New articles and commentary related to interest in Krishnamurti's work (and some off-topic remarks) – September 2007, by Reza Ganjavi

©Copyright, Reza Ganjavi. May not be reproduced without permission in part or in whole.

 
Disclaimer: I do not work for anybody, do not belong to any organizations, and do not work for the Krishnamurti foundations, but I am friends with them. This document is purely a personal undertaking and should not be viewed as an authoritative document on K’s teachings or anything else.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

KRISHNAMURTI & SEGOVIA

HISTORY OF BROCKWOOD PARK STUDY CENTRE – by Kathy Forbes

ON INTERPRETATION – by Professor Padmanabhan Krishna

NEWS FROM A K'S SCHOOL IN INDIA – by G. Gautama

KRISHNAMURTI: The greatest psychologist of all time

BROCKWOOD PARK PICTURES

SACRED GEOMETRY

MARY CADOGAN'S BOOKS

UPDATE ON THE LETTER ABOUT KINFONET/LINK/KLI

THE ROSE

ABOUT THE EARLY WORKS

K WAS NOT WRONG ABOUT COMPUTERS’ ROLE

 

KRISHNAMURTI & SEGOVIA

After reading in one of the biographies of K a long time ago that Segovia played the guitar for Krishnamurti, I tried to find more information on this but even Segovia's family didn't know about it. Recently, listening to an audio of Mary Cadogan, she mentioned that event. Last night we spoke about this and she kindly provided more color on it. I was under the impression that it had taken place in Rome. Mary recalls a private concert was organized by Krishnaji's Italian friend Vanda Scaravelli (who has also authored a yoga book) that took place in London, probably in the first class hotel where Segovia was staying. At first Krishnamurti was not keen on attending it but did it out of politeness. But he was impressed and called it sublime. Pablo Casals also played for Krishnamurti. My guess is that it was probably also organized by Vanda as her biography indicated both Segovia and Casals were family friends of hers.

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HISTORY OF BROCKWOOD PARK STUDY CENTRE – by Kathy Forbes

Dear friend, Kathy Forbes gave an extremely interesting talk about starting and running of the Brockwood Park Study Centre: http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/kathyforbes.html

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ON INTERPRETATION – by Professor Padmanabhan Krishna

Dear friend, Professor P. Krishna’s wise, spontaneous remarks about dangers of interpretation: http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/Dr.K.html

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NEWS FROM A K'S SCHOOL IN INDIA – by G. Gautama

Dear friend, G. Gautama's new article: Special News from The School of KFI in Chennai. This document contains several links including one to a new blog: http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/gautama3.html

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KRISHNAMURTI: The greatest psychologist of all time

I just finished working through a 550 page book by a psychologist, at the end of this verbose book which is typical of American authors (according to a Norwegian professor I had), he said what K says in a few sentences.

I think K’s insights into the workings of the psyche are unique, extremely powerful and essential. I have met many people with psychological problems or mental anguish and sometimes a few simple insights does wonders. The biggest mistake professional mental health therapist make is to divide the observer from the observed, the analyzer from the analyzed. Once you apply this no-division outlook magic can happen (because there is no wastage of energy in conflict and friction of what is and what should be, no ideal is created to make one move away from the fact, and understanding brings its own change “seeing is action”, etc.).

This is not some kind of a fanatic assertion of how great Krishnamurti is in the field of psychology – most academic psychologists probably have not even heard of K but they should because the insights what K offers are essential for this fairly new, under-developed field which tries to apply scientific method to things where science falls short of insights. However, I find what K proposes in terms of approaches to psychological problems extremely logical and surely not un-scientific or dogmatic. He says, look, what you’re looking at is yourself. You’re not separate from your anguish. Many psychologists says, you are separate from that anguish. . . and until we see what we are there can be no freedom. Same applies to little pains of daily life and relationship which many consider as normal and live with it and get burdened by it.

I do not believe everything K says, and for that matter, I do not believe anything he says. But he points out to certain phenomena which I have investigated and found some of which to be true. And the most significant of those insights, in my opinion, have to do with psychological health. This reminds me of the statements he made early in his “career” about wanting to heal the mind. Not just in my life but in the lives of some friends and strangers with whom one comes in contact with, some of the insights K provides have proven to be powerful and critical in living a life free from psychological / psycho-somatic turmoil.

A new friend who’s seen psychiatrists and psychologists for years wrote recently: “since i met you i've changed a lot in my views. it's healing inside, i feel more energy, more will.” …and … “that's a very new experience! i don't see life as a dark dangerous aching shit anymore, i see lights there.”.

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BROCKWOOD PARK PICTURES

Several friends wrote in appreciation of the 2007 Brockwood work-party pictures -- that they could capture the spirit of place through the pictures – the joy, laughter, work, inquiry, affection, understanding, conversation, friendship, cooperation, amazingly beautiful nature, delicious food, music, etc., so I uploaded the pictures from 2005 and 2006 work-parties as well. The entire set can be found at:
http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/workparty.html

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SACRED GEOMETRY

During the last work-party I met the designed of the Brockwood Park Study Centre, Dr. Keith Critchlow who was visiting with his daughter and a group of students. His foundation's website is http://kairos-foundation.com (I just got word that this website may feature my music recordings). I also met Jon Allen, the Centre's architect, who gave a great talk at the anniversary of the Centre. His website is: http://www.jonallenarchitect.co.uk

On this subject of sacred geometry, one of the topics that got a lot of attention during the last work party was “crop circles”. Interestingly enough I only hear discussion on this topic in Southern UK where these things have occurred more than anywhere else, man-made or not, I have no idea, but according to someone I respect highly they can not all be discarded as hoax (though some are surely man-made) and that indeed there is a lot of mysteries in the universe. On that topic, which is really getting to be off-topic and has nothing to do with K, I watched a very interesting documentary which can be found on:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=qns2W6CVpPw – it’s about 1.5 hours but worth it.

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MARY CADOGAN'S BOOKS

Mrs. Mary Cadogan, a trustee of KFA and long time friend of Krishnamurti, is a writer among her other talents. She’s written several books, two of which I have gone through recently. Her first book: “You’re a Brick Angela!” is a collector’s item (maybe to be reprinted again) which Krishnamurti also enjoyed reading. The other one is called “Women With Wings: Female Flyers in Fact and Fiction”. Both are very enjoyable readings, scholarly researched, and beautifully narrated. The subjects of both are close to my heart as an avid feminist. Mary is a great joy to read as her story telling totally conveys the warmth of her heart which is deep and touching.

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UPDATE ON THE LETTER ABOUT KINFONET/LINK/KLI

Based on the feedback received I updated the document that was released last month about the “fifth foundation” which was just a rhetorical term to refer to KLI and some of the activities it supports such as Kinfonet. I put it on the web for perhaps a limited time in case anybody is interested in downloading an updated version. Noteworthy are an introduction to the new version that is found in the beginning of the document that lists the summary of the few changes, and two Addendums, one, includes some of the feedback, and the other, is a new list of 14 IAQ’s (instead of FAQ): Infrequently asked questions, to clear the air on some questions, images, and innuendos that seemed to occupy a few people’s minds about the intensions of the document, its distribution, and other related items. The document can be found on:

http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/kli_kinfonet_link.html

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THE ROSE

I added some photos that I took during the last three years of K’s talks in Ojai to this file (The first picture is the rose he gave me when I was very young): http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/k_pictures.html

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit some new old friends in Alaska! I will keep their life style a secret otherwise too many people would want to go to Alaska :-) One of them remembered that it was Irmgard, the beloved chef at Oak Grove School, who handed K the flower which he turned around and gave to me. This remembrance made me digitize the poor rose and put it on cyberspace :-)

It was so easy to meet Krishnamurti. Several times I went up and met him. He had no entourage or body guards (in physical form at least :-) . I wrote the account a long time ago:

http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/meeting-k.html

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ABOUT THE EARLY WORKS

I was in a dialogue on this perennial topic of early works recently. Surely the subject is in good hands at the official foundations and I have full trust in how it’s being handled. Just to reiterate, K did specifically ask us to be careful about the early works. A couple of dates have been stated on a couple of occasions and the foundations have one date, i.e., 1933 (as far as I know), prior to which the teachings are considered not fully mature. And if you read some of the early works, you can quickly see why this is so. In his early language K used phrases that he never used later and which sound contrary to his message – things like, I am the way, vs. later saying you should find your own way and do not follow me. This is just my understanding of the issue and maybe inaccurate.

I heard a myth by a Greek gentleman that K only wanted “At The Feet Of The Master” not to be considered as his mature teaching. That is false. There is apparently an effort in Greece to put music to Poems and Parables and permission was granted by KFA for doing so. Some of the pre-1933 material is becoming public domain, well, eventually everything will be public domain, and so the foundations will lose control. Therefore it makes sense, and I believe the foundations maybe planning this, that after the publication of the Complete Works, which is a huge ongoing task, the early works will be published with the appropriate disclaimers about how K felt about them.

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K WAS NOT WRONG ABOUT COMPUTERS’ ROLE

In May 2007 a panel discussion at the annual K gathering in Ojai quasi concluded that K was wrong in predicting that computers would one day take over many functions from humans. At the time I felt this conclusion was a bit premature because it has not been so long since K has died, and it’s already clear that computers are playing a bigger and bigger role in society. My interest on this topic is related to my formal studies and professional experience in computer science.

A conference: "The Singularity Summit: AI and the Future of Humanity" strengthened that impression. (Reference: Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence). Top computer scientists are still thinking that machines will eventually outsmart their makers and play bigger roles in society. Rodney Brooks, a robotics professor at MIT said: (paraphrasing) "We and our world won't be us anymore. When it comes to computers, who is us and who is them is going to become a different sort of question."

Of course, there are many pitfalls in the advances of technology. Aside from issues with moral values which computers do not inherently possess, we should not lose sight of the fact that what we need more in the world is quieter brains not faster ones, but some bio-tech and info-tech scientists tout the possibility of us thinking a million times faster than we already are !! No thanks :-)


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A lot of positive responses come to these articles.

One example is from a person in New Zealand:

Dear Reza, Thanks for your articles and commentaries about K and K things. Very nice and refreshing, clear and sincere. I never met K though
I've been reading him on and off for almost 40 years, and . . . Some people have said it doesn't matter if one never met K in the flesh, and I know what they mean, but I still wish I had!  Thus your lovely descriptions are much enjoyed and appreciated. You're spot on, I think!! Keep up the delightful input!

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Dear Reza, Greetings from Malaysia, Thank you for your e-mail posting, the pictures took and articles send were very enlightening. I do appreciatte it.


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What a very interesting selection of articles and information - thank you.

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Dear Reza,
It was a Pleasant surprise to receive your mail and thank you very much for listing my name in your  Krishnamurti-related, confidential, private mailing list.
It was just yesterday that I played your CD at my office function and more also I played it at home today before coming to office... and what a coincidence  that I received your mail today. I would love to receive your mail.
Warm Regards,


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Dear Reza,
Please include me in your mailing list. I'm a graduate student focussing on holistic education and Krishnamurti's work will certainly be a central theme in my research.
Thanks.

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What a very interesting selection of articles and information - thank you.

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Hello Reza,

Thanks the beautifull work you are doing.

When reading the page about computers I was surprised to read your worries
about what we need as brains.

For sure, we need and will have much faster brains and, for me, thinking faster
does not mean thinking more. On the contrary, when thinking faster, the brain
manages more space or time to be quiet. The quality of its quietness is deeper.

What we must be carefull about is the attachment to the toughts or ideas produced
by the thinking process and this attachment makes the thinking slow and full of all kinds
of irrelevant thoughts. In a certain way one can say that the thinking process has to
get rid of all the ideas based on and substaining the "self" or the "illusionnary entity".

To me, this is what K means when saying "the thinking has to take its right place" or
when speaking about the radical mutation we need to undergo, a transformation which
will affect the brain cells.

Maybe you'll have something with these few words but anyway, I thank you to have
initiate them and I'm glad to share those with you.

All the best, Luc

........Yes Reza, you may add it to the document.