A booklet of the above title appears to have been published by Order of the Star, Adyar, Madras. No date of pulication is given, though it must be1927, just after the great change came about in Krishnaji. - A.
 

 

By the new Krishnaji, I mean the Krishnaji who arrived at Adyar on 31 October 1927. I had last seen the old Krishnaji at Ootacamund in April of the previous year; and although changes were even then going on, and although there were occasional hints of what was to come, the difference between then and now was the difference between being on the point of breaking through a wall, and having broken through and emerged on the other side.

The Krishnaji of today is the Krishnaji of the other side of the wall. We may interpret the significance of this as we please; for I do not think that our interpretation of it much matters. Indeed, if one is to go by certain talks with Krishnaji himself, the less we allow it to matter, the better he will be pleased -- for it is of things unessential. The fact, however, matters greatly; for it is upon this fact that he avowedly bases his right to teach. And it is fortunate, therefore, that the change itself is one which cannot but be palpable to any one of even moderate sensitiveness of perception. But I think that one must see him and be with him in order to perceive it. The writings do not yet reveal it; it is possible that they never may. But the personal affluence, the magnetic effusion, is so extraordinary, that I defy any one not to surrender to it, unless he has hardened his mind and heart in advance; just as I defy anyone to feel it and to remain unchanged.

My testimony on this point is not devised by value, since, to speak frankly, I had gone down to Adyar half-expecting - or perhaps, I should say, half-fearing -- that I might be disappointed. One had heard, of course, of a new Krishnaji. News had come from Ommen and elsewhere. But I had known Krishnaji so long and so intimately, and was so well aware of his own natural charm and of the wonderful beauty of his general make-up, that I thought it by no means impossible that an extra year's development, along his own lines, might of itself have produced changes so striking, that it would be quite pardonable for people to interpret them as something very much more significant than they really were. My immediate practical interest in the matter was, of course, that I had to decide whether, or not, I could apply for re-admission into the Star Order. This, in my opinion, would be not only a meaningless, but a dishonest act, unless it could be done from absolute, personal conviction, and with the fullest realisation of all that the necessary affirmation implied. Consequently, the first thing was to get into personal touch with Krishnaji and to judge for oneself. Finding, therefore, that my autumn vacation would enable me to get about a week with him, if I spent it at Adyar, I resolved to go down there, and to hold over my decision until I had had the opportunity of seeing him for myself. I reached Adyar on October the 10th, and had thus been there for three weeks when he arrived.

"As things turned out of course, I need not have worried. But it was not till the day after his arrival that I realised this, in a way sufficiently convincing to banish my doubts. All that I saw of Krishnaji, on the first day, was at the crowded ceremony of welcome to the President and himself which took place in the Headquarters Hall - a ceremony, which, I should mention, was about the fifth or sixth function which had punctuated the seven-mile drive that morning from Madras. At the conclusion of the proceedings, he made a short speech in reply to the various addresses. But it was disappointing. He was not eloquent, and his words aroused no thrill; while he had the further disadvantage of speaking immediately after the President, who really had been both eloquent and moving. One gathered that the large and somewhat wrought-up audience had expected something more from him, seeing that this was his first appearance at Adyar after the rumoured Change. One learnt afterwards that he was unwell. He had caught a chill in the train from Bombay, and was tired out by all the addresses and tamasha of the morning. He ought not to have spoken at all.

The following day, however, I was able to have an hour's talk with him in his room. Then, all was different. There it was that I saw and recognized, for the first time, the new Krishnaji. I do not propose to attempt any expression of what or how I felt on this occasion. I need only say that everything has become changed for me since. Something had dreamed of, half-unconsciously, all my life, had at last come true.

* * * * *

The student of occultism, accustomed - as most of us have been - to talk in terms of 'forces' and 'vibrations,' will, I think, find himself confronted with something new and rather puzzling, when he comes into contact with Krishnaji, as he now is. The noble force, for instance, which comes so often through our President, and which we have all many times felt when she is speaking, interprets itself very easily in terms of vibrations. We can, as it were, feel it beating upon vehicles. But what comes from Krishnaji is something very different. It seems too gentle to speak of as a 'force'; and the effect of it is as of something smooth and vibrationless. It seems, too, to act, as it were, not on the vehicles at all, but directly on the life. Indeed, so absolutely free is it from any element of the striking, or dramatic, that one is perhaps conscious of it only after the magic has been accomplished. One is aware of the effects, but not of the process which produced them.

That, at all events, has been my experience - confirmed, whenever I have been with him. What struck me most of all was the quality of this affluence. To speak of its purity and depth is to use well-worn words which, for that reason, do it imperfect justice. But what I mean by the words is that the life, which comes from him, gives the impression of having welled up from somewhere very deep in the heart of things, and of having remained absolutely unmixed with any taint of individuality, or personality in passage. It is thus, in the oldest sense of the word, simple and because of its simplicity, universal warmth without colour, is the only way I can think of, at the moment, to express a purity which is, at the same time, full, sustaining and charged with a great joy. But the language which I am using about it is altogether too heavy, because it suggests something grave and solemn and full of spiritual portentousness, Nothing could be further from the truth.

Outwardly the new Krishnaji is the old Krishnaji. The same eager boyishness, the same affectionateness, the same spontaneous and unselfconscious charm is there; and the change which has happened to him has not changed these. He does not seem to me older; on the contrary he seems to be younger than when I saw him last at Ooty, at a time when he was far from well. Nor has he grown solemn; I found him, at Adyar, just as fond of a good joke as he had ever been. And the charm and the affectionateness are just what they used to be, only that they are now far more winning. What has happened, to me, has not altered him in the least, so far as his own natural characteristics are concerned. All that it has done is to have suffused these with a certain magical grace, which they did not possess before, and which is so compelling that it is the one thing of which one is conscious when one is with him. Krishnaji today, if I may use a metaphor, is like a musical chord, of which the harmonies, or overtones, are far more resonant than the notes themselves. It is the Oversoul that one feels, rather than the personality. Yet this over-shadowing influence is not a weight which bears heavily upon him. I see no signs of its pressing upon, or constraining, the free play of his personal life. On the contrary, it seems to have, as it were, lightened and lifted all this. Its effect has been rather that of release than of constraint. And the consequence is that one can meet the new Krishnaji on just the same frank friendly footing as one could the old. More - I would say that the feeling of easiness, and freedom is now greater than ever. His personality invites confidence and naturalness even more readily and in all such personal relations there is a feeling of absolute equality. Anything more unlike the popular conception of a spiritual teacher could not be imagined. There is nothing ex cathedra, nothing pontifical about him. The last thing, indeed, that one is conscious of, is of being taught at all.

And yet.........

I do not know, quite how to complete the unfinished sentence without spoiling all that I have been saying. But if I say that one cannot leave the presence of the new Krishnaji without the feeling of having had the most cleansing of spiritual baths, made fragrant with the most delicious of spiritual bath-salts, perhaps the reader will gather what I mean. And I have purposely chosen an almost flippant metaphor, because I want, more than anything to preserve the impression of the easiness, the lightness and the naturalness of it all. But this does not prevent one from recognising, at the same time, that the experience has been a transcendent one, and that one has found a new meaning for the word 'holy'. Why is it that holy things are nearly always thought of as solemn things? I suppose one can think of reasons for this. But it is none the less a revelation when one discovers for the first time, that the the true essence of holiness is far more of the blue sky than of the thundercloud, and that the authentic odour of sanctity is less that of incense than it is the scent of wild flowers in the hedgerow and the breath of early spring. A blue-bell or a daffodil, rejoicing in its life, is the typically holy thing. The fawn playing in the forest, the mountain torrent leaping in glee from crag to crag, are apt emblems of things spiritual. The voice of the spiritual life is not a sermon but a song.

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