Copyright Ian Ellis-Jones 2006 - All Rights Reserved.

1. Krishnamurti and the Star in the East
by Ian Ellis-Jones
AN EXPANDED VERSION OF AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE SYDNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH ON SUNDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 2006
Acknowledgment is made, and gratitude is expressed, to the Krishnamurti Foundation of America,
Ojai, California, United States of America.
“It is the truth that frees, not your effort to be free.”
“Truth has no disciples but you must become a disciple of truth.”
“The search for truth is the very denial of truth.”
“Truth is a pathless land.”
- J Krishnamurti.
Theosophy (“Divine Wisdom”, from the Gk theos god, and sophia wisdom),
whose maxim is “There is no religion higher than Truth”, is a body of ideas and
beliefs promulgated by the Theosophical Society, founded by H P Blavatsky and
others in New York City in 1875. However, as Unitarian minister and Humanist
leader Charles Francis Potter points out in his book The Faith Men Live By
(Prentice-Hall, 1954):
Ancient in origin, Theosophy stems not only from the Neo-platonists like Plotinus
(who held that the physical universe, nature, and man were all emanations from
God, to whom man might be reunited by ecstatic trance) but derives also from the
still other Hindu and Buddhistic search for the divine knowledge which they called
Brahma-vidya, the exact Sanskrit equivalent of Theosophy.
Early mystics like the Chinese Taoists, the Christian Gnostics, and the Jewish
Cabalists were often theosophical; so was the Renaissance genius Paracelsus
and, a century later, the German cobbler mystic Jakob Boehme, who got much
from Paracelsus and gave much to George Fox and the early English Quakers.
The ideas and beliefs of Theosophy are said by Theosophists to form the basis
or “secret doctrine” of all the major religions and mythologies. However, as
Potter also points out, Theosophy “implies secret wisdom or vital information
obtained only by student initiates after a lengthy process of indoctrination”. The
use of the word “indoctrination” is perhaps unfortunate, for even Potter himself

2. concedes that Theosophists “combine with intuition a great deal of philosophical
speculation and reasoning”.
Many prominent individuals have been members of the Theosophical Society,
including Australia’s 2nd prime minister Alfred Deakin, the Indian parliamentarian
Rukmini Devi Arundale, the scientist and inventor Thomas A Edison, the artist
Paul Gauguin, the composer Alexander Scriabin, the writer L Frank Baum (The
Wizard of Oz), the artist and architect Claude Bragdon, the poet W B Yeats, and
the American philosopher and psychologist William James, who joined the
society in 1882. Although not an actual member, Mahatma Gandhi, who
purportedly said, “God has no religion,” had a long association with the
Theosophical Society beginning in his youth. Walter Burley Griffin, a member of
the not dissimilar Anthroposophical Society - and also, with his wife, a member of
the Sydney Unitarian Church - was also greatly influenced by Theosophy and
some of his writings were published in theosophical journals in Australia.
The three principal objects of the non-sectarian and non-political Theosophical
Society (which imposes no belief on its members), as listed on the official
website of The Theosophical Society in Australia, are as follows:
 To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without
distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color;
 To encourage the study of Comparative Religion, Philosophy and Science;
 To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in
humanity.
Thus, the core values espoused by the Theosophical Society, which affirms the
essential oneness, indivisibility and universality of all life, are brotherhood,
freedom of thought and tolerance.
Much has been written about the rise of Theosophy in Australia. Australian
historian and Emeritus Professor Jill Roe, of Macquarie University, has written a
wonderful book entitled Beyond Belief: Theosophy in Australia 1879-1939 (NSW
University Press, 1986), as well as other salient material on the subject. The
Theosophical movement in Australia had quite an impact, particularly in the

3. 1920s and 30s. Indeed, Sydney became a major Theosophical centre in the
1920s, with much of the attention focused on the building, by a Theosophical
organization called the Order of the Star in the East, of a large Greek-style
amphitheatre at Balmoral Beach in 1923-24. I will have more to say about the
Order of the Star in the East shortly.
Many of the Australian Theosophists also belonged to or at least had more than
a nodding acquaintance with the Liberal Catholic Church, our neighbours in the
next street, who have worshipped with us from time to time. The first services of
the Liberal Catholic Church, whose orders are derived from the Old Catholic
Church of Holland, were held in Melbourne in 1916. The Liberal Catholic Church
is a religious denomination which, like the Unitarian Church, allows its members
freedom of interpretation and expression. The Liberal Catholic Church has a
neo-Platonic Gnostic theology the doctrines of which have a strong connection
with the basic ideas, teachings and principles of Theosophy. That’s not
surprising, as the Church was formed by Theosophists. Although the Liberal
Catholic Church and the Theosophical Society are organizationally quite
separate and distinct, dual membership is fairly common, even more so in times
gone by.
Now, “The Manor”, a most imposingly-sited residence in Mosman, was for many
years the Sydney residence of leading Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater
(1847-1934) who was Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church from 1923-
34 as well as being its Regionary Bishop for Australasia (later, Australia, New
Zealand and South Africa). Leadbeater, a 33o Mason, was also Administrator-
General in Australia of the Universal Co-Masonic Order, and Senior Knight of the
Round Table.
In its heyday (viz the 1920s and early 1930s) the Manor, which was purchased
by the Theosophical Society in 1922, was known in Theosophical circles as “The
Occult Centre for the Southern Hemisphere”. In 1926 the Theosophical Society
established the Sydney radio station 2GB (named after Giordano Bruno (1548-

4. 1600), the Italian priest and occultist who was burned at the stake as a heretic)
which operated from The Manor for a few years.
The Manor is still used today as a spiritual centre and spiritual and educational
community based on Theosophical ideals by the Esoteric School [or Section] of
Theosophy. That body is a distinct legal entity from the Theosophical Society
and its Australian Section. There is a beautiful chapel in the building which is still
used for Liberal Catholic services. My wife and I have been honoured to have
been invited there on several occasions to attend private services in The Manor
Chapel.
Now, back to the Order of the Star in the East. In 1909 Dr Annie Besant (1847-
1933), the then president of the international Theosophical Society - she was
president of the body from 1907 until her death - gave a series of lectures on
“The Changiing World”, declaring that a new race was coming and that a “new
Christ”, or “World Teacher”, was shortly to appear. She was to say, “Australia is
to form part of the nucleus of the new sub-race, the chief characteristics of which
will be intuition - brotherhood and co-operation”. She also said:
Sydney is to be a great city … and Theosophists may safely regard it as the
centre of the southern continent, I do not mean geographically … but the centre
which will radiate its spiritual life.
Charles Leadbeater, in his book The Masters and the Path (Theosophical
Publishing House, 1925), has this to say about the expected Coming of the
World Teacher that had been predicted in several of the world’s sacred
scriptures:
… The World-Teacher will come when He thinks well, but we are told that the
Coming will be soon. The Order of the Star in the East was established thirteen
years ago to prepare for that Coming by drawing together people of every sect and
religion all over the world, who for various reasons believe in the near approach of
the World-Teacher, and are willing to combine in a grand effort to proclaim it to the
world, and prepare themselves as far as may be to be useful servants of the Lord
when He comes.
Since the Lord Maitreya has chosen to announce His Coming to the world through
our President [Annie Besant], we are justified, I think, in assuming that His teaching
will be somewhat along the line of the ideals which she has been promulgating with
such wonderful eloquence during the last thirty-six years. Some sects claim that lie

5. will come to judge mankind and to destroy the earth, so that there is a great
element of fear and uncertainty connected with their beliefs. But all fear of God
comes from a misunderstanding. The Coming of Christ is indeed connected with
an end—not the end of the world, but the end of an age or dispensation. The
Greek word is aion, which is the same as æon in English; and just as Christ said
two thousand years ago that the dispensation of the Jewish law had come to an
end, because He had come to found a new one, that of the Gospel, so will the era
of the Gospel come to an end, when He returns and founds yet another. He will
give the same great teaching; the teaching must be the same, for there is only one
Truth, though perhaps it may be put a little more clearly for as now, because we
know a little more. It will be promulgated in some fresh dress, perhaps, with some
beauty of expression which will be exactly suited to us in this present day, and
there will he some statement of it which will appeal to a large number of people.
It will certainly be the same, because it has appeared in all the existing faiths.
They have differed much in their method of presenting it, but they all agree
absolutely in the life which they ask their followers to live. We find considerable
difference between the external teachings of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and
Muhammadanism; but if we examine the good men of any one of those religions
and enquire into their daily practice, we shall find that they are all leading precisely
the same life—that they all agree as to the virtues a good man must possess, and
as to the evils he must avoid. They all tell us that a man must be charitable,
truthful, kindly, honourable, helpful to the poor; they all tell us that a man who is
hard and grasping and cruel, who is untruthful and dishononrable, is making no
progress, and has no chance of success until he changes his ways. As practical
people we must recognize that the things of real importance in any religion are not
the vague metaphysical speculations on matters of which no one can really know
anything for certain—for these can have no influence upon our conduct; the
important things are the precepts which affect our daily lives, which make us this
kind of man or that kind of man in our relations with our fellow-men.
Now, enter one Brahmin boy Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986). It was Charles
Leadbeater who, in May 1909, discovered Krishnamurti on the beach at Adyar,
Madras (now Chennai), India. Krishnamurti was then aged 13. Leadbeater
adjudged Krishnamurti’s aura to be completely free of selfishness. He was not
alone in seeing something very special in Krishnamurti. Others have written
eloquently of the tremendous impact Krishnamurti had upon them. For example,
Kahlil Gibran wrote, “When he entered my room I said to myself, ‘Surely the lord
of love has come’,” and even the ordinarily cynical George Bernard Shaw was to
later say about Krishnamurti, “He is the most beautiful human being I have ever
seen”.
Anyway, Annie Besant, along with Leadbeater and certain others, proclaimed
that young Krishnamurti was to be the vehicle of the World Teacher, the
reincarnating Christ, whose coming the Theosophists had predicted. Note, not

6. the World Teacher himself, but perhaps a “vehicle” through which the World
Teacher would speak, that is, that Krishnamurti would or at least might be
“overshadowed” by the World Teacher. (Leadbeater shared with Annie Besant
the title “Protector of the Order of the Star in the East”. Interestingly, some,
including Leadbeater’s former secretary, the late Harold Morton, have claimed
that Leadbeater ingratiated himself to Besant because he wanted himself
proclaimed as the vehicle of the World Teacher, but as he knew he was
unacceptable as a “candidate” for the position, he then sought out someone else
whom, he hoped, he would be able to dominate and control, namely,
Krishnamurti. There is also some evidence that Besant came to consider
Leadbeater a liability by 1915 because of concerns supposedly held by her
pertaining to allegations of pedophilia in relation to Leadbeater. A few cynics
have even suggested that Leadbeater involved himself in the “World Teacher
project” in order to divert attention away from his own alleged misconduct.)
But who, exactly, was this supposed “World Teacher”? According to
Theosophists, it was the Lord Maitreya, the “Living Christ”, the Lord of Love, the
alleged head of the occult hierarchy. The Lord Maitreya supposedly held the
office of World Teacher until he supposedly assumed the office of the Buddha on
1 January 1956. According to Theosophical teaching, Jesus of Nazareth and the
Master Kuthumi have jointly assumed the office of the Lord Maitreya. Many
Buddhists also believe in the coming Lord Maitreya Buddha - the next and,
according to some, the “final” Buddha - the Lord Gautama Buddha being the
“Teacher of the Past”. Anyway, Theosophists - well, at least some of them -
idealistically proclaimed that all of the sacred scriptures of the major world
religions attest to the fact that the World Teacher takes a human form from time
to time to bring salvation to humankind. “The coming forth of a Great Teacher,”
said Leadbeater in a lecture, “is a thing which happens periodically in the world’s
history”:
It is about time another should come, and those of us who have been into touch
with the Great Ones behind, whose privilege it has been to be taught by Them,
know because we have seen for ourselves Who this Great Teacher is Who is to
come. We know for ourselves from Him, from His own word, that He will come
soon – that as soon as the world can be prepared for Him, He will come forth.

7. Now, to prepare the world for the expected Coming of the World Teacher, an
organization called the Order of the Star in the East (originally, the Order of the
Rising Sun) was formed in 1911 with the young Krishnamurti as its head. (It was
George S Arundale (1878-1945), Theosophist and Liberal Catholic bishop, who
instituted the preparatory Order of the Star in the East, also editing its journal
Herald of the Star until 1913. Arundale resided at The Manor from 1926 to mid-
1931, was chairman of the Theosophical broadcasting station 2GB, and later
became world president of the Theosophical Society in 1933, after the death of
Annie Besant.) In 1911 Krishnamurti was taken to England and later to Europe
to be privately educated and trained in connection with his Messianic role.
The Declaration of Principles of the Order of the Star in the East, acceptance of
which was all that is necessary for admission to the Order, was as follows:
1. We believe that a great Teacher will soon appear in the world, and we wish
so to live now that we may be worthy to know Him when He comes.
2. We shall try, therefore, to keep Him in our minds always, and to do in His
name, and therefore to the best of our ability, all the work which comes to us
in our daily occupations.
3. As far as our ordinary duties allow, we shall endeavour to devote a portion of
our time each day to some definite work which may help to prepare for His
coming.
4. We shall seek to make Devotion, Steadfastness and Gentleness prominent
characteristics of our daily life.
5. We shall try to begin and end each day with a short period devoted to the
asking of His blessing upon all that we try to do for Him and in His name.
6. We regard it as our special duty to try to recognise and reverence greatness
in whomsoever shown, and to strive to co-operate, as far as we can, with
those whom we feel to be spiritually our superiors.
Things went smoothly for a while. Krishnamurti resided here in Sydney in 1922.
Annie Besant also visited Australia in 1922 in connection with the expected
Coming. She spoke at many places, including the St Albans Liberal Catholic
Pro-Cathedral then in Regent Street, which, according to Leadbeater, would be a

8. “channel” for the coming World Teacher. Besant even spoke at the Sydney
Unitarian Church, which in those days was located in Liverpool Street.
Krishnamurti returned to Sydney in 1925, and spoke once or twice at the
impressive Star Amphitheatre at Balmoral Beach. The amphitheatre, which was
used for Star lectures, as well as for a few theatrical productions, was the only
one of its kind in the British Commonwealth. Indeed, it was said that there was
only one other in the world, namely, the Greek Amphitheater at Point Loma,
California, built in 1901 by the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society.
An urban myth developed in Sydney - that exists to this day - that the
amphitheatre had been “built by lunatics to watch Christ walk on water through
the Heads”. That was not, however, how Krishnamurti actually arrived. “It was
by boat,” said Krishnamurti, to the ABC’s Caroline Jones in Sydney in 1970.
Even within Theosophical circles there were some doubters. Bishop George
Arundale himself was one. In late 1925, Arundale openly doubted Krishnamurti's
“possession”, and that led to much consternation and squabbling. Be that as it
may, Annie Besant announced in 1927, “The World Teacher is here.” A
millennial cult, it was. Well, maybe. On 2 August 1927 Krishnamurti said
publicly, "I never said: I am the World Teacher; but now that I feel I am one with
my Beloved, I say it." Yet Bishop Leadbeater was to say privately, "The Coming
has gone wrong." How right he was. Despite all of the apocalyptic zeal, things
fell apart badly. On 2 August 1929, the opening day of the annual Star Camp at
Ommen, Holland, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star in the East in the
presence and to the great consternation of some 3000 members, effectively,
indeed explicitly, renouncing the Messianic role that had been thrust on him by
others. He gave up all the money and property that had been collected in
connection with the ill-fated Order. In the following year, 1930, Krishnamurti
resigned from the Theosophical Society, although for the remainder of his life he
remained close to many of its leaders. “I have split the rock on which I grew,”
said Krishnamurti.

9. In his historic and oft-quoted speech delivered at Ommen on 2 August 1929
Krishnamurti explained why religious organizations cannot lead us to Truth. This
is part of what he had to say on that momentous day:
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path
whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere
to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned,
unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any
organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If
you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a
belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not
organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect,
a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world
is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who
are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be
brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You
cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-
top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the
dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the Truth, it cannot be "stepped
down" or organized for you. Interest in ideas is mainly sustained by
organizations, but organizations only awaken interest from without. Interest,
which is not born out of love of Truth for its own sake, but aroused by an
organization, is of no value. The organization becomes a framework into which
its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the
mountain-top, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they
put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the
organization will thereby lead them to Truth.
…
For eighteen years you have been preparing for this event, for the Coming of the
World-Teacher. For eighteen years you have organized, you have looked for
someone who would give a new delight to your hearts and minds, who would
transform your whole life, who would give you a new understanding; for someone
who would raise you to a new plane of life, who would give you a new
encouragement, who would set you free-and now look what is happening!
Consider, reason with yourselves, and discover in what way that belief has made
you different-not with the superficial difference of the wearing of a badge, which
is trivial, absurd. In what manner has such a belief swept away all the
unessential things of life? That is the only way to judge: in what way are you
freer, greater, more dangerous to every Society which is based on the false and
the unessential? In what way have the members of this organization of the Star
become different?
…
As I said before, my purpose is to make men unconditionally free, for I maintain
that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal, is the
harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth
which is Life itself. I want therefore to set man free, rejoicing as the bird in the
clear sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom. And I, for whom
you have been preparing for eighteen years, now say that you must be free of all
these things, free from your complications, your entanglements. For this you
need not have an organization based on spiritual belief. Why have an
organization for five or ten people in the world who understand, who are
struggling, who have put aside all trivial things? And for the weak people, there

10. can be no organization to help them to find the Truth, because Truth is in
everyone; it is not far, it is not near; it is eternally there.
Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free;
nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make
you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing
yourselves into works, make you free. …
Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of
Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key
is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the
incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.
… My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.
In the International Star Bulletin of August 1929 we read:
You must be of no god, of no religion, of no sect; bow down to no authority, past
or present, for all authority is unproductive …
Similarly, in the Star Bulletin of January 1931:
Life has no philosophy,
No cunning systems of thought.
Life has no religions,
No adoration in deep sanctuaries.
Life has no gods,
Nor the burden of fearsome mystery …
Krishnamurti remained friends with Annie Besant until her death on 20
September 1933. Peter Michel, in his book Krishnamurti: Love and Freedom -
Approaching a Mystery (Bluestar Communications, 1995), has written:
Of all the members of the Theosophical Society, it seems that she was the only
one who stood by Krishnamurti in absolute loyalty until her death, and she never
doubted his mission, even though she did not fully appreciate all the steps he
took or all the aspects of his teachings.
Many years later, Krishnamurti was reported to have said that she was the “only
sincere one” in the whole Star in the East business.
For almost the next 60 years Krishnamurti travelled all around the world, giving
public talks and private interviews, and holding dialogues, not as a guru, but as a

11. lover of truth. His addresses, talks and dialogues have been compiled into
numerous books which have been translated into more than 50 languages. He
returned to Australia in 1934, and again in 1955 and 1970 for public talks and
addresses which were very well-received. On the last mentioned occasion
thousands of people crammed into the Sydney Town Hall to hear him say:
This is not an entertainment, either philosophical or intellectual. We are
concerned in observing all this, how to bring about a radical change in man, how
to bring about a total revolution, not the revolution of bloodshed, physical
revolution, that doesn’t lead anywhere. There is only one revolution,
psychological, inward revolution, because the human being, you, is the society.
You have built the society. And in that society, in that culture, you’re caught,
therefore you are the world, and the world is you.
”Selfishness is the essential problem of our life,” he would say to his audiences.
What was required was “self-liberation”. We must liberate ourselves from “self-
ness”. Moreover, we can instantaneously liberate ourselves from the past and
from past conditioning - all thought is nothing but memory - if we refuse to
analyse them and see things as they really are, without judgment or evaluation.
On 11 April 1985 Krishnamurti traveled to New York City where he was
presented with the United Nations 1984 Peace Medal. This is part of the speech
Krishnamurti delivered to the United Nations on that day:
It is a vast cynical world and cynicism can never tolerate affection, care, love. I
think we have lost that quality - quality of compassion. Not analyse what is
compassion - it can be analysed very easily. You cannot analyse love, love is not
within the limits of the brain, because the brain is the instrument of sensation, it is
the centre of all reaction and action, and we try to find peace, love, within this
limited area. Which means, thought is not love because thought is based on
experience, which is limited, and on knowledge, which is always limited, whether
now or in the future. So knowledge is always limited. And having knowledge,
which is contained in the brain as memory, from that memory springs thought.
This can be observed very simply and easily if one examines oneself, if one
looks at one's own activity of thought, experience, knowledge. You don't have to
read any book, or become a specialist to understand
So thought is always limited, whether it is now or in the future. And we try to
solve all our problems, both technological, religious, and personal, through the
activity of thought. Surely thought is not love, love is not sensation or pleasure, it
is not the result of desire? It is something entirely different. To come upon that
love, which is compassion, which has its own intelligence, one has to understand

12. oneself, what we are - not through analysts, but understanding our own sorrows,
our own pleasures, our own beliefs.
Elsewhere Krishnamurti has written that love has no motive, and must be for the
thing itself. He also wrote that we cannot depend on anybody else for what is
truly important. “Following blindly or according to pleasure or temperament does
not bring man to freedom,” he said.
Krishnamurti died of cancer on 17 February 1986, at Ojai, California, where he
had lived for many years. Immediately, there was a great outpouring of love and
affection shown to him around the world. To millions of his “disciples” - a most
unfortunate word that Krishnamurti himself disliked - he was irreplaceable.
Roland Vernon, author of Star in the East: Krishnamurti - The Invention of a
Messiah (Sentient Publications, 2002), writes:
Krishnamurti was dead. The star had set, its mission at an end.
Well, then, was Krishnamurti the “World Teacher” or, at least, a vehicle for the
World Teacher, whoever that may be? Here is something interesting that
Krishnamurti said to Lady Emily Lutyens:
I have never denied being the WT [World Teacher]. You know, mum, I have
never denied it. I have only said that it does not matter who or what I am ...
Years later, long after the last Star Camp, Krishnamurti tried to articulate what
this supposed “Other” was behind him, remarking to his friends Mary Lutyens
(Lady Emily’s daughter) and Mary Zimbalist that the “Other” was "there, as if it
were behind a curtain ... I could lift it but I don't feel it is my business to." Roland
Vernon in his book Star in the East records that, as Krishnamurti lay dying, “he
astonished one and all by stating firmly that while he was alive he was still ‘the
World Teacher’.” Anyway, some of the Theosophists who went to camps and
other meetings where Krishnamurti spoke in the 1920s - particularly at the Star
Camp at Ommen, Holland, but also at Adyar, in India - have written that they
clairvoyantly saw this great being overshadowing Krishnamurti. Scott Shaw has
aptly written:

13. [Besant and Leadbeater] taught that Krishnamurti would lead the world onto a new
level of spirituality.
In actuality, this is what he did. He left all of the nonsense of holiness behind.
World Teacher or not, to millions of people all over the world, including myself,
Krishnamuti spoke with deep authority and always from a position of integrity.
He was the embodiment of Truth. In his own distinctive way, Krishnamurti largely
fulfilled the Theosophical expectations concerning the World Teacher in several
key respects. In any event, his basic message was entirely consistent with
Theosophical teaching. Yes, truth is a "pathless land" and you cannot approach
it by any creed or path whatsoever. Direct perception of truth is, however,
possible, when there is what Krishnamurti called “choiceless awareness” of life
as it really is. The important thing is life itself. Whatever "it" may be, it is all here
now, and all we have to do is to learn to perceive it here and now. We need to
see each thing as it really is - as a new moment. Krishnamurti was perhaps the
first world teacher who said that “you have to be your own teacher and your own
disciple”. Now, that was new, and original. No wonder His Holiness the Dalai
Lama referred to Krishnamurti as “one of the greatest thinkers of the age”, and
Time magazine named him “one of the five saints of the 20th century”.
And what happened to the Star Amphitheatre at Balmoral Beach, in Sydney?
Well, it was sold in 1931 after having been used briefly as a mini golf course. Not
long thereafter part of it was used briefly, and illegally, as a rest home, but
Mosman Municipal Council closed it down in 1936. The following year the
property was sold again, this time to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
for purposes that remain to this day unclear. Richard Neville has poignantly
written, “the temple withered away”. In 1950 the Roman Catholic Church sold
the property, and in 1951 the amphitheatre was demolished. A nondescript,
indeed ugly, block of home units, known as “Stancliff”, stands there today. It’s so
ironic … and so sad. Perhaps they were all lunatics, but I admire and salute their
idealism. In this rather ugly age of crass materialism and crude consumerism,
the Theosophists’ quaint and whimsical but optimistic esoteric spirituality still
shines in the hearts of many who believe that there is more to life than meets the
eye. May the Star ever shine upon them … and upon us.

14. And what has happened to the Greek Amphitheatre at Point Loma, California?
Well, it’s still there, amazingly, but it’s now part of the Point Loma campus of
Point Loma Nazarene University, a conservative Christian institution. The
Theosophists have long since departed from there as well. Another sad irony.
And what about the Star Camp, in Ommen, Holland? Well, Sterkamp became a
Nazi concentration camp in the Second World War. That’s even sadder.
We can’t let it end there. Let’s finish with the Liberal Catholic Church’s “First Ray
Benediction”, which is said to have been written by Dr Annie Besant herself:
May the Holy Ones, whose pupils you aspire to become, show you the Light you
seek, give you the strong aid of their compassion and their wisdom. There is a
peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the hearts of those who live in the
Eternal; there is a power that maketh all things new; it lives and moves in those
who know the Self as One. May that peace brood over you, that power uplift
you, till you stand where the One Initiator is invoked, till you see His Star shine
forth. Amen.