Tim Boyd – India, USA
Tim Boyd speaks
I am told that J. Krishnamurti once made the comment that if there were ten people in the world like him, the world would be transformed. Regardless of one’s opinion of Krishnamurti’s history or status as a “World Teacher”, the statement is worth considering. Coming from the mouth of an average person, a normal reaction to hearing such a statement would bring the idea of delusion or extreme boastfulness. “Who does he think he is?” is the question that would arise. Given the more than seven decades of Krishnamurti’s life of teaching and speaking, and the numerous books by him and about him, we have some sense of who he was and what he might have meant. Clearly the ten transformative people he was talking about were not determined by their personalities, circumstances, or popular regard. Although these are the tags most of us normally use to identify ourselves, to him they were meaningless attributes. The “ten people” referred to something deeper. That something is consciousness.
The ability to solve and explain the processes and phenomena of the natural world is rightfully the pride of the scientific endeavor. However, its inadequacy to address the fact of consciousness has been a continuing problem. No one denies its existence; that would not be possible. The act of denial itself is a function of consciousness. But how to explain it? Although the effects of consciousness can be measured, currently consciousness itself cannot. Acupuncture, therapeutic touch, and other energy-based healing modalities have been accepted and taught in universities of the Western world, not because they are understood, but because their measurable effects in promoting health have been repeatedly demonstrated. Meditation and mystical states have been examined in laboratory settings and found to have dramatic effects on the brain and the rest of the body. The inescapable conclusion is that activities of consciousness affect the material world. What is unseen influences what is seen.
From the point of view of the Ageless Wisdom everything is endowed with consciousness. Its expansiveness is what differentiates the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, and all the higher and lower kingdoms from each other. The factor that makes a human being human is a specific center of consciousness, the soul, which accompanies and, when allowed, directs the human experience. At the end of the little book, The Idyll of the White Lotus, “three truths” are given. The first is “The soul . . . is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendor has no limit.” Sometimes called the spark of the Divine, the higher self, or inner self, it is the soul that associates itself with the body and personality in life after life. Because the soul is not separate from the Universal, or Divine, it is a center of genuine power. During their lifetimes most people have glimpses of its splendor, but they tend to remain in the background as fleeting reminders of an indwelling wisdom potential. Some find themselves so moved by these brief encounters with genuine “soul power” that they commit to finding some path that leads to the soul’s full expression in their lives.
Ultimately these ones find their way through religions, practices, ashrams, and orders, to the “temple of Divine Wisdom”, where truth, beauty, power, love, and freedom become their experience. Of these few, at various times in human history, one will emerge in the world, normally to attempt some “course correction” to humanity’s current misguided direction. Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, Shankaracharya, and others are examples of this exalted consciousness. Their words and life story are the message intended to awaken us to our own deep potential — a shared potential which, according to them, is in every way equal to their own. They are the souls whose “growth and splendor” have moved beyond all limits with which we are familiar. Other disciples, outposts of their all-embracing consciousness, follow them to ground their vision in the human family. These are the “ten people” to whom Krishnamurti referred — the rare flowering of generations of seekers who have learned to truly see.
There is an idea expressed in the book Power vs Force by David Hawkins MD, about the relationship between power and force. He makes the point that “power arises from meaning” and “always supports the significance of life”. Force on the other hand “always moves against something”. It “is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly” and “its effect is to polarize rather than unify”. David Hawkins developed a model, mapping the progression from the lower forceful states to the highest expressions of power. Whether or not one accepts his model, it is a useful mapping for something we already intuitively know; that love, joy, peace, and enlightenment are the highest, most powerful states for the human being.
When we read or are told words of wisdom that go beyond our personal experience we are faced with a choice. What to do with them? For many, it is clear that the message exceeds their grasp, but it is accepted because the source is deemed to be reliable. Often such things become a matter of belief, or blind faith. Buddha’s advice to his disciples was “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” The approach that H. P. Blavatsky prescribed was rooted in the Hermetic Axiom — an expression of the Law of Correspondences, or Analogy.
The axiom is rooted in the idea that there is an all-encompassing, undivided consciousness within which “we live, move, and have our being”. There is no separation between high and low, near and far, caste, gender, species, or any other categories of difference we create. Its fullness is accessible at every point. The Hermetic Axiom is normally stated thus: “As it is above, so it is below. As it is within, so it is without.” It is a tool that can be applied to align our “normal” experience with that which is as yet beyond our grasp — hidden behind self-created walls of personal preferences.
Let me share a story that, for me, is an example of the Hermetic Axiom in action. During the time I was in college, outdoor concerts were a big thing. It was just a couple of years after the iconic Woodstock Festival, the “Three Days of Peace and Music”, that marked a generation. I was still living in New York and had bought a ticket to attend a “blanket concert” — no seats, no chairs, just bring a blanket and enjoy the music. Many of my favorite music groups of that time were scheduled to perform. The only problem for me was that I had been given medical advice that I should not attend. I had injured my knee and was awaiting surgery. Basically, I could not walk, but I could limp, and that was good enough for me; I was going.
Ten thousand people showed up for the concert. For some unknown reason the concert was delayed. Announcements were made to be patient; it would start soon. The delay continued and people and the audience started getting impatient, restless. I was standing on the edge of the crowd nursing my knee. At one point, the way it appeared to me, the entire crowd suddenly turned and started running directly at me. It was a stampede. What started it? I don’t know. The next thing I remember, I was 100 meters down the road, having outrun everyone. As I came back to my senses I realized a couple of things. The first was that, like a leaf in a storm, the fear generated by a mass mind had overwhelmed me, literally it had propelled me to act in a way that was supposedly medically impossible. Surprisingly the crowd did not disperse, but went back to waiting for the show to begin. I, too, decided to stay.
The next realization for me was that the crowd was still restless and likely this stampede would happen again. Like the light bulb that shines above the head of a comic book character when he suddenly gets an idea, a thought came into my mind. This time I moved into the center of the crowd and waited. As expected, it happened again. The crowd turned and started running. This time I was ready. I grabbed the two people in front of me and shouted “Why are you running?” Somehow that broke the spell they were under and they stopped. Of course, they had no idea why they were running. They were running because everybody else was. The effect of them stopping was that the people immediately behind them had to stop, and the ones behind them. Although drones did not exist at that time, a drone’s view of the crowd at that moment would have shown a surging stream of people and in its center a small unmoving fan around which all of the rest were streaming.
That experience impressed me in important ways. At the time I was newly exposed to the Ageless Wisdom teachings. The power of thought and the capacity to be centered were a strong focus in those early days. Certainly now, I would not do what I did then. I mark it up to the excesses of youth, but that experience changed me. The deepest realization for me was that if in that crowd of ten thousand people there had been just ten people who were centered, present, and aware, no stampede would have been possible. The fear would not have been able to overwhelm them; the mass hysteria would have been calmed at its beginnings; hell could become heaven. It defined a direction for me, a path along which at ever-deepening levels I could become one of the “ten”.
To get back to Krishnamurti’s statement: whether the number of people is ten, or twenty, or one hundred, some small number, functioning from the level of the unimpeded soul, can radically change society. The founding of the Theosophical Society was intended to address this need — the creation of a body of people who through “self-induced and self-devised efforts” enter into the soul’s orbit with all that means in terms of transformative, radiant power. We do not have to stand in the middle of fear-filled, stampeding people in the physical sense, but each of us has the power to refuse to be caught up and swept away in the stream of fearful, force-filled, destructive currents active in the world today.
In our homes, among our friends, in our communities, in every place we are present, we can be powerful. Even in silence.
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This article was also published in The Theosophist, VOL. 145 NO. 8 JUNE 2024
The Theosophist is the official organ of the International President, founded by H. P. Blavatsky on 1 Oct. 1879.
To read the JUNE 2024 issue click HERE