View of Octagone Building and Adyar River at TS Head Quarters
Adyar, Sunday, 29 September
2013
This morning on the terrace of our room, we managed
to go on internet. After the usual e-mail exchanges, we read for two hours in
the book “Supranormal” by Dean Radin, in which he is making the case for
scientific acceptance of the existence of the siddhis. He is presenting it in a
well-documented scientific way. All the references should be verified, though,
and that is not a simple job. We were told at the ITC in Naarden, where we
attended a presentation by someone about the research of Ian Stevinson that
part of the study and research into the subject of reincarnation, to which Radin
refers, was financed by Xerox and that it appeared that not all the evidence
was as convincing as a scientist would have wanted.
Sitting on the terrace in lush green surrounding was a
wonderful experience and we wondered, why not more students were allowed to
have the same experience.
After lunch, a good siesta prepared us for the talk
before the inter-lodge meeting. At tea time, the assembled crowd of more than 50
members could listen to the thoughts of a well prepared advaita scholar and
retired policeman about ancient wisdom in modern times. Living the dharma is
following the law and not being harmful the speaker said, so he included ahimsa
in the idea of dharma.
This week, it has been difficult to go on internet.
Some days it took till half past nine in the evening, before we could start to
use our e-mail.
Konstantin replied to our question about Sundays, in which
we said to have learned in school that the weekdays and the one day of rest were
from ancient Indian origin, that HPB in Transactions (25.04.1889) asserts that
7 days week is of Indian origin.
It appears, that in December there will not be a Wi-Fi
installed at LBC. Some-one had been busy talking and wishful thinking, while we
were taking the utterances for factual statements.
Work is interesting and completely different from the
control work we were used to. The colleagues try to come to positive,
workable solutions to the problems, which we encounter together.
The evening study this week was with ten or more
people, but not allways the same. We read chapters 4 and 5 of Practical Occultism,
which has quotations from ‘Light on the Path’ and other works of Indian
philosophy. The participants tried to link the theosophical teaching with the Indian
philosophies. The reader said that in former days, the children in India used
to be taught these teachings from very early age.
One evening there was an interactive Adyar Lodge meeting
on the book “Practical Occultism” with some 16 people, which was very good. The
moderator summed up the conditions for living the life of an occultist as given
by H. P. Blavatsky, the result of which was a long list we could not remember.
We shall have to look it up.
During another evening at the study group on the
booklet “Practical Occultism” we witnessed an exchange of views about how one
could become of service to one’s fellow workers. It appeared that the different
personal kingdom builders were difficult to cope with. After that there was a
more mellow conversation about the trip to the South-East Asian Theosophical
Conference in Bali during the first week of November, when the participants
would like to visit Borobudur. Our whole life we have wondered if and when we
would see this extraordinary, world famous Buddhist Temple and now all of a
sudden it is just happening, without any special personal effort, but as part
of a group dynamic, which is taking form. Like the petals of a flower opening
harmoniously in space and time. In this same spirit, yesterday one confirmed
that the special psychic powers come naturally, when time is there. We should
not force developments, but be aware of them as they take place.
Friday, there were about 14 people resent in the study
group and the discussions were lively. Mostly it was about meditative life or
living the life in the form of an altruistic prayer. There were two visitors,
of whom one seemed kind of medium as he was at certain moment staring at the
ceiling, while looking absent minded. For the rest of the time he participated
actively in the discussions and said to have been meditating for some ten
years. Best was to sit for meditation round three in the morning. This was
confirmed by another person, who told a story about consulting a wise guru in
the case of a sick child. He advised that the girl should meditate for half an
hour at about three in the morning. We referred to the eightfold path of
Buddhism, which leads to meditation. Further we said, that a meditative life
begins with learning to meditate and that probably the easiest way to learn is
to start at about three in the morning. This is the time, when the world is as quiet as can be.
We made the comparison with learning how to write between the lines, while
later the writing becomes automatic. So after learning how to meditate the
meditative state becomes an automatic way of life.
Because the room we occupied has to be whitewashed and
tiles have to be laid in the bathroom we had to move to another room, so we
moved from Room 11 to room 10. These rooms are not situated next door to each
other, but on different floors and at opposite sides of the building, which is
more than 50 meters long.
We had felt the urge to move as quickly as possible,
as soon as we came here last week, but the move to a permanent residence is for
a later phase. It was good to experience though that the urge to move was about
changing rooms in LBC. When we were told, that we had to move, we were not
surprised. Except for the meals, the walks, the study and one visit to the
International Secretary in the Administration Building, one whole day was taken
by packing, moving and unpacking. The "green form" for moving house has not been signed
yet. The General Manager said that the house will have to be cleaned
thoroughly, because it is infected with ants.
In the new room, the electricity sockets are of the
old model and the plug of our new water kettle, for which new sockets had been
installed in some other rooms, did not fit. We managed to boil the water with a
big one thousand watt boiler for heating laundry water in a bucket, which we
had placed in a completely filled tea pot. Later an electrician fixed a new
plug to the cable of the kettle.
The connection to the Internet works also in the new room,
but we have to position the laptop with the usb-stick-modem either outside on the terrace or inside the room as far as possible
towards the back door, which door would have been the front door in the earlier
days, when the building was newly constructed and the dining room with a terrace
overlooking the Adyar River were situated on the ground floor.
Walking after dinner is quiet and relaxing. Dinner though
is in a hurry, because kitchen workers want to get home before dark. We work
till almost five o’clock, have dinner at half past five and go to the beach
before the gate closes at half past six, where the guard tries to close
earlier, because he also wants to get to a safe place before dark.
We also saw another head of department, who is almost
80 years old and looked much better than in June. We had an exchange of views
about how long he might continue to work here. May be he would like to stay as
long as possible, he said, because he is here now since about ten years and has
to decide if he would want to do something else.
The beach walk in the morning before breakfast is
beautiful, when there are no clouds and one can see the sun rise. We should get
up at five o’clock to be on time for that.
One resident told us today, that LBC will not stand
another century, because the iron inside the reinforced concrete beams is
rusting. The only and very costly solution would be to put up new beams fixed
to the existing ones. That might be a scenario for the next generation in the
year 2050 or so.
Yesterday we just had Tulsi tea with the neighbour,
who was ill with digestive problems. He must have caught some bug during the
holiday at the beginning of this week and his indisposition became worse during
the last days. He had even skipped lunch, at which there was a tofu dish, with
delicious sauce.
It has been raining during the night and some days
even during the afternoon siesta. We did not hear it most of the time, because
we still sleep like a rose, now on the matress which we have borrowed from a
compatriot, who told us that we could have it temporarily, because he is not
coming to Adyar for the time being.
The laundry had arrived and clothes for one week had
been washed clean and ironed by the TS Laundry Department for a dazzling, subsidized price of less than one euro everything included.
The work was normal and most of the week we had
internet access in the workplace, also with the usb-modem of another provider,
which we borrowed from our neighbor at LBC, who has had to move rooms too.
On Saturdays work is only in the morning. We are
slowly beginning to participate and share the responsibility with the more
experienced colleagues. Next week there are just two and half working days (Monday,
Thursday and Saturday), while the other three days are official holidays, one
for Deepvaly and the other two for commemorating A. Besant and Gandhi.
We have become associated member of Adyar Lodge by a
procedure a little bit different from the one applied to our predecessor, who
became president of this same lodge as soon as she had arrived in Adyar. But
different tempora have different mores.
The pc is having access to internet again inside the
room, and we should hurry to post the blog.
Bye for now,
Brooder
