time I read it I feel thrilled. I have read the Italian and French Bibles but those translations are nothing compared to the English version. If I had to teach someone English, I would start with the Bible.” He opened a chapter of the Song of Songs and said, “ It is so passionate that really I should not read it to you young people. It is really meant to illustrate the love of man and woman but was later on interpreted as the love of the Church for God.” Then he read it aloud to us. His manner of reading was very beautiful. He created such a taste for the Bible that we too wanted to read it on our own and so we noted the passages which he thought were particularly worth reading.

One evening we created a tremendous row. We collected in the music room. Each one of us had a musical instrument, drums, castanets, cymbals, tambura (the drone), violin, accordion and bells, and each played in his own fashion! Krishnaji was not less rowdy. The situation quietened after some time and Krishnaji started to sing a dhoon, a chorus sung usually with a religious motive, and we joined him -Then Krishnaji recited Sanskrit verses. He knew sti (hymns, usually from well-known religious works) by heart mantras (verses intended to evoke spiritual blessings selected deities, or to create a meditative condition) pertainii Agni (the God of Fire) and ritualistic worship. He knew pass from the GeetGovinda (A long and beautiful descriptive poem of the poet Jay adev about Krishna). He remembered Bhandarkar’s Sanskrit readers and repeated by heart ‘R, Ramo, Rama, and ‘Gama Gachcha’(noun and verb forms o go’). We ended up with jazz music and some hit songs! Krisl sang to us some songs which he had heard in the popular pla; his time, like ‘Mary Mary is my only sweetheart. ’ He said, ‘ I knew all these by heart.”

We had an early dinner. My father and Krishnaji talked about absurd things and we had a hearty laugh. After dinner, conversation was rather serious and penetrating. About nationalism he said, ‘‘Nationalism can do no got the country. Through patriotism and nationalism, we in Indi trying to resist the British. Maybe we shall have the rigt legislate and rule but we are not going to be free; because such ‘freedom’ we shall still continue to be narrow-min orthodox, bigoted, superstitious and tyrannical and still rer exploiters. At present there are white exploiters and then we'll have brown ones.”

My brother Vikram interrupted, “ It is better to have our own exploiters than have strangers to exploit us.” Krishnaji replied: “ No, not at all. It is the same to me whether a white man or a brown man were to steal my thing. After all, I have lost it. Would I feel it less, if a brown man were to snatch it away from me? This is merely an empty sentiment.’’

To this Vikram said, “ Let us assume that our people are tyrannical, bigoted and orthodox, and that when they assume power they shall be even greater exploiters than the English. But after some time they shall learn how to rule and they shall improve. We must drive out the English first. For this we must become national minded and patriotic.”

“ Only by driving out the British, it is not going to improve matters. We must change our emotions, our thoughts and our attitude. In these lies freedom. Nationalism; I hate the word. There should be a World State.” “ We have no power in India and we have no freedom, then how can we form a World State? The first step to a World State is to have a National Government,” Vikram persisted. “ If, through a National Government, one is to attain a World State then that should have been attained long ago in Europe. On the contrary we see each country with its narrowed outlook trying to make itself powerful and preparing for war. If it continues like this, Europe will be overwhelmed by wars and will be destroyed. Do we also want to cultivate this nationalism and bring destruction to this country?”

My father added, “ How can we even say that India is my country? Punjab, Gujarat, Madras and Bengal and all these provinces are at present in the Indian Empire and they are coloured red in the maps. Why should not Punjab be a separate country and why not Gujarat also? Why should not people of these two countries develop nationalism? Why should not they have separate kingdoms and fight each other? Even then, when we shall drive out the British we shall try to keep Gujarat and Punjab under one domain. It will be like the British Empire, just another small version of an Empire.”

Krishnaji said: ‘‘Some of our leaders seem to be mistaken in trying to imitate European politicians and economics without really knowing true Indian conditions. They don’t seem even to be up-to-date in their ideas. About fifty years ago that which was discarded as a mistaken ideology has been taken up as a political programme by us. The problems of India are different. The way to solve these is not to imitate but to co-ordinate our thoughts and emotions and become an entity for the achievement of freedom.”

“ If our fight is not on the right lines what would be the measures you would employ?

“ I would take steps to first get rid of dogma, custom, superstition and ignorance. I would bring awakening through education, books and newspapers.”

One evening, my father and Krishnaji sat discussing how they would plan India if they were dictators. They seemed to agree on many points : (1) To abolish religious beliefs as they stand just now. To maintain temples as objects of art and to use them for public utility. (2) To establish a minimum standard by which everyone shall have sufficient food, clothing a n d living accommodation. Along with these one should have ample leisure. It shall be the choice of everyone whether to spend away or hoard what is given to him. After the death of a miser, his savings will go to the State. (3) Everyone shall have the opportunity to be educated and to develop his abilities to the fullest. Books, movies and theatres should be widely used for this purpose. (4) Marriages may be permitted, but one would have to take a licence before becoming a parent. Others will resort to birth control or will be sterilized.

After that, Krishnaji went to his room. As he had a very severe cold, my mother and I went to attend on him. We treated him with simple home remedies like a foot bath, gargles and steam inhalation. Then we retired at 11 or 11-30 p.m.

This post was last updated by John Raica Tue, 25 Apr 2017.

Here are a few selected excerpts from Mr Lakshmi Prasad's interviews with K during the early 80's in India, for 'Andhra Pradha Weekly'

The first question dates from January 1986

Q: We are soon entering the 21-th century. Beyond the political & economical predictions, what is the best spiritual approach to solve the problems of this country, as well as those of the world ?

K: The problems that India is facing are enormous -poverty, over-population, etc. And our government seems incapable to solve them.
Besides we have already entered into the Computer Age - and it is not unlikely that the computer will eventually surpass man. It is already competing with the human brain and its 'thinking' can go infinitely far both in the past as in the future. So, what will happen to the human brain ? Will it shrink and perish ?

And, what should we think about the actual education system ? Why are we educating ou children ? In order to become good technicians concerned exclusively to make (a lot of ?) money ? and live a life based on pleasure ? If education does not teach us to observe life (holistically ?) and to understand it, what is its purpose ?

We were having these interviews which you publish in India every year; are there at least a few who are reading them seriously ?

Q: Certainly, the more thoughtful of them...

K : But they don't pay any ( responsible ?) attention to what I am saying. In fact, nobody wants to 'learn'...

Q: Te 'self-preservation' instinct seems to generate selfishness in all the areas of life. How could we avoid this trap ?

K: Why are we always emphasising the 'ego', on the existence of a separated consciousness ? The whole structure of society as a whole does encourage self-interest . And this was a problem throughout our whole history: how to create a society in which self-interest is not the dominating factor. The verious religions, the sects and the Gurus have also sought to solve this problem, by using all the available means. But, these Gurus, have they really gone beyond their egoticism . In fact, I think that all the forms of power -far from facing it, have only encouraged its expansion.

Q: Doubtlessly ' for the greater benefit of the many' ...

K: Yes, for the so-called 'general interest'.
You want to know how to get out of this trap ( of self-interest ?) ? Well, one has to observe oneself, to become aware of how selfishness is born in himself, what form it takes and under what 'mask' it is hiding. This is a (hard ?) work that everyone must do within oneself.

Q: In fact, our approach must be almost 'scientifical', even non-personal.

K: Exactly.

This post was last updated by John Raica Fri, 21 Apr 2017.

I was often intrigued by the unusual meaning K was giving to the word 'reincarnation' as in: ' Reincarnating each day - a very powerful image indeed , making it sound like the ultimate spiritual achievement

Here are ( flash-posted ) a few "out-of-this -world" Q&A's that might shed some extra-light on its deeper meaning ( the answers were obtained by W. Usborn Moore around 1911 via 'automatic writing' )

Q.: Is there such a thing as re-incarnation ?

A.: Not in the Theosophy sense ; 'yes' in another.”

Q.: Is each phase of advance in spiritual life what you mean by a 're-incarnation' ?

A.: “Yes, in another world ; you may belong to the Latin race, to the Slav, to the various offshoots of Babel. Do you follow me ?”

Q.: I do not quite understand. Isn't the spiritual progression supposed to be achieved through a series of births ?

A.: That is a punishment.

Q.: How do you mean , our punishment ?

A.: Yes in that lower state to pay for any (karmic) 'criminal offence'.

Here are a few 'lost & found' interviews given by K in India (between 1981-85 ) to Lakshmi Prasad, a local journalist for the (telugu publication) Andhra Prabha Weekly

(Author's Intro)

In 1971, I bought The Penguin Krishnamurti Reader and endeavored to read it with all due attention. But my hopes were somewhat disappointed and I ended up abandoning this project. A few months later, while rummaging through a library, I accidentally fell onto one of the volumes of Commentaries on Living, which I read this time with the greatest interest. Seized with a sudden passion, I decided to scum bookstores and libraries - including those of my friends - in search of the works of Krishnamurti, which I devoured after my hours of work, sometimes extending my readings very late at night .
I even devoted my days of vacation to the study of the said works, which always filled me with unmixed joy. Moreover, if I borrowed a book from the master to some one, I had to imperatively recopy the most important passages in my notebooks before being able to separate from it. In a word, Krishnamurti had literally spellbound me.

At that time I was working with T. Vedantam, who was in charge of the census operations. In December 1972, Vedantam, who also admired Krishnamurti, advised me to join the Rishi Valley school for a few days. Naturally, this proposal delighted me, and I thanked him from the bottom of my heart. On this occasion, I met Mrs Pupul Jayakar and Mr Achyut Patwardhan, who also lived in Rishi Valley. A few words exchanged with them sufficed them to understand that my fervor in the master's place was not feigned. So they cordially invited me to lunch with him, along with some other visitors. But this kind of formal meeting could not satisfy me. What I wanted was to get in touch with Krishnamurti - but how? At the time, I was ready to climb the walls and burst into his room to be able to talk to him privately.

A few years later, when I told him of these "impetuous" impulses, he contented himself with murmuring: "Well, very well," not without a broad smile. Subsequently, I attended his lectures in southern India every year. But, although I had become a true exegete of his work, ten years passed without my being able to approach him.

In 1980, a journalist friend, Rao was appointed Editor - in - Chief of Andhra Prabha Weekly, a reputed weekly magazine with considerable popularity in Telugu. Rao, who knew nothing of my passion for Krishnamurti, offered to interview him. Needless to say I jumped at the opportunity. Finally, I went to see the master up close ...
The interviews gathered in this book repeat word for word the notes taken both by my wife and myself while Krishnamurti answered my questions. During one of our interviews, he asked me: "How do you proceed exactly? "My wife and I note your answers with the utmost accuracy." Then I try to transcribe their spirit in telugu before giving them to the publication. - Why do not you use a tape recorder? Krishnaji suggested. I have a very good one. "I'd like to conduct the interview in my own way," I replied without hesitation.

 The presence of a tape recorder would, in my opinion, have given an artificial character to our interviews - whereas I wanted to preserve the spirit of a simple and natural conversation. Krishnaji understood my intentions and nodded with a smile.
During a life devoted to teaching, Krishnamurti spoke to thousands of people - and his words have deeply transformed the most sincere of his disciples. But each one of us, according to his means, can at any time receive his grace

This interview was conducted in the reception room of Vasanta Vihar, headquarters of the Krishnamurti Foundation in Adyar, Madras. On that day, my daughter Padma, who was then a high school student, was very interested in seeing the teacher, whose papers she had read. We also accompanied Achyut Patwardhan, former socialist leader and longtime companion of the master.
No doubt I was the only journalist who pushed Krishnaji to stammer a few words in his mother tongue, the Telugu - when he had been using only English for decades. This demand was naturally formulated in the tone of the joke, but he yielded to it with much sportiness.

The last question I asked him - why men merely adore the pioneers who cleared new territories instead of embarking on the adventure themselves - broke the ice between us and I believe that readers will find his answer extremely relevant

Struggle and Conflict

Prasad - Everywhere in the world, communities and individuals seem to be torn apart by ongoing disputes and quarrels. How do you analyze this situation?

Krishnamurti - You see, the conflicts that separate the man from his neighbor begin at the individual level, that is to say within the family. Indeed, the incomprehension already reigns among the members of the same household. Ambitions, dreams, aspirations - each one thinks only of himself. And everything that characterizes the family is found on the level of the community, extending to the whole nation. Therefore, these conflicts must be resolved at the first level, that of the individual, before we can move on to the next stage.

Communications

Prasad - The rapid development of communications should, it seems, have led to a better understanding among the peoples of the world. We are seeing everywhere an increase in ideological conflicts. Is there not some correlation between the growing advancement of technology - in other words, the acceleration of progress - and the decline of certain values, including generosity, which constitute us as a man? And if so, what is the reason?

Krishnamurti - Obviously, these values ??are weakening day by day, while on the contrary strengthens the attachment to the goods of this world - money, sex and power. But your question was about the inevitability of such a situation. Indeed, the very existence of technology has allowed the widespread expansion of all these desires. The least politician runs today after power. As for money and sex, they are the dominant factors in everyday life. Add to this the formidable speed of communication that characterizes our era ...
In such a context, how do you expect man to evolve differently? Our moral defeat is to the exact measure of our technological advance-
The Though many gurus stretch out on true values, they do absolutely nothing to prevent them from perishing - to say nothing of the established religions which generally confuse discourse and action. What interests gurus is power. And those will certainly not encourage you to go further.

Prasad - In general, they do not invite to the discussion ...

Krishnamurti - The gurus are content to decree what to do. But as soon as it comes to taking action, they can not be found.
Busy in strengthening the foundations of their power, they spend their time evaluating the numerical strength of their disciples.
Then who will save man? It can only be man himself.

Discipline

Prasad - As you preach self-control, you fight at the same time against any form of discipline imposed from the outside.
Yet, considering the state of India today, do not you think that all sections of the population should be subjected to a minimum of discipline?

KRISHNAMURTI - Who should control who? Are all these corrupt governments able to teach people anything? Are our educational institutions capable of transmitting the least authentic value to our youth? Of course, many teenagers turn to drugs and adopt suicidal behavior. But how did the college professors get their place - if not then through corruption! And you want them to set an example for their students! Do you think young people are blind? They know how their parents act, how they live, and what methods they use to make their way into society. Hence this rebellion, even this revolt of a great part of them. In truth, both boys and girls must receive an adequate education
and understand for themselves the requirements of an impeccable life. And this is decided at the level of the school.

Achyut Patwardhan - What Prasad seems to suggest is that, as in communist countries, there could be censorship of certain forms of literature or other artistic productions - in short,

Krishnamurti - Who taught me discipline? To tell the truth, I was raised in the greatest freedom. Never has anyone banned me from smoking, drinking alcohol or eating meat. And yet these desires are unknown to me.

Ayyut PATWARDHAN - There is the discipline that we forge ourselves, and the discipline that society imposes upon you.

Krishnamurti - The latter is devoid of purpose. Remember Bhagalpur ... (Krishnaji is referring to those thieves whose eyes were broken when they were detained on the decision of the local authorities.) This drama made a great noise at the time and raised storms of protest.

PRASAD - Should we leave a madman free?

Krishnamurti - What if the internal one is even crazier? What is Discipline? It is "learning". It is imperative that each of us learn. Over the centuries, many constraints were imposed on monks, sects and religious orders. See the result. Today, some "men of God" can abandon celibacy. And they would certainly not have gotten the right to marry if they had not demanded it themselves ...

Two generations

Prasad - You have taught more than two generations and observed how those-civous express only in English . And maybe you never learned that this one language ...

Achyut Patwardhan - Prasad would like to know if you have kept some memories of the telugu.

Krishnamurti - Doubtless I can count up to ten.Prasad - Very good. Okrat, Rendu, Moodu, Na-lu-gu (one, two, three, four in Telugu). (After a long hesitation, he continues by mixing the languages: five, sei, etc. - before bursting with laughter.) That 's it. See, I have already slipped to Italian.

Deeper depths

Prasad - Every epoch arises an exceptional being. He digs a well, quenches his thirst, and shares the water with the others. Then he goes his way. But his "disciples" do not make the slightest effort to dig in their turn - and the well ends up drying up. So they build a sanctuary at this site and turn it into a place of worship. Why do not they have the will to dig for themselves? Is this the destiny of humanity?

Achyut Patwardhan - This is an excellent question.

KRISHNAMURTI - (He looks at the face of the interviewer with an incredulous air, as if it seemed impossible for a journalist to have such concerns.) That is indeed an excellent question. (Penetratingly.) But are you the author?

Prasad - Of course! You know, I have read many Sufi texts, and especially Rumi. And when I discuss these subjects with people, some even exclaim "Listen to him, he speaks like Krishnamurti!

Krishnamurti - Good, very good. (He seems to plunge into himself.) What was taught to man if not to follow the greatest of us? And this not only in the spiritual realm, but in every sphere of activity. Whether it is art policy or science, it has always been the rule. One will want to imitate Picasso, the other Beethoven. Man has been conditioned to follow in the footsteps of others. And in this conformism, which responds to his deep desire, he finds himself safe. We do not want to think for ourselves, because we have been taught what to think - not how to think. Society, our education, our religion have encouraged us to imitate, to obey - in short, to conform. For thousands of years you have been pushing me to imitate others. And my brain resists all your solicitations. What else can I do? You see, man does not like change. Did you attend the meeting yesterday?

Prasad - Of course.

KRISHNAMURTI - As you can see, I have spoken to a lot of people. But how many have really listened to me, how many have accompanied me on the way - before falling back quickly in their ways? Such are the human beings.

Prasad - May we now take leave ?

I got up, as did my daughter Padmapriya. Krishnamurti went downstairs with us and said, "Whenever we are together in Vasanta Vihar, do not hesitate to come and see me. The interview, which was not to exceed twenty minutes, had lasted three quarters of an hour. Afterwards, Krishnaji always took care to treat me as a friend

K's last interview in India taken by Lakshmi Prasad ( Madras 1985)

There were many rumors about Krishnamurti's ill health and the fact that he had to cancel his Bombay conference to return directly to Los Angeles from Madras. The atmosphere seemed filled with sadness and gravity. However, in his room on the first floor of Vasanta Vihar, we found the master ready for this final interview.

I knew we were putting pressure on him by trying to interview him anew. I therefore proposed to postpone our conversation so as to avoid any unnecessary fatigue. "Do not worry, and do what you have to do," he replied. - Would you like me to read the questions directly? "Do your best," he said.
A certain weariness was read on his face. Just before our meeting, he had briefly received a Quakeress who came especially from Europe.

And no doubt I was the last Indian journalist to speak to him before he left for the United States. I had long wanted to bow before Krishnaji in the traditional Indian way, but I also knew his reluctance, if not his dislike, for this form of salvation. He had one day told one of his relatives that if someone prostrated himself before him, he would have to do the same. For Krishnaji, indeed, every human being participates in the sacred. Another day, when I stood before him in an attitude of deference, he "rebuked me", remarking: "You have no need to bow to me. You can do it elsewhere, if you want to, but not here. Not between old friends.

However, I could not get rid of this desire: prostrate myself before Krishnamurti at least once in my life. So at the end of our conversation, when all three of us sat cross-legged on the floor, I asked not without some hesitation, to bow my respectfully before him. "Since you are so fond of it," he answered, smiling. And, to our surprise, he bowed before us to the ground.

Disconcerted, we rose and he saluted us with hands joined. Krishnaji then walked to a small table near the wall, sat down and turned his back to us . Usually he accompanied us to the door of the room. But this time, my suggestion, quite stupid for that matter, seemed to have disappointed him. "To show too much devotion is a bad thing," he said one day. And no doubt we had fallen into this trap ...

Self-centeredness

Prasad - The conservation instinct seems to engender selfishness in all areas. How to avoid this trap?

Krishnamurti - Why do we always emphasize the ego, the existence of a separate consciousness? The social structure as a whole encourages self-interest. Is this a problem that haunts our history: how to create a society in which self-interest is not dominant? Religions, sects and gurus have, it seems, sought to solve it by all means. But had these gurus themselves overcome their egoism? To tell the truth, I believe that all forms of power, far from attacking this evil, have favored its expansion.

Prasad - Probably in the interest of the greatest number ...

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, the so-called general interest. A lure designed to hide the personal aims of those who hold power ... You want to know how to get out of this trap?
Well, everyone has to observe himself, to find out how egotism is born in him, what form he takes and under what mask he conceals himself. This is a task that must be carried out.

Prasad - In fact, our approach must be quasi-scientific, even impersonal.

Krishnamurti - Exactly.

Conformism

Prasad - If I believe that your talks , you link conformism to "violence" ...

Krishnamurti - By nature, man conforms to things. And the outside world imposes a specific mold on it. The violence comes from the fact that he is desperately trying to adapt to this environment. Imagine that you are a career in politics. If you want to succeed, you will have to comply with the requirements of this kind, whether or not they are right. And every decision will be a source of endless conflict for you. Thus, violence exerts both on the individual and on society
 

 Terrorism

Prasad - One knows the misdeeds of nationalism, but what about supra-nationalism, which uses terrorist actions to achieve its objectives?

Krishnam urti - What is the purpose of a terrorist? To do everuthing frightened you. Whatever the method used - hostage-taking, assassination, sabotage, etc. - terror is a means of achieving its ends as quickly as possible.
Why does an individual join a terrorist organization? Because he can not reach his objective by the usual means. If I am unable to convince you, I (will) impose my ideas on you by force ...

Censorship in the Soviet Union

Prasad - Your books do not circulate freely in the Soviet Union (1984) , although the authorities seem to tolerate the spread of other religious texts. Would you represent a greater danger?

KRISHNAMURTI - I am aware of this censorship. If the government authorizes the publication of so - called religious books, it is simply because it considers them to be harmless. As for my own writings, they speak much of liberty, which a dictatorial regime can not naturally endure. I do not resist the pleasure of telling you one of those stories of which the Russians are fond. A drunkard walks through the Red Square screaming with all his might: "Brezhnev is a furious fool! The police immediately arrested him and led him to a judge. The latter, having listened to the charges against the accused, sentenced him to twenty-two years' imprisonment. At the sentencing, the man tries to plead his case: - I would have admittedly admitted that you inflicted two years in prison for this crime. But such a heavy penalty, it passes the limits! "You are right," replied the magistrate. For drunkenness on the public highway, I have indeed condemned you to two years ... As for the other twenty years, it is the punishment that is usually inflicted on those who have revealed a secret of State

Prasad - Are not they sensitive to the light and clarity of your writings?

Krishnamurti: They do not want it. Their only desire is for their system to perpetuate itself to infinity.

Prasad - We are fast approaching the third millennium. Beyond the economic and political forecasts, what spiritual approach should we adopt to solve the problems of this country, and of the world as well?

Krishnamurti - The difficulties India faces are immense - poverty, overcrowding, etc. And our government seems incapable of controlling them. In addition, we have stepped into the age of computers - and it is not excluded that the computer can one day override the man. He is already able to compete with the human brain. And his "thought" can moves indifinitely into the past or the future. So what will happen to the human brain? Will it atrophy and die? And what should we think of our pedagogical system? Why do we educate our children? So that they all become good technicians, busy exclusively in earning money and leading a life based on pleasure? If education does not teach you to observe life and understand it, what is its usefulness? You talk to me every year and then you publish these interviews. Are there a few to read them in depth?

Prasad - Probably the most conscientious...

Krishnamurti - But they pay no attention to what I say. Indeed, no one wants to learn anymore.

The ultimate salutation

The last Krishnamurti conference in Madras took place on 4 January 1986 in the evening. The next afternoon, the teachers of Rishi Valley, to whom we had joined, took leave of the master. I emerged from behind the group and headed for Krishnaji. - Hey! He said, laughing, "I was sure you were hiding behind everybody. "May I take your hands?" I asked. "Naturally," he replied, "and he immediately seizes mine." "At least that's what my wife confirmed later." I bowed my head until touching our hands together. Indeed, I was no longer aware of anything. Krishnaji therefore left India for California, where he died on February 17, 1986.

And....to whom it may concern:

For a right education

Prasad - How to get young people to discover the ultimate meaning of life?

Krishnamurti - If they are very young, the question does not arise. But see how the children are treated. What do their parents want? That they find a good job, that they marry and that they found a home.

See how (psychologically ?) "corrupt" society is. Do you want children to find their way in such a context? When they enter life, their mind will be completely absorbed by a multitude of material problems - employment, marriage, etc. And they follow, unconsciously, the path traced by their parents ... So, everything depends on education.

We have recently offered some fertile land to a group of teenagers (in India) , with all the necessary equipment to put them into cultivation. Well, can you imagine that they refused this offer because they did not want to get their hands dirty? During my life, I planted all varieties of vegetables, milked cows in the mountains of California and learned to do everything by myself, including cooking. Today, young people do not even know how to cook. In such a society, how do you expect them to discover "the ultimate meaning of life"? Hence the importance of a right education .

Here are some 'lost & found' pages from the 'aniversary' interview of David Bohm , realised by Mrs Evelyn Blau

EB: Dr. Bohm, could you say how you first came into contact with Krishnamurti or his teaching?

DB: Well, the background is that in my work in physics I was always interested in the general philosophical questions as they related to physics, and more generally, universally as it might relate to the whole constitution of nature and of man. One of the points arising in physics which is somewhat related to what Krishnaji is doing, is in quantum theory, where you have the fact that energy is found to be existent as discrete units which are not divisible.

EB: Could you clarify the word 'discrete' in that context?

DB: One view is that matter is continuous, flowing, and the other view is it’s made of atoms, which are discrete, but there are so many atoms that it appears to be continuous. Like grains in an hourglass, they flow as if they were water. But obviously they are made of discrete units. So the notion of the atomicity or discreteness of matter had already been common for many centuries, but in the early 20th-century there arose a discovery that energy is discrete as well. Energy comes in units, though they’re very tiny; therefore, we don’t easily see them, and the number is so great that they appear to be continuous. Now this has important consequences because it means that things cannot be divided from each other. If two things interact by means of an energy that cannot be divided, that link is indivisible. Therefore, fundamentally, the entire universe is indivisible, and in particular, it means that the thing observed and the apparatus which observes it cannot be really separated. Now, we already had this point that the observer cannot be separated from the observed. In fact, whenever you observe, the thing observed is changed because it cannot by this interaction be reduced below a certain level. Therefore, you have the transformation of the object observed in the act of observation.

I had already noted the similarity to consciousness: that if you try to observe your thought in any detail, the whole train of thought changes. That’s clear isn’t it? So therefore, you cannot have the separation of the observer and the observed in consciousness. The observer changes the observed, and the observed changes the observer, therefore, there was a mysterious quality which was not really understood in physics.

EB: Was this part of your observation, scientificallv, as well as philosophically, when you first came in contact with Krishnamurti?

DB: That’s right, let me add one more point. My interest in physics...l had always had a tendency to say that what I was thinking about in phvsics should be taking place within me. I felt that there was a parallel between what is in consciousness, and what is in matter in general, and I felt 'movement' was also a question, that the movement that vou see outside, you 'feel' inside. In general therefore, I felt that we directly apprehended the nature of reality in our own being.

EB: Had you pursued this through contacts with other teachers, or philosophers, or was this a purely scientific matter and vourotvn self-observation?

DB At that point, it was probably mostly my own. The question of the observer and the observed was obviously looked at in quantum mechanics as to its implications, especially by Nils Bohr, who in fact was influenced by the philosopher William James, an American. He had developed an idea of the "stream of consciousness", along the lines I have been saying. But as a matter o f fact, that idea occurred to me independently as soon as I read about quantum theory. There was an analogy between this "stream of consciousness" and the behavior of matter. That was the background of mv interest in science. I was also trying to understand the universal nature of matter. Questions like causality and time and space, and totality, to grasp it all.

EB: Is this something that is shared by other scientists, are there similar observations?

DB: Those who are inclined that way do, but most do not. Most scientists arc very pragmatically oriented, and mainly want to get results. They would like to make a theory that would predict matter accurately and control it, but a few are interested in this question. Say Einstein. I should say that I had some discussions with Einstein on the quantum theory when I was in Princeton. Most physicists know the quantum theory cannot be understood, they take it as a calculus, as a way of getting results, predicting. They say “That’s all that really matters, and

that a deeper understanding might he nice, but it is not really essential.

E B: So with the background of this kind of interest, you came to reading a book by Krishnamurti?

DB Yes. As I said, scientists have an interest in cosmology, many of them are trying to get a grasp of the totality of the cosmos. Einstein particularly wanted to understand it as one whole. What happened in regard to Krishnamurti was that my wife and I were in Bristol. We used to go to the public library where I got interested in philosophical or even mystic or religious hooks, such as those of Ouspensky and Gurdjief because I was somewhat dissatisfied with what could he done in the ordinary sphere. My wife Sarel and I came across The First and Last Freedom. She saw a phrase there, “The observer and the observed,” so she thought it might have something to do with quantum theory, and she pointed it out to me. When I read the book, I was very interested in it. I felt it was a very significant one, and it had a tremendous effect on me. That the questions of the observer and the observed were brought to the psychological level of existence, and I had the hope that one could tie up physics and psychological matters. I also read the Commentaries on Living. Thev were the only other books in the library. I wrote to the publisher in America, and I asked whether one could get more books, or whether Krishnamurti was around. Somebody sent me a letter suggesting that I get in touch with the people here in England. I wrote to them and they sent me a list of books.

EB : Do you remember what year that was?

DB It could have been about 1958, or 1959. Then somewhere around 1960, he came hack to England and gave talks. It could have been 1960. In my letter ordering books, I asked if Krishnamurti ever came to England, they said, in fact he was coming and there would he a limited number of people who could come to hear him. I came with Sarel and, while I was here, I wrote a letter to Doris Pratt, asking if I could talk with Krishnamurti, and then I got a phone call from her arranging to make an appointment. They were renting a house in Wimbledon, and I waited for him with Sarel. Then he came in, and there was a long silence, hut then we began discussing. I told him all about my ideas in physics, which he probably couldn't have understood in detail, but he got the spirit of it. I used words like 'totality', and when I used this word 'totality', he grabbed me by the arm, and said, “That’s it, that’s it!”

EB: What was your initial impression? You had read books by Krishnamurti. What was your impression as vou first met this man?

DB: Well, you see, I don’t usually form those impressions, I usually just go ahead. But the impression I got was that when we...you see we remained silent, which was not usual, but it didn’t seem odd to me at the time, and there was no tension in it. Then we began to talk. Now in talking I got the feeling of close communication, instant communication, of a kind which I sometimes get in science with people who are vividly interested in the same thing. He had this intense energy and openness, and clarity, and a sense ol no tension. I can’t remember the details, but he couldn’t understand very of what I said, except the general drift of it.

EB: You were speaking on a more scientific level?

DB: I was speaking about the questions I was talking of earlier, like quantum theory, and relativity, and then raising the question of whether the totality can be grasped. I should also say that my interests had turned toward understanding thought, which I’ve forgotten to mention. I gradually began to see that it was necessary to understand our thought. In going into philosophy, and going into causality, and questions like that, it was a matter of how we are thinking. I had earlier been influenced by people who were interested in dialectial materialism and when I went to Brazil, I talked to a man who had read a lot of Hegel, and raised the question o f the very nature of our thought. Not merely what we are thinking about, but the structure of how our thought works, and that it works through opposites. Our thought inevitably unites the two opposite characteristics of necessity and contingency. When I got to Israel, I met another man who was very interested in Hegel. What he said was, “ You should pay attentioa to your thought, how it ’s actually working.” So I had become very interested in how thought proceeds. Considering thought as a process in itself, not it ’s content, but it ’s actual nature and structure.

EB So you found similarities between what Krishnamurti was saving, and someone like Hegel.

DB: There is some similarity, yes. I found a relationship, and that was the reason I was fascinated by Krishnamurti. He was going very deeply into much deeper than Hegel, in the sense that he also went into feeling and into your whole life. He didn’t stop at abstract thought

EB: So over a period of years you became deeplv acquainted with Krishnamurti’s thought. In the course of that how did you look at the source of Krishnamurti’s teaching?

DB: Well, I didn’t raise the question for a while. What happened was that we began to meet every time he came to London and had one or two discussions. In the first year I wanted to discuss the question of the "universal and the particular" with him, and we raised the question “Is mind universal?” and he said, “Yes.” We used the word 'individual', is intelligence 'individual', and he said, “Yes” at the time. We had quite a good discussion on that. When we left I had the feeling that the state
of mind had changed, I could see that there was no feeling, but clarity

EB: When you say "the state ol mind had changed", do vou mean both of your states of mind?

DB: I don’t know, I assume that he was similar since we were in close communication. I said that I had no feeling, and he said, “Yes, that's right,” which surprised me, because I had previously thought that anything intense must have a lot of feeling, and then when I went out I had a sense of some "presence" in the sky, but I generally discount such things...saying that it’s my imagination.

EB: Was that a physical sense?

DB: Yes.

EB: You actually could see some... ?

DB : Feel. Not 'see' anything there, but 'feel' something there, something
universal.

EB: Had vou ever felt anything of that nature before?

DB: I had hints of that, but my whole background was such as to say, I didn’t tell mv parents or anybody, they would have said, “You’re just imagining that.”

EB: Did you feel that there was any relationship between the intensity of vour discussion and what was happening?

DB: Yes, I probably felt that they were related. In fact I might have explained it by saying I was projecting the 'universality' into the sky, is I might have done as a child.

EB: When was your next meeting?

DB: I didn’t see a lot ol him, but we had discussions every year in London when he came in June, and when I went to Saanen in Switzerland. We began to have discussions in which at least for a while I could leel that was some change of consciousness, but by the time I got back to England, it went away. When you go back into ordinary life.

EB: What would you say are the salient characteristics or qualities of his
teaching that differentiate it from that of others?

DB: Well, first of all, the total concern with all phases of life and consciousness, and secondly the question of something beyond consciousness, which began to emerge in our discussions in Saanen.

E B: Did Krishnamurti ever describe any particular influence on his teaching? He says today that he doesn’t read books of a religious or philosophic nature, but in his earlier years he mav have come into contact with that.

DB : Well he didn’t describe it to me, but I’ve heard people say that he read the “Cloud of Unknowing,” which was influential, and probably other books. My feeling is that he must also have been familiar with what the Theosophists were saying. The other things he’s read or heard may have awakened him to some extent.

EB: Did you ever leel that he was drawing you awav from vour scientific interests?

DB: No, because I was going on with my scientific interests, at that time I wanted to understand this whole question of the "observer and observed" scientifically, and the question of dealing with the universe as a totality. So it didn’t really draw me away front the scientific work. I became more and more interested in the question of the nature of thought, which is crucial in everything, including science, since it was the only instrument you had. When I was in London with Krishnaji, I did discuss what to do about scientific research, and I remember he said, “Begin from the unknown. Try beginning from the unknown.” I could see that the question of getting free of the known was the crucial question in science, as well as in everything. For example if you take scientific discoveries— I’ll take a very simple case: You may have heard of Archimedes and his discoveries. He was given the problem of measuring the volume of a crown of irregular size in order to see whether it was gold or not by weighing it, and it was too irregular to be measured and he was very puzzled, and then suddenly when he was in his bath he saw the water displaced by his bodv, and he realized that no matter what the shape, the water displaced is equal to the volume of the body, right? And therefore he could measure the volume of the crown. He went out shouting “Eureka!” if you recall.
Now, you consider the nature of what went on. The basic barrier to seeing was that people thought of things in different compartments, one was volume by measurement, and two, water being displaced would have nothing to do with that, right?

EB: Exactly.

DB: To allow those to be connected, the mind would have to dissolve those rigid compartments. Once the connection was made, anybody- using ordinary reasoning could have done the rest, any schoolboy of reasonable intelligence. The same happened with Newton. Obviously Archimedes, as Newton and Einstein were in states of intense energy when they were working, and what happens is that the moment of "insight" is the dissolving of the barrier in thought. It is "insight" into the nature of thought, not into the problem. All insight is the same. It is always insight into thought. Not its content but its actual physical nature, which makes the barrier. And that is what I think Krishnamurti was saying, that "insight" transforms the whole structure of thought and makes the consciousness different. Now for scientists that may happen for a moment, and then they get interested in the result, working it out, but Krishnamurti is emphasizing "insight" as the essence of life itself. Without coming to a conclusion. Don’t worry too much about the results, however important they may be.
Insight, fresh insight is continually needed. That insight is continually dissolving the rigid compartments of thought. And that is the transformation of consciousness. Our consciousness is now rigid and brittle because it’s held in fixed patterns of thought due to our conditioning about ourselves, and we get attached to those thoughts, they feel more comfortable.

EB: Krishnamurti always seems to be able to make the distinction between using thought as a tool and then putting it aside when the tool was no longer needed for a specific reason. Putting it aside
leaves space for further inquiry.

DB: Yes, one could feel this space was present in our discussion

E B: What would you say are the most characteristic features of Krishnamurti’s teaching?

DB: I think there are several features you could say are characteristic.The emphasis on thought as the source of our trouble. Krishnamurti says that thought is a material process, he’s always said that. Most people tend to regard it as other than that, and I don’t see that emphasized anywhere. Now it’s very important to see that thought is a material process, in other words, thought can be observed as any matter can be observed. When we are observing inwardly we are observing not the content of thought, not the idea, not the feeling, but the material process itself. If something is wrong with thought it’s because erroneous things have been controlled in memory which then control you, and the "me" has to be changed physically. You see with a tape you could wipe out the memory with a magnet, but you would wipe out the necessary memories along with the unnecessary ones.

EB: Krishnamurti seems to indicate that a certain tabula rasa can be achieved through clear perception.

DB: That’s right, but it’s necessarily happening intelligently, so that you do not wipe out the necessary memories, but you’ll wipe out the memories which give rise to the importance of the self. He says that there’s an energy beyond matter, which is truth, and that truth acts with the force of necessity. It actually works on the material basis of thought and consciousness and changes that into an orderly form; So it ceases to create disorder. Then thought will onlv work where it’s
needed and leaves the mind empty for something deeper.

EB: People often raise the point that they lack sufficient energy to continue this investigation in their daily lives. How would you respond to that?

DB: That’s probably because there’s not an understanding of the nature of energy. Let’s connect it with another objection people raise. They 'see it' at certain times, but it goes away.

EB: That’s a frequent complaint.

DB: The way I see that is this: You have to see what is essential and universal, and that will transform the mind. The 'universal' belongs to everybody, as well as covering everything, every possible form. It’s the general consciousness of mankind. We come now to energy, this whole process of the ego is continually wasting energy, 'getting you low' and confusing you. In other words, the individual’s perception of themselves as a separate being, is a waste of energy.

Yes, because if you see yourself as a particular being you will continuallv try to protect that 'being'. Your energies will be dissipated.

EB: Earlier you were saying that since thought is a material process, it’s necessary to observe the process of thought rather than it’s contents. How is one to do that? How is one to make that shift anti observe the material process when it appears as if the only thing that consciousness is aware of is content?

DB: Well, there are several points. Before we get to that, another important difference of Krishnamurti is his emphasis on actual life— on being aware of everything— and also his refusal to accept authority, which is really extremely important. There were Buddhists who said, Krishnamurti’s talking much the same as the Buddhists, but he says, "why do you begin with the Buddha, why not begin with what is here now?" That was very important, he refuses to take seriously the comparison with what other people have said. Now to come back to what you were saying, about observation of the material process. You have to see what can be observed about thought asitle from the pictures and feelings and its meaning. Whatever you think appears in consciousness as a "show". That’s the way thought works to display its content, as a "show" of imagination. Therefore if you think the 'observer' is separate from the 'observed', it’s going to appear in consciousness as two different entities. The point is that the words will seem to be coming from the "observer" who 'knows', who 'sees', and therefore they are the truth, they are a description of the truth. Thatis the illusion.
The way a magician works is exactly the same, you see. Every magician’s work depends on distracting your attention so that you do not see how things are connected. Suddenly something appears by magic 'out of nothing'. You do not see how it depends on what he actually did.

EB: You miss that missing link ...

DB: By missing the link you change the meaning completely.

EB: So what appears to be magic is actually not realizing the connection ol all of these links.

DB: Yes, and that kind of 'magic' take place in consciousness, the observer see things appear and the observer appears to be unlinked to the 'observed'. Therefore it comes out as if from nothing.
Anti if it came from nothing it would be truth. Something that suddenly appears in consciousness out of nothing is taken as real and true. But if you see the link to thought, then you see it as not all that deep.

EB: You’re saying then that thought is more shallow than we believe it to be.

DB Yes, in fact it ’s extremely shallow. You see, most of our consciousness is very, very shallow.

E B Anti what we see as our most profound insights are really rather superficial observations.

DB: Yes, or not even observations. Many of them are just delusions, a great deal of what we 'think about ourselves' is just an illusion. The analogy that is often made in Indian literature is if you have a rope that you think is a snake, your heart’s beating, your mind is confused, and the minute you sec that it ’s not a snake everything changes. The mere perception is enough to change the state of mind, and the perception that, for example, the ol r and the observed arc not independent, will mean lie things which the observer is thinking arc not regarded as truth . more. They lose that power. Now if you see the whole, you could say the whole energy of the brain is ''aroused' and directed bv the 'show' which thought makes of it’s content, it ’s like a map. There is a 'show' in which this whole content is regarded as truth, as necessary. Then the entire brain is going to restart up around this show. Everything is going to be arranged to try to make a better show. Now the minute you see it ’s only a 'show', this all stops. Now the brain quiets down and it ’s in another state. It’s no longer trapped and therefore it can do something entirely different. But to do that it’s necessary not merely to say so, but to see it in the way we've been suggesting. I thought of another case where you can see the power of perception.
It was this case of Helen Keller you may have heard of her, she was blind, deaf, and dumb. When she couldn’t communicate she was rather like a wild animal. They found this teacher, Ann Sullivan.
What she did was to play a game, as it were, to put the child’s hand in contact with something, that was her only sense, and scratch the word on her hand. First it was clearly nothing but a game she didn’t understand what was going on. Then, Helen Keller recalls that one morning she was exposed to water in a glass and the name was scratched, and in the afternoon to water in a pump, and the name
was scratched, and suddenly she had an insight, a shattering insight, and it was that everything has a name. If water was one thing in all its different forms, this one name “ water” could he communicated to the other person who used the same name. From there on she began to use language, and in a few days she learned words, in a few days she was making sentences, and her whole life was transformed. She was no longer this violent, wild person, but entirely different. So you can see that this perception transformed everything. Once she had the perception there was no turning back. It was not to say she had the
perception and then forgot about it and had to have it again. And I think Krishnamurti is implying that to see that "the observer is the observed", would be a perception enormously beyond what she had. It would have a far more revolutionary effect.

EB: You feel then that the concept of "the observer and the observed" is a key one in K's teachings.

DB: Yes fact they are identical.

EB: I wonder if you would recapitulate some of the other key factors in his teaching?

DB: Well, the question of time , psychological time being merely produced by thought. You see, 'time' is just the same thing as the observer and the observed. The ending of the (division between) observer and the observed is identical with the ending of psychological time and therefore a timeless state comes.

EB: And with the perception of the 'observer and the observed' as one
all of the phenomena of suffering, the human difficulties that we all go through are ended.

DB: THat's right, because they all originate in ignorance of the true nature of this question. Then the emphasis on compassion arises. Passion for all, not merely passion for those who are suffering. That is part of the passion which goes beyond suffering.

EB Authority is certainly another major factor in his teaching.

DB: Yes, you can see now why authority is so important. One of the points you have to add is the enormous power of the mind to deceive itself, which he recognized . Authority is one of the major forms of self-
deception. That is, the authority in the mind , not authority in other matters, they are not necessarily self-deception. If somebody comes out as an "authority on truth" , the danger is that you say that you had begun to doubt certain things yourself but now you take what he says
as true. Because you want it to be so. It’s basically that 'truth' for me is what I need it to be. I feel uneasy, frightened, worried, and on, and so the authority— the religious authority- comes along and says, “God will take care of you as long as you are good and you believe" and so on. Therefore I "want to believe" and therefore I say that "that’s the truth". I was on the point of having to question all this and along comes the "authority" who makes it unnecessary. You have to ask why you accept authority. You see, the authority gives you no proof whatsoever, so why do you accept it? Because you want to, you need to, right? I must have comfort, consolation and safety . And here comes this impressive figure, very nice looking, perhaps clothed in certain ways , with certain ceremonies, and verv nice music and consoling thoughts and a good manner, and he says, " You're alright everything’s going to he all right. You just have to believe"

EB: One of the major characteristics of authority is that it has great power, and that power displays itself, as you said, in rituals, in ceremony. Just as a worldly power, a king, would show himself through his trappings, through his crown, etc.

DB: That’s right. But you see, it’s an empty 'show'. The whole point is that authority builds an 'empty show of power' around itself. A 'display', as you called it. There’s nothing behind it whatsoever, except our belief that it’s there.

EB Have you been able to observe in Krishnamurti’s writings any 'breaking point' where his teaching deviated or went in a completely different direction?

DB: No, I can’t see any fundamental change.

EB: Even as a young man, this teaching was implicit within everything
he said.

DB: Yes, yes.

EB: And there was no learning from other models?

DB: No. I think it comes from a Source beyond the brain which is, in principle, open to everybody.

Continuing with Evelyn Blau's 'anniversary interviews'
Here's one with Mrs PUPUL JAYAKAR

P J : Krishnaji returned to India in 1947, after the war and an absence of several years. In January of 1948, I had gone to see my mother, a social worker, who had an interest and was involved in politics at this time, but no interest in anything at all connected with a religious life. My father had died a few years earlier and my mother had never got over the shock. There was an old friend of my father’s, Sanjeeva Rao, who had been connected with Dr. Besant for many years, who at the time was responsible for organizing Krishnaji’s visit to India. He had come to see my mother, and when I went there he told me that he was taking my mother to see Krishnaji. As a child I had been in the Theosophical girls school in Benares. I remember seeing Krishnaji for a minute and being overwhelmed by the extraordinary beauty of Krishnaji as a person. As I had nothing else to do, I thought I would go with my mother to see this very beautiful person. We went to Carmichael Road where he was staying and after a little while Krishnaji walked in. If you had seen him at the time...it was like a sudden explosion of a presence, the sudden entrance of a presence unlike anything that had ever be seen before. He had great beauty, which he still has, but seeing it ; the first time, the impact was total.

He was dressed in Indian clothes. I remember he used to laugh a lot in those days, and he was laughing when he came in. Sanjeeva Rao introduced us and Krishnaji sat down and my mother started telling him all about my father. After a little while he turned to her and said, “Amma, you’ve come to the wrong person. I have no sympathy to give you.” This came as a blow, I didn’t know what he meant. He said, “Which husband do you miss? the husband you married, the husband who was the father of your children, or the man he would have been if he had been alive. Do you miss the memory of the man?” It was all confusing- I felt a little disturbed and distressed and a little angry he couldn’t give my mother the solace she needed. Then he looked to me and asked, “ And what do you do?” I said, “ I do social work " He started laughing. I was again very disturbed as to why he should laugh at this. He said, it’s like a person who takes a bucket to a well, the bucket has a hole, and the more water you put in the more water flows out. He talked in this way for a little while. We were there for about one hour. When we came home I swore to myself that I’d never go again, but I couldn’t keep away and when I heard he was giving some public talks I went to hear him again. I couldn’t understand a word of what he said, but went again. Then Sanjeeva Rao came and said to me that Krishnaji wanted me to come to his smaller talks. I started going and after that there was no turning back.

E B: What was said at that time that was decisive in your thinking ?

PJ: Right from the beginning he had very small group discussions in India, where twelve, fifteen people used to gather round him. In those days he used to sit every morning and evening and people would walk in, sit round him, and ask him questions. There was a tremendous openness, and a tremendous compassion which flowed from him.
It deeply moved me. I remember he used to speak to individuals, relentlessly challenge them, question them, till listening to him, there arrived a point when one could see. This instant of 'seeing', which itself is impossible to describe, transforms the whole nature of the self. It happened to me and I think that instant of seeing, listening was for me the most significant thing which took place, I actually saw myself as I was in that instant.

EB That must have been an overwhelming experience, and that was what you felt you could not turn back from?

P J : Yes, and from there the teaching started unfolding. He was quiet.. .there was this tremendous outpouring of energy. He gave a lot of time, he met people in groups mornings and evenings, had small and large discussions, gave public talks, and a number of private interviews. Krishnaji is totally different in each of these areas, and when he used to give private interviews it was as if he literally became a mirror which he held up to you. The individual Krishnaji was not, it was just a m rror in which the very presence of Krishnaji made you look at yourself for what you were. He refused to allow you to move away from the seeing of what you were. In the discussions, one of the most interesting things for me, was to see this man start at the same level as all the people who sit around him. As he questions, he questions himself as much as another. He’s prepared to withdraw and look at what he says. I think another very vital clement was the quality of 'listening' which was manifest in Krishnaji. One was not used to that type of listening. I don’t think it exists in the world. A 'listening', in which there is no movement of the self. A listening which takes in the totality. You felt it. It is something that is tangible.

EB During those years were you able to see him in another context, other than as a teacher, in a more informal way?

PJ : Yes. He used to go for drives with us. He often came for dinner at our house. Two or three things I remember very vividly. It s difficult to say
that Krishnaji has 'personal' relationships. Each individual feels a sense of uniqueness in his or her relationship to Krishnaji. He responds to each individual by supplying that which each individual lacks. He laughed a lot and my mother, who was a very good cook, used to specially cook for him . He enjoyed good food. He enjoyed excellence, whether it was the way a house was arranged, or the way a meal was prepared or served. He would participate in situations in a very human way.

EB You mentioned his relationships, and said that there is a line or perhaps something where people are not capable of being in total relationship with him .

P J : No, I say that when he is the teacher, sitting on the platform, gjving his talks, you cannot imagine yourself having a relationship to hin because there is a 'totality' ; he is an empty vessel, and yet there is fullness in him. There is no personal element in him at all. When he gives an interview, even though you feel the warmth and compassion, gentleness, and love of the man, there is nothing 'personal'. When you meet him at a dinner table , or you drive with him he would tell and listen to jokes, ask all about India, all about our children, our families and our problems. He was also concerned about the position of women in India. You could see this concern reflected in many of the talks he gave.

EB: Would you say that his understanding of the position ol women in India was allied to an understanding ol the extreme poverty there?

P J : No, it had nothing to do with the poverty of India. It was the social position and the economic position which the Indian woman had at the time, where she was dependent on the husband. Inheritance laws had not made her a sharer in the inheritance of the father. Krishnaji’s talks were full of sections where he expressed his distress at the plight of women in India.

EB: You mentioned that he likened social work to carrying a bucket with a hole. Does he still view it in that light? Is there no other action worthy o f complete attention in the social sphere?

PI : He used to often tell me, “ Why are you wasting your time, Pupul?" Yet he was greatly interested in the weaver and crafts, I was concerned with. It was very strange, after I gave it all up, which was last year, he said, “ You know, you have created this over the years, are you going to abandon it?” I said, “ Why do you ask? It ’s over now.” He said, “But are you going to abandon it?” I think, to him , the creative moment is very important. Out of that creative moment things happen

EB Would you say that Krishnamurti has had close friendships in his life?

PI : Yes. I would say so. He in fact said a very strange thing to me very soon after I met him. He said, “ People usually adore me, treat me like their divinity, or they hate me. To be a friend is difficult.”

EB Krishnaji has shown a great interest in a variety of things over his lifetime, in automobiles, in clothes, would those be areas where he might be more playful?

P J : He would be playful. There’s a side of him which relaxes, laughs, is human. Sometimes an individual who doesn’t kow Krishnaji misunderstand his capacity to relax. l don’t think that side of Krishnaji is as spontaneous as it was. He has become much graver.

E B : You said previously that you and your sister were with K
at Ootacamund in 1948. Could you tell us about that ?

PJ : Well, I had known Krishnaji for just five months. I was beginning to
know him but, he was still very much the 'unknown stranger', if I may put it. He asked us to come to Ooty. We had no intention of goin to Ooty

EB: Could you tell us first where Ooty is?

PJ : Ootacamund, or Ooty, is a hill-station in the south, in the Nilgeris at a height of about eight thousand feet. It is very heavily wooded . It has great avenues and forests of pines and trees, meadows green. Krishnaji agreed to stay with a friend there for six weeks or so.
I suddenly got a letter from him asking my sister Nandini and me to go to Ooty. We went. Nandini had many domestic problems, a whole family, but we went. After about a fortnight he suddenly asked us if we would mind staying on in the evening. He asked us to come to his room. We went to his room. He said, “Whatever happens, don’t be afraid. Under no circumstances be afraid. If I faint and my mouth remains open, close my mouth. Just sit at a distance of about four feet from me. Just keep on watching me.”

EB: Just you and your sister were present?

PJ : Yes, just the two of us. He first started complaining of tremendous pain in his tooth. We thought he had a toothache but, he said “No no, you don’t understand. No no, sit quietly.” So we sat. Then he complained of a tremendous pain in his head and in his spine. There was a stream of poetic language that came from him. He used to keep on moaning and then this stream of marvelous language would flow

EB: Was that language part of his teaching?

P J : He used to talk of nature and leaves and stones, and then he would sav. “They’re having a great time with me. Do you know what they’re doing? They’re completely emptying my mind.”
I’ve got it written out, I don’t remember the exact words today. He implied there were some 'forces' that were working inside his brain, cleaning up the brain, making it totally empty so that it could receive. This used to go on for hours, it went on for sometimes four hours, five hours, sometimes six hours.

EB: Over a period of successive nights?

P J : Fifteen or sixteen nights at a stretch. There was a tremendous sense of sacredness in the whole place. We were quite new to it, but we couldn' t help feeling this tremendous sense of being in a temple. Not an ordinary temple, but a great presence. There was another very strange thing. He kept on shouting his own name. “Krishna has gone away, he’s left me. Oh no, no, he’s told me not to call him. I mustn't call him, he’ll be very angry. I mustn’t call him.” Then one day he said, They' re back, don’t you see them? Washed by raindrops, spotless. After this went on for some time he would faint. Then he would come to and he would be completely Krishnaji again for a little while. Then again he wouldstart this and the three things were the tremendous pain, the tremendous sense of 'presence' in the room and the great flow of language.

EB When he spoke in that way was he speaking in his own voice?

PJ : When he spoke about nature it was his own voice, but when he used to call out for Krishna it was a different voice. It was a voice which was an empty voice. Totally empty as if it were... how shall I put it? It was an 'empty bubble' who was calling him. There used to be times when the body would suddenly grow. You felt a tremendous fullness.

EB: It appeared physically larger?

PI: When you say that it sounds so stupid that it’s difficult to say, hbut it was as if suddenly a 'light' would come.

EB Would he be unconscious then?

PI: He would he unconscious then. Once I remember very well, it was the end, he fainted. As he fainted his face was worn with pain, but suddenly it changed. It became totally quiet. Every vestige of pain disappeared. It became a deeply meditative face, with a beauty that cannot be contained in any words. We just kept on watching, we got a strange feeling of wanting to fold our hands. Then, it was as if he came out of his faint. He lay there and then turned to us. He said, “Did you see that face?” We said “yes.” He said, “The Buddha was here." I don’t know how we remained quite balanced and sane through it, because we didn' t know where we were. Here we were like two babes in the wood, suddenly thrust into a situation which was incomprehensible, completely beyond anything we could ever have conceived. Then one day it didn’t happen.

Another incident I remember very well, in the middle of this period.
We went for a walk. He said he wanted to walk in the woods. It started to rain, so we took the car as we thought he would get wet and we could bring him back. We went along that road but couldn’t find him, so we came back. Within two minutes he entered the room. He was completely dry. We said, “Krishnaji where did vou walk?" He said, “Along that road.” I said, “You were not there, we went on that road and you were not there.” Suddenly he 'switched off', lay down on the bed and started speaking. He said, “They covered me with leaves, I was covered with all the leaves that fall from the trees. I nearlly didn’t come back.” To this day I don’t know 'where' he went lor a walk. He said he went for a walk on that road but he was not on that road. Il was a strange, strange experience for us.

EB During this time did he carrv on his regular activities?

PI : Oh yes. The moment he came through with this he was perfectly well. He’d grown a beard at that time. He used to go for walks. I remember he used to have a great stride in those days.

EB He still does.

PI : He used to walk down the hill and we used to sometimes watch him come down. I remember a group of women carrying wood on their heads who on seeing this figure walking past removed the loads from their heads, and prostrated themselves on the ground as he walked by.

EB: Did the thought ever occur that a doctor should bencalled at these times ?

PJ: Right at the beginning, yes. We said: “Shall we call a dentist ?"
Then he said, no, no, just sit. Don't be afraid. Whatever happens don't be afraid.He was very concerned that there should be no fear That incident which took place in Ojai, when he said that inside the house he felt everything dirty. He couldn't bear the touch of anything and therefore he had to go under the tree and take a mat and lie down there. He never spoke of any kind of pollution. If there is one feeling which I came away with it was a sense of sacredness. Great sacredness

EB: Do you think this is something that is happening to this day ?

PJ: Not in that way. The 'presences' which were there in that room, the throbbing presence, happens sometimes.

E B: Those things that he's written about in the Notebook ?

PJ: Yes, it's a continuous thing that takes place.

EB: During that period did he ever talk about the masters or any such things ?

PJ: Except that one time; “They are here, they are here. Spotless", I think he used that phrase ' like dew drops or raindrops, but he never spoke of the masters. He used to say t"hey are having fun with me. They
won't | leave me". He felt that his brain was being completely 'emptied'.

EB; In the Notebook he speaks of his brain being 'carved out'.

P J : Well it was that kind of a thing going on, but it was an intense physical thing. What else it was one doesn’t know.

EB What would you say was the relationship between the physical, the pain of that, and the other...

PJ: When the pain became too great he used to faint.

EB: I’m trying to understand the role of that pain.

P J : I really couldn’t tell you. It was not possible to say. I remember asking him, “You speak of Krishna as if he were some outside person? Are there two entities?” He said, “ No no Pupul it ’s not quite like that, it’s not quite like that.” He implied that there is only one entity.

EB: Culd you observe any change in his teaching after these experiences?

PJ: I think 1948 was a period when his teaching was, in my view, different from the teachings which took place previously. Whether it was due to this or something else I don't know. I have noticed that whenever has gone through this kind of an experience it has had an effect. It has not had an effect on the teaching but the teachings have shown a new dimension. I would say that as far as teaching I would consider thye main phases to have been h 1 9 4 8 , 1 9 6 0 - 1 9 6 1 and 19 7 2 - 1 9 7 3 . These are the three main periods. In 1948, he used to take you literally by the hand into self-knowledge . He would lead you from thought to thought till there was an ending of thought. He would do this, for example, with the thought of 'greed' or with the rising of fear He would keep on saying “And then what arises?" So that you started observing, “ what is" , as it arose. You also observed, “ what should be” as it arose in thought. So that one was awake in that instant of “ what is." In 1961 that phase was over. In 1961 he said, "step by step is the process of analysis". He wiped out all that (gradual approach) , and he said, self-knowledge is necessary, it is essential. But he concerned himself with the whole not with the fragment, but with the total seeing of a thing. It has become, as I’ve often told Krishnaji, far more 'abstract'. It was most 'personal' in 1948. In 1972 there is no 'personal' relationship in his teaching. It is a teaching which is 'absolute', which has no relationship to the 'personal me'. While in 1948 there was a relationship to the 'personal me'. There has been a deepening and maturing and a widening of the teaching. It has become 'universal'. For the first time now he is talking about a "life of correctness", which is a life which is completely free of self-centered activity. He said that is essential before anything else can be. He never said that in 1948.

EB: So that there has been constant change actually.

P J : I say there is a constant change, there was a time when he told the members of the foundation that “I have nothing to to do with the (K) foundations. I have nothing to do with 'institutions'. Don’t use my name in the institutions or use me in any sense as an 'authority'. It’s not 'my' wishes which are in the picture. I’m only concerned with the individual and awakening self-knowing in the individual. I’m not concerned with anything else.”
He said once, “My real dharma is that.”

And from the same 'centennial' edition, here's a rather 'odd' K anecdote

"Perhaps the most significant of Krishnamurti’s personal experiences was told to me in December 1949. It was during Krishnamurti's visit to Colombo, as we were driving out of the city for our brisk evening walk. Gordon Pearce, who had known Krishnamurti since his childhood, and who was to become the principal of the Rishi Valley School later that year, was sitting in the front seat, and Krishnaji and I in the back. Gordon enjoyed talking about old times, and this evening he was questioning Krishnaji about those early days.

“Is it true that you used to talk with the Master Kuthumi ? Did you actually see him and talk with him ? ”

It came as a great surprise to me, when Krishnaji answered, “Yes." After a pause, he repeated, “Yes, I did"

Then he went on to explain what took place. He told us that he had talked with Kuthumi on a number of occasions, usually in the early morning while he was meditating. One morning, just after sunrise, Kuthumi appeared in the doorway of Krishnamurti's room. They talked for a while, until Krishnaji, who had participated in similar discussions before, decided that he wanted more than verbal communication, not just words. He needed some 'tactile' contact, to actually meet and touch Kuthumi. So he stood up, and walked to the sunlit door.
Then came the telling words. “I walked right on through the figure. I turned around. There was no one there. I never saw the Master Kuthumi again"
There were no more questions. We rode on in silence.
— INGRAM SMITH , Colombo, Sri Lanka 1949

Sunanda Pathwardhan

EB: Could you talk about the physical dimension of Krishnamurti’s teaching?

S P : Krishnaji shows the importance of the role of the senses in bringing about a quietness of the mind and in awakening a new sensitivity. It is not by suppressing the senses; it’s not by denying or sublimating the senses, but rather by awakening your eyes, your ears, your touch, sense of smell, everything. Generally we use or are aware of only one or two senses at a time, whereas he talks of "all the senses" operating simultaneously. Then there can be a (sensitivity ?) 'ground' of a deep non-verbal state. This awakening of the senses has in it vibrancy and vitality without an (egotistic ?) center.

EB: You said earlier that a teacher like Krishnamurti only comes along once in a thousand years. Can you explain what you mean by that?

S P : You see, the Buddha belonged to the great "break-away" traditions of India. That was more than 2500 years ago. He repudiated everything traditional, ritual, rites, orthodoxy, etc. Like the Buddha, Krishnaji has broken away from the mainstream of Indian tradition. He was brought up, denying his mother tongue and was taught English and French. In a way he was brought up to speak to the whole of humanity in the English language which is understood in many countries of the world. I think this is a very significant thing so that whatever he says can be understood directly by many persons in many parts of the world.

EB . There are hundreds of gurus and Krishnamurti, in some sense, has functioned as a "guru". In what way was he different?

SP : I think Krishnaji was quite different and unique because he was very emphatic in saying that there is no spiritual authority; that there is no authority whatsoever in spiritual matters. Many people may have looked upon him as a guru; he was known as "the guru who was a non­guru." He held each one of us to be responsible for ourselves in this journey of inquiry; there is no authority in spiritual life. Therefore, he never gave answers. He said; “ Look at the problem. The problem will reveal itself, you have to inquire, you have to observe what is and in that very observation what is will reveal itself and a transformation can take place. For this to happen, no guru can guide you. If you are suffering, if you are in a state of agitation, no guru can help you. You have to observe it, and that awakens a capacity to be independent and inquire in freedom from the very beginning.”

EB: Did affection have any place in Krishnamurti’s teachings?

S P : I would say, emotion had no place in his teachings. Sentiment had no place in his teachings. The mere response from the intellect too, is limited; it has no basis of affection and sensitivity in relationship between human beings. It is only when we human beings come together in affection that there can be a new quality in our daily living. He certainly has given tremendous importance to affection and love. If we have that, relationships pose no problem.

I am reminded of a conversation with him . A friend of mine told me“ You know, in Krishnaji’s teachings there is place only for compassion. There is no place for ordinary human affection, pleasure or fondness. How does one live then?” Later when I met Krishnaji, I talked to him about this. He said, “ Compassion is a very vast thing, it can be quite abstract. Many people cannot understand or comprehend what Compassion is. It is very difficult. But that Compassion can touch a person. It can relate itself to an individual and when that happens you will understand it.” Compassion can remain a concept, but affection one can feel where there is no prejudice, no demands of reciprocity. Then it is possible to have effortless understanding and empathy for each other

EB: Did the presence of the teacher in any way prevent an understanding of what he was talking about?

S P : What does the presence of a person who is a so-called “realized person,” a witness to that supreme intelligence and compassion do? We have descriptions in scriptures, in books, of those states of “otherness,” of transcendence. But when a person actually lives in the presence of such a person, he experiences a different quality because there is a communication in silence of 'that' which is sacred, not just through word, symbol or thought. The living presence of an indivi­dual who is a witness and a holder of that extraordinary sacred dimen­sion and pure energy; has a significance which is beyond all measure.

E B In what way did Krishnamurti change as he grew older and did that change reflect in the talks?

S P : I think Krishnaji changed over the years a great deal. I first met him in Madras when he came to India in 1947. Of course, personally speaking, I absolutely fell in love with the teachings, with him, and it meant a whole lot of change in the direction of my life. He was a delight to be with; he would walk with you, he would talk with you, such fun it was, being with him ay. t om the seriousness of the teaching itself. I would say, perhaps the end of the fifties this personal factor gradually started diminishing. Personally, I observed that he became more severe, very serious, and from then onwards, there was very little of the 'personal' in him. I could see that he was deeply concerned with the state of humanity. For fifty years he had taught, spoken and travelled all over the world. Why was not a single person transformed? He was certainly concerned with this problem. Therefore, there was hardly any place for the 'personal' factor.

EB Do you think that Krishnamurti’s teaching may create the foundation for a new civilization?

S P : I feel so, though I may not be able to substantiate it; it is onlv a gut feeling about this direction. Today, Krishnaji is addressing humanity, which has already become closer together as a global village. He is addressing humanity as one unit. Therefore, human consciousness is being spoken to, being touched through word and through non-word by his presence, and therefore the whole stream of human consciousness is being affected in depth. This awakening of the collective consciousness o f humanity, could be the ground for the release of a new creative process. New energies in perception, in relationships, can be released. One can be related to other human beings w ithout images; a new creative process is set in motion, in dialogue with oneself, in dialogue with nature, in dialogue with people.

EB: Are there aspects of Krishnamurti’s teachings that can only be understood non-verbally?

S P : We all know that the word is very limited and thought is limited. Our relationship to each other is based on mutual pleasure, pain, dependence, insecurity . We have observed all this— and the word is not the thing. Not because Krishnaji has said it, but we have also comprehended it e of the great things which he said was that images in relationship prevent you from being really related to another. It is only when there is sensitivity, a listening, a sharing without wanting anything, that there is real relatedness. One of the grounds of the non-verbal quality is to be sensitive and be related in affection to each other. If human beings can love each other, have affection for each other, perhaps we may find a way out of all the extraordinary chaos in this world.

Evelyn Blau's 'centennial' interview with MARY ZIMBALIST

EB: You became quite close to Krishnamurti. You were doing many tilings for him ; did you detectany difference between the man and his teaching at that time?

MZ: Absolutely none. One of the many extraordinary things about him was that there was never any 'shadow' in Krishnam urti. He really was what you saw, what you sensed, and infinitely more, but nothing was ever in contradiction. I don ’t know if many people realized it, I’m sure you do, but he was also a very human person. He loved to laugh, he liked funny jokes, he looked at television and went to the movies. He liked Westerns, as is w ell-know n, and sometimes when the mayhem on the screen had me ducking and closing my eyes, he would say, “Look at those mountains!” meaning the scenery of Monument Valley. While people were being slaughtered in the foreground, he was lost in the desert scenery. At some time he had asked me things about movies and I must have told him that it wasn’t really blood on the screen, so when I would quail he would reassure me by saying, “It’s all right, it’s just tomato juice.” He had this very endearing and almost childlike quality about many thnigs and yet there was also this limitless extraordinary man

E B : What were his other in terests? Was he interested in art, in literature , politics , nature ?

MZ: He was keenly sensitive to the beauty of language. Apart from his well-known enjoyment of detective stories— 'thrillers', he called them — and which he read for relaxation, he read mostly poetry and used to read the Old Testament, not for religious reasons but for the language. In art he always spoke of m arvelous architecture— the Acropolis, the Gothic cathedrals, and he found something almost sacred in the beauty of the Winged Victory and the great Maheshamurti statue at Elephanta. As to politics, he followed the news, often on television, and in the weekly magazines. Also he would talk to people, question them, he was well-informed, more than you might think.

EB: Would you say that he fitted in any particular category, politically speaking? Would it be liberal or more conservative? Did he express those kinds of views?

MZ He wasn’t sophisticated in matters of politics, hut he didn’t tolerate the pettiness of divisions of people, the fighting between countries, political groups, divisive beliefs, he would be most dismissive or impatient of such things in general conversation, but he was always enquiring.
He liked to listen to music in the morning while he had breakfast.
After giving him his tray I used to ask what he would like to hear and almost invariably he would reply, “ You choose.” So I tried to guess what he would enjoy. Most of all he loved Beethoven. Then Mozart, Bach, Haydn, and sometimes he would take a fancy to a particular performer. I think he liked Richter which I played often, and the great Italian pianist, Michelangeli. I once asked him which of those two he preferred; he thought for a moment and said, “One is like snow and one is like sunlight”

EB: Most people tend to view Krishnamurti as more, I won’t say intellectual, but the fact that he liked Beethoven was certainly more romantic.

MZ: Beethoven was his favorite. But what moved him deeply was chanting— the Sanskrit chants in which he joined most wonderfully and also Gregorian

E B It is also known he had a special affinity to nature, that it was beyond just our envitonmental concerns— a really deep link to nature.

MZ: He reacted more to nature than to visual art. He felt looking at a tree or a mountain was more moving than a Leonardo painting. He didn’t dismiss it but he said the beauty of nature, of a tree, is beyond anything that man can create.

EB: Which puts artists in their place, doesn’t it? A chastening experience. He had, and this is also well-known, a rather 'mechanical' aptitude which is somewhat at variance with the other aspects of his life.

MZ: He used to say he had once taken a car apart when he was quite young, and then put it together again. And he took great care of his watch, checking it carefully in Geneva so that it was correct to the second. He liked that. Once I asked him what he would do in India if he were not what he was? How would he earn a living? He said, “Oh, beg around.”

E B : It’s rather interesting to think what would have happened to Krishnamurti had he not had a European English education. He might have been “begging around” in India.

MZ He said that he would probably be dead because he was a child his brother had TB and we know K rishnamurti had scars on his lungs. His must have been an arrested case and only because his health was looked at very carefully did he think he was alive.

E B: Now another question about his interests ; K was not a good student when he was a young man. H ow dlid that translate into his innterest in education for children and for adults with the founding of the schools and centers?

MZ; As you know, a central part of his teaching is the role of knowledge- both the good of knowledge and the limitation of knowledge. We need knowledge even to speak, but the mind mustn’t be confined by knowledge, it must have the ability to go further. He was endlessly explaining the limitation of thought, which is so fundamental to his teachings. He used to feel that to help young people who are more pliable, less conditioned , to understand the role of knowledge was very im portant. I remember one of the first summers in Gstaad he used to lunch with som e friends who had a photograph of him as a child with his little brother, Nitya. He stared at it a long time as though it were of someone else and said he had no memory of it at all, but when I asked him what was going through his mind when he looked at it, he said, “If we could understand why that boy was not conditoned , why in spite of all the adulation and the fuss that went on around him , it left no mark on him , perhaps we could help other
children to be less conditioned.” I think that was why he wanted to bring about a different kind of education in which there is an understanding of the function of thinking, and also understanding the potential of the brain - not simply to reflect what it had been taught or what it had already experienced. That, I think was the reason behind his creating schools. After starting the Brockwood Park School in England, he thought of beginning with younger children, in the Oak Grove School in O jai, to see if they would be less conditioned. I'm afraid that one came to feel, eventually, that children are conditioned practically from the crib, that was what he was trying to see— if you could free children from the grip of conditioning.

E B Do you think that he ever felt that the schools were a success? Did they help the children?

MZ: I think what he wanted in all this was something unlimited, so he never would say, “This is good,” he would point out what was wrong and go into how to make it right Approbation was not given as such, but it didn’t mean he was carping. He would see an insufficiency or where there was need for something and try to open that door, but there was never a moment when he said , “That’s a good job." I don’t think he ever thought in those terms. Excellence was, 1 think, the quality he looked for and it wasn’t defined.

EB: Was he disappointed if things didn’t live up to expectations?

MZ. Oh, he would point it out in no uncertain terms. When things went wrong he would really chastise people, not in a personal, hurtful way, but saying, “Look what you’re doing.”

EB: Krishnamurti's language changed greatly over the years, he seemed to speak with increasing clarity and a 'scalpel-touch' somehow to words.

M/ Yes, he was precise about his choice of words. Often before talks he would ask me to look up dictionary meanings, most often for the derivation of the word, He didn’t prepare the talks the wav most people would, but he often had some direction in mind.

E B He didn’t make notes?

MZ: Never in my time. In fact, many times in the car driving to the talks, he said, “What am I going to talk about?” I never answered, but almost invariably a great and extraordinary talk would take place.

EB: How did you weigh that in the balance of your own early experience of hearing him talk and being overwhelmed by the words that would come out, against someone who asked “What shall I talk about?.”

MZ: It would 'come'. He didn’t like to listen to his own tapes. When it was over, it was finished. He wanted to come to things afresh and when he started taking written questions he didn’t want to see them ahead of time. People dropped them in boxes and he would have me collect them and I would sort them by subject. Questions about fear—always the most numerous— and nationalism, jealousy, greed, gurus, all these different topics and I typed them onto the paper he took with him. He didn’t plan what he would say, but he would choose a question, read it out to the audience, explore it as if he were looking through a celestial microscope, and this marvelous reflection would come out in his language.

EB : When you were driving him to a talk did he ever resist talking, did he ever say “I’m so tired” or “I really don’t want to do this today?”

MZ: No. Talking w as his job, his responsibility, and even when he was ill he would, if he could, fulfill that. I don’t think many people realize how very hard he worked. For over seventy years his life was spent giving talks, writing, seeing people privately, holding discussions with teachers, students, very erudite people, and the continual traveling. It was gruelling constant work. Only when he was physically unable to do so did it let up. And even then there were times when he was seriously ill for two days before the talks, but on the day of the talk he was astonishingly able to speak. On such days he would be ready and erything would be exact. He would be up early, the car would be in front before the time to leave. If I were driving, when I heard him coming I would have the engine started, the door open and in Saanen, for instance, the tent was reached exactly at the moment for him to walk in and climb onto the platform. He didn’t want to pause or, heaven forbid, be late!

EB: Marv, you’ve heard it said that some 'being' was speaking through Krishnamurti; this w as particularly prevalent in the early days. Did you ever have the sense of some 'entity' speaking through Krishnamurti?

MZ: No, I have never had such notions. To me that is nonsense because Krishnamurti could speak at any moment as he spoke on the platform. If at the lunch table conversation became serious, he would talk with the same depth and perception. In interviews, private or public he spoke that wav. This was the man himself, not some spirit talking through him. But often on the platform one could feel in him a tremendous energy and it seemed that it was out of that 'energy' and 'ability' to go to the heart of things that he spoke. This may be speculation, but one felt it intensely. I felt it. It was out of his intelligence, his own perception.

E B. And yet he seemed to have a connection with what he described as “ the Other,” what was the line if any, between the 'other' and his speaking, or for that matter, his life?

MZ: Me never spoke of a 'line', but he spoke very often about 'otherness', the 'immeasurable'— all the marvelous words he used about it— and this, that he called 'meditation' would come to him, usually in the night.

E B . Would he be sleeping and then wake up?

MZ: I don’t know, because he would only talk a little about it, but he would often say, “ I had an extraordinary meditation last night,” and some­times when alone with him or on a walk— particularly on a walk when he liked to be silent and look at nature— one felt he was very 'far away'. Something was happening or present. It was almost palpable at times.

EB: You yourself would have a sense of the 'otherness'?

MZ: I would feel some 'invisible force'.
EB It’s rather like when you listen to the radio you are able to tune in and get a concert or the news or whatever. Apparently, K was able to 'tune int this energy which surrounds all of us.

MZ: In a way. Again this may be just my imagination, but it is as though there is 'something' that is nameless but can be called 'intelligence' or 'truth' or 'beauty'— any of those things— but most of us are 'blind' and do not sense it.

EB: Was it something that he could do deliberately?

MZ: He said meditation cannot be done deliberately, it has to come to you.

EB: Did he describe his sense of meditation? O f course he has written and spoken about it in his talks, but did he talk with you about meditation?

MZ: He talked about being very quiet and not letting thought have its way in your mind. Not letting all the 'train of association' that generally streams through our heads, not to stop it by will, but not to pursue it. It goes byand you watch it and you let it pass. You 'learn' from it. So when we talked about these things it would often be in terms of being quiet, of just watching the mind, not doing anything about it, not pushing or stopping it. He had many descriptions of meditation, they are in almost all his writings. An essential was a quiet mind. He could have that quiet, even once on a flght to somewhere this 'meditative state' came to him.

E B But as he described in his writings, never something that he deliberately sat quietly to do.

MZ You cannot induce it, he said. When he was so ill at the end, still that 'extraordinary thing' continued to come to him through all the pain and suffering. He said, “Something else controls what will happen to me. When the body can no longer do the things necessary to speak, the life will end.” And that is what happened.

EB: Docs that imply there is 'something else'?

MZ; 'Something else'. Not that he was just an instrument of that, but that the expression of that 'Other' was his task; from that he spoke, and when physically he could no longer talk his life would end.

EB: He felt that the reason for his life was to be able to give these teachings?

MZ: Yes, that was his life. A personal life existed but that 'Other' was the Reality.

EB: His last days must have been quite overwhelming for you.

MZ: He had spoken of his death for some time. He knew he was dying, he wanted to do his job to the end, and he did. He was entirely rational, his mind was not touched by the illness, the pain or the medication, and as his body grew weaker, his way of talking became infinitely painful to hear because his voice was so weak, but he was Krishnamurti to the very end in the fullest sense of all he ever was.

EB: You have described Krishnamurti as a fountain giving forth his teaching; what was the 'wellspring', where did it come from?

MZ: I cannot say. All I could say would be my imagining, and that has no value. I can try to put it into words, but it is only my speculation. It is as though there are ''abstract realities''— intelligence, beauty, love— qualities that he spoke of. They are not the product of the human mind. One could use the word 'God' too as long as it is not an imagined God in one’s own image. Different words can be used but they are aspects of one infinite life force. I think this was Reality for Krishnamurti, and if you want, a well-spring.

E B : It has been suggested that Krishnamurti might represent an evolutionary step in humanity, a prototype of something new. Is that a possibility?

MZ: I don’t know about a 'prototype', but to me his life was proof that a human being is capable of extraordinary intelligence and perception, and a way of living that is very different from most human life. It was 'real' in him, not something I imagined. Doubtless some will say I am projecting onto him some ideal. But for me it was incontrovertibly evident that this man was what he was talking about and he lived that way. In all the years I was with him I never saw anything that denied that or was inconsistent with a life lived that way. There were no contradictions. At many, many times there was undeniably a sense of something I can only call 'sacred'.

EB: Mary, obviously Krishnamurti has had a tremendous impact on your life; how would you describe that impact?

MZ: I don’t know how to characterize it. I’m not being trivial when I say that I don’t know why I was lucky enough to be able to be with him as I was. If there was 'something' that was looking out for him in life, people who came along, I suppose, were instruments of 'that'. I don' t mean that I was sent from heaven to do something for him , I simply was 'at hand' and it came about, and the good of it was overwhelming for me, but I can ’t measure or describe it. I was privileged, I was blessed beyond any words to be able to be around him and in small ways be just useful in a human sense, doing things that needed to be done.

E B: What would you say was K’s impact on the world?

MZ: I feel that his impact on the world is almost in a very seed-like state. I feel that perhaps in years to come, in one hundred years, history will look back and see this as an extraordinary time when Krishnamurti was alive on this earth . If you look back at human history, how many people knew the Buddha was there at the time, or for many centuries afterward, but what was said and spoken has grown and entered the lives of millions and millions two thousand years later. I feel that K is of that order and we must do what we can to make his teaching known because it is and will be something vast for humanity.

I feel our responsibility now is to keep the accurate record of what he said and taught. For those of us who knew him that is our most essential responsibility: to preserve and protect the authenticity of his teaching so that it is there for centuries, as he gave it, uninterpreted by others. But the another even deeper responsibility for those who have known and listened to him: The ultimate one is to reflect his teachings in our lives, in our relations to others, to whatever life brings. It is to live the reality, not just the words of his teaching.

Here are a few lost & found souvenirs of K recollected by his nephew and close collaborator Narayan

In 1947 I was a student at Loyola College, located on Sterling Road in Madras. I was cycling after a game of tennis and saw a billboard which announced forthcoming talks by J. Krishnamurti at Vasanta Vihar. I found out that he was staying in a house on the Sterling Road. My father, Dr. Sivaram, who was a physician then working in Nellore as a district medical officer, had told me that Krishnamurti was his younger brother and that they had not met for many years. I went to the house where Krishnamurti was staying in my tennis kit and had to wait for some time as he had gone for a walk.

I was standing on the threshold of the main door of that house, and when Krishnamurti returned from his walk, I introduced myself as the son of his brother Sivaram. It took Krishnamurti some time to remember his brother. He asked me to come up with him to the first floor. We sat down and he asked me many questions about his brother Sivaram and his many children. [In 1985, to my surprise, before he left India for the last time, Krishnamurti pointed out to me that I was in tennis kit when I came to see him for the first time. There were many other members of the Krishnamurti Foundation [KFI] in Vasanta Vihar when he made this remark.]

The next day I went to see Krishnamurti, and among several things, I asked him about the Buddha and the 'sangha' [the Buddhist monastic order]. According to legend and tradition, there were sixty-three disciples of the Buddha who were enlightened during the Buddha’s lifetime. Krishnamurti said that there were not so many but only two or three who may have attained enlightenment.
I wrote to my father at Nellore. My father came and I took him to Krishnamurti. He could not recognize my father, as they had not met for many years. Some snacks were offered. After some time, my father asked Krishnamurti whether he was self-realized. Krishnamurti did not give a specific answer.

My father then asked Krishnamurti, “What is the self?” Krishnamurti answered that it was a bundle of memories. My father responded by asking if that was all. To this Krishnamurti replied that there was nothing more to the self. The discussion came to a sudden end, as Sivaram was thinking of atman and Krishnamurti’s approach was that of the self as a projection of thought which is conditioned and limited. The conversation ended there. They held each other’s hands, and soon my father and I left. I took my father to Madras Central Railway Station and saw him off to Nellore. This was the last time that Sivaram saw his brother Krishnamurti.

This is the essential difference between the Hindu and the Buddhist approach, which is hard to reconcile. In Buddhism, and also according to Krishnamurti, the word "self" is always used with a small 's'. In Hindu thought the word 'Self' is used with a capital 'S' to indicate Godhead and is also used with a small 's' to indicate the ego, egotistic attitude, and self-centered activity.
Subsequently, Sivaram read some of Krishnamurti’s talks to understand the teachings. He was happy doing that and told me that Krishnamurti’s mind was pure and cleansed.

Here are a few lost & found words of wisdom from 'Red Cloud' which may shed some additional light on some K's concepts like 'remaining with what is' mind and 'creation'

The teachings from our world today contain nothing new. I am an Indian, but I can only teach you the same laws as taught by the Nazarene, for the laws of God will always remain the same, although His messengers will come and go.
The messengers on the earth today are here to make you realise that you must once again readjust yourselves to the laws of God. To awaken your souls to the reality of that immortal life which you have yet to earn; for although within each soul there is the seed of immortal life, yet that seed must be nurtured and fed with the food of the soul before it can germinate.

How do you account for the fact that very often in a poor family a genius is born? How do you account for genius at all? When you listen to a great musician enthralled as the liquid notes pour forth from his instrument you say, "He is a genius," and leave it at that. You never think as you listen that they are creating beauty, expressing creation, which you can express.

You do not attribute the glorious voice, the wondrous painting and the liquid notes to the inward desire for expressing creation, and that these "gifts" as you call them are only reflections in the crudity of matter. You do not think of the beauty behind the mind of the individual. You do not realise that the beauty which the artist creates does not lie in what he shows the world, but in the finished the mind or soul lies the first creation and the first picture of the artist is but a daub compared with the impression he had in his mind. That great and glorious impression as it first enters his mind can never fully be expressed in material things. For, although everything comes from the earth yet nothing is created through the earth, everything is created by the "mind" (or soul mind). You can build a
musical instrument, but the creation of music comes from the mind or soul, for mind and soul are one.

This post was last updated by John Raica Wed, 24 May 2017.

More excerpts from Narayan's memos of K

I met Krishnamurti again in Bombay in late 1952. I was working in Bombay and lived in Andheri, a suburb. He was staying in Ratansi Morarji’s house on Carmichael Road.10 There was some difficulty getting into the house. The lady at the entrance asked me if I had an appointment with Krishnamurti and I said yes. It was after five o’clock in the evening. Fortunately Krishnamurti came out of his room and saw me standing there. He took me inside and said that he had just returned from his evening walk.

Krishnamurti went to the windows and drew the curtains. The sun was just setting in the western sky above the waters of the sea. It was a glorious sight with the full disc of the sun slowly sinking into the Arabian Sea. I felt a sense of beauty and peace.
The room was well furnished and had an elegant look. We sat on the floor facing each other. After some conversation about my stay in Bombay, Krishnamurti asked me if I would like to go and teach in the Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh, in which case he would talk about it with the principal when he visited Rishi Valley. I had visited the school in 1948 when I went to play a tennis tournament in Madanapalle F. Gordon Pearce was the principal. An Englishman, he was a well-known educationist in India and Sri Lanka, and was associated with the public schools [the British term for private boarding schools] and the scout movement in India. His wife, Anasuya Paranjpe, was the daughter of an Indian Theosophist from Varanasi [Banaras].

I went back to my residence in Andheri. That night, as I was sleeping, I had an interesting experience. My chest region was diffused with light, mingling white and blue with a great sense of calmness. I awoke and stayed quiet and went back to sleep. Again the light with a blue tinge spread all over the chest and there was no thought. Only a feeling of beauty. It was a unique experience, though it lasted only a few minutes.

There is a difference between 'experience' and 'experiencing'. The former is rooted in the past, with the latter gathering knowledge and cultivating memory.
Experiencing has a quality of the present not colored by the past. The experiencer is absent while experiencing, and so there is a freshness and renewal.

STORY TIME: SELECTED 'LOST & FOUND' PAGES FROM MARY ZIMBALIST'S MEMOIRS OF K

(...) It was in 1944, during the war. I had a friend who was a doctor, a regular medical doctor, but he was very interested in all kinds of psychiatric things, and so was I. So, whenever I went in for a flu shot, or whatever it was, we’d wind up discussing the brain or the mind and how it worked and such. Well, one day, in the spring of 1944 I went into his office for some medical reason, and he said, “Oh, come in. Come in. I have something I want to tell you.” He proceeded to tell me about a friend of his, a psychiatrist, who had learned that he had some fatal form of heart disease. On learning this, he had up and left his family, his friends, and everything in Chicago where he lived, and said, “I’m going to California to learn how to die from a man named Krishnamurti,” which doubtless startled everybody. My doctor friend was very curious, so he went to see his friend, the dying doctor, and of course, he meets Krishnamurti.

That was on a weekend, and I happened to come in on the Monday afterward, and he said to me, “I’ve met this extraordinary man, who knows more about the human mind than anyone I’ve ever heard of.” Well, of course, I was all ears at this description. And then there was a pause for about a month or two or maybe three when I heard that this Krishnamurti was going to resume giving talks in Ojai. As we all know by now, during the war he was in Ojai because he happened to be there when the war broke out, and he couldn’t travel. So he simply led a quiet life in Ojai, and didn’t talk publicly at all. However, now that the war was winding down, it was decided that he would speak again. Well, I thought I wanted to see what this was about, so I drove up to Ojai from LA found the place where he was to talk, and heard the talk—the first talk. I remember quite vividly his coming into the Oak Grove; his dignity and his quiet, and his doing what we later came to see so often: his looking around before he spoke. And then his speaking; being struck by his voice, he had an English accent but with his own intonation. I found the talk and his manner of giving it very impressive, but it was all strange to me in a way. So, afterward, I went and bought some of the booklets, the things that we have come to call “The Verbatim Talks,” those little pamphlets. I took them home, and started to read. I found that, because of my background in psychoanalysis, I argued with him down the page. I couldn’t advance in these things. I kept thinking, why does he say that? This went on for a couple of days, but luckily it dawned on me, somehow, that I should just go and listen to what he said and not argue through these written things.

He was speaking, in those days, standing up, I think on the ground and not on a platform. I sat on the ground, and most people sat on the ground, as I remember it.
Probably several hundred people, at least. It wasn’t as full as it could’ve been, but it was a goodly crowd. The whole set-up was the same, except that they had the tables with the books, or the pamphlets for sale, and a few books. One of the people who was selling the books was a Mrs. Vigeveno. I bought the pamphlet from her. She and her husband had an art gallery in Westwood in Los Angeles, where I had gone to look at pictures at some point. I don’t know whether she knew my name, but she recognized me from having come into the gallery, and, so, when I bought the little pamphlets, she asked, “Are you interested?” Anyway, I continued to go to the rest of those talks. That was my first sight of Krishnaji.

Now the relevance of Mrs. Vigeveno in the story is that sometime later that year I had a telephone call, I think from her, and I don’t know whether I’d been into the gallery and seen her again, but I was invited to join a discussion group at their gallery (their gallery was part of their house) once a week with a small group of people. So, I went, and I think there were probably a dozen or fifteen people, maybe a few more. Some of the people there I already knew, two couples I knew, plus the Vigevenos, whom I knew but just very casually. Rajagopal was at those discussions, and it was said that Krishnamurti might come, and indeed, he eventually did come. I can’t remember now whether Krishnamurti came to the first set or only the second set, but I was in both. I also remember that I got my husband Sam. He was curious in what interested me, and he only went out of that curiosity. Later on I heard that Krishnaji would also meet people individually. So I wrote, and in due course I got a reply saying that, if I could come on such and such date at such and suc h a time to such and such a place, I would have an appointment with Mr. Krishnamurti. The address for the meeting was a house in Hollywood, not Ojai. So I went, rang the bell, and the door was opened by Mr. Krishnamurti. And I remember very vividly the way he sort of bowed. He had beautiful, very formal manners. “Good morning, Madame,” he said.In I went and apparently there wasn’t anyone else in the house. I don’t know. It was very quiet. We went to a sort of sitting room and I felt it behooved me to say why I was there, and why I had come. I told him a little bit about myself, and was approaching the questions that I had intended to ask him when he asked me some questions. I don’t remember the back and forth of it. I only remember that it was a different order of any discussion of anything psychological or indeed any other kind of discussion I had ever had. When I came out I felt as though my head had been opened up and everything inside had been operated on. It was terribly moving. I remember also that he took me (but I saw it happen many times to other people) so far into my own mind or level of understanding that well…I wept copiously. I mean, it was so deep, it touched something so deep inside me that it made me cry. I’ve seen so many people go through that when they come out of talking to Krishnaji.

Anyway, I went to all the talks of that year, and after the first talk, I really just listened. I’d caught on that you shouldn’t keep going on about what you think, but just go and listen. And, from then on, I just listened, and it sank in.

Then I was in the small group discussions. I would imagine that the interview was in ’45, but I’m not sure. Anyway, he then went off to India, as we now know, there were no more talks in Ojai for some time. He obviously spoke in India and probably Europe, but I didn’t attend any of those.. Then, there’s a big gap in all this, because I didn’t really hear him speak again until he came back in 1960, and began a series of talks in June.
Sam died at the end of 1958. I had just left him in Rome because the picture, Ben-Hur, wasn’t finished, but I needed to come back and start rebuilding our house which had burned down. Ten days after I got back to Malibu, and signed the contract, got the building started, Sam died suddenly of a massive heart attack. It was as though my life had ended too, somehow. It was very strange: I had the feeling that as I was still alive, there was something that I had to do, and in some strange way, I felt I was doing it for him and for me—as though, there was something that I had to learn, and don’t ask me how, but I could somehow do it for him too. I felt that I had to find out what all this was about - what lay beyond life and death, and what are we all doing with our lives, and why do we go so wrong? All the questions that …probably we all have about our lives when we come into contact with something that is as serious as Krishnaji’s teachings, or as serious as someone dying in your life that is really a crisis. The answer to that was that I had to go back and listen to what Krishnamurti had to say. It wasn’t running to Krishnamurti for some kind of a refuge or enlightenment or solace. It was that I had to understand what he was talking about because I felt instinctively and profoundly that what he was talking about had to do with reality and truth, and that that was the whole point of my still being alive. It was the only thing that I wanted to do, was interested in. It was the only reason for anything to me at that point.

But I also had a very strong feeling in the weeks and months that followed that I mustn’t run away from something; that I mustn’t go to anyone to solve a problem, or to somehow make me feel better in some way. I mustn’t run away from what’s happened, but rather come to terms with what happened in my own life. In other words, don’t go to anything with self-motive. I felt that intensely, strongly. So I didn’t make any attempt or even think of going to see him, and then suddenly he came back in 1960. This was about 18 months after Sam was gone. I went to the talks. I also wrote and asked for an interview. He was to give eight talks, but he only gave four. At the end of the fourth he announced that he regretted that that would be the last talk. For reasons of health, he had to stop. In the meantime, he had okayed a certain number of interviews, and mine was among them, fortunately.

So, I was called to go on a certain, again, time and date and place, but it was in Ojai this time, at the Vigeveno’s house. He again greeted me very formally. There was no reference to my ever having seen him before. We talked for a very long time, and it was all about death. And at the end of it I was able to tell him that I had seen for myself that when people are in a state of grief, it’s very often self-pity. They’re feeling, why did this happen to me? Why have I lost something? And I thought that was false and repellent, and I didn’t feel that way. I felt I had seen that very clearly, and I was able to tell him this. I remember his nodding, and I could tell, or his manner showed that he saw that I saw that, and that he didn’t have to go through that with me so he could go on from there. The sort of conclusion of this, to put it very simply, was his statement, which I understood at the time and have since; “You must die every day to everything. Only then are you really living.” I understood that it doesn’t mean that you brush your life under the rug and forget everything. It doesn’t alter what you feel, or the feeling of loss, if you’ve lost someone you loved, it doesn’t alter that, that sense of loving them, or indeed, remembering them. But it’s the factor of dependence, it’s the factor of egotism, it’s the factor of me and the whole thing. You have to die to that and only then, otherwise, well, as we now know from his teaching, that you mustn’t carry the whole shadow of the past and react to that. It was the most profound experience of listening to Krishnaji that I’ve ever had. It meant a great deal.

After that, he left Ojai. I didn’t know what was happening. But, I determined then  that I would hear him again and follow what he was saying seriously.
What I didn’t know was that he wouldn’t come back to Ojai. I assumed that he would return because he’d resumed talking in Ojai, but he didn’t. In those days I didn’t want to go back to Europe because that’s where I’d been with Sam. I just wanted to be quiet and to think about all these things.So it wasn’t until 1961 that I realized he wasn’t going to come back to speak in Ojai. So, the first time I went to where he was speaking, which was Saanen, Switzerland, was in the summer of ’64. I determined that summer that I would follow the whole tour; do this really thoroughly that next year. I would start wherever he spoke in Europe, which turned out to be London, and that I would go on to Saanen and to India—do the whole year, which is what I did. I remember landing in Geneva, renting a little tiny car, a Hertz rental car I think it was, and driving along the lake with a map, figuring how to get up to this place called Saanen. Then the talks started. I remember that he took questions at the end of each talk, and I wanted to ask a question but somehow it didn’t work out, and the talks ended.

At the end of each talk, Krishnaji used to stand over where Vanda who was driving him in those days, used to park her car under some trees, back toward where the Boy Scout place was. He would stand under the tree and talk to a few people who would come up and shake his hands, as they always did after the talks. So, I went up to him and said, “Mr. Krishnamurti, I’m Mary Zimbalist, and you won’t remember me, but I’ve talked to you before in Ojai, and I wanted to ask you about…so and so.” He replied, “Yes, yes, ask that tomorrow.” So, I thanked him and walked away. Of course, the next day, the talk went off in a totally different direction, and my question had no relevance to what he was saying! So I didn’t ask it. Again, I hoped to have an interview, but I was shy about asking and I didn’t know how to go about it there. However, there was a friend, in those days, of his and Vanda’s - Pietro Cragnolini, a funny man; very, very Italian, and he’d known Krishnaji from the Ommen days. He used to tell me tall tales of what really went on at Ommen, people going in and out of the wrong tents in the middle of the night , sleeping in the woods, all these stories. I used to walk with him, or lunch with him sometimes, and he caught on what I wanted: he asked, “Do you want an interview?” and I said, “Oh yes, but I’m hesitant to ask.” He said, “Don’t worry about it,” and the next day, this was on a Sunday or a Monday, I had an appointment on Wednesday at 3 o’clock at Chalet Tannegg. So, I went to Chalet Tannegg. And again, Krishnaji opened the door and took me into the living room where there was a black leather one, and he sat at one end and I sat at the other end, and we talked. I also remember Krishnaji’s eyes, and I thought it looked like a cataract was developing in his eyes, and I remember thinking—horrible! He’s going to lose his vision, which, of course, he never did. But his eyes were sort of cloudy.

But, my diagnosis was luckily very poor. I was telling him that I was really tormented by the disturbances in the world that were going on and to the degree that I was not a free, enlightened, psychologically clear person, I was responsible for all that human evil, really. I felt that I had to do something about it, the whole thing. I felt a terrible burden of this. He sort of brushed that aside. He didn’t feel that was really the root of it. He said, “You take all these things very seriously,” and I said, “Yes, I do.” He went on from there, but I remember that it somehow unhooked me from this thing.

What I think he was saying was that I was displacing onto the state of the world, that my responsibility was myself, and I shouldn’t feel all this other burden of everybody’s insanities. Another nice thing in those days was that Cragnolini sometimes used to walk with Krishnaji. One day, Cragnolini asked, “Would you like to come on a walk? I’m walking with Krishnaji this afternoon. You come too.” And I said, “Well, if it’s alright, yes, of course, I’d like to.” I remember that we walked towards Lauenen, on the road to Lauenen.
And I remember we walked way up. We all talked very easily, I don’t remember about what, but it wasn’t strange at all. As the talks were ending, he said to me on one of these walk, “Are you going to stay after the talks? Will you be here, or are you leaving after the talks?” I said that I had intended to leave. He replied, “Well, we’re holding a small discussion after the talks, and if you’d like to be part of it, you are welcome.” So I naturally changed my plans, and stayed on. He had about 30 people, roughly, in that meeting, and again it was at Tannegg. By this time, I’d met Vanda, and I’d also met Alain Naudé, who had just come to the talks, but he was going to go to India. He was very serious about it all, and he sort of was acting as a kind of assistant. For instance, he was the one who called me up and told me when to come to Tannegg for the meeting, and things like that. He already had started to do things to assist Vanda, for Krishnaji. Vimala Thakhar was in the discussion, and I remember she was already obnoxious. She was already saying, “Where do you live?” When I told her where I lived, she made it up in her mind that she’d come to visit me, and that I would put her up during her coming tour of the west coast. People like the Suarès were there. I think Marcelle Bondoneau was there.

After these discussions, I flew home. Then I went back to California.
So, the next bit in this story, is that Rajagopal comes into the picture now, because while these meetings were going on in Chalet Tannegg, some of the people, including myself, wanted to hear the recordings of the meetings. So, I said to Alain, “So many of us would like to hear the tapes of our discussions, or read a transcript that I would be delighted to pay some secretary to transcribe it for some of us, if that’s allowed.” Word came back from Krishnamurti via Alain that, “Mr. Krishnamurti does not have the right to give that permission, only Mr. Rajagopal does,” which rather took me aback. I called up Rajagopal and said, “Look here, I was in this discussion group, and I know you have the tape…” Oh, by the way, the tape had to be sent the same day it was made, it had to go right from the recorder into the mail to Rajagopal. So, I knew he had the tapes, and I said, “I’d like to hear them. “Well, you see everyone wants to hear them, and I can’t possibly let everybody hear them, so no, well…” he went on shilly-shallying back and forth about this. Finally, he said, “Well, if you can come up to Ojai,…did you make notes?’
“Yes, I made notes.”
“Well, you bring your notes, and you can hear one tape, and you can choose the tape, but you must bring your notes.” And it had to be a day when the Vigevenos, who lived next door, would not be in Ojai, because he didn’t want them to know that I was allowed to hear a tape. And, not only did I have to come when they were away, but I had to park my car so that it would not be visible to them next door. He had a sort of teasing, flirtatious way, not towards me, but toward another woman who was all excited by him. He sort of made himself the center of attention, not by coy behavior, but in a way that drew attention to his every reaction. So, I knew he was a bit neurotic, but this nonsense over the tape was something. Oh, I was asked for lunch too. So, we had lunch, and then I could listen to the tape. So, Rajagopal, his wife, and I sat solemnly in the living room. It was in sort of an alcove. We ate on a table in a corner of the living room, and then we moved to another area where he had a tape recorder. I had to hand over my marvelous notes. I could make notes of listening to the tape, but I had to give him copies of those notes too. So, I listened to the tape. They both sat there and listened with me. I suddenly figured out why he was letting me near the tape: he had recognized some of the voices of people he knew on the tape, but he didn’t recognize others, and he wanted me to identify them. That’s why all this performance went on.

By this time I was living in Malibu, and naturally I wanted to know when and where future talks were going to be held. So I called him up and he said casually that he didn’t know. I thought that was very odd. He said, “You must write to Mrs. Mary Cadogan in London.” So I wrote to Mrs. Mary Cadogan, and I got back a letter that said that since I was coming from so far away, that she would tell me where the talks were and when, but I must please not tell anyone else where they were, including my family, or why I was going to London. I thought this is crazy—these are public talks. But, I wasn’t going to argue as I wanted to hear them.

When the spring came, I returned to London, went back to Mrs. Martinez and went out to Wimbledon where the talks were being held. The talks were in the Boy Scouts’ Hall in Wimbledon, which was a very small hall. I’ve asked Mary about this since, and she agrees that the hall was very small. I didn’t understand why such a small hall was rented, but Rajagopal was really trying to damp down all this; printing these little booklets which were only sent out to those on the mailing list, and nobody knew anything, It was all kept as a big, dark secret. He made mysteries out of everything, and of course, he e was pulling the wires on this whole thing. Anyway, I went and afterward when Krishnaji stood outside, I went up to him this time. Alain was there and Krishnaji seemed to recognize me and he was charming. We chatted a bit.
I think Alain eventually called me up and said that they’d like me to come for lunch at the house in Wimbledon. That was one of those dreadful  rented houses in Wimbledon…
It was really awful to put Krishnaji up in those dreadful houses, but they did. So I went. I had again rented a little tiny car to get out there. So, we had lunch. I was the only guest with the two women, Alain, and Krishnaji. He was full of the questions about “What is the American mind?” as he used to say. “What’s happening in America?” Well, as it happened, I had gone on the March to Selma, from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King. I thought that would interest him, because that was big news in America at that point. He was very interested, and I described the whole thing in quite some detail: how it came about, and what happened, and all of it. He listened with great interest to that. He walked me out to the car afterward with Alain, and he said, “Perhaps we could go to a cinema.”
I, of course, replied, “Yes!” Then he said, “Well, you decide.” So I went off, thinking, “What in the world! What do I take this man to? A cinema? What would he like?”

So I stared at the newspaper and pondered and finally decided that My Fair Lady was playing and that that would be a good movie and suitable. So, I called Alain and I told him my choice, and Alain said, “Oh, Krishnaji has changed his mind by now. He doesn’t want to go to the cinema. He wants to go for a drive in the country. So could you choose a place and drive us to the country.” So, I was back to my problem. I didn’t know where to go. I wasn’t that familiar—I’d spent two winters in London, but I hadn’t gone driving in the country especially with the aim of something that would please a man named Krishnamurti. So I did some research. I heard about Wisley, the royal horticultural gardens at Wisley, and I thought maybe that would be a place. So, I did a dry run. I went out and cased Wisley and decided, yes, that it was really beautiful and perhaps he’d like that. I remember that I got a better car than the one I was driving, and I went to the house in Wimbledon. Doris came out and said “Now, be sure you have him back here by 6 o’clock. He has an appointment at 6 o’clock. It is very important that he be here in time for that.”
“Yes, yes, Ms. Pratt. I will.” So, in we get, in the car. Krishnaji looked happy, pleased.
“Where are we going?”, he asks. I said, “Well, I thought perhaps a place called Wisley, the garden.” “Oh, Wisley!” said he. He knew it, but he hadn’t been there in a long time. “Oh, yes!” So, off we went to Wisley, and it was a success. We walked around, and I had the feeling that he saw every flower and every tree and every bird and every everything. It was my first experience of his extraordinary perception that he had of…of everything. When we got back in the car, he said, “Oh, let’s drive a little further.” Where to take him now?! Luckily, I had been to Box Hill. It’s the highest point of Sussex, and you look out at all of southern England. It’s beautiful! So we went up Box Hill. We got out and looked at the view and it was beautiful, very pleasing. So now it was time to get back for 6 o’clock. We got back on the A3, and it was heavy afternoon traffic. Now, I wasn’t used to driving on the left and I certainly was not used to driving the World Teacher. And the responsibility was weighing heavily on me, especially in the terrible traffic, and getting there at 6 o’clock. I drove with absolute concentration, and just I got him back at 6 o’clock.

When he got out, he thanked me. “Thank you, Madame, so much. It was so kind of you.”I replied, “It was a pleasure, Krishnaji- he asked me to call him Krishnaji in the Saanen discussions. Before that I’d called him Krishnamurti, and at some point he rather sharply had said to me, “Call me Krishnaji.” I thought I’d made a mistake to use the other word.
Anyway, it was Krishnaji. So I thanked him. And I went back to Mrs. Martinez in Eaton Place. I was due to go out to dinner with friends, and suddenly the enormity of the responsibility [both chuckling] of having the life of this man in my hands as a chauffeur hit me. I started to shake, and I shook so much that I couldn’t go out for dinner. I had to call it off.

They didn’t have any car, and there was no way to get into town from Wimbledon, so I did a lot of taxiing them back and forth. By this time, 1965, Alain had been hired as Krishnaji’s secretary. Alain became his secretary that winter in India. He’d gone to India in the winter of ’64—’65. In January, Alain wrote me a couple of letters, and then he wrote me that Krishnaji had asked him to be like a secretary, assistant, do things for him. So, that’s what he was doing.

I remember sitting at his discussions behind Dorothy Simmons and Montague and getting quite annoyed at Dorothy. Something about…I’ve forgotten what it was…I thought she looked disagreeable. They sat right in front of me, and something about her being was rather brusque about the sea But she was there, and Iris again. I don’t think I knew any of the others. How I met Mary Cadogan is very funny. There was a woman showing people up and down in the tent in Saanen to seats, dressed in sort of chiffon, and I remember thinking, “That woman thinks she’s Ophelia!” I was looking for a Mrs. Cadogan and I decided that Madame De Vidas must be Mrs. Cadogan. She too was showing people around. So I went up to her and said, “Are you Mrs. Cadogan?” And she said, “Oh, non, non!” She didn’t speak English much. The 'Ophelia" character was Mrs. Cadogan

The Memoirs of Mary Zimbalist ( continued)

In May 1965 I took the boat train to Paris , wher Krishnaji was scheduled to give his talks in the Salle Adyar, a theosophical place near the Tour Eiffel, only a few blocks from where he was staying with the Suarès’ who lived on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais up on the top floor. It was like a penthouse. He spoke twice in the Salle Adyar, and then he had some days off. Apparently my driving abilities were satisfactory, because he suggested going to Versailles. So I went to Hertz and I got a Mercedes car and we went to Versailles. He wasn’t then and never has been very interested in palaces and looking at them. He was not a sight-seer. But he loved gardens, and a walk in the gardens was something he enjoyed. We walked all over: a big walk. Then another talk, and after that there was another expedition, again in the Mercedes, and this time we went to Chartres, which was wonderful. We walked all around and looked at everything very carefully. Krishnaji was taken with the stained glass windows, found that particularly beautiful, and we all agreed that this was the loveliest of all the gothic cathedrals that we had seen. And then we went to Romboulliet and had another walk in the forest. Paris was busy for him, but not so much for me. All the French friends wanted to see him. I rented a room, for the discussions, in the hotel where I was staying, and about sixty or seventy people came. Krishnaji discussed with them and answered questions. . Some of them would ask questions in French, but he’d reply in English. These meetings with young people was something new and something good, and it continued from then on for as long as Alain was with us.

After the talks I left for Switzerland by train. I became a vegetarian on the first of June . Knowing I was going to be a vegetarian, I started, not in Paris because of my father, who lived in Paris in those days—his pleasure was to take me to all the best restaurants in Paris, and I didn’t have the courage to say, “Father you should know that I am now a vegetarian.” So I postponed making the change until I got on the train leaving Paris. So now I’m on the train from Paris to Geneva, and I go into the dining car for a meal, being now a vegetarian , and there’s nothing on the menu that’s vegetarian. There isn’t a vegetable in sight , except for pommes frites, which came with steak. So, I thought, well, one last time, and I ate. When I got to Geneva, I rented a little car again, and toured up to Gstaad. This time I went to the hotel Rossli. My room overlooked the main street, and one morning I heard cowbells. I looked out the window and there was a procession of cows going up to the high pastures in the mountains. They were led by the dowager cow, the queen cow [chuckling]. She had the biggest bell and she wore a lovely straw hat with wreaths of flowers on it. She walked with majesty. All the cows each had their bell ringing as they went past. That was nice. So a few days after I got there, the telephone rang, and it was Alain to tell me that they had arrived; they flew from Paris to Geneva. He asked, “Do you have a car?”
“Yes, I have a car.”
“Well, Krishnaji would like to drive up to Gstaad instead of coming on the train, can you come and pick us up?”
So, I drove down. I think I got a slightly bigger car. I was forever switching from the smallest, cheapest to something worthy of the event! I drove down to Geneva and met them. They had spent the night at the Hotel du Rhône. We went into the dining room. I remember scrutinizing the menu thinking, “You know, I’m a vegetarian now, what do I order?” Krishnaji, who picked up everything, looked at me and said, “What have you been eating lately?” Well, what I had been eating [more chuckling] was cheese omelet, and cheese omelet, and again cheese omelet, and I had the feeling, “Am I going to live on cheese omelet for the rest of my life?!” I explained about cheese omelet.

He said, “We will teach you how to eat.” And he said it quite…firmly. And then they ordered a lovely meal of vegetables and salads and fruits and all the things that we’ve all been living on ever since! We drove up to Chalet Tannegg. Vanda had rented, as always, one floor of Chalet Tannegg. Vanda had sent ahead a cook, a chef really, to look after Krishnaji and provide the food and all that. It was lovely in Gstaad. There was nobody there. Usually I was asked for lunch, not supper because he had that in his room, but usually for lunch. And I would, with my car, drive to wherever he wanted to walk in the afternoon, if it wasn’t up the hill and into the woods. Sometimes we went up towards Gsteig and walked. Also, we often walked down along the river, the Saanen River toward the airport, that way. So, one day I went up to Tannegg and there was this beautiful little silver jewel-like car, with Krishnaji looking so pleased. He showed me everything about it, and then he asked if I would like a drive. I said, “Yes, I’d love a ride.” So, he drove me to Chateau d’Oex. I remember it was the first time I’d driven with him driving instead of me driving. He looked so elegant with his driving gloves, and he drove beautifully. Obviously an experienced driver! We just went to Chateau d’Oex, then turned around and came back. When we got back he dusted the car—it had been out! I think the next day when I went up, I found him and Alain both washing it because it had been out. As I watched Alain working, I thought, “My god, he’s a musician, he’s going to ruin his hands. But he was doing what had to be done, and Krishnaji was also washing. After it was washed, Krishnaji opened the hood and dusted all the machinery inside. Only then was it alright.

Also, there was a lot of talk about my going to India. I was planning to make the whole tour that year, so, we talked about that. Krishnaji said that he must see that I’m properly looked after in India, and he’d arrange my housing. He said that I shouldn’t go to a hotel in Madras, but that Frances McCann and Alain and I should rent a house in Madras, because it would be healthier: we could control our food. Back to Saanen: We often went down to the Biascoechea’s for lunch. Either I would also be asked to have lunch, or I would drive them, drop them, and later take them back up the hill. That was when Enrique pulled out a photograph of Krishnaji and his brother Nitya as little boys. The Biascoecheas brought them out to show us. Krishnaji looked at that and looked at that, and he kept going back and looking at it again. He said he didn’t remember that time at all. Afterward, when I drove him up the hill, I said, “What was it that interested you so much in that photo?”
That’s when he made the statement, “If we only could figure out why that boy wasn’t conditioned and remained vacant, perhaps we could help children in the schools not to be so conditioned.” He was trying, somehow, to get a sense of why that boy, meaning himself, remained that way. Why nothing really scarred him at all, mentally. I remember his looking at the photo for such a long time.

Vanda eventually arrived. I, in the meantime, not wanting to spend my life in the Hotel Rossli with cheese omelets, had rented a flat in an apartment house called Les Caprice.
When Vanda came there was no longer a room for Alain because she only rented one floor, and that only had two bedrooms. The proprietor lived upstairs. He was a German, and he only came for a short time in summer, but he never rented out his floor. There was a downstairs floor with a flat, because the chalet was built on a hill, but Vanda only had the middle floor. When Vanda came Alain had nowhere to go. Fortunately, the flat I had taken had two bedrooms, so I invited Alain to stay with me, which he did.
Then the talks began. Again, usually I walked in the afternoon with Krishnaji and Alain. Vanda didn’t want to walk; she was doing yoga all morning and wasn’t much for walking. So, I usually walked.
At one point, Pupul Jayakar arrived, and that was my first meeting with her. She stayed only a short while. Also, Pupul’s daughter Radhika arrived, also staying with the Biascoecheas. I remember going on a walk with everybody, Pupul, Radhika, Alain and, I forget who else; I was walking behind, and Krishnaji fell back in step with me. This is when he said to me quite shyly, “Did I ever know you in California?” Of course, he didn’t remember anything. In those days a lot of people made their own tape recording of the talks . Krishnaji gave an awful lot of talks in those days. I think there were ten or something like that. And, at the end of each talk, he would ask for questions from the floor.

After the talks were over, he held young people’s discussions again. Alain had rounded up young people. He used to go around the camping ground where a lot of the young people camped, and just collect young people like the Pied Piper. Sometimes these young people’s discussions were at Tannegg, if they could all fit in, but there was one across the river in a field. Also, David Bohm came, and they had discussions. There were six of those, and they were at Tannegg. Then there was another trip to Geneva. I don’t quite remember when. But at that point Krishnaji asked me to be on the Rishi Valley School committee! I had no qualifications, but it didn’t matter to him! I don’t remember what I replied, but fortunately nothing came of it. I was going to go to India, but before going to India I had to fly back to the U.S. I flew back to Malibu, and I went and saw my family. So,  the story picks up in September, there was a fight between India and Pakistan, which put the whole Indian winter tour in jeopardy. Alain called me to tell me that Krishnaji was going to decide whether to go to India as scheduled, or postpone it until the end of the month. He then suggested that I come to Rome, and that if we didn’t go to India, that we all spend the winter in Italy. But, as it happened, there was a cease-fire, and Alain, who had been refused a visa for India, now was able to get a visa for India. So, I flew back to meet them in Rome in October. Krishnaji and Alain were staying in a place that Vanda had rented, Villa del Casaletto, which was a house outside Rome, toward the airport, over behind the Villa Florie and all that. Borghese Gardens, next to the Excelsior. I had wanted never to go back to Rome, but I had to go back to do this. I wasn’t there very long.:

 So, two or three days after arriving, on the first of November, we flew to Delhi, and were met at the airport by Kitty Shiva Rao and Pupul. I remember the fact that when Krishnaji arrived in Delhi, the car met him at the foot of the steps down from the plane and we were ushered into the VIP lounge, while other people saw to the luggage. I didn’t have to do anything, which was wonderful. Our passports were taken away (Pama, I think, did that, as I recall). Eventually passports were returned after being processed, and we were taken into Delhi, stopping first at the Shiva Rao’s for Krishnaji. Kitty Shiva Rao had very kindly arranged for me to stay in a place called the Indian International Center, not far from her house, where I had a very nice room. She lived not far from Lodhi Park. I remember that same day, Krishnaji, and, I think, Pupul, and Alain, we drove around to show me a bit of things, and we drove into Lodhi Park, but it was dark by that time. He gave his first talk on the seventh in the garden of the Constitution Club. He was under a shamiana on a little raised platform with a bright little canvas thing shielding him from the sun. There was a wonderful red and blue carpet put out for people to sit on. I sat with Alain, right in front of the stage with the Nagra tape recorder. That was the first time I saw Krishnaji with an Indian audience, and he startled me by being really blunt with the audience, saying, as nearly as I can recall, “You people have talked about non-violence for all these years, and yet this year not one of you spoke out against the war.” They’d almost had a war with Pakistan. He really, put it as only he could, witheringly! I remember really feeling shocked, that he talked differently to Indian audiences at that time. He was tougher with them.

Then there was a side trip. Alain, I, and George Vithoulkas, with a car and a driver, drove to Rishikesh. We were told that there would be no place to stay, and that we must prepare to put up with that. We thought that we’d go anyway and, if necessary, we would sleep in sleeping bags. We went off, I remember with a big bottle of boiled water and a bag of walnuts which was sort of our rations. When we got to Rishikesh we discovered that there really weren’t any hotel rooms; but Alain, who was very good at persuading people, went into the tourist bureau, and talked them into letting us stay in what were called Dak Bungalows. These are the places for government inspectors to stay when they came around. There happened to be one right on the Ganga. You entered past a little sentry at the gate. We drove in quite a way , and found the bungalow, which was immaculately clean, and it had, I think, three bedrooms and four bathrooms, which was quite something. Frances and I shared a bathroom, and this was my first experience with Indian toilets!  But it was clean, it was nice. After settling in, we went back into town, looking for some place to eat. There was a restaurant chain called Kwality Restaurant and we very carefully ordered cooked things that we thought wouldn’t have ptomaine in them. I think we drank a lot of tea We had rather cold showers in the morning, then we went up to Shivananda Ashram in Hardvar, which was interesting because of the masses of sannyasis in yellow robes, and it was the first time I had  seen leper beggars, which were part of the Ben-Hur story. We went to the Ashram and we waited to see the head of it, but he was busy. So, we left, and we went looking for a specific yoga guru, who was reputed to be wonderful, but he was out. So we returned to Rishikesh.

Then George went looking for something, I can’t remember what, but he came back saying that next door there was an Ayurvedic doctor who told him that a great swami was about to arrive and did we want to meet the great swami? We replied that we did. So, at the appointed time, we went next door, and this weird looking man entered. He was very fattish, with a big round face. He looked at us from one to the other, seeming to question, “Who are these people and what do they do?” We sat down and he asked some questions and George got fascinated by this man. Later on, George decided that he wanted to become this man’s disciple. Alain was horrified and disgusted. The next day, Alain, Frances, and I went up to Dehradun, up, up, up, up, the Himalayas to the snow line and beyond, the most wonderful mountains. When we returned, Alain and George got into an argument, with Alain saying, “You came here to look after Krishnaji, what do you mean by going off with this guru?” So, we drove back to Delhi with a rather poor atmosphere in the car. George went to see Krishnaji that evening, and Krishnaji tried to help him see clearly what he was pursuing, but George wasn’t going to have anything to do with contradicting his intentions. Alain was furious. He thought this was outrageous, inconsiderate, irresponsible, and so forth. So, George goes off to his swami, and the rest of us went to Rajghat.

I remember in the airport in Delhi, waiting for the plane, there was a whole room of waiting passengers, but there was one who had a gray scarf around his head; he was fat and short, and he was covered with ashes on his forehead, and done up in a shawl. I said to Krishnaji in French, “Quel est son maquillage?” What is his makeup? Krishnaji made a bewildered gesture, and then Krishnaji did what he always did in airports, he walked around with great dignity, taking in everything, but never staring at anything, he would obliquely see everything. When he came back, he made a funny remark like, “Now, I’ve seen everything.”

When we got to Benares, Krishnaji went off with Madahvachari and some others in a kind of a bus. I’ll never forget my first glimpses of Benares, because it made me feel that I hadn’t been in India till then. All the traffic with the lorries constantly honking at each other, and all the decorations on them, and the goats and cows wandering around, and the women putting dung patties on the walls to dry them, and other women with big brass pitchers of water on their head, and the smells of things drying and the people lying on those string beds, low beds by the sides of the roads. It was India, much more so than Delhi! When we got to Rajghat there was a big turnout at the school to greet him, little children with flowers and everything. Frances and I were given rooms. We had a big room and a little room and we shared a bathroom. It was in one of those buildings looking over the river called Krishna Ashram. We went upstairs to our rooms and opened the door, and were astonished. It must have been unused for several years because, there was so much dust it was like being in the desert. When we entered, clouds of it went up. It looked like sand, but it was dust. There was nothing in the room except one bed with just the rope, no mattress, no sheets, no blankets, no mosquito netting, nothing! The small room was in a similar condition. Frances and I debated about  who got the big one and who got the small one. She won and got the small one. There were three pegs in the wall on which you could hang things, but that’s all there was, nothing else! The bathroom was not very big, and it was chiefly extraordinary because of the wash basin and then there was just a hole in the floor as a toilet.

Alain was in the same building but somewhere else,  and after seeing our place, he went right to Krishnaji and told him. Then, apparently, Madhavachari, who ran all K activities in India, was told that all was not well. He’d been an Indian railway big shot of some kind but was now retired. Very tall, big man. Very severe Brahmin type, but he had no interest in people’s comfort—at all! [Laughter.] He came and looked at it and mumbled something like, “Oh, it, ah yes, it’s not ready. Well, I’ll ah, send someone” but nobody ever came! Apparently Krishnaji was again informed, and now Krishnaji arrived. And the to-do that followed from his coming and seeing this! This should be, you know, beneath his knowledge or notice, but he came in and started asserting his authority. In no time people came with buckets of water and brooms, etc. Eventually a mattress was found, and some sheets and a blanket and, I think, eventually mosquito nets. Some pathetic bearer, the one who staggered up the stairs with our buckets of boiling water in the morning, which he’d gotten up way before dawn to make (we could hear him cutting the firewood, making the fire, boiling the buckets of water); this poor man was set to cleaning the wash basin. He cleaned it for four hours the first day, and he was still scraping away with a razor the day we left three weeks later. Terrible! But the consternation at Krishnaji coming over and seeing what his guests were subjected to—everybody’s face was ashen.

Anyway Krishnaji gave lots of talks, and talks to the children in the school hall which was initiated by Tagore. Anyway, there were talks to teachers, and to students, together and separately. And, one lovely day in December Frances and I were invited to Krishnaji’s room where he chanted with Mr. Salman, who was the music teacher. We sat on the floor. I remember his room, it was very neat. There was a towel over this pillow. The mosquito netting was pulled back ever so neatly, and there was a metal wardrobe and something with drawers, and a chair. I can still see it vividly. There was a small rug on which we sat, and they chanted. It was wonderful. There was a big walk that goes all around the property. Also, I went quite a lot by myself across the little river, the Varuna, to the villages—I remember the earth is sort of sand-colored, and the buildings were made of that same earth and so were the same color, but with white decorations on them. They weren’t square, like ordinary houses; they were sort of rounded as if little children had made them, you know, like the houses children make on the beach. I used to walk over there quite a lot. Also, I used to walk to the agricultural school.
I also remember being asked to go with Alain into Benares to buy staves because there was a student in the agricultural college who’d been bitten by a rabid jackal, and he didn’t take the Pasteur treatment, so he died. We were asked to buy staves, big heavy things, to ward off rabid jackals. I never saw jackals, but that was the errand. I remember the extraordinary-ness of Benares, which again is like no place else in the world. Again, the taxis and trucks honking, with goats and cows wandering around. At one point, Frances and Alain and I were walking down toward the ghats and, going around a corner, I almost collided with a bicycle with a dead body on the back! Wrapped up and being taken to the burning ghats . Then walking along the river, on the ghats, and we were just walking through ashes. I remember saying to Alain, “Look if I fall in, just keep walking and forget you ever knew me, because I’ll be dead!”

I went to Sarnath either alone or with somebody, probably Alain. I walked there,  and went to the museum. I remember the walk, and going by a little, tiny—it wasn’t even a temple, but there was some guru who lived there, and people would come with offerings and things. We also went down the Ganges in a boat. I remember also that there was an old dog, I’ve forgotten his name, but, it was something like Rover. In the early morning, when I’d go for walks, I’d see the dog out in the river looking for protein! And so were the vultures.
Then I’d go to tea in the afternoon and see, dear old Rover and I don’t think the Western ladies who fussed over him knew where he’d been in the early morning!

Eventually, when we were to travel on, I remember at the airport, there was a lady, she was a Jain, and she was disturbed and believed she was married to Krishnaji, so we had to protect him from her. She would lie in wait for him because she always wanted to touch him, and he didn’t want her to, so we had to run interference like in football. We used to call her Mrs. Moonlight, because she got madder when the moon was fullest, as some people do. At one point, in the airport, she almost got to him, and I remember his saying severely to her, “Don’t touch me.” He later told a story about how once in Bombay, he was out alone, and she appeared, and he had had to say, “Go away,” and eventually, “If you don’t, I will call a policeman.” She replied, “Go ahead, I’m your wife!” Luckily, at that point, a streetcar came by, and he jumped on the streetcar and escaped. She had a daughter, and she got the poor child to write, “darling daddy” letters to Krishnaji.

Anyway, we traveled on to Madras. It had been rather cool and dry in Rajghat; in fact, it was rather cold. We flew back to Delhi, because we had to go to Delhi to get to Madras.
Again, I spent the night at the International Center, and Krishnaji stayed at the Shiva Rao’s. Then Krishnaji, Alain, and I flew to Madras. I remember stepping out of the plane in Madras, and it was suddenly the tropics. It was late afternoon, and it was totally different. There were crowds of people to greet Krishnaji, many of them with garlands, and one of them was Mrs. Jayalakshmi. She was quite tall for an Indian woman, with great presence and dignity. She dressed in a South Indian style, which was always the cotton blouse with beautiful heavy, heavy, heavy silk saris, but she wore them differently: it was wrapped around her waist in a different way. It wasn’t the over-the-shoulder way, and it had great elegance. Eventually I saw her collection of saris, which is something extraordinary. She was very silent, and rather shy; and slightly austere. When Alain greeted her, she said, “I have found you a house.” She proceeded to drive us to the house that she had rented for us. She also rented all the furniture from Spencer’s in town, and she lent us her Brahmin cook to cook one meal a day! I couldn’t believe the hospitality. She didn’t know Frances and she didn’t know me. She knew Alain, and because he’d written to her that Krishnaji wanted so and so, she’d gone to all this trouble!  Really extraordinary. So we moved in; Frances and I had rooms upstairs with a bath. Alain was downstairs, and we had a kitchen, where I was to get breakfast and supper. And I remember my first glimpse of the kitchen, a room about ten feet by twenty feet, a sizeable room, and at the narrow end were shelves with  cooking pots, which looked like silver, but they don’t have handles. At the other end of the room was a stone counter with a square hole cut out, above which was a cold water faucet. That was the sink. To the left of that was a huge kerosene burner . Well, the one servant arrived, the Brahmin cook. He was a very handsome young man, very polite and austere and dignified, but I saw him preparing lunch on the floor. Chop, chop, chop, chop, on the floor. Now, because he’s Brahmin he’s very clean, and I realized that I had to not go in there without taking off shoes and having clean feet! So, my first meal was breakfast, but before that the milk-man came with water buffalo milk. He carried it in a huge pitcher. The customers had their container, and he would pour it into your container. And I remember there was always the dirty thumb that was holding it like this and the milk cascaded down over the dirty thumb. So I would boil the milk. There was also an earthenware closed pot for boiled water which was filled by the Brahmin cook. You could trust the water. I made toast on the camp-fire thing with toast stuck on a fork and there was fruit, carefully cut so you didn’t get dysentery. That was breakfast That was interesting as a first experience. Frances didn’t do anything about breakfast in those days. I got the breakfast alone Anyway, I was invited over to Vasanta Vihar Krishnaji showed me all around and explained that when he was no longer welcome in the TS Rajagopal collected donations to buy the six acres of Vasanta Vihar. They had intended to build two small buildings, but somehow all this great big thing was built, which wasn’t what Krishnaji would have chosen, but there it was. He showed me everything, including the big hall and his rooms upstairs, etc., the whole thing.

After that we went for a walk. Mrs. Jayalakshmi drove us to the deer park, and the three of us walked around the deer park. That was nice. Then, the public talks began, at which point I got the flu. I was really sick and had to stay in bed. I remember thinking that I was going to get pneumonia because I got sicker and sicker and sicker. Finally, one night I went down to Alain’s room and said, “Look, what am I going to do?” He responded, “I promise you, as your friend, that if you really get seriously ill, I will get you to the American hospital in Paris if I have to drag you there myself.” That reassured me. I had a terrible feeling that I’d be put in an Indian hospital. I kept having visions, I suppose from movies, where there’s a caravan crossing the desert and someone falls off a camel, and the rest just continue on. And that was going to be me! Left in India! So, my spirits picked up and I guess I conquered my bug. The moment my fever dropped, Alain told Krishnaji, who said, “Bring her here.” Alain came back and told me, “Krishnaji wants to see you NOW!” So I staggered up and put clothes on. He wanted to do, what we have come to call, “healing.”  That was the first time he ever did that with me. He sat me down in a chair, put his hands on my shoulders so lightly it was like a bird’s wing touching me. He then asked me where I felt the illness, and I had, of course, terrible sinus congestion. He put his hand on, above, and beneath my eyes as though smoothing it away with the tips of his fingers. Then he put one of his hands over one eye and the other hand on one shoulder. The pain stopped instantly. He said, “Now, you come every day and I’ll do it.” I was so touched. It was terribly moving. Years later, he once helped my housekeeper, Filomina, who had terrible arthritis. She said to me afterward, “A le mani de un santo.” He has the hands of a saint. He would always go away afterwards and shake his hands like he was shaking it all away, but he seemed to me to be doing something like shaking the illness off. And then he’d go and wash his hands. The first lunch I was invited to was held in that big room where all the meetings are held. There was a table at the end of it. Madhavachari was there and Krishnaji, and I don’t remember who else.

Krishnaji drove with Pama and I forget who else. Alain, Frances, and I were in a separate car that I had hired with a driver. We all set off at four in the morning, as you will remember, the usual time to set off for Rishi Valley. Krishnaji’s car was ahead, and he had told me to look for the Southern Cross, which I’d never seen. I remember driving through that morning before sunrise and the bullock carts coming in from the country bringing vegetables to the city; those white bullocks prodding slowly along, not to be hurried, and the lorries honking—the whole thing. Going through villages where people were huddled around small, smoky fires and all wrapped up, especially their heads and necks wrapped up to keep them warm in the predawn of India. We were to all meet up and have a picnic breakfast somewhere along the road. But when we got to a certain road block, a check point as it were, it turned out that our car didn’t have the proper papers, so the car had to go back to a place called Nallore. After much gesticulating, talking, and so forth, we hired another taxi, which had the proper papers. So, we got to Rishi Valley rather late. The other car had stopped for the picnic breakfast, but we never turned up. Krishnaji was out in front of the old guest house when we arrived.

I immediately felt better in Rishi Valley, because it was a different climate: dry. It was like Arizona for me. All my troubles with that flu-like illness ended with the good climate.
Krishnaji was in that little room of his upstairs in the old guest house. I just remember the strange look of the valley, with those extraordinary rocks that have always looked to me like children’s toys that must have been put there by a giant baby and balanced just so. Nature wouldn’t have done it that way. I’ve forgotten to mention what happened in Madras before we went to RishiValley that year. George Vithoulkas suddenly turned up. He’d gotten, I guess, scared of the swami. He thought some sort of black magic was going on. Anyway, he turned up, and Alain was really angry at him for the way he’d behaved, because Alain felt responsible for having introduced him to Krishnaji. It got to be rather unpleasant between them, so George left rather rudely, as I recall. It was all quite unpleasant. Most of the Indians were very disapproving of all this, but they rather blamed Alain for it because Alain was suddenly an intruder for them. They had to go through Alain, to some degree, to see Krishnaji or arrange things for him. They felt he was an intruder, and they didn’t like him for that. I think there was great resentment. And as Alain wasn’t deferential, Madhavachari particularly disliked him.

MZ's K-story time again

At RishiValley old guest house. Krishnaji had two small rooms upstairs, and there was also a dining room and a kitchen and a big open place where meetings were held. Downstairs there were some guest rooms. Frances McCann and I had each a room downstairs and we shared a rather large bath. Alain was on the other side of the building in his quarters. We settled in, and eventually went to lunch. There was a special dining room for the visitors, and the food was less spicily prepared than for the school.

I was immediately struck with the beauty of RishiValley, which was entirely different from Madras. It was dry, and it has a wonderful feeling of being away from the whole world somehow, which I like. To the west there was the mountain which Krishnaji cared so much about called Rishi Konda. In the afternoon the students used to go to watch the sun go down behind Rishi Konda, which was a nice sight because they’d all had their bath after playing sports, and changed into little white pajama suits. All the boys with their black hair, their big eyes, and the white, clean and neat outfits, and very young. It was very, very nice to see. Krishnaji felt that there was something sacred about Rishi Konda. The legend was that once some hermit had lived up at the summit, a holy man, a Rishi. And he’d left some kind of 'something' in the air, which Krishnaji felt, I think. He didn’t say he felt it, but he cared very much about Rishi Konda.
The way of our life usually there was as follows: In the mornings sometimes Krishnaji would talk to the staff, in which case we (meaning Alain, Frances, myself and any other guests) would sit in on the discussions. On certain days there’d be a chanting in assembly when the students chanted, and Krishnaji would go. He usually sat among the students on the floor, cross-legged, and chanted with them. It was very beautiful, very moving. Some days I would go up the mountain by myself and lie in the sun and take a sunbath and feel a wonderful sense of being away from the whole rest of the world, in this ancient valley, sort of suspended in time and place. Usually, in the afternoon, I would walk, and very often I would be invited to accompany Krishnaji on his walk with maybe some other people. I met Narayan then and walked with him and with Krishnaji. Other days I’d be walking on my own and sometimes meet him coming back from his walk and walk back with him and talk.

Somewhere in those weeks we were there, I asked Krishnaji for another interview. This time I felt much more relaxed in the interview with him. I remember the question that I had on my mind which, was one of relationship. I asked him if there is indeed any reality to relationship between people if they really don’t see each other a great deal. He asked me what I had in mind. Well, what I was talking about was a niece of mine who was quite a young child then, and I was concerned about her but I hardly ever saw her. I was questioning whether there was any relationship just because you’re a member of a family. He asked me a little bit about it, the circumstances of the child’s life, where she was, etc. In effect he replied that probably there wasn’t any relationship, but there would be if there’s an exchange of some kind, either a conversation or by letter, or something. If I was to establish a contact verbally, then relationship can be real and can endure, but otherwise not.
Then he asked me what all this (by which he meant the really listening to him, the contact, etc.) was meaning to me. I repeated what I’d said to him in an earlier conversation, which is that I was leery, as it were, of trying to measure where I was all the time because of the inclination to and danger of trying to achieve some aim. I saw that that wasn’t an intelligent way to go about it. He then asked me if I was fearful of anything. I replied, “Well, actually no, not at the moment, but I distrust that. It’s like a fear of not being afraid.” He laughed a little bit, smiled at that, and said, “Don’t do that. Don’t make problems for yourself.”
I told him that once earlier I had said to him, “I’m very hesitant about asking for an interview with you because I don’t want to take up your time unnecessarily, and there are so many people who want to talk to you. So, I haven’t asked to speak to you in quite a long time. Also, it didn’t seem right, unless I have a crisis of some kind, I shouldn’t ask.
I remember his replying, “Now that we’ve talked a little bit and we know each other better, it will be easier for you to speak…” Also,  he didn’t want to have to tell me to come for my so-called treatment. You know, I had been sick in Madras, and I should just come when I thought it was necessary. I said, again, that I was hesitant to bother him with anything like that. He replied, “Well, now we know each other better, it will be easier.” So, that was the end of that.

He called me Mrs. Zimbalist for years! I’ve forgotten now when he changed, but I think that for about seven years he kept calling me Mrs. Zimbalist! He’d been my house guest for years, and he still was calling me Mrs. Zimbalist! This is jumping ahead but, he switched from Mrs. Zimbalist to Maria. Well, there are so many Marys around—Mary Lutyens, Mary Cadogan—so he called me 'Maria.' I remember that before that interview he wanted to cure me of something, and he said, “Do you want it before we talk or after?”
I said, “I think after.” You could often tell with Krishnaji if you made the right answer. You felt it. And also one always knew when an interview was over. His attention was turned off like a light. It was curious; not his total attention—he would still speak to you and all that, but that other quality went out. You just knew, that was that, you felt it was over. When I got up from the interview, he pulled out a chair for me to sit on. He washed his hands and came back and stood behind me very quietly for a while, and then, ever so lightly, he put his fingers on my eyelids. The touch of his fingers was extraordinary. It was as delicate as a leaf touching a pool of water. It was so unlike most human touch.

I remember some nuns who were always asked for lunch up in Krishnaji’s dining room. I also remember Balasundaram's wife, Vishalakshi, being a traditional Indian wife; she didn’t eat with everybody. She sat on a stool and saw that everything was properly done, but she didn’t eat. Very old-fashioned Indian style.

Pongal occurred then while we were then in Rishi Valley. All the bullocks were dressed up with flowers and ornaments on their horns. Villagers came and played on flute-like things and drums, and the children had a lovely time dancing. Krishnaji came with his big umbrella to watch. He called it not a parasol, but a sun umbrella. At some point in his early years, I don’t know when exactly, he’d had sunstroke in India, so he was sensitive to sun, which is why he used to walk always in the afternoon, when the sun wasn’t high.

It was a wonderfully peaceful time. I remember the combination of Krishnaji, his talks, the beautiful valley, the remoteness, the silence, children all around, and those funny hills. A great atmosphere there. I imagined suddenly leaving everything and becoming a kind of hermit there. Then, of course, there were the dance performances under the banyan tree. I think that the same Mrs. Moonlight lady—the demented lady—had come, too. So, again, we had to run interference for Krishnaji to keep her away from Krishnaji.
But overall, Rishi Valley was just lovely.
The next move was to Bombay but via Bangalore. Again, Alain, Frances, and I had a car, a school car this time, which took us to Bangalore. We had lunch, did a little shopping, and then we met Krishnaji at the airport and flew to Bombay. In Bombay he was staying with Pupul Jayakar in her house. Alain was staying with one of her sisters. .
Frances and I stayed at the Taj hotel, and I think Alain eventually joined us. I was invited over to Pupul’s for lunch about the second day, and Krishnaji said, “Bring me the things that you want kept safely.” In other words, money, passports, and things like that. So, I brought them, and he took me through the bathroom into his bed-room, and he took my things and put them away, saying they were perfectly safe as no one would come in his room. He then said, going out through the bathroom, “When I got here they had all sorts of pictures on the wall of Indian statuary , and they’d taken them down quickly after he’d got there. And he added, “But not before I’d had a good look!” All those erotic statuary. I remember Alain saying, “They were pornographic, weren’t they, sir?’ And Krishnaji replied, “Oh, no, they were 'religious'!” I said that I didn’t feel that they could be pornographic because they all looked so happy! Well, it turned out as the conversation went on, that I hadn’t seen the ones that were on the bathroom wall; I’d only seen ones that are reproduced books—strange positions and so forth. Anyway, I had lunch there.

Then Krishnaji began giving his talks. They were held in the usual place, in that college of art. He also held public discussions in the something like Khareghat Hall, which lots of people came to. You had to leave your sandals outside, and I remember one day I came out and all the sandals had been stolen!  Hundreds of pair of sandals where gone! Great consternation. Then there were walks around the hanging gardens in Malabar Hills with a required number of laps around. Krishnaji one day (there were people milling around), and pointed to a couple on a bench with their arms around each other, sprawling, and he said, “What is this country coming to? You never would have seen that a few years ago.” He sounded quite shocked.
There was shopping obviously; one shops in all these places.
Krishnaji talked several times about Elephanta and the great statue of the Mahesh Murti. I rather vaguely said I’d like to see that again. To which Krishnaji replied, “No, no, it’s too tiring.” I said, “Well maybe the boat ride would be tiring but, what if I hired a helicopter? Would you go by helicopter?” “Oh no, no,” he said, “don’t bother, don’t bother.” So, of course, I went hunting for a helicopter. And that wasn’t very easy, but finally I had one 
So, I went back and said, “I think I can get the helicopter. Will you go if I do?” He replied, “No, no, even that’s too tiring.” So, I went with Alain by boat. Yes, and I could see why that wouldn’t do for Krishnaji at all - we climbed up to the cave where it is, and in spite of the fact there were children running around playing music on radios, that extraordinary statue is something unforgettable. Much later, Krishnaji got a photograph of it, which I have in Ojai, and he said (and I felt the same way), “We’re not going to put it up because one mustn’t get used to looking at it, then one doesn’t see it.” To this day it sits on a shelf in the closet, and occasionally I take it out and look at it.

I was invited to several at Pupul’s discussions , and I remember in particular the first one I went to. There were about fifteen people. Krishnaji asked the question, “What can the individual do in the face of the disintegration of society?” He made it something very interesting. He said that an individual cannot be changed by another individual. He made a distinction between individual consciousness and human consciousness: the individual consciousness is one’s own, but an individual can affect the totality of human consciousness. He said that if only two or three people ever could do what he talked so often about, it would make a change in the world. He was pointing that out in this discussion. The individual who has changed has a vast resonance, like a wave going out from the individual; if there’s really change in the individual it would spread out like a wave through the totality of human beings. He didn’t use those exact words, but that was the implication of what he was saying. He said one has to see this, but people aren’t willing to. It was one of those discussions which were frustrating because he would say something like that and then inevitably, as in all discussions, there’d be someone who would say, “But we don’t see that, Krishnaji!” And then the discussion would go back as so many of his discussions did. So you’d go through a whole catalogue of what’s wrong, and it wouldn’t go forward. It was frustrating, somehow. If the discussion had flowed onward, people had gone with it, they would have seen something. Oh yes! , there was one day, another private discussion, and he was a little bit late, which he usually never was; he came in laughing, and said, “I’ve just been scolded by a guru.” Apparently some guru took him to task for saying that gurus were no good! He was laughing at that so much! I think he said that in a talk at which I felt that one occasionally gets a sort of insight, and then thought perceives that insight as a danger to itself because we perceive that as almost like death; because if we really went ahead the self would disappear, and that is perceived by the thought process as death,  and it’s so scary that you pull back, and don’t go ahead.

Anyway, he talked, and whatever I said, I said, and he said things back. But I had the feeling—many people have these feelings in talks with Krishnaji—that he was talking to me directly, not only words, but subconsciously. I could feel it coming at me, even when he was talking to somebody else or addressing some particular question. It was very strange. Afterward he came over to me for some reason and said, “You didn’t mind me pounding you in that talk, did you?” I replied, “No, of course not.” It was one of those times when there were different levels of communication going on.

I think it was in that talk that he said, “When you see that the road you’re on is the wrong road—you’re going north and someone comes and says that doesn’t lead anywhere; go south or east or west—why don’t you do it? Why don’t you see that where you’re going leads no place and stop?” I remember saying, “But I can’t stop walking. My mind won’t stop. Even though I see it’s futile. It won’t go on.”

He replied, “Why do you say that? You think you can’t, but you can.” I remember that strongly. It was like, he didn’t say it then, but it’s like, “Stop thinking.” I had never done that. I mean, I could stop thinking about a particular thing, but the mind would run on in some other way.
About this time, Krishnaji would call me to come and discuss whether this house in the south of France, that had been offered by Frances McCann, was a good thing to accept or not. And at that point it was still a possibility, so he called me to discuss it. Frances had lived in Rome, where she had one of the very beautiful old apartments in the old palaces, Palazzo down in the old part of Rome, Piazza Navona—that part of Rome. She’d lived there, and she had an art gallery, too, that she supported. She sold all this, and had a certain amount of money as a result. She wanted to buy what they call in the south of France, a "mas"—a large farm house that could be a place where Krishnaji could retire, or use in whatever way he wanted, as he didn’t have a home really.

So that was still being discussed. In Bombay, he had said that he wanted to involve me in it. He wanted to make a committee of people who would be responsible for it. The idea was that Frances would look after it, but there had to be a group that would have jurisdiction.
He said that Alain should go and look for such a house when they got back to Europe after Bombay. Gérard Blitz was involved in this too because he lived near there. He knew that part of France. He lived in a community of rather luxurious houses. So, Blitz was going to help find it too. But there was to be a group of people—I think myself, Alain, possibly Vanda, I’ve forgotten who else, would be involved in it. We were still talking about all this. Krishnaji wasn’t sure that he wanted to do this. He was a little afraid that Frances might regret it, or he felt Frances wasn’t perhaps too stable, and that it would be a mistake to have a place like that which she had really provided. But at this point it was still on. As I recall, when we did get back, Alain did go and look for things. But it didn’t go any further. And, of course, it was after that, that the idea of a school came up. But we’re still in Bombay in 1966, two years before seriously looking for a school.

I remember another discussion. This was the final discussion. It was again on the subject of thought and the difficulty of letting go of thought. I found that impossible. Krishnaji said something quite extraordinary which made the whole thing clear to me. He used the metaphor of the drum that is silent—the silence was necessary. “Thought is the un-tuning of the drum,” he said. And he also said, “What happens when you put thought aside? Turn your back on it?” I again replied that I couldn’t do it and said, “How does one turn away even when the futility of that is seen?” He said, “You mean you’re in thought and you can’t get out? Why do you insist on that?”
All I could do was just be stuck. And then he did something quite remarkable. All of sudden he said to me, “Mrs. Zimbalist, is beauty thought?” And that broke it for me. I saw that. That isn’t thought. It was like a blinding light all of a sudden.
I remember also that at the end of that discussion, he said, “If you could see the beauty of the empty drum tuned and out of that, action comes.” I said, “Yes, I see.”
And then when he said goodbye, he said, “Hold onto that drum!”
There was also a dinner party at Mrs. Mehta’s house, the mother of Nandini and Pupul. It was in their old family house, it was quite beautiful. Really marvelous food, extraordinary food, and everyone was wonderfully dressed in saris and things. There was a great sense of the affection that the family had for Krishnaji. In one of the discussions,  suddenly a door burst open and Nandini’s little grandchild, who later became a dancer - she was a little girl of about six or something then, she rushed into the room to Krishnaji, and he jumped up and kissed her on both cheeks and threw her up in the air to her delight. [S laughs.] There was such excitement in the child’s face, and his joy in seeing this little child. It was lovely.
So, then, the time for India was over. I must say everyone was absolutely charming to me, all the Indians. They were friendly, and went out of their way to help me with shopping or any of those things. I was invited to their houses. So I felt I was nicely treated as a guest, in a way.

But there was a kind of private relation that was between Krishnaji, Alain, and myself. I mean, he would talk with us about other non-Indian things—wanted to discuss for instance the house and whether he should accept the invitation to talk at Harvard and at the New School and all those things. It was as though that was his private life apart from Indian things. And I seemed to have become more and more a key person. In fact, I remember that when we were still in Rishi Valley, at the end of that discussion that I mentioned earlier, I went back to just mentioning the other interviews that he’d given me, which of course he didn’t remember, and I said, “Sir, I feel that, as I seem to be increasingly a fixture around you that you should look into what I’m like. You should ask me anything you want. You should know who the people are around you.” . I said, “I’m shy too, but I think it’s only right that if there’s anything that you want to know about me, you would ask me, please.”

On the last day in India, I went over to Krishnaji’s, to Pupul’s house to collect my passport or whatever it was that I left with him. When I came in people were seated on the floor in a little sitting room just to the left as you come in. There was a dark bearded minstrel who held a stringed instrument, one string, and a little clicking castanet sort of thing. The minute Krishnaji came into the room, he started to play and sing. It was lovely, haunting songs. Apparently Krishnaji had heard him singing in the street and had him brought in to play. We sat and listened to it. Krishnaji said that he’d heard the singing in the street and he knew that rich people who lived around there don’t hear it, only the servants would hear it. He also said that the man was from the south and spoke Telugu. When it was over, Krishnaji went and thanked him and put a gift of clothing on the floor next to him. I remember so clearly the grace with which he did something like that. It is rare for a person to be able to convey such human grace in everything he did.

So, that evening, everybody went to the airport, and there were a whole mass of devotees who came to see him off. They were seated in a big circle in a room, and Krishnaji was seated on a chair, and there was dead silence. I remember that when I came in, he got up as he would if a woman came into the room, and you could feel a shock wave go around through the whole of the Indian devotees that Krishnaji would get up for a woman.
And finally, he got up and went out in the hallway, and the Parsee lady, Mrs. Moonlight, she was after him. So, again, we had to protect him. I should clarify, we had been in a sort of a sitting room that had been put aside for him as a waiting room, and then there was the open airport outside. So, I went along too, to protect him, until Madhavachari came, and then he kept her away. Krishnaji said to me, “I can’t stand sitting there and being stared at.” So, off we went. Alain and I were in tourist class, and Krishnaji was in first class, but he kept coming back to see us, and said, “I’m visiting the poor.”
So that was the end of India that time. We landed in Rome. Krishnaji went to stay with Vanda Scaravelli, at the house she’d rented in Rome, Via Casaletto, and I stayed in Hotel Rafael, off Piazza Navona, which is a very nice little hotel, but I didn’t stay there long as I went back to the United States. This was the end of March 1966, and I didn’t see Krishnaji again until April, in London. Krishnaji stayed in Rome for a while. That may be the year where he went to Bircher Benner Clinic, in Switzerland, but I’m not sure.

I saw him again in London, in April and, again, he was in a crummy little rented house in Wimbledon; not right in Wimbledon, but near there, in Kingston something, near the Kingston Bypass. Alain telephoned me and said, “Will you meet us at Huntsman?” And of course, this entertained me vastly because it was the follow-on of the last time we were in London.  Anyway, there was much pouring over samples, and they ordered suits. Everybody was very happy. I was consulted on the choices, as my advice was really a Ph.D. advice! Or so I was considered. And there was just the whole experience of going into Huntsman. They greet you with such ceremony; bow with, “Good morning, sir,” and he was always so pleased to be there. He used to say that Huntsman was “his club,” as he put it. Mr. Lintott was just as pleased to see Mr. Krishnamurti as Mr. Krishnamurti was to be there. So, all the “patterns,” as they called samples of materials, were brought out, and there was great discussion about what was needed. Then, of course, he had the added fun of deciding what Naudé “needed,” as he said. Krishnaji called him Naudé always; never called him Alain. “Naudé should have a blue suit.”
So what kind of a blue suit, what weight of a blue suit? Where and what climates would he being wearing it, and what occasions? This was all a very serious matter. And it entertained me greatly.

By then I had ordered a car because I don’t think I had a car before that. Anyway, I’d ordered a Jaguar, not a Mercedes. Ordered it in California for delivery in London. I drove it out to the little horrid house by the Kingston Bypass. I remember Krishnaji looking out the window and rushing out to see the car. He looked it all over, but as it wasn’t a Mercedes, he didn’t say very much. I think it was that day that he gave his first talk at the Friends Hall on Euston Road, and we went to that in the Jaguar. It was a bigger and better hall than Wimbledon, but it’s still not such a great hall.
The next day,  in the car, I took them on their round of appointments, mostly shopping. I can still see driving them in and out from Kingston Bypass place, which was the point of the car. Krishnaji had a wonderful way in the car. We’d be chatting about anything, and he would suddenly say, “Do you mind if we talk seriously?” Naturally one agreed. And he would say something like, “Meditation can be extraordinary if you know how to do it.” And then he’d say, “What is humility?” And then he’d say, “It is without content, without any movement toward anything.” There were these extraordinary unrecorded little things, which luckily, I made some notes of these.
And then he would ask me, “Does it interfere with your driving if we talk seriously?” He wanted to discuss, “What is seriousness? What is it to you?” he would ask. And then I would say whatever I thought it was. He replied, “There is decision in it.”

After he had talked to David Bohm he said that David had said that he was not decisive. That word struck Krishnaji, that decision was a part of all this. At that point, Naudé quoted something Krishnaji had said some time before about seriousness, but Krishnaji brushed it aside. He didn’t want to go back to something he had said, and he was looking at it anew at that moment. At one point he asked me about someone we both knew, whether that person was serious. I apparently paused quite a while and then said, “No.”
He then asked, “What do you mean by that?” I said that to me a person isn’t serious if they’re unwilling to go wherever the inquiry takes them; and that was why I answered “No” about this person. He countered by asking, “Why do people do that?”
I felt that a serious person doesn’t chose or decide out of self-interest.
Krishnaji then asked me why they always act out of self-interest; to which I responded that I thought it is an impulse in people and they were “afraid of putting all their eggs in one basket,” as I put it. He replied “But actually people would have much more, but they don’t see it.”

Then he asked me out of the blue, “Would you be serious if you married (god forbid), and had a family?” I said it depended on the marriage and the relationship.
He said that people say they are serious about work and about the people they marry. “I am serious about the suit I’m going to fit.” I said, “Well, is that because there’s no extraneous questions about that?” He replied, “Have you self-interest in your car?” We were driving.
I said, “Yes, but were these things a measure of seriousness, or was it what the car meant to me? I am serious about the car to a point,” but I said, “not dependent on it.” That was the kind of conversation that would go on. All the time, he’s directing me through traffic. He was the greatest backseat driver that I’ve ever encountered, or heard of. He would, he would do hand signals. There’d be a red light coming up, and with his hand, while still talking, he would slow me down. Occasionally, when we weren’t talking (so-called) seriously, he would say,  “There’s a red light ahead.” Oh dear.

Then one day we got on to the subject at the table with Anneke. I was there for a meal. Anneke brought up LSD, and Krishnamurti expressed surprise that I knew anything about it. He told us again about soma in ancient India and how he had discussed this with Huxley and Huxley told him LSD wasn’t quite the real thing. Krishnaji said, “It can’t be like the real thing.” I had told him all about my being part of a scientific experiment with it. He rather dismissed it. Huxley had taken all these things at the time he knew Krishnaji.
I sat next to him at that dinner party, and during that dinner, I asked him whether Krishnaji’s knowledge of LSD and all that had come from him and whether that was why Krishnaji felt so much against it? Huxley gave an odd reply, he said, “Oh, well, it’s part of his vegetarianism.”
Anyway, on this day, he wanted to go for a ride. So in the non-Mercedes Jaguar, we were going to go to Wisley again, but as we got toward Wisley, he said he didn’t want to go there. So, we went on to the Links’s. He had told me all about how he’d known her since she was a baby, and that she and her husband Joe had  a house near Haslemere. So, we headed for Haslemere. We didn’t know where to go, but Alain inquired and we finally found the house, but there wasn’t anybody there. A farmer who was in a field said that he knew who we were talking about, and he thought that they would’ve been out for a walk. So we parked the car at the house, and we walked along the road, and met them coming back.
Krishnaji was delighted, and they were thrilled to see him, of course. I had the pleasure of meeting them for the first time.
We went in and we had tea, and immediately everybody was very congenial. Mary writes about it in her book: how she was pleased to see that Krishnaji had some fun in his life with two people who laughed and enjoyed things with him. On those drives, Krishnaji would remember places that he’d stayed in the old days. Apparently, he’d stayed all over England with various people. He would explain it by saying that he was never allowed to go out by himself when he was young. He always had to have two initiates with him at all times. The reason being that Dr. Besant thought he’d be safer, but also because he would give all his money away. If he was alone, he’d just give it to someone who needed it. So, Dr. Besant said, “For god’s sake, don’t let him go out alone!
That was a lovely day, just a lovely day. We drove back.
There was another drive, which is almost historic in a way because we decided to drive to the Cotswolds. I went with maps and an itinerary and everything, but when I got to the house, and it was decided that maybe that was too far. So we set out towards Winchester. And as I look back on it, we must’ve driven right past the road up to Brockwood, because from Kingston we went out the A3 and must’ve turned onto the A272 and drove right by. Nobody had any paranormal intimations of the future, and we got to Winchester. We looked at the Royal Hotel for lunch, but there wasn’t anything vegetarian. Alain went in and looked at the menu and found that it wouldn’t do. So we wound up at the Wessex’s.

After lunch we went to the cathedral and looked around it. Then we drove on roads, I remember the names of Grateley, the Wallops! And in the middle of Middle Wallop probably, we decided to take a nap. I had a big steamer rug in the back of the car, which we took into a field, and spread it out on the grass. Each person had a portion of the rug, and we lay down and snoozed a little. And then, refreshed, we drove on to Stonehenge, which in those days was so wonderful because it wasn’t surrounded by fence. There was nobody around. You could just go up to the stones. It was wonderful! We drove back by another route In the car, Krishnaji said that a question by some young people he’d seen the day before had come back to him in the morning. He’d thought of it, and he said that, “Time is a like a river flowing, but we divide it into the past, the present, and the future. But one must see the whole of it, and then when you see it, then time has a stop.”
Suddenly he said, “Yes, I see, but I mustn’t talk about it now.” Which meant that he’d seen something that he didn’t want to talk about because he’d talk about it in a public talk. Then quite suddenly he said, ”When my brother died, this person” meaning himself “fainted, went into a coma for several days, so Shiva Rao told me,” He didn’t remember. And when he came to they all assured him he was alright—the Masters and all that. But though he cried out and it was a great shock, he never tried to move from that fact, to question what it all meant. He just suddenly came out with this thing about his brother. And then he was very intense and very elated by the idea of time, and said, “I wish I could give a talk right now!”

That night, I had supper with them. Anneke had it ready when we got there. He kept saying at the table, “I’m ready to talk now!” We were concerned that he wouldn’t sleep—it would be hard for him to sleep in such a mood, so he wouldn’t get enough sleep the night before a talk. So, we watched television as a soporific to calm him down. Then I went back to Eaton Place.

He was talking to David Bohm during these times. They were having discussions. Sarel and David would come 'on the tube' to Sloane Square or somewhere near there, and I would pick them up there and drive them out. In one of the discussions, Krishnaji made the statement that, “there is, in effect, nothing to do but listen, listen with affection.” That’s the way he put it. He said that if a statement is made that is true, it has its own action if you listen. He illustrated this with that story of the robbers—he’s told it many times—of the band of robbers is made by their leader to close their eyes and ears as they go past a teacher who is teaching. The youngest robber steps on a thorn, and drops his hands, and hears the words, “stealing is evil,” which he truly hears, and he could no longer steal. After these discussion we would walk in Richmond Park quite a lot, David, Sarel and Krishnaji and myself.. Also, Krishnaji started asking questions about “that boy”—meaning himself—why, despite everything, he wasn’t conditioned. He was talking about that an awful lot in the car. Anyway, we again went to Mary and Joe’s in the country one day. It was pouring rain, and we took a picnic to eat on the way down, but we ate it in the car because of the rain. I remember that I made a ratatouille— Anyway, we went and had tea with Mary and Joe and had another lovely walk because the rain had gone away.

MZ's Story Time continued:

From my research in the Michelin guide, I’d found a nice place to have lunch somewhere in Le Touquet. It was very nice because it was sort of cottages around an old building. I had a big room with a fireplace. Krishnaji and Alain were somewhere else, I don’t know where they were, not in the same cottage, but we had dinner in my cottage. We ordered room service and we had a fire. It was lovely. This was May twelfth 1966.
So, we spent the night there. Everybody’d slept well, and it was a beautiful day the next day. Around noon we drove on towards Paris, and I had ordered a table at the Coq Hardi, a ravishing restaurant near Malmaison, west of Paris. In summer, you sit outside on a terrace, and behind there’s a hill, and it’s all banked in hydrangeas. And the food is superb. I obviously was taken there by my father many times.
So, I knew about it, but of course they hadn’t been there, and we had a sumptuous lunch. One beautiful dish of vegetables after another, and fruit. Krishnaji was pleased. So we went on into Paris in the afternoon. I dropped Krishnaji and Alain at the Suarèses’ at about four o’clock. On May fifteenth, Krishnaji gave his first talk in the Salle Adyar; apart from the talks, there was shopping. Then we went to the Bois de Boulogne and to the park of Bagatelle which is lovely. We walked around, and I think we had tea or something to drink, and then I drove them back.
On the twentieth I drove Krishnaji, Alain, and Pupul Jayakar to Chartres. We went through the cathedral again, and had lunch. Then we came back to Paris, dropped Pupul at her hotel, and went back to the Bois for another walk.
There was going to be another young people’s discussion arranged by Alain, and I was able to hire a nice room for that discussion in the Hotel Pont Royale. I took them to it, and sat in on it. Afterward, I dropped them back, and I went to tea with Marianne Borel, a 'little bird' like lady with white hair, very French. She always used to put up money for the camping people in the tent to have food. Well anyway, she gave a tea, and that was for all the French people, and so I met them all. On another day, I lunched with Marcelle and Mar de Manziarly there. There were two other characters of note: General and Madame Bouvards . He was a retired general and she was a rather worldly woman. They were around in Saanen every year, and Madame Bouvards would give luncheons and things. So, we went and had a luncheon with them and somebody called Nagaswaran who played the veena in India, for Krishnaji, and also he played it at the house that Alain and Frances and I shared. He was rather nice, and he moved to France, I think, and believe he started a school.
I was invited to the Suarèses’ for meals, once or twice. He was a little gnomish-like man, and he was very busy, really absorbed, in doing some translations and writing a book about the Kabbalah. He was very involved in that. Nadine was a grey-haired, middle-aged, very French-looking lady, but in fact they were both Egyptian. They came from Egypt.

There was another young people’s discussion, and I took K there. And then coming back [laughs], this is a saga. I drove that small distance between from the Hotel Pont Royal and the Suarèses’, and as I got to the corner, where their building is, the Jaguar stopped. Luckily, there was a parking place right on the corner, and I was able to roll it in. I don’t know how, but I did. And so I said to Alain and Krishnaji, “Go away, and leave me to deal with this.”
After some protests, they did. This was on the twenty-ninth of May, and there ensued an absolutely frantic and comic day trying to get the Jaguar moving, have life again. I eventually got someone through the auto club, I don’t know what. “Ma voiture est en panne,” said I. “Oui, oui, Madame,” came the reply. He would come and deal with it. So, how he dealt with it is that he towed it away. And I couldn’t find it. I was due to drive K, in the Jaguar, to Switzerland. And it was Pentecôte, and nobody was anywhere. I finally located the man who towed it away, and I learned where it was supposed to be. He said that he would meet me there. He hadn’t been able to fix it, but we were going to try to get it out anyway. So I went in a taxi way into the eastern part of Paris, to some terrible place, where all the dead cars go when they die and mine was behind a big wall with a big gate and an enormous padlock on it. So, the man climbed the fence, and was to stand guard outside in case the police came by Anyway, he got the gate open, and he got the car out, but it would only go in very low gear in fits and starts. And driving it that way with this awful jerky motion, I thought it’s ruining the whole car so it’ll never recover from this. He got it to the Jaguar agency up near the Étoile. By this time, I was rather a nervous wreck. The next morning, I called the Jaguar people, but they were rather vague about the whole thing. So, I got Alain on the phone and I said, “You’ve got to come with me, or we’ll never get it” –we were supposed to leave that morning for Switzerland! We went over, and Alain was marvelous. He found out who was head of the whole place and where his office was, and we went upstairs to it, and he walked in with me in tow. There was the boss behind a big desk, important man in a conference with other important men.

Alain walked up and said in immaculate French, “Monsieur, I am bringing you a great problem. Madame is due to leave this morning in her car to take a very distinguished gentleman on a tour of France and to Switzerland. It is the highest importance that the car be able to run. Will you see to it?” With that, the chef de Jaguar pointed to an underling and told him to take care of this.
We went out and followed him down, and there was the poor car. So we got in and, again, a harrowing ride into the Bois with the car going in lower than low gear, I don’t know what, and jerking, jerking all the way. The technician, who was driving, forced the car to go. Apparently the car was not broken. There was something stuck, and by forcing it, and forcing it, and forcing it…suddenly it went!
When we went back to the Jaguar dealership, I said, “We can postpone our departure until after lunch, but I will need the car looked at in detail between now and 3 o’clock,” or whatever it was.
Alain and I then took a taxi, fetched Krishnaji, and went to 'Chez Conti', which is an Italian restaurant in Paris, very good. Mr. Conti, the founder and owner, was very attached to my father because, not only was my father a great customer (all restaurant owners adored my father, because he was the perfect customer), but  Mr. Conti was also a racing fan, and Father had horses, and went to the races every day.
So, Mr. Conti was all too pleased to give us a wonderful lunch. Krishnaji was delighted to have Italian food, and said, “Why haven’t we come here every day?!”

After lunch I fetched the Jaguar, got my luggage from the hotel, and I met them both at the Suarèses’ - they were getting old, and Krishnaji’s being with them was becoming more of a burden than a privilege. They made remarks about, “Oh, it’s so much trouble, so much work, when you’re here.” And Krishnaji felt uncomfortable. Now, the car was driving perfectly, so off we went to Touraine. This was when Krishnaji told both Alain and me that, at times, he faints; and that, if it happened, we weren’t to be frightened, but “don’t touch the body,” as he put it. So, we’re going out of Paris on the thirty-first of May. Heavy traffic going south on the Autoroute du Soleil. We’re driving along, and something made me glance at Krishnaji, and he s-l-o-w-l-y fainted to the left into, more or less, my lap. I put out my hand instinctively. I was afraid his head would hit the steering wheel. I couldn’t stop the car. Cars, you know pouring all around us. Alain was in the back seat. It was extraordinary the way this happened. It was like slow motion. He didn’t go 'plop'. He v-e-r-y slowly, like a flower leaning over, so I was able to continue to drive. Luckily, I was in the right-hand lane. As soon as possible, when there was an exit, we got off the auto-route. Alain was in the back seat, but he couldn’t do anything. After a few minutes, with a cry, Krishnaji came to. But it was curious - every time it ever happened in a car, 'something' made me turn and look at him just before it happened. Every time. It was very odd, because it happened a number of times later on. But that was the first time.
He made some half-joking apology for falling into my lap or something. He didn’t explain it then, but he explained it later on; that it was something about leaving the body temporarily, after it’d been through strain of some kind. The effort of the Paris talks and all that, would have made that a moment for it. He also said it will never happen in public, and it will never happen unless he’s with people he knows well, not casually.

So, we drove on. I booked rooms in a hotel in Montbazon, which we turned out to dislike very much. It was the former house of somebody like Monsieur Coty, you know, some big (politician and ) industrialist. It was turned into a hotel, and it was overly ornate and pretentious. We didn’t like it at all. But we spent the night, we had to. We decided to drive on the next day.
It was awful noisy, too, and they didn’t appreciate vegetarians.  So, the next day we drove on to Amboise. We lunched in Amboise. Krishnaji isn’t a great 'chateau visitor', as I’ve said, so we didn’t go into the Château, but we went on to Chenonceau and we walked around the gardens.

Then we went on to a place I’d found called Pougues-les-Eaux, there was a Château de Mimont, which had been turned into a hotel. It was in the country, and there were fields, and trees, and beautiful rolling country. We had nice rooms and I remember in the salle à manger that supper was very good. They rose to the vegetarian challenge very nicely, and it was good.

I remember that was one of the first times when I was aware of something strange…some 'presence' when Krishnaji was talking about his early life. I can see the dining room in my memory, and feeling 'something', that’s not identifiable. A sort of 'presence'- I’ve described it as a vibrance in the air. Something electric, some sort of 'unheard hum' or something…

He’d been to the Bircher Benner Clinic and that’s part of the regimen: that you eat your main meal at lunch, and there’s that business about fruit first, and then raw things, and then cooked things. Which we’ve all followed ever since. It’s the way they feed you there , and diet is very much part of the therapy. There are books, medical books supporting this program of food.

So, then we drove on to Geneva. I was supposed to be a great driver. Krishnaji approved. Anyway, we arrived in the—back to the good old Hotel du Rhône, and then of course the next day we did our Geneva errands. Patek. And also neckties at Jacquet. So, we then went to Gstaad, and Les Caprices. This year we all stayed at Caprices for a while, because Tannegg wasn’t open yet. Krishnaji had a sort of studio, next to my flat, as I recall. But we all used my sitting room. And I did the cooking, but we spent most of our time in my sitting room and had our meals there. We’d lunch at home, and, of course, we had walks.
At one point, Krishnaji got bronchitis and stayed in bed. And then Krishnaji got his Mercedes out of storage at Mr. Moser’s, and drove it back to Gstaad.
We went to Geneva again, going through France, going around the south side of the lake. And we took a picnic and had it on route. And then we went to the Hotel du Rhône . We went to a Hitchcock movie that evening, Dial M for Murder with Grace Kelly. The next day Alain and Krishnaji went to Dr. Pierre Schmidt, who was a noted homeopath. An ancient gentleman. Alain of course has always been mad about homeopathy, and he got hold of Dr. Pierre Schmidt, who was a very distinguished homeopath. I went along, I took them. They both had 'liver treatments'. God knows what that was. They became patients of Dr. Schmidt. Then K and I drove back to Gstaad, and Alain remained to meet Desikachar, who was arriving from India. But before then it had been Iyengar, and Krishnaji always told me that Iyengar had hurt his neck. When Iyengar was teaching him (some yoga exercises) , I took lessons from Iyengar too, and I must say he was almost brutal. I mean, he tried to make you do things that just pushed you to your limit.
In fact I used to deliberately get angry to get enough adrenalin to do what he was making me do. And he’d been too rough with Krishnaji. It wasn’t that he was hurt then and there, but from ( his yoga practice with ) Iyengar, he couldn’t turn his head well. It got terribly stiff, and took him a long time to get over that.
I’ve forgotten what pose it was he was making me do, but with my bad leg, it was forcing me very hard. I was shaking with the effort.

Well, here’s a typical day. June eighteenth. I marketed and made lunch while K went riding in his Mercedes.
The Biascoecheas came for lunch with us. And later, I walked in the rain with Krishnaji. Desikachar arrived, and we started yoga lessons. I have my first lesson with him. Here’s a day when Krishnaji took me for a ride in the Mercedes. On another, I drove Alain to Thun where he picked up his Volkswagen, so we’re now three cars! Mine, of course is an 'inferior' Jaguar, but anyway, I mended that later. One day we drove one day to Evian for lunch on the terrace of the Hotel Royal, which is lovely. I think it was the time when cherries, those wonderful, big, black, huge cherries.
 We ordered cherries, and Alain insisted on opening every cherry in case there was a worm in it. He had a thing about worms. I said it ruins the cherries, being full of anxiety about a worm! I said that I’ve never had a worm in a cherry. He said, “I have!”
But it was this really a lovely lunch because the terrace looks out over the whole lake. And it’s a very old-fashioned hotel. In fact, we thought of taking rooms there once, but we never did.

So, on we went to Geneva and the Hotel du Rhône Alain and Krishnaji had homeopathic treatments, which I didn’t have. They also had steam baths — it was a homeopathic thing. I don’t know where they went. The next day, we drove back to Gstaad via Evian, he would be like Toscanini or von Karaian conducting the driving with hand signals.  But, he would also like to look at the country. He enjoyed that. At other times, when I drove alone with him, he used to chant. And that was wonderful. We would drive through France on lovely little tiny roads, with the beautiful country unwinding around us, and he would chant. It was like…well, I’ve always felt most people have a hum—when they’re alone, they hum something. Krishnaji’s hum was Sanskrit chants. Those were really wonderfully magic moments, being in the middle of France, away from everything, no telephone, no people, nobody knew where we were, just rolling through lovely country, relaxed and–just loveliness. We wouldn’t talk too much. But there was a kind of something unspoken that we both were enjoying.
Fosca would have given us a whole pannier of fruit and something to drink. So, we’d stop and have a picnic breakfast, which was lovely. Krishnaji would always remember the place! He, with his 'trick memory', not remembering so many things, but he had a memory for places. Yes, and he would say, “We’re coming to it” when we’d be, say, a half a mile away. And when we’d get there, and he’d say, “Here it is, here it is.” There was a place we could park off the road just a little bit, behind some trees and bushes.

So the next day, June twenty-sixth, K started to cough, so he stayed in for a couple of days.
My activities were that I took the Jaguar down to be serviced in Lausanne, returning by train.
The next day Krishnaji was up again, and I left after cooking Alain and Krishnaji lunch. The train I took to go back to Lausanne to pick up my car went by Caprices, and Krishnaji, Alain, and Desikachar were waving to me on the balcony. And then K drove the Jaguar. He condescended to drive a Jaguar! Again we went to Evian and the Hotel du Royal, and to Geneva and the Hotel du Rhône, and again they had steam baths. After this last steam bath, Krishnaji decided that he didn’t like it, it didn’t suit him. We came back this time via Ouchy, and had lunch in Ouchy.

**I’ve remembered suddenly these things when Krishnaji talked about his life. He made a rather detailed attempt to explain to Alain and me about the theosophic order of things:  the seven Masters, and a sort of Super Master, and the Lord Maitreya, and the Buddha, and the Lord of the Universe. He explained that the Lord Maitreya is a living ancient being in Tibet who periodically leaves his own body and enters that of a person. He hasn’t gone on to be a Buddha (yet ?) because humanity is suffering. It is said that he took Jesus’ body.
I asked Krishnaji if he could see auras. He replied that "he used to". Then I asked him if his extraordinary perception in interviews that made such an impact was, or came from such powers. He said "probably".
He told us a story about a man who came to him, and K was able to tell him all about himself. And the man was annoyed! It’s as though this man felt Krishnaji had intruded into his life. As he was talking about these things, he always seemed to know how they occurred, but he never said how he could see auras, and how he could, for instance, know all about this man when he walked in the room. One felt that he understood what was going on. He would talk about it, but he wouldn’t vouch for it, as it were. And, of course, I was always felt it was not right to pry. If he wanted to tell me something, wonderful. But if he didn’t want to go beyond what he told me, I never asked questions.
Or, I sometimes asked questions prefaced by the statement, “If you don’t want to tell me, please don’t, but I’ll ask it, and then forget it if you don’t want to tell me about it.” So, I never pushed. Perhaps I should have, but I felt that wasn’t right to do it that way.

And also in one of these talks, he talked about what was actually “the process,” but he didn’t call it that then. He said that he’d suddenly had fits of unconsciousness or coma that would come upon him, and he would cry out. And his brother was there, and Rosalind, and a Mr. Warrington, who was a theosophist . And he said that they never touched the body- there was an extreme vulnerability at a time like this. There mustn’t be anything to shock the body physically or it could be fatal. He said "they never touched the body". When he was telling us about this, I wondered if there was some reason that he was telling us. And, he said that his brother wrote it all down. That the boy had spoken marvelous poetry, and strange things happened. This was during “the process.” We asked "what strange things happened ?". He said rather hesitantly, “A star appeared.”
I asked where. He said above his head.
The boy had no memory of all this" then or now, he said. I asked if he was aware of what was happing then and he said, probably, he must have. But he couldn’t remember.So that was one of the times when he talked about this. It’s, in a way, the sort of things that Mary [Lutyens] felt and wrote about, and about which Krishnaji used to say, “Do you feel it?” And, I had always felt it before he said it, later.

I ought to recount one evening when he spoke of a game of noticing and naming objects from just one glance. He said he used to play this game with his brother, and a similar game, where you, say, have just a second to look at this table, and then not look at it, and remember. I asked him if his state of noticing everything is constant.
He replied, “It always has been, except when I’m empty, and I hardly look out the window of my room. I’m empty.” Then he turned to Alain and said, “That’s why, sir, sometimes when you come into the room I jump out of my skin.”
That was interesting: how he could look at everything, see everything, and then he’d go into these states of being empty, at which times anything would startle him. He also asked, in the car going to Amboise, if we’d never heard a definition of meditation, what would it mean to us? We replied, “A concern for life.”
He then asked, “How does one look at oneself, not each individual, but in a way in which all things are included?” He continued, pointing to a mountain, “It’s like being up there. When you look down from there you see everything in its proper place. So, how do you see from there?…Not how, but what is seeing from there? That is the question.”

Then he asked, “Do you remember silence?” There’d been a silence. And, “Where was it?” he asked.
Alain said, “The Château de Mimont.”
Krishnaji replied, “Yes, there was silence, and all the sounds in it.”
I said it had happened since, and he nodded, and said, “Yes, several times, in this room.”
He continued, “Where do you start to look from? Not 'up there', but 'where you are'. You must be very sensitive and do everything you can for that. Right food, enough sleep. Hip baths…
I think, Mary talks about having to have hip baths in mountain streams from melted snow when they were in the Tyrol. He used to take hip baths in the tub, ice cold water. I tried it once, ice cold water, it was unbearable! I never did it again! And it says here in my diaries, “hip baths,” and that he laughed at me as he said it because I had complained.
“Be aware of everything you do. Have you ever tried that awareness?” he asked us. Alain said that he had.
Krishnaji continued, ”You are not aware if there is a 'center' watching to correct. As long as there is this, you are not watching. There must be no 'center'. Then things are corrected of themselves. That is the lesson for this evening.”
And then he changed the subject, and said he wanted us to speak only French all through supper!
In the middle of a lunch, at some point, he said suddenly, “There is no discovery in 'thinking', only in 'observation'.” These things seem to be floating through his mind. We’d be chattering, or laughing, or something, and suddenly he’d say something like that, as though it was always humming inside him.
We were also playing records in those days in Caprices He liked Segovia’s guitar music very much.

Krishnaji also asked me what I thought neurosis was.
I said that I thought, in part, that it was a very defective perception of reality. “The persistent pursuit of impossible aims,” said I.
He asked me if I thought psychoanalysis did any good.
I replied that I did. Of course, he doesn’t remember all that I have told him about my doing psychoanalysis.
I said, “Yes, but not on the level” of which he was talking. “It seeks to adjust people to the environment.”
He then said, “But the society is neurotic. Thinking creates neurosis,” he said. And laughed at what he thought most people would think if he said that.
Then he asked, “So, how does one act without thought? You must see that thought creates conflict, which is neurosis.
He was full of energy through all this, delighted that the rain had stopped his hay fever.

We watched the turbulent gray river pouring down the mountains. I remember one trip, somehow Krishnaji and Alain were both in the back-seat, I don’t know why, and they were both perishing with hay fever, streaming noses. And I was sitting in the front, driving, just entranced with the lovely smell of new mown hay!
He used to tell us his stories, but you know his stories about the student of a guru who went off and studied for fifteen years with another guru, and then came back to the first guru and said he’d learned marvelous things, so the second guru said, “Show me a little.” The student said he could walk on the water.
So the student showed the first guru, who said, “You took fifteen years to do that? If you’d told me, I could have showed you there was a ferry!”
Then there was the Lord Vishnu one I won’t repeat all those stories because they’re well documented.
 Anyway, back to the period we’re discussing Desikachar gave yoga lessons every morning to Krishnamurti. In return for yoga lessons, Krishnaji was giving Desikachar meticulous lessons in western table manners! Alain and I learned a thing or two about western table manners as it went along!
Now here’s a question that appeared on the way to Geneva; Krishnaji asked, “What would make a man change, a man like Iyengar, who is angry and bitter at Desikachar’s giving lessons here.” “As long as he is taking a stand, there is no change.”
At this point, Alain and I ask if he hadn’t taken a stand on things like not killing or eating meat?
He replied, “It isn’t a stand. I don’t kill anyone. I’ve never eaten meat, but it’s a position. I just don’t.”
It seemed a subtle and important difference between just not doing something, and having a plan, ideal pattern of action. It was not a principle.
“As long as he takes a stand he will never change. There is no small, gradual change. That is no change at all. Only the awareness that a total revolution is necessary, in an instant, will change a man.”
Another day, in the car, he asked, “What is love? Not all the exchange between most people. For love there must be meditation, there must be no memory.”
And then he said, “Love is innocence, just don’t answer it.”

At one point he asked me if I would like to be twenty-five again. Not to go back to when I was twenty-five but be that now, having had all the rest of my life.
I replied, “In that case, yes!”
“I thought so,” he said!
Later he admonished us about food and the good or bad of taking vitamins. He was in a wheel of energy and kept coming back from his room to tell us more. He told me that I must make the body very sensitive by learning what foods were best for me.**

On another drive he was talking about relationship, and he said, “I’ve always done what I wanted. One reason Rajagopal used to get upset was that, if I wanted to give something away, I gave it.”
He spoke of 'seeing things instantly'. And he asked why I hadn’t seen, in the past, both death and pleasure and stepped out of it? I said that I had.
He replied, “No, no Madame, why didn’t you see it then?”
I was beginning to gather more and more that things were not well between him and Rajagopal . He didn’t talk too much then, but he did later on, when he went to the United States, and went to Ojai. So, for the moment, we’re still in Switzerland. When people started coming for the talks and we used to go on walks, he said, “I don’t dare look to left or right” because people would be looking at him and want to catch his eye. He said, “Do you mind if we walk fast?”

I had a dream at that point. It was the most vivid dream I’ve ever had in my life, and it’s pertinent to this time in my life. I knew immediately what it meant. So, the dream was that I’m standing on the bank of a river. The river is very fast, and turbulent; a fast moving river. If I jump in, I may drown, but I feel I must jump in. In the middle of the river was a tall, majestic Sequoia; a redwood tree; a splendid towering tree. I knew that if I jumped in the river that I had to be willing to drown. Perhaps I wouldn’t, perhaps I’d be washed against the tree and that would save me. So, I jumped, and that’s what happened. The moment I woke up, I knew exactly what it was because the Saanen River is gray, and can be turbulent and though the Saanen River a little river, the river in my dream was vast. The grey river represents 'change' to me. What the dream was saying to me was: You’ve got to be willing to let go and 'die to yourself', as it were, and change. Of course, the tree is obviously Krishnaji.
I did decribe it to him sometime later. We were on a walk along the river, and he smiled and said it was a symbolic dream.
I said, “Yes, it could be interpreted in various ways, either being saved or perhaps destroyed.”
“Oh no,” he said, and asked how a psychiatrist would look at those things. I described the process. “Oh, that takes forever,” he said. Also we had a conversation about "masks"; that we all wear masks, and would it be possible to live with no masks, no defenses, directly in contact, and have no objectives?
Just before Vanda arrived, at lunch, there was a teasing battle on the subject of 'marriage' with Desikachar, as the audience. Krishnaji and Alain were attacking it and I was taking the defense.
I said that Alain put it along-side leprosy [both laugh] and that K’s tone when speaking of  marriage to the children at Rishi Valley was enough to put a terror into them. We finally agreed that the whole system needed revising, and I suggested that he re-invent its meaning.

That afternoon Vanda arrived from Rome at Chalet Tannegg, and came down for supper with us. It was lovely to see her. She met Desikachar for the first time. Then the next day  Krishnaji and Alain both moved up to Tannegg. Krishnaji thanked me for everything and said if he and Signora, as he called her, quarreled could he come back and stay with me? I moved most of their things up to the Chalet, and as I left Vanda said, “You must come for all lunches and suppers”. Krishnaji walked me to my car, kissed my hand very lightly and thanked me again.

K Story time (continued)

Vanda arrived in Gstaad from Italy, and she had the ground floor in Chalet Tannegg again. Krishnaji moved up there on July seventh. Thereafter, I was very kindly invited to many meals by Vanda, so I was frequently up and down the hill between the two places. The day after Krishnaji went up there, I lunched with all of them and also present was Radha Rajagopal Sloss with her husband and two youngish children, quite attractive children. She had a kind of 'proprietary' air toward Krishnaji as though he sort of belonged to her as a child, a sort of hangover from that. She both played up to him and treated him as though he was old and bumbling. There was much chatter at the table. The children were very nicely behaved, nice children.  Krishnaji was very sweet with her and the children. I remember that there was quite a lot of talk at the table, and he said something about, “How these Americans do get on,” which was an ironic remark considering the two Americans in question, Radha and me.

He liked to get there for the talks just in time to walk right in. He didn’t want to hang around. He would stand around afterward, and people would come up and greet him. Alain, again, arranged young people’s meetings. They were usually held at Tannegg. Filled the living room with young people, and I suppose they were taped. So, there was also yoga going on with Desikachar, for both Krishnaji and me.
And also, Krishnaji used to ask me to come driving with him in 'his' Mercedes. At about this time I remember Mrs. Lindbergh came to lunch. She was a friend of Vanda’s and had met Krishnaji before. Of course, she had written something for one of Krishnaji’s books. She admired him very much.
The Lindberghs had a summer house in Les Avants,

On the twenty-second, there was another ninety young people for a discussion. It was kind of crowded! Alain loved young people, and he would talk to them, and laugh with them, and they liked him. He was very good with young people. It was Alain’s doing that brought all the young people to Krishnaji. That was a really good thing that he did. Instead of us old ladies doddering in the front rows, tides of young people came. Of course, it was also the era when young people were wandering around Europe, with packs on their backs, and this was a place to go at that point, a 'hippie' stop.

On the twenty-eighth, there was the ninth Saanen talk. Lots of talks in those days. And the next day there was the third young people’s discussion at Tannegg. I was invited to attend and stay for lunch afterward.
It was busy days. He had a bit of bronchitis but, as usual, he surmounted the bronchitis.
On the thirty-first was the tenth and last Saanen talk of that year. On August third, the public discussions began. On the fourth there was the second public discussion—there was one every day at that time. But of more significance was the meeting at Tannegg with all the people who wanted to start a Krishnamurti school. The room was full. There must have been fifty people, at least, with many rather emotional ladies who were thrilled with the thought of starting a 'Krishnaji school'. Krishnaji just listened, and then asked a couple of questions.

On the next day, after the third public discussion, Krishnaji sent for me. We went outside to a private place where we could sit and talk, and he discussed his and Alain’s staying with me in New York and in Paris the following spring. He wanted to talk to me because he was worried that I might be spending too much money. He talked to me very seriously about all that, as he was a bit worried. “Are you going into capital, Madame?” he would ask, and I would assure him it was alright. He kept coming back to that subject. When we came back to Tannegg, the Bohms were there, and there followed a long talk with Krishnaji, the Bohms, Vanda, and me.
On the seventh of August, Krishnaji called a meeting at the Biascoechea’s. Krishnaji picked out about fifteen people who’d been at the first meeting about starting a school. He decided the rest were not serious. He said I was to be part of it. I don’t know why, having nothing to do with education. But, he wanted to involve me in it, apparently. Anyway, he said to everyone, “Are you all serious?” This was the time when he really inquired into it.

There was the question of what country the school should be in. He wanted it to be an international school, and he wanted, at that point, the teaching to be in both English and French. The possible countries were France, Switzerland, England, and Holland. There was much talk back and forth. There were people from all those places. That was when he said, at the end of it, “Well, go and find out everything to do with what it takes to establish a school in your country, and come back here next summer, and we’ll talk about it some more.” So, he acted rather quickly on all that.
Nadia Kossiakof was finding out about France. I don’t know who was doing Switzerland. And Dorothy was finding out about England.

At one point Iyengar came to Gstaad to do yoga with Menuhin even though he wasn’t doing it with Krishnaji. Heretofore, Iyengar had taught Krishnaji, and he used be put up by a lady in the lower flat in Tannegg. He used to give his lessons there. The first yoga lessons I took were in that downstairs flat. So, there was rather a coolness, shall we say, between the lower floor and the middle floor. Except for Vanda, who always was very loyal to Iyengar because she really got her knowledge of yoga from Iyengar. She got on with him and liked him.
Iris took me there to call on Mrs. Menuhin, and I remember it was quite fascinating. First of all, they were all practicing for concerts in the rest of the house, so we sat in, I think, the dining room. Mrs. Menuhin carried on a flowing conversation mostly with Iris, and wrote letters at the same time! I found the logistics of it interesting, because she had very large handwriting, and she was writing on little, bright, pretty blue note paper. This enabled letters to go off to friends all over that didn’t take long to write because the writing was so big and the page was so small. I thought that was very clever of her!

So, I met him at the same time. We just shook hands.
There was again a 'frost' there. Krishnaji had made probably one of those statements that genius and talent aren’t really creative. They got it second-hand but the Menuhins all took offense. I think it was the sister Hepsibar and her husband who used to go the talks, and they must have heard him say this and reported it.. Vanda was very musical. Her father started the Maggio Musicale in Florence. She knew all the leading musicians of her time. Casals and Toscanini, and all these people. And she would have known Menuhin, so I imagine that Krishnaji met him through Vanda, but I don’t know.
So anyway, we’re on the ninth, when Krishnaji had the seventh and final public discussion.

Anyway, Alain and I went to Paris, and looked at different localities, but we wanted to be near the Bois. In fact, from the house we eventually got, we could walk right into the  Bois, the south end of the Bois. It was near Longchamp, and then the bottom of the Bois was about two or three blocks from the house we had.
Onze Rue de Verdun. It was a nice house, sort of.
And then we flew to London. The amount of traveling we did in those days that felt like nothing; it was like going from here to the post office, we flew to London because Alain wanted to get British citizenship, so we flew to London. And, what did we do there? We went to a Hitchcock movie, I remember. And we had lunch with Fleur Cowles at Claridge’s.
We were in England for only a few days, but we found time to drive down to Oxford to look around. And we saw the Digbys. We also saw the Frys at their townhouse. And then we flew back to Paris and picked up my Jaguar, which had been in the Jaguar agency being serviced in some way. And we drove to…
S: Hold on here, just to be clear. Krishnaji stayed at Tannegg, and you and Alain drove to Paris.

The next day we drove on all those little tiny roads that we like, through lovely country. We got back to Lausanne in time for lunch at the Grappe D’Or, and were back at Tannegg by four o’clock.
By now we’re at the end of August, and Krishnaji talked to Alain and me about his possibly speaking at Harvard after the New York talks, or around then. So we talked about that.
S: Who had arranged that?
M: Alain had arranged that. It seemed a good idea.
I took my car to Thun to leave it there for the winter, and came back by train and said goodbye to all of them, Vanda, Krishnaji, Alain
The next day I flew to California and my house in Malibu. While I was there, Rajagopal telephoned me and asked me if I would drive Krishnaji when he came to Ojai for the talks, because he’d heard that I had been driving him around. I said, “Well, yes, of course if you want.” I really had intended to stay out of things. I thought Krishnaji would be back in his own home territory and I would stay out of things. I would, of course, go to the talks, but I wouldn’t be involved in all the personal things as I had been in Europe. But Rajagopal wanted me to be the driver, and he said that if I would do that, would I like to stay in his old flat, which is the upstairs flat of the house next to Pine Cottage. So I said, “Well, yes, thank you very much.” So, that was arranged and they arrived in NY on Sept the twentieth. Then there was, as usual, a dentist appointment. They always were having their teeth fixed. So I arranged all that in New York. And then there was the usual round of people being asked for lunch. We also went to the movies. Krishnaji was interviewed by the New Yorker to do a profile of him, but it was never printed for some reason.

At this time Alain went up to Boston to arrange the Harvard business, and returned. Then Krishnaji began speaking at the New School.
At one of the talks we got a message that Allen Ginsberg had been there and would like to talk to him. So that was arranged, and, lo and behold, on the twenty-ninth Allen Ginsberg appeared, with Timothy Leary in tow! And also, a friend of his, and I didn’t know who his friend was. But I thought, “How could any woman allow herself to be that unattractive?” Dirty jeans and long ponytail down the back. Just plain unattractive. Eventually it dawned on me it was not a woman at all; it was a man! But anyway, the young man never spoke. Ginsberg began all the talk, and I think he was against Krishnaji saying that drugs were not a good thing. And he went on about LSD, and a religious experience or something. At one point Krishnaji said to Ginsberg, “You know what the symbol of the cross is ?” And with that he made the gesture, with his hand of like crossing yourself with vertical stroke, and then horizontal stroke. Then he said that it stood for the negation of the ego. And with that Leary sprang to his feet, silenced Ginsberg who was going to reply, threw his hands out, and said, “Yes, every night!”
It turned out that Leary was giving some sort of performances down in Greenwich Village on the stage. And he said, “I stand on the stage, and I throw out my hands, and I pluck the nails out of them and throw them onto the ground!” with a big dramatic gesture, in a loud voice, an enactment of Christ removing the nails from his hands. Krishnaji talked very quietly, and said something about Christianity, whereupon Leary sat down and agreed with Krishnaji, absolutely refuting what he’d been saying before.
I mean, he just turned around and agreed with Krishnaji absolutely. There was no discussion. Really! They finally left. So, that was that. Anyway, the talks went on at The New School, and we went to the movies and the dentist. We walked in the park, around the reservoir. Nobody mugged us; they didn’t do that in those days. It was quite safe. People were jogging, but there were no muggers.

The last talk of Krishnaji’s at The New School was on October seventh. The next day, Alain brought a lot of young people up to the flat to have a discussion with Krishnaji. Krishnaji also met Ralph Ingersoll. He used to publish a newspaper called PM, which was way before your time, but it was avery good newspaper, very, very liberal. He had a son, young Ralph, who I think we met in Switzerland before this. I believe he came up to Tannegg. Alain must have met him with the other young people. He came to see us in New York, and then his father and the father’s wife. I don’t know if she was his mother or step-mother, but they came for lunch. Hughes van der Straten also came for lunch when we were there.
Bud lent me his car, so we went out to the country for lunch one day. He had a very old Rolls-Royce And Radhika Herzberger came for lunch with her new-born baby. I  remember we put it down in the room I stayed in while we had lunch, and Krishnaji was struck by the fact that I paid attention to this little baby. He didn’t know that most women behave the same way , when a little baby is present. He seemed to think my attention was significant. On the sixteenth of October, we flew to Boston and stayed in a hotel in Cambridge that was close to Harvard. We could walk there.
Krishnaji met Harvard students at something called Lowell House. They asked questions, but those kind of dull questions. They hadn’t done their "homework". It was alright, but nothing special. Then on October eighteenth, we flew to Malibu. It was their first time there, and I had the pleasure of driving in the gate with both of them, and cooking supper for them in my own kitchen. It was the first time he’d been back in California since 1960. And the reason he hadn’t gone back all those years was that it was so disagreeable with Rajagopal. There was awful trouble going on, and this visit in ’66 was supposed to reconcile things, or at least be peaceful. I found out that Krishnaji couldn’t give permission to listen to an audio-tape, and that only Rajagopal could do that. But I do remember that when Krishnaji arrived in New York, on the very first day, Rajagopal telephoned him. Alain and I were with Krishnaji in his bedroom when the call came, and inside of two minutes Rajagopal was yelling at him on the phone and then hung up on him.

K and Alain were in Malibu until they went back to India that winter. So then that was a real liberation because then Krishnaji didn’t have to stay at Pine Cottage under Rajagopal’s control. He only stayed there when we went up to Ojai for the talks.We arrived there on the eighteenth of October.
There were some dental matters, and on the twentieth we drove up to Ojai. Rajagopal arranged that Rosalind who was living somewheres else, come to Arya Vihara and supply meals to us. So we went up and drove right to Arya Vihara for lunch. Krishnaji had to show me where it was. He guided me there through Ojai. And then after lunch we drove around to the other entrance and into Pine Cottage, where Rajagopal was waiting. Rosalind just said “hello,” kind of thing; but it became a nightmare, so much so that I had to stop taking my meals there. I have never heard such nagging in my life. I finally just gave up. I couldn’t go to the meals because I was getting an ulcer listening to it all. Krishnaji sat at one end of the table, and she sat at the other, and Alain and I sat in between. She would say things like, “Why aren’t you finishing your food? What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? That’s good for you, you should eat that. That’s good for you. Finish that.” That’s the way she talked to him. Like to an errant child. And when she would bring the food in, or when we’d sit down she’d say, “Well I suppose you all won’t like this but here it is. One night things were so bad with Rajagopal that Krishnaji couldn’t sleep. He had about three hours’ sleep, and then he had to give a talk in the morning. When we got back after the talk for the lunch, Krishnaji mildly said that he hadn’t slept much the night before, and she said, “Oh?! Why?! Why not?!” in a tone of voice as though he was a child and had to be reproved for having done something awful.
She was unbearable! I thought, how could he put up with this dreadful woman?! That was before I knew how dreadful she’d been all through the years.

So, Rajagopal was waiting there at Pine Cottage and I remember vividly the two men. Krishnaji got out of the car and went over to him, and they both sort of embraced and put their arms around each other. Rajagopal was facing me, and I remember that he averted his face from Krishnaji as though he was both moved and repulsed. It was unfriendly, horrid. I also remember that he insisted, before he took Krishnaji and opened up Pine Cottage, that I be shown where I was to stay. So he alone took me up the steps to the little flat above, and when we got to the door there was a garter snake by the door, and he said, “I hope you don’t think I put it there on purpose.”  So, he opened it, and I went in. He showed me where things were. That was before we enlarged it. Krishnaji’s apartment was the way it is now, except that it was slightly enlarged when we redid it. The other one had a separate entrance, but shared a wall. It was what they call here semi-detached. And it effectively ruined Pine Cottage and had been done when Krishnaji was off in India, and he was never told about it until he came back. Instead of his little cottage, which he had great feeling for, there was this hideous thing with cork floors and high windows like in a prison that you couldn’t see out of. And it had a small kitchenette and a bathroom and a small bedroom and a big office when you went down a step.

It was unbelievably ugly. But After Rajagopal went away, Krishnaji then showed us around a little, showed us the pepper tree. Krishnaji came with Alain up to where I was, and I remember his coming in the door and just looking around. He said that he hadn’t been there in many years since once when he went up there, Rajagopal had chided him for having brought dirt in on his shoes. So Krishnaji never went back! Rajagopal was one of those neatness obsessives: everything had to be lined up just so. Clearly an obsessive and he had every symptom of paranoia that I’ve ever read of in any book. Anyway, Krishnaji looked around the flat. There were some paintings that Rajagopal had done on the wall, little tight sort of paintings. Krishnaji looked at them and sort of nodded and said, “He’s very deteriorated.” Not about the pictures but from having talked to him. Then he showed us more of his cottage, including…that was when he showed us the cupboard off the back porch when Krishnaji used to live in that cottage, and Rosalind and Rajagopal stayed in Arya Vihara. One night Krishnaji lost his key to his apartment, so he couldn’t get in. It was cold, I guess it was winter. California houses of that era and kind usually have the water heater outside in a kind of closet, so that if it leaks it’ll leak not into the house but where it won’t do any harm, in this case under the porch and onto the ground. So Krishnaji spent the night standing up next to the water heater, which was just a few inches, just barely room to cram in. I said but why didn’t you go and ask him for another key, and he said, “Oh, I couldn’t have done that. They would have been too angry. This was a horrendous revelation to me. It showed just how terribly wrong things were.

And the next day, Rajagopal came over and talked to Krishnaji. And in no time at all we heard Rajagopal’s voice, angry voice coming right through the wall. We couldn’t make out what he said, but we heard this angry, raging voice. Pretty soon he left. Alain had also arranged for the talks in Ojai to be filmed through KQED, the public broadcasting station in San Francisco. They’d written to ask if they could record the talks on film. Again, it was without Rajagopal’s permission, so he didn’t like that.
One day I drove Alain to the Oak Grove to look at the sound system. Rajagopal met him there and explained how it all worked. Afterward, Rajagopal wanted to talk to Alain. So they sat in my car and I went and sat in the grove. They talked for two hours. I finally got so cold that I had to go break it up. Later on, Alain told me that Rajagopal had wanted him to report to him about who Krishnaji saw, and when Krishnaji gave interviews to arrange to tape them. It would have been like bugging a confessional, because people often wanted to talk to Krishnaji about very personal things. I was appalled. So, as things got worse and worse, Alain and I came to feel that Pine Cottage was probably bugged. Whenever we talked about anything we wanted to keep private, the three of us went outside so it couldn’t be picked up.I mean it was our suspicion; we never found a bug or looked for one actually, but it was that bad. And we knew that he used to surreptitiously tape things. Then there was another meeting in the old office, where the vault now is  Krishnaji had sent Rajagoal a letter when we first got to Ojai saying that he, Krishnaji, wanted to be reinstated on the board of KWINC. He also wanted the board enlarged. He wanted me on it, and he wanted accounting of what happens to money coming in. Krishnaji had also stated that KWINC shouldn’t be run just by Rajagopal; there should be some other arrangement. So, in this meeting taking place in the old office, Krishnaji said, “You haven’t replied to my letter.”
Rajagopal replied, “No, why should I? I don’t take orders from you.”
Krishnaji then said, “You don’t understand, Rajagopal. This is a very serious matter, and if you don’t reply and we don’t come to some arrangement, I shall have to take measures.”

At this Rajagopal flew into a rage and said, “What is this? Is this a Brahmin curse? You’re cursing me. Well, I’m a Brahmin too, and I curse you more than you could ever curse me.” And then he went on and apparently said things that Krishnaji wouldn’t tell us about, but he said things against, as Krishnaji put it, “the Other.” The minute Rajagopal talked about “the Other,” Krishnaji left and went back into his own cottage.
We heard the door slam when Rajagopal left. The lights in the office, which we could see, went out, the door slammed, and then the car drove off. And then we went in to Krishnaji, and he told us what had happened. I think it was the day after that that he called Vigeveno, because Vigeveno was the Vice President of KWINC. Vigeveno came over, and Krishnaji showed him a copy of the letter that he’d given to Rajagopal, and which Rajagopal wouldn’t show to Vigeveno. Vigeveno knew there was a letter but hadn’t been allowed to see it. So Krishnaji showed it to him. He was trying to get him to act as the Vice President. “You’re responsible” Krishnaji told him. But Vigeveno, of course, did nothing.

More 'lost & found' pages from Mary Z's memoirs of K

It is May 1967, and Krishnaji was giving talks in Amsterdam. He gave about six talks, and we were living in a really lovely place, which had been found for him by Anneke Korndorffer. It was a big farm-house that smelt faintly of farm life, which was rather nice. And a big room with a fire-place, and it was comfortable and it was very congenial for all of us, Krishnaji, Alain Naudé, Anneke, and myself.  Anneke and I cooked when she was there, and I cooked when she wasn’t there, and I did all the marketing, and so it was a kind of a home life, and very nice. And there was a beautiful privately owned park, but it had been arranged that Krishnaji could walk there, and it was ideal—winding paths through partly woodland and partly open fields, laced with canals on which there were all kinds of water fowl, and Krishnaji enjoyed looking at these very much. And there was nobody there, which made it perfectly lovely to wander about as though you were in the wilds somewhere.

Krishnaji was busy giving the talks, naturally, and also there were reams of young people collected largely by Alain at the talks. There were also groups of students from Utrecht, and he talked with them. But on the whole it was a very, very happy sojourn in Holland. We stayed until the end of May. And I remember talks in the early morning with him. My job was to get the breakfast, and so I would get up early and go in the kitchen and start making breakfast. And he would be up early too, and he took to coming into the kitchen and talking, standing or sitting in his white bathrobe and chatting with me while I got the breakfast.
I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. He may have asked me questions about myself. I don’t remember, really. I just remember the enjoyment of it, how nice it was. And he also was trying to help my bad leg in those days. In the afternoons or early evening he would give me a so-called treatment which, as I think I’ve described, he put his hands on your shoulder and something strange happened in the sense that he was sort of brushing away ill health and any pain. And it all was so…it was always something one felt very strongly afterward or during.

Well, it really wasn’t what he did. I mean, from my point of view, what it felt like was not different. Although when I had the infection in India, he would draw his hands across the forehead and cheekbones where the infection was.From the center of the face outwards, and then he would shake his hands.
But later on, when he was trying to help my bad leg, which was really the circulatory problem at that point, he would generally touch the shoulders, and again…shake his hands, sort of like wiping something away
and he would always go and wash his hands afterwards as though there had been contamination from whatever the illness was. And he’d gotten rid of it, but he had to wash his hands.

Anyway, the talks came to an end. There were immense crowds at the talks. The place was full, and there was usually a television screen in the lobby, so that the overflow that couldn’t get in could still watch it. And also, so many came to the young people’s discussions. And, of course, Holland is small so they could come from other places. Utrecht wasn’t so far away, so many came from there.
Anyway, the talks ended and we were packing, as always, horrid! And every day we went, rain or shine, for the walk. That was a special part of being there.
We left in the two cars, as usual. Alain was driving his station wagon with all the luggage, and I had my car with Krishnaji. We drove across Holland and into Germany and met in Cologne for lunch and went into the cathedral and looked at all that. And then we went on, through Bonn to a place called Königswinter, and we spent the night there in a hotel called Hotel Petersburg, way up on a cliff looking over the Rhine. Just one night. The next day we drove along the Rhine to a place called Oestrich and lunched there. We went through Wiesbaden to Karlsruhe and then on to a place where I had booked rooms for the night called Ettlingen, which has a very, very good hotel, and particularly good restaurant. So we stayed the night at the Erbprinz Hotel in Ettlingen. We were tired. Krishnaji had dinner in bed that night, and Alain and I went to the dining room. The next morning we crossed into Switzerland.

Of course we saw nothing of Germany because it was the autobahn from the time we crossed the border till we got to Switzerland. In fact, at one point we needed petrol, and I was loath to get off the autobahn because I didn’t know where we were, or how to communicate with anybody. But we had to, so I drove off and, luckily, quickly found a petrol station and was able to fill up and get back on the autobahn because I didn’t have a map or anything. And with Krishnaji I didn’t want to go floundering around Germany, trying to find fuel.
Anyway, so we got to Switzerland, and we lunched, I think, in Basel or Bale, if you prefer. We were going to stop in Bern, but we didn’t. We thought we’d push on to Les Caprices in Gstaad.

Now we’re on June third, and again this year, Vanda had the Chalet Tannegg apartments, but not until July. So, I’d gotten a little studio apartment for Alain, and Krishnaji stayed in the flat that I had before, which has two bedrooms and sitting room, kitchen, bath, etcetera. So he stayed there this time, and in a very little room, I’m sorry to say, but that’s what it was, and he seemed perfectly happy there. We settled again into a very quiet domestic life, me cooking and marketing and housekeeping and walks in the afternoon. We also, of course, went right away to fetch his car in Thun, where it had been in storage all winter. And, of course, I still had, in those days, a Jaguar. The next day, in my car, we went to see Doctor Pierre Schmidt in Geneva, his homeopathic doctor. He and Alain had check-ups, and I did some shopping. Then we had lunch at what became the place we always had lunch from then on, which is the Amphitryon in the Hotel des Bergues. It was always a pleasure; very old-fashioned. Lovely white table cloths and nice flowers on all the tables, a very formal mâitre d’hôtel and waiters, two, at least, to one small table. It was fitting for Krishnaji, if you know what I mean.

It pleased my sense of the fitness of things! Because the food was very good, and they were most attentive to vegetarian requirements. And he enjoyed it without talking about it. You could see things were nicely done. And then all the usual errands that one does in Geneva: Patek Philippe, Jacquet. All of that. The ritual of that. Let’s see, I think we didn’t stay very long, and at that point the Israeli war broke out, you know, the Six Day War. Then, what happened? Desikachar came. Around June twelfth
Krishnaji would have his yoga lesson in the morning, and then he’d rest and then lunch. I’d do the marketing and the cooking, and we’d have lunch, all four of us. After lunch he’d rest again, and then walks in the afternoon. I don’t remember Desikachar walking so much; I think he did his own yoga. But, it was lovely. Gstaad was wonderful because there was nobody there in June. The crowds hadn’t started. Krishnaji didn’t feel, as he later came to feel, even that summer, he felt a sort of pressure of people’s…looking…attention. Almost a psychic pressure focused on Tannegg.

Gérard Blitz and his wife turned up in Gstaad, and they came to lunch. At some point he became a member of the Saanen Gathering Committee. And so was invited during this period. I think it was later in July when the other members, who were Doris Pratt, and Mary Cadogan, and de Vidas, I think, and a weird man called Perizonias. And David Bohm came for lunch. I guess Saral was with him, though it doesn’t say so in my notes. But he was only there a short time. I think in those days, Krishnaji thought that Blitz would be his sort of what he called un homme d’affaires. In other words, advise about finances.
He was supposedly enthusiastic about the teachings, though I don’t know that it went very deeply. He was also very interested in yoga. In fact, as I think you know, he used to bring Desikachar to Europe, repeatedly for yoga demonstrations, and seminars, and lessons, and what all.  On June twenty-ninth, Krishnaji had a fever in the night that went up as high as 101.8, which is a high fever for him. Alain got hold of Doctor Schmidt in Geneva, who prescribed some homeopathic remedy, and Alain went to Thun to get it. They didn’t have any in Gstaad.
That was the afternoon that Krishnaji became, what I then called, 'delirious'. But, he had warned us in the past, or told me, if his fever goes up high he’s apt to become unconscious. And sure enough he did. He was in bed, obviously, and I was sitting in a chair by the bed with him, and Alain had gone. He started looking around the room with sort of vacant eyes, and said to me, “Who are you?” I said my name. Then he asked, “You haven’t asked him any questions, have you?”
I said, “No.” Then he said, “He doesn’t like to be asked questions.” And after a pause or two, he said, “Even after all these years, I’m not used to him.” Through all of this he had a child voice, a little, little, little child. High voice. And again he had these large eyes that didn’t recognize me or indeed anything, and it just stayed that way. I didn’t attempt to talk to him. I think I replied to him using his name, saying, “Yes, Krishnaji” or “No, Krishnaji,” but that didn’t seem to have any effect. It was as though he had gone away, but he wanted to be sure that I hadn’t questioned him about anything. He didn’t want that. It was the 'process' and he had said that if his fever goes up high, it’s apt to happen. And it did. Eventually, Alain returned, and his fever was still high, but he was out of that, and he fell asleep finally. And when he woke up he was himself. He was sort of quietly sleeping most of the time after that.

Besides, he never called for a doctor. He wouldn’t have called for a doctor for this. He might have called for the fever, but the fever was presumably being taken care of. I think, as I recall, Alain brought back some medication, and also we had to make a kind of tea out of the stems of cherries. That was the remedy.
But he was very weak the next day. I sort of gave him bed care, which I knew how to do from working in a hospital during the war. You know, sponging him off and getting him clean and comfortable. Now this was on the thirtieth when he was so weak, but he didn’t have “the other,” and he didn’t want to cancel the Sunday meeting of the Saanen Committee, which was the second. So, in other words, two days before this meeting was to be held, he wouldn’t cancel it, although he was so weak he couldn’t get out of bed, really. Vanda arrived that afternoon, and he was to move up to Tannegg, but he obviously couldn’t that day. But he was better. She got in, in the late afternoon, and Doctor Schmidt was consulted, and he said it was alright for Krishnaji to be moved the next day to Chalet Tannegg. So, the next day, which was I think Saturday, his fever dropped to normal.

I went up to Tannegg the next morning, and Krishnaji was fine and held the Saanen Gathering Committee meeting there. When he had to do something, if he was ill, usually the fever went away, or the sickness. He would carry on. It was curious. The next day he was fine.
He made me a member of the Saanen Gatherings Committee, and I remember that the others were Alain, de Vidas, and Frasiea. Mr. Perezonias was there, and Doris Pratt and Mary Cadogan. Blitz was to be added’, it says. Afterward I lunched with Vanda and discussed everything: Krishnaji, Alain, and whatever.
She’s written about it. There’s a record in the archives about that.

There were a lot of people at the first talk. It was a beautiful day and afterward at lunch there was Balasundaram and Sacha.
The yoga lessons were in the very early morning because I remember going up at 8 a.m. for a yoga lesson and then later drove Krishnaji to the talk.
In the afternoon on the eleventh, there was a Saanen Educational Meeting at my flat. All sorts of people were there. Narayan was there, Mark Lee was there, Frances McCann, and Pupul arrived all of a sudden. I met her at the train station, and she spent the night at Tannegg. The next day Alain drove her back to Geneva, from where she went on to India. Alain met Nandini  and daughter, Devi Mangaldass, and brought them up to Tannegg by supper time. They had the rooms downstairs, which were, in those days, the whole of the downstairs. Vanda rented part of it for guests. And so Nandini and Devi were downstairs and they hadn’t been to Gstaad before.
I usually suppered at Tannegg, and a couple of nights I stayed at Tannegg. I don’t remember why exactly, except that, it didn’t feel right to leave Krishnaji alone. And later on during this summer, when he was alone up there, he began to feel that thing of people focusing on him. He often used to talk about going on holiday where nobody would know where he was. Because he felt some sort of, it was like a pressure. I can’t describe it, but I think I understand it. It was like beams of people’s attention, and he wanted to get out of the focus of it. And quite a few times that summer, of course, Vanda wasn’t there then, although she came back, it was as though it pressed on him. I don’t remember, really. It’s just my notes say, ‘stayed at Tannegg.’ Later on, you see, Vanda had me stay there whenever she wasn’t there. It was sort of the beginning of that, too. I was to look after things.
Might have been, because then he wanted to get physically out of Tannegg, and so he came by occasionally to Les Caprices.

When he talked about going on holiday, at times, it should be where nobody would know where he was so he wouldn’t feel that, and even the last summer, when we were talking about whether to go back to Saanen just for a holiday when he was only going to talk at Brockwood. He asked, “will it be alright if nobody knew I was there?" Or 'we should go somewhere else'.
It says for the twenty-fourth, ‘Krishnaji and Alain discussed going to the U.S. later in ’68 for a long holiday.’ He wanted a long holiday—get away from things.
Krishnaji discussed with Dorothy, Alain, and me, saying we’re probably going to have a school, probably in Holland’ in those days. And again, ‘there was a meeting in the tent and it was announced plans for a school in Holland’!
I took Nandini and Devi to Interlacken. Krishnaji didn’t come. And it says here, ‘Extraordinary talk in the morning on the twenty-seventh,’ and, ‘Rajagopal telephoned from Ojai.’ It was probably some disagreeableness, and again Krishnaji came for supper with me and stayed at Caprices.

Then Krishnaji, Alain, Nandini, Devi, and I went to Geneva. Again ‘Krishnaji and Alain went to Doctor Schmidt and we all lunched at the Amphitryon and drove back via Evian, stopping at the Hotel Royale for tea.’
The big thing then was to go one way and come back the other way. And there was this splendid Hotel Royale up on the hill above Evian. Again, very Edwardian atmosphere, central European, Grand Luxe hotel. All the tables were out on a terrace looking over the lake, and it was very nice. We even thought of spending some time and staying there. We went and looked at rooms, but didn’t in the end.
On the thirtieth was the final Saanen talk and the tent was usually pretty full. Quite a lot. I actually can’t remember which year we changed tents, but I don’t think it was that early because the geodesic dome one was there for quite a while. And then he began in August his public discussions. On August second, the same day as the first discussion there was a meeting at Tannegg of those interested in a school in Holland. They all talked about what they wanted to do.
The next day there was another discussion about a school, and Anneke was there. Krishnaji then took Nandini and Devi for a ride in his car.

On August fifth was the fourth public discussion.
One must say that when I first heard him speak, and that’s way back in the ’40s, he had written questions, and he’d read them and then answer the way he eventually came back to doing. But at this epoch, as you know, people would just stand up and ask a question. There would be several questions, from as many people as wanted to ask them. He would then do what to me was a fantastic thing of remembering each question. He would say something like “Let’s see if we can find an answer to all of them,” and he used to do just that, which was even more extraordinary.
One answer that would answer each question.
It was only changed later when it became continuously disrupted by that Norwegian man, and that Indian man and his waspish wife. She and the Norwegian sort of 'teamed up'. It got so disagreeable that at one point they almost broke up the meeting. But these earlier times he would take spontaneous questions from the audience, and it was quite extraordinary what he did.

There was another educational meeting on the sixth, and on the seventh there was the last public discussion.
And then, right away the next day, there began six discussions on education with teachers and as far as I can remember, every time Krishnaji spoke to any groups, it was recorded.
On the ninth  we had a big lunch at Tannegg for twelve people, and Alan and Helen Hooker cooked it. At 4 p.m. the Saanen educational meeting with Krishnaji was held at Tannegg, and it was decided that the school was going to be in Switzerland!
Again he came down that night for supper and stayed. He said, it says, ‘has difficulty sleeping at Tannegg, as if people’s attention is concentrated on him. He feels a target, but he has privacy down at Caprices.

He was still working very hard because he held the last educational meeting on the thirteenth, and it was an extraordinary meeting. My notes say, ‘it left me dazed.’ This is August thirteenth.
We went for a drive up the mountain in Rougemont. Then at 4 p.m., Krishnaji had a talk with young people at Tannegg. And again, on the fifteenth, there was another young people’s discussion at Tannegg.
On the sixteenth, we drove in his Mercedes to Lausanne. Lunched at Ouchy and came back via Vevey, Montreux, Aigle, etcetera. The three of us had dinner and talked.
The next day I lunched with them up at Tannegg, and we went for a walk and talked of having a house for all of us in Gstaad. I remember there was a piece of land that we looked at. But it was incredibly expensive! I’ve forgotten now what it was, but something like $40,000 dollars for a little tiny piece of land you would just build a house on. But we were talking about all living together all the time. Presumably, the three of us, and then Vanda whenever she wanted to be there, the four of us, would share a place, but it didn’t come to anything. But we went on for several days discussing this building in Gstaad and somehow it was nice. We also went to look at some land near the Sonnenhof, up that way.
Then Saral and David turned up, and they came for lunch, and walked, and talked, and everything.
On the twenty-second, Vanda came back from Rome. And then one day Krishnaji, Alain, and I went to Lausanne where they both went to the dentist, and I did errands. We had lunch at the Grappe D’Or.
Then one day, interesting, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lippmann came for dinner at Tannegg. And later I took them to the Menuhen concert. They had met Krishnaji, and they knew Vanda, and so she invited them.

Here’s one day when Krishnaji appeared at Caprices before lunch. His Mercedes wouldn’t start. So he kept it down at Les Caprices. Some of the time he kept it down there, and sometimes he kept it up at Tannegg. So, we drove up in the Jaguar, and met the Bohms for lunch. My diary says ‘came down after reading what K had written this morning on meditation and ecstasy. He wrote more here while waiting for his car to be fixed. Later walked with him and Alain, and talked of Fontainebleau. Fontainebleau is the new idea, you see. And we started packing. Krishnaji came down to pack all his things that are here,’ which means at Les Caprices. He left things in both places. Again ‘we went to Lausanne, dropped Sacha, and then Krishnaji and Alain went to the dentist, and then on to Geneva for Alain to get his Indian visa. To Patek for Krishnaji’s watch and back to Gstaad Then we went to Thun and left Krishnaji’s Mercedes for storage, and I ordered a Mercedes for April delivery
The Lindberghs came for lunch on September third at Tannegg. They had known Krishnaji and Vanda, and they had a house, over the mountain where Noel Coward and Joan Sutherland had a house. It was interesting to meet them.

On the fourth I drove to Lausanne, met Alain there, stopped for his tape recorder, and then I drove on to Paris via Saint-Cergue, Champagnole, Poligny, Dijon. The next day, I went out to Orly and met K arriving on a flight from Geneva. Alain drove in his car to Paris. We stayed at the Hotel Westminster in Paris, which is a rather uninteresting hotel. It says here, ‘We went to Lobb’s.
It also says, ‘We went out to look at the Lippmann house, which we didn’t like. Came back and walked in the Tuileries, lunched at Le Pre Catelan, walked in the Bois, and went to Lobb for a fitting. Then we went to a movie, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.’

The next day I left Hotel Westminster, Paris, at 6:45a.m., drove to La Touquet, 153 miles in three hours. Breakfasted and took the air ferry across the channel to Lydd. Drove to London in two and a half hours. On September ninth I got to Kingston Vale and a house rented by Mary Cadogan and Doris Pratt for Krishnaji. It was rather dreary. We had three bedrooms and one bath upstairs, and downstairs there was a sitting room, dining room, kitchen. I remember that if you wanted to wash any clothing the idea was to hang it over the stove in the kitchen, which I find squalid! So, it wasn’t great, I must say. Anyway, we got there, and ‘the Cadogans and Jane were there, and we went over the house. Later I had supper with the Cadogans in an Indian restaurant in Wimbledon.

The next day, we went to the Heathrow and met Krishnaji and came back to the house by 3:30 p.m.. Went for a long walk in Richmond Park. The next day Mary Cadogan came for lunch.
On the twelfth, Alain arrived in his Volkswagen in time for lunch. Alain must have stayed with Krishnaji in Paris, and then taken him to the Paris airport, and I met him at Heathrow.
Then, on the thirteenth ‘we went to Huntsman, and I ordered my first suit there, after which we lunched at Mary Links’s flat.
Rosalind Rajagopal was in London, and she telephoned Krishnaji and was invited to the house. She came an hour late, and talked to Krishnaji alone and disagreeably. I wasn’t present but I know she was being troublesome, saying that Krishnaji must make friends with Rajagopal. She was always on Rajagopal’s side.
Then, Krishnaji started giving his talks in Wimbledon.
One morning Krishnaji said that Alain and I should come into his room, and we’d all three 'meditate together'. I just sat there; it was sort of an experiment, but I don’t think anything came of it.
But we did it again: ‘On the twentieth, meditation with Krishnaji and Alain.’ It was just sitting quietly and watching, as it were.

We left off when Krishnaji was giving talks in Wimbledon and living in Kingston Vale.

I also spoke of the experiment of the three of us sitting cross-legged on the floor in his room in the early morning in dead silence. What it was for the two of them, I do not know! We were sitting on a rug in the middle of the floor. He had a big bedroom. We did it several times, but it didn’t become a habit by any means! But I must say Krishnaji could induce a tremendous quietness . And it was, for me at least, a kind of a wonderful space with nothing going on but quiet. It was the time when he began to say, “You are no longer responsible to yourself; you’re responsible to something other. And he was to say that to me over and over through the years to come.
Whenever I would go back to California, and not go to India, he would admonish me: “Don’t do anything unnecessary that’s risky.” And that usually was spelled out as unnecessary flying. It was alright for me to fly from wherever we were to New York and then go up to Martha’s Vineyard to see my mother because that was necessary. And then fly back to California, but what wasn’t alright would be, say I thought I’d like to run up to San Francisco for lunch with somebody tomorrow. Don’t do that. And he also used to say, “When you are with me you are protected, but when you are on your own, I can’t protect you.” Sometimes he used to say, “I’m sending two angels with you.” I won’t interpret whether he was just saying something metaphorically or not, I don’t know. But then he would add, “But don’t strain them! Don’t make them work too hard.” In other words: Don’t do foolish things that you could have avoided. Don’t drive the car too fast, and drive carefully. An example of unnecessary things was in Saanen, where I was tempted, though I never did anything about it, to go up in a glider.

It turns out he was, too; he thought that would be wonderful!
But he thought that that was something that was unnecessary, and he shouldn’t do it. And therefore, similarly for whatever came up in my life, I must be careful. He was protected, but failing to get at him, evil might try to strike down those who were around him, who were in some way useful to him, a part of what he was doing. And therefore, we were targets.
When we were in Malibu, and I’d go into Los Angeles to do errands, if I was late coming back, he’d often be standing near the gate, waiting for me. And he would say, “I could feel you were coming.”
Especially in his last few years, he had this feeling about darkness, that there was kind of…when the sun is gone, the forest, which he loved, and he felt evil went into the forest at night. He said he would never go into a forest alone at night. But there was also protection. I said, “Would you go in with me?” and he said, “Yes, but only if you were there.” And, for instance at Ojai, apparently he wouldn’t have gone out of the house at night alone, even to walk to Arya Vihara for instance, once it was dark.
I mean he had no occasion to go, but I asked, “What if?” and he said "no he wouldn’t". It’s as though something menacing, something evil, would come with darkness, and could creep into an otherwise benign and much loved place.
 Well, he said very categorically that there is such a thing as good and evil. And one is not the other face of the same coin. There is no relation between the two. But both exist. And he also felt the "contamination", as it were, of people who had evil intent or something evil in them. For instance, he told me I must never let either Rajagopal or Rosalind come into the cottage. Those two, he said, never let them come into this place. And so, at the very end, when he was so ill, I went to him and said, “You told me never to let either of them in here, but supposing the doorbell rings and I open the door and Rajagopal is on the doorstep, what do I do?” Krishnaji shrugged, as if he was saying well, I’m dying - he was beyond being affected by it.

Back to September 1967, on September twenty-fourth, Robert Lutyens, the brother of Mary, who Krishnaji hadn’t seen for probably decades, he and his wife invited Krishnaji to tea at their house on Mansfield Street ? And at this point Mary and Robert were estranged. And his wife wasn’t very sympathetic to all this. Anyway, we went for tea and it was quite an interesting time. They had a child who was there, and the child and Robert seemed to get on quite well.

Then, Krishnaji had more young people discussions, which were held in the WimbledonCommunity Center. The Bohms used to come and go for walks in Richmond Park with us. Krishnaji and Dave would walk ahead talking, or Saral and I would walk ahead talking. It was just the way he and David always were: discussing something intently.
And that same week we went to Cecil Beaton’s for photographs. That’s when those pictures were taken. I had known Cecil for years because of my career as a model. He used to come to New York in the winter, and there’d be parties and all kinds of goings-on. So when we wanted to have photographs for publications and had none, I called Cecil up out of the blue. I hadn’t talked to him in years and years, and asked if he would like to photograph someone who is very interesting. And I said, “I think you’ll like him because he’s the most extraordinarily beautiful human being.” That interested Cecil very much. So we went, and he took the pictures. I’ve seen Cecil in endless photographic sessions where he’s very cheery and talkative. He has a way of making the subject relax by his chatter. He was the same way with Krishnaji, and he was very enthusiastic because he saw the remarkable face. The three of us went—Alain, Krishnaji, and I, and Cecil actually took a photo of the three of us; it isn’t good, but he took a picture at the end of it of the three of us. Again, there were public discussion meetings at the Wimbledon Community Center. Krishnaji gave six talks in Wimbledon. There are the usual notations in my diary of walking in the park, etcetra.

Now we’re into October! We left Kingston Vale, drove to the airport and then Krishnaji and the maid Adrianna (who had come from Vanda to help us) flew to Rome. Alain and I, in his Volkswagen, drove to Lydd, flew on the air ferry to Le Touquet and drove on to Paris. On the eighteenth of October, I met Blitz and heard about his seeing Rajagopal; he apparently had a lonnnng talk with Rajagopal, which he described to me. I then telephoned Krishnaji and Alain in Rome to report it. Blitz said that Rajagopal talked from ten points of the compass, he’d be at times surly and antagonistic, and then he’d be ingratiating, and then he’d be very manipulative. Really nothing came out of it. They just talked for hours, apparently.
I woke up at midnight for a clearer connection and telephoned Rome, spoke to Alain, then to Krishnaji.’ They were leaving for India the next day. I went there the first two times. And then I didn’t go for a long time. More or less he didn’t need me in India. There were a lot of people there to do what was needed. Alain was with him, and I had to sort of catch up with my own life a little bit. So I went on and did that.

And then on November third, ‘I met Blitz at the airport and gave him papers from Krishnaji. He flew on to Paris postponing meeting Rajagopal again the next day.’
By this time, Krishnaji was on tour; in November he was in Rishi Valley. Krishnaji moved around from Delhi to Rajghat to Delhi to…so forth… On December seventeenth, Blitz returned to LA and had a seven-hour conversation with Rajagopal at the Vigeveno’s. After that he came back to Malibu for dinner, and he taped a report for Krishnaji, and I cabled Krishnaji in Rajghat.’
On the nineteenth it says, ‘Blitz telephoned me to ask if his lunch tomorrow at the Vigeveno’s could be held at my house, and so I called them up and invited them.’ And on the twentieth, ‘Blitz arrived in the morning and made a second taped report for K. The Vigevenos came at twelve for a discussion and lunch. Blitz gave them his reaction to his meeting with Rajagopal. They left, and I posted the tape to K in Madras.’ Blitz was hoping in those days that the Vigevenos would somehow be helpful. But they were active in the case against Krishnaji from then on.
So that was the end of 1967.

On the third of January I got a letter from K discussing the tapes that Gérard Blitz had made in reporting the conversations with Rajagopal. I think it was this year or ’67 really, when he went to India, that I think he wrote to me every day. Which means that he would write a little every day, like a running diary of what he was doing. He would write a paragraph, either short or long, and when he’d covered two pages, he would have it posted. So, I didn’t get a letter every day, but I would get letters that continued and that contained something from every day. And he continued this to the very end of it all, except eventually it became tapes.
On January thirtieth, Rosalind Rajagopal telephoned me, asking to see me. She came to Malibu in the afternoon, but it was a completely pointless conversation. She rambled on about how awful it all was, and then she started to talk against Alain. I said, “Look, we can discuss anything you want, but I will not discuss Alain Naudé with you. He’s a friend of mine and that’s out.” But all she really wanted to say was attacking him. At one point I remember, she said she had some proof that she wanted to show me; a letter that proved something. She went out to her car and came back with some papers and proceeded to read me a letter which she didn’t know that I’d already heard, because it was a letter she had written to Krishnaji, and he had read it to me, or I’d read it. So this proof of whatever it was she was trying to say wasn’t a letter of any proof: it was her own concoction. She didn’t know I knew that. Anyway, it was a completely pointless conversation, and she was just meddling, or trying to.

On the fourteenth of February, Krishnaji and Alain left Bombay for Rome. Anyway, the next day I went to Claremont to look at possible places for K to stay when he spoke there the following November, and somewhere in here I got a cable from Krishnaji with a message to the Vigevenos. I’ve forgotten what it was now, but something to do with all of that. At this point my notes say: ‘New guest quarters by garage finished.’ This was because the house in Malibu had only two main bedrooms and baths, and it had the room that Filomena used which was in the back. So when Krishnaji and Alain were there I slept on the couch in the living room and used Filomena’s bath. So, if they were going to be coming regularly, we needed more rooms.

On the ninth of March , I flew to London from New York. The next day I lunched with Mary Links, and then Alain telephoned from Rome, and it says here: ‘We are not going to Castellaras.’ Castellaras is in the south of France, and Blitz had a house there, and he was insistent that Krishnaji come and stay there, and there was much backwards and forwards about that, but in the end we never went. It was one of those closed settlement of rich people who have houses and nobody else can come and all that. It didn’t sound like what we’d like. On the fourteenth I dined with Mary and Joe and her daughter and son-in-law; and Mary gave me the manuscript of her book on Krishnaji to read. The first volume of the biography.

Then on the twenty-second, I went back to London and the White House Hotel and moved in, and at 5 o’clock, Mary and Joe came, and we all went to meet Krishnaji at the airport. Vanda had put Krishnaji on the plane in Rome and we met him. And in the mean-time Alain, had driven his Volkswagen. So that night, Krishnaji, Alain, and I had supper together in our sitting room. The reason White House Hotel was chosen was that it had little kitchens, so I could get meals for us.
On the March twenty-third, Blitz arrived, and Krishnaji, Blitz, Alain, and I discussed everything all day Lunching in the hotel—you could lunch there, too. And the next day ‘again an all-morning discussion between Krishnaji, Alain, Blitz, and me. And then I took them all to lunch at the Savoy Grill. ‘Came back to the hotel where Mary Cadogan brought a solicitor, a Mr. Michael Rubinstein who specializes in copyright law.

On March twenty-sixth, ‘the Bohms, Mary Cadogan, Dorothy and Montague Simmons came to discuss the school and the decision was made to go ahead and buy a place near Canterbury for the school.
As I recall, he was sending people off to find out about the different countries, what were the requirements, in Holland, England, France, Switzerland, etcetera. And I guess by now, although I don’t remember when, it was apparent that England was going to win out. We must have heard from the other people. In Holland, I seem to remember, you had to teach part of the curriculum in Dutch, which limited things considerably. And in France, de Gaulle was still alive and who knew what would happen when he either died or a 'revolution' occurred or something. Switzerland—there were too many private schools, and all too expensive, anyway. England was the obvious choice because there was freedom in England to do whatever you wanted scholastically, and by this time, Krishnaji was sure that he wanted Dorothy to be the principal. So, in the intervening months they’d obviously made some investigations. I remember that the Canterbury place…I never saw it, but I saw pictures of it, and it didn’t look as nice as Brockwood. So after talking to Dorothy and Montague, Krishnaji, Alain, and I lunched at the L’Aperitif, and then Krishnaji and I went to a cinema called Scalp Hunters . We walked back to the hotel from that and had supper in the rooms.

Then on the first of April, two days later in France , he dictated a letter to the schools. I don’t know whether that was an individual letter or the beginning of that series of letters. We drove over to Fontainebleau, but Krishnaji didn’t want to go in. He’s not a museum person. We sort of just stared at the palace. And then we walked in the snow. A snow-storm!

On the fifth we drove to Paris, and moved into the little house on the Rue de Verdun, and unpacked. This time, until when the Paris talks began, was meant to be a rest for Krishnaji. So, we went for walks in the afternoon in the Bois, and saw for lunch people we thought of as friends, like Mary and Yo de Manziarly. Yo was the younger  sister who eventually turned and supported Rajagopal. She came under the influence of her older sister Mima Porter. But in those days she lived in Paris, and she was amiable.

**People felt very strongly about Krishnaji, and if they had certain expectations of how he should be toward them, and when they didn’t get that…they weren’t recognized in some way, that may set up a terrible enmity. I think the deeper challenge is very much a part of it, I’m thinking actually of David Shainberg, where you’ve seen something and you haven’t been able to rise to it. Therefore, the firmly entrenched ego says “Well, it’s his fault, not mine. It’s the fault of the teachings. Or it’s the fault of the way he lives, or the way he combs his hair, or the way…something…anything. And that 'fault' is what’s preventing me from realizing what I could if only he were different.

The fact that people over and over say it’s his fault, or the teaching’s fault if everybody doesn’t realize it. It’s nobody’s fault but the person! And of course, in Mary’s case, it was also that she couldn’t go on living in this sort of a limbo that it was for her.I mean, she couldn’t lead a worldly life and simultaneously lead a spiritual life; that was too much for her.But she didn’t turn against him.** Also when Krishnaji decided not to stay with the Suarèses, it was because he had felt unwelcome there. They took him for granted and complained about - "there’s so much to do when you’re here, it’s such a strain.” And for a sensitive man like Krishnaji and his having to always be a guest, he would feel that particularly. And the Suarèses then turned nastily against him.
I think it’s because people didn’t 'feel vague' about Krishnamurti. They either saw something and revered him, or they rejected him in some way for their own peculiar reasons.

We went to another movie; a French movie with Jean Gabin called Le Pacha, and Blitz came for lunch. We went to Notre Dame. It was Easter Sunday, and the three of us went to Notre Dame and listened to the Easter music. It was lovely. Marcelle Bondoneau, Gisela Elmenhorst, and her sister came for lunch that day. And  there’s another cinema! This it’s Italian, something paranormal something, I can’t read my writing. We lunched at the Bouvard’s. I think I’ve mentioned General and Madame Bouvard were part of the French world that went to hear Krishnaji; they lived in Paris, they came to Saanen in the summer, and they used to entertain. He was a retired French general, and she was a woman of mystery.
And then came his first Paris talk at the Maison de la Chimie. Now this was a big improvement over the Salle Adyar of previous years.
On the seventeenth, Jane Hammond came for lunch and Mr. Moser arrived from Thun with the new Mercedes 280.  And we all went for a drive, and later we walked in the Bois.
So then, on the next day, the eighteenth, I drove Krishnaji in the new Mercedes to the second talk at the Maison de la Chimie. And the car was a great success. He enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Everyone was happy. Then what happened? We had Madame Duchet to lunch. And we went to a cinema later, oddly enough! It doesn’t say which one. And walked in the Bois, as usual. Then, it says just, ‘cinema in p.m.’ so that isn’t helping us. His third talk was on the twenty-first of April, and some pupil of Alain’s came for lunch. And then we went to see a Jeanne Moreau picture.

The Memoirs of Mary Zimbalist (continuing with some selected excerpts)

We left off with Krishnaji and Alain arriving in New York on the twenty-fourth of September. We had no sooner gotten there than we started to talk things over about the school in England, because there was said to be a house in Surrey, which was a possible school. So, it was decided that Alain would fly back to London, which he did the next day. And that he would go and look at it and report. So he flew back, and stayed with the Digbys.
On the next day, which was the twenty-fifth, we rang him and he’d already seen the house. We also received photographs of it and liked it. He liked it too, but said we should wait and discuss it when he got back. So that’s all we know about that house.
Now in the meantime, Blitz was somewhere around, and Krishnaji wanted to talk to him. Blitz, as well as Krishnaji, received in the summer, while still in Gstaad, a letter from Erna Lilliefelt, who had read or heard the news that Krishnaji had disassociated himself from KWINC and that it had been suggested on his behalf that people who wanted to help with the work should donate to the new foundation. She was startled because she knew that over the years a great deal of money had been given to Krishnaji’s work and why did he not have it? She wrote a very intelligent letter, I must say, which, when it came to Saanen, was like a breath of good sense .And Krishnaji said, “Who is this Mrs. Lilliefelt?” It now developed that he wanted Blitz, and Mrs. Lilliefelt, and Rubinstein to come to New York and discuss the situation. So I rang Alain in London to please get Rubinstein to come. And I telephoned Erna, whom I didn’t know at all in those days, and asked if she would come to talk to Krishnamurti. Both said yes. So, those were immediate things that happened.

Blitz came immediately on the twenty-sixth, and we had the meeting set up for the following week. .
Alain returned the next day and had news of the house. The pictures were very nice, but it looked too small. It looked VERY nice. It actually turned out to be the house that belonged to…ahh…movie actor whose name we both know well…English actor.
Well, this building was made for one man, a single man at that. But it was attractive. So we talked about all those things. But, anyway Krishnaji decided to buy the Newal. We telephoned Mary Cadogan to have Rubinstein negotiate. So, well, then we lunched and went to another movie not mentioned here, so I’ll skip that day.
Now we come to the twenty-ninth, and Alain went up to Yale to see about Krishnaji’s talking at Yale, and I went with Krishnaji to Mrs. Pinter . Apparently Rajagopal used to come over to see them, and Pinter would put down, as Krishnaji put it, a bottle of Johnny Walker on the table and a glass. And by the time Rajagopal left, half of it was down his gullet. This loosened his tongue and he was telling Pinter what he was doing here and there, and Pinter saw what was going to happen.And he warned Krishnaji. He said, “Look into it, or you’ll be out of everything. He’ll have the money and the power and the whole, whole thing.” But, of course, Krishnaji didn’t know how to go about that.

And now Mrs. Lilliefelt makes her first appearance on the scene. She came to New York and came to tea, and we talked. It says here ‘Krishnaji fell ill in the night, but he nevertheless went to his first talk at The New School at 4 o’clock.’ Mrs. Lilliefelt came to lunch the next day, October second, and so did Mitchell Booth. Mitchell Booth was my father’s lawyer in New York; and sort of our family lawyer. He still takes care of Bud’s affairs, my brother’s. Erna brought with her her research that she had done on the transfers of property—land, houses, real estate that Rajagopal had done where he played what we called the Shell Game. He would transfer something that belonged to the Brothers Association and transfer it to the Star Bulletin and then some other local Star thing, and then he’d move it again. He moved these things around creating little foundations as he went. And, lo and behold, everything went into the ones controlled by him and nothing was left in the ones where Krishnaji had the power that Mrs. Besant had insisted he have, which was meant to be total power.

So everything had just been removed to empty shells. So Erna Lilliefelt had, by tracing land ownership, because land ownership has to be recorded; she traced enough land to show how he would sell a property to KWINC at a high price. Then he would have KWINC pay to improve it vastly. And then he would buy it back from KWINC at a low price. So KWINC’s money was spent, and he wound up with just about everything, including the house, which had been built by James Vigeveno for his daughter. When Vigeveno’s daughter divorced her first husband and moved out, Vigeveno owned the house because he’d built it. That was then sold to Rajagopal by Vigeveno, but with money that Rajagopal had gotten through these manipulations. So Erna had this really curious picture of the transfer of assets, and that’s what she brought with her and showed to Mitchell Booth.
So the next day, the third of October, there was a meeting with Krishnaji, Alain, Mrs. Lilliefelt, Blitz, and me, and we went through all these papers again. Michael Rubinstein arrived from London at 2:30 p.m. And at 3:30 p.m., Krishnaji and I went to The New School for the second talk, but Rubinstein, Blitz, and Lilliefelt continued to go through all these papers. When we returned, Blitz had gone to Los Angeles, and we talked some more with Rubinstein, who stayed for supper.

The next day, October fourth, Erna Lilliefelt, Michael Rubinstein, Mitchell Booth, and I all met, and we went over all this again until the afternoon, when Rubinstein flew back to London. Yes, yes. And then, as will develop in all this, Mitchell Booth then suggested that we get a Los Angeles lawyer, and he suggested Saul Rosenthal a youngish man, very bright, very nice, but he was in a very prestigious law firm in Los Angeles.
Eventually, and this is down the road, but when it was seen that it would be tried, if it came to trial in Ventura county, Rosenthal said “Look, when you get out of Los Angeles, the judges, the courts, the whole thing, tend to favor local people over the big Los Angeles law firms.” So he advised that we get the man we got, Stanley Cohen, who was in Ventura.
So after the beginnings of it were all handled, things were eventually all transferred to Michael Stanley Cohen, who was the lawyer throughout the entire case for Krishnaji and the Foundation.

Then on the eleventh, Erna called from Los Angeles to say that she’d gone to see Saul Rosenthal, our new lawyer.
On the twelfth, it was Alain’s birthday, and at 10:00 a.m. Krishnaji gave his sixth and final talk at The New School. Then Krishnaji lunched with Narasimhan and U Thant at the UN. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Narasimhan before. He was at the UN, the second to U Thant, who was the head of the UN then. So, he was Chef de Cabinet, and a cousin of Jayalakshmi’s in Madras. He had known Krishnaji for a long time.
Alain and I went to La Côte Basque, which was another wonderful restaurant.

The next day, the nineteenth, Hughes van der Straten arrived from Brussels, and came for lunch. I don’t know where we had lunch. Krishnaji gave interviews in the afternoon. Then with Alain we went for a walk, and then Hughes joined us for supper.
On the twentieth, we talked all morning with Hughes about houses in England, and there’s a new one in view, and its name is Brockwood Park. ‘In Hampshire,’ it says. ‘All four lunched. Hughes left in the afternoon, and Krishnaji, Alain, and I went for a walk’, after which there were more interviews. One was with Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy.
‘There was a morning discussion on the twenty-first at Brandeis between Krishnaji and students. And in the afternoon he gave another talk at 4:30 p.m.’
On the twenty-second, ‘in the morning we watched on TV the return to earth of the astronauts from four-day orbit. At 10:30 a.m. Krishnaji held a discussion with students at Brandeis, and we walked.

The twenty-fifth: ‘We left New York at noon and flew to Los Angeles. Amanda met us with the Jaguar; also the Blackburns came from Ojai. We went to the house in Malibu.’ It says here ‘the house and garden looked lovely. Filomena had everything shining and ready. K was all the things that are enshrined in Filomena’s estimation. He was a great gentleman. He was also courteous and friendly, and she immediately took to him. And he recognized all her lovely qualities. Eventually, somewhere in here, she had awful arthritis pains, and he asked me if I thought he could put his hands on her to try and help her. So, I spoke to her, and she, of course, said yes. So he had me be present, I don’t know why. He did what he always did: stood behind, putting his hands on her shoulder. When he finished, as always he did, he left the room to go wash his hands, but he said to her: “Just sit quietly.” So she sat there, as though in a trance and finally got up. Afterward, that’s when she said to me, “A les mani di un santo.” He has the hands of a saint.
Well, we started right away having beach walks, which was pleasant. But, Krishnaji’s walks were not a stroll.
They were vigorous. I suppose about an hour, all told, by the time we got back.
The next day, the twenty-seventh, Mr. and Mrs. Lilliefelt came. We met a senior lawyer, Mr. Berkowitz, and Rosenthal at 4:30 p.m.

Then on our return home, we got a letter from Mary Links about Brockwood. Well, she thought Brockwood was the place. And, as she explained, there was a part of it called the West Wing, which could be a sort of separate residence for Krishnaji. And she’d already picked out who got which room. She liked it right away, and I must say, that had a big influence on us.
We got a cable and a telephone call from Mary Cadogan on the twenty-ninth saying that Blitz had resigned from the Krishnamurti Foundation at the trustee meeting yesterday. We also learned that Brockwood can be ours. And Krishnaji sent a telegram to Rajagopal suggesting that they meet to discuss KWINC.
I remember that Blitz’s resigning was in disagreement over something. I do remember that there was a disagreement financially between Blitz and everybody else, that he was uneasy about starting the school until we had lots of money collected, and of course we didn’t. But we did have enough to buy Brockwood, and we did.

To continue, ‘Krishnaji sent a telegram to Rajagopal, saying he would like to meet with him to discuss KWINC and he would like the meeting to be held at the Lilliefelt’s.’ Whereupon ‘Rajagopal telephoned and spoke to Krishnaji, and he refused. Then he called back and Krishnaji had me talk to him, and Rajagopal hung up on me. Then Rajagopal called Erna at home and was insulting,’ according to Erna. So the gist of it, was “Who are you to interfere? You people are outsiders. This is between Krishnamurti and me.” That’s the line he always took.

The next day, the thirtieth, ‘Krishnaji decided to have the Lilliefelts head the USA branch of the Foundation, and to commence forming it. The Lilliefelts and Blackburns came down at 3:00 p.m. We talked of plans, and had tea. Later, Rajagopal gave me a message for Krishnaji, who didn’t want to talk to him: There will be no meeting unless they talk alone first.’ That was his pitch the whole time. He wanted to get Krishnaji alone and browbeat him. And Krishnaji wasn’t planning to do that.
Krishnaji spoke to Vigeveno, and gave him a vivid talking to on the gravity of the meeting with Rajagopal and the board. Krishnaji said, “It’s very grave and you must realize it and there must be a meeting at which not just Rajagopal, but the whole KWINC board must be there.” And he was very firm.’
‘The next day we talked with Erna on the telephone about getting the KWINC board here for Krishnaji to see. And he invited Mima Porter, the Vigevenos, Castlebury…they refused. So no meeting was held. Krishnaji had made every possible gesture,’ which was what he was aiming to do. He didn’t think they’d come. They wouldn’t dare come.

Then it says here, ‘Rosalind called to ask to come here tomorrow.’ So she came the next day, which was November second. She came at 10 a.m. and stayed till 1:30 p.m. in a three-way conversation with Krishnaji and me.’ And I have in my notes: ‘ugly people.’ I received her at the door, politely as hostess and took her into the living room, at which point she announced, “You sit here, and Krishnaji sits there, and I’ll sit there.” This was in my house, so this was a bit much So, we sat down, and I don’t know, she talked in circles, sort of. She was berating Krishnaji: “How can you have this quarrel with Raja?” and “It’s all awful, and you don’t know what your getting into.” You know, it was just picking at him, picking at him. She was attacking Alain, too. And she said to me, “Oh, well, you, you’re infatuated with him.” And Krishnaji and I looked at each other and burst out laughing

I mean, they fought over their own complications…she didn’t want him to divorce her, or her to divorce him when he wanted to marry Annalisa, but that wasn’t to preserve a beautiful marriage; it just suited her the way it was. They had fought over that, back in early ’60s. But, no, they were manipulating Krishnaji. They wanted him to be subservient to, in this case, Rajagopal, whatever Rajagopal decided. And she was prepared to testify for Rajagopal in the case. She went to our lawyer, which is absolutely beyond the pale; you can’t do that, and they said that she couldn’t do that; they had to show her out. She wanted to say that there were things they didn’t know about. The hold they thought they had over Krishnaji were those stories about an affair. She never said it, but she hinted at it, and that Rajagopal had letters that would be compromising. Our lawyer said: “I’m sorry, it’s immaterial, you have nothing, and we can’t talk to you” and they put her out.
We instructed our lawyers to write to Rajagopal,’ but I don’t remember the details of what that was. It may be in Erna’s account. But in other words, we instructed the lawyers to enter the picture as our lawyers, and it was the first time, as far as I know, this been mentioned straight to Rajagopal.

Then the same day, on the sixth, ‘we drove in two cars to Claremont. And we met at something called the Blaizedell Institute,’ which is the entity that invited K to come to talk, ‘and a Mr. Rempel, the head of it, showed us to the house that was provided,’ and it was a very nice house. And I remember the first evening, a family of raccoons came to the porch, obviously expecting to be fed. They were charming, and that was enjoyed by Krishnaji and me.
The next day, ‘Krishnaji took a canyon walk in the late afternoon. And I put food in the house. Rosenthal rang’…about legal matters.
‘We were shown around the campus the next day, and at 7 p.m. Krishnaji gave his first talk to the students and faculty and public in something called “Bridges Auditorium.”’
On the next day, the ninth, ‘Krishnaji discussed the threat from Ojai with Alain and me and what to do. There was a student from Fordham, Jim Eagan, who came to lunch with us. We walked.’
On the tenth, the Blackburns came to lunch, Krishnaji gave the second talk after which the Lilliefelts came to the house. They left after supper.

On the thirteenth, ‘Krishnaji gave a talk and discussion at the School of Theology. After lunch, Krishnaji, Alain, and I walked two miles up the canyon while Krishnaji gave us a history of Zen! And back down in the dark,’ it says. ‘Four miles in all.’

On the fourteenth, ‘Huston Smith came for lunch to discuss a televised discussion they are to have tomorrow. I was very unimpressed with Huston Smith, why…I don’t remember. Krishnaji didn’t comment.
There was the just-mentioned recording for television discussion in the morning, and at 4:30 p.m. another discussion with students. Then it says, ‘Krishnaji decided to cancel a Tuesday meeting, and go back to Malibu on Monday.’
The next day, Krishnaji ‘decided to cancel the Monday afternoon meeting at the college and leave for Malibu after lunch. But he had an informal discussion with students.’

On the seventeenth, ‘after lunch, the Blackburns came by and wanted,’ they were always wanting, to get into the work, so-called. So, the only thing that Krishnaji could come up with was, “Well, if you want to travel at your own expense with us”—meaning the 3 of us—“maybe Gaby could type and Al could help record, that was alright,” but it had to be at their own expense, because we couldn’t afford it.
On the eighteenth, Krishnaji recorded a television interview for NBC. ‘We left in the afternoon, and were home in Malibu by 4:20 p.m.’
.
On the twenty-second, ‘at 11 a.m. on the twenty-second, there was a meeting with Krishnaji, Alain, the Lilliefelts, me, and lawyers Berkowitz, Selvin, and Rosenthal. They will now write to Rajagopal to meet with him and his lawyers.’ It’s getting into serious legal things now.

Now, there had been talk that Alain should go away for a holiday, and it had been back and forth between Krishnaji and Alain and me, too. But, at this point, Alain said that he would prefer, instead of going away for a holiday, he would like to do things he enjoys, such as writing, etcetera, here in California. So, that was decided. It didn’t happen that way, but temporarily it was decided.
The next day we went to the Zeffirelli movie of Romeo and Juliet.

Well, it’s a succession of beautiful days and beach walks for quite a while. We always walked in the afternoon, at sunset, which was lovely. Krishnaji would have, as usual, breakfast in bed. And then we would often sit, he in bed, and Alain and me sitting on the couch or on a chair or something, for quite awhile. And then eventually, Krishnaji would get up and bathe, and be dressed for lunch, and meanwhile, I usually cooked the lunch. Filomena would assist but I did the main cooking. And then, he’d rest after lunch. And later, in the afternoon, go for a walk. Or, if we were going to do errands, we’d have gone probably in the afternoon.

Here’s a nice day. December second, ‘Windy day, after lunch, went to town for errands, saw Amanda, had tea with a friend. Radha rang Krishnaji, and Sidney Field came to see Krishnaji.’ Radha gets into the picture to chivvy Krishnaji on behalf of her father. And Sidney Field was a long-standing friend of Krishnaji’s, and Krishnaji would get Sidney Field to help him wash the car! That was a big event, or go for a walk on the beach with him sometimes.

Erna made a draft of questions about KWINC for our lawyers to ask.’ She was the one who knew where all those 'bodies' were buried in the county records. She’d done all that research. In fact, Erna did all the research, really, for the case; she was really Then, we went to see Judge Robert Kenny.’ Now, that was a very important day because we had all this data that Erna had dug up, and didn’t know what to do about Rajagopal? Judge Kenny was a very good man. He’d been the attorney general of California, and he was now a superior court judge, or something like that, and just a very nice, very liberal man. He used to fight for all kinds of good, liberal things in California, and he was a friend of Sidney Field. So, Sidney suggested that Krishnaji go and talk to Judge Kenny, and we went on this particular day, the ninth of December 1968, and told him what we knew. He said that there was no question that all this was very suspicious, and that we must take the evidence to the present attorney general immediately and present it to him and he would then advise us. But it was clear that something is there to be investigated. So, that is just what we did.

On the eleventh, ‘Christopher Isherwood and his friend Don Bachardy came to lunch.’ Isherwood’s best-known book is the Berlin Stories, which were about Berlin in the early Nazi days, and it was also made into a movie. He had been living for some time in Santa Monica, and Don Bachardy was the man he lived with, and was a painter/artist. Isherwood became a Ramakrishna disciple, and he wrote the life of Ramakrishna, a very good likeness. It’s well-written. So he was very involved in Ramakrishna things. He was also a friend of Huxley, and all that English literary world.
‘In the late afternoon, Rajagopal telephoned. Krishnaji picked up the phone, and then put me on. ‘Rajagopal again said he wanted to meet Krishnaji alone,’ etcetera, you know, the same old thing. I think that was the time that he said, ‘Wasn’t that Krishnaji who answered the phone?’
I said, “Yes.”
He then said, “ I want to speak to him.”
I replied, “He doesn’t want to speak to you. You’ll have to tell me whatever it is.”

Oh, on the morning of seventeenth of December, ‘a cable came that Brockwood papers were signed today, and is Foundation’s as of today.’
On the nineteenth, ‘we all three drove to Ojai and to the Lilliefelts for lunch. There was a tea afterwards for Krishnaji to see Ojai friends.’ Lots of people came for that. It says here, ‘I was having trouble with my leg.’
On the twenty-first ‘Krishnaji talked to Alain and me about Alain’s feelings of tension between Alain and me, and apparently my remoteness was at fault.’

On December twenty-fourth, ‘in the evening, we had supper and watched the live television of the moon from the Apollo flight. After the tenth orbit, they headed back to earth.’
‘We watched a Horowitz concert on television.’ This is Christmas Day. ‘Quiet day at home.’ We don’t do anything about Christmas. ‘Miranda, Philippa, Jessica, and Miranda’s beau all came to tea, after which Krishnaji walked on the beach with Steve, the beau, and Jessica, while Miranda and I talked in the car.’
‘Supper as usual by the TV and watched the Horowitz concert. I spoke to all of my family in New York,’ and that was this Christmas. We didn’t celebrate Christmas.

There was another group discussion on the twenty-eighth at 4 p.m. and another at 11 a.m. the next day.
On the thirtieth, ‘Freedom from the Known, Krishnaji’s new book edited by Mary L. arrived, published by Gollancz. This is the first Krishnamurti Foundation copyright book.

1969, January first. Krishnamurti was staying that winter in Malibu. My diary reads, ‘What a lovely way to start the year. A warm beautiful day, clear, still—like summer. Krishnaji, Alain, and I were out on the lawn before breakfast. Krishnaji dictated in the morning.

January second. ‘Alan Watts and the Basses, and wife.’ The Basses were a couple who lived down in San Diego, who were friends of Alan Watts. All four came to lunch this day. ‘Alain Naudé left afterwards to drive north, and set up Krishnaji’s talks in Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz. Krishnaji and I went for a beach walk.

The third says, ‘to town for errands. Back before lunch. Krishnaji made the first direct tape by himself. After lunch, we went to Sears and bought Krishnaji blue jeans, then to Saks for loafers.

January fourth. After lunch Krishnaji held a discussion with a group at 4 p.m., and the next day ‘the eighth group discussion at 11 a.m. Then lunched alone, rested, and went for a walk on the beach.

On January sixth, ‘Desk work. After lunch Krishnaji came with me to town while I went to Tassell.’ Tassell was a designer of clothes. I had quite a lot of clothes from them. We then looked at a Leicaflex.’ That’s a camera.

On January seventh, ‘After lunch with Erna and Theo Lilliefelt, they followed Krishnaji and me to a session with Saul Rosenthal about the list of questions for Rajagopal and KWINC. Also set up the "Krishnamurti Foundation of America".

On the ninth, An X-ray of my left leg showed my blood vessels were causing intermittent 'claudication ', the pain spasms I was having all the time.

On the tenth of January, Krishnaji and I drove via Moorpark through Santa Paula to Ojai. We lunched with the Lilliefelts. Krishnaji gave two interviews, and we drove home along the ocean.

On January eighteenth, we all three went at 4 o’clock to meet Mary and Joe Links, who arrived on a 'polar' flight from London. They have rooms at the Casa Malibu, but came here for a late tea and early supper.’
Mary and Joe came to get away from the London winter, and it rained every day they were there. And the day they left, I remember, as their car disappeared to the airport, the sun came out!
For the nineteenth, it says ‘Pouring rain! The Linkses came to breakfast. The Lilliefelts and Ruth Tettemer followed. Talked about the Bulletin, donation appeals, etcetera, until the group discussion began. Mary and I went over Brockwood matters.
January twenty-first. ‘The storm total is seven inches. It cleared in the morning. Early lunch, and three of us went to a movie, Bullet, in Hollywood.’ That was a good movie.
On January twenty-third, ‘I bought a Leicaflex camera with a 90-mm lens…’ It was really for taking pictures of Krishnaji, because the new books and the Bulletin that were planned needed photos and was back by tea. Mary and Joe came for dinner.

The twenty-fifth of January: ‘Mary and Joe came to breakfast, lunch, and supper. There was a group discussion in spite of being, for a while, cut off by the rain and mudslides. Ojai was blocked, but one boy, Lloyd Williams, from Ojai walked seven miles to a bus to come!’ The roads are blocked to the north. The Linkses and Alain decided to fly to San Francisco instead of motoring.
January twenty-sixth. The rain stopped at last. After lunch, Krishnaji and I drove the Linkses and Alain to the airport where they flew to San Francisco. Krishnaji drove the Jaguar back and practiced parking in Santa Monica.’ (That’s when he wanted to get a license). ‘We walked on the beach strewn with driftwood. A quiet supper in a quiet house.’

On the twenty-eighth of January, Krishnaji drove as we went to the dentist for a filling that he lost. Eve Siegal and children came to tea. Krishnaji took his driving license test. Excellent on the written, but nervous on the driving part. They gave him only a temporary permit. We had a picnic in the car.’ Then it says, ‘packed.’

January thirtieth, ‘Krishnaji and I left at 11:45 a.m. in the Jaguar and drove north. Stopped beyond Santa Barbara in Dos Pueblos for a picnic lunch. Drove on. The country was green and beautiful. Big Sur Road was closed, so we took the inland 101 freeway through Salinas and into Carmel Valley. Spent the night at the Highlands Inn.’
Thirty-first of January. ‘We drove down the Big Sur Road a little to Point Lobos. Walked and I used the new Leicaflex. We shopped in Carmel, and lunched at the Pine Inn, then drove on to San Francisco, arriving at the Huntington Hotel at 5:30 p.m. Alain was there. We unpacked, and had a long three-way talk, and supper.’ We had quite nice rooms in the Huntington; there was a kitchen, a sitting room, and two big b

February second. Joan Baez came to see Krishnaji. Alain and I dined downstairs in the restaurant, L’Etoile, and reviewed our Friday conversation.’ Alain was upset about ( not being given) the life memberships for setting up the foundation and his not being one of them. On the third, at 8 p.m. I drove Krishnaji to the first Berkeley talk. There were about 2,500 in the audience. We had supper afterward.’
The next day there was the second Berkeley talk. ‘Tremendous, tremendous one,’ Also, ‘Krishnaji has a slight cold.’

Fifth of February. ‘Rain. Sonoma student, Terry Agnew, came to lunch, then to the third Berkeley talk.’ The next day, ‘the final Berkeley talk. It was a great one.’

February seventh. ‘Michael Korman came to lunch. Krishnaji, Alain, and I went to Alan Watts’ in Sausalito; he had people to meet Krishnaji. Messy discussion!’ Alan Watts lived on a houseboat in Sausalito, and he had wanted Krishnaji to come and meet all the distinguished, intellectual people in San Francisco. But when we got there, both he and his wife were drunk! And the people asked stupid questions. It was a fruitless event! It was just a mess. We left.

February eighth. ‘With Krishnaji to a meeting arranged by KPFA at 7 p.m. in Berkeley. Came back to supper. Rajagopal has formed another foundation called K & R. Ninth of February. ‘We lunched, and then Professor Nader and family came to tea. Father and Olive came at 7 p.m. Then, I took them down to dine in the L’Etoile.’ That was the very good restaurant downstairs, down just next to the Huntington.
The next day, we ‘packed, left the Huntington, and drove to Sonoma State College, where Krishnaji spoke. We lunched with students, Terry Agnew and Helen Hauserthen, then drove south to Palo Alto, where we had rooms at the Stanford Faculty Club.’
February eleventh, ‘lunch with Buckminster Fuller,
Michael Kerina, and John Digues.’ John Digues is the one that brought Buckminster Fuller. ‘A discussion was taped for KPFA. At 4:30 p.m., went with Krishnaji to his first Stanford talk, but I had to return to San Francisco to an appointment with a vascular doctor.’ My leg was troubling me, and my Los Angeles doctor said I must see this vascular person. ‘He thinks the femoral artery is blocked.’

On the twelfth, Krishnaji decided to cancel the Australian tour, then he went to the second Stanford talk. The next day, ‘Krishnaji is tired, but he gave his third Stanford talk. Alain out for supper. He is to go ahead of us to Europe.’

On the sixteenth, ‘we packed, had lunch, and drove to UC Santa Cruz. Krishnaji and I were lodged in a nice flat. Alain was nearby. Krishnaji gave a talk at 8 p.m. to students in Cowell College. The next day, he gave his second talk.’
On the eighteenth, ‘Krishnaji had the day off. We went for a drive inland through the Redwoods. He walked while I followed him in the car.’ I couldn’t walk much at that point. I used to drive along slowly.

On the nineteenth and twentieth, Krishnaji gave his last two talks at Santa Cruz.
On the twenty-first, ‘We were early. Breakfast at 7 a.m. Alain loaded the car and Krishnaji and I left Cowell College and Santa Cruz at 8:45 a.m. Drove via Carmel, Big Sur, stopped briefly at Nepenthe’—that restaurant right on the water. ‘The coast road only just opened after the storm and mudslides. Had a picnic lunch near Cambria. Krishnaji drove the rest of the hundred miles to Santa Barbara, and then I drove the remaining way to Malibu, arriving at 4:20 p.m. Good to be home. House and garden beautiful.

February twenty-second. ‘Beautiful morning after the rain. After lunch, Erna and Theo Lilliefelt, and Ruth Tettemer came; we discussed affairs and formally signed, before a notary, the trust’s founding documents of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. Trustees are Krishnaji, Erna Lilliefelt, Ruth Tettemer, Alain, and me. Had our first trustee meeting.’

February twenty-fourth. ‘Took Alain to the airport. He flew to Paris, and will go to Gstaad and find housing for students next summer. Went to the French consulate for Krishnaji’s visa

the twenty-seventh Krishnaji and I met the Lilliefelts and Ruth Tettemer at Rosenthal’s office. We all went to the attorney general’s office downtown for a meeting between Krishnaji and Laurence Tapper, the attorney general. He will investigate KWINC. Krishnaji and I had lunch in the car. And then I went to fetch the visa and my Tassell coat, while Krishnaji had a haircut.’
The next day, ‘we packed, and I took four bags to Pan American cargo for shipment to London.’

‘We took a new Pan American flight nonstop to London. I went first class with Krishnaji.
On the fifth of March, ‘Krishnaji and I arrived in London, and spent one half hour waiting in transit before flying on to Paris. Telephoned Mary Links, the Digbys, and Mary Cadogan. Alain surprised us by being at the Paris airport with his car. He had got rooms in the new school in Schonried for students. We all lunched and talked. Krishnaji and I walked over to see my Mercedes in the garage, brought by Mr. Moser from Switzerland. We took naps, then phoned Madame Duperrex.’ She was the very nice concierge of the rooms in Caprices at Gstaad. ‘We rented rooms in Trois Ours.’ Instead of staying down in the village at Caprices, I had wanted to stay there.

March sixth, ‘We left Pont Royale and Paris in both cars at 8:40 a.m. Krishnaji and I drove to Le Touquet, 160 miles in three hours. Alain met us there and flew both of the cars to Lydd. We lunched there, and then at 2:30 p.m., left and drove across southern England, 120 miles. We met Alain at the West Meon Hut, and then this is the first time we’d been to Brockwood!

Anyway, ‘just as sun was setting, the Simmonses, Donald Hoppen, Doris Pratt, Alan Hooker, and four boy students were there. The house and grounds are beautiful. Saw it, had supper, and went to bed.’ I remember that I was so tired because I had misjudged how long the journey would take. I knew how long it took to get to Le Touquet from Paris, then cross over in the plane; that was easy. But then, on the map, it didn’t look very far to cross the south of England.
I’d been driving since eight in the morning or something, and by the time I finally drove up the lane to Brockwood, and had the first glimpse of Brockwood, I was in tears from exhaustion.
Krishnaji’s room had everything it needed, and my room had that big dressing table, which was left by the former owners. So we had the necessities. We had beds, linens, and towels.

So, on the seventh, wé unpacked. Mary Cadogan arrived for lunch and talked with Krishnaji, Alain, and me. Went for the first walk with Krishnaji in Brockwood Park. Lovely, seven redwood trees, the "cedar of Lebanon" trees, the fields and orchard, and an enormous rose garden and vegetable garden.’
The next morning, ‘Alain and I left early and drove to London and the airport to fetch the four bags I’d sent a few days ago by Pan American cargo. Frost on the fields. Lovely landscape. Returned in time for lunch. A discussion with Dorothy Simmons about which rooms will be Krishnaji’s section of the house; also of plans for the school.
On March ninth, ‘The Linkses came to call in the morning. The Digbys and the Cadogans came to lunch. Trustees meeting all afternoon. George Digby reassured on KF of America being able to contribute funds. Well, in those days, the KFA had nothing much to do except run an office, so Erna was glad to send funds to England. It turned out pretty soon that it was illegal to give charitable funds from the USA to a foreign entity ‘I went for a short walk with Krishnaji and Alain. Krishnaji decided we must use only two floors of the West Wing.’ ‘Discussed alterations, etcetera, with Donald Hoppen. The weather was still clear and beautiful.’
The next day. ‘Cloudy with rain later. Walked in the rain with Krishnaji.’

March eleven, ‘Krishnaji decides not to spend the night in a hotel in London before and after tomorrow’s talk. Relief to all three of us to stay in Brockwood. Spent a quiet day doing household things.’

On the sixteenth, ‘Krishnaji and I drove to Wimbledon at 9 a.m. for the 11 o’clock talk. Went via the Hog’s Back.’ The ride in was one-and-a-half hours. Sat in Richmond Park for a while. Then, to the hall. We drove back afterward, immediately afterward, and had our picnic lunch in the kitchen. Rested, and then walked. Very cold, about twenty-nine degrees.’
On the seventeenth, ‘Paul Anstee came to discuss furnishings for Brockwood. He, Alain, and I lunched at the West Meon Hut. Then continued work on same, all afternoon.’
On March eighteenth, Krishnaji and I went to see the BBC for a color television interview of Krishnaji. I did errands at Harrods, etcetera, and met them at Waterloo Station for return train at 6:30 p.m.’

On March twenty-first. ‘Went to London with Alain and Narendra in Krishnaji’s car.’ That was an Indian boy student that made such difficulty for Alain.
On the twenty-third, ‘Motored with Krishnaji to Wimbledon for the fourth and last talk of the series, a very moving one. We came back and lunched alone. Then a lot of people came. Krishnaji had a school discussion which included the Simmons, Alan Hooker, Alain Naudé, and me.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji and I in the Mercedes, and Alain in the VW left Brockwood at 10:30 a.m. Outside Rye, in a place called Playden, a man ran into the Mercedes, crushing the right rear fender. The police said it was the man’s fault. They bent the metal away from the wheel, so I continued to Dover. Krishnaji rode with Alain for less weight. We all got on the 4:30 p.m. ferry to Calais. We had driven the 144 miles in England and then on as far as Montreuil, where we spent the night in a charming hotel, Château de Montreuil.’ That was a nice hotel.
On the third of April. ‘We left Montreuil at 9:45 a.m. and drove via Arras to the autoroute to Paris. Krishnaji and I arrived at 12:30 p.m. at 16 Rue de Verdun, and Alain slightly later.’ That’s the house I rented. There was a maid, Marguerite, and a cook, André, and they had lunch ready. We unpacked and rested. After supper, Alain and I went to the Salle Pleyel and heard Sviatoslav Richter play Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, numbers 13 to 34. Infinitely beautiful playing!’

On the fifth, ‘Krishnaji dictated more of the Holiday Book. De Vidas came by. In the afternoon, Krishnaji, Alain, and I went to a movie, Mackenna’s Gold.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji worked on the book and after supper I played a tape that Alain made of his notes of conversations with Krishnaji.’

April twelfth, ‘Krishnaji and Alain worked on the book. At 4 p.m., Krishnaji held a discussion with young people at the Hotel Pont Royale.’ That was followed the next day with the second talk at the Salle de la Chimie.
On the thirteenth, ‘Suzanne and Hughes van der Straten came for coffee and stayed till 5 p.m. Invited us to stay with them on the way to Holland. Spoke to Anneke about a house at Hilversum.’
The next day, ‘I had my hair done at Elizabeth Arden, and a Chinese boy and woman came to lunch.

On April fifteenth, ‘Mary and Joe Links arrive in Paris. I shopped. Met Krishnaji in town and brought him back for lunch. Alain was lunching with the Linkses. Mary Cadogan came in the morning. Alain got word he has been granted British citizenship.’

On the eighteenth, ‘Fetched the Mercedes. All fixed.’ That was after the Rye episode. Marcelle Bondoneau and Doris Pratt to lunch. There was a tea at 4 p.m. for the French group, which consisted of the Suarèses, de Vidas, Ma de Manziarly, Madame Samuel, Madame Safra, Madame Ettori, Madame Banzet, Mademoiselle Borel, someone Suydoux and Frances McCann.’
Another young people’s discussion on the nineteenth at 4 p.m, followed the following day by Krishnaji’s fourth talk.
On the twenty-second, ‘Krishnaji saw de Vidas about his telling lies to Mary Cadogan.’
On the twenty-third, ‘Krishnaji saw Doris Pratt, and then Alain with her. Loads of criticism. ‘I went with Krishnaji and Alain to UNESCO, where they taped an interview with Krishnaji. Talked to Alain, who is upset at the Pratt / De Vidas criticisms.’

On the twenty-sixth we left Paris at 11 a.m. and drove to Arras, lunching at Le Cheuzy.’ It was on the way, and a very nice restaurant. ‘Left there about 3 p.m. and drove around Lille to Tournai, crossing into Belgium. Onto Brussels, where Krishnaji, Alain, and I spent the night with Suzanne and Hughes van der Straten. Their children Gauthier, Favienne, Marie-Laure, Evrard, Marjolaine and Ariane were there. A nice, immense, comfortable house, and very nice family.’ The next day, we ‘spent a pleasant, relaxed morning with the van der Stratens and left after lunch. A three-hour drive to Hilversum in Holland, and to the house at S’Gravelandsweg where Anneke was waiting. A house rented for Krishnaji and furnished with loans from well-wishers.

I spent the next morning ‘getting settled. After lunch, Krishnaji, Alain, and I drove to Keukenhof, The tulips were just beginning. I ordered perennial bulbs for September delivery to Brockwood. On return to the house, we heard of de Gaulle’s resignation.’

May third. ‘I drove Krishnaji via S’Gravelandsweg to first Amsterdam talk at the Congress Centrum, in the RAI. It was a very strong talk. Krishnaji was slightly faint in car on the return. After lunch, he came with me to Bussum on errands. Then I typed for Alain. We all three went for a walk. It was a warm spring day.’
On the fourth of May, ‘With Krishnaji to the second talk in Amsterdam. There was an afternoon tea for all the people who have helped in the week here.’

On the fifth, I had a discussion with Krishnaji about how we might cut down on some of his traveling and talking. And the very next day, we continued the discussion on the way home from a 5 p.m. young people’s discussion at the Congress Centrum.

On May seventh, Alain and I went to Amsterdam to the Theosophical Society Bookshop to buy a book that Alain wanted.’ And I remember vividly, they had a big picture of Mrs. Besant and a big picture of Leadbeater on the wall, life-size, in sepia…you know, old-fashioned. And I looked at these two photos. It could’ve been 300 years ago. I thought, those two people were in Krishnaji’s life! And the contrast between the apparent age of these people in the photographs and Krishnaji, who was as young as could be, was astounding.

For the next day it says, ‘Krishnaji decides not to come to Amsterdam next year. I marketed all afternoon. Alain and I rang Madame Dupperex in Gstaad about Chalet Trois Ours.’

The entry for the next day reads, ‘Brockwood is lovely. Slept well, unpacked, and put everything in order. The carpet is down in my room. There was a meeting between Simmonses, Krishnaji, Alain, and me on school matters. Walked with Krishnaji through the bluebells in the woods.’ The next day was ‘a quiet day at Brockwood, but Alain is feeling low.’

On the twentieth, ‘Alain had a long talk with Krishnaji. Mary Cadogan came and we had a meeting with her and Dorothy. Krishnaji’s talks to Alain seems to have changed and cheered him.’

The following day I returned to London to pick up the Mercedes and it took me three
hours to drive back to Brockwood through the Whitsun weekend traffic, arriving at 9:30 p.m.
1969, January first. Krishnamurti was staying that winter in Malibu. My diary reads, ‘What a lovely way to start the year. A warm beautiful day, clear, still—like summer. Krishnaji, Alain, and I were out on the lawn before breakfast. Krishnaji dictated in the morning.

January second. ‘Alan Watts and the Basses, and wife.’ The Basses were a couple who lived down in San Diego, who were friends of Alan Watts. All four came to lunch this day. ‘Alain Naudé left afterwards to drive north, and set up Krishnaji’s talks in Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz. Krishnaji and I went for a beach walk.

The third says, ‘to town for errands. Back before lunch. Krishnaji made the first direct tape by himself. After lunch, we went to Sears and bought Krishnaji blue jeans, then to Saks for loafers.

January fourth. After lunch Krishnaji held a discussion with a group at 4 p.m., and the next day ‘the eighth group discussion at 11 a.m. Then lunched alone, rested, and went for a walk on the beach.

On January sixth, ‘Desk work. After lunch Krishnaji came with me to town while I went to Tassell.’ Tassell was a designer of clothes. I had quite a lot of clothes from them. We then looked at a Leicaflex.’ That’s a camera.

On January seventh, ‘After lunch with Erna and Theo Lilliefelt, they followed Krishnaji and me to a session with Saul Rosenthal about the list of questions for Rajagopal and KWINC. Also set up the "Krishnamurti Foundation of America".

On the ninth, An X-ray of my left leg showed my blood vessels were causing intermittent 'claudication ', the pain spasms I was having all the time.

On the tenth of January, Krishnaji and I drove via Moorpark through Santa Paula to Ojai. We lunched with the Lilliefelts. Krishnaji gave two interviews, and we drove home along the ocean.

On January eighteenth, we all three went at 4 o’clock to meet Mary and Joe Links, who arrived on a 'polar' flight from London. They have rooms at the Casa Malibu, but came here for a late tea and early supper.’ Mary and Joe came to get away from the London winter, and it rained every day they were there. And the day they left, I remember, as their car disappeared to the airport, the sun came out! For the nineteenth, it says ‘Pouring rain! The Linkses came to breakfast. The Lilliefelts and Ruth Tettemer followed. Talked about the Bulletin, donation appeals, etcetera, until the group discussion began. Mary and I went over Brockwood matters.
January twenty-first. ‘The storm total is seven inches. It cleared in the morning. Early lunch, and three of us went to a movie, Bullet, in Hollywood.’ That was a good movie. On January twenty-third, ‘I bought a Leicaflex camera with a 90-mm lens…’ It was really for taking pictures of Krishnaji, because the new books and the Bulletin that were planned needed photos and was back by tea. Mary and Joe came for dinner.

The twenty-fifth of January: ‘Mary and Joe came to breakfast, lunch, and supper. There was a group discussion in spite of being, for a while, cut off by the rain and mudslides. Ojai was blocked, but one boy, Lloyd Williams, from Ojai walked seven miles to a bus to come!’ The roads are blocked to the north. The Linkses and Alain decided to fly to San Francisco instead of motoring. January twenty-sixth. The rain stopped at last. After lunch, Krishnaji and I drove the Linkses and Alain to the airport where they flew to San Francisco. Krishnaji drove the Jaguar back and practiced parking in Santa Monica.’ (That’s when he wanted to get a license). ‘We walked on the beach strewn with driftwood. A quiet supper in a quiet house.’

On the twenty-eighth of January, Krishnaji drove as we went to the dentist for a filling that he lost. Eve Siegal and children came to tea. Krishnaji took his driving license test. Excellent on the written, but nervous on the driving part. They gave him only a temporary permit. We had a picnic in the car.’ Then it says, ‘packed.’

January thirtieth, ‘Krishnaji and I left at 11:45 a.m. in the Jaguar and drove north. Stopped beyond Santa Barbara in Dos Pueblos for a picnic lunch. Drove on. The country was green and beautiful. Big Sur Road was closed, so we took the inland 101 freeway through Salinas and into Carmel Valley. Spent the night at the Highlands Inn.’ Thirty-first of January. ‘We drove down the Big Sur Road a little to Point Lobos. Walked and I used the new Leicaflex. We shopped in Carmel, and lunched at the Pine Inn, then drove on to San Francisco, arriving at the Huntington Hotel at 5:30 p.m. Alain was there. We unpacked, and had a long three-way talk, and supper.’ We had quite nice rooms in the Huntington; there was a kitchen, a sitting room, and two big b

February second. Joan Baez came to see Krishnaji. Alain and I dined downstairs in the restaurant, L’Etoile, and reviewed our Friday conversation.’ Alain was upset about ( not being given) the life memberships for setting up the foundation and his not being one of them. On the third, at 8 p.m. I drove Krishnaji to the first Berkeley talk. There were about 2,500 in the audience. We had supper afterward.’ The next day there was the second Berkeley talk. ‘Tremendous, tremendous one,’ Also, ‘Krishnaji has a slight cold.’

Fifth of February. ‘Rain. Sonoma student, Terry Agnew, came to lunch, then to the third Berkeley talk.’ The next day, ‘the final Berkeley talk. It was a great one.’

February seventh. ‘Michael Korman came to lunch. Krishnaji, Alain, and I went to Alan Watts’ in Sausalito; he had people to meet Krishnaji. Messy discussion!’ Alan Watts lived on a houseboat in Sausalito, and he had wanted Krishnaji to come and meet all the distinguished, intellectual people in San Francisco. But when we got there, both he and his wife were drunk! And the people asked stupid questions. It was a fruitless event! It was just a mess. We left.

February eighth. ‘With Krishnaji to a meeting arranged by KPFA at 7 p.m. in Berkeley. Came back to supper. Rajagopal has formed another foundation called K & R. Ninth of February. ‘We lunched, and then Professor Nader and family came to tea. Father and Olive came at 7 p.m. Then, I took them down to dine in the L’Etoile.’ That was the very good restaurant downstairs, down just next to the Huntington. The next day, we ‘packed, left the Huntington, and drove to Sonoma State College, where Krishnaji spoke. We lunched with students, Terry Agnew and Helen Hauserthen, then drove south to Palo Alto, where we had rooms at the Stanford Faculty Club.’ February eleventh, ‘lunch with Buckminster Fuller, Michael Kerina, and John Digues.’ John Digues is the one that brought Buckminster Fuller. ‘A discussion was taped for KPFA. At 4:30 p.m., went with Krishnaji to his first Stanford talk, but I had to return to San Francisco to an appointment with a vascular doctor.’ My leg was troubling me, and my Los Angeles doctor said I must see this vascular person. ‘He thinks the femoral artery is blocked.’

On the twelfth, Krishnaji decided to cancel the Australian tour, then he went to the second Stanford talk. The next day, ‘Krishnaji is tired, but he gave his third Stanford talk. Alain out for supper. He is to go ahead of us to Europe.’

On the sixteenth, ‘we packed, had lunch, and drove to UC Santa Cruz. Krishnaji and I were lodged in a nice flat. Alain was nearby. Krishnaji gave a talk at 8 p.m. to students in Cowell College. The next day, he gave his second talk.’ On the eighteenth, ‘Krishnaji had the day off. We went for a drive inland through the Redwoods. He walked while I followed him in the car.’ I couldn’t walk much at that point. I used to drive along slowly.

On the nineteenth and twentieth, Krishnaji gave his last two talks at Santa Cruz. On the twenty-first, ‘We were early. Breakfast at 7 a.m. Alain loaded the car and Krishnaji and I left Cowell College and Santa Cruz at 8:45 a.m. Drove via Carmel, Big Sur, stopped briefly at Nepenthe’—that restaurant right on the water. ‘The coast road only just opened after the storm and mudslides. Had a picnic lunch near Cambria. Krishnaji drove the rest of the hundred miles to Santa Barbara, and then I drove the remaining way to Malibu, arriving at 4:20 p.m. Good to be home. House and garden beautiful.

February twenty-second. ‘Beautiful morning after the rain. After lunch, Erna and Theo Lilliefelt, and Ruth Tettemer came; we discussed affairs and formally signed, before a notary, the trust’s founding documents of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. Trustees are Krishnaji, Erna Lilliefelt, Ruth Tettemer, Alain, and me. Had our first trustee meeting.’

February twenty-fourth. ‘Took Alain to the airport. He flew to Paris, and will go to Gstaad and find housing for students next summer. Went to the French consulate for Krishnaji’s visa

the twenty-seventh Krishnaji and I met the Lilliefelts and Ruth Tettemer at Rosenthal’s office. We all went to the attorney general’s office downtown for a meeting between Krishnaji and Laurence Tapper, the attorney general. He will investigate KWINC. Krishnaji and I had lunch in the car. And then I went to fetch the visa and my Tassell coat, while Krishnaji had a haircut.’ The next day, ‘we packed, and I took four bags to Pan American cargo for shipment to London.’

‘We took a new Pan American flight nonstop to London. I went first class with Krishnaji. On the fifth of March, ‘Krishnaji and I arrived in London, and spent one half hour waiting in transit before flying on to Paris. Telephoned Mary Links, the Digbys, and Mary Cadogan. Alain surprised us by being at the Paris airport with his car. He had got rooms in the new school in Schonried for students. We all lunched and talked. Krishnaji and I walked over to see my Mercedes in the garage, brought by Mr. Moser from Switzerland. We took naps, then phoned Madame Duperrex.’ She was the very nice concierge of the rooms in Caprices at Gstaad. ‘We rented rooms in Trois Ours.’ Instead of staying down in the village at Caprices, I had wanted to stay there.

March sixth, ‘We left Pont Royale and Paris in both cars at 8:40 a.m. Krishnaji and I drove to Le Touquet, 160 miles in three hours. Alain met us there and flew both of the cars to Lydd. We lunched there, and then at 2:30 p.m., left and drove across southern England, 120 miles. We met Alain at the West Meon Hut, and then this is the first time we’d been to Brockwood!

Anyway, ‘just as sun was setting, the Simmonses, Donald Hoppen, Doris Pratt, Alan Hooker, and four boy students were there. The house and grounds are beautiful. Saw it, had supper, and went to bed.’ I remember that I was so tired because I had misjudged how long the journey would take. I knew how long it took to get to Le Touquet from Paris, then cross over in the plane; that was easy. But then, on the map, it didn’t look very far to cross the south of England. I’d been driving since eight in the morning or something, and by the time I finally drove up the lane to Brockwood, and had the first glimpse of Brockwood, I was in tears from exhaustion. Krishnaji’s room had everything it needed, and my room had that big dressing table, which was left by the former owners. So we had the necessities. We had beds, linens, and towels.

So, on the seventh, wé unpacked. Mary Cadogan arrived for lunch and talked with Krishnaji, Alain, and me. Went for the first walk with Krishnaji in Brockwood Park. Lovely, seven redwood trees, the "cedar of Lebanon" trees, the fields and orchard, and an enormous rose garden and vegetable garden.’ The next morning, ‘Alain and I left early and drove to London and the airport to fetch the four bags I’d sent a few days ago by Pan American cargo. Frost on the fields. Lovely landscape. Returned in time for lunch. A discussion with Dorothy Simmons about which rooms will be Krishnaji’s section of the house; also of plans for the school. On March ninth, ‘The Linkses came to call in the morning. The Digbys and the Cadogans came to lunch. Trustees meeting all afternoon. George Digby reassured on KF of America being able to contribute funds. Well, in those days, the KFA had nothing much to do except run an office, so Erna was glad to send funds to England. It turned out pretty soon that it was illegal to give charitable funds from the USA to a foreign entity ‘I went for a short walk with Krishnaji and Alain. Krishnaji decided we must use only two floors of the West Wing.’ ‘Discussed alterations, etcetera, with Donald Hoppen. The weather was still clear and beautiful.’ The next day. ‘Cloudy with rain later. Walked in the rain with Krishnaji.’

March eleven, ‘Krishnaji decides not to spend the night in a hotel in London before and after tomorrow’s talk. Relief to all three of us to stay in Brockwood. Spent a quiet day doing household things.’

On the sixteenth, ‘Krishnaji and I drove to Wimbledon at 9 a.m. for the 11 o’clock talk. Went via the Hog’s Back.’ The ride in was one-and-a-half hours. Sat in Richmond Park for a while. Then, to the hall. We drove back afterward, immediately afterward, and had our picnic lunch in the kitchen. Rested, and then walked. Very cold, about twenty-nine degrees.’ On the seventeenth, ‘Paul Anstee came to discuss furnishings for Brockwood. He, Alain, and I lunched at the West Meon Hut. Then continued work on same, all afternoon.’ On March eighteenth, Krishnaji and I went to see the BBC for a color television interview of Krishnaji. I did errands at Harrods, etcetera, and met them at Waterloo Station for return train at 6:30 p.m.’

On March twenty-first. ‘Went to London with Alain and Narendra in Krishnaji’s car.’ That was an Indian boy student that made such difficulty for Alain.
On the twenty-third, ‘Motored with Krishnaji to Wimbledon for the fourth and last talk of the series, a very moving one. We came back and lunched alone. Then a lot of people came. Krishnaji had a school discussion which included the Simmons, Alan Hooker, Alain Naudé, and me.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji and I in the Mercedes, and Alain in the VW left Brockwood at 10:30 a.m. Outside Rye, in a place called Playden, a man ran into the Mercedes, crushing the right rear fender. The police said it was the man’s fault. They bent the metal away from the wheel, so I continued to Dover. Krishnaji rode with Alain for less weight. We all got on the 4:30 p.m. ferry to Calais. We had driven the 144 miles in England and then on as far as Montreuil, where we spent the night in a charming hotel, Château de Montreuil.’ That was a nice hotel. On the third of April. ‘We left Montreuil at 9:45 a.m. and drove via Arras to the autoroute to Paris. Krishnaji and I arrived at 12:30 p.m. at 16 Rue de Verdun, and Alain slightly later.’ That’s the house I rented. There was a maid, Marguerite, and a cook, André, and they had lunch ready. We unpacked and rested. After supper, Alain and I went to the Salle Pleyel and heard Sviatoslav Richter play Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, numbers 13 to 34. Infinitely beautiful playing!’

On the fifth, ‘Krishnaji dictated more of the Holiday Book. De Vidas came by. In the afternoon, Krishnaji, Alain, and I went to a movie, Mackenna’s Gold.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji worked on the book and after supper I played a tape that Alain made of his notes of conversations with Krishnaji.’

April twelfth, ‘Krishnaji and Alain worked on the book. At 4 p.m., Krishnaji held a discussion with young people at the Hotel Pont Royale.’ That was followed the next day with the second talk at the Salle de la Chimie. On the thirteenth, ‘Suzanne and Hughes van der Straten came for coffee and stayed till 5 p.m. Invited us to stay with them on the way to Holland. Spoke to Anneke about a house at Hilversum.’ The next day, ‘I had my hair done at Elizabeth Arden, and a Chinese boy and woman came to lunch.

On April fifteenth, ‘Mary and Joe Links arrive in Paris. I shopped. Met Krishnaji in town and brought him back for lunch. Alain was lunching with the Linkses. Mary Cadogan came in the morning. Alain got word he has been granted British citizenship.’

On the eighteenth, ‘Fetched the Mercedes. All fixed.’ That was after the Rye episode. Marcelle Bondoneau and Doris Pratt to lunch. There was a tea at 4 p.m. for the French group, which consisted of the Suarèses, de Vidas, Ma de Manziarly, Madame Samuel, Madame Safra, Madame Ettori, Madame Banzet, Mademoiselle Borel, someone Suydoux and Frances McCann.’ Another young people’s discussion on the nineteenth at 4 p.m, followed the following day by Krishnaji’s fourth talk. On the twenty-second, ‘Krishnaji saw de Vidas about his telling lies to Mary Cadogan.’ On the twenty-third, ‘Krishnaji saw Doris Pratt, and then Alain with her. Loads of criticism. ‘I went with Krishnaji and Alain to UNESCO, where they taped an interview with Krishnaji. Talked to Alain, who is upset at the Pratt / De Vidas criticisms.’

On the twenty-sixth we left Paris at 11 a.m. and drove to Arras, lunching at Le Cheuzy.’ It was on the way, and a very nice restaurant. ‘Left there about 3 p.m. and drove around Lille to Tournai, crossing into Belgium. Onto Brussels, where Krishnaji, Alain, and I spent the night with Suzanne and Hughes van der Straten. Their children Gauthier, Favienne, Marie-Laure, Evrard, Marjolaine and Ariane were there. A nice, immense, comfortable house, and very nice family.’ The next day, we ‘spent a pleasant, relaxed morning with the van der Stratens and left after lunch. A three-hour drive to Hilversum in Holland, and to the house at S’Gravelandsweg where Anneke was waiting. A house rented for Krishnaji and furnished with loans from well-wishers.

I spent the next morning ‘getting settled. After lunch, Krishnaji, Alain, and I drove to Keukenhof, The tulips were just beginning. I ordered perennial bulbs for September delivery to Brockwood. On return to the house, we heard of de Gaulle’s resignation.’

May third. ‘I drove Krishnaji via S’Gravelandsweg to first Amsterdam talk at the Congress Centrum, in the RAI. It was a very strong talk. Krishnaji was slightly faint in car on the return. After lunch, he came with me to Bussum on errands. Then I typed for Alain. We all three went for a walk. It was a warm spring day.’ On the fourth of May, ‘With Krishnaji to the second talk in Amsterdam. There was an afternoon tea for all the people who have helped in the week here.’

On the fifth, I had a discussion with Krishnaji about how we might cut down on some of his traveling and talking. And the very next day, we continued the discussion on the way home from a 5 p.m. young people’s discussion at the Congress Centrum. On May seventh, Alain and I went to Amsterdam to the Theosophical Society Bookshop to buy a book that Alain wanted.’ And I remember vividly, they had a big picture of Mrs. Besant and a big picture of Leadbeater on the wall, life-size, in sepia…you know, old-fashioned. And I looked at these two photos. It could’ve been 300 years ago. I thought, those two people were in Krishnaji’s life! And the contrast between the apparent age of these people in the photographs and Krishnaji, who was as young as could be, was astounding.

For the next day it says, ‘Krishnaji decides not to come to Amsterdam next year. I marketed all afternoon. Alain and I rang Madame Dupperex in Gstaad about Chalet Trois Ours.’

The entry for the next day reads, ‘Brockwood is lovely. Slept well, unpacked, and put everything in order. The carpet is down in my room. There was a meeting between Simmonses, Krishnaji, Alain, and me on school matters. Walked with Krishnaji through the bluebells in the woods.’ The next day was ‘a quiet day at Brockwood, but Alain is feeling low.’

On the twentieth, ‘Alain had a long talk with Krishnaji. Mary Cadogan came and we had a meeting with her and Dorothy. Krishnaji’s talks to Alain seems to have changed and cheered him.’

The following day I returned to London to pick up the Mercedes and it took me three hours to drive back to Brockwood through the Whitsun weekend traffic, arriving at 9:30 p.m.

(continuing the MZ memos )

 So, we’re living at Brockwood, and Anstee was helping me get the furnishing for it.
The next day, the Chinese-Indonesian family of possible student came.’ That’s Tungki.
Krishnaji began a new book - it wasn’t writing, it was reading. On the fifth of June, ‘Had fifth yoga lesson with Desikachar. He’d come to work with Krishnaji, and I was just lucky.

Then the next several days there was nothing special, just more work to find things for the house. A trip on the eleventh with Krishnaji to London for tailor, dentist, haircut, etcetera.
It seems that on June twelfth, ‘Krishnaji’s right foot was swollen and sore,’ which continued the next day. Also the next day, an unhappy discussion between Krishnaji, Alain, and Dorothy Simmons. Alain and Dorothy didn’t get on at all. And it was over that student, that Indian boy. Alain felt he was his guardian or something. The father had given him permission to put him in the Brockwood School, and Dorothy didn’t want Alain interfering. They didn’t get on at all, and Alain was very emotional about these things. This was the year that Alain finally left.

 June fourteenth. ‘Alain rang Dr. Schmidt, the Swiss homeopath who says that ‘Krishnaji has gout. The Digbys and Mary Links came in the afternoon for an editorial meeting. Joe Links came with Mary’s grandchildren, Anna and Nicky. We had tea. After supper, Krishnaji, Alain, and Dorothy had another meeting about Alain to which I didn’t go.’
The next day, ‘Another long talk with Alain. Walked alone in the afternoon.’
June sixteenth, we had a three-way talk with Krishnaji, Alain, and me, at which it was resolved that Alain promised not to talk about leaving or to leave.’ Well, that didn’t last, but anyway, that’s what happened in June.

June seventeenth, ‘It was raining. Yoga lesson number twelve. Krishnaji came with me to Alresford and Winchester. Krishnaji’s foot was better so he could walk. He was also practicing his driving so he could get his English drivers license. Then on the twenty-second of June, ‘Krishnaji held first talk and discussion at Brockwood in the big room. About 165 people came, including two boys, Terry Agnew and Alan Hansen from Sonoma. Sandwich lunch afterwards.’
Krishnaji drove me to Winchester and beyond, practicing with the Mercedes for the driver’s test. We had our first meal at the new long table in school’s dining room. Krishnaji played a game of throwing the Frisbee on the lawn after supper.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji talked to two new teachers, Mark Schmidt and John Digues as well as the Simmonses, Alain, and me about the school.’

‘School meeting in the afternoon; Krishnaji, Alain, the Simmonses, Digues, Schmidt, and me. Tensions are everywhere. Everybody was tense, particularly Alain.
The twenty-seventh of June. ‘Talk at breakfast with Alain. Then, he and Brant Cortright left by car for Paris en route to Saanen.’ Brant Cortright was a student, I think. Krishnaji and I went to Winchester in the afternoon. Got his temporary driving permit.’
The twenty-eighth of June ‘A lovely day. Gentle day. Meeting on school matters in the morning. We will accept Marcus Lavarra and Alan Shapiro as students.

June thirtieth: ‘In the afternoon, Krishnaji passed his driving test in Winchester and now has a lifetime license!’ That was a triumphant day! Because he’d gotten turned down in California, and he was unhappy that he’d flunked. So, he said he’d get one in England, but to be on the safe side, he engaged an equally aged gentleman to give him driving lessons, so he’d learn the English driver’s laws and techniques. And this day, what happened was that the teacher, a little old man, came, and he rehearsed Krishnaji, though he didn’t tell him that, by having Krishnaji driving all through Winchester. He said, “turn left here” and “stop here” and “turn right here”, and all that. He knew exactly the pattern that the inspector would take Krishnaji.
And Krishnaji did it flawlessly. So the old man got out, and the inspector got in, and they went over the exact same route. And Krishnaji got it. And he came back very happy, because everyone had said to him, “Oh, nobody ever gets it the first time, and they’re very difficult.”And he was quite put out at having flunked in California. [S laughs.] He came back, you know, just triumphant!

July second, Krishnaji washed the car in the afternoon, and while backing into the garage, his foot slipped on the accelerator and the back of the car was slightly demolished against the garage door.’ I was upstairs doing something, and he came up looking stricken!  I thought he’d hurt himself. I blurted out, “What happened? Are you alright?”, you know. He couldn’t speak he was so shocked.

July third. ‘Krishnaji is still shaken by yesterday’s car episode. Dorothy Simmons in the Land Rover drove Krishnaji, me, Desikachar, and Narendra to the London Airport.’ We ate sandwich lunches there, and then Krishnaji, Desikachar, and Narendra flew to Geneva where Alain was to meet them, and Dorothy and I came back to Brockwood. The Mercedes had been towed to Southampton, and they will let me know the damage tomorrow.’ There didn’t seem to be very much.

The fourth of July. ‘Krishnaji and Alain in Geneva to see Dr. Schmidt for a check-up, and then they went to Gstaad. I put things away at Brockwood, paid the bills, etcetera. Two months to fix the Mercedes! The house is so quiet. There’s scarcely anyone here. Alain called from Gstaad, got me an Avis rental car.’
The next day ‘I put everything away in locked cupboards for Krishnaji and Alain. Packed for myself. Went to Winchester to get a plane ticket.’
On the sixth of July. ‘Donald Hoppen drove me to the London Airport. I took the 2:40 p.m. Swiss Air flight to Geneva. An Avis VW was waiting, and I drove to Gstaad and found Chalet Trois Ours.’ That was the year I rented part of Chalet Trois Ours, which is just below Tannegg, as you come up the hill.
Went to Tannegg to see Vanda and Krishnaji. Unpacked a little at Trois Ours. Alain came in later.’

The next day ‘I had the twenty-sixth yoga lesson with Desikachar at Tannegg. I lunched there with Vanda and Dorothy. Talked to Vanda till 4 p.m. Did errands in the village, and finished unpacking.’
July eighth. ‘Lunched at Tannegg with Krishnaji and Desikachar. Krishnaji held a discussion with the young people at the Schonried School.’
Krishnaji held another young people’s discussion on the tenth.
On July eleventh, ‘Early lunch with Krishnaji and Alain. Then, we drove to Thun, where Krishnaji got his new Mercedes sports car! I drove back with him. Exhausting afternoon, and on into the night with Alain.

July thirteenth. ‘Drove Krishnaji to Schonried, where he spoke to young people. We had lunch at Tannegg, Vanda, Krishnaji, Alain, and a Mr. and Mrs. Raul, a UNESCO man from Paris. Had a nap. Then, a looooong conversation with Alain on all the difficulties. Had a violent headache.’ He was so being difficult, and I was trying to keep him with us, because I thought he had very useful capacities and skills in bringing young people.

July seventeenth, ‘Drove Krishnaji to the opening Saanen talk. The question and answer period was broken up by an angry Norwegian boy.

The next day, ‘Krishnaji had a meeting with Mary Cadogan and Alain. Vanda and I had a brief talk and agreed to all share Tannegg next year.’

On July twentieth, ‘I drove Krishnaji to his second talk. Lunched at Tannegg with Krishnaji, Vanda, and Alain. Alain and I dined with the van der Stratens, and at 8:30 p.m. news came that the astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin had landed a capsule on the moon.’
The next morning. ‘Went to Tannegg at 6 a.m. to watch on Krishnaji’s television, Armstrong followed by Aldrin, setting foot on the moon. Vanda left for Florence after lunch. I moved up to stay at Tannegg.’ When she went away, she had me come and run things. ‘Watching at 6 p.m. TV shots of the astronauts taking off from the moon to rendezvous with the main capsule and the waiting astronaut Collins.’

Krishnaji held the fourth talk on the twenty-fourth. ‘Came back and watched TV of the perfect landing and pick-up of astronauts in the Pacific.’
On the twenty-sixth, ‘Krishnaji had taped discussion with Swami Venkatesananda.
The next day ‘I became signatory for Krishnaji of his account.
On the thirtieth, ‘Krishnaji and I to Thun in the Mercedes while it had its 500-kilometer service
First of August. ‘A long talk with Alain at breakfast. Vanda arrived from Florence. She is coming with Alberto’, that’s her son, ‘on Monday. David Bohm and the Hammonds came for lunch. There was a tea for all the foreign committees. Krishnaji walked to Saanen afterwards and I picked him up.

The next day ‘Krishnaji spoke to an encampment of young Theosophists. There was a meeting of the Dutch Committee. There was a discussion all afternoon between Krishnaji, Alain, and me.’
On the third of August, ‘Krishnaji came to breakfast with Alain and me, and talked till almost 10 a.m. Then, we dashed to the tent for the first of the public discussions.’
August fourth, ‘Krishnaji held the second public discussion. Simmonses, Donald, and Alain to lunch. Talked afterward without Alain. Then there was a meeting of the Saanen Gathering Committee after which Alain came to Tannegg. Krishnaji talked to him with me there for three hours. Alain will no longer be his personal assistant. He is to work away from him.’

August seventh through ninth were the fifth through seventh, and last, public discussions.
On the tenth there was a long talk between Krishnaji, Alain, and me about Alain’s new work for Krishnaji. All sounded well. After the walk there was a phone call from Dorothy that Narendra was leaving Brockwood to go with Mark Schmidt. Krishnaji disapproves. A cable was sent to his father.

On August eighteenth, ‘Last talk between Krishnaji, Alain, and me on his plans. Krishnaji and I went to Thun to leave his car with Mr. Moser’s garage for the winter. We had a picnic lunch by the lake. Returned to Gstaad in Alain’s VW. Posted tapes to the Lilliefelts. Packed. Alain, Vanda, and I had supper. Alain goes to Italy tomorrow, so does Vanda. Alain said goodbye to Krishnaji, and then to me.’ It was such a relief when Alain left.’

On the twentieth, ‘Krishnaji and I carried three tape recorders and a camera. Flew to London at 12:30 p.m. Dorothy and Montague met us. One of the shipped bags was lost. Arrived at Brockwood at 5:30 p.m.’
The next day, ‘I unpacked. Mary Links came for tea. Explained some of the events of the summer, Alain, etcetera. She is disturbed. Also, she doesn’t want to do the Bulletin anymore. The Mercedes won’t be ready for three weeks.’

On August twenty-third, ‘Krishnaji dictated a conversation. On the twenty-fourth, ‘Krishnaji dictated another “conversation” to me. We walked around the garden.’

August twenty-seventh, ‘Krishnaji stayed in bed all day resting. His cold is improving. I did desk work.’ Let’s see…he seems to have stayed in bed until lunch on the twenty-ninth when ‘Krishnaji got up for lunch. Saral and David Bohm came. There was a discussion with Krishnaji about the school.’

On September seventh, ‘Krishnaji gave the second Brockwood talk in the tent. The Bohms and van der Stratens lunched in the West Wing. Krishnaji invited David to be a trustee. There was Indian music in the afternoon. I spoke to Sidney Roth about TV films of Krishnaji.’ Sidney Roth was the man from Chicago who was paying for filming Krishnaji, and he must’ve come to Brockwood, I guess.

The following day, ‘Krishnaji had a discussion in the tent with about sixty people. It went well. We ate the cafeteria lunch that was on sale. Walked with Krishnaji around the lanes.’

On September thirteenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his third Brockwood talk. We lunched in the tent. At supper we were forty with sixteen nationalities. Mercedes was delivered after ten and a half weeks.’ That was from when he pushed it into the garage.

On September sixteenth, ‘Krishnaji decided against the scheduled public talks in Rome and so will go there later, staying here until about October twenty-first. In the morning he dictated a conversation to me. Well, he was dictating those over a period of years…they were called 'conversations', but it was just a dictation.

On the twenty-second, ‘David Bohm came and there was a discussion with Krishnaji, staff, and students.’
On September twenty-third, ‘Krishnaji and I drove to London. He had a Huntsman fitting and haircut. We had a picnic lunch in Hyde Park.’ Left some papers at the Digbys for Alain, who was staying there. Krishnaji and I left at 3:30 p.m. and got back to Brockwood in record time.’
On the twenty-fourth, ‘Mr. Graf of the Saanen Committee was at the house. There was a meeting to decide on a tent versus a building for 1970. We chose a tent.’ In those days, I think we thought of building something permanent…
On October fourth, at ‘11:30 a.m. another school discussion with Krishnaji and David Bohm. After lunch, Krishnaji and I drove to Blackdown. Walked and had tea with the Linkses. Drove home in marvelous late afternoon light and rising mists, such a sense of peace and beauty.’
On the sixth and seventh, Krishnaji did another two dictations to me. Also on the seventh, Krishnaji held another meeting with the school, and talked about responsibility and authority, and Dorothy Simmons’ responsibility in particular.

On the twenty-fifth, ‘Krishnaji held a discussion with the school in the afternoon on love, pleasure, etcetera. We went for a last autumn walk. After supper, Dorothy brought another Labrador puppy, female, 8 weeks old, and golden. A lovely puppy named Whisper.’
October twenty-sixth, ‘Krishnaji and I left Brockwood. We took Air France flight to Paris, at 3 p.m. after eating a picnic lunch in the car. We have rooms at Plaza Athénée. Unpacked and took a walk. Supper in our rooms. Today was most beautiful autumn day ever at Brockwood, and Paris was gentle and a soft gray.’
My diary for October twenty-seventh says, ‘Lobb was closed. We bought books, went to the Jeu de Paume walked through the Tuileries to the Louvre, saw the Victory of Samothrace…’ That was lovely because, it’s up at the head of a great marble staircase.
We went in, and for me, the sight was Krishnaji, very small at the bottom of the stairs, looking up with just total enjoyment of this marvelous statue, and the whole scene was quite wonderful.
He was here on the steps, in front of the statue, and I was over to his left, but I was out of the frame, as it were. We’d come in from the left.
‘We had lunched at the hotel. And then went to the cinema, and the movie was Once Upon a Time in the West’ which he liked because it was a western.
 

‘We walked back, stopping to buy a bag at Vuitton and shoes at Mancini,’ that’s a good shoe store. ‘Marcelle Bondoneau came to tea with me, and G.V. Rao came to see Krishnaji. We had supper in our rooms.’ I don’t want to imply that we were sharing a room.

October twenty-eighth, ‘We went to Lobb’s. Krishnaji ordered four pair of shoes, and then we went to Au Vase Etrusque,’ which is sales of china that I was buying for Brockwood Then, ‘we lunched at Conti,’ that’s the Italian restaurant that he likes so much. Monsieur Conti was an ebullient, cheerful man.
Then, we went to a movie, The Wild Bunch.’ communications. ‘Went to Madame Welser for Krishnaji to help her.’ She was a French woman and an invalid, she used to come to Saanen, hoping that he could help her, heal her. ‘Then, we came back to the hotel and had supper in our rooms.’

November sixth. ‘First letter from Krishnaji written and sent from Rome.’ Then there was a meeting with someone from Harper and Row—they were one of Krishnaji’s publishers—and Curtis Davis of NET about the films of Krishnaji they made.
On the tenth, ‘I took a noon plane to Los Angeles. Amanda met me; Filomena and Cracker,’ our Siamese cat) ‘welcomed me to Malibu.’ ‘Malibu has had two inches of rain and looks beautiful. Also talked to Erna about the meeting between the attorney general’s man and our lawyers, which was postponed.’

The next day I got two letters from Krishnaji. They often didn’t come in the same sequence as they were mailed.On December first, ‘Letter and cassette #2 from Krishnaji. He goes from Delhi to Rajghat tomorrow.’
On the fourth, ‘A letter from Krishnaji in Rajghat. He went today from Delhi to Bombay.’
The next day I got a cable from Krishnaji.
On the eighth, I wrote a report on Brockwood for the Bulletin.
On the thirteenth, ‘A letter from Krishnaji in Bombay enclosing a letter to KFA trustees about Rajagopal.
On the fifteenth, ‘Alain’—that’s Naudé—‘telephoned and arrived from London last night. He is staying with the Morrises. Alain came for tea; took him back afterwards to where he is staying.’ The next day Alain came to supper.
On the seventeenth, ‘Cable from Krishnaji about an attempt by Rajagopal to telephone him in Bombay. Spoke to Erna and Saul Rosenthal’—that’s our lawyer—‘as Krishnaji’s cable asked me to tell Rosenthal,’ so that’s why I called him.

1970 began with Krishnaji in India, and I was in Malibu. He’d been in India since the autumn. In January, the first thing that happened to me was that I went down to La Jolla because there was a possibility that Krishnaji would speak in San Diego. I went down to find a place for the three of us to live and to talk to the people at San Diego State University. There I met a man who was the head of religious studies, a Dr. Ray Jordan. I also met, from the philosophy department, Dr. Allan Anderson, who, as we all know, is the person who eventually did the video recorded dialogues with Krishnaji. I also met a woman called Martha Longnecker who had a house down there, and she very kindly offered it if Krishnaji came down. It was a little house, a very nice house. She is a potter, and had a nice comfortable small house, which she turned over for Krishnaji—she moved out, and Krishnaji and I lived there.

On the twenty-sixth of January, Krishnaji left Bombay and flew to Rome, and after two days he flew on to Brockwood, where he stayed until the second of February, when he flew to Los Angeles. I met him at the airport, and we drove up to Malibu. He’d been up by then for twenty-four hours, but instead of being wilted, he was full of vim and talk. It was lovely.
In those days he was writing to me, and he brought with him…he wrote small amounts every day, but he didn’t mail the letter every day, only when he had about two pages…letters numbers 25 and 26; one he wrote while at Brockwood, and one he wrote on the plane.
They were always wonderful, especially the ones he wrote on the plane. He would describe what he saw out the window and things like that. And his handwriting, it was more like his early writing, because it’s become more pinched together somehow.
He would write right to the edge of the page. And if let’s say, the last word on the line was ‘that,’ it would be th on one line, and then at- on the next line. He wrote right till you fell off the edge of the page Anyway, now he rested for a couple of days. I caught him up on all the news of what was happening with the Ojai people.

On the fifth of February, we got a letter report from from David, who had just met with the attorney general, Laurence Tapper, the deputy attorney general, and Rajagopal, and Rajagopal’s lawyer. In those days, his lawyer was a man called Jim Loebl who lived in Ojai. And as a matter of fact, Erna had gone to talk to Jim Loebl when we first started to think of dealing legally with Rajagopal, but he stopped her in mid-sentence and said, “I represent Mr. Rajagopal.” Rajagopal changed and got a big law firm in Los Angeles. Anyway, Leipziger had a meeting, and so he reported all that. We read it through, and then Krishnaji had me telephone Rajagopal to say that he had arrived in Malibu and that he would telephone in a few days when he was rested. So, that was the opening contact with Rajagopal.

When that was done, we went off to see a movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which Krishnaji was very pleased with.

On February tenth, Krishnaji began to dictate me the opening of a book to be done in 1970,
A couple of days later he dictated one to me on suicide, which was a topic generated by me. I really interviewed him in that, on suicide.But it was really interesting, whether there was ever a justification for committing suicide.
We went to Lindberg’s, the health food store. He took quite a pleasure in going to the health food store. He would walk around and look at everything. We went there quite often.People who recognized him would walk around and look at him!
That evening we saw on television the first of the NET films made in 1966. They were the first ever done in the Oak Grove when he talked, those black and white…That was the first showing, and that was the first one of the series.
The next day was a Saturday and his toothache continued, but he gave interviews, and held the fifth group discussion. It says here, “Good discussion.” But that’s all it says.
 

On March twenty-third, Krishnaji gave two interviews, one to a nice boy, Bill Burmeister, who has since disappeared. He was a seventeen-year-old boy, and he used to come to Saanen in later years. But who knows where he is now. At 4 p.m., Krishnaji had his tooth pulled out, which was loose and infected. The tooth came out easily, but Krishnaji fainted twice in the car on the way home. The tooth has probably been making him feel 'under par' for months, according to the dentist.
So, later I telephoned Rajagopal and asked him with or without the Vigevenos to come here to see Krishnaji. He said he would think about it and let me know. Rajagopal always claimed he wanted to see Krishnaji, but alone and on his territory, which Krishnaji wouldn’t do. We all believed Rajagopal taped everything, all conversations, without telling you.

On the afternoon of March twenty-fifth, Krishnaji held a young people’s discussion. Young people brought by Sidney Field and Laura Huxley and four sent by Dr. Weininger. He was a psychoanalyst/psychiatrist, lived in Santa Barbara, had known Krishnaji for a long time, and was responsible for Krishnaji’s only trip to Washington before he spoke there in 1985. He’d taken him to see a meeting of psychiatrists, and I think Krishnaji was taken through a mental hospital, which I think was called St. Elizabeth’s in Washington. But any contact that Krishnaji had with psychiatrists in those days was through Weininger. Laura Huxley was working with Weininger, doing some sort of psychotherapy. They left, and Krishnaji and I walked around the garden. When we didn’t have time to go to the beach, we’d walk around the garden, and he saw for the first time the great-horned owl that nested in a big eucalyptus tree out by the garage, and you could see it sitting up there …

O
The next day, the Lilliefelts, Ruth Tettemer, Sidney Roth, and Donald Hoppen all came at 11 a.m. and we held the annual KFA board meeting. Alain was supposed to come down for the weekend so, I sent Narayan to pick him up at the airport, and he arrived in time for lunch with everyone else. The meeting lasted till 4 p.m., when Krishnaji gave interviews. He was tired that night. That was the first trustee meeting after the formation of the Foundation.
My diary says for the twenty-eighth, Saturday, that we had an interesting discussion at breakfast. When Alain was there, Krishnaji would come to the table so we could all have breakfast together, and we’d often talk quite a long time. It was recorded onto an audio cassette, Krishnaji, Alain, and me. In the afternoon, there was a seventh group discussion at 4 o’clock, and that was videotaped.

That same day, a letter came to Krishnaji from Rajagopal saying that he couldn’t leave Ojai to meet Krishnamurti and in the afternoon, Krishnaji gave an interview to two rabbis, Rabbi Rabin and Rabbi Lymen.’ I remember them, sort of.

On the thirty-first, Krishnaji, Alain, Miranda, and I lunched at the Bel Air Hotel. That’s a rather nice hotel in Los Angeles, in a canyon; very pretty hotel, lunched in a sort of garden-ish place. And then we went to Hollywood to see a movie called Airport. After that we drove Alain to the airport and he went back to Oakland and Berkeley, and he said that he planned to go to Europe in May, gather his things, trade in his VW for a new one, bring all this over. Said a warm goodbye, and Krishnaji and I came back to supper.

Then nothing much happens until the third of April. ‘At breakfast, we decided to go to La Jolla the next day, instead of today. I said, it was too nice here, and we didn’t want to leave.’ So, we had a long, lovely beach walk in the afternoon. Krishnaji had written a letter to Rajagopal, which we posted, and he rang at suppertime and said he wanted to see Krishnaji before he left. Krishnaji said he would ring before leaving. It was a brief conversation.

The next day, ‘I packed for Krishnaji and myself, and we left at 12:30 p.m. on a hot, calm day for La Jolla. Stopped and had a picnic lunch in the car, near San Juan Capistrano, and arrived at 3:45 p.m. in La Jolla. She has lent her house to Krishnaji for the week of his talks at San Diego State. She and the Lilliefelts were staying nearby. We unpacked and went for a walk along the cliffs above the ocean. I drove him to Montezuma Hall at San Diego State campus, where he gave the first of his talks at 3 o’clock. We came back, and walked in the neighborhood. Krishnaji spoke to me about the two months he spent alone in a cabin at Sequoia national park and his shyness in avoiding people. He was always more or less shy, but particularly in the early days, and ‘he would go to the store in Sequoia, when he figured out there’d be the least people around. He had to buy his own supplies because he did his own cooking. He was shy even of the ranger who cautioned him to be careful on his long walks. He says even today he’s too shy to have ever walked alone when we were here on Sunday.’ In other words, he wouldn’t have walked in La Jolla alone; he’d have been too shy. He’s alright when it was in a wild place like Sequoia, but around people he is very shy.
La Jolla was a town, I mean, a town in California means houses with gardens and sidewalks. First of all, he would always attract attention because of his looks. And people who knew who he was would probably want to speak to him. And he was shy. I’d forgotten that he said that.
The next day was the sixth, and he gave his second San Diego talk at 7 p.m. They were college students that came to that. It was well attended, as I recall, but nothing much came of it.
At 7 p.m. he gave his third and a great talk, ‘at San Diego State. We had supper afterward.’
‘It was another beautiful day’ on the eighth, ‘and at 11 a.m., he held a big public discussion at San Diego State. And then, with Theo Lilliefelt, we went to Coronado’ -there’s a naval base at Coronado, and Krishnaji had wanted to visit a naval ship. The only one we could get him permission to visit was a heavy cruiser, but he walked around and looked at everything, the way he looks at cars.
It was a little bit like the time in Australia, and the American aircraft carrier; Krishnaji was fascinated by that. I wanted to get him a battleship, but there wasn’t one handy!

On the ninth, ‘there’s a long telephone and talk with Sidney Roth and his lawyer, Mr. Wyatt, who gave advice. Krishnaji and I lunched quietly, and at 7 p.m., he gave his fourth and final talk at San Diego State. There was a huge crowd,’ it says. Then, ‘Krishnaji’s comment on seeing the photo of himself in a 1929 Star Bulletin.’ We got that from Mark Sellon the day before. ‘He said, “He must’ve been a very gentle person. And it’s also in the talks. He never liked to say “I”; he’d say “the speaker.”  And yet he didn’t identify with anything else. I mean, people might easily say, “Well, he identified with a master or the Maitreya or the World Teacher or something,” but it wasn’t what we call identification; there was no self to identify. Last night, I was looking through that little book, The Young Krishna, that Mary’s just done, and reread the part where Nitya talks about when the little child was talking to him. Nitya writes how the little boy would prattle on to his mother and saying that he had some biscuits in his pocket. And quite a lot of them, he told his mother, and then he confessed that he’d been stealing them from wherever she kept them, and so he thought he ought to tell her because he thought she maybe suspected it. And Nitya makes the comment that he must’ve been a very nice child. In a funny way, that character was still there. When you say he had a childlike quality, this was that in a man in his eighties or something, and it was not in any way odd or incongruous. There was that wonder that a child has, and if he was interested in a motorcar or something, he was like a child looking at toys, with that kind of…How can you say a man of eighty-something is, in a way, a child?
And the heartbreaking thing is that toward the very end, when he knew how bad the cancer was, that it was fatal, he said, “What did I do wrong?” as though it was a punishment, or that he hadn’t been responsible enough to keep the body healthy, which was his job to do, that he had failed in that. And that just broke my heart.

He also had an aversion, though he didn’t do it all the time—I often had photographs of him on the desk or somewhere, and he would turn them face down; he’d just, as he walked past, he’d turn it over and go on doing whatever he was doing. Or, if a book had a photograph of him on the dust jacket, he’d turn it, so it didn’t show in some way. And he seldom listened to any recordings.
On the eleventh of April, ‘we watched Apollo 13 take off for the moon.’ That was something he was interested in.
We’re about to go to England. So, ‘in the afternoon on the thirteenth, there was a 3 p.m.  meeting with Krishnaji, the Lilliefelts, Ruth Tettemer, Sidney Roth, and Saul Rosenthal.

Krishnaji and I had supper as usual and then news came of the electrical trouble on the Apollo 13 moon mission, forcing cancellation and return to Earth.’
Then the next day, ‘Rajagopal telephoned Krishnaji and said “Don’t desert me.”’ Imagine that. We said goodbye to Filomena and drove to the airport. Krishnaji and I took the 3 p.m. TWA nonstop flight to London.

Krishnaji and I arrived in London at 10:30 a.m. The Digbys came to greet Krishnaji, and Dorothy was there to bring us back to Brockwood in the Land Rover. Dorothy said this was the first spring-like day. We arrived at Brockwood, where the daffodils are out but the trees are still bare. The house looked lovely. Everyone gave a warm greeting, and we were just in time for lunch. Both were groggy and tired. Telephoned Mary Links at Blackdown. Alain was there, having flown from San Francisco last Monday. Slept all afternoon.’
On the twentieth, the morning, ‘I felt sick, but better later. Very tired. Krishnaji felt the same. Mary Cadogan came by in the morning and for lunch. I brought her up-to-date with the news. Slept in afternoon. I did a little unpacking. Krishnaji and I went for a walk with the two dogs, Badger and Whisper.’
The next day, the Mercedes was reactivated, and in the afternoon we drove to Winchester on errands. Krishnaji talked to me about a change that is necessary and quiet within and without.’ He was always talking about being quiet within. As you know, a 'little-paid-attention-to' factor in his teaching, the real necessity to be quiet, which, of course, is the emptiness. He talked often, often about that.
Heh-heh....The next day, it says, ‘A quiet day, and I was quiet, too.’ Unfortunately, I wasn’t as quiet as I should’ve been.

April twenty-fourth, 1970 we were at Brockwood.
Mary must’ve been in communication with Shiva Rao who was supposed to do the biography, and he assembled a lot of material. But then he got too ill and old and so forth, and so Krishnaji asked Mary to take it over, and Shiva Rao turned over all that he’d written and also the research material, which he’d gathered quite a pile of it, he turned all that over to Mary. some more another day. He kept coming back and back to that. It’s such a…well, now, I find, reading through things, his teachings I mean, his writings, I keep highlighting some things. It keeps jumping out at me, this necessity for everyone to be able to have this emptiness. He talks so much about emptying the mind. There’s some place where I’ve probably come upon it in notes where he says that every night, before you go to sleep, empty the mind, go through what happened, what you’ve been preoccupied with that day, and empty it. Finish it! So the mind can start anew the next day. And, of course, this is something few of us even think of trying to do, much less doing it.
You know, one of the great mysteries of right now, and I would think it will continue to be mysterious in people who really take this very seriously, is the apparently extraordinary fact or phenomenon of this man who apparently was unconditioned and yet he lived on so many different planes. I mean, I can rattle on about everyday life with him, but the infinite fact of this man is that that played a very small part, I think—I mean, I’m guessing actually, in the totality of what he was. A lot of what I’ve been talking about this summer with Dr. Parchure is looking in old, early talks of the 1930s , and the hints which a lot of us mightn’t pick up in the writing because he’ll say something, but it has a much deeper meaning in another context, and yet it seems understandable in our context. We understand it on our level, but it has a deeper significance if you continue to study and see how he’s really testifying, or there seem to be very strong hints of a lot of things he didn’t go into in depth with that audience, because they wouldn’t have understood it. Or, he may come back to it later and deepen it. He hoped we would find, someone. I think that he felt that with David Bohm, he’d gone as far as they both could go. But he used to say, there’s more… And, I would say to him, “Krishnaji, couldn’t you just talk?” And he said, “No. It takes, a kind of a (shared) process of having not only just a listener, an audience, but there’s that communication, and he could tell what the other person was picking up. Therefore, he knew, had he explained it properly. He did this in talks. This he did tell me. He would find a face somewhere in the audience that seemed to be following, he could tell, and he would talk at that person, not necessarily just looking at him constantly and excluding the others but that was like a thermometer of the 'temperature of interest', or what he was saying was communicating to somebody; somebody was going with him. And he used to say, “Does this interest you?” or “Do you understand?” or “Are you going with me?” He wanted that reciprocal response. Not that he had to have it, but it made it easier. That’s probably why he would say to the audience it was 'dialogue', even though he was doing all the talking. But there was that 'sonar 'going out and coming back, which somehow paced his talking. In other words, if he had to go into it again, or that curious pattern of how he would go forward and then he would loop back part of the way, and then go a little forward, like endless figure eights on the side. And therefore, he also needed the challenge. He wanted someone to challenge him, which would make him dig deeper into his perception and his language to bring it out. Because he was 'communicating' something, he had to get something back to tell whether he was communicating it adequately. But, at the same time, the challenge of questions made him look deeper. It wasn’t that he was sitting seeing, you know, a whole ocean there; he had to go deeper into his power of perception to meet the challenge of a question, and what he brought out of that made it…it sort of stimulated another step.

He never wanted people to turn it into a process.
Even when he was saying to negatively look at what’s going on in you, don’t try to look at what’s out there. Nevertheless, people tend to say, “Oh yes, I must be aware.” Well, people have no idea what he meant by 'awareness'. I don’t know what he meant by awareness, but I know from reading and talking and so forth, that it’s infinitely deeper than just being aware of sitting in the kitchen, and flowers on the table, and I’m sitting here trying to think.

Also, he seems to be calling for…I’ve been talking about mutation with Parchure and what Krishnaji meant by that, and Parchure has looked up what science has said causes mutation, to try to see what this thing is in outward life. In other words, scientifically, it’s mostly medical, about the genes, all the genetic things they found and how that works. And the thing that Krishnaji’s always said which is it’s the constant change and flow, which is really of life. I mean, as we sit here, we’re both changing, both organically in various ways and psychologically. And he was trying, I think, by all the ways that he spoke of awareness and watching and all these things, to bring people into that perception that thought is never the flow. In other words, the stuff of thought happened, it’s over; it’s a reflection of something that is by now static and over. And to bring people into a state where psychological change can occur, because the mutation is a psychological mutation, obviously. This is also why he was so interested in talking about the brain, and the repercussions of perception in the brain cells; and even into genetic change. He seemed to foresee all this way back before science caught up with all these things, that that is the evolution, not some step-by-step unfolding of human potential.

I don’t know what else to say. It’s a psychological “going further.” We’ve evolved physically over a period of whatever it is, but now what is required in order to survive, and it’s part of the survival thing. The mutation that’s possible and the next…what human beings should be doing is to mutate psychologically, which would be into this state of not being bound by conditioning, and all the level that we live at ninety-nine percent of the time, and which we perpetuate in a way, by thinking; because as we think and talk, we’re adding more data into our brain cells, which is indeed, that’s where the self lives, and the self wants to keep that going and resists the emptying, resists the something that threatens it.

I may be doing a lot of interpreting here but it’s fascinating to read…read almost between his lines and without interpreting, but seeing he says this, and that on that level is what he meant to say, but what else…the depth of these things. People don’t realize the extraordinary depth of what he was saying.
Sometimes it sounds so simple, which is where people get "hung up' because they think it is simple. It isn’t. It’s immeasurable.

He loved to go to the temple with his mother. In fact, he went to temples by himself in Rishi Valley, there was some temple way up some mountain that he used to climb up and go to it. I think it was a deserted temple or something. So he didn’t either embrace it or resist any of all this. The more, the more one ponders all this, both Krishnaji as a human being and his teachings, the more extraordinary both become.
It’s just our shortsightedness that prevents us understanding all that or seeing it. But it’s important, I think, to never say, “Oh yes, this is, this is what he meant. I understand this. It’s just like the light coming in this window. You can’t say, “I’ve so much light now and I’ve got it. It’s alive; it’s there.

Well, now, I guess we have gotten to the twenty-eighth of April, and Krishnaji went on dictating chapters of a book. The next day, Krishnaji ‘dictated another chapter. And we talked to Mary Cadogan and also to Mary Links about publications. Mary and Joe were to go to Venice the next day for a fortnight.’ Also it says, ‘In the p.m., Krishnaji, Dorothy, and I drove to pretty country beyond Petersfield and walked there.’

On the first of May, ‘Again Krishnaji dictated in the morning, and in the afternoon Mr. Campion and a nurse arrived and they set up their equipment in the guestroom. Campion pulled two of Krishnaji’s lower left molars. They came out very easily. Krishnaji felt well enough to listen to a little of some Indian musicians who came to play for him at the school. He went to bed and had a liquid supper.’ He had a terrible time with his teeth all the time. And as a dentist once said, they just 'wore out'. The next day, ‘Krishnaji was feeling fairly well, and he got up for lunch and came with me on errands to Petersfield, and we went for a walk.’

‘There was a Saanen meeting in the morning. And we walked across the fields and down into the lanes, and started cleaning ivy off trees.’ He was very intent on getting the ivy off the trees. Well I, to this day, if I pass a tree and I think the ivy isn’t too strong, if I can get a grip on the ivy and pull it off, I will.

‘On the train in the morning, we had a discussion of what is 'sacredness', and what freedom is to the sacred.’  I’m afraid I don’t remember the contents of that. ‘Later Krishnaji had an idea to bring his Mercedes to England and sell mine in January.’ But then he changed his mind because he didn’t want to bring the little one.
Now we come to the eighth, and ‘a student meeting and made a tape from it on education to be used in Finland at an educational conference in June.’
The next day, James Brodsky interviewed Krishnaji and stayed to lunch. Saral and David Bohm came for the weekend.

On the tenth, Krishnaji spoke to students in the morning. I talked to the Bohms and the Simmonses about trying to raise money by the English Foundation for a grant for Brockwood. Obviously, we didn’t get it.
According to India, the eleventh was Krishnaji’s seventy-fifth birthday. And it says here, ‘as he brushes it away, no reference is made to it in the school. He dictated on the book in the morning. And he washed the Mercedes very thoroughly.’ ‘I went for a walk alone as he’d had enough after the car washing.” That was his seventy-fifth birthday.

On the sixth, ‘after lunch, Krishnaji, Dorothy, and Sebastian put two hives of bees, which arrived in cartons, into the new hives in the orchard. Krishnaji said later, “Now I feel this is a real place; it has bees.”’ “Bees are a marvelous thing,” he said. He used to take care of bees, in Ojai.

On the ninth: ‘Krishnaji said there was a different 'something' in  meditation in what would have been described in old terminology as an 'initiation'.’

The next day, Krishnaji asked if I might carry on the work when he is gone: “You have listened to all this.”
The fifteenth of June was spent in ‘Krishnaji giving an interview in color for the BBC television. He was questioned by Oliver Hunkin, head of the religious department of the BBC, and a Miss Shirley du Boulay was the producer of the show.’ I remember that; it was in the drawing room.
On the seventeenth, ‘we went to London for Huntsman and then the dentist for Krishnaji’s bridge to be adjusted. Then we lunched with Mary at her flat, and continued the discussion of Krishnaji’s early life for the biography. The Uher’—that was my tape recorder in those days—‘didn’t work, so I took notes. Krishnaji felt tired on the train back and quite sick when we got home. He coughed a lot, and though he was without fever, he became somewhat delirious. And he said, “He shouldn’t have gone to town. Who’s looking after him? He’s left the body. No, no, not that.”’

He wasn’t well that day, and he’d done too much. When he first told me about the “going off” thing, he said, “If I have fever this may happen.”
And Krishnaji said it was like violence to the body: apparently illness or fever, particularly fever. The time in Gstaad he said, “If I…if my fever goes up…” When the body was under great stress, and in the hospital it happened, too. See, when the body was under stress from either operation or fever or a slight thing in his lip, Krishna would leave the body. Krishna would go away. And the little creature that was left…
I don’t remember that it was a child’s voice, this time. You see, he went by train that day; and then he went to Huntsman, and then the dentist, and then the lunch with Mary, the discussion, and he was tired on the train and sick when we got home. He coughed a lot. It says here ‘without fever, he became somewhat delirious. He said, “He shouldn’t have gone to town. Who was looking after him?”’ He’s left the body. And then he said, ‘“No, no, not that.”’ And the fainting, he later explained, was a kind of leaving the body to rest something.

But he would only faint when he was with people he trusted. He wouldn’t faint in public. So, we finally got there, and I took him in a sort of back room, the main room, and showed him where it was and he was standing by the window and fainted. He fell on the floor. I wasn’t quick enough to catch him. I’d turned away or something. That time, I was not warned. Every other time something has always warned me.
It’s as though from time to time…well, again, this is such speculation, that as though he needed to be away from the body, and perhaps when these things happen to him in sleep, it’s that happening, you know these strange sort of meditation things, where…I don’t know. That’s all just speculation.

The next day, the eighteenth, ‘Krishnaji was shaky and weak at first, but he stayed in bed all day, but felt better after lunch. He read and watched television.

from the twentieth of June 1970, which is where we left off, until the twenty-fourth, there is nothing much to report. And even on the twenty-fourth, there’s nothing about Krishnaji (except, of course, he was giving interviews), but I flew on that day to Paris to see my father. His wife, my stepmother, was very unwell and in the hospital. Bud had flown there from New York. I returned to Brockwood on the twenty-fifth.
The first notable thing we did was on the twenty-seventh, when ‘we drove over to Blackdown and had tea with Mary and Joe. We took a walk and had a lovely time. “Let’s enjoy ourselves,” said Krishnaji.’ ‘And we did. We had fun.’ He was so quick to enjoy things, when things were nice and enjoyable, he entered into it with such a kind of childlike
 for a man who was so far from childhood—and yet he still had that lovely quality of openness and entering so easily and quickly into anything nice that happened. It made one want him to be pleased because seeing him enjoy something was really such a selfish pleasure for me. One had that joy also because of his reactions. So, one shared that kind of wonder and enjoyment.

So, on June thirtieth, ‘we left Brockwood and drove to Hastings, and then to Lydd, where we flew the car across to Le Touquet in France, as we had before. Krishnaji drove about halfway there.’ ‘We went on a little further to Montreuil,’ where we had stayed a number of times, ‘and stopped at the Château de Montreuil,’ which was a very nice hotel, a château made into a small hotel. It’s right on the sea with battlements in front of it.
S: How nice.
M: ‘We walked along the battlements before supper with the sea wind blowing in. It was lovely. We had a pleasant supper in the dining room,’ and that was it. We left the next morning,’ the first of July, ‘and went via Arras to the autoroute and reached Paris at about 1 p.m. We lunched at the Tour d’Argent with my father.’
 So, ‘we left Paris, and went to the hotel Bas Bréau in Barbizon,’ where we’d stayed before. ‘We had the same rooms as before, which was very nice.’ It was a little upstairs in another building. It was very quiet. ‘We went for a walk in the forest and had dinner up in the rooms.’ You could have meals brought, which was nice.
The next day, ‘we left Barbizon and drove to Sens, where we took the little tiny yellow roads on the maps,’ those small country roads and wound our way. We went to Troyes, and beyond Troyes we lunched at the Hostellerie Pont in Pont Sainte-Marie. We went on towards Chaumont and finally came to Prangey, where we had rooms in the Château de Prangey,’ which wasn’t so good. ‘The food wasn’t too good’; we didn’t like that too much. And then on via Saint-Cergues,’ down to Nyon and to Geneva, and to good old Hotel du Rhône.’We’re both pleased to be in Switzerland and arrived at Chalet Tannegg. ‘Vanda was there, also Fosca, and a maid called Olga.’ So we were well looked after.
The next few days were quiet: ‘Krishnaji stayed in bed most of the time. Sacha de Manziarly came to lunch, and for that Krishnaji came to the table’ because he was fond of Sacha. Sacha told him stories and made him laugh and that was very nice.

‘Unfortunately, Krishnaji was having hay fever trouble. They were tossing the hay in the fields, and that got to him, as it always did.’
On the tenth, ‘Vanda left for Florence. Krishnaji and I drove my Mercedes to Thun and had just a lovely drive. We picnicked at the edge of the lake, which was fun.’ Swans used to come in and beg for food. And it was fun to see them with their baleful eyes, but lovely, long, graceful necks. Then we went back to the garage, by which time Krishnaji’s Mercedes was ready, and we drove back to Gstaad.’
On the thirteenth, ‘Krishnaji was feeling quite a bit better, and he got up for lunch with Marcelle de Manziarly. We went for a walk along the Turbach River in the afternoon. Vanda telephoned from Florence about Krishnaji’s speaking in Italy in October; some talks in Perugia and some in Firenze.’ He was asked to speak there and she arranged it. ‘Krishnaji spoke after lunch to Herri and Hilda Moorhead  and he talked about India a lot with them, and who can carry on the teachings in the school and see that they’re followed and taught. Also, and if money becomes available from KWINC for the Indian schools, who is to see to that and see that it’s used for the teachings and not used for buying tractors, etcetera?’ ‘He also asked, “Who has the teachings at heart?” They had no answer. “All the old Foundation for New Education, that is the present KF India, is mostly old followers who don’t want any interference, even by me. They care about the status of it and little else.” The Moorheads pointed out something about the Krishnamurti Centre in Madras, and The Bulletin, and Krishnaji got quite upset. He wanted to revise the text of his statement, but I pointed out that the omission in the statement was because of his talking of all three foundations and not all the allied committees.’

‘In the evening, Krishnaji suddenly said to me, “Make a note of it. I’ve been talking in India, spending more time there than anywhere else, and there is not one person who listens and has changed. It is terribly difficult for people to change. They are what they are. When I die, it will be over. I thought Naudé might have done something, but he wasn’t ready. What will happen to you? People aren’t serious. Are you serious? I’ve been talking over forty years, and I’d be a damned fool if I didn’t realize people are as they are. I’m not depressed by it, I’ll go on talking.” It was a kind of…I don’t like the word frustration about Krishnaji, but he felt that people were all busy there, but it wasn’t…the teachings were somehow, I don’t know what, taken for granted, as it were. 

Krishnaji asked what will happen to me when he dies. He said that it depends on what I do and am now, i.e., the changes in me. He asked me if I felt any presence of Sam after he died. I said yes. We discussed what is evidence and what is imagination. I said I felt it strongly but neither saw objectively nor heard anything. It was a strong sense of presence and communication, real to me, but I cannot offer it as objective evidence to another. Krishnaji said to me, “You can tell the difference between imagination and a 'something'.” He wished he could remember how it was when his brother died. I asked how one can assess such things. I don’t assert anything because I cannot see how it can be proven. But I pay attention and do not deny any part of it. I spoke of the conversation with Vanda last week: her saying that neither she nor I have theosophical conditioning and therefore her experience of being spoken to when Krishnaji was unconscious and the words spoken to me when Krishnaji was sick on June seventeenth…”—that was when he said he shouldn’t have gone to town, who was looking after him—“…were not out of our projection.”’ That’s what Vanda felt.

Krishnaji then spoke of change and listening, i.e., ‘“if you really listen and see, that erases the habit, the previous imprint. The new then functions in the mind and whenever an action of the old pattern arises the mind alerts the consciousness, the conscious attention.” He spoke of my bad habit of frowning, and the need for “a quiet face”’—he always used to say to me, “Have a quiet face”—‘remains because I haven’t seen the importance of changing them. If I had, the old pattern would be erased, he said. He said, “The body sometimes takes time to relearn, but the mind can be instantly alert, therefore, to listen, to see, to change, to wipe out the old pattern. Lack of change is inattention,” he said. “What is listening? Make a note. I will talk about that.”’

On July fifteenth, ‘The weather is suddenly cold and rainy. It was a quiet day, and I did desk work. We ate lunch alone. In the afternoon, I did errands, went to the tent and to the camping site to greet the Simmonses. After a walk alone, I talked to Vanda in Firenze about Krishnaji’s Italian schedule.’
On the next day, ‘it was snowing early. I drove Krishnaji to the tent for his first talk of the year. There were many people, and it was a good talk. The Simmonses came to lunch. We walked in the afternoon. I felt a little light-headed. Donald Hoppen had arrived from Brockwood and he spent the night here, and will look for a place of his own.’
On the seventeenth, ‘Krishnaji spent the whole day in bed resting and reading. I had a good day’s work at the desk. It is still cold with thick clouds. I went down to do errands in the afternoon, and ran into Fabienne van der Straten and Donald, who came with me for a walk.’
The next day, ‘I took Donald to a chalet where he has taken a room up the mountain above Saanen and near Chalet Helios, where Brockwood people are staying. I visited there.

Krishnaji and I went to the Biascoechea’s for lunch. Krishnaji asked Enrique to tell me about the dreams he had before Krishnaji was found as a boy. In Enrique’s dream, Mrs. Besant appeared with a young Indian and said, “This is the world teacher-to-be.” The dream was so strong that Enrique, who was speaking at a Theosophical meeting, announced that a boy had been found before he knew it officially.’

‘“What was he like when you saw him?” Krishnaji kept asking. But Enrique was only able to discuss what he himself felt and not what the boy was like, except that he was very warm and friendly. “Write it down, sir,” said Krishnaji. I asked later, would it be interesting for Mary’s biography?

On the nineteenth, ‘it was another beautiful day and it was Krishnaji’s second talk in the tent. Herr Graf had water trickling down the exterior of the tent to cool it, but the tape recorder picked up the sound of it, so the water had to be turned off. Krishnaji spoke on freedom, authority, compassion, and the basis of fear. In response to a question, “Is it possible to learn all the time?” he said, “You block yourself in such a question. If you are watching, there is nothing to learn.”
People swarmed around him afterwards. One of the hippies, bearded, barefoot, in jeans and a skivvy top, was wearing a pistol and walked out before the end.’ I remember that.

Krishnaji’s audiences are no longer welcome in Gstaad. Krishnaji attracts hippies.’
‘Krishnaji and I went for a walk in the rain down behind Gstaad. He had me make mental notes that “Creation is never conflict,” and later that “You all don’t make use of me enough.” I asked if he meant we didn’t ask the right questions. He said, “Partly. It’s all so vast. You are not serious enough.”’

On the twenty-first, ‘Krishnaji gave his third talk in the tent. A very good one on inner real revolution, the dangers of analysis, time, and postponement. The Lilliefelts were there, having arrived early by car from Spiez, Frankfurt, and California. They came up for lunch and we asked Se?or Fresia too. After the latter left, Krishnaji, the Lilliefelts, and I caught up on all the news. A letter came from James Vigeveno in the usual vein i.e., “it is a personal matter between Krishnaji and Rajagopal,” the usual threats, etc. Krishnaji refused to touch it. He made me open it. When I began to read it to him, he stopped me and made me jump to just tell him the gist.’ He didn’t like to touch or be too close to these things that he found soiled and dirty and somehow evil.

M: ‘I read most of it to him over his expostulations as he should know. Each of these letters has seemed something unclean to him. He would not touch or look at them. He gave it to the Lilliefelts to read. A meeting of lawyers is now set for the sixth of August. The summary of a settlement offer is due here any day. Harper & Row are eager to do the books. Urgency of Change is coming out in time for Christmas, so they want the talks from 1969 on and are trying to buy up ones Servire have. Mr. Cutler’—that must have been the man at Harper—‘is very enthusiastic.
‘Krishnaji had walked down the hill before lunch, so we went for a drive in his car toward Les Mosses. I talked of the hippies to Graf, who says the locals wouldn’t rent a barn to Krishnamurti people because the hippies come and behave amorously near the tent next to the children’s encampment!’ I don’t quite know how far that went, but that’s what it says. ‘Krishnaji sent Graf to see Mr. Mueller to find out if the community is really becoming hostile. Krishnaji decided to hold discussions with the young people in the tent. Older people could sit silently in the back if they want.’
‘He spoke of a quiet mind.’ ‘I discussed the endless serving up of thoughts and images that is all trivia. If one widens the scope, like looking from one’s finger to the wide valley, it is still an act of the conscious mind and will, and not very different.’ ‘Then, attention to inattention can become a succession of images. As I spoke I find myself saying that a different sense comes about when there is great physical quiet in that there is almost a detachment from the body, a different quality of mind. Krishnaji said, “Try to act from emptiness. Find out what it is and do that. It is the way one should live . Throughout his life the emptiness has been the most dominant quality.
Both for him, naturally, and to try to convey that to us.
Later Krishnaji said, “You must be transformed in every way inside and out.’”

‘Krishnaji asked me what I would do if he died. I asked what he would want me to do, but he wouldn’t say. Later, he came back to it again, saying how he lives between life and death—it has always been a very thin line for him. Sometimes he feels like disappearing. I asked if he meant dying. He said, “No, no,” just going off where nobody knows him. He said he had often told me that talking is necessary in what he is supposed to do. Could living quietly, remotely and just writing be sufficient? And he said, “No.”’

On the twenty-fifth of July, ‘Krishnaji weighs only fifty kilos on the scale, but looks less thin and is full of energy. So, he polished shoes with a fury,’ ‘and had his bath as the Simmonses and Lilliefelts arrived for lunch. He went merrily off down the hill for his walk. I fetched Donald and a dessert, and then we went back for Krishnaji. Erna and Theo had a baptism of fire about Brockwood as Dorothy described some of the behavior of the students before she left. Her worries over the girls here in Gstaad is because of the hippies.’ She was afraid the girls would get mixed up with the hippies.

‘ Krishnaji’s talks and discussions and the feeling some people have that they can’t get through to him. Krishnaji listened and examined it and said, “The speaker also feels you are not coming to him with great buckets, etcetera. He says, ‘Please take anything you want,’ and you say, ‘Here, give us a little bit of that.’ He doesn’t want to push. He can pour, pour when you say, ‘That is not enough,’ then he can pour. He, the speaker, he says, ‘Alright, I’ll give you…you know?’”

‘On our walk back toward the car, we passed U.G. Krishnamurti, who gave the Indian salute unsmilingly with a sort of hunched turning away. Krishnaji said after we passed, “I felt something unclean.’”

On the twenty-eighth, ‘Krishnaji gave his sixth Saanen talk, and an Italian hippie, Enzo, shouted at him in the middle of it. Krishnaji, who had been talking about pleasure in sex, in various things, was quiet, then resumed, “You take pleasure in violence, in anger, etcetera.”’

This is the twenty-ninth, ‘Krishnaji said to me, “I came from Madanapalle to make you intelligent.” The taxi I had ordered didn’t come, so Krishnaji put a coat over his dressing gown, and drove me down to the station. I caught the train to Zweisimmen, and he took the car back up the hill.

On the fourth, ‘Krishnaji held the third public discussion in the tent. A Saint Bernard tethered to the fence near the car jumped at him aggressively but didn’t hurt him. After the discussion, Krishnaji saw the Biascoecheas upstairs at Tannegg, while I had a meeting downstairs with Joan Gordon and the Lilliefelts about New York next April. Then Madame Duchet and Marcelle Bondoneau came to lunch. Krishnaji asked questions on what he was like when he was about twenty-two and Marcelle first met him. Marcelle imitated the way Indians talk, animated.’

Dorothy is in a mood to expel the three girls who have behaved badly here. She is tired of playing policeman to save silly girls from delinquency. The school was meant for more than that, she said.

Krishnaji talked about the function of the committees after his death and much about publications. He spelled out that Vimala Takhar has nothing to do with anything.

Krishnaji gave the eighth and last of the public discussions in the tent. It seems these talks and discussions were the most intense Krishnaji has ever given. Superb.
Krishnaji went off for a walk and when they’d gone, I joined him. I saw his footprints along the muddy road. It had been raining and then the remote figure in his raincoat and beret came along the path. He is tired but full of energy. These concentrations of meetings seem to bring him the necessary, almost limitless vitality, but they all are now over, and he will give no more interviews, etcetera. He was restless at night, cried out, “Mama! They don’t know how vast it is.” He said he might start writing.’

The tenth was ‘a cold, foggy day. Krishnaji wanted to shop for shoes, so we went to the village and he found a pair he liked for walking. Joan Wright, the American young man Jim Wallace, Canadians John and Elaine La Marquand came for lunch. The latter was a boy who seemed to be listening so intensely in the talks. Madame Duchet saw Krishnaji briefly at 4 p.m. Then Krishnaji took Dorothy Simmons and me for a ride in his Mercedes. Let her drive it, too. Both of them were quite nervous at that.’ ‘Krishnaji and I walked with Dorothy down to the van der Stratens, where she and Montague went, and Krishnaji and I came back.’

The eleventh. ‘I fetched Madame Suarès up the hill to see Krishnaji at noon. She has sided with Rajagopal through misinformation of Mima Porter, so Krishnaji talked to her and gave her the facts. She had been told that Krishnaji had refused to see Rajagopal. He explained why he wouldn’t see him alone and that he had tried repeatedly to meet. Blitz’s story was distorted. Alain was blamed for all of it. Krishnaji said that his trouble with Rajagopal had been going on for over ten years before Alain appeared. Krishnaji didn’t mention the attorney general at all, but said that things are now up to Rajagopal if he wishes to settle. Mima Porter sent her a seventeen-page copy of accusations for Suarès to read.

On the twelfth, ‘The Lilliefelts left; and the van der Stratens came for lunch. Krishnaji said he read in his Maigret , which he reads to practice French, the phrase, “his thought was faster than his words.”’
‘And he realized that when he is giving a talk, he does not think at all!’

‘Along the way, Krishnaji said, “Shall we talk seriously? That no one has made the change. Is there something he should do before he dies about this? I don’t feel I’m to blame.” I began to ask him what the process is of meeting a statement of his, such as “having an empty mind,” i.e., hearing that, my mind sees it has known such moments but doesn’t know if what I have known is what he refers to. I suspect it is far less, but that is speculation. How indeed shoul

This post was last updated by John Raica Fri, 23 Jun 2017.

more MZ "story time"

On August twenty, 1970, ‘It was a cool grey day, and Krishnaji and I said goodbye to Fosca and Antonia’—that was the extra maid—‘and drove in the Mercedes toward Geneva at 11:30 a.m. We had a terrible time finding a gas station open to fill the tank. But we did and we had a picnic along the autoroute before we got to Geneva. We arrived at the Geneva airport where Mr. Moser met us.’ ‘We signed the order for the new Mercedes 280 SE Coupe 3.5 for next April, and he drove off in the dear present one.’ As usual, I got very sentimental about giving a car away. ‘It had hummmmed at 105 miles per hour on the auto route.’ ‘The nicest car I ever drove,’ I say. ‘Krishnaji and I took the 3:15 p.m. British Airways flight to London. Dorothy met us, but on exiting the terminal, found that her car had been impounded for illegal parking! So there was a delay while she got it back. We then drove to Brockwood. Krishnaji was very silent and remote. He has been “far off,” he says, since the train ride on Tuesday. He said that Rajagopal and Rosalind must have asked him for things when he was in such states, and he would say, “anything you say,” the way he used to say to Leadbeater. His face was an austere mask in the car, but he returned enough to greet people on arrival at Brockwood, and wanted to have supper downstairs with everyone. Dorothy looked tense. Brockwood needs pulling together, but it is good to be back. Slept very well.’

‘At 4 p.m., Krishnaji held a meeting with the Simmonses, Doris, Donald, and me on Brockwood and all problems and general disorder. A female teacher, who was left in charge of Brockwood with an American couple called Janetson, is having an affair with someone else at Brockwood, and that was the problem. ‘Krishnaji really blazed at all of us. He said, “When you have tried reasoning, talking with them, and it does no good and you don’t want to use threats, what do you do?” He hammered so hard on Dorothy, the others kept silent, but I was afraid she would come apart, so I drew some of the fire, and what a fire it was! “You can’t walk away from me. You have to educate them.” In the end it was a matter of saying that we have tried dissuasion, and they have turned that into a game of contention.’
‘Krishnaji said, “We are through with that. This is the direction of Brockwood, not your direction, but the original direction for which it was begun. Do you want to come with us? If so, it will be an answer in action and not merely verbal.” It was 7:00 p.m. by the time this meeting ended.’

On Sunday, the next day, ‘the Lilliefelts arrived, having motored around southern England for a few days. They are in the West Wing spare room. Krishnaji was interviewed at noon for the Times’ Educational Supplement. Mr. Parriae wants to invest $100,000 in a house nearby, which Brockwood can use. After lunch, I took Erna and Theo around the place. At 4 p.m., Krishnaji had another meeting with the Simmonses, Doris, Donald, and me. Dorothy has asked all the extraneous people to leave, including…’ those people who are having affairs. The very next morning he talked to the woman concerned before lunch. But I wasn’t there so there’s nothing about what he said. And ‘in the afternoon, I went to Winchester with the Lilliefelts in their car and then went alone by train to Southampton. At the Hertz office I rented a tomato-red Volkswagen and drove home to Brockwood. Krishnaji went walking with a young man who wishes to be part of Brockwood. This was good news to me until Krishnaji added that this young man said that he had a feeling of Krishnaji’s death and that he would be present then when Krishnaji is seventy-seven.’ This so shocked me that I felt sick and wished never to hear of this young man again. Krishnaji was impatient with all this. “You must face it,” he said. “I don’t know why you all make such a fuss about death.” I said I would face it when it came, but I didn’t want to face the trivial references to it conversationally. Later, he said, “I think I will live quite a lot longer, or pop off any time!”

The next day ‘was quiet. Krishnaji slept a lot. We walked a long walk in the afternoon.’
August twenty-sixth. ‘Krishnaji and I in the red Volkswagen went to Alton, then to London on the 10:20 a.m. train. Naturally, our first stop was at Huntsman, where I ordered a pair of grey Birdseye slacks, and Krishnaji liked the material so much that he ordered a double-breasted suit of the same material. We walked to W. Bill Limited and bought two Shetland pullovers for Krishnaji, and then went to the Aperitif, where Mary Lutyens met us for lunch. Krishnaji asked her about “continuing conversation” for the next book or doing one on parents, children, and teachers. He will start that.

‘The next day was a lovely, warm, clear day. I did deskwork all morning while Krishnaji slept. In the afternoon, we drove to the Itchen River near Avington. Lovely clear stream. We walked along it, but it was too short and we came back to Brockwood.’

On the twenty-eighth, ‘Before lunch, Krishnaji, Dorothy, and I continued the conversation Krishnaji and I had on what are our reasons to the students against their sleeping together. He had to stop for lunch before we finished. Then Krishnaji met the staff and two students who are here for discussions of what cooperation is. Krishnaji said the feeling of cooperation comes first; then, out of that comes its objectives, etcetera. On the walk after, he lit into me, saying I didn’t understand when I asked if the cooperation doesn’t imply action with others, and around some endeavor, the objective or some general nucleus of something, a direction stimulates a feeling of wanting to cooperate. Or, does it get started in the beginning? It generates the wanting to cooperate. I had felt in the discussion that he was stressing cooperation as a primary thing to lead people past the pitfall of beginning by defining what the objections are.’ ‘ He said he has no plan, but I had said in discussion, that he did. That it was not so. That he was examining and had no preconceived plan.’ I was saying, “You planned what you would say.” He was vehement and impatient. I felt an impasse I couldn’t bridge. Later, he sensed this and said he was sorry. He had been rough and it wouldn’t happen again.

When he saw Dorothy later, she was almost in tears of exhaustion. People tried to push their way into staying at Brockwood. Somebody in the garden left.’ Can’t read the writing.
On the twenty-ninth of August, ‘there was the first official meeting of the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust and the Krishnamurti Foundation of America. Present were Krishnaji, Dorothy Simmons, Mary Cadogan, George Digby, David Bohm, Erna and Theo Lilliefelt, and me…also Hughes van der Straten, who stayed for the night. Earlier the post brought Leipziger’s account in detail of the Tapper-Loebl-Leipziger meeting held on August sixth. In it, we learned for the first time the disturbing news that Tapper, without consulting Leipziger, proposed that Rajagopal be allowed to carry on publications of post-1968 material. Everyone thinks this is non-negotiable. Krishnaji leans to thinking that perhaps Rajagopal may want to settle with him rather than go through lawyers. All this plus the Indian Foundation, Spanish-American, and Australian potential foundations were discussed. Finances look somewhat more optimistic.’

Next day, ‘there was a long morning talk between Krishnaji, Hughes, Erna, and me about the impossibility of the Tapper proposal, that Rajagopal carry on publications. Erna cabled Leipziger our feelings and drafted a stiffletter on all of this. Krishnaji again explored the idea that Rajagopal doesn’t really want to carry on this work; he’s too old and sick, but wants the rapprochement with Krishnaji, and may want to hand things over personally to him.’ This was his perpetual optimism. ‘Hughes flew back to Belgium. After lunch, I drove Erna and Theo to Blackdown for tea with the Linkses. Krishnaji was ready to come but looked so tired that he stayed and slept. Mary had written to him yesterday to suggest that Brockwood needed his presence eight to nine months of the year. It was a warm day, and pleasant at the Linkses. We got back to Brockwood in time for supper.’

On the thirty-first of August, ‘Krishnaji dictated to me, in the morning, a conversation on the meaning of cooperation for The Bulletin. At lunch, Dorothy gave a resume of the instant hostility of the latest pupil from the U.S. He wants to leave after being here two hours ‘because of his hair!’It was suggested that it be kept reasonably clean, neat, and not too long. Hair is one’s most sacred object these days. Krishnaji and I and Whisper walked along the road toward West Meon and then down the hill between the fields, a long and lovely walk.’

Krishnaji decided to start a new book tomorrow on education. Giving views of parents, students, and teachers in India, Europe, and the U.S. Mary L. wants to start editing his next book in January, which means we must work on this one every day.

The first of September. ‘Krishnaji began dictation of the new education book. It began very like the conversations except that the questioner was a group of parents, in this case, Indian ones. There was the usual lovely bit of nature descriptions at the beginning—Rajghat in this one. Though I typed in the afternoon, it was impossible to finish. Krishnaji talked to the Biascoecheas at 4 p.m. and wanted me present on it, as it was about the Hispano-Americana Foundation. Then we took Whisper for a walk. Erna and Theo went to Stonehenge, Longleat, and the New Forest.
The next day, ‘Krishnaji did #2 of the education book. I went to Winchester on errands. It rained and the de Vidases came for the talks.’
On the third of September, ‘he dictated #3 of the education book in the morning. We had a 12:30 p.m. lunch, and made the 1:50 p.m. train from Alton to London. Both had Huntsman fittings. Krishnaji bought a windbreaker at Lillywhites and we were back at Brockwood by 6:30 p.m. On trains, Krishnaji gets very dreamy.’
The next day, ‘again he dictated. The house is swarming with people. Balasundarum arrived from India. There’s a letter from Rosenthal’—that’s our lawyer—‘who will be in Norwich on Sunday.’

On the fifth, ‘Saturday, a lovely sunny day. The tent had been put up in the field beyond the swimming pool, and in it, Krishnaji gave his first of four talks. About 600 people came. The sound system worked excellently this year, and lunch was had after the talk by everyone, including Krishnaji. Martha Longnecker was there—the Digbys, the Lilliefelts, and I discussed publication matters afterward.’
Sunday the sixth, ‘another lovely day and Krishnaji gave the second talk, very good, very strong. Again, a picnic lunch in the tent—800 to 900 people today. At 4 p.m., the two Krishnamurti Foundations met—Biascoechea, Farias, and Sendra, regarding their forming a Krishnamurti Foundation; a Krishnamurti Fundación Hispano-Americana. They never could give a reason why they wanted to be called a foundation, but it looks as if they will. There was talk of how more protection could be put in all the foundations’ charters to protect Krishnaji’s intention. For instance, they would publish only his books, etcetera.
The seventh of September, ‘Erna and I rang Saul Rosenthal in Norwich. He can come here next Sunday to discuss settlement proposals.’ Then things about my brother and sister-in-law. ‘Krishnaji dictated No. 5 on the education book. At 4 p.m., he held a meeting with the school. Brockwood’s intention is 'intelligence', which is sensitivity and freedom. Freedom equals freedom from one’s own conditioning. 
 
Mrs. Jayakar has the flu in Bombay and can’t be here till the eighteenth, missing the meeting on Monday. The Lilliefelts’ charter flight leaves that day. We will go ahead with the meeting on Monday. A tiring but busy day. Balasundarum showed Rishi Valley slides in the evening.’
Tuesday, the eighth of September. ‘There were showers, and it was colder. Krishnaji held a discussion in the tent for those who are staying in the neighborhood between the weekend talks; 150 to 200 people or more. Questions were on education and ran rather like yesterday’s school discussion, except that he made it sound utterly new. Intelligence, freedom, and the fragmented conditional mind could see that it is patterned as it happens, and that instantaneous perception
‘The Bohms asked to see Krishnaji and he talked to them at 4 p.m., and later Krishnaji went for a walk with Dave.

We continued with “what Brockwood is about,” how to bring about intelligence and freedom in this. And what is discipline? What do we do if after discovery through intelligent discussion and agreement the person still doesn’t follow through?’ That’s what we talked about. ‘Hair was brought up as a subject by Dominic. If clean and tidy, fine, but otherwise is disagreeable to others who have to live alongside. Sensitivity, consideration, should prevent dirty bare feet, etcetera, etcetera. That was the early problems. ‘But if a person perpetually disregards all this, do we discipline, punish which is repellent? What do we do it became almost a detective story, wondering how Krishnaji would solve it. Later, he told me that he had no idea where he was going; it just came out. That it is the reluctant person who punishes himself by pulling away from the intelligence of an offer to live in friendship and accord, and the learning process here.

Krishnaji was too tired to walk after all this, and went to bed. In the evening, Balasundarum talked with Biascoechea and said he had seen Krishnaji’s Indian horoscope at Adyar, and that he was born at 12:24 a.m., after midnight on May thirteenth, 1895 Balasundaram's notes:‘Theosophy said Krishnaji in a former life, was one of the Buddha’s disciples. Balasundarum gave me a photo of Krishnaji when young', said Krishnaji, in answer to his and Pupul’s question on how it was he could see things without division, etcetera, how it came about. Krishnaji replied, he could remember that as a boy he had always seen things without any division, i.e., the "observer" and the" observed" were not there from the beginning in him.’ ‘Yesterday, Balasundarum told me of Rajagopal’s bullying Krishnaji in India in 1957, and also Rosalind’s rudeness to him in India in 1956.’

On the tenth of September, ‘Krishnaji held the second discussion in the tent for those here between talks. A woman new to all this and a worker in a mental hospital, by the name of Spooner, kept asking, from the psychiatric point of view, questions on thought, solving everything, trying to understand through the brain. Krishnaji gave a brilliant analysis, laying bare how thought is the cause of trouble—fear, as an example, cannot exist without thought. Erna and Theo left for London after lunch and spent the night there.’
The next day, ‘Krishnaji dictated #7 in the education book. Rosenthal rang from London and will be here on Sunday. Krishnaji, Dorothy, Whisper, and I took a long walk down the lane between the fields. Erna and Theo returned. They’d had a long lunch with Michael Rubinstein and Mary Cadogan. After supper, I talked to Balasundarum about Indian publication matters.’

The twelfth of September ‘was pouring rain in the early morning, but it luckily stopped in time for Krishnaji’s third talk in the tent. He lunched there, sitting with Mar de Manziarly, who had just come from Boston. Later, he showed her through the West Wing. Erna, Theo, and I were talking right up to the 4 p.m. meeting with the Digbys to persuade George, at Krishnaji’s instructions, that the foreign committees must be able to get publication rights for their languages from KF London directly and not have to go to Servire or Gollancz[4]. George clings, like a limpet, to his concept of loyalty and to Verhulst of Servire. He feels overly indebted to him for publishing the talks when we first began to do it and we hadn’t a publisher. Verhulst has profited by this, and has, in fact, done us no favors, but George cannot see that the committees, though they have every sound reason not to want to deal with Servire and Gollancz, nevertheless, do much work and are owed something by the Foundation, too. De Vidas has been the opponent of Digby, rude as usual, and has stirred up others too, but he did come up with an offer from Delachaux et Niestlé, a Swiss publisher, to do the French translations, and George had brushed him off. Nelly was on our side in all this, and Erna, Theo, and I talked to George right up to the 4 p.m. meeting attended by Krishnaji, de Vidas, Madame Samuel, Farias, Sendra, the Biascoecheas, Tilly Von Eckman, Schmidt, Balasundarum, and the Greek and Danish representatives, Sybil Dobson (who took minutes), the Digbys, the Lilliefelts, and me. Krishnaji led the meeting. Then there were sparks between de Vidas and Digby—de Vidas being his rude and heavy-handed self, George resenting it and defending Servire. It came out, at one point, via Tilly, that Verhulst hadn’t even published in Dutch, except the Gollancz books. With Nelly prodding, George said that the Flight of the Eagle—it was called the Cry of the Eagle then (selected 1969 talks being published by Harper and Row shortly)—is available without Servire, and they all dove for that. De Vidas will offer that to Delachaux et Niestlé. Then, when the meeting was all over, George said to de Vidas he would have to wait three weeks until George had talked to Verhulst. At that point I went back in, and Nelly and I pointed out that he had to give de Vidas a letter authorizing him to offer the book immediately. A long day.’

Sunday, September thirteenth, ‘Erna, Theo, and I met Saul Rosenthal at Alton, and we all came back in time for Krishnaji’s fourth talk in the tent. A big crowd. Afterward, the four of us lunched and talked in the new West Wing dining room. Krishnaji ate in the tent, then joined us, and we set a line of proposal to be made to Rajagopal to join us, and become a trustee of KFT in London.’ What?! Well, that’s what it says. ‘Via a cordial letter from Saul and Leipziger to Loebl saying that Krishnaji would come on his way to Australia to Ojai to meet Rajagopal to invite him into the fold. Specifics to be worked out by lawyers later. Discussed this as essentially what Rajagopal seems to want as an ultimate face-saver for him. Krishnaji then rested and went downstairs, and he questioned Mary Cadogan on events in the past. At 4 p.m., Krishnaji came down and the English trustees, i.e., the Digbys, Dorothy, and David Bohm, met Saul. All of us discussed the above proposal and got their consent to inviting Rajagopal to join KFT London.’ It obviously sank into the mist, and was never heard of again, but at least it showed an effort to try to have come to some accord.
On the fourteenth, ‘Saul Rosenthal left Brockwood and flew to Los Angeles. At 11 a.m., Krishnaji, the Lilliefelts, the Digbys, Dorothy, David Bohm, Balasundarum, and I met to discuss the Indian Foundation and relations between the three Foundations. The question of Krishnaji’s formal position on the KF India was discussed, but can’t be settled until Pupul Jayakar arrives later in the week. Krishnaji raised the question of what is his and everyone else’s responsibility in all these matters, and bore down on Balasundarum about whether the Indian schools really work at the teachings. Otherwise, the American trustees—if they get Ojai funds, can’t, with a responsible conscience, support them,’ meaning India.

‘Balasundarum gave the history of the Rishi Valley Trust, the Foundation for New Education and its relation with KWINC, and finally the structure of the present KFI. This took all day.’
The next day, ‘Erna and Theo left Brockwood to drive back to Frankfurt and fly from there to California. Krishnaji dictated #8 in the education book to me. The de Vidases left. I put de Vidas clear on the story he got from Vigeveno, and has repeated, that in 1966, when Krishnaji came to Ojai, he refused to see Rajagopal but sent Alain Naudé instead.’ That was a complete fabrication. ‘Krishnaji, Dorothy, and I walked in the p.m.’
The next day was pretty much the same.
On the seventeenth, ‘he dictated #10 of the education book. Pupul Jayakar was met at airport by Dorothy and Balasundarum, and arrived at Brockwood for a very late lunch. Krishnaji talked to her and Balasundarum, and after tea Dorothy, Krishnaji, and I went for a walk.’
The next day, ‘Krishnaji, Pupul Jayakar, Balasundarum, and I met in the morning and discussed the KFI’s relations with the other KFs. She understands, as does Balasundarum, that funds in the United States cannot be divided equally.’ They wanted whatever KFA got to be shared.

 ‘She suggested an annual meeting be held of at least one member of each of the three main Foundations, as only then could there be cooperation built for now and for the future. Suggested topicS: the needs of each foundation, publications, matters of overall policy, and any other pressing matters. She had read the legal papers about Rajagopal and is shocked. She wants Madhavachari to see them. Krishnaji asked for suggestions for a settlement, and it was suggested that Rajagopal be given something to do. Krishnaji then told her and Balasundarum, in total privacy, of what was decided during Rosenthal’s visit last Sunday, i.e., to offer Rajagopal membership as a trustee of KF London, and this in return for all assets in archives. ‘They both welcomed the idea and approved completely. We discussed Krishnaji being on the KFI board as a distinction for three main Krishnamurti Foundations, and as a differentiation from subsequent ones.’ If he was on the board, that would be the difference between the three main ones and any future ones. ‘They will try to come up with something, what will probably be honorary.’ You see, they didn’t want him to have any power.
 ‘Pupul says that if Krishnaji disapproves of anything, everyone on the Indian board would do what he says.’‘Later in the day, I voiced my doubts about being an Indian trustee. She said it had been a gesture, and it didn’t matter if I couldn’t attend meetings. She seems to understand that it wasn’t feasible to have representatives of each Foundation on all the boards.’ That was another thing that came up. ‘But thought the idea was a good one in principle. Hopes that the annual meeting of representatives from each Foundation will have the same effect. In the p.m., Krishnaji held a meeting with the school.

A Wilfred Thomas telephoned to ask to interview Krishnaji for Australian broadcasting. Michael Rabiger of BBC came to talk over a half-hour film of Krishnaji and Brockwood next weekend. This was a long and tiring day.’
On the nineteenth of September, ‘Krishnaji dictated #11 in the education book. Balasundarum left. In the late afternoon, Krishnaji and I took a long walk, coming back across the fields and into the Grove. We had Whisper with us, and we no sooner entered the grove than there was an extraordinary silence. Neither of us spoke, and we walked as though we didn’t want to tread on the grass. There was no wind; an utter stillness. The great trees were like silent living guardians of something, witnesses. There was a sense of something sacred, a presence that was total stillness. When we came out, latched the gate and walked across the field, Krishnaji said, “Did you feel it? It was something holy. One didn’t even want to step on the grass. Whatever there is about this place is centered there, not in the house.” Late in the evening, I remembered my dream several summers ago in Gstaad.’ Oh, that’s the river dream; I don’t want to go into it again.

‘After supper, Mrs. Jayakar and I talked in the drawing room. Krishnaji was above in his room, and while we sat there, that strange quality was in the room. She spoke of the book she is writing on art and yoga. We spoke of Krishnaji.’
On Sunday, the twentieth, ‘Krishnaji planned to write, but a conversation at breakfast lasted into the morning. He sat with Pupul and me in the West Wing dining room, and got onto the subject of kundalini. He questioned Pupul on whether her observation of what happened in Madras and at Ooty in 1948 could have been kundalini. Her version, which she wrote in detail, was taken by Rajagopal, who forbad her to make a copy. She described it to Krishnaji and me. She and Nandini were staying in Vasanta Vihar. They heard Krishnaji groaning in his room and went in, fearing he was sick. He looked at her and said, “Are you Rosalind?”
She said, “No.”
He told them to stay in the room and not leave him alone. He said, “Krishna has gone away,” and then he put his hand over his mouth and said, “I mustn’t say his name. He doesn’t like me to say his name.” He was in apparent pain, sweating and faint.
This happened again the same year when he was staying with Frydman It would start around 6 p.m. and lasted until 1 a.m. He told Pupul and Nandini to stay in the room’—this is the Ooty occurrence—‘but wouldn’t have Frydman there. He would faint and an extraordinary beauty would come into his face. Pupul described what was happening to him as seeing a total cleansing of his mind.

In reply to Krishnaji’s questioning, she said that she wouldn’t describe it as kundalini, which is a result of conscious deliberate meditation on chakra centers in the lotus pose, and the result of great effort and a release of great energy, bringing various powers, etcetera. But Krishnaji’s various related experiences were different. Leadbeater, who knew at least something about kundalini, couldn’t explain Krishnaji’s experience. In kundalini, there is a breaking of the energy in the mind, like an explosion. Krishnaji never seems to have been caught in conditioning. He was very interested, and questioned her at length. After these episodes, he has no memory of them at all. In Madras, and maybe it was at Ooty, he spoke of “the shining ones, the great ones are here.” In the afternoon, Krishnaji spoke to the school and we took a walk.’
The next day, ‘Krishnaji dictated #13 of the education book. I went for my postal order for a new passport for Krishnaji. Pupul will take the application to the high commissioner tomorrow. We walked in the afternoon.’
On September twenty-second. ‘Pupul left, and the following day, Krishnaji dictated #14 in the morning. I dashed for the 12:50 p.m. train to London and, with Anstee, covered many shops looking for a table and something to put over the fireplace in the drawing room.
Friday, the twenty-fifth, ‘Michael Rabiger who works for the BBC and is making a half-hour color film of Krishnaji and Brockwood, came with two others to start three days of work on it.

On October first, ‘for the first time, Krishnaji and I went to London via the Winchester Station. Krishnaji was very pleased with it, as it was a better train. Part of the scenery was new, with some yellow fields of mustard. He was “lost” and far away. Later, he tried to put it into words in a dictation: emptiness and stillness within, which lasts all day. “That is my rest,” he said. We went to Huntsman and to L’Aperitif, where Mary L. joined us. Krishnaji went to Mr. Campion while I walked to the health food shop on Baker Street. We had luck in immediately finding a taxi, which took us to the train back to Winchester.’

October second. ‘Krishnaji had said he would have only one more talk to the school this coming Sunday, but Doris Pratt came upstairs and made a rather dramatic plea for one today, too. I said it was too much, but left it to him. “Nonsense” from Doris; she said something to the effect that people were going to kill him with their demands anyway, so it was necessary for the school that she should be the one to kill him by asking for the meeting.’ ‘Krishnaji said, oh, it didn’t matter; he would see them at 4 p.m. He thought I was angry, which I wasn’t, only disapproving, but leaving it at that. He charmingly tried to divert me by saying lovely things and about the trees and sky.

He began dictation on #18, but it didn’t come, just a description of yesterday in the train. He intended to do one from the point of view of European students, but gave it up. ’

‘In the afternoon, we fled the packing and had a marvelous walk down the lane between the fields. The sky had dark clouds with bright sun, illuminating the earth. Autumn has touched the trees. There was the lovely color of the Hampshire earth, honey-buff and pinkly brown where some of the fields were plowed. The air was bright and clean and had the sharpness of autumn, though it wasn’t cold. We cut across the great bowl of a field and ate blackberries along the hedge. Whisper has learned to catch them. What a lovely land it is.’

On the morning of October seventh, ‘we were up early at 5:30 a.m. Krishnaji did his exercises, and I packed. Doris was very helpful with last-minute things, and yesterday, she got the interview correspondence off my back’—that means she typed things for me. Everyone was lined up on the driveway to say goodbye to Krishnaji. I went around first, and there was a real warmth of affection in each one of them.

‘At Heathrow, we negotiated our mountainous luggage, mostly mine. Went first to Alitalia and checked Krishnaji through, then to Air France for me. Dorothy said goodbye to us and we went through immigration and sat in the departure lounge for about forty-five minutes. Humanity was a scruffy lot, and Krishnaji was all elegance and simplicity. His Rome flight was called and he went off with the grace, exquisite manners, and face lighting up in affection that only he has. My flight was an hour late leaving. Krishnaji was arriving in Rome before my Air France took off at 3:15 p.m.

Rajagopal had rung again from Ojai. Vanda asked him not to speak to Krishnaji, who was resting. Rajagopal gave his message that if Krishnaji didn’t “withdraw for technical reasons,” Rajagopal would be forced to go to court to defend himself, and Krishnaji would be “exposed.”’ You see, it was always one day that, and the next day this.
That he loved Krishnaji and that the reason he was calling was that Krishnaji must see him in California. I asked both Krishnaji and Vanda if Rajagopal had said he would go to court, or it would go to court. Krishnaji put Vanda on, and she wasn’t positive which of the two it was. Rajagopal asked if I were there, and she said I was in Paris. Rajagopal said that Krishnaji would never have done all this but for those around him.’ ‘Krishnaji had been resting in bed’—this is in Rome—‘and felt “washed out” , but went for a walk and to Marchetti today, but found it closed.’
Telephoned June Gordon, who had told me there was a rumor among the Gurdjieff people who quote Alan Watts saying that “Krishnaji has died, and they are keeping it quiet.”’

On Tuesday, the tenth, Rajagopal telephoned. Krishnaji wouldn’t speak to him. He told me to tell him that because he (Rajagopal) had been abusive on the telephone in Rome, he would not talk by telephone. If he had anything to say, to write to him.’
‘Rajagopal said angrily, “I will never write him,” and rang off. Later, he rang back in a different tone, and asked if I would talk to him. Then there ensued a part of his neurosis, saying Krishnaji had destroyed him all over the world, with people thinking he is an embezzler, etcetera.’
‘I tried to get through and say that first Krishnaji had not talked about him—on the contrary. And that if he wants to be reconciled with Krishnaji, to reply through Loebl to the settlement suggestion we had made. That the door was open to a solution, and that we all wanted it, and with deepest sincerity. 'How can I work with people who think I am an embezzler?” he said. Then he said that there would be no settlement until there is a meeting between him and Krishnaji. That it is a personal matter.’
‘I said, “Krishnaji has said there is nothing personal to discuss, only what concerns KWINC, the Foundation.”’
‘“What foundation?” said Rajagopal. “You aren’t in this,” he said, “It is between Krishnaji, Rosalind, and me.”
‘I repeated Krishnaji’s statement, and said that Krishnaji had been repeatedly willing to see Rajagopal, and that in every instance Rajagopal had prevented it. His last telephone call to Krishnaji in Rome was an example of his being disagreeable and abusive.’
‘“I didn’t abuse him,” he retorted. “He is a liar, a hypocrite, and a coward, he hides behind women,” meaning me and Vanda.’
‘I finally rang off.’
The eleventh. ‘I talked to Saul Rosenthal and David Leipziger and reported the conversation with Rajagopal. They have a reply from Loebl, which is discouraging. Loebl wants to know if our offer for Rajagopal to join the Foundations as a trustee rejects the suggestions of Tapper about publications.’.‘I said he has summarized Tapper’s suggestion incorrectly, that Tapper’s suggestion had been that Rajagopal would get copyright to the post-1968 material, etcetera.

Krishnaji and I then took a beach walk. In the evening, Rajagopal again telephoned and asked to speak to Krishnaji. Krishnaji told me to tell him that he had again abused and insulted him through me, and therefore, if he had anything to say, to write. Rajagopal was angry, and said a “goodnight” and hung up.’

On Thursday, we boarded a Pan Am 747 plane at 8:30 p.m., but were almost two hours on the ground before taking off. We landed at Honolulu around midnight. The tropical soft air was lovely and we walked for exercise and circulation briskly up and down the airport waiting room for forty-five minutes. We changed to a 707 and flew on across the vast ocean.’
People stared at you, you know, if you didn’t just sit down or stand there.

Friday, November the thirteenth, ‘crossing the international dateline, we lost this day. ‘We crossed the equator somewhere west of Fiji—a first for me—and landed in Sydney around 10:00 a.m. The press and television people interviewed Krishnaji. We then were met by Mr. and Mrs. Reg Bennett, Barbara and Spencer English, Donald Ingram-Smith, and a Mrs. Marsha Murray. We were taken to Manly, a suburb of Sydney, to a very nice apartment on the eleventh floor of a new building above the harbor with a magnificent view of the bay. The Bennetts and Englishes have thought of everything. Mavis B. and Barbara E. are to do the marketing and lunches, and I will do the rest here. They would come each morning. Krishnaji and I took naps all afternoon.’ It was very nice. They had arranged everything very well.

Sunday, the fifteenth, Sydney. ‘Krishnaji rested all morning. Mavis Bennett and Barbara English did the lunch. We discussed the plans for the meetings in Sydney, TV, and newspaper interviews, etcetera, and also their thoughts on whether an Australian Foundation is necessary. Reg Bennett and Spencer English came in the afternoon for the walk. In the evening, Krishnaji and I watched the Hitchcock movie North by Northwest.’

The next day, ‘Donald Ingram-Smith brought a TV interviewer, also a reporter from the newspaper The Australian. The Bennetts and Englishes and Smiths were all at lunch. The Bennetts took me to Manly for errands, and Krishnaji and I walked at six.’
On the seventeenth, ‘Krishnaji had a public discussion in the Mona Vale Memorial Hall at 10:30 a.m. He said later it was like, “pushing a weight.”’ We had naps in the afternoon, and Krishnaji and I went for a late walk. At supper, we saw the television interview that Krishnaji made yesterday, and out of all that they shot, they only used one minute of what he said. They spent the rest of the time on the story of his arrival here in 1925, when the Australians thought he would arrive walking on the water.’
The next day, ‘Krishnaji showed the Leipziger and Tapper letters about Rajagopal to Reg Bennett and Spencer English. The Bennetts then took me on a drive northward to Ku-ring-gai, where I saw koala bears, emus, and wombats, all kinds of brightly colored parrots, and went in the kangaroo enclosure where you can come close to them. They have soft fur.’ On Thursday the nineteenth, ‘Krishnaji held the second public discussion in Mona Vale, and it went better; they seemed to catch on.’
‘The next day was quiet. In the afternoon, I went in to Manly and bought paperbacks for Krishnaji to take to India. Detective stories,’ obviously.
On Saturday, November twenty-first, ‘we had a quiet morning. I made a light lunch for us, then we went with the Bennetts to the Sydney Town Hall, where at 2:30 p.m. Krishnaji gave his first talk. There was a crowd of around fifteen hundred. It was Election Day, and some rather rowdy young people, who had been passing out communist papers at the polling places next door, came in and called out rough questions. One came down to the edge of the stage and challenged Krishnaji on a question of social change. Krishnaji’s answer quieted him to silence.’

Next day, Sunday, ‘Krishnaji and I drove with the Englishes to Sydney for Krishnaji’s second talk, a most intense one. In the middle of it, a young man climbed up on the stage and sat himself self-consciously at Krishnaji’s feet. Krishnaji was taken aback for only an instant and asked him to move further away. He then took up his talk where he had been interrupted. When it was over, Krishnaji had that half-faint, far-off look. In the p.m., we walked alone. At 7:00 p.m., we saw a good nature film on TV of rare Australian animals; and at 7:30 p.m., the Bennetts and Englishes came and showed a color film of the Great Barrier Reef.’
On Monday, November twenty-third, ‘Krishnaji held a discussion with about thirty-five people chosen by the Bennetts and the Englishes, here at the flat in the morning.’

The twenty-fourth. ‘Krishnaji has been questioning the Bennetts on what it was like here in the Leadbeater days; why people accepted Leadbeater, etcetera. They suggested asking Harold Morton, who was once one of “Leadbeater’s boys” and still lives here with his wife, whose brother, a Leadbeater favorite, now a psychologist in London. So, Morton came for lunch. He was a white-haired, pink-faced, aged, adolescent-looking man. He spoke with some detachment and a tinge of humor about it all. Krishnaji questioned him, and most of his answers as to why people believed so in Leadbeater were that they wanted to believe in all of it, in the supernatural, his supposed clairvoyance; and so, no one really dared question him. Krishnaji asked him if Leadbeater was homosexual, and Morton replied that he was; he knew it definitely in two instances, one from the boy himself, and in the other from the father of the boy. Krishnaji was appalled that a man would so use his position of trust. The clairvoyance was discussed, its apparent genuineness, first of all in the recognition of Krishnaji, and in foreseeing a ship sinking which turned out to be the Titanic. Also, its nonexistence, as when he cabled for news of one of his boys, Tom somebody, who had already died.’ Krishnaji and I walked in the rain in the late afternoon. In the morning, we had watched the departure of the aircraft carrier S.S. America. Krishnaji said it would be fun to be its captain. He would like that.’ I have photographs of that; we were standing on the balcony. This splendid great carrier was going out through what they call “the heads,” which are the two cliffs on either side of the entrance to the harbor. It was a very splendid sight. We could see right across. We were high up on a hill and also on the eleventh floor, so we had a great view of this, steaming out through the heads.

On the twenty-sixth, ‘Donald Ingram-Smith and Marsha Murray came to take Krishnaji and me to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where at 1:45 p.m., Krishnaji was interviewed on television for half an hour by a Ross Saunders. It looked excellent on the monitor. Krishnaji paid little attention while Saunders read passages on belief from Penguin Krishnamurti Reader, which is published here, too. Then Krishnaji demolished belief, religion, etcetera, and went on with such a fresh clarity until the end of the half hour, covering a great deal with simplicity and eloquence. We took naps when we got back and then walked in the rain.’
 

On Friday, the twenty-seventh. ‘After lunch, the Englishes took me to see The Manor, where Mary Lutyens and Ruth Tettemer, as well as the others, lived with Leadbeater. It is now a Theosophical home for retired people. We drove past, then went to a Swiss health food shop where I arranged for some good lecithin granules to be packed so that Krishnaji can take them to India. Then we went into Sydney and got Krishnaji a beige sleeveless pullover, which he likes so much that I will try to get a cardigan to match. Kitty has written’ that it is cold in Delhi.’

On Saturday, ‘Krishnaji had a quiet morning in bed. I fixed us a light lunch, and then we went with the Bennetts to Town Hall for Krishnaji’s fourth talk at 2:30 p.m. At the end he spoke of beauty, asking, “Is it in the object? The sky? The white sails on the harbor? A Velásquez?” “Or is it in you? As long as there is space between you and that, there is no beauty. Only when there is no self is there beauty.” He was tired when we came back and we skipped the walk.’

On Sunday, the next day, ‘he gave the fifth talk at Sydney. He said to me, “I don’t feel as if I had been working here,” which made my spirits soar. He said he wasn’t tired because he had done nothing when not talking. He had slept, read, and walked. NO’ ‘private interviews. I am to reply to in quiries in the U.S. saying there will be no interviews.’

Monday, the thirtieth. ‘Krishnaji held the second private discussion in the apartment. He was delighted with the cardigan to match the beige pullover I bought on Friday. If I see something I think he would like, in the way of some good detective novels, I am to buy them for his arrival in Malibu. “I like new things,” he said, with his face alight.’

December first. I went into Manly to cash a check and send flowers to the Bennetts and Englishes. This was a packing day. The Bennetts and the Englishes came by in the p.m. for the walk. In the evening, Krishnaji told me to write only letters that could be read by anyone, as his mail is not secure in India, and even at Brockwood, letters could be opened by mistake. He said about Rajagopal that I, Erna, and Roth lawyers must discuss what to do, and not wait to consult him. He will not be a part of litigation, but if we decide to pursue Rajagopal, “All the better.” He said this might need immediate decisions to be made, and he trusts me to make them. If I am acting for him according to the thing, not because of my personal feeling, I will be alright. He said Rajagopal has stolen. That he, K, will not accept any telephone calls from him or any emissaries. It may be a question of money to finance a suit, and we, KFA, must decide. This was the first thing he wanted to tell me, and the second was that we are getting older and must beware of falling into bad habits,’ ‘i.e., I have rubbed my nose in an unbecoming way lately.’ ‘Three, he is feeling increasingly far away: “Lately, perhaps, I am becoming as I was as a little boy, vacant. ‘I must look after things, somehow do things anonymously, so people will not resent it. “We must figure out a way.” He asked me about the book’—that’s the book he’s writing. ‘He feels it should have another five chapters. I am to send him a list of what questions were asked in the student section of the book. He may add to it. I asked him about the part in which he said, “You have raised a generation with regard for nothing.” And he agreed that it was too harsh, and that I must change it. We talked about the personal letters that came for him; he has changed back and forth whether I am to open them or keep them for his arrival. It wound up that I should open them and, if they appear very personal, to hold them. But no one must know they have been opened by someone other than him. He said he felt very well; he looks and acts well.’

On the second of December, ‘Krishnaji and I had breakfast and were packed and ready by 9:45 a.m. The Englishes came and took the luggage, while Krishnaji and I drove with the Bennetts to the airport. I checked Krishnaji through for his flights to India; his tickets and passport. Then, checked myself and luggage onto Pan Am for my 5:30 p.m. flight back to L.A. There were some people to see Krishnaji off. He had that remote look.’

His Qantas flight to Delhi went via Hong Kong, ten hours, and then another six-and-a-half hours to Delhi. He had said goodbye to me in the apartment; from then on, he was far off. It was a hot day, and he wore his cotton grey sports shirt and carried the nice Gucci bag that Vanda gave him. At the airport, he wandered off and stared while waiting to leave, as he does so often in airports. He shook hands very formally with everyone, including me, and went to his plane. We all waited and watched until it took off and became a tiny white dot in the sky.’

‘I went back to Sydney and took the Bennetts, the Englishes and David English, Marsha Murray, and Donald Ingram-Smith to lunch. Had something called the Salad Bowl in Kings Cross. Then said goodbye to them and went back to the airport with David English, who works in a restaurant there. I sat and talked to him for an hour, and then read until my 5:30 Pan Am flight.’
‘Krishnaji had left at 11:30 a.m., was due in Delhi at midnight. I flew all night and landed back at Honolulu at 7 a.m., then, in another aircraft, flew to Los Angeles. Flying along the coast on such a clear day, I could see Ojai and houses all the way down to the airport.

February twentieth, Krishnaji flew from Bombay to Rome after his India program, and on the twenty-second, from Rome to London to stay at Brockwood for a couple of days. So, on February twenty-fourth, ‘I drove to the Los Angeles airport at 4:30 p.m. and ran into Peter Ustinov  who was also waiting for the Pan Am arrival. He said he has children who live near Lausanne. Krishnaji arrived from London at 6 p.m., looking marvelous. We came home and had dinner by the fire.’
The next day, ‘Krishnaji rested and slept most of the day. We talked at length. He taught me a new pranayama taught to him by a sannyasin from Bangalore. We went early to bed.’

On February twenty-sixth, ‘at 11:30 a.m., the Lilliefelts and Ruth Tettemer came, and with Krishnaji we discussed current matters.
The next day was a quiet day. Krishnaji slept a lot. We walked around the garden in the afternoon.
‘Four days after his arrival, I telephoned Rajagopal and invited him and Mima Porter here on Krishnaji’s behalf. Rajagopal said that he couldn’t leave Ojai because he was ill; we must come there. It was agreed, and an appointment was made for March third, at 2 p.m.’

On March second, Krishnaji reported having a dream of a large man who was unfriendly to his being in this house. Something about the man’s mother in the dream. ‘Krishnaji began a new dictation tentatively titled, This is meditation.’ ‘It was a clear, cold day. We walked in the garden.’

On the third, ‘the weather was marvelous. We had an early lunch, then Krishnaji and I drove to Ojai and met Rajagopal at his house at 2 p.m. He, in bare feet, Krishnaji elegant in grey flannels, turtleneck jersey, and a tweed jacket. Rajagopal seemed nervous and unable to begin a serious conversation or say what he had asked Krishnaji to come and hear. Krishnaji was poised. Finally, he asked Rajagopal to talk about whatever it was he had to say. Rajagopal began what became a tirade, saying that Krishnaji had attacked him, blackened his name, etcetera, etcetera. Krishnaji explained why he broke with Rajagopal and KWINC, and said he had completely lost contact with Rajagopal due to all this, and probably there had never been a real relation between them. This seemed to shake Rajagopal. At one point, when I was pointing out to Rajagopal his inconsistencies, he tried to silence me by saying that I was trying to protect Krishnaji. I said I was replying to what he, Rajagopal, had said and continued, and it looked for a moment as though he would come apart. He shook. He cannot stand logic and pressure. He veers off and tries to muddy the issue. At the end of three hours, he said that Krishnaji must retract all criticism, announce publicly that he was mistaken, that Rajagopal has done nothing improper, apologize, and then, perhaps, the right time could be set to discuss what should be done with KWINC and KFA.

The following day, ‘Krishnaji dictated a letter to Rajagopal saying that he had come to try to find a basis for some contact with Rajagopal, and that it was up to Rajagopal to respond in deeds—that his action would be his reply. It was up to him.
On March sixth, ‘Krishnaji, Alain Naudé (who arrived yesterday for the weekend), and I had breakfast in the dining room. Krishnaji rested all morning. We had an early lunch. At 2:30 p.m., Krishnaji and I drove to Santa Monica for the first of Krishnaji’s four talks at the Civic Auditorium. It was full. We walked in the garden on our return. Krishnaji and I were alone for supper.’

The next day, ‘I cooked an early lunch for Krishnaji and Alain. Krishnaji and I drove to the Civic Auditorium just in time for the 3 p.m. talk number 2. He spoke of the violence of comparison, and as long as thought exists there can be no meditation.

On March eighth, ‘Alain, Krishnaji, and I talked at breakfast and Alain talked alone with Krishnaji during the morning. Krishnaji, Alain, and I drove up Coral Canyon and walked along the top of the hills.’
The next day, ‘Alain left for Berkeley. Krishnaji and I lunched alone. After his rest, we went to town for errands. Bought books at Campbells, etcetera, and came home to supper.’
There is nothing more on Rajagopal matters until ‘a letter came to Krishnaji from Mima Porter dated March twelfth, hinting at “personal matters between Krishnaji and Rajagopal,” which Rajagopal was hurt by Krishnaji not coming openly to tell him squarely what had happened, surreptitiously that all this was the crucial matter Rajagopal wanted to clear up in private conversations with Krishnaji.” Hence, Rajagopal’s exasperation when Krishnaji wanted only to discuss KWINC affairs and not “that 'cadaver' which is rotting between you and him.” And she added that Rajagopal is the victim. To this, Krishnaji wrote to her: “If there were problems between Rajagopal and myself, I do not see that it is anyone else’s business. The fact is there are no personal matters that need discussion between Rajagopal and me. The constant implications of something personal is a very obvious attempt by you, by Rajagopal, by others, to evade the serious issues of KWINC and your grave responsibilities to that trust.

The next day, ‘Krishnaji gave the fourth talk at 3 p.m. in Santa Monica. A wonderful one on meditation. The Lilliefelts came for tea afterwards.’

The next day, ‘after lunch, Krishnaji and I drove to Santa Monica on errands. We walked in the garden. Rajagopal telephoned to speak to Krishnaji but hung up when I relayed Krishnaji’s message that he wouldn’t speak to him, but to write or give me a message.’
On March eighteenth, ‘we left at 10:30 a.m. for Ojai. Krishnaji had a treatment from Dr. Lay. Then we had a picnic lunch at Lake Casitas. It was a clear, hot, marvelous day. Wind from the lake kept us cool. Krishnaji was delighted.
On March twenty-second, ‘Krishnaji dictated book material and letters. A letter came from Rajagopal to Krishnaji saying that it was obvious that Krishnaji wished their personal friendly relationship to cease, but that he intended to continue his work for the teachings.’

On the twenty-fifth, ‘we drove to the University of Southern California; at noon, Krishnaji held a discussion with students. The Lilliefelts came back with for a late lunch. We talked all afternoon.’
On March twenty-sixth, ‘I went early to town on errands, including renting a Nagra tape recorder. I then met Alain and Professor Jacob Needlemen and wife at the airport, brought them to Malibu where a taped interview occurred between Krishnaji and Needlemen. At the end of that we had tea, and then there was a second discussion. Alain drove Needlemen to the airport and came back for supper and to stay. We all three watched a TV version of “Gideon” with Peter Ustinov.
The next day, ‘I recorded two dialogues between Krishnaji and Alain. Alain was in good spirits and behavior, helpful, relaxed, and nice.

On March twenty-eighth, ‘after breakfast, Krishnaji and Alain did a Nagra recording of a discourse on good and evil. We discussed Rajagopal. Krishnaji rested in the afternoon. We all went on a garden walk, then had an early supper, and were early to bed.’
On March twenty-ninth, ‘Krishnaji, Alain, and I drove to the University of Southern California, where at noon Krishnaji gave the second student discussion.
Friday, the second of April. ‘Krishnaji and I, on a lovely day, drove after lunch to Ojai and Rajagopal’s house. Krishnaji had said that he wanted to be outside, so we sat on a balcony. Mima Porter was there. Krishnaji had brought notes in his handwriting of the points he wanted to cover.’ ‘He said it was a last attempt to bring order. He spoke of his reasons for the break; Rajagopal’s refusal to inform or consult, and the limited activities of KWINC; the systematic elimination of Krishnaji as the founder, and the plot by Rajagopal; the Vigeveno letters, and the Casselberry and Porter letters, all threatening; the lawyer saying that Vigeveno and Casselberry letters were extortion; Porter’s broken promise in Paris about the archives; the Noyes’ settlement offer which came to zero;
Rajagopal and Porter were dead quiet through all of this. Krishnaji was nervous, but spoke very slowly, almost hesitantly.’
‘Porter took exception to the comment of her doing nothing, said she had written to Krishnaji in ’68 that Rajagopal would hand over everything to him.’
‘Krishnaji said, “I never got that.”’
‘I reminded her that her letter had said that Rajagopal loved Krishnaji and that they should talk it over in the autumn and settle it then. But that this was a brush-off at the time, and not an offer to turn everything over to Krishnaji.’

‘Rajagopal then said that he had been accused, and that “your lawyer” had dug up information and that he must have the chance to refute it.’ Actually, it was Erna who did all the research on finding out his maneuvering with real estate sales to his own benefit.
‘Porter went on about the letters of criticism of Rajagopal.’

‘To Krishnaji’s saying that KWINC funds were being used to fight Krishnaji, Rajagopal said, “Your funds were going to lawyers.”’
‘I said that that was not so. Not a single dollar of public donation had been spent for legal fees, only private and special money given for that very purpose.
Rajagopal was so insistent that only a public vindication would satisfy him and that reconciliation with Krishnaji wasn’t enough, that we said it was then fruitless to continue, and that he was choosing to push it to court. He said we did; that we offered a reconciliation with one hand and a gun with the other.

We started to leave. Rajagopal said that he had wanted a private conversation with Krishnaji, and then the work, etcetera could be allocated in discussion between all of us. Krishnaji said he would do that, but that now he was too tired and had to leave. He went out to the car. I rose to follow, and Rajagopal said he had the Dodge papers I had requested for Krishnaji. These turned out to be a statement from the First National City Bank in New York and a checkbook on an account in Krishnaji’s name at Security Pacific in Hollywood. Rajagopal said he would ring me tomorrow about another meeting. I said that, if it concerned the work, that Erna Lilliefelt should be there. He said, “not now.”’
Krishnaji wondered out loud about what would be a proper response if and when they meet and Rajagopal admits his faults. Meanwhile, Rajagopal has not called about this next meeting.’ Krishnaji was always hopeful that the man would behave decently.
I asked him whether he wanted to go to a movie, Wellington’ ‘“What! Go to see my favorite hero defeated?”’ - he was a great fan of Napoleon! Which I found absolutely incomprehensible! He was a man who defeated all of Europe, who did nothing but wage war and Krishnaji admired him.

‘As part of our ongoing feud about who was doing the dishes, Krishnaji said, “I’m carrying out the dishes, and if I can’t do that, I’m going back to Madanapalle!” I said, “Do you want to be the Rishi of Rishi Valley?” Krishnaji said, “Yes.”’

On the fifth of April: ‘ At 3 p.m., Krishnaji and I went to Rajagopal’s, and Krishnaji and Rajagopal talked on the balcony while I sat in the car.
‘At about 4:30 p.m., Krishnaji called to us to join him. Rajagopal said they had completed a personal discussion, and I asked Rajagopal to repeat to me his proposition. Rajagopal said it was the offer he had made through Colonel Noyes in London in 1968 with some modifications. I asked why then he had withdrawn the offer, or denied it.’
‘Rajagopal said because Krishnaji had “demanded that the archives be turned over to him.”’
‘I said that request was made after Rajagopal had sent word to Krishnaji that he would have to go to court to get a tape of the talk he had given the day before in Ojai, and refused him his own manuscript.’

“I deny that,” said R.’

‘I said, “Don’t deny it to me. I came over to this very door with Alain Naudé, and asked you for it, and was refused admittance.” I said I could not remember the details of the Noyes memorandum. Would he have Loebl send it to our lawyers?’
‘He said he didn’t want to do it through Loebl. That he and Mima Porter would draw it up and send it to us. Then all of us and our lawyers could consider it with Tapper and, if we have an agreement, then all the lawyers could draw it up in legal form. All through this, Rajagopal was alternately irritable, ready to fly off the handle, or insistent; which irritated Krishnaji, and made him try to stop Rajagopal from hammering points. This, in turn, made Rajagopal madder. I tried to quieten it and get him to say what he proposed. He wants, of course, a statement from Krishnaji withdrawing accusations.’

‘We left, and Krishnaji told me the personal side of their discussions. The bickering in the past, past disputes, hurts. Krishnaji injecting himself into Rajagopal’s divorce dispute. Krishnaji told him of Rajagopal’s daughter’s visit to him and me. I don’t know whether Rajagopal knew about it, but probably yes. I also don’t know if Rajagopal had just secretly recorded Krishnaji’s conversation with him. My last words of warning to Krishnaji as we drove in the entrance were, “Remember, please, that he could.”’
‘“I completely forgot,” said Krishnaji. “I looked at the mountains and forgot everything.”’
On the way home Krishnaji said he felt free of a weight, the weight of Rajagopal. It wasn’t until later that he wondered if he had said too much. Said he had done everything he could to reach Rajagopal, to go far beyond halfway in trying to solve it all. He never wants to see Rajagopal alone again. He said, “I don’t know how to deal with people like this. I would be vague and agree to anything. That is what happened in the past. That’s the only time they talked alone during all these years.

April sixth. ‘Donald Hoppen just arrived from Brockwood, and came to lunch. He feels Brockwood lacks vitality. It needs better staff but something in the atmosphere has kept some good prospects away. He showed a plan for a new dormitory and pictures of a model of it. It will go where the pavilion[6] is. Krishnaji was tired and didn’t have his mind on Brockwood. He asked Donald to make a memo on it. Krishnaji went to bed after a short walk and supper.’

The next day ‘we went to the dentist, and Krishnaji had his teeth cleaned. A memorandum came from Rajagopal on the settlement basis he spoke of Monday. He proposes to “turn over part of the real estate,” but it is so poorly worded with assessor’s value and cash value that it is unclear whether he will give it or sell it to K Foundation. There was no mention of Arya Vihara. There was also no mention of K & R…’ That’s the K & R Foundation, ‘…or AB trust.’ ‘

‘Then, in the morning, Krishnaji felt he should telephone Radha Sloss There ensued a tirade from her, hammering at Krishnaji. Her father might go to jail. Krishnaji said it was up to Rajagopal. He had been offered a settlement to wipe out the past, but he hadn’t taken it. If Rajagopal settled, Krishnaji said he would make a public statement of reconciliation.’
‘“You should make it first,” said Radha. “You care about money.” She repeated this over and over. When Krishnaji said it was up to Rajagopal, the way out had been offered, she said, “I don’t accept that. You told me three years ago you wouldn’t have anything to do with KWINC as long as he was head of it.”’
‘Like both her parents, she reiterates what was said in the past as though the present didn’t exist. Her blistering nag had Krishnaji shaking. It was worse than his meeting with Rajagopal. He was a wreck by the time he was able to end the conversation.’

‘An hour later, during lunch, she rang back and said that her father had offered a settlement and had no acknowledgement. Krishnaji said it would reach him Monday or Tuesday. Other people are busy, too. “But you’ll be gone. Who is he to deal with?”’
‘Krishnaji said he was out of it, and that the KFA would reply. At the end of this conversation, Krishnaji said that he would never ever see any of them again alone, that I must remember this, and remind him, and protect him from this sort of bullying.’

Erna and Theo brought a copy of Krishnaji’s latest book, The Flight of the Eagle, a Harper paperback, 1969 talks in Europe, and some Saanen discussions. Nice-looking cover. They also brought a book,The Quiet Mind by John Coleman, a former CIA Agent who has two chapters in it about Krishnaji. He came to Brockwood and had an interview with Krishnaji in September ’69, and had met Krishnaji in India previously. After supper, Krishnaji spoke of chastity. It must have an absence of ego, will. It is missing in most people. Saturday, which is the seventeenth, ‘Krishnaji felt sick to his stomach at lunchtime and ate almost nothing. He slept till 4:00 p.m., then had a cup of rosehip tea. At 5:15 p.m., in Bud’s station wagon with a driver, we went to the Town Hall on 43rd Street. A huge queue outside. We caught Narasimhan outside of it and took him in. The house was totally filled, and some had to be turned away. Krishnaji showed no sign of weakness, but spoke in that deep other voice, almost from the beginning of the talk. There were difficulties with the sound, and an officious woman was clearing the aisles. The talk was videotaped. The audience seemed young in a larger proportion than usual. Afterward, Krishnaji was dizzy, far-off, and seemed almost faint, but wanted to sit at the card table where we eat, and even turned up the television. “It helps me unwind,” he said. He ate very little, and went right to bed.’
‘In the talk, he had said, “The worst crime is to be in conflict.” And later he told me to remember to tell him, “Knowledge is the basis of the mind being hurt.” During the talk, a man brought a brilliant red rose and put it at his feet on the platform. Later, when he seemed to cough, another one brought him a paper cup of water. Krishnaji put it on the floor and seeing the flower, tried to put the stem into the paper cup. He said later, “That man on the platform must know a great deal.” And we talked of pain, as opposed to suffering. Pain can be felt organically, or through sensitivity, but suffering is when the mind holds onto it.’
The next day, ‘at 5:30 p.m., Krishnaji gave his second talk at the Town Hall. During the day, he spoke of Rajagopal, Rosalind, and what makes people go wrong. I asked if there were ever a time when Rajagopal and he would talk about the teachings, about all the things he and I talk about, and he said, “Never.”’

On Monday, the nineteenth of April, we lunched with the Ingersolls. He thinks, that Krishnaji should talk only to a few influential people. Wonders if the young today are not a suicidally self-destructive generation. Mrs. Ingersoll mistook Krishnaji’s estimate of the world as cynicism.

On the twentieth, ‘Mr. Clayton Carlson, the new religious book department head of Harper and Row, brought Mrs. Claire Rosen of TIME Magazine to interview Krishnaji. A nice, bright woman. In the p.m., we went to look for other fabric samples for Malibu sofas, and decided the first one was best.’
The next day. ‘TIME Magazine sent a photographer, who took about a hundred pictures of Krishnaji. He sat quietly as though it were part of the job.

The next day, ‘While Krishnaji called on Mrs. Pinter, I shopped at Bergdorf, and then we walked back to the Ritz Tower. Then we walked to see a movie called The Andromeda Strain, science fiction, and Krishnaji found it exciting.

August first, 1

This post was last updated by John Raica Tue, 27 Jun 2017.

August first, 1971 finds Krishnaji in Saanen and ‘he gave his seventh Saanen talk, which was on intelligence—intelligence that comes when thought realizes it cannot go beyond itself, and is still. It was a very hot day, and Krishnaji said that he felt ill that day. He said he was as tired as though he’d been ill. And he said that he felt like disappearing after the talk. Instead of that, he treated people: de Vidas, and the Kossiakofs. Marcelle Bondoneau came to lunch, and we discussed doing an interview for French television.’ as a result of all of this, Krishnaji did a television interview in French for a André Voisin, who was an interviewer on French television. We’ll come to that later, because we did go over to Paris for that.

We discussed also the dead-end of 'hippyness' in the young, and their need to see that intellectual action is not against Krishnaji’s teachings, but lives alongside it. He said that he wanted to go into this in his next discussion. He was tired, too tired to walk, but dusted the car instead.
The next day he was still tired. He felt as if he had been sick, he kept saying. I went to the village on errands, and he met me at the station, and we started for a drive, but it was too hot. He was nervous for some reason that day. I don’t know why. Coming up the hill, something punctured the right tire on the car, and I somehow got it all the way up the hill and into the garage before it was literally destroyed. There was no tire left.’

Dorothy came at 5:30 p.m. and went for a walk with us to the river. Krishnaji persuaded her and Montague to move up to Tannegg to try to get some rest.’ When they were in the camping site, they didn’t have a moment’s privacy, and people were always dropping by unexpectedly, and it was wearying. ‘Later that day, we watched the Apollo astronauts, Scott and Irwin, take off from the moon and dock with the space capsule.’
‘The Simmonses moved in the next day to Tannegg downstairs. They had lunch with us. A new tire was put on the Mercedes,

On Wednesday, the fourth of August, ‘Krishnaji held the first of seven daily public discussions in the tent. This one was on 'conscious and unconscious', and seeing the whole. Krishnaji, Dorothy, and I had talked about new teachers for Brockwood.’
On the fifth of August, ‘Krishnaji gave his second Saanen discussion, a marvelous one, one on the old brain and the new brain.’ ‘Thought is the old brain, and cannot find that which is beyond itself, which is the new.’ “The perception of this is intelligence,” he said. In this perception, the old is quiet and in abeyance, but it’s there; it just doesn’t interfere. Then the new one can be, and this is intelligence. Intelligence can perceive the unknown, the new, and this can use the old when it is necessary.’ ‘it was a talk that left me drained with its intensity. We came back, and at 3 p.m., Krishnaji came with me to the bank to close an account that Rajagopal had opened, and which he was co-signatory of. Also, we bought some detective novels and a Mao book, which I’m to read and report on to him later,’ The Little Red Book! And I never read it! Or reported on it, and I don’t think it was ever referred to again, but that was my task! I just forgot about it quickly .

On the sixth, ‘Krishnaji held his third discussion in the tent. This one was for young people. Erna and Theo came for lunch and we discussed all this. Sybil Dobinson also was there, and we discussed with Krishnaji material for The Bulletin. It was still hot, and Krishnaji and I were both too tired to walk.’

On the eighth, ‘Krishnaji gave his fifth Saanen discussion, mostly on fear. The audience seemed limp.

‘Krishnaji and I told Erna and Theo of the meeting at tea yesterday, when Mr. and Mrs. Sloss, parents of Jimmy Sloss, came. Mrs. Sloss obviously wanted to find out the Rajagopal situation. Krishnaji asked them if they wanted him to speak of it, and Mrs. Sloss replied, “Yes, but before you do, I want to tell you, I’m on your side!” . Krishnaji described ten years of Rajagopal’s refusal to let him know anything about KWINC, the necessity for the break, etcetera, efforts to find a settlement, and Rajagopal’s refusal to answer. Krishnaji said that he had gone three times to see Rajagopal. Mr. Sloss said that Krishnaji should get a lawyer and sue Rajagopal, that Rajagopal wouldn’t listen to anything else. Mr. Sloss also said that Rajagopal lied to him the first time they met. He repeated that Krishnaji must sue and “let the chips fall where they may.” He took me aside and said that he had no use for either Rajagopal or Rosalind Rajagopal, and that Jimmy had told him he wanted nothing to do with either of them. We reassured him that we had excellent lawyers and had gone to the attorney general and we had him on our side as a result of his investigations. Sloss left saying, “You go ahead.”’

‘Ran into Cragnolini, Pietro. He says the eclipse of the moon affected Krishnaji in his health because it was Aquarius or something. I met Krishnaji coming down the hill, and we went up. I paid a deposit on Tannegg for next summer. They have raised the rent by five thousand francs [chuckles] to eleven thousand for two months.’
On the tenth, ‘Krishnaji held his seventh Saanen discussion, completing this year. We had a quiet lunch alone.
 ‘Then, Krishnaji spoke to six young, lost-looking people who want to start a school as a result of yesterday’s discussion. They haven’t the vaguest qualifications or plans. Suarès brought a Monsieur Bey, editor of Stock, to greet Krishnaji briefly.’

On the twelfth, ‘Madame Duchet came to talk to me about a French committee. At noon, Krishnaji and I walked down the hill and met the Grafs at the new curling building, as a possibility for the talks. It is large and efficient, but looks like a factory. Krishnaji didn’t like it at all. So we will stick with the tent, which is a very good one this year, but costs Swiss francs 37,000—$9,000 to rent.

The thirteenth ‘was a clear, warm, beautiful day. Taking Dorothy and Montague, Krishnaji and I drove to Thun. We left the Mercedes to have its door lock fixed and walked to the steamer, where we boarded for the two-and-a-half-hour sail to Interlaken and back. We took a picnic and also ordered on the steamer to be able to use a table.’You had to order some food to use a table.
‘The lake was a deep jade and the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau were majestic in their snows. It was a peaceful, far away day.

Saturday, the fourteenth of August. ‘The Simmonses left for Brockwood, somehow taking two of our bags in the Land Rover. This was Krishnaji’s suggestion; he doesn’t want the Mercedes to carry too much!’ .

‘Then he said, as he has so often, what went wrong with Rajagopal? He was intelligent, chosen for the work, able when young, chosen by Leadbeater, but never especially liked by Leadbeater, nor was Mrs. Besant close to him. He was the son of a district judge. His brother was like him. Krishnaji described seeing the brother in India, and thinking for a moment that it was Rajagopal. He sat just so, expecting to be waited on, had Rajagopal’s refusal to do anything with his hands. Krishnaji used to clean up after the dog in Ojai. Rajagopal always had reasons not to do the dishes. Has Rajagopal remained Theosophist at heart or has been in fact all these years? Did he go with Krishnaji to eventually lead him back to Theosophy?’
‘Krishnaji doesn’t think so. But Erna remembered an odd remark by Radha when discussing what might happen to Happy Valley School at the time when Rosalind was managing it, and was being possibly unbalanced. Radha said she didn’t think Erma Zalk would object’ to returning it to the T.S.

Rosalind considers herself the representative of Mrs. Besant. Anna Lisa Rajagopal’—that’s Rajagopal’s second wife—‘joined the T.S. after marrying Rajagopal. Krishnaji spoke of incessant quarrels with Rajagopal and Rosalind. He said it was surprising they had not shot him. Rosalind Rajagopal once taking a hammer and hitting him on the head in the car, taking a bottle and trying to hit him with it in India, witnessed by Sunanda, etcetera. Telling him to jump under the train once at a station’—that was in Santa Barbara. ‘And hitting him in the groin with her knee once so that he could barely walk for a day.’

‘Why, I asked, had he not turned away from these people after all this?’
‘“I don’t know,” he said. Talk went to the protection of the boy when young. There were always with two initiates to accompany him, the right food, etcetera, etcetera. Necessity for the body’s protection. But if the body was attacked by Rosalind, why was she tolerated by him? I asked him if the two
Rajagopals had ever tried to influence him in his speaking. “Never,” he said. “I would not have tolerated that.” Suddenly it seemed clear, and I asked if it was that if he were attacked personally he would do nothing, but if an attempt were made to influence his teachings he would not have tolerated it for an instant. “What would you have done?” I asked.’
‘“I would have left,” he said.

I tried to get him to be the navigator, look at the map, and he was hopeless! He’d tell me, “Drive on, drive on, drive on!” when I should’ve gone left or right or something. And I’d have to stop and look at the map and back up and turn around. He was no good at that at all. But when he’d seen it; it was a visual thing.
And if you showed a photograph, he not only naturally knew his brother, but he knew all these other people because he saw them. He once told me that he couldn’t tell me what Vanda looked like when she was away. And one of the reasons he wrote to me all the time, he said was that it kept the memory alive.

When I had the skin graft on my leg, it wasn’t serious, but he said to me, “You know that I can’t come and see you in the hospital,” and I said, “Of course I know, I wouldn’t hear of you coming to see me in the hospital! He knew I was in the hospital, but it wasn’t so much me in the hospital, but it’s all the terrible things that are happening to people all around. It was the hospital, not me.

I keep coming back in my mind— we talked about two angels who were looking after me. And he asked me the next day, “Do remember what we talked about?” and I said, “Yes, about the two angels.” And then I said, “What did you mean by that?” And he said, “You should have asked the man then.” And when I said something, he said, “Probably.” I mean that was a bystander’s comment. And there’s that strange repeated statement reported by Nitya in “the process” times of “the man who came to watch.” there were different entities during “the process”; there was Krishna, who went away; there was the little child who was left; and there were entities or “somethings” who were doing operations. And then the man who came to watch.

While driving, Krishnaji said he had a meditation,’ it says here. ‘“Be empty and aware from within.”’ The next day was the twenty-third of August. ‘We lunched in the garden at the hotel. Krishnaji drove all the way until we got off it, and we went via Arras to Montreuil. Spent the night at the Château de Montreuil, and took a walk before dinner along the ramparts.’
The next day, ‘we left Montreuil for Boulogne and took the 11:30 a.m. hovercraft to Dover.A long winding trip, which took until 6 p.m. to reach Brockwood.’

On September first ‘Krishnaji dictated three essays, the first of which was on attention. People began arriving for the Brockwood Public Talks.
‘Krishnaji gave his first talk on the fourth in the tent at Brockwood,’ marquee as we say here. ‘It was a lovely day, a big crowd; everyone ate in the tent afterward. We are seventy-two people at meals in the house. Krishnaji, Dorothy, and I went for a long walk.’
On September fifth, ‘Krishnaji gave his second Brockwood talk. It was again a lovely day, and it was a very great talk’ ‘

On September ninth, ‘Krishnaji held the second discussion in the tent. It is perfect weather, warm. He gave an interview in the afternoon.
On the train, Krishnaji observed with horror three businessmen, commuters. “Society must change! Some other way to live must be found,”

On September sixteenth, ‘at 11:30 a.m., Krishnaji held a meeting with the staff on what we are trying to do in the school. A new physics/chemistry teacher arrived from the U.S. and was present.’ ‘Students are arriving for the start of school on the Sunday.

September twentieth, 1971 we’re at Brockwood. And on that day, ‘Krishnaji talked to the students and the staff on the opening day of school. We had thirty-two students, of fourteen nationalities, and they looked like a nice group.’
On the next two days, ‘Krishnaji held a discussion with the staff and students. But also, on the twenty-fourth, my Tiffany clock disappeared!’ There was much drama that ensued. It must have been stolen because nobody could find it, and I searched my room minutely. Then I had the good idea, as it turned out, to get the students in to help me search. Perhaps they were better at searching. And lo and behold, it turned up in my room.
Somebody had put it back.

Krishnaji gave a wonderful talk to the students on the vividness of awareness and a quiet mind. He showed them pranayama. We went to Winchester after lunch for the Normandy Ferry tickets, intending to go on to South Hampton to scout out where we would dock, but Krishnaji was tired after trotting around Winchester, so we came back. It was a marvelous, clear, sparkling autumn day: very exhilarating. We went for a walk and Krishnaji said, ‘This is better. Now I feel better.’ Later he told me he had dreamt he met Winston Churchill talking to a girl. Churchill said to Krishnaji, “Oh, it doesn’t matter if you marry a girl or not.” Krishnaji said to Churchill’ "If you’ll forgive my saying so, Churchill, you are naughty!”’ ‘To which Churchill replied to Krishnaji, “I love you, I love you.”’ End of dream! ‘Krishnaji said to me, “I’ve met very many distinguished people on the astral plane.”’ Well, take it as you like, but it was said with humor.

‘At lunch, a Tony Fergusson telephoned to know why he hadn’t a reply to his letter to Krishnaji. He had joyous news about the reincarnation of Annie Besant. He said that there was a rumor that Krishnaji wouldn’t see him.’ ‘Krishnaji said, “Oh, for god’s sake,” when he was asked about it.

Again the next day, Krishnaji and I drove off in a light rain to South Hampton, where we loaded the car onto the Normandy Ferry. We have state rooms, fairly comfortable. The seas were a bit rough in the night, but alright.’ On the seventeenth, ‘the ferry docked at Le Havre, and we drove off at 7 a.m., going in the direction of Rouen. Stopped on the autoroute for a breakfast and were in Paris at the Plaza Athénée shortly after 10 a.m. well. Moser arrived from Thun and took the car off for its winter storage.

At 4 p.m., Nadia Kossiakof came to talk to me, and then Mr. Voisin and an aide came to discuss doing a filmed interview for O.R.T.F. Krishnaji said yes. He and I then went for a walk and had supper in the rooms.’
On the eighteenth, Monsieur Voisin and his crew set up for a TV interview in the sitting room. Krishnaji came there at noon, and the interview was filmed.
On the next day, ‘Krishnaji did a further interview in French for O.R.T.F. He has done a total of four hours, including yesterday.’ They recorded four hours of interview. And he was talking French through all that,

On the twentieth of October, ‘Krishnaji flew on Alitalia to Rome.
On the twenty-first, ‘I telephoned Krishnaji in Rome and told him of Erna’s letter. Rosalind tried to telephone him at Vanda’s last night. She had postponed her trip to Israel in order to see him, “not about the dispute.” Krishnaji sent a reply via Vanda that he did not wish to see her about anything. Erna’s letter stressed that it was more important than ever that he not see Rosalind. There is still no decision yet on his going to India. The war news between India and Pakistan is still tense.’  On October thirty-first, it says, ‘Krishnaji was to give a public talk this morning in Rome.’

On November sixth, ‘I had a letter from Krishnaji. He has decided not to go to India. Not because of the war possibility between India and Pakistan, but because “body is rebelling against it.” Needs a complete rest. He’s staying in Rome till the sixteenth, then goes to Brockwood, and then comes here’—meaning Malibu. ‘I feel infinitely relieved and happy. I cabled to him.’
On the thirteenth, ‘a letter came from Krishnaji. He is very tired and worried he may be involved in the Rajagopal case. He must be protected. I talked to Erna and agreed that he must be totally shielded, no matter what.’ Then, I did all kinds of errands, and came home. ‘I telephoned Vanda in Rome. She says Krishnaji is alright. Just tired. I spoke to him and reassured him about the case and about getting money for the Cloisters.’ I don’t know what that was. ‘He goes to Brockwood on the nineteenth and will be here on Thanksgiving.’
On November fifteenth, ‘Alain Naudé came from Ojai for dinner and to stay in the guest house till Wednesday.’ That was on Monday. ‘He says that Rajagopal and Annalisa Rajagopal were served with papers in the complaint.’
On the twenty-fourth, ‘I got an express letter from Krishnaji sent from England, Monday. Leipziger telephoned about Biascoechea doing a deposition and it being possibly taken here. Also, there are possibilities of protecting Krishnaji if he should be subpoenaed by Rajagopal.’

On the twenty-fifth, Krishnaji began this day awakening at Brockwood at 3 a.m. He couldn’t sleep and so got up and did exercises and later left in the Land Rover with Dorothy Simmons and Doris Pratt for Heathrow, where he took a 10 a.m. TWA flight for Los Angeles. It was misty here. Philippa came over. I made soup and left early for the airport. The plane wasn’t due until 4:15 p.m. Driving, I had that curious intense sense of awareness of every inch of the road and the other cars, because once again, I was on Krishnaji’s business. It is conscious, but more than that, it is as if something took charge and my actions become, as Krishnaji has so often told me, responsible to whatever his are. That was a very strong feeling. Suddenly, the things became serious.
‘So, sitting at the airport, waiting for him was for me a feeling of at once a very quiet intentness and the limitless feeling of joy at his coming. Again, most intensely personal and at the same time beyond and apart from any personal dimension. The plane came in precisely on time and through a window I could see him second off the plane, carrying his Gucci bag. In half an hour, his two bags were wheeled out of customs behind the porter. He was here! Somehow, his coming now, only five weeks from when we were last together in Paris, seems more momentous than it had been after the long weeks of the Indian tour. In some way, it is intently important that he has changed course and come here for, at last, a thorough rest.’
‘He looked bright and very well in spite of accumulated fatigue, and the very long flight of eleven hours. Once turning onto the freeway, I thought he was about to faint, but touching him lightly seemed to prevent it. It was only when we were unpacking in his room, and he had just given me a little bottle of eye drops, that he suddenly fainted toward me, so quietly that I could only break his fall. It lasted about two minutes. Then he was alright, took a shower, and insisted on having his supper tray in front of the television news. Then, quickly to bed. He is wound up from traveling, chattery, and full of sparks, but his very simple supper came up, as had the food on the plane. He brought me a letter he had written at Brockwood, and today, to me, written on the plane.’
“There was a right action when the Order of the Star was dissolved. There was a right action when the castle and land were returned. There was right action when he broke with Rajagopal, and there is right action now. We are dealing with a crook, unscrupulous, utterly unreliable, and deeply antagonistic, with a considerable hate. Action, any action where he is concerned will have in it the elements of distortion. We are not concerned with him. He’s unbalanced and self-centered. It is not the money we want, nor the property, nor the manuscript, etcetera. I feel that money was given with great devotion, sacrifice, love. To those people who gave it, we are responsible. And what is our responsibility? People, including Signora,”’—he always called Vanda, “Signora”—“‘have said to me, ‘Is it not violence to embark on the path of lawyers?’ Signora was wild about it. Personally, money, etcetera is nothing. But to leave it all in Rajagopal’s hands seems and feels totally wrong and not right.” And then, “Right action under any circumstances is always true, and from that everything flows easily. It is like a flowing river. The flow of the river is not inaction. Its action is of itself from the beginning to the end. There is a right action in this.”’
‘And later, he said, “One must be a complete outsider, and so the most true revolutionary, and then action will be incorruptible. We must act as outsiders with Rajagopal.”’

Krishnaji, and Krishnaji temporarily withdrew from the board to avoid participating in the litigation. He suggested Theo Lilliefelt as a substitute member, and this was carried out.’ That’s how Theo became a member; we had to have one more. ‘We then discussed Alan Kishbaugh as a possible trustee and agreed to invite him to become one. Krishnaji walked ahead down Grand Avenue with Theo, and I followed in the car, and we drove home from there for supper. Doctor Lay had said that his body is bone-tired. But Krishnaji says his mind is bursting with energy. He needs to slow down till his body can rest and catch up.’
December fifth ‘was a lovely, quiet day at home. We did French lessons in the morning. Alain Naudé telephoned from San Francisco. He’s moving into an apartment. We walked on the beach road. Krishnaji dictated during lunch an article for The Bulletin on relationship.’

The next day, ‘we did a French lesson, and we walked on the beach. There was a cable from Balasundarum about hearing from Friedman in Bombay that Krishnaji was in a New York hospital.’ This happened all the time, rumors about Krishnaji.
On December eighth, ‘Krishnaji came with me on errands and to arrange to buy a Nagra 4.2. We had a picnic lunch in the car. Then we went to a movie, Man in the Wilderness, in Hollywood.’

December eleventh, He said he awakened in the night with a sense of joy and felt the room was filled with people. Quote: “Eminent, holy beings who seem there when something happens in his brain. My head felt enormous.” …and in the afternoon we went to a movie in Santa Monica, Play Misty for Me. That was a Clint Eastwood movie.
On December thirteenth, ‘Krishnaji said to me, “You must be cured, not corrected.”’ I guess that was my ailments or maybe my habits I don’t know which.

December fourteenth, ‘we went to Ojai. There was discussion of the origins of the Happy Valley School and dissident teachers there wanting to hear the facts of it from Krishnaji. Would he see them or not? He and Theo walked, and Erna and I met them on the road. Krishnaji and I drove home, seeing a marvelous sunset.’
‘We went early to town on miscellaneous errands. Went to get the new Nagra. Krishnaji had rested all day. He walked around the garden, and had met me when I drove in. Krishnaji remote, as if aware of other things in the house. “Something is going on in the head,” he said, but he slept throughout the night.’

The next day. ‘The pain in Krishnaji’s head continues. He rested all morning, but wanted to go to a movie, so we saw the Disney Bedknobs and Broomsticks with Angela Lansbury. The pain stopped for Krishnaji, but resumed as we came out of the theater. He fainted in the car on the Pacific Coast Highway. We walked around the lawn on returning home, and at supper saw a TV program of the Indian war.’

The next day, ‘we had a beach walk. Krishnaji felt better. No pain in his head.’
ASKED Krishnaji about the background of Happy Valley, and under what condition he would be interested in the school. He said only if the trustees remove Rosalind. Krishnaji walked and talked for half an hour with Erna and Theo, and then we drove home.’

We ignored Christmas totally. As we did birthdays, too.
‘Ariba of the Happy Valley School board came to see Krishnaji. It is clear that the school is in a total mess, and that the board is totally under Rosalind’s thumb.’
December twenty-eighth, ‘there was rain in the early morning and then it ended. Six inches had fallen.
On December twenty-ninth, ‘The rains stopped, and it was a clear, beautiful day. While talking to Erna on the phone, we heard there was snow on the mountains in Ojai. Krishnaji said, “Let’s go.” So, we took a picnic and drove to the Lilliefelt’s. Had our picnic there, and then walked with them three miles. The mountains are powdered with snow. We came home for supper.’

On December thirtieth, ‘we had an early lunch and then drove to Hollywood and saw a movie, Dirty Harry, a detective one. We came back via Pacific Palisades and bought a twelve-inch Sony color TV. We discussed in the car, “what is it to be bourgeois?” It is self-centered, desiring ego. Material things, concepts, but more than that, an inelasticity. I asked if I were that. Krishnaji thought I am not attached to money or things, and I answered, “no” to deriving ego from them.
There was wind all night on the thirty-first. ‘It was a beautiful, bright day. Krishnaji dictated a piece on what the bourgeois mind is. The wind was less in the afternoon, and we walked at low tide on the beach.’ It says, ‘a blessed way to end this year.’
On January first, 1972 the scene is Malibu, and ‘it was a clear and beautiful day. Krishnaji watched the Rose Parade on television, saying “These people are crazy.”’ ‘Later, he watched the start of the Rose Bowl football game.’ ‘I went over next door to see my friends, the Dunnes. When I came back, Krishnaji had had his nap, and then we watched the end of the Rose Bowl.’
The next day was ‘another beautiful day, and Krishnaji talked into the Nagra about the first of his reminiscences. He talked about the discovery of the boy in the early years. We walked on the beach in the late afternoon. And at night there were gale winds and the house shook with it.’
On January third, ‘the winds had quieted in the morning but began again at lunchtime. The Dunnes had part of their roof ripped off.’ Such were the winds.

The fifth of January, ‘Sidney Field telephoned that his brother John had died suddenly the day before. Krishnaji spoke to him and asked him to come to lunch the next day. In the afternoon, Krishnaji and I went to a James Bond movie, Diamonds are Forever, in Hollywood.’ And it says here, ‘terrible movie.’ And it also says that ‘Krishnaji shouted a bit and didn’t sleep well at night.’ He used to call it “shouting,” I heard this cry and it sounded like distress. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to Alain Naudé, and said something’s wrong with Krishnaji, and I described it. He said, “Oh, no, no. Pay no attention, it happens all the time; Krishnaji doesn’t like to talk about it, and it doesn’t mean a thing.” This was the first inkling I had of, really, part of the process, in a way. Krishnaji called it “shouting,” and often he woke himself up by doing it.

On the nineteenth, ‘Sidney Field again came for lunch with Krishnaji, and talked to him about reincarnation.’
but it wasn’t recorded. The one that was eventually done was a reconstruction of one of these things.
At lunch, we taped a discussion on reincarnation derived partly from Krishnaji’s conversation to Sidney Field last week. ‘Krishnaji and Alain did another taped dialogue, starting with the Upanishads, and going on to emptying the mind of 'everything but fact', as the ending of thought. A mind that is not empty can never find truth. We lunched at home and walked on the lower road.’

January thirtieth ‘was a windy, clear day, and Krishnaji and I drove to Ojai. He spoke again of an "extraordinary light burning in the mind.’ - he was awake three hours with it in the night.

Martha Longnecker telephoned. San Diego State University wants to film the discussions that Krishnaji might do with various people.’ That was the origin of all those videos that were done down there.

‘Krishnaji says he hasn’t felt so rested since the ’40s. Having been there that whole winter was wonderful.
‘Krishnaji told of waking last night and seeing for a brief moment that it was as if something were being done in his brain, his inner brain,’ it says. ‘It ''disappeared' and he felt he mustn’t pursue it. It is part of what has been going on lately,’ it says.

On the tenth of February, ‘Krishnaji slept in the morning and the afternoon. We had a beach walk. In the evening, Krishnaji was given a shock when I spoke to him while he was “far away” while watching television. It caused him to shake and he felt it all night, so sensitive has his body become.’ We were sitting watching television, and after supper, I remember it clearly, I casually spoke to him. I didn’t realize he was off and he came to with this jar. It was like waking him up, which he said, never wake him up, or if you have to, when I did, I would make small noises, so that it would gradually enter his consciousness.

February thirteenth. ‘It was a beautiful day, all the loveliness of California. I cooked all morning. Father Eugene Shallot and his assistant, a Miss Jacqueline Kelly, came to lunch. He will do a dialogue with Krishnaji in San Diego on Thursday. He’s a professor of sociology at San Francisco University, the Jesuit university. They left at 4 p.m., and we went for a beach walk. Television showed the first half of Ben Hur, and Krishnaji wanted to see it.’ That happened to be my birthday, but nobody mentioned that. I concealed it.
On the fourteenth, ‘I packed. We had an early lunch, and left at 1:45 p.m. for La Jolla, 140 miles away, and to Martha Longnecker’s house. She is lending it for Krishnaji’s stay. Dr. Alan Anderson came to call. He is a teacher of Religious Studies at San Diego State and will do videotaped conversations with Krishnaji on Wednesday.’ She had a very nice house.
The next day, Krishnaji rested while I marketed and checked motel arrangements for the Tibetan ChögyamTrungpa Rinpoche, and for Naudé and for Shallot, etcetera. I made our lunch and we went to San Diego State University, where Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his assistant, Marvin Kasbar, arrived. Krishnaji and Trungp awere videotaped in dialogue. The Tibetan was nice, but contributed little.’ [Chuckles.] ‘Krishnaji did it all, so very valuable.

The sixteenth, ‘Krishnaji did a videotape in the morning with Dr. Alan Anderson of religious studies, San Diego State. Krishnaji, Alain, and I lunched, and later went for a walk through La Jolla. Shopped at Tweeds and Weaves, and Krishnaji and I had supper alone.’ Krishnaji wonders if something in my past life causes my sometime mannerisms of tension.’
If there’s any posterity listening, you may well wonder why I didn’t ask, and I’m tired of explaining that I didn’t want to push, or ask pushy questions. If he wanted to tell me, hooray. If he didn’t, he didn’t have to.
There’s nothing interesting about Krishnaji until the twenty-second, when ‘he said, meditation was so strong that he couldn’t sleep.’ on the twenty-sixth, ‘after lunch, we went to see a movie, The Hard Rock, a comic detective film. Coming out, Krishnaji asked about ice cream, which he hadn’t had in years. So we went into Will Wright’s—that was a little store that had wonderful ice cream—and he chose English Toffee. We had a small portion at supper. It promptly came up, but he said, “I see why people like it!”’ He liked ice cream, from then on- his stomach couldn’t take it initially, but it got used to it. ‘Later he told me I should write some of the things he tells me very well, with style.’

The first of March, ‘was a clear, warm day. We drove to Ojai. Krishnaji had his hair cut, then we lunched with Erna, Theo, Ruth, Albion Patterson. Afterwards, Krishnaji answered questions, mostly from Patterson, on the relation of his personal early history to the teachings for people without that background. Krishnaji said it had no relevance. “What happened to him interests people who are not really interested in themselves. ‘“There is no path, no system. There is a quality of mind you cannot put into words that can go into the question of truth. There is a mystery which one must approach with extraordinary delicacy. The conscious mind cannot do this. The word is not the thing. If one comes to the thing, one never puts it into words, but can say it is there. I know it is there.”

He added a small bit to yesterday’s tape, saying he had no ill feeling towards the TS people who opposed him. He had no relationship at all to them.’

‘Krishnaji read a report on some kind of research that predicts the collapse of the world economies in seventy years unless growth, birth, and pollution are drastically halted. Krishnaji asked what is the individual’s answer to such catastrophe? He said the response must come not out of the problems, or compulsion, but out of freedom. What matters is to live rightly.’

On the twelfth ‘Krishnaji and I telephoned Dorothy at Brockwood just for fun.’ ‘Again we walked on the lawn. I was busy with income tax. Rajagopal has asked for postponement of his deposition for March twenty to the twenty-eighth.’
The next day, ‘we went to the dentist and saw West Side Story on television. Krishnaji said meditation was so intense in the night that he wanted to get up. Also felt something evil outside so that he looked out the window, “as if when there is great good, evil attempts to come sniffing around.” He’d feel danger, and he would also feel protected, but he spoke of it often, that evil would try to get at him through some others, you or me or somebody…and it really does.

On the seventeenth, ‘Alain arrived just after lunch, having motored down from San Francisco. He brought ties for Krishnaji and a pretty scarf and a little bottle for me. He and Krishnaji walked on the beach, and I went over to see the Dunnes.

‘Krishnaji, Alain, and I had lunch at home and Erna and Theo came by on their way to Ojai. Krishnaji was very sharp on analyzing Rajagopal’s actions, especially about the alleged oral agreement that Rajagopal says Krishnaji gave him on a trusteeship for life. Krishnaji said to me later, “Judas isn’t in it”—i.e., Judas was pale by comparison.’

In the morning, Krishnaji came to me with almost tears and said, “Come, let me show you this place.” We looked down the valley and at the hills. He loves this place so much. The air was filled with the smell of orange blossoms, and he had me listen to a hum, which was the bees in the grove. I asked him if he would like to get a place here, that I would sell Malibu if he wished it. He wouldn’t hear of that, but came back later to thank me.’
Krishnaji, Theo, and I walked down the Thatcher Road. On our return, Krishnaji had me write down that he had, in the early morning, a feeling of meditation that he had never had before. “From my center, from my heart that filled the whole valley. It went on for a considerable time. From that, it went to my head, and was a most extraordinary thing. It has been pursuing me on all the walk and when I was talking to the lawyer Gold—it was just a voice talking. There was no reaction. It was just happening.

This post was last updated by John Raica Wed, 28 Jun 2017.

More MZ Story time

Tuesday, twenty-seventh March, 1972, Malibu to Ojai. Lovely, bright morning. Dorothy called about the tender estimates from the builders. It is £63,000 sterling and we have only £46,000 sterling . Krishnaji wants to get on with what we can and hope to raise money for the balance.
We got to Ojai and the Lilliefelt’s at 5:15 p.m. Theo was there, but Erna only arrived later, having spent the whole day at Rajagopal’s deposition. At one point,’ ‘Rajagopal denied that the old office next to Pine Cottage was a KWINC office. “It was,” said Krishnaji’
‘Rajagopal rambled, evaded, doesn’t listen to the whole question before replying.’
On March twenty-ninth, ‘Erna spent the second day with Rosenthal at the KWINC office on Rajagopal’s deposition. Krishnaji said that he had not slept too well. He felt psychic crossfire “of those two”’—meaning Rosalind and Rajagopal. ‘At eleven, he held the first of the educational gatherings. About forty people in all, mostly professors, and a few psychiatrists.
‘Rosenthal bore down on Rajagopal about the threats to Krishnaji, but Rajagopal wouldn’t come out with it…’—he wouldn’t admit it. ‘It showed him that we knew what he had been up to and we are not responding to the threats. The cross-complaint was gone through and it said that the rest of us have sided with Krishnaji, that Erna had played the tape to someone and that I prevented Rajagopal from seeing Krishnaji. Rajagopal said that he hadn’t seen Krishnaji alone, and then said that he had only seen him alone for about five minutes. He denied that he had taped that meeting. He admitted to taping Krishnaji’s telephone conversation in 1966, the last call to Malibu before Krishnaji left California, and also taping a meeting they had face-to-face. He denied any other taping. Saul said that he felt Rajagopal might want to settle soon. There was to be another deposition meeting next week. Saul had to give the court stenographer a lift, and his comment on Rajagopal was that he is “a lying bastard.”’ This shocked Krishnaji because of the language, but as Erna told the whole story, Krishnaji again said, “he is a crook, he is lying.”’ Erna and I sent a cable to Mary Cadogan, asking her to find out if Miss Dodge left a will in which Krishnaji and Rajagopal are mentioned.’

March thirtieth, a Thursday. ‘Clear, exquisite morning. Krishnaji came to me and said “Come, I want to show you this place.” We went out on the Lilliefelt’s driveway and looked down the valley toward the mountains, and Krishnaji was half in tears at the beauty of this place, which he loves so much. The air was filled with the smell of orange blossoms, and he had me listen to a hum, which was bees, thousands of bees, that work in the orange groves. I said that if he would like it, I would find a house here, and sell Malibu. He wouldn’t let me finish the sentence even, but later came to thank me. Today he didn’t feel the psychic crossfire of Rajagopal and Rosalind. He had slept well. The silence here is good for him. No noise of cars or even the sea.’
‘At 11 a.m., he held the second educational gathering, mostly on comparison. Afterwards, Krishnaji went in Alan Kishbaugh’s BMW for a spin and pronounced it a good car, next to a Mercedes. I made lunch for Krishnaji, Erna, and Theo, and then went for a back treatment. I ran into Alain Naudé in the post office and asked him why he had in 1966 ‘gone over to the office next to Pine Cottage when Rajagopal was there meeting with Krishnaji.’ This was when we first came back and Rajagopal and Krishnaji had a meeting alone and Alain and I sat in the little flat in which he was staying next to Pine Cottage. And at one point Alain wanted to go over and wanted me to come with him. ‘He remembered that we had thought they were meeting in Pine Cottage and that Rajagopal might be taping it. We went over looking for wires or something that might show this It happens that they were meeting in the office, which we didn’t realize, and Rajagopal came to the door.’

Theo, and I walked up around Thacher Road. On the return, Krishnaji told me what had happened in the night. These are his words, quote: “I have never had this before, this feeling of meditation. I woke up this morning at 5 with the feeling from my center, from my heart that filled the whole valley. It went on for a considerable time, and from that it went to my head and was a most extraordinary thing. It has been pursuing me on the walk. When I was talking to him’”—the lawyer Gold—“‘it was just a voice talking; there was no reaction. It was just happening.”’
April first. ‘Krishnaji had the fourth meeting of the educational gathering’—this was in Ojai—‘and we stayed through lunch with Erna and Theo.

At supper, Krishnaji brought up the subject he had raised with me earlier: What should be done by the Foundations when he dies? He spoke at first of support for people who might travel and speak, but the Lilliefelts and I too wonder how one would choose such people, even if there were any to consider? Only Krishnaji can judge that. Again, I had an idea that came, as it had about the Educational Centre while sitting in the same place at the Lilliefelt’s table, that a Krishnamurti library to house books, tapes, films, and people could come to study quietly would be part of the answer.’ ‘The rest of the three of us felt the Foundations should pursue every current activity, i.e., continue publishing of all the books. Krishnaji then dreamt of what to do if KFA gets the land here from KWINC. He felt the Oak Grove and adjoining fields for parking should be kept while he continues to speak and that the rest be sold, except the McAndrew Road property. When I spoke of the sense of contamination there a few days ago, he had said, “Oh, one night there and we will sweep it away. You must do the house, nobody else”’—he meant me ‘“He did say the upstairs of Arya Vihara where Rosalind and Radha lived are poorly planned and cheaply made and should be removed. India should make Vasanta Vihar into a center for a library, etcetera, continue the schools and education; England should continue the publications and support Brockwood both as a school and as a center. He spoke about my having use of the West Wing for life, which I said I couldn’t possibly do. Krishnaji said, quote: “I say you must have it. What you do is up to you, but you like England and it should be your home there.” Erna pointed out that all of us have probably only about fifteen-something years to carry on. Krishnaji said, “I am going to live another fifteen years.” He mentioned cremation, scattering of his ashes, no ceremony, no churches, temples. Erna said that all these matters should be legally recorded as his intentions.’

‘We spoke then about the third deposition of Rajagopal tomorrow, the point that he may be a Theosophist. His wife is. Casselberry had joined the liberal Catholic Church, according to Sidney Field, and that others on the KWINC Board have shown open hostility to Krishnaji as well as acting counter to his teaching by those affiliations.
Thursday, April sixth, Ojai. The text of Rajagopal’s first deposition arrived, 170 pages. I read about half of it after lunch, and it reads very evasively to my mind; at times, hardly a sentence is grammatical English; gives ridiculous explanations for holding all the land, for forming the K & R Trust and the Annie Besant Trust; real estate transactions are very weak. He said his birth date was seven September 1900, born in Periyakulam, South India.’
‘Rajagopal did admit that he was a lifelong Theosophist’ Krishnaji was visibly shocked by all this and said, “How could a man that had corrected the talks and been part of this be at the same time a Theosophist?” At supper, Krishnaji talked more about how Rajagopal could have become so crooked. Erna and I both feel he is even more devious than we suspected and is so deeply antagonistic to Krishnaji that he is trying to destroy him and the meaning of his teachings. Does he really believe in Theosophy? Can he believe in anything except his own overweening sense of self?’

Friday, April seventh. Krishnaji again talked about making the eleven acres on McAndrew Road a center office, Pine Cottage the library/discussion center. Arya Vihara a private place for him during his lifetime, and then convertible for a quiet place to read, listen to tapes, etcetera. He also spoke again about Rajagopal being a Theosophist—is shocked and appalled by it.

I prepared lunch, then took the Nagra to Libbey Park in Ojai where Krishnaji is to give two talks this weekend. I set it up and left it to Alan Kishbaugh to watch while I came back for Krishnaji. I drove Krishnaji at 11 a.m. to the talk and it was videotaped in color by Ben Lewin…’ A large, attentive audience. Krishnaji spoke of beauty, of the valley, of preserving it. Most of the talk was on thought.
At supper, Krishnaji talked of Rajagopal, his refusal of Krishnaji’s healing, his self-pity. Krishnaji quoted Rajagopal as saying, “People will always look after you. But me, who will care about me?” Krishnaji wondered how, with this extraordinary protection that has characterized his life, that those two’—Rajagopal and Rosalind—‘were allowed to come into it as they did.’

I came back to fetch Krishnaji to his second talk. A strong, superb one, tremendous energy in it. He said, “Order is not within the field of consciousness.” Bill Quinn, from past days in Ojai, spoke to him briefly after the talk, almost in tears. In the car, Krishnaji was shaking from the outpouring of speaking. It had been broadcast live on radio and was videotaped. He had worn a middling dark red knitted shirt, which came out well on colored video. We drove back very slowly, followed by a hippy. Krishnaji spoke to him. He was too choked up to speak to Krishnaji and later when we left, he was waiting by the gate to see Krishnaji again. Mark Lee and family came by for Krishnaji to touch the children’s heads. His wife brought idli, which Krishnaji, Erna, Alan Kishbaugh, Ruth, and I had with our lunch.

At lunch, Krishnaji gave Kishbaugh a summary of what Theosophists believe, part of it very funny. After lunch, we had a trustee meeting. When it was over, Donald Hoppen saw Krishnaji. I spoke briefly to him as he left and he said his being upset and angry is something he now looks on as a passing phase. Krishnaji and I then left and drove home to Malibu in time for supper. It had been a long and full day for Krishnaji, but he wanted to watch High Noon, a movie on television, and it was a diversion from all that had gone on.’

Monday, the tenth of April. ‘Krishnaji found Candles in the Sun  in the bookcase and he read in it. He read me the part in which Lady Emily and others resigned from the TS and Dr. Besant offered to as well when Krishnaji broke with it. “And yet Rajagopal didn’t,” said Krishnaji. “How could he remain in it? This is worse than his stealing money.” He told me, and probably Erna, that if he’d known that Rajagopal continued to be a Theosophist all those years, he never would have let him edit the talks. At lunch, after reading Candles in the Sun, he spoke of “protecting the body”, how it is necessary. Crossing the beach road together, Krishnaji paused and a car came along fast with the sun in its eyes. I called to Krishnaji, who was just out of my reach, and he said, “I see it, I see it,” but he didn’t move. He has an odd tendency never to act quickly when there is danger from traffic. He says he sees it as though that was enough.’ I remember the first time crossing Piccadilly road with him: he was about to step into traffic and I, without thinking, grabbed him. And he said very casually, “You just saved my life.” And I was horrified, and he said, “Well, it wouldn’t happen if I were alone. Then I pay attention.” So, I thought, my god I have to save his life every time we come to cross a road, possibly. And once I left him for a fitting at Huntsman. We were going to lunch at Fortnum and when I came back, he’d gone on his own! I was in panic wondering which road he’d taken and rushed out, and he then reappeared. He not only crossed, but he crossed back, twice. Such things

‘In the morning, Krishnaji asked me to write each day, “What is it like to be with a man from Madanapalle.”’ ‘He said I must be able to write well. He has been reading Out of Africa because of my suggestion and sees that it is a style which means much to me. He said to do this, and that it is more important than all those letters to spend “an hour or two each day.” This is something that I would like to do most deeply. Where that hour or two is each day is to be found, god knows! I am drowning in deskwork, hopelessly behind. There are days after days when I cannot even read some of the mail that I should be answering. But he is right. And if he wants me to do this, “do it!” as he would say. He is confident about tomorrow.’

Wednesday, April twelve. ‘Saul Rosenthal came at 9:30 a.m. Then, a Mr. Nevel, a court reporter, then came Terry Christen, Rajagopal’s lawyer, and his assistant, G. Gilbert. I suddenly looked out the kitchen window and, completely unannounced, saw Rajagopal, Nima Porter, and Annie Vigeveno. I met them on the driveway and walked ahead of them to the house to warn Krishnaji and Erna. It was a shock to Krishnaji and an angry one to Erna and me. We sat at the extended table in the living room, Krishnaji facing the ocean. I sat just behind him and tried to draw the baleful stares of Rajagopal. He looked like an angry ancient baboon, a tense mouth, heavy, decayed body, and hands clasped and twisting, and angry eyes moving as if at a tennis match to the questioner and back. He would stare at my stare, not wanting to cede, and I had the feeling of calmly sending what I thought of him along the wire of his stares. Porter and Vigeveno sat at the end sofa, old and endlessly ugly, Vigeveno tense and hidden behind very black glasses. Tense, pursed mouth. Porter in her crazy ranch-hand face’—I was really not very flattering when I wrote this—‘sat in frozen attitudes, twisted over with her hands over her face. They looked cold and dead.’
‘Krishnaji spoke in a deep, slightly hoarse voice, slowly, carefully. When he became tired in the afternoon, he had difficulty concentrating on Christen’s questions and asked often for their repetition.’

‘During the break for lunch, Krishnaji went into the dining room and his body shook from head to foot. He lay down in his room for half an hour, and it resumed until 4:30. In the morning, Christen had asked for long explanations of Theosophy and what had happened in the early years. It occurred to me that he was trying to tire Krishnaji before more pertinent questions. Krishnaji answered carefully, giving more than necessary and making no derogatory references to Rajagopal. It is so against his nature to speak critically of someone that even in this context, he cannot do it. He also, out of a politeness, gave us margins for doubt in some of his answers, as though not wanting to contradict Christen. After it was over, he looked drained. When we saw that Rajagopal and the others had gone, Erna telephoned Theo to come, too, and he rushed from Ojai. He accompanied Krishnaji on the beach walk, and Krishnaji came back looking much better. Erna and Theo spent the night here. Krishnaji was shivering a little when he went to bed.’

Thursday, the thirteenth of April. ‘Another even longer day of deposition. Again, Rajagopal, Annie Vigeveno, and Mima Porter lumbered in and sat as yesterday. These two days are the only times I have ever seen Krishnaji sit with his legs crossed. At moments of fatigue, he would sit that way. Rajagopal sat opposite at the other end of the table and again was silent but with an attitude of shrugged shoulders and unspoken indignation.
The questioning went on. Christen ‘in a loud striped shirt and tie, gold spectacles and rings, polite words, sharp eyes, ably and doggedly putting forth questions, seemed to be uncertain what would come from Krishnaji or how to deal with him. Rajagopal asked for a break in mid-morning because Krishnaji had forgotten having seen Joy Mills, etcetera, last month in Ojai. This was corrected. Yesterday, before leaving, Christen had left copies of letters he wished to put in as evidence.

We had read them; Krishnaji had not. Some were so sad, Krishnaji apologizing to Rajagopal and mentioning a 'betrayal'. They were letters written at Rajagopal’s insistence. One in 1952 was written for Mrs. Bindley in London. Krishnaji was asked to identify his signature, but not the content, for he has no memory of them. Christen had shown us only about a dozen as he is supposed to by agreement.’

‘Krishnaji was shown only about a dozen as he is supposed to by agreement with Rosenthal, but Rajagopal offered some forty in all. The copy of the deposition will give the back and forth of all this, but when we stopped for lunch, it looked as if the questioning might be prolonged into tomorrow. Christen had not yet moved into anything touching on Rosalind, but there were signs of it coming closer. Krishnaji lay down after lunch and I took Saul in to speak to him before the resumption. Krishnaji was sleeping in his bed like a child—infinitely touching. He motioned Saul to sit down on the end of the bed, and Saul told him that he was doing very well, 85 percent marks, he said, and Krishnaji listened as if he were taking an examination in school.’

‘We went back in and it was agreed to try to finish today. As the afternoon wore on, Krishnaji was looking so frail, his body in his jeans and blue shirt and sweater seeming to become smaller. And then he seemed to gain a different strength. He began to speak on his own level of trust and friendship in the early days, which allowed him to leave everything to Rajagopal, of how that trust was eroded by Rajagopal until it was gone and he had to break. Toward the end, Christen was asking if it would meet with Krishnaji’s approval, if Krishnaji could accept KWINC doing publishing of the already-published books, not by the TS Press. Krishnaji did not accede to this readily. He continued to speak of lack of confidence in Rajagopal. “Trust once broken is gone,” he said. Finally, Christen asked him if the court found that KWINC could do that and if KFA did the rest, would Krishnaji accept it? Krishnaji replied that one must accept the court’s decision, and if both organizations shared the work then that would happen, and “God help them both.” It was over. They left.’

‘Saul stayed on a little while. He had got into the record that Krishnaji repudiated a letter that Krishnaji wrote to Rajagopal years ago as a “will” that Rajagopal should carry on the work and appoint his own successor after Krishnaji is gone. But Saul wants Krishnaji to draw up a separate, more binding document to counteract this before he leaves California.’
‘We all felt euphoric that it was over. Saul told Krishnaji that he got 100 percent for the afternoon, and Krishnaji was both shaking and laughing, as the strain was beginning to come out of him. ’

I asked Krishnaji what was the so-called 'betrayal'; and Krishnaji said that it was an episode in Athens when they were both staying in a hotel and somebody had asked Rajagopal for an interview with Krishnaji, and Rajagopal turned the person down. Later, Krishnaji was in the lobby, or somewhere, and the person came up to him and begged him for an interview, and he agreed. Rajagopal was in a rage, and said this was a 'betrayal'. This is what he dictated so he could use this as something about Rosalind

‘Several thoughts on awakening. The thing is not over. Much in Krishnaji’s testimony can be pulled down in court because he does not remember things, but his evident trust he gave and Rajagopal’s abuse is formidable. Krishnaji was very tired and slept all morning and after lunch.
The sixteenth, ‘Krishnaji told me I must have a secretary for all the letters, etcetera. He said I spend all my time working when I should be quiet. "Think. Read. Write. And keep around him a serene atmosphere". If I get tired, it tires him. I must do everything to be well and stay well. He expects to live many more years and I must be well to help him. If anything happens to me, if I were in a hospital, he could not be with me, etcetera. He joked about, “the Master only speaks once.” An old Theosophical saying, so I must pay heed. During the evening, he said something was happening as if someone were in the room watching. Something is happening to him, an energy. He said he understood something about a very, very long prolonged life. He chided me a little about not having noticed anything in the room. I had not been quiet.’

April seventeenth. Krishnaji and I walked on the beach road, and then he spoke of Kundalini, something that cannot be sought and is not a reward. He asked me if I am writing these things down. It’s my job.’
On the eighteenth, ‘Erna, Theo, Ruth came at noon. We held a KFA trustee meeting. Krishnaji drew up a statement to prevent Rajagopal or KWINC having anything to do with his work after his death. They left after lunch and we went for a walk.’

April twentieth. The astronauts landed on the moon while we listened on TV. Malibu was at its loveliest; flowers, sunlight, and a clear, clean wind from the sea.’ ‘I could have packed for hours but gave it up and went to bed.’
The twenty-first. ‘Up at 5 a.m., and we were ready to leave at 7:15 a.m. Filomena went by taxi and Amanda drove Krishnaji and me to the airport. We had thirteen bags! to check. Good lord. We flew at 9 a.m. on TWA. Arrived in New York around 5 p.m. Very slow traffic going into town. TWA didn’t have Krishnaji’s black Anthony bag, but it came on the next flight and was delivered to the Ritz Tower during the night. My father had a very small apartment with two bedrooms and two baths and a little sitting room, and a sort of closet with a cooking thing in it. We had supper and went to bed.’

On April twenty-ninth. ‘Krishnaji’s first talk at Carnegie Hall at 11 a.m. I had a car and driver. Everything went perfectly. Krishnaji spoke exactly one hour and then took questions. He said every form of conditioning is an act of separation. After lunch, we each took naps and then went for a short walk. Too much wind and dust, Krishnaji said. He felt faint. We came back and he had a runny nose during the night.
The next day ‘was Krishnaji’s second talk in Carnegie Hall. He felt alright and the cold symptoms stopped.

After lunch, Krishnaji and I went to 9 East 90th Street, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum offices. In the rooms made available by Lisa’—Lisa is my brother’s wife, who was director of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum—‘Krishnaji gave interviews…One was ‘for the Village Voice magazine’—looks like—‘Eve Berliner. Also Gary Wayne Londrin’—‘Paul Bura, and G. Marcello. Then we walked all the way down to 57th Street.’

The third of May. ‘I went to get Krishnaji’s visa for France, and miscellaneous errands. Felt poorly after lunch. I have 'grippe'. Rainy day, so Krishnaji didn’t go out. He had fever in the night.
On the fourth, ‘I went to Dr. Wolf, who gave me some quinine tablets for the grippe, and’—something else, some medicine. ‘I fetched Krishnaji’s passport from the French Consulate. A Mr. D. K. Jha, the Ambassador of India, came to lunch. He was an old friend of Krishnaji’s. A nice man.

May sixth. ‘Krishnaji gave his third talk in Carnegie Hall. After the usual conference last night on which suit, shirt, and tie to wear; he was in dark blue, his hair a little shorter after the barber visit Thursday. The barber refused to cut it short, long pieces on the side now fly…blow in the wind, like ears, and seem a nuisance to him, but he didn’t go as far as to cut them really short. I think it would look very nice and simple, but he must decide. The Carnegie Hall manager, Mr. Warkow, said when we arrived that Mr. Stokowski was in the audience and would like to greet Krishnaji afterward.’
‘It was a very good talk, beginning with the need for order; a new dimension must be first in the individual. Unfortunately, we usually try to bring order about from the outside. Order is not to be cultivated, it is not competition, not conformity. Order comes from observation and choice-less awareness. Only the man who perceives without distortion, who will have the energy to change, will then, with others, make a change in the world. Order comes without effort, sweetly. A mind that is completely in order is good. In this order lies our whole problem of living. We must stop the disorder which society accepts. The pattern of society is corrupt. Can you put that aside and bring about order in yourself? Knowing yourself is the ending of sorrow. There is sorrow in each individual and there is a collective sorrow. Fulfillment, changing according to a pattern, is a dissipation of energy because it is an avoidance of what is, and you need complete energy to change what is. Order can come about without any effort. Effort implies division and conflict; order is only possible when we observe what is and go beyond it. So there is an ending of sorrow when there is order, and this comes about when one understands oneself. How do you look without division? No observer, but only observation. The observer is only a fragment, it is the ego, the me, the past, the thinker, and the creator of division and conflict. The understanding of disorder is order. For us, love is a series of disorders. How is it possible to have love without a breath of disorder? Love is never to be in conflict in relationship—relationship means responsibility. Love in which there is total responsibility. Death is part of living. We have to understand that extraordinary thing called death, which means: Can I be free of the fear to look at it? The chaste mind has no image. You must find it. There is something permanent, not at the behest of time. That goes beyond death. Something not the product of time, physically or psychologically, not shaped by the mind, the environment, or experience, and therefore not touched by death.’
‘Time, a psychological process we call progress. We need tomorrow because we are lazy. We need to live a complete life without fear or death and with no tomorrow, dying every minute, dying to everything you hold dear, which is memory and to the past, which is the me, the me that says I must be. To die to the past is to die to oneself.’
‘Is there such a thing as immortality? Not me becoming immortal, which is such a small thing, which cannot love. There is only love when the me is not. So, is there eternity? That is what concerns man. If there is something beyond death, which is neither the continuity of what has been, nor seeking a heaven; to come upon that, which is not time or put together by thought as true.’
‘Immortality is where time doesn’t exist, and for this, the mind must be still. You cannot come upon this stillness without order. The really religious life is the life of non-self.’

‘After the talk, Krishnaji waited back stage until Stokowski came. They bowed and shook hands with great dignity. They mentioned how long since they had met. Krishnaji says it was first in Ommen, then in Ojai when he brought Garbo with him. Each seemed to give an appraising glance at the other as if noting how the years had touched each one. Stokowski is ninety now, still conducting. He has a concert in Carnegie Hall tomorrow night and Mr. Warkow said he had made a box available to Krishnaji and his friends.

‘We came back to lunch, and while Krishnaji slept, I went to the Dray Gallery to see a Bourdelle watercolor done of Krishnaji in 1927–28, which is similar to the one at Brockwood given by Mar de Manziarly. The gallery tried to sell it to me for $2,500. Bought some shoes and came back.’

‘During supper, the television showed an English curate doing exorcism on people possessed. Krishnaji told of doing it in the past. We watched a documentary on climbing Everest.’

Sunday, May seventh, 1972. Krishnaji’s fourth talk at Carnegie Hall. It seemed to me a very great one. ‘After the talk, we came back to the Ritz Tower, It was a warm day and Krishnaji and I walked all the way back to 57th Street in the afternoon. And then we went to the airport, and at 8 p.m. took a TWA flight to London.’
‘We scarcely slept on the 747, but arrived in London on time at 7:40 a.m. We were met by Dorothy in her new Cortina; Krishnaji and I drove with Dorothy to Brockwood. It was a grey day, but the sun came out as we came up the lane. Spring is late this year, and the copper beeches are just unfurling their tiny leaves.

Everyone looked well. Krishnaji, Dorothy, Whisper, and I went for a walk across the fields and back by the lane. Slept nine hours in the marvelous quiet of Brockwood.’
The twelfth of May. ‘Today, at half after midnight, it was Krishnaji’s seventy-seventh birthday, but so totally does he brush the subject aside that nothing is made of it. It is also Dorothy’s birthday. We made a little more of that. She, Doris, Krishnaji, and I had to go to Rubinstein’s office to sign legal papers in the new arrangement of the Foundation ceasing as is and becoming two new entities—the KF Trust Limited and the Brockwood Park Krishnamurti Educational Centre Limited.
On the fifteenth, ‘Krishnaji and I took the 12:40 p.m. Air France plane to Paris, and Michel met us’—that’s my father’s chauffeur—‘with the Rolls in which Krishnaji feels a little self-conscious, but also likes.’ ‘we went to the Plaza Athénée, Maurice, the maître d’hotel, was helpful with our vegetables, and a salad aux champignon, and a cheese flan with a light dusting of truffles. Krishnaji liked it, and his eyes darted about, taking in everything, including the fat priest in a monk’s habit who ate and drank interminably. Krishnaji was fascinated. How, first of all, how anybody could eat that much, and secondly, a man of the cloth…Krishnaji kept eyeing him, very discreetly. But this restaurant soon fell out of favor partly because they didn’t serve salad. Krishnaji couldn’t believe that a restaurant, especially in France, a good restaurant, you couldn’t have salad. He was quite shocked. Today, Au Pactole did not find favor with Krishnaji as they had no green salad.’ ‘He was aghast. “How can these people live?” he said, looking around at very copiously fed clientele.’

In Givenchy men’s boutique, , we found some good summer trousers and Krishnaji bought three pairs: a beige linen, a brown linen, and blue silk and wool combination. The next day was Thursday the eighteenth, and ‘I had a fitting at Chanel, ordered a blue tweed suit, went to see Father, came back to the hotel, and found the Mercedes there, brought from Thun by Mr. Moser. He, Krishnaji, and I discussed Krishnaji’s car, the purchase of which is postponed until next year.’ Krishnaji didn’t like the current model. ‘He left, and Krishnaji and I had a pleasant lunch at the Plaza. At 3:50 p.m. we left in the Mercedes for Le Havre. About an hour out on the autoroute, the car stopped for no reason we could tell. After five minutes, it was alright, and we continued. We found the Normandy Ferry, and the next morning, ‘we debarked in Southampton at 7 a.m., and drove to Brockwood in less than an hour. In afternoon, Krishnaji spoke to the staff. A statement of sanity makes one see what is, and therefore be sane.’ The next day, ‘Mary and Joe came for lunch. Krishnaji talked to Mary afterward about the biography. Then, we all had tea, including Frances McCann. The Links went back to town, and Krishnaji, Dorothy, Frances, and I went for a walk.’ Ahh…this is when Krishnaji said to me, “Are you my brother? For a moment, I felt you were.”’ I’d forgotten when that was. ‘“That’s reincarnation,” he said. I pointed out I couldn’t be, because I was born before Nitya died.’

‘Krishnaji said strange things are going on in his head. “Head is burning,” he said. He slept in the morning and afternoon, but we walked.’

On the ninth of June [chuckles], ‘we went to London, and we lost my briefcase in the cab.’ What happened was Krishnaji was always concerned by what I carried. And when I carried both a handbag and, in this case, a briefcase, he wanted to carry the non-handbag. I always resisted, but I gave in on this occasion. He left it in the backseat of the cab.
We didn’t know it until we got to Huntsman. Oh, yes, he was very disturbed by that. ‘So, I reported it to the police. The taxi driver had taken it to the police, who could see from papers inside that it had to do with Michael, so they called his office, and Michael’s clerk collected it. So, it wasn’t crisis, but it could’ve been. ‘Dorothy, Doris, David Bohm, the Digbys, and Mary Links were there. The Brockwood Park Krishnamurti Educational Centre Limited was formed, and the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Limited was set up separately, and both of them replaced the Krishnamurti Foundation of London. Krishnaji said the shock of the briefcase loss “put him away for the rest of the day.”’ His dismay was touching.

On June eleventh, ‘Krishnaji talked to the school. “Is there  communication that is neither verbal nor by gesture? When total attention exists at the same moment at the same level, there is communication.”’

On June twenty-second, ‘Krishnaji spoke to the school about what to do with physical pain—don’t fight it, watch it; on the insight of seeing the pain of conflict, etcetera, but not making an insight into a pattern. It was a good talk in spite of a little hay fever, Krishnaji was shining,’ it says.

June twenty-sixth. We both had supper downstairs, and then some of the boys helped me load the car, and as usual, all the school came out to see Krishnaji off. We drove to Southampton and onto the Normandy Ferry. We had comfortable cabins and the crossing was so smooth that I couldn’t tell when the ship left the dock.’ On June twenty-seventh. ‘We disembarked at 7 a.m. at Le Havre.

‘Krishnaji and I drove from the Tour at noon and found the way to the A6 autoroute beyond Fontainebleau. The country unfurled in great rolling spaces, the beautiful stretches of middle France. Krishnaji was delighted. The Plaza had provided a very expensive and uninteresting picnic. But, we had plenty of fruit and ate it in one of the prettier parking spots off the autoroute. Then on into the afternoon, and rain until we got off the autoroute, and came to Lissieu just north of Lyon by 5:30 p.m. We had rooms at the Réserve, a quiet place. Mine had pink bird wallpaper I had considered for Brockwood. We dined in the dining room. Krishnaji wished to order the normal sequence, not beginning with fruit, as we usually do. So, we had a good meal built around an omlet and haricots verts with a half-bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse, which Krishnaji tasted and then made a wincing face.’ ‘Both slept soundly. No hay fever symptoms for Krishnaji.
We drove on to Avignon, but it became very hot and we got caught in traffic jams. We tried to see the Palais des Papes, but within the walls, the city was an ant hive for people and cars, and we escaped after a look out the car window at the Palais. ‘We got to Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and found our hotel, Le Prieuré.’ All these reservations had been made by Sacha through the French tourist office in London. ‘Krishnaji had a room on one side of the hotel, and I on the other, but they were cool and comfortable, and a refuge after the traffic. We rested, and we had dinner at 7 p.m. in the garden. Krishnaji elegant in his infinite dignity and grace. I watched all this, diagnosing the other diners’ ills from the fact that they ate too much and meat.’ Saturday, the first of July. ‘It was a bright cloudless morning. We left Le Prieuré at 11 a.m., and drove westward, looking for Pont du Gard. At one point, Krishnaji said “Turn here, turn here,” with such vehemence that I felt struck down and shaking. He startled me as though I were about to run over a child, and being so open to him, it was devastating. I could hardly drive for a while, but we came to the Pont—a Roman aqueduct built at the time of Augustus, huge and splendid. Krishnaji liked it. We drove toward Nîmes, the country reminded both of us of California, and so did the bright Provençal light. At Nîmes, we found La Maison Carrée, and found it beautiful, saw the amphitheater, then drove on. Krishnaji navigating by the map to Aigues-Mortes in the Camargue. We left the car outside and walked through the fortress walls into the tiny townn in the Camargue, right down at the bottom of France. It’s a little old town. It looked as though it were built for very small people, lived in, and
defended by them until the sea capriciously withdrew from it, leaving it no longer the port that Saint Louis had built to launch his crusade. The shops where we hoped to buy cheese and fruit were closed for the noon hour, so we had to sit at a café in the square, where a grudging waiter brought us our small orders. It was a bit noisy, and Krishnaji curled in distaste. We ate and left, and his head began to hurt him from such a place. We drove then across the Camargue to Nîmes. Less wild than we had imagined, even the marshes with its rice growing and a couple of horses. But there were des mas… ‘But it was no wilderness. At Arles, we found the amphitheater, and went on to Les Baux and the hotel, L’Ostraus de Baumaniére, three stars, and luxe. We had rooms in the manoir, quiet, with a terrace and a little pool. We rested, bathed, and went up to the hotel for dinner of elegant excellence. The artichauts came in a purée, and there were fifty cheeses. But there was a vulgarity in some of the clients—tough Americans. Luxury must go with grace, or it becomes vulgarity. We drove up to and looked at the illuminated rocks of Les Baux above, and then came down and went early to bed.’ The next day was the second of July. It was another cloudless morning and we left the Baumaniére at 10:30 a.m., and drove toward Cavaillon, stopping at a village where a food shop was open. We bought goat cheese, bread, olives, and biscuits, peaches, apricots, and cherries for our lunch. The country was Van Gogh country—rows of black-green cypresses. There was a wind blowing, and when we drove through tunnels of touching trees, the leaves were green-flowing waters over our head. The bright quality of light kept bringing my eye to Van Gogh and Cézanne. At Cavaillon, we took the autoroute north because we had a good way to go to reach Geneva. The wind was a gale, head on, and the car had to be held like a ship. North of Valence, we left the autoroute gladly and took a road through Romans, Chambéry. Gradually the country changed. Provence was gone, and there was a northern look and quality of the air and light. We drove up a lane and ate our picnic.’ ‘It was almost cold. A family parked nearby and also ate. Krishnaji, in order to stretch and not drop crumbs in the car, stood outside to eat, with that far-off child’s stance he has, a child absorbed in something. At such times, he has the look of “that boy” that was and always has been the slight figure of grace off in his own perception.’ According to Sacha’s excellent planning, on a small road that led to the Swiss border at Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, the Haute Savoie country was utterly unspoiled, fields of farms, trees and hills turning to mountains, the shape of the farmhouses massive against the winters is like the best of the old Swiss. At the border, I put through the papers, for the Chanel tweeds, saving many francs thereby. We came immediately down into Geneva and were once again in the little narrow efficient rooms at the Hotel du Rhône. We went out for a walk, watched the Jet d’Eau, and came back to supper in the rooms. During the day driving through the Savoie, there were signs “Jesus sauve” . Krishnaji pointed to the first and said, “Oh, Jesus!” Then we came to one that read “Jésus est là” said Krishnaji, “Bons, j’y suis.”’

After that, we drove via the lac and through Lausanne to the Oron road that comes down a long straight hill, and at last to Gstaad by 5:30 p.m., and 1,013 miles from Brockwood a week ago.’ ‘Vanda and Fosca were there, and it was lovely to see them both. Krishnaji unpacked a little and then went to bed. I unpacked, too, in spite of my foot. The good of putting everything away in order is necessary. Then bed, for I am tired physically.’ On July fourth, ‘I put everything in place. Krishnaji stayed in bed all day.

After supper, Krishnaji, Vanda, and I talked till quite late about the early days. Mrs. Besant, Leadbeater’s discovery of the boy, and the so-called instructions from Masters reported by Leadbeater on how the boy was to be cared for. Krishnaji was in high form, laughing, told most of it. “Listen to this, signora; when he traveled, there was to be always two initiates, one to have a compartment on one side of him, and one on the other, so if there were an accident, they would be killed first’

This post was last updated by John Raica Thu, 29 Jun 2017.

Continuing with the MZ memoirs

July 1972 (in Saanen) It was a clear day for Krishnaji’s first talk. Vanda went with Mrs. Walsh’—she’s the woman who lived downstairs—‘to the tent. She also took Frau Erkelenz, the owner of the chalet upstairs. Krishnaji and I drove via Saanen. The tent looked dignified, well ordered, and was nearly full. I sat in the last row where Vanda and Doris Pratt had saved me a seat.’
‘Krishnaji began with, “I wonder why you have all come. To be given something? To find something? And who is it that wants to get it?” Later, he said, “Intelligence is energy as application.” A very good opening talk  Krishnaji had had a slight cough at the beginning, but did not seem too tired. He had lunch in bed. Vanda said he looked smaller on the platform, and she figured out it was his face because of the hair combed over the forehead. Combed back, it looked much better. It meant cutting the long side pieces and Krishnaji said we both agreed it would be done.’ ‘He wanted to do it immediately with narrow scissors but was persuaded to wait for a barber.
‘He walked with Vanda later and returned to bed. She and I did pranayama before dinner. She is an excellent teacher.

The seventeenth of July. ‘Vanda left by train. The Mercedes refused to start. Krishnaji went down to the village by taxi to have his hair cut short. It looks very nice. No long ear-like pieces to bother him when the wind blows and now the shape of his forehead shows. Proportions are right, and there is a new glimpse of beauty. That beauty referred to in a review by Cyril Connolly in the London Sunday Times yesterday, and Jacob Needleman’s book The New Religions. “People,” he said, “who have seen Krishnaji inevitably speak of his extraordinary beauty to which is now added the fragility of age.” Krishnaji read this and seemed surprised at the rest of it, which speaks highly of him. Krishnaji knows who Connolly is; he says he’s a friend

Tuesday, the eighteenth. ‘Krishnaji had slept little because of congestion in his head, but this day was not lacking in energy. It was clear and warm, and he wore the brown linen Givenchy trousers with a new Charvet shirt that has a tiny pattern of checks that gave it a faint pinkish tone. With the hair, at last, cut, looking more natural and somehow much younger, he was looking marvelously. The Mercedes, which had not started yesterday, had spent the night at a garage, and was delivered at 8 a.m. Krishnaji and I drove again via Saanen to the tent. The trees make a shadow on the road, and Krishnaji said, “I like this way.” He gave his second talk, a truly great one. Spoke of insight, which is intelligence, seeing without conclusion; the mind without conclusions is without fear. The only security is that of intelligence and insight, a talk with many things in it and tremendous power.
‘We drove to Gstaad slowly. “The body is too excited” to go back to Tannegg immediately.

‘After reading the mail, I went down and picked up Alan K., who moved his things into the downstairs apartment and also brought Radha Burnier[2] up for lunch. This was Krishnaji’s first meal at the table since our arrival. He told her some of the Rajagopal case events and the background to it. In fact, he took no rest but talked till 4 p.m., when he went for a walk with Alan K., and I drove Radha—as she wishes me to call her—back to her hotel. She’s here till Saturday. After the walk, we had tea, and Krishnaji sat and talked with Alan K. and me until 7 o’clock, somewhat on supernatural thing  his sense of unease when doctors come and when he is outside at night. Once in Ashdown Forest, he was walking alone and it became dark, and he felt he was being followed, and he reached the house exhausted and had to be put to bed “for several days.” Last year in Madras, he came to a temple as the light was fading and felt the threat. He stood and watched, and “said something.”’
‘Then I asked, “a particular thing?”’
‘Krishnaji replied, “Yes, a particular thing. And gradually, it oozed away.” I didn’t ask him then what it was he said, but he spoke earlier of the Christians making the sign of the cross, the Hindus uttering the word “om” to ward off evil’—he had spoken earlier about those two things. He told too of being asked, when young, to heal a “possessed” woman. He went to see her, and she looked up at him and became quiet and normal. He told of Jayalakshmi going one night alone to a temple felt to be very holy, and feeling great danger there, so that she fled to her car and went home. Krishnaji said it is not supposed to be good to talk of “dark powers,” as it somehow gives them energy. He says these things as an “on dit” —gossip, but he says too one mustn’t tamper with such things, and he does have his unease about being out at night, and an extra precaution being necessary for those around him, as if we were his protection, in part, and therefore liable to attack by whatever is evil. Evil is attracted to goodness, wanting to destroy it. Alan K. talked of the odd sense of threat when he camped in an Indian burial ground and it ceasing when he put on a Hopi medicine man’s bracelet. Alan K. said to me at supper he feels the sense of being there to protect Krishnaji when he is with him.’

‘In addition, Krishnaji began his talk today, number three, by requesting no filming, taping, or taking notes, as it disturbs others. The talk was on thought, what are its uses, and its destructive effect in relationship. He spoke with enormous energy. Afterward, he wanted to drive, and we went to Saanenmöser and back, then picked up Radha Burnier, who lunched with us. Krishnaji asked her various questions on mantra, yoga, Hindu beliefs, immortality, etcetera. Afterward, Krishnaji walked alone. He came back physically tired but looking well. His hair cut is such an improvement, and today’s costume, faintly pinkish shirt, the buff-beige linen Givenchy trousers, cream-colored socks and brown Belgian moccasins, made him as well-dressed for summer as he is in all his Huntsman suits. There is a glow, a shine, to him. No news yet of the Lilliefelts, who should have arrived today.’
‘On the twenty-first, the Lilliefelts arrived and they came for lunch. We talked all afternoon. Isabel Biascoechea brought a Spanish woman who was hysterical to see Krishnaji. He calmed her somewhat by placing his hands on her head and told her husband to take her away from here, to take her to the movies, away from all this. They had been to some meeting before coming here, and people attempted some kind of prolonged meditation.’
The next day, there was nothing interesting. ‘Krishnaji went for a walk alone. Yvon Achard and Jean-Pierre Gaillard came to talk to me about French books being too expensive for students, and the need for resumption of the Bulletin. They are for Linssen doing it. I told them to talk to the French committee.’

‘Krishnaji asked Balasundaram why Madhavachari was acting this way. Balasundarum guesses it was his allegiance to Rajagopal. Krishnaji said the loss of his son’—that ‘had embittered Madhavachari, but Balasundaram said he was over that. From my view, Madhavachari has been consistently Rajagopal’s man all along and has been so well before the son died. But, Krishnaji realizes Madhavachari doesn’t tell the truth. Krishnaji brought up the book Tradition and Revolution, edited by Pupul and Sunanda, the 1970–71 discussions with Krishnaji

Tuesday, the twenty-fifth. ‘Krishnaji’s fifth Saanen talk, and it was on suffering, conflict, and finally pleasure and joy. He spoke with almost explosive energy. At 4 p.m., Nadia Kossiakof brought Mlle. Delachaux of Delachaux et Niestlé, the French-Swiss publisher, to see Krishnaji. She wants to do a livre de poche and a hardcover and wanted suggestions. We discussed it a little and I referred her to George Digby. Krishnaji came in dressed in jeans and a grey sweater. Mlle. Delachaux asked him if he was a mystic, and Krishnaji recoiled in distaste. “What is a mystic?” Krishnaji said it implied search, and explained the projections of the Catholic having mystical experiences of Jesus, of the Hindus of Krishna, or whatever; all is within conditioning; a religious mind must be outside all that. She asked about intuition, which Krishnaji always finds dangerous as a word. “That may be only a projection,” he said. “What is the subconscious?” Krishnaji replied,  “the repository of conditioning.” He said, “Thought, other than technical thought, divides,” and she couldn’t see that. He explained about nationalities, religions, etcetera, all products of thought, and so it went. Through all this, he sat with a relaxed grace of a young boy. Once again, I was watching the extraordinary beauty of face, posture, gesture, expression. Because he was tired, he was hesitant in his replies in French, in which the conversation had gone. But he addressed himself with total attention to her questions, and at the same time, he had an informality that enhanced his grace. Apart from all he said, there is an ascetic experience in seeing him that is limitless.’

‘I drove the two women down to the Bernerhof, went to get The Economist and some detectives for Krishnaji, and had the surprise of finding him waiting for me at the foot of the hill by the bridge, thumbing a ride with me. He had started on his walk up the hill toward the woods, felt tired, and so came down hoping to catch me. He had been there a minute when I came by, as if something neatly arranged it. We came back and had verveine tisane and then he went to bed

The twenty-seventh of July. ‘Krishnaji’s sixth Saanen talk. Again, a blazing energy. He said, “there were some new things.”’
‘Tapes were discussed and the Indian books were gone into. The revelation that the Tradition and Revolution book being from notes made by Sunanda after the talks and not verbatim tapes increases the unwillingness to use it in the West.’ Balasundaram said Tradition and Revolution is not based on tapes or shorthand, but on notes made afterward from memory. Everyone is rather appalled by this.

Sunday, July thirtieth. ‘Krishnaji’s seventh Saanen talk on meditation. On August eighth, ‘Krishnaji gave his seventh and last public discussion, completing the series. It was a hot day. We had a quiet lunch alone.

Sunday, thirteenth of August. ‘Nadia Kossiakof, when she was here, told Krishnaji that Suarès is venomous about him, and when I asked her about it, she said it was both about Krishnaji and his teachings. Nevertheless, Krishnaji said we must have them for one meal. I said it was his house, but on my own I wouldn’t. If it were about me, I wouldn’t care, but to be against him puts them beyond the pale, as far as I was concerned. So, they came to lunch today, along with Marcelle Bondoneau, and Dorothy and Montague to dilute things. I fetched Marcelle and the Suarèses up the hill. Everyone was very polite. Krishnaji came in with his eager smile and greeted them so nicely. The conversation ball was always kept in the air throughout lunch. Carlo Suarès, who looks like a grey rat nibbled away with gusto at Fosca’s spinach ravioli, etcetera. They were socially busy, but Krishnaji said later that they were not at ease with him. On saying goodbye, Carlo Suarès put his hands on Krishnaji’s shoulders as if in friendship, but it was so fake, I felt revulsion. Marcelle stayed on a little with Krishnaji and talked awhile. She, Nadia, and Mar de Manziarly see the Suarèses rarely, but when they do, Krishnaji’s name is no longer mentioned, or they could not get on. One wonders why they want to get on, in that case. It is curious how easily people turn against one another, and also how difficult it is to separate. Yo de Manziarly still winters with the Suarèses, and Marcelle said Yo has gone to India to see Sathya Sai Baba with Annalisa Rajagopal. I think this shocked Krishnaji. I felt sick that this dimension of an old friend and betrayal should be seen by him.

“What is it with these people?” Krishnaji asks, and I wonder, is it that each one of them wants something from him, or something he is, and not getting a thing they can grasp and hold, they turn on him; cluster together; and reinforce each other’s resentment? Rajagopal gets the coalescence of this and most of these people have no real direct liking for Rajagopal, but their anger at Krishnaji drives them to adhere to Rajagopal.’ That’s what I think it is, if you come close to Krishnaji, or the teachings, beyond a certain point, if you then turn away, you’ve turned to evil, it turns to poison. And you have to be, not just meandering off somewhere else and forgetting it, youhave to be against, you have to take a hostile position.

August fourteenth. ‘Krishnaji came into the dining room where Dorothy, Montague, and I were having breakfast, looking very beautiful, there is no other word, in his orange silk kimono. There are no lines in his face, no wrinkles. There are sunken parts and age signs under his eyes, but the surface skin is unwrinkled and glowing. I told him this earlier, and he said, “What am I to do? It is pedigreed cucumber night cream.”’
‘In spite of clouds, we decided to go for an expedition, out, at any rate, to give Fosca a rest, and it was too uncertain for a picnic. So, it was decided to take the new road from Diablerets to Villars. As we were leaving, Madame Duchet came by with a photocopy of a note from Jean-Pierre Gaillard to her saying, “Notre travail s’accomplit en parfait accord avec nos Maître Koot Humi et Djwal Khul avec qui nous sommes en contact permanent.” He was a friend of the one who wrote the dissertation on le langage de Krishnamurti and both of them lived, I think, in Grenoble, and he used to come to Saanen

‘Afterward, Krishnaji, Dorothy, Montague, and I drove to the Diablerets and up the new road to the Col de la Croix, where we got out and walked a little. Then, down to Villars. It was too cloudy to see Mont Blanc, and the Dents-du-Midi, but Krishnaji guided us to Montesano, a hotel where he and his brother stayed in the early ’20s, when Nitya had TB. Then, in 1957 also, Rajagopal left him there alone for about two months, giving him just enough money to pay his board plus 50 francs so he could do nothing else. We lunched there in the dining room where Krishnaji used to have a table alone in the corner by the window. It is a family hotel with long tables, children and parents on holiday. The waitress, a lumpy girl in a Swiss costume, was English and uncomfortable, but the food was surprisingly nice—well-cooked carrots, potato puree, salad, cheese, and fruit. Krishnaji told us of Rajagopal having written to Vanda who was, at the time, in Gstaad not to communicate with Krishnaji.’ He left him there alone. When Rajagopal left, after several days there, on one of which he was drunk in the dining room and called Krishnaji names in a loud voice, he told Krishnaji,’ ‘“You say you are never lonely, well, now you’re going to find out what it’s like, what the rest of us feel.”’ ‘“But I was never lonely,” said Krishnaji.’ ‘“I could have just stayed there.” He went for walks all day in the hills, never spoke to anyone, even when the hotel manager wanted to introduce him to some guests. He left when it was time to go somewhere he was due. He went by train, changing twice, to Chamonix, where de Vidas met him. Rajagopal’s attempt to hurt him didn’t work. “But why did I put up with him?” he asked. “I just accepted it. I suppose because there was no one else to turn to.”’

‘We lunched alone, and later walked up the Turbach Road. Krishnaji said again, “you must take care of yourself, as you must outlive me. I will live at least another ten years, till I’m ninety, probably. You must live beyond that. You do not belong to yourself anymore.”’
‘At lunch they touched on Buddhism, the hierarchy of masters in Theosophy, over them the Maha Chohan, the Maitreya, then the Buddha. He explained where some of it came from, mostly Tibet. We talked of Jesus. Wasn’t what he is said to have said to us either true or not? It wasn’t very original, said Krishnaji, just to love one another. I asked, wasn’t it a way of saying, no self, which seems at the core of all religions in varying words. Krishnaji said yes and that Akhenaten had said it too. He has been reading a book on Egyptian history. I said that the religion that people grasp, like Jesus, gives people symbols to hold onto, whereas he takes them away.’

August seventeenth. Krishnaji had not slept well, and said meditation is so strong that the back of his head felt on fire, not pain, but a flame so strong he had to read to stop it before he could sleep again. It has been the first day of sun after cold, grey ones. The fresh snow against the clear sky makes the world look reborn. We walked all the way on the Turbach Road. In a pause in all my telephoning, Krishnaji came in and said, when I told him what was happening, “Are you worried?” he asked. I said, worry is when there is something that can be done to change things; this, it appears, cannot be altered. Krishnaji: “Do you feel something in this room, the atmosphere, and I don’t want this to impinge on you.” We went to his room, and he said, “Do you feel a difference?” And then he said, “Perhaps it is because you have been filled with this in here. We are all going.” Then I asked, “Tell me when does one stop 'coming' and start 'going'? Krishnaji said, “Oh, I guess, at birth. No, probably at ten to twenty years old. I have never seen someone die. I wasn’t there when my brother died. It would have been terrible. In a way, I am 'gone' when I walk, or sometimes when I am reading, I am so far away. Not when I talk. Then, I am all there. But otherwise, I am getting farther away. That is why you mustn’t let them give me a general anesthetic; put me out. That would be the end. ‘“What if you are in pain, hurt?” I asked.’ ‘He replied, “I don’t think that will happen like that. But then sedation, but not 'out' —meaning unconscious. You must outlive me. I will live another fifteen years, or twenty, I don’t know. And when he goes, you must not 'commit suicide', as you did, in a way, when your husband died.

My father died the next day. Krishnaji came into the room as I was hanging up the telephone. “I felt it had happened,” he said, “I felt it from you.” On the drive this morning, Krishnaji spoke of death. “I don’t like to speak of your father,” he said, “but what happens to a man like Rajagopal?” He said the following, which I wrote down verbatim. “Take a man like X who is suspicious, jealous, secretive, concerned with his physical security. He is, after all, a product of his environment, his culture, his pattern of behavior. He may have peculiarities, his temperament, his so-called character. His mind is conditioned by the (social) class he was born in, and so on. And when he dies what happens to him? He has not come out of his (old mental) ‘environment.’ He has not made anything of life. He is merely reacting within his conditioning, which may be very clever, artistic, but he has not come out of it. He is part of the whole "quivering mass" . He has not come out of it, so he is absorbed (back) into his basic (cultural) conditioning. This sounds cruel, but as you observe, he is part of this (consciousness stream of) humanity. As he was in his life, so he is in death. To live with death every day is to deny totally this conditioning. So to die to conditioning every day is to live a life of a different dimension.”’

(continued)

On August twenty-sixth, ‘we arrived at Southampton early and were at Brockwood in time for breakfast. We unpacked slowly and walked in the afternoon with Dorothy and Whisper. It was peaceful, beautiful, and quiet there.’

Noyes arrived suddenly from California, bringing settlement talk from Rajagopal. Krishnaji and I saw him after lunch. Noyes said that Rajagopal would turn over 80 percent of KWINC, keeping 20 percent to carry on publications and the library project. Krishnaji told Noyes that had he known that Rajagopal was a Theosophist all these years, he would never have let him touch his writing and would have asked him to get out of KWINC. We both said that if Rajagopal has a settlement suggestion to make, it must be made through his lawyers to ours. All this upset Krishnaji’s stomach.’
On September seventh, ‘the campers began arriving for the Brockwood talks.’

On Saturday, September ninth, ‘Krishnaji gave his first Brockwood talk for that year in the tent. It was a rainy day, but a thousand people came. We had food  set up in the adjacent tent. In the late afternoon, we walked.’ On the tenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his second Brockwood talk. The weather was nicer. Over a thousand people came, and we ate again in the tent.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji had a discussion in the tent, a very good one on thought and the mind.
On the fourteenth, ‘Krishnaji held his second discussion at Brockwood. In the afternoon, after a walk, Dorothy, Elena Greene, Sidney Roth, Martha Longenecker, the Bohms, Yves Zlotnitcka, and I saw the four San Diego talks of 1970 that were videotaped.’ Sidney Roth had organized all that and, I think, paid for them, and the titles also showed Krishnaji walking in the garden in Malibu.’

On September sixteenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his third Brockwood talk. We had lunch in the tent later.’

Dorothy said we had enough money to do all the building.’

On the thirtieth, ‘the Digbys came at noon, and after lunch met with Krishnaji and me about a large book on the miscellany they had prepared.’ The Awakening of Intelligence. The Bohms came for the weekend. Krishnaji has a dialogue with David Bohm. Saral, Dorothy, Doris, and I were present, and George Carnes taped it on the Nagra. They discussed what intelligence is, it is not thought, which is in time, etcetera. At one point, far into the discussion, Krishnaji put the question: “What is its source?” David was silent, and Krishnaji later asked me if I had noticed the change of atmosphere in the room when he asked that question. Then, at the end, he suddenly began to speak of another way to communicate something, to speak not to the conscious mind, but to the unconscious. “That is affection,” he said, “that is love.” To me, later, he said, “I’m going to speak to you that way about your habits of tension. He’s scolding me, and telling me he’s going to speak to my unconscious. ‘“Do you know what it is to be quiet?”’ ‘He said that he has noticed that I have neglected my body, that for reasons he doesn’t want to inquire into it, I am highly nervous physically. It shows in an unquiet face, fiddling with fingers, etcetera. I have tried to correct it from the outside, through will, through the conscious mind, and when he has pointed out these mannerisms, I have responded with effort, will, irritation, or depression— ‘all of which are superficial responses. He said, “I am now talking to a deeper level, out of affection. It is from this level, from the inside, you must listen and change. If you do, in a few days, you will be different. There will be an awareness of your body.” He said that after my husband died, for eight years, I abandoned my body, neglected it. Today, I have greatly changed and am aware in many ways, but still not in the well-being of the body. He will speak at this level to me, to my unconscious during the coming days.’
Nadia Kossiakof telephoned that the first of Krishnaji’s two television interviews in French done last year will be shown on the seventeenth, so we can see it as we will be in Paris then.On October ninth. ‘Last night Krishnaji again said, “I’m speaking to your unconscious mind. I feel it doesn’t feel it is important or you would’ve changed these habits during these five years. Do you know what it is to be quiet?” As he was saying this, I saw that the habits are offshoots of tension; I don’t feel tense or nervous, but somehow, to get things done, I build up this steam of energy, which has a quality of tension. It feels like being in high gear. This probably wastes the very energy I need. I see that, from the inside, a quietness is necessary, and that the core of these things cannot be done from without. It is a false tension. Quietness inside, I understand that. Later this morning, while doing dishes in the kitchen, Krishnaji said he felt a difference in me. Then late in the evening, he said, “You have taken the 'first initiation'. Do you know why you have taken so long? When you do, it will be the second initiation.

The next day, Vanda rang, saying that Krishnaji will give one talk in Rome on the twenty-ninth.

On the thirteenth of October, ‘Krishnaji spoke to the school and Mark Edwards took photographs of it. Mary and Joe Links brought Gollancz and Peter Day to meet Krishnaji. That was the first time they had met. Donald Hoppen, too, was at lunch. The Digbys sent a letter via Mary to Krishnaji, saying they were resigning from the Publication Committee and the KFT, “as he wished.” Krishnaji dictated a letter replying that he had not said that. Then, in the evening, he had me telephone George and say he hoped they would continue editing the talks. George and I spoke in a friendly fashion, and he said they would edit the talks but wished to withdraw from organizations.

In Paris Krishnaji went to sleep but I sat up to see the broadcast of the half-hour André Voisin TV interview of Krishnaji conducted by a year ago, recorded here in the Plaza Athénée. It was all in French. It was superb. Krishnaji spoke clearly, eloquently, and his accent was good. Voisin did an excellent job really listening, subtly smoothing words when Krishnaji didn’t get the ones he wanted and lightly leading Krishnaji to essential questions in his teachings. It was marvelous to watch Krishnaji in conversation. His face tells so much, so eloquently. I was moved and thrilled. The second part, another half hour, is to be shown on the twenty-fourth ‘There were enthusiastic telephone calls about the television from Bondoneau, Kossiakof, and Mar de Manziarly, the latter taking credit for her family giving Krishnaji his good French accent years ago’

‘We packed and got to Orly for an Alitalia 10 a.m. flight to Rome, but it was delayed till 3:45 p.m. We lunched at Maxim’s at the airport. We were most meticulously searched before boarding the plane. Security has greatly improved since the hijacking. Then we were frisked, and women had metal detectors passed over their bodies. Every lumpy thing in my bag and briefcase was examined.’
‘On the plane, Krishnaji said “You must take care of yourself. Eat properly. Walk two miles a day. You must be well. You must outlive me. ‘“Do everything quietly, then everything will be alright.”’
‘Vanda met us at Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Mr. Barabino and his friend Mario Pia Vecchi were also there, and they drove me to the Hotel Rafael. Krishnaji is staying with Vanda.

October twenty-fifth. ‘Reporters came to interview Krishnaji, also some student who monopolized things. Arrived at Vanda’s in late p.m. Unpacked. I am staying here.’ She invited me to stay in the flat on my return. On the twenty-ninth, ‘Vanda drove Krishnaji and me to the Teatro dell’Arte, where Krishnaji gave his first talk in Rome, a very fine one. The place was overflowing. Barabino came to lunch and discussed Krishnaji’s future talks in Rome. Krishnaji may cut India to two months or less another year. Walked with him in the Villa Glori later. Krishnaji and I walked in Villa Glori. He said, “Pay attention to your unconscious. It may want to tell you something now. Do not take too long to change. You are quiet inside now. Do not take so long to change. It will tell you something and you must be alert and quick to respond, otherwise it is harmful.” He has touched something that is now different, an interior movement.
The next day, ‘Krishnaji said he had awakened at 4 a.m., and wished to tell me things. There was a discussion of about fifty people at Vanda’s.

‘On the fifth of November, Krishnaji took an Alitalia flight from Rome to Delhi.’ On the seventeenth of November, ‘I got a special delivery letter from Krishnaji, his first from India. His Alitalia flight from Rome was delayed in Athens and the airline made him share a room in a hotel with a man who smelled and snored.’ And I remember his telling me that when the bus took them back to the airport there was some American woman on the bus. They drove past the Acropolis and with numbed voice, he said, “She never even looked up!” The Acropolis! He couldn’t believe it!
On the twenty-ninth of December. ‘Letter number six came from Krishnaji, written in Madras. He had been asked questions about Vasanta Vihar by Rajagopal’s lawyers. Madhavachari had given all of Krishnaji’s private letters to Rajagopal. Krishnaji had been open and honest, and he wrote about the case, and what should be done, and asked his advice, and all the things we were talking about he wrote to Madhavachari, who promptly turned them over to

1973  Krishnaji is in India through part of this period, so when I’m not with him, there’s not as much about him as when we’re together.

Krishnaji left Bombay and flew to Rome on January thirty-first.’ On February fifth, ‘Krishnaji flew from Rome to Brockwood.
On the ninth of February Krishnaji had left Brockwood, and at 1 p.m. English time, he took a TWA flight from London, and I met him at Los Angeles Airport at 4:30 p.m., looking very well in spite of his long flight and all his work this winter. We came back to Malibu, unpacked, and had supper by the fire. Krishnaji was not sleepy and so he talked a lot.’
The next day, ‘it rained and we made breakfast together. He rested in bed all morning, but got up for lunch. Amanda came back from the hospital. Krishnaji slept all afternoon and we had supper by the fire and went early to bed. It rained all night.’

There was snow on Topatopa and the other mountains. Krishnaji wants to give four Ojai talks in April on seventh, eighth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. We took a walk later and then drove home at 6 p.m., had supper and went to bed early.

On the twentieth, ‘Krishnaji had a 100.3 fever.’ No wonder he felt washed out. ‘He stayed in bed all day. He had no other symptoms except weakness. He slept almost nine hours.’ He had a great ability to sleep.
Now, on the following day, which was the twenty-first, ‘we were awakened at 6:45 a.m. by an earthquake.’ ‘5.75 magnitude, centered thirty-four miles west of Santa Monica in the ocean. Not as strong here as in 1970. Krishnaji’s temperature was normal, but he felt weak and stayed in bed all day.’
On the twenty-third, Alan Kishbaugh came to discuss filming a course with Krishnaji at San Diego; how to do it and with whom. We tentatively planned to do it with all of us asking questions during the week of March sixth.’ This, of course, became the Anderson series.
The next day, ‘Sidney Field came for lunch. Then, Krishnaji and I went to see a movie, Sleuth, with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Krishnaji fainted gently as we came home along the Pacific Coast Highway, and then he half-fainted again a few minutes later. He said, “I felt far away.”’

On the twenty-fifth, ‘we went to the Malibu Cinema for the first time and saw French Connection. He liked that.’ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Louis Blau and Mrs. Robert Ellis came to tea to discuss with Krishnaji how they can help the work, and Felix Green came to supper.’

The tenth, ‘we walked across the street to the Masonic Center Auditorium, where at 11 a.m. Krishnaji gave his first San Francisco talk, which was mostly on relationship. The hall was 90 percent full. Naudé taped it on the Nagra. Kishbaugh came for lunch and stayed to talk after Krishnaji took a long nap. The rain kept us in. Jacob Needleman telephoned wanting to see Krishnaji about interviews. I questioned him on his Esalen connection. I suggested he send Krishnaji an outline of the plan he has in mind.’
On the eleventh of March, ‘Krishnaji gave his second San Francisco talk’—this is on a Sunday—‘in the Masonic Auditorium. Erna and Theo lunched with us in the apartment. In late p.m., Krishnaji and I drove to the Golden Gate Park and took a good walk.’

On the fourteenth, ‘A Dr. Rockman of Argentina came to see Krishnaji at noon. Then Donald Ingram Smith came. We lunched in the rooms. Krishnaji dictated a To the Schools’ ‘the first of a series he wants to do. This one on freedom and responsibility. Krishnaji rested, and then Jacob Needleman came to tea. Later, Krishnaji and I walked in Golden Gate Park.’

On the seventeenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his third talk at 11 a.m. in the Masonic Auditorium on suffering and death, a very fine one. The audience was HUGE,’
Next day, the eighteenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his fourth San Francisco talk on the religious life, meditation, and enlightenment. The hall was full.

We discussed a meeting of scientists at Brockwood. A possible topic is a total view of things, wholeness. I invited them to Malibu. We will have discussions next weekend.

On the twentieth, ‘we left the Huntington at 9:05 a.m., and drove south. The Big Sur route was closed, so we came down 101 through rain, hail, and sleet. We stopped for a forty-minute picnic lunch at Pismo Beach. Krishnaji drove from the Pleasant Valley bypass to Malibu, arriving at 4:45 p.m.

Now the next day, which was a Sunday, ‘Krishnaji held the second Malibu discussion with the same group as yesterday. It was on education, and he spoke of a school here in California being necessary because we are in a time of violence, a “Dark Age.” He also said, there is a residue of both good and evil that exists in itself. Then he said, “I am not speculating. I know this.” We must bring up children in goodness, an umbrella of it sheltering them. How are we to have it? We already are in this goodness or we would not be here. Extraordinary turn to this discussion.

After lunch, we packed and drove to Ojai and the Lilliefelts for Krishnaji’s weekend talks, arriving at 5 p.m. I made supper and we talked. Krishnaji spoke of a sense he has that the Lilliefelts and I have been sent by something to look after him, and we must be responsible and keep control of the schools and also be prepared to handle whatever this coming tide of energy will bring. We three must keep things in our hands At supper with Erna and Theo, Krishnaji described the horror of his life with Rosalind Rajagopal and Rajagopal.’

On April ninth, ‘there was a KFA trustees meeting about the dates for U.S. talks and about a school. “It should start small,” Krishnaji said. Krishnaji is back as trustee of KFA.’

On the thirteenth, Krishnaji now is talking about a cottage we could build in Ojai, pull down Arya Vihara and build a new one on that land.’ In the afternoon, I talked to Robert Logan, a “cinematographer” who wants to do a documentary on Krishnaji. Nothing came of that expensive documentary plan, obviously.
On April fifteenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his fourth and final Ojai talk. In the afternoon, Krishnaji held a meeting about a school.

On the nineteenth, ‘Dr. Alan Anderson from San Diego State college and Alan Kishbaugh came to lunch to discuss Krishnaji doing videotaped conversation with Anderson next February.

At 7 p.m., we took an Air France flight to Paris.’
. As we’d had no sleep on the plane, Krishnaji rested all day. Krishnaji has severe cramps in his right lower leg muscle, so severe that he had almost fainted. I put hot wet towels on it, and it subsided. We had supper in the rooms.’ . Krishnaji said to me “Never let me be in a hospital. I would rather die quietly at home.” This was the first time he has been in a hospital in many years. The atmosphere disturbed him. We met Nadia Kossiakof at the hotel and talked awhile. Then Krishnaji and I dined in our rooms.’

Continuing the MZ Story time in a more selective way :

April twenty-eight, 1973 , Krishnaji and myself in Paris, and we were staying at the Plaza Athénée briefly, having flown from the U.S. ‘At 1 p.m., Mr. Moser delivered the Mercedes to us from Thun. (...) Anyway, ‘we got to Brockwood. So then there was unpacking’ On May fourth, ‘Saral and David Bohm came for lunch, and spent the night in the West Wing. We talked to them about a scientist meeting at Brockwood, and David Bohm said he would write to David Hall,’

On the twentieth, it starts with a quote from Krishnaji: ‘“I had an odd dream last night. There was a certificate that the mother, probably our mother, was dead. And I sat down on the bed and put my hands on her, and gradually I felt the warmth return to her and she sat up. Then I woke up. Probably it is symbolic.” Then, Krishnaji talked to the school in the dining room. He questioned why the students are so silent in meetings with him, and don’t discuss, also why there isn’t a fire and energy in them. Are they bored, listless? Some said because there is no pressure, i.e., grades, and other demands of study, there isn’t a prod to do things. One must supply one’s own interests, energy. There was then a discussion of authority: “If X doesn’t come to the morning meetings, how does a staff member deal with him?”’ That’s the sample problem. “‘I would describe to him the reasons for the morning meetings, the coming together quietly in the sense of unity. And if he refuses, what do I do? I tell him twenty times; but he still doesn’t come. I leave him alone on this subject but talk to him at meals here and there. I give him the sense that I care about him. I point things out. Then I go back and ask him to come to the morning meetings again. I have talked this way for fifty years. Do you know why? Because I love you. You are my son or my daughter.”’

On June fourth, ‘Mar showed Krishnaji and me letters written by Nitya to her in the early ’20s. Very moving. They seem so alive, and there was such humor and irony, and somehow sad, as though much of that world they occupied was tiresome to him. “Theosophy is the most boring thing of all.”’ That’s what Nitya wrote. ‘Krishnaji was moved by the letters, and said, “I saw what it was like, but he was much more mature than I was.”’

Krishnaji talked to the school about what is distraction. He then said how he would teach mathematics. “I will show you.” Begin by asking the students if they have habits, any habits. So you see that if you have a habit, you are unaware of it, and that will lead to habits of mind? Discuss that. Then with that mind discuss mathematics, he said.’

On June tenth, ‘Swami Venkatesananda and his admirers dropped by to see Krishnaji.’ ‘Eventually we got out for a walk.’ That reminds me of the scene in the doorway here in the West Wing when the swami was arriving. Krishnaji was with me at the door, and the swami insisted on prostrating himself in the doorway, a most awkward spot to have chosen, and Krishnaji didn’t want him to do it, and sort of tried to get him up, and it was kind of a humorous struggle. Insisting on prostrating toward this man who never wanted that kind of thing.

Arrived at Tannegg, 568 miles from Brockwood. Vanda and Fosca had everything in order. Krishnaji was giving his first talk in Saanen and driving slowly, we arrived exactly on the dot of when he was due, which was 10:30 a.m. The tent was almost full, and there seemed to be a lot of new faces. Krishnaji did his usual thing of sitting and looking at everyone very slowly, which makes some people nervous, I discovered, that he might not know what he’s going to say!’ and on that day, he asked, “Can knowledge bring about a psychological change?” My impression was that he put a lot into the first talk, to really get people going, and perhaps bewilder the newcomers. In the middle of it all, it began to rain, but after the talk Krishnaji, as usual, walked rapidly up the road. And people kept trying to offer him umbrellas, but he kept going’ Um, ‘I caught up with him as quickly as I could in the car, and we went up to Tannegg.’

On the seventeenth, ‘Krishnaji gave his second talk. It was on the subject of time, and it was a wonderful one. On seeing the action of thought. I was exhausted at the end. He put enormous energy into it, and there was just ourselves at lunch.

Next day was ‘a quiet day. Krishnaji on that day said, “One day I will see Rajagopal and tell him what he has done. It will be good for him.”
The twenty-second was ‘the fourth talk on what is the meaning of life?

Well, the next day ‘I dreamt vividly of Nitya. He had been allowed to come back once, and I held onto him lest he vanish for Krishnaji to see him.’
Krishnaji gave his seventh and last of these Saanen talks on meditation, on looking without thought, without any reaction.’

‘The sixth Saanen discussion was the next day, and it was on death. “If you really know life, you will understand death, and love. They are one; not separate.” It had a profound effect.

Mr. Moser called and said that Krishnaji’s new car had arrived.’ then back to Thun to Moser’s when it was time to take delivery of Krishnaji’s new Mercedes 450SLC that we ordered two years ago. He drove it back to Tannegg with Moser. The Simmonses and I came back in my car, and then Moser drove back to Thun, taking my car for winter storage. Krishnaji is pleased in every way with the new car and the way it drives. The look on his face delights me,’
On the next day, ‘of the car, Krishnaji said, “It’s like a crouching tiger.”’

This is Tuesday, the fourteenth of August, 1973. ‘Krishnaji and I left Tannegg at 4 a.m. in the new Mercedes, 450SLC. There was a golden moon lighting the valley, and then an orange ball of sun took its place as we drove along the Lausanne autoroute. Krishnaji drove that part. He said, “Now, I know I can drive this car.” We stopped to rest in a wooded area for a while, and Krishnaji said, “I could have wandered off in the forest. The body is off. I’ve never felt it quite like this.” There was a delay at the border because we couldn’t find the chassis number on the car for the Swiss customs.’ It had to be checked out of Switzerland. ‘We finally did’—it was on the windshield—‘and we bought croissants in the same village in the Jura and ate our picnic breakfast at the little side road where we have done the last several years.’ Krishnaji would always remember where it was. He said, “We’re coming to it now.” So, we had our picnic. There was a heat wave all over Europe and the air conditioning in the new car meant a comfortable drive. We had a picnic lunch, but didn’t care for the parking spots as we neared Paris, so wound up, as last year, eating our lunch in the Bois de Boulogne, near to where we used to walk. There were prettier places, but Krishnaji wanted a familiar one. We sat a long time under a tree. Paris is very hot, ninety degrees. We reached the Plaza Athénée by 5 p.m. A long, cool bath, delicious supper of fruit and soup made, the waiter said, of puréed rice and carrots.

The weather was hot but not uncomfortable, and that added to the floating feeling. We lunched in the garden under umbrellas in the hotel, luxuriously and quietly. There were very few guests here. At 4 p.m., we walked to the Champs Elysées, where a Burt Lancaster Western was playing.’ The usual nonsense, but Krishnaji observed the southwest desert mountains and his head pains stopped. “I didn’t know what was happening. I just watched.”

The next day was the sixteenth of August. ‘Krishnaji, about his head pains, and that faraway feeling, said, “These people usually remain in one place surrounded by their disciples. The Buddha walked eighty miles, but that wasn’t very far. This body was made sensitive and it rebels at being pushed around in strange places.”’
‘I said, “Shouldn’t it stay in one place?”’
‘Krishnaji said, “If you mean Brockwood, no. It may come to that, but not now.”’

The next day, ‘we drove to Brockwood. The Simmonses had not yet arrived. Annette and Richard Cooke and Jim Fowler have been the caretakers all summer. It was a cool and misty morning. We unpacked quietly most of the day. Krishnaji cleaned the Mercedes engine and worried at it standing outside because Dorothy’s Cortina is stored in the Mercedes garage. “It will rust. We must cover it!”’

‘But Dorothy and Montague and Doris arrived in the Land Rover at 8 a.m. The Cortina was moved and the Mercedes was saved from the night’s dew.’ ‘Krishnaji’s head was hurting him; his face looked drawn.’

On the twenty-second, ‘Mavis and Reg Bennett arrived to stay through the gathering. I put them in the West Wing guestroom.’On August twenty-eighth, ‘Saral and David Bohm came to lunch and discussed plans for a scientist discussion meeting next year. Krishnaji, Dorothy, and I worked hard at the tree pruning in the grove.’

On the first of September, ‘Krishnaji gave his first Brockwood talk of the year. Afterward, I gave him lunch upstairs and then he went back to the tent where lunch was being served. The weather was fine; we had about 920 people at meals.’
The next day ‘was the second Brockwood talk. Amanda Pallandt left after the talk.’
On September fourth, ‘Krishnaji held a discussion in the tent, after which he had lunch upstairs, and then went back to the tent.’
On the tenth, ‘the Bennetts left. Almost all the campers and Cloisters guests have left. The house is becoming quiet. One can feel it happening.

Mary Links met us at Fortnum’s for an early lunch. She is working on the second draft of the biography. Krishnaji told her of the curious thing that happened before the first Brockwood talk two weeks ago, August thirty-first. He woke in the night feeling as if a ball of light were being placed in his head. He stayed awake observing it for about an hour.

On the fourteenth, ‘Krishnaji wrote a whole page in his new notebook with his new pencil. A description of the grove and the feeling of silence and something holy there.
’
‘Barabino telephoned from Rome about confirmation of the date October twenty-eighth for Krishnaji’s talk there, and wanted to know if we were still coming in spite of the recent cholera outbreak in Italy? Krishnaji hopes it will be over by then. At 4 p.m., a Polish professor’ whose name I can’t pronounce, ‘a professor of Oriental philosophy and psychology came with his father and two people to see Krishnaji. He was a very emotional man who asked no questions, but kept repeating, “We are one, we are one” over and over. Krishnaji found it tiring.

On the twenty-fifth, ‘I worked all day on typing Krishnaji’s notebook. He does two-and-a-half pages a day.

Krishnaji wrote in the morning and held another discussion with the school at 3:30 p.m. He said, “To say, ‘I do not know,’ and really mean it, is to be out of thought.”’

The next day, I drove Krishnaji’s Mercedes to London, and then took the car to the Fisher Shipping Company, for shipping to Los Angeles. On November thirteenth, I flew to Los Angeles and went directly to the hospital to see Amanda; she was in the hospital. ‘Called Erna; Balasundaram telephoned today from RishiValley about a cable received by Krishnamurti from Rajagopal. It said, “I can forgive.” Cohen counseled us to make no reply.

The eighteenth of November, ‘Krishnaji went from RishiValley to Bangalore. And on the next day, Krishnaji goes from Bangalore to Delhi.

December thirteenth, ‘Letter number five from Krishnaji arrived, written from December second through the fifth, from Delhi. In it he said that the Rajghat visit was canceled because not only were the airlines on strike, but there was uncertainty with the trains, and he had a cold. He told the Indian trustees that he cannot speak in so many places.’

We now come to 1974, and on New Year’s Day, I didn’t do much. So, we jump to the third of January, 1974. ‘Mary Cadogan telephoned from London. The English Foundation trustees agree to the settlement with minor suggestions. The KFT office has heat and light for only three days a week. Brockwood is alright because of its being a school.’ Brockwood apparently gets electricity because it’s a school. ‘Erna received a letter from Balasundaram with Indian lawyers’ text of what is necessary for Rajagopal to give a quit claim to Vasanta Vihar. They have given power of attorney to me to sign for KF India.’

On the tenth, ‘letter number ten came from Krishnaji, written in Madras, RishiValley, and Bangalore, giving his travel plans. He goes to Rome on the thirty-first, to Brockwood on February second, and then on the fifth, he had arranged a ticket from London to here. He has sent letter to Cadogan to arrange for his U.S. visa.

On the thirtieth, on the California calendar, ‘Krishnaji left Bombay early in the morning, which was the thirty-first on the Bombay calendar.’ My diary says that he should have arrived in Rome at 10:30 p.m., California time.
On the thirty-first, I say, ‘Krishnaji should be in Rome. I finished typing his notebook chapters.’ And he had left them with me to type while I was in Ojai. ‘It totals thirty-five chapters, up to October twenty-eighth,’ which is when he left.
Tuesday, the fifth of February, 1974. ‘The day began with a telephone call as I stepped out of the shower from Dorothy at Brockwood. She had a worried voice because Krishnaji had been refused a visa by the U.S. consulate in London. It was a poor connection, and I couldn’t quite understand why, but it seemed to be something to do with my letter of responsibility for him being on official KFA paper. Would I ring the legal people? I did and got someone other than the head of the department. I explained etcetera, and was told suddenly that the visa was being granted at that very moment. I telephoned Dorothy the news. Ingrid had gone to the consulate. The Indian embassy should have vouched for Krishnaji, but people at Brockwood didn’t know the present high commissioner. Krishnaji had tried to reach Mr. Pandt, but he was in Canada on a trip. Dorothy called back in a half an hour and said Ingrid had the visa. Great relief.

Tapper had telephoned Erna out of the blue this morning; his son, whom he wants to go to Brockwood, has turned up among the Jesus freaks, but is now getting interested in Krishnaji. Erna brought some books, and some tickets to the Santa Monica talk for him. But all this has given us an opportunity for her to talk to Tapper. Annie Vigeveno came to the courthouse and sat on the far side, away from Erna and me. Then, Judge Richard Heaton took Rosenthal, Cohen, Tapper, and Rajagopal’s lawyer, Christensen, into his chambers, where they remained for three hours.’
‘Sol came out first and told Erna and me that he thought a settlement is going to occur. The judge insists that, if this went to court, it would be a long four-month case. Tapper was very helpful; he called Rajagopal “a crook” , said Sol, and Tapper is only willing to consider a settlement because the length and expense of the case might outweigh the monies Rajagopal has taken by “self-serving.” Tapper is going to insist on yearly audits of K & R Foundation. Cohen came out with a draft of a statement announcing the settlement, which would be given to the press and published in the Bulletin.’ Rajagopal was very fussy about what we said about it, so that he wouldn’t look as though he were in the wrong. So, ‘Cohen came out with a draft of a statement announcing the settlement, which would be given to the press and published in the Bulletin. Erna and I edited it, removing references to “working together in friendship and cooperation.” We kept it direct, plain, and factual. Christensen and Vigeveno left. Sol, Cohen, Tapper, Erna, and I talked for a while. Tapper as relater(that’s some legal term) is rarely in such a position and made it clear to Christensen that he was such with us because we’re trying to right the wrongs that Rajagopal has committed. He will insist on things like the audit, which Rajagopal would never accept from us. There is talk of making Rajagopal personally pay for the $40,000 vault built for K & R (in other words, with K & R money) in his own house.’
‘By 6 p.m., everyone was too tired to go into things further and wanted it finalized with another meeting, which will occur on the twentieth and again on the twenty-second.

The sixth of February. ‘The wind stopped. Krishnaji left Brockwood and then Heathrow at 1 p.m. London time on TWA, a twelve-hour flight to Los Angeles. I finished putting the house in order, fetched fresh fruit and vegetables at the Brentwood Market, had the car washed, and went to the airport. A thankful, smiling feeling as the white aircraft wheeled up. I saw Krishnaji’s head as he was second out and down the steps to the customs entrance. There was quite a wait, and then he stepped out, carrying his Vuitton bag, elegant, tired but wonderful. “Travel is hell,”’ ‘he said.’
‘We came home, talked, unpacked, and talked some more. He had supper in bed on a tray and I on a chair in his room. He wanted to hear Walter Cronkite’ . ‘We telephoned the Lilliefelts. It was a clear, brilliant night, a full moon, the wind blessedly gone. Krishnaji was too mixed up in time to sleep well. “Things have been going on, exploding in my head. Something is going on.” He told me of the plans for the Bangalore headquarters for KFI, and the school plans there. Mary Links has finished the biography. She says it is good. Krishnaji is too tired to sleep, but he is here and wants to rest here for the month of May. Very happy.’
The seventh of February. ‘Krishnaji spent the day in bed resting. Still disoriented in time. He has difficulty sleeping, but it was a lovely, quiet day.’
The next day, ‘we drove to Beverly Hills, had lunch in a crêperie, the Magic Pan, which Krishnaji liked, but their fare of spinach crêpes was not a proper lunch for him, and he felt slightly sick later on.

On the ninth, ‘Krishnaji slept better and spent all the day in bed sleeping on and off. He taught me new pranayama and a back exercise and gave me Aryuvedic medicine prescribed for me by Dr. Parchure; a purpley-black powder to be taken with ghee’ ‘also some oils and herbs to rub on my sore leg, etcetera. I am to put eight drops of milk in Krishnaji’s nose each morning and oil at night.’ He always came back with these…these things…

February tenth. ‘Another quiet, lovely day, warm, beautiful, and restful. Krishnaji slept and read out of a string of new detective novels waiting for him, including a new Nero Woolf, which he is saving.’

February thirteenth. ‘I forgot it was my birthday until Alain Naudé telephoned with wishes. Krishnaji spoke to him. I invited him down during Krishnaji’s Santa Monica talks. Krishnaji dictated letters, but remained in bed all day except in the afternoon when, in his blue jeans and Earth shoes, he did twenty laps around the garden.’ ‘Then we walked over to the Dunne’s. Walking in their driveway, the red-tailed hawk was high and utterly motionless over the canyon. Three quick wing flaps and they mathematically stay in one spot. The clear, clean ocean air came across the canyon. The lovely afternoon light and small blue sight of Krishnaji briskly walking on the lawn was the sum of happiness to me.’
The next day. ‘Another lovely day. We drove to Dieter’s Import Cars in Oxnard, and signed all the papers for the Green Beauty, which is due in San Pedro from England next week. Dieter will fetch it for us, and we arranged it all with him. Dieter asked Krishnaji about a special license plate, one you can pay extra for, with the money going to ecology and the plates being permanent, what to put on it? Krishnaji said “KMN” for Krishnamurti, Mary, and Nitya. He used to, when Nitya was alive and they were in London or in Paris even, they were very elegant and had things made with their initials on it. So, he must have, I suppose, remembered that. I don’t know, but he said “KMN.” So that’s what it had.

‘We went to the Ranch House and bought bread and a casserole of nut-loaf and took it to the Lilliefelt’s for lunch and a trustee meeting with Erna, Theo, Ruth, and Albion. Krishnaji reported on Indian activities, Brockwood, and the Assembly Hall building going ahead. Then we talked about the Anderson dialogues that were coming up, then the educational center plans, and then the case.

And then Krishnaji asked, “How will you judge a student? Will it be because of your prejudices, likes, dislikes? Will you be aware of these; of choosing with your own ego? It is a sin to turn down a child who comes to you, who may be the right one. It is a tremendous responsibility. If you feel that responsibility deeply, you will act rightly.” It was 6 p.m. when we left.
Krishnaji said the body was tired from all this. He must get to bed early. Last night he slept almost nine hours.’
February fifteenth. ‘I was able to fill the gas tank. Then I sent the papers to clear the Mercedes Green Beauty. Krishnaji rested. I did house and garden things. Later, Krishnaji packed, but mostly slept. “I don’t know what is the matter with me,” he said, “I’m sleeping so much.” He is relaxed and needs it.’
On the sixteenth. ‘It was a less sunny day, therefore more comfortable for Krishnaji to motor. We had planned to leave at noon, but watering the garden, laundry, and putting the house in condition to leave…Krishnaji wanting to nap after the morning packing made it better to leave at 3 p.m. Miranda and David Nelson, who were spending the weekend at the Dunne’s, came over and efficiently put all our luggage in the car, helped me do the dishes, and disappeared. So, Krishnaji and I left relaxed at 3 p.m. and drove at fifty-five milessedately’ ‘to not use up more gas than necessary. We drove 141 miles to La Jolla, arriving exactly at 6 at Martha Longenecker’s house. Sidney Roth was there. Martha checked me out on how the house works. Tibbet, her cat, welcomed us. Then, Martha and Sidney left. Krishnaji and I had supper and went early to bed.’

Sunday, the seventeenth. ‘It was a quiet morning getting settled. By careful driving, we came here on only one of Jaguar’s gas tanks.’ we drove 160 miles on it. So, I drove to the market using one more mile and laid in a supply of food. ‘Came back and made lunch. Krishnaji rested all day until we took a walk around La Jolla at 5 p.m. We had supper entrées by the television. A program came on, Religion in America, showing Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary’s old 'partner in LSD' at Harvard University) at the Baba Ram Dass ashram; scenes of pompous, beaded turban types doing what was billed as kundalini yoga’ ‘“God bless, America,” said Krishnaji, “They embrace anything.”

The next day, Martha and Sidney guided us to San Diego University and where the TV department is. We met Paul Steen, who was in charge, Paul Hartman, the director, and Professor Alan Anderson, with whom Krishnaji did the first of the ten days of dialogues, generally on what is the place of knowledge and the transformation of man. There were three color cameras. A girl, Doris Bently, who had written asking to see Krishnaji and saying she had permission from Anderson to sit in on the discussions was there. Anderson doesn’t know her.’ ‘Steen said no one could get in, but my dim view of being excluded amended that decision for me. The girl sat in a viewing room.’ I suppose Steen didn’t want me there.
‘Krishnaji spoke of fragmentation causing division of man and nations, etcetera, sorrow, conflict, and violence. Revolution isn’t revolution, he said, because it is gradual. This was all in the first hour. Then, there was a half-hour break and they resumed for a second hour. They went on, on freedom and knowledge. At one point, Krishnaji said, “Religion is a gathering together of all energy to be attentive” and “Freedom means complete austerity and total negation of the observer.” We came back at 1 p.m., and lunch was ready fairly soon. Krishnaji slept in the afternoon and at around 5 p.m. we went for a mild walk, then supper on trays by the television. Early to bed.’
February nineteenth, ‘At 7:30 a.m. it was still dark. I queued up in the Jaguar behind over a dozen cars to get gas. It took a half hour, but I got a full tank and was back as Krishnaji was starting breakfast, which I’d left ready for him. Here, we eat breakfast at the table, as he says he will get woolly’ ‘and be late if he stays in bed. “Art is to place 'what is' in order,” he said suddenly’ Krishnaji told me Anderson is not challenging enough and said, “I will have to do it myself.” But he had a word with Anderson and today’s dialogue numbers 3 and 4 were more intense and went well. I am bothered by the gold background color, so I watched it all on a monitor, where I couldn’t take notes but was absorbed by the dialogue and the way it was coming over in this medium. These may turn out to be unique and effective, our most important record so far. The color of the background is too green a yellow; they called it gold. It’s not a becoming background to Krishnaji’s skin. We came back to a quiet lunch and a small walk in the rain. We carried some shopping, each holding a handle of the shopping bag.’

On the twentieth, ‘Krishnaji slept less well and efforts to try other background colors delayed the start of the recording for an hour, which tired and upset him, but once launched into the dialogue, he didn’t want to stop after one hour, and they did full two hours. They discussed freedom and responsibility, what is order and freedom. On the way in, in the car, Krishnaji said to me, “Energy is not thought. Remember to remind me.”’

‘He went into what is disorder…’ and then it goes on again about all the things he said. ‘We came back after 1 p.m. but soon had lunch, and Krishnaji slept all afternoon. A very short little walk.

On February twenty-first. ‘Krishnaji is more rested and as I have accepted the gold background, they were able to start dialogues immediately on arrival, and 7 and 8 were done. Pleasure and fears, desire—what is it, control, pleasure.’ And then again it goes on about all the things. ‘So we were back earlier and stopped for eggs and a few things at Safeway. Krishnaji wanted an omelet. He has been off eggs for some months. He slept in the afternoon; we walked up the hill, saw a shepherd puppy.

Rajagopal wants the rights to republish all material published by KWINC and its predecessor entities (i.e., the Star Publishing, etcetera) up to 1968. Erna says that would give him early rather Theosophical-sounding works in the Star Bulletin. She, Theo, Ruth, and Albion went over a total list of KWINC publications, and thought a possible compromise might be post-1933 materials with the exception of the ’47–’48 Indian talks, which are recorded from Madahvachari’s notes of recollection.

February twenty-second. Dialogues 9 and 10 at San DiegoState on beauty, passion, understanding of suffering.’ ‘We came back to lunch, and telephoned the shipper. The Mercedes Green Beauty ship docked today. It should clear customs Monday or Tuesday. We got Erna’s letter about the lawyer’s sticking points, that is, where to keep the archives, and Rajagopal’s demand to republish anything pre-’68. We walked in the village later, bought a book on sharks by Peter Benchley for Krishnaji and a new Helen MacInnes for me.’

The next day, ‘On way to San Diego State, Krishnaji said, “I think I will take charge of the discussion.” Both dialogues 11 and 12 went very well. It began with religion. Krishnaji was very tired after all this. He slept and we walked a few blocks, and for the first time he said his head hurt as we came back in the car. He has definitely decided not to go to Japan in the autumn.’
On February twenty-sixth, ‘Krishnaji spoke in the car of immortality as a subject. Then Krishnaji held dialogues 13 and 14 on consciousness, living, love, death, immortality, and reincarnation. Telephoned the shipper; the Mercedes cleared customs.
February twenty-seventh. ‘Krishnaji wants to finish the dialogues tomorrow. We will decide after tomorrow’s taping. He did  video tapes15 and 16 today on education, death, religion, experience, authority, obedience, teaching. After lunch, I went hunting for gas and a car wash. Kishbaugh came for a walk with Krishnaji and me along the cove.

The next day, ‘Krishnaji did dialogues 17 and 18 mostly on meditation and decided not to do anymore. So we went back to the house, had lunch, loaded the car and left at 2:45 p.m. to drive all the way back to Malibu, part of the way in a light rain. We arrived at 6 p.m. Both Krishnaji and I are tired, but especially Krishnaji. The dialogues are more tiring than talks.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji and I fasted, taking only fruit juice all day. I worked at the desk and Krishnaji stayed in bed. There was heavy rain in the night. The newly fixed roof leaked right over my bed.’
March third. ‘Asit Chandmal and Mr. Cook came to lunch. The rain stopped after two inches.’

The fifth of March ‘was a beautiful day. Krishnaji and I drove to Oxnard and saw the Green Beauty. We asked Dieter to get some special personalized license plates for it—KMN. We then went on to Ojai and met at the KFA office with Asit Chandmal, and an Indian friend, Shree Bedaker. We took them, the Lilliefelts, Ruth, and Albion to the Hooker’s Ranch House Restaurant for lunch in the garden. Afterward, we walked up on the land adjacent to the Oak Grove. It was beautiful, but too close to Meiners Oaks and the proposed highway for a school, in Krishnaji’s view.’

March eighth. Two Siddoos, sisters, who are starting a similar school in Vancouver, Canada, were also there, and Asit Chandmal. The latter and Kishbaugh stayed to lunch.’

‘Erna and Theo brought Krishnaji his manuscript written in 1961, brought by Vanda to Rajagopal and given to our lawyer Cohen. Krishnaji asked me to read it. It is in pencil in Krishnaji’s hand, a daily journal of process within him, pains, pressing, and strange action of whatever it is.Immensely beautiful and moving.

On March tenth, ‘there was a third meeting, and more people came. Kishbaugh lunched with us, and Krishnaji let him see the manuscript. Krishnaji said he had a sudden feeling that he would live another ten to fifteen years. “The body must last,” he said, “and I must outlive him.”’ 

Erna and Theo drove us to Dieter’s car place, where the Green Beauty was ready and shining! We drove it home at last to Malibu, Krishnaji at the wheel half the way. We showed it to the Dunnes. “We accomplished a lot today,” he said.’
The thirteenth of March. ‘I began dictating Krishnaji’s 1961 manuscript into cassettes to be transcribed by the local secretarial service.’

On the sixteenth of March. ‘Krishnaji gave the first talk at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. An unserious audience.’

On the eighteenth, ‘we washed the Green Beauty.’
The next day, ‘I called some people I knew to suggest an architect, which we would need if we are to build a school. They suggested a man called John Rex, so I made an appointment with him for Thursday. Krishnaji gave an interview to Alfredo Calles. I felt a sense of something present in the evening while we were talking about the school. Krishnaji felt it for a while, and then when it was gone, he said that feeling means something—they—it is right to do what we are doing.’

‘I went into town for errands, and was back at 1 p.m., as Krishnaji came up the driveway to meet me. He said, “I knew you were coming.”’

.’
On the twenty-first, ‘I worked on manuscript dictation and other desk things. As it was such a lovely day, Krishnaji and I drove the Green Beauty up to CabrilloPark and back. At 2 p.m., John Rex came and we discussed an Ojai education center most usefully. He knows the region, people there, etcetera and made a satisfactory impression on Krishnaji. In the evening, we played records: Krishnaji’s Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.’

On the twenty-third, ‘Krishnaji gave the third Santa Monica talk.
On the twenty-fourth, ‘Krishnaji gave his fourth talk, completing the Santa Monica series.

So, the next day, April first, ‘we telephoned Mary about color photos in Brockwood. Too expensive, it says. But yes on expenses in Saanen for the Simmonses…

‘Swami Venkatesananda and five followers came to see Krishnaji at 4 p.m.’. That always produced a sort of battle of Indian manners because the Swami would hurl himself at Krishnaji’s feet, and Krishnaji would try to prevent it. And it always happened in doorways and awkward places It caused quite a sort of confusion.

On April seventh, a Sunday, Palm Sunday, it says here, ‘Krishnaji held the second public discussion in LibbeyPark on a lovely day. He spoke of intelligence, awareness, and then took questions.

On the ninth, ‘we went back to Ojai in the Green Beauty, and there was a meeting about the school at the Lilliefelt’s. They, Ruth, Albion, Kishbaugh, Evelyne Blau, Mark and Asha Lee, David…’ whose last name begins with an L ‘…were there. Krishnaji said, “If the school is your baby, then you will make something of it.” He applied his irresistible force again. Most of the afternoon was taken up with the education center. We got home by 7 p.m. Each drove about halfway.’

We had supper as usual on trays and watched “Washington Week in Review.” Then Krishnaji watched Ben-Hur on television. I came in several times to remind him it was getting late, and when I came in at 9:45 p.m., he was sitting with the sound turned off and a far-off look. He said, “Sit down quietly.” He looked as though something were happening—intent, listening, aware of something. I was unable to feel it, distracted by deskwork I had been doing away in my room, in avoidance of Ben-Hur.’ I didn’t want to see it. ‘Soon he left the living room and told me it had been extremely intense, a “precipitation,” something so strong in the room he had been prepared for it to become “manifest” in some further way “visible—I don’t know how. I’ve never felt it like this. Something is happening.” He said later that it continued when he was in bed so that he stayed wide awake and had to sit up. His head was bad.’

The next day, ‘Krishnaji got up later than usual. The “thing” continues. He said to me, “You mustn’t be attached to me or anything.” He thought I had been upset by Ben-Hur last night. I said, “No, but that inevitably the picture was different for me to see” than for him, a story, a diversion for him; but to me, it is something that was too costly to Sam.[1]  It is not worth what it helped to do. I do not suffer seeing the movie, but there is nothing to make me want to watch it. I had finished the attachment in pain before coming to this life with Krishnaji. I am not “attached” anymore.’

Saturday, April twentieth. ‘It was Krishnaji’s first Carnegie Hall talk. We went in a car with a driver. The stage entrance had three police cars in front, and the entrance was full of police. A telephoned bomb threat had been made by a “man with an Indian accent” who said something—a bomb—was to go off when Krishnaji began to speak. All people with packages were being stopped. Krishnaji was unaware of all this. Gave an excellent talk. The only difficulty was the inadequacy of the sound system. It wasn’t until afterward that Erna told me what had happened, though the sight of the police made me guess. I didn’t speak of it to Krishnaji. I am often uneasy when he is front of a large, unknown audience. But as I thought about it all day and at night, there was a curious sense of hovering protection and reassurance.

Krishnaji talked to me about, “The necessity of living without shock and strain.” Erna told him about the bomb threat, but he brushed it aside and said “I must live at least another ten years.”
When Krishnaji woke up the next morning he said, ‘“marvelous meditation last night.”
I asked if it were the “new process” he was so full of in Malibu before we left. Yes, it was different. “I must find out what to do to live ten to fifteen years, there is so much to do.”  Dr. Wolf gave a report of the tests. There is weakness; his adrenal is a little low in energy. The larynx are hard, healthy but a little weak. He also talked about the possible cause of Krishnaji’s swollen ankles. Prostate slightly enlarged. His enzyme level is 2.3, which is good. Wolf suggested a cellular implantation and Krishnaji agreed.

The twenty-seventh of April. ‘Krishnaji’s third Carnegie Hall talk. They gave him a new microphone. It was better, but not good enough, or the hall is simply not suited to speech. After lunch I saw Mr. and Mrs. David Nortebaert, who want to move to Ojai to put their seven-year-old son in our school: nice, serious, and earnest. Krishnaji and I went for a short walk, bought books at Doubleday, including Mary L.’s novel Cleo.
The next day, ‘Krishnaji gave a fourth talk at Carnegie Hall on meditation and very fine. Krishnaji said he had felt “far away” on Sunday, and cautioned me about using a personal term in speaking to him at such times. We went to bed early, and each slept deeply and well.’
Today there is supposed to be a meeting between Christensen and what Krishnaji calls the “mafiosi,” Rajagopal and company, on their response to the settlement draft.’
On the fourth of May, ‘Krishnaji said, “I think I will live another ten years. There is so much to be done.” We spoke of perhaps less travel and talk and more time in centers.

May eighth, ‘Mrs. Alan Anderson telephoned on her husband’s behalf about the release of the videotapes. I spoke later to Rosenthal about it.’ I don’t remember what was said, but anyway, it turned out alright.