Adyar, 19 May 2013

Adyar Beach

Adyar, Sunday, May 19, 2013

This week all our personal belongings were finally collected in our room. All the documents for the visa registration have been drafted. We have a bicycle and can make our own tea. We can consult our e-mail and bank account on the Internet. The meals in the restaurant are of good standard and sometimes even with products like tofu, which are a must for the vegan diet. After having spoken with the President of the TS on Monday morning, all is fine and now the work can begin. 

One night there was a tropical storm somewhere in the region. We had to get out of bed and shut most of the windows. The next few days temperature was somewhat lower than the 35° C on the day of our arrival.

We had a good conversation with the International Secretary about our housing situation, our responsibilities to our family members at home and to our national section in Europe. We have to get out of our national and supranational dress and put on the international garment coming with the function at the headquarters of a truly international organization.

We have been occupied whole days with administrative matters and finally we got print outs of all the necessary documents for the visa registration at the Immigration Bureau next Wednesday.

The heat is just bearable. Riding on the bicycle we could praise ourselves very fortunate to feel really at home in the beautiful natural surroundings of the TS estate here in Adyar. It is just the same feeling as when one comes back home from a long travel to far away countries and continents and finally realizes, that there is no place as beautiful as home.

Some evenings we have a chess game and lessons, so the next time we shall be playing chess with the grandchildren, we shall be able to give them the right instructions about the rules.

In the afternoon we do some reading in the library, where the atmosphere is just fine for reading and study.

We went shopping on the bicycle and for repair of the nose support of our spectacles, which repair was done in ten minutes and for a very low price by the optician, who is the next door neighbor of the TS.

Morning and evening walks to the beach continue and are relaxing to the mind with the wide ocean views and many impressive rolling waves bursting continuously into white curls of foam hurrying restlessly to the coast.

We met with the new secretary of the President, who invited us to come to the daily, Monday to Friday, study group from 7.15 to 8 pm. After dinner, this study group is a good social experience.

It is too warm for tea, so we make our own freshly pressed orange juice with the newly acquired citrus press. When we go shopping at the end of the afternoon, the watermelon juice in the fruit juice shop is also a most welcome refreshment.

Real work has started and we find that most of the book keeping is manual and that for the accounting a software program is used.

Slowly does it and we have still almost five years to go, we said to the colleagues, when they asked if we wanted to see many things at the same time.

The days are becoming too short to do all there is to do. The work is very satisfactory and is beginning to take some shape.

Yesterday at 5 p.m. we went to the beach for our first swim. This was a great success, although the waves were so high, that we did not dare to go deeper in the see than up to our knees, and even then we were still being overthrown by the bigger waves. All together a joyful experience with reminiscences from past summers and tropical years.

At the beach we met with another swimmer, who was very enthusiastic and said that the waves and cleanness of the sea varied from day to day. Today we saw him diving through the waves and take a real swim between the first two rows of waves, where the undercurrent apparently is not too strong at this time of the year.

Sunday was a day of rest with a little bit of study in a book on so-called “Christian Theosophy”  by Emmanuel Tourpe, professor in philosophy at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Brussels and Director at the Belgian Radio (BRT). Title of the book is “L’audace Théosophique de Baader”. Franz von Baader (1765-1841) appears to have found a good source for his rather chaotic approach of Theosophy in the teachings of the German Christian Protestant and Theosophist, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624).

Like R. Guenon (1886-1951) in “Le Théosophisme, histoire d’une pseudo religio”, E. Tourpe (1970-  ) speaks about the ideas of the Theosophical Society as “Theosophism” and calls the Theosophy of H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891)  “Anti-Christian Orientalism” while considering the teachings of Jacob Boehme to be part of what he calls the “Traditional Theosophy” which according to him has a Judeo-Christian basis. All very Catholic, but still is it not to be mistaken that, as a Roman Catholic theologian, he is making a study of those Theosophical ideas, which were ventilated in Europe in the XVI century AD.

With these kind of studies at hand, our stay at Adyar will be much too short. Anyhow, our most important work is at the headquarters of the TS and the study activity is but a collateral action in the margin.

This was our first full weekly blog.

Another one comes next Sunday.

Bye for now,

Mr. Brooder