We're On the Road to Nowhere

Sign in the Blavatsky Gardens, Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai

I visited the rather non-descript, sprawling metropolis of Chennai, formerly known as Madras under the Raj, and for better and worse, it shows that India is indeed on the cusp of breaking onto the list of “developed” countries. However, this is not necessarily a good thing, culturally speaking, but that opens up quite another debate. For now, Chennai shows that India can do what all developed countries have done all too well: that is, it can make a very impersonal, generic urban spread, which has very little character and appeal on the grand-scale level, but is highly functioning with all of the prerequisites to find itself amongst the list of large, global cities. In short, besides being highly, and densely populated with Indians (population statistics vary greatly with Chennai (and the rest of India), from 6-12 million, so statistics are rather worthless when speaking of India), it is just a big, ugly generic city with cultural pockets that are interesting to visit, but I certainly wouldn’t want to live there. 

Ostensibly I went to Chennai because Gitesh, one of the other volunteers on the program, had acquired tickets for the big Mumbai Indians versus the Chennai Super Kings for the Champions League Twenty Cricket series. As Chennai is emerging as one of India’s top 3 cities, and its film industry is actually even more prolific than Bollywood’s, though hampered in audience numbers by the significantly smaller Tamil-speaking population, this was a game of local and regional pride and the fans of the Super Kings were raring to go.

As far as Cricket matches go, this one was indeed extremely exciting, coming down to the final two plays of the game. Sadly enough for the home team, Mumbai rallied in the final over, despite being down 7 wickets, to dash the hopes of the Super Kings fans with a score of 158-159 at 19.5 overs. I must say, despite being rather unimpressed by Chennai the city, I was rooting for the Tamil underdogs, so was sad to see this result. Another point of interest about going to a major sporting event in India is that there are no alcohol sales, all of the food was vegetarian, the athletes were warming up with yoga stretches on the field, and the coolest Indian music was blaring through the loudspeakers in between overs and after 4’s and 6’s were scored. They even had quite modestly clad cheerleaders, though not that the crowd needed much to be extremely fired up to play Mumbai.

Cricket matches aside, I agreed to go to Chennai for an ulterior reason as well, that being to visit the grounds of the Theosophical Society, where Krishnamurti was culled from the local boys and groomed and courted to be the emerging World Teacher.

In addition to Krishnamurti’s involvement, I have been intrigued by the Society for many years because of the link to James Joyce and Finnegans Wake. While writing his final opus, Joyce famously and infamously used and abused information from the Society’s “bible,” which was Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. In it, the very odd and eccentric Russian mystic explores the realms of, inter alia, astral planes, super-consciousness, universal souls, and the correspondences amongst the major world religions. The TS’s core mission was to create a new Theosophy based upon the rather more occult angles of the religions and to try to find the similarities rather than the differences.

The TS suffered a monumental blow to its existence when Krishnamurthi announced  that he was disbanding the movement and declared quite famously and infamously that “Truth is a pathless land...you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” I rather agree with him, though whenever I say that it sets off bells and whistles of “you don’t like organized religion” and other tired chestnuts that really don’t add to the discussion but continue to say the same old thing. I don’t think that organized religion has any fear of my meager criticisms of it...

In going along with Krishnamurti, however, I am wont to believe that “Truth” is quite alive and kicking, but it is an organic process that continues to grow, that the path continues to be cut through the wandering dark woods, and at times, much akin to Heidegger’s concept of wood paths, we venture upon clearings of insight and meadows of clarity, which may have been made by others before us, by hook and crook, luck, or our own doing. Yet, resting upon the laurel leaves from the trees that have fallen before us and smelling the flowers after they have withered is in fact counterproductive. At times, we need to pull up camp, return to the woods, clear new pathways, meeting other travelers along the way, exchanging stories and experiences, though, ultimately, it comes down to us, and us alone.

People can tell each other “personal truths” till the Holy Cows come home, but we still must engage in the experiences of spiritual, mental, and physical development as individuals, seeking to indeed “know thyself.” Does this mean that organized religions are wrong? Absolutely not, but they may rather being serving as weigh stations for like-minded individuals who have found a similar “personal truth” that works in life. I am very hard-pressed, however, after all of my travels and encounters with people from around the world to believe that there is indeed one, single, correct path. In my mind, that just smacks of incredible human-based arrogance, control issues, and narrow-mindedness.

Is this a call for spiritual anarchy? Far from it. Do I think that no religion has tapped into the “Truth?” Again, far from it. However, I believe that we are still cobbling it together from the collective experience of personal truths, perhaps approaching the calculus of understanding, but again, along with Krishnamurti, Kant, Nietzsche, and Socrates, I believe that the true communion with the Universal Spirit, Oversoul, Godhead, Higher Power, Supreme Being, Prime Mover, God, or whatever you choose to call it, is beyond human reason and beyond human time, and beyond human concepts of the physical world.

I, for one, am pretty happy with the path that I am clearing, even if to others it appears to be going nowhere at times, as well as when I am sitting in a meadow that I have come across and sit, smelling the sweet flowers, seemingly allowing the world to speed by, not really caring that it might “leave me behind,” or even during those dark nights of the soul that challenge us so and put our true spiritual mettle to the fiery tests of confusion and delusions of ego and control, and in all of these, I believe that these comprise the collection of experience that I am able to carry along with me in my mental, spiritual, and physical backpack to make the journey more visceral, authentic, and informed.

Walking alone through the overgrown grounds of the Theosophical Society, which are on an enormous rambling, and for the most part, vacated tract of land to the southeast of Chennai, it was as though I was walking through a veritable ghost land, devoid of the eclectic activity that once flourished there, and seeing the enormous banyan tree that Krishnamurti was wont to speak under, I was glad that I had found this stopover and clearing made by others in my journey, but was happy to move on, and to then leave the masses of Chennai behind, returning to Madurai’s frenetic, though now propitiating anarchy of the senses and to its welcoming individual character, like coming back to see an old, strange friend.