The World Teacher and Yours Truly

(A true story)

Hello, young one. Do you want to hear a nice story about my younger days ? Yes?
OK. Then sit down by the fire, while I get you some thyme-and-sage tea with a good dollop of honey…
Here goes my story…
Once upon a time, when I was young…

…I was a follower of Krishnamurti. I was in my twenties then, with a rainbow heart, and a good brain. Every summer for six years I put up my tent in the camping place in the Swiss town of Saanen, to listen to one of the greatest teachers of all times : Krishnamurti.
We hippies always sat on the ground, with our coloured clothes and flowing hair (yes, guys too).
We sat at his feet, you understand, not on benches, not on chairs, we sat on the ground, because we were HIS children, and we knew that. He was a teacher for us, the young ones, the hippies, the flower-children. And we wanted to be as close as we only could to him. We knew, even then, that he was talking to us. For a time that was still to come, perhaps.
What I really want to tell you is the story of how he looked at me, once, and my life was changed forever.

You see, I had had the chance (…but is there “chance” in this universe??) to meet an intimate friend of his, in Geneva, my home town in Switzerland. Silviji, a dear old Romanian grandpa, was 85 when I met him. I don´t know exactly what he saw in me, it was a very unlikely friendship. Me with my blond tresses and my Afghan skirts, and he, already bent with old age. I think he felt his life ending, and needed to transmit his experience of having been close to Krishnaji and he chose me, perhaps because I was at that time, exceptionally open to Spirit.
We went for long walks in the countryside of my beloved Geneva, and he recounted to me all the details of Krishnaji´s early days, when Krishnaji started to talk about his enlightenment, and about The Beloved. About the Gatherings in Holland, and the Order of the Star.
Anyway, I read all the books, and that is how I came to be at Saanen, during six summers, with my little tent and my cooking gear, at the camping place, where  people gathered from all over the world every rainy month of July in the Swiss mountains.

So – that year – that fateful year, Krishnaji had ranted again against his “disciples” (he didn´t want “disciples”!), who all had their respective seats with their names on it, if you please! – in the front row of the audience. I remember, that last year I decided to not sit on the floor with the other “flower-children”.
I sat on the side, at the entrance of the giant tent where the “gatherings” took place. As I said, Krishnaji, old and bent – but with what dignity, ranting again…”You see, you would not be here if you were not neurotic. Go out, there, the world is aflame, bring a little water if you can.”
… Wow. That sounded really hard. I looked at the “disciples”, at their Hollywood star chairs…and I was so sad for this old man, this giant spirit, this oh so gentle soul – who, year after year, told them the same :”Dear Sirs… If you understand what I´m saying, you will not come back here, you will be in the WORLD doing what you can for the world”.
” See, just once, what I am talking about, and you will follow your own heart, not my words, not me!”
Anyway, – that year I decided not to sit with the hippies. I guess I wanted to grow up.
That year, Krishnamurti had to sit on his hands (he had Parkinson), and my heart almost broke to feel this great life offering itself to us, and the seeming callousness of the star disciples. I was so young then, you know, I couldn´t understand, then, what hard work it really is to stand up on your own and go out into the world.
After the talk he came down the stairs of the wooden platform where his chair was placed, and, to get out of the tent, came walking into my direction.
This time, I don´t know why, I had a good look at him, up close and personal. I was boiling inside, I guess what I wanted to scream out was “I listened, I REALLY listened!You are not alone!I listened! I know what you are talking about!”

For forty years he had told the same thing over and over again, “Bring water to the world, share your UNDERSTANDING of what I´m trying to say, this is what ¡s important, not my words, not ME – for pity´s sake!”
He passed me by, and for the fraction of a second, for the fraction of an entire eternity, he looked straight into my eyes.
Went out of the tent.
I cried for two solid hours. I couldn´t stop. It was as if I had been struck by lightning.

In his eyes I saw… Love, of such a magnitude…The very Love of God for His Creation, a vast compassion, – you understand ? A love for Humanity…

A love for us… A Love “among” us. Something absolutely out of the world that I knew at the time, yet “in” this world, “of” this world, like the beauty of the mountains and the song of the rivers.
From then on, I never went back to the camping place. And yes,  I went out into the world, I made my way in the world, trying to be a fountain, trying to still “the fire that the world is”, as Krishnaji had said. Where I could, when I could, remembering his Love.

I never saw him again in the flesh, and yet, even today, sitting at my computer looking over the Earth Sanctuary,  35 years later, I remember him, and I cry. The impact of his Love, the transmission of…what ? I don´t know. It has no name. No form. The energy that impacted me, that pushed me on, out of Saanen, out of books, out of mere intentions, GET OUT! DO SOMETHING FOR THE WORLD! DON´T COME BACK!
I understood. Dimly, at that time, I think.

I was twenty-four.

And my Path, from then on, has not stopped until I came to this valley, in Northern Spain, where I finally got the message of those eyes, where I finally understood what my mission really is, – what I have to do, where and how I am needed.

He died one year before I came to Spain, one year before the battle for the Earth Sanctuary started during the Harmonic Convergence, when 16 million people met, in sacred places all over the world, to declare TOGETHER that they wanted “a new heaven and a new earth”.

 

May the Kingdom come, the Kingdom that is (as Thomas the Apocryph said) “inside you and also around you”…

Yup. Those were the days…
Finish your tea now, and let´s go get some brambles out of the way!